Plain Simple Life Quotes & Sayings

The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death.
It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:
"This is water."
"This is water."
It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. — David Foster Wallace

I am strongly drawn to the simple life and am often oppressed by the feeling that I am engrossing an unnecessary amount of the labour of my fellow men. I regard class differences as contrary to justice and, in the last resort, based on force. I also consider that plain living is good for everybody, physically and mentally. — Albert Einstein

One very difficult aspect of sin is that my sin never feels like sin to me. My sin feels like life to me, plain and simple. My heart is an idol factory, and my mind is an excuse-making factory. — Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

I write because I want more than one life; I insist on a wider selection. It's greed, plain and simple. When my characters join the circus, I'm joining the circus. Although I'm happily married, I spent a great deal of time mentally living with incompatible husbands. — Anne Tyler

I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational. What it is, so far as I can see, is the truth with a whole lot of rhetorical bullshit pared away. Obviously, you can think of it whatever you wish. But please don't dismiss it as some finger-wagging Dr. Laura sermon. None of this is about morality, or religion, or dogma, or big fancy questions of life after death. The capital- T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It is about simple awareness - awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: "This is water, this is water."
It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive, day in and day out. — David Foster Wallace

It is about simple awareness - awareness of what is so real and
essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep
reminding ourselves, over and over: This is water, this is water. — David Foster Wallace

My life is simple, my food is plain, and my quarters are uncluttered. In all things, I have sought clarity. I face the troubles and problems of life and death willingly. Virtue, integrity and courage are my priorities. I can be approached, but never pushed; befriended but never coerced; killed but never shamed. — Yi Sun-sin

Part of her wanted to stay for Darling and keep the promise she'd made last night, but at this point, she was done. He didn't want her and she wasn't going to put up with this kind of abuse, waiting for him to come to senses he most likely didn't have anymore. Screw him. If he didn't want her, she didn't want him - plain and simple. His life might not mean anything to him, but hers meant something to her and she'd be damned if she would spend it waiting on a man. Any man. She might be a lot of things. Stupid wasn't one of them. The — Sherrilyn Kenyon

That's how I know they are dreams. Because the simple and plain and everyday things are the ones that we can never have. (Cassia Reyes) — Ally Condie

Any 'Christians' who take for themselves any more than the plain necessaries of life, live in an open habitual denial of the Lord. They have gained riches and hell-fire. — John Wesley

For what she'd asked him, in her real voice, a voice that only the heart could hear, was a simple question:

Have you ever once loved another human creature so much that her life was more precious to you than your own?

And his heart had replied in words just as plain:
"Yes," it said, and the power of it nearly blinded her. — Sasha Soren

Life is smoke, plain and simple; we just fool ourselves that it's otherwise. All it takes is one good gust and we float away and disappear, leaving behind only the scent of our passing in the form of memories. — Cody McFadyen

There were many echoes of Johnson in Lewis. Both were formidable in their learning and in the range of their conversation, both had the same delight in argument, and in spite of their regard for truth, would argue for victory. Lewis had Johnson's handiness with the butt end of a pistol if an argument misfired. Like Johnson, he was a largish, unathletic-looking man, heavy but not tall, with a roundish, florid face that perspired easily and showed networks of tiny blood-vessels on close inspection; he had a dark flop of hair and rather heavily pouched eyes; these eyes gave life to the face, they were large and brown and unusually expressive. The main effects were of a mild, plain powerfulness, and over all there was a sense of simple masculinity, of a virility absorbed into intellectual life. He differed in his youth from most others of his age by seeming to have no sexual problems or preoccupations, or need to talk about them if he had them — Jocelyn Gibb

I wear no makeup in real life. I'm very simple. That may be why I go over the top for the red carpet. But otherwise, I'm very plain. I should make more of an effort, actually. — Eva Green

It was a terrible refreshment, his plain way, the simple words, the absence of strategy. It made you realize how much of your life you spent not being like that. It made you realize what a waste not being like that was. — Glen Duncan

With your Social Security number in the wind, whoever finds it - or, more likely, whoever buys it on one of the many black-market information exchanges on the deep web - holds the keys to every part of your life. What that means - plain and simple - is that you're going to need an efficient way to keep one eye over your shoulder, all the time. — Adam Levin

We're not a people worth saving, plain and simple. We're completely beyond that - both the undead and the few still living. Yeah, 'living.' Some life, huh? But it's the only life we could ever possibly live if we want to stay alive another day. It's our life that terrifies me. — Bryant A. Loney

But when, from the midst of the printed page, there suddenly sprang out at her these words: 'Here I stand; I can no other,' a great enlightenment came to her, a sudden illumination. In a moment, everything was made plain to her. She felt instantly that she understood the meaning of life - as far as it concerned her. Amazing to see clearly for the first time. Now everything was explained. How simple it was for her to realize that she herself was the centre of her own universe. How easy and simple to face life from the single basis of her own undeniable individuality. She was what she was: herself. No need for compromise or apology or modification or defence. — Anna Kavan

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, an initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns. — Vladimir Nabokov

In the middle of [the] despair [of postwar Germany], my family learned about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints and the healing message of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. This message made all the difference; it lifted us above our daily misery. Life was still thorny and the circumstances still horrible, but the gospel brought light, hope, and joy into our lives. The plain and simple truths of the gospel warmed our hearts and enlightened our minds. They helped us look at ourselves and the world around us with different eyes and from an elevated viewpoint. — Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Does the plain, simple beauty of life get buried under society's so-called required daily activities or is that just true of me? No, I know I'm not alone in that feeling. We all get caught up in the making and spending of money. I know it's not just me. — Dan Groat

How many times his (Port's) friends, envying him his life, had said to him: "Your life is so simple." "Your life seems always to go in a straight line." Whenever they had said the words he heard in them an implicit reproach: it is not difficult to build a straight road on a treeless plain. He felt that what they really meant to say was: "You have chosen the easiest terrain." But if they elected to place obstacles in their own way-which they clearly did, encumbering themselves with every sort of unnecessary allegiance-that was no reason why they should object to his having simplified his life. So it was with a certain annoyance that he would say: "Everyone makes the life he wants. Right?" as though there were nothing further to be said. — Paul Bowles

The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves. — Alan W. Watts

The little house is not too small
To shelter friends who come to call.
Though low the roof and small its space
It holds the Lord's abounding grace,
And every simple room may be
Endowed with happy memory.
The little house, severly plain,
A wealth of beauty may contain.
Within it those who dwell may find
High faith which makes for peace of mind,
And that sweet understanding which
Can make the poorest cottage rich.
The little house can hold all things
From which the soul's contentment springs.
'Tis not too small for love to grow,
For all the joys that mortals know,
For mirth and song and that delight
Which make the humblest dwelling bright. — Edgar A. Guest

If you want to give a message to the world, let it be simple, as simple as the life of a shepherd! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

A pretentious, showy life is an empty life; a plain and simple life is a full life. — Rick Warren

He saw clearly how plain and simple - how narrow, even - it all was; but clearly, too, how much it all meant to him, and the special value of some such anchorage in one's existence. He did not at all want to abandon the new life and its splendid spaces, to turn his back on sun and air and all they offered him and creep home and stay there; the upper world was all too strong, it called to him still, even down there, and he knew he must return to the larger stage. But it was good to think he had this to come back to, this place which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome. — Kenneth Grahame