Quotes & Sayings About Living Simpler

People who put my paintings on their walls are putting their values on their walls: faith, family, home, a simpler way of living, the beauty of nature, quiet, tranquillity, peace, joy, hope. They beckon you into this world that provides an alternative to your nightly news broadcast. — Thomas Kincade

In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely; as the pursuits of the simpler nations are still the sports of the more artificial. It is not necessary that a man should earn his living by the sweat of his brow, unless he sweats easier than I do. — Henry David Thoreau

As poet-philosopher Rabindranath Tagore reminds us, "We cannot cross the sea merely by staring at the water." Simplicity has power. And living on purpose comes to this: Just do it. How much simpler can we get? — Dan Millman

I'm much more famous than I am rich, but I'm able to scale back my lifestyle. I know a lot of people who were where I was who can't imagine living any simpler, but I haven't got a lot of expensive wants. — Ali MacGraw

I believe we would be happier to have a personal revolution in our individual lives and go back to simpler living and more direct thinking. — Laura Ingalls Wilder

To fly! to live as airmen live! Like them to ride the skyways from horizon to horizon, across rivers and forests! To free oneself from the petty disputes of everyday life, to be active, to feel the blood renewed in one's vein - ah! that is life ... Life in finer and simpler. My will is freer. I appreciate everything more, sunlight and shade, work and my friends. The sky is vast. I breathe deep gulps of the fine clear air of the heights. I feel myself to have achieved a higher state of physical strength and a clearer brain. I am living in the third dimension! — Henri Mignet

Primates stand at a turning point in the course of evolution. Primates are to the biologist what viruses are to the biochemist. They can be analysed and partly understood according to the rules of a simpler discipline, but they also present another level of complexity: viruses are living chemicals, and primates are animals who love and hate and think. — Alison Jolly

I often think about, 'How do we return to a simpler way of living? Is there some way that we can start to think of each other as human beings again, instead of worshiping money, instead of worshiping electronics, instead of worshiping getting ahead just for me?' — Giancarlo Esposito

Humble living does not diminish. It fills. Going back to a simpler self gives wisdom. — Rumi

David Shi (historian of the simple life) describes the common denominator among the various approaches to simpler living as the understanding that the making of money and the accumulation of things should not smother the purity of the soul, the life of the mind, the cohesion of the family, or the good of the society. — Duane Elgin

It confuses me that Christian living is not simpler. The gospel, the very good news, is simple. — Donald Miller

People don't realize how easy they have it these days. Most kids have never known what it's like to go without anything. They want something, they get it. If there isn't enough money, they charge it. We never wanted anything because we never realized we could have anything. We never missed what we never had. Things were much simpler back then, and we were stronger for it. We worked together to keep the house in order, to put food on the table. We kept things going. — Clara Cannucciari

To understand something and to put that something into a form that you can see with your own eyes are two completely different things. If you could manage to do both equally well, living would be a lot simpler (from Honey Pie) — Haruki Murakami

I like to play chess. I moved to a small town, and nobody played chess there, but one guy challenged me to checkers. I always thought it was kind of a simple game, but I accepted. And he beat me nine or ten games in a row. That's sort of like living in a small town. It's a simpler game, but it's played to a higher level. — Peter Hessler

The more people you run into, the greater your exposure, the easier it is to understand and empathize with other people. So if you are living in a much smaller ecosystem, it's probably easier to have simpler feelings. — James Scott

The cake had been done by a lady friend of Mary's. It was simpler than it would have been had she been given more time; but I was finding more and more beauty in simplicity. — Janette Oke

Going back to a simpler life based on living by sufficiency rather than excess is not a step backward. Rather, returning to a simpler way allows us to regain our dignity, puts us in touch with the land, and makes us value human contact again. — Yvon Chouinard

A living organism must be studied from two distinct aspects. One of these is the causal-analytic aspect which is so fruitfully applicable to ontogeny. The other is the historical descriptive aspect which is unravelling lines of phylogeny with ever-increasing precision. Each of these aspects may make suggestions concerning the possible significance of events seen under the other, but does not explain or translate them into simpler terms. — Gavin De Beer

What made Olive the saddest about the Gardners was that everyone wanted to be enshrined in someone's memory. It was the only way of living on after death, really: in the minds of loved ones. Memories were the only things that made aging bearable, a way of reverting to better, simpler days. — Andrea Lochen

Every living creature commences its existence under a form different from, and simpler than, that which it eventually attains. — Thomas Huxley