Simple Lesson Quotes & Sayings

The most important lesson in managing our careers as we get older: Sometimes staying the game is as simple as not leaving the room. — Tina Sloan

The greatest lesson that I learned in all of this is that you have to start. Start now, start here, and start small. Keep it Simple. — Jack Dorsey

Jesus kept it simple. The lesson wasn't complicated. 'I speak; you believe My word; your son will be fine.' We complicate what God has made simple by seeing the world through human eyes. We want to see in order to believe and presume that our limitations are His. — Charles R. Swindoll

The rest of us learned the simple lesson - invaluable in a bureaucratic society - that there is no moral or practical obligation to tell the truth when filling in forms. — Auberon Waugh

I've had a pretty good lesson in human nature. It's more important to try to surround yourself with people who can give you a little happiness, because you only pass through this life once, Jack. You don't come back for an encore. — Elvis Presley

What a way Oak had, she thought, of enduring things. Boldwood, who seemed so much deeper and higher and stronger in feeling than Gabriel, had not yet learnt, any more than she herself, the simple lesson which Oak showed a mastery of by every turn and look he gave - that among the multitude of interests by which he was surrounded, those which affected his personal well-being were not the most absorbing and important in his eyes. Oak meditatively looked upon the horizon of circumstances without any special regard to his own standpoint in the midst. That was how she would wish to be — Thomas Hardy

The real job of every moral teacher is to keep bringing us back, time after time, to the old simple principles which we are all so anxious not to see; like bringing a horse back and back to the fence it has refused to jump or bringing a child back to a lesson that it wants to shirk. — C.S. Lewis

Prince, cast aside these Foreign Airs, which don't speak, 'cept to the Head," said I (without Thought, but only Combustion of the Tongue), crying, "Poor timid Creature, cast them aside, and instead play the Simple Things in your HEART!"
He replied, "What is in my Heart is not simple."
& I says, "Then you han't listened."
& He says, "I listen, & cannot understand its Speech."
& I says, "Then it ain't your Heart you hear."
"The Human Heart," recited he bitterly as if from some damp Lesson, "is a Muscle that operates through Constriction." His Work on the Oysters grew defiant. "I have seen a Heart lying on a Plate, jolted with Electricity. It had as much to say dead as alive."
Now I was terrified at his Past & his Secrets & I asked for no more Music. — M T Anderson

All writers know that on some golden mornings they are touched by the wand; they are on intimate terms with poetry and cosmic truth. I have experienced these moments myself. Their lesson is simple: It's a total illusion. And the danger in the illusion is that you will wait for those moments. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Unspoiled by education, frank and unsuspecting as young an8imals, they came up to school from their meadows, their games, and their dreams. The simple law of life was alone valid for them; the most vital, the most forceful among them was leader; the rest followed him. But little by little, with the weekly portions of tuition, another, artificial set of values was foisted upon them: he who knew his lesson best was termed excellent and ranked foremost, and the rest must emulate him. Little wonder, indeed, if the more vital of them resist it! But they have to knuckle under, for the ideal of the school is the good scholar.
But what an ideal! What ever came of the good scholars in the world?
In the hothouse of the school they do enjoy a short semblance of life, but only the more surely to sink back afterward into mediocrity and insignificance. The world has been bettered only by the bad scholars. — Erich Maria Remarque

The lesson here is very simple. But it is striking how often it is overlooked. We are so caught in the myths of the best and the brightest and the self-made that we think outliers spring naturally from the earth. We look at the young Bill Gates and marvel that our world allowed that thirteen-year-old to become a fabulously successful entrepreneur. But that's the wrong lesson. Our world only allowed one thirteen-year-old unlimited access to a time sharing terminal in 1968. If a million teenagers had been given the same opportunity, how many more Microsofts would we have today? — Malcolm Gladwell

I was sent here to be alive. To breathe and sweat and thirst and sometimes cry. And everything that happened to me, everything both great and small, was something I had to learn! There was room for it in the infinite mind of the Lord and I had to seek the lesson in it, no matter how hard it was to find. I almost laughed. It was so simple, so beautiful. If only I could keep it in my mind, this understanding, this moment - never forget it as one day followed another, never forget it no matter what happened, never forget it no matter what came to pass. Oh, yes, I would grow up, and there would come a time when I would leave Nazareth, surely. I would go out into the world and do what it was I was meant to do. Yes. But for now? All was clear. My fear was gone. It seemed the whole world was holding me. Why had I ever thought I was alone? I was in the embrace of the earth, of those who loved me no matter what they thought or understood, of the very stars. "Father," I said. "I am your child. — Anne Rice

In what, then, can those engaged in this kind of warfare place their hope? The Nakano Military School answered this question with a simple sentence: "In secret warfare, there is integrity." And this is right, for integrity is the greatest necessity when a man must deceive not only his enemies but his friends. With integrity - and I include in this sincerity, loyalty, devotion to duty and a sense of morality - one can withstand all hardships and ultimately turn hardship itself into victory. This was the lesson that the instructors at Futamata were constantly trying to instill in us. One of them put it this way: "If you are genuinely pure in spirit, people will respond to you and cooperate with you." This meant to me that so long as I remained pure inside, whatever measures I saw fit to take would eventually redound to the good of my country and my countrymen. — Hiroo Onoda

Man doesn't realize his real purpose on earth so long as he rolls in comforts. It is absolutely true that adversity teaches a man a bitter lesson, toughens his fiber and moulds his character. In other words, an altogether new man is born out of adversity which helpfully destroys one's ego and makes one humble and selfless. Prolonged suffering opens the eyes to hate the things for which one craved before unduly, leading eventually even to a state of resignation. It then dawns on us that continued yearnings brings us intense agony. But the stoic mind is least perturbed by the vicissitudes of life. It is well within our efforts to conquer grief. It's simple. Develop an attitude of detachment even while remaining in the thick of terrestrial pleasures. — V.S. Naipaul

Teenagers are in the throes of learning the biggest lesson of all: life isn't simple, it isn't black and white. It's multiple and varied shades of grey. If you mix these shades of grey you might end up getting close to black or white, but in the end, it's the darkening of themselves around the edges and the ways in which they bend and break that will make them more wholesome people; people that others will want to be around and who will contribute greatly to society when given the awesome opportunity. — Danielle Weiler

Negotiation exposes something at once simple and intricate about intimacy: that it is far better to actually know your partner's body by becoming one with their interior selves, and you can only do this by talking to them. Far from being the stereotypical "mood killer," sexual knowing requires discussion, requires asking questions, a lesson that I and so many others have had to learn quite painfully; the worst sexual experiences of my own life occurred, as I often say, because I did not know how to ask and did not know how to tell. For too long I thought sex had to occur in a kind of monastic, knowing silence. To do anything else would be to risk giving offence, putting myself in harm's way, or simply ruining the atmosphere; how wrong I was. — Katherine Cross

The most important lesson I received from Conceptual art consisted in the recording of simple and obvious things, and viewing them under a whole new light. — Luigi Ghirri

The first lesson, simple as it is, is that whatever court we're in, whatever we are doing, at the end of our task some human being is going to be affected. Some human life is going to be changed by what we do. And so we had better use every power of our minds and our hearts and our beings to get those rulings right. — David Souter

But life should not be traded for gold - a simple lesson, which I had had to learn twice. — Laila Lalami

It was a simple lesson, really. He could never, ever allow misplaced ideals to seduce him. He would not employ death as a tool. — Bonnie Dee

There's two wolves battling us all right now ... One's good, the other one is evil. If you're wondering which wolf inside will succeed, simple it's the one that you feed ... — Ronnie Radke

Humanity will destroy itself, body and soul, before it will learn a simple lesson. — Dan Wells

You know why I think we still execute people? Because, even if we don't want to say it out loud-for the really heinous crimes, we want to know that there's a really heinous punishment. Simple as that. We want to bring society closer together-huddle and circle our wagons-and that means getting rid of people we think are incapable of learning a moral lesson. I guess the question is: Who gets to identify those people? And what if, God forbid, they got it wrong? — Jodi Picoult

Learn their lesson, that if you would teach people you first must capture their interest with news; that your service rather than your sermons must be your claim upon their attention; that what you say must be simple, and brief, and above all sincere - the unmistakable voice of true regard and affection. — Bruce Barton

But I'm going, because all I've ever gotten and all I have now is somehow due to what we did then, and you pay for what you get in this world. Maybe that's why God made us kids first and built us close to the ground, because He knows you got to fall down alot and bleed alot before you learn that one simple lesson. You pay for what you get, you own what you pay for ... and sooner or later whatever you own comes back home to you. pg 78 — Stephen King

At last, the answer why. The lesson that had been so hard to find, so difficult to learn, came quick and clear and simple. The reason for problems is to overcome them. Why, that's the very nature of man, I thought, to press past limits, to prove his freedom. It isn't the challenge that faces us, that determines who we are and what we are becoming, but the way we meet the challenge, whether we toss a match at the wreck or work our way through it, step by step, to freedom. — Richard Bach

The market might have learned a simple lesson: Don't make loans to people who can't repay them. Instead it learned a complicated one: You can keep on making these loans, just don't keep them on your books. Make the loans, then sell them off to the fixed income departments of big Wall Street investment banks, which will in turn package them into bonds and sell them to investors. — Michael Lewis

I learned a simple lesson about being awesome: always play to the size of your heart, not to the size of your audience. Awesome doesn't let the crowd determine the size of the performance. Awesome gets up for two people or 200. Awesome writes great books even if no one is going to read them. Awesome sweeps the parts of store floors that no foot will ever touch. Awesome can't help itself. Awesome has a huge heart. And that's what it always plays to. The size of the crowd doesn't matter. The applause of the audience doesn't matter. — Jon Acuff

You haven't learned life's lesson very well if you haven't noticed that you can give the tone or colour, or decide the reaction you want of people in advance. It's unbelievable simply. If you want them to take an interest in you, take an interest in them first. If you want to make them nervous, become nervous yourself ... It's as simple as that. People will treat you as you treat them. It's no secret. Look about you. You can prove it with the next person you meet. — Winston Churchill

I had before me an object lesson, I thought: two ways to face the world. One way as embodied by this old woman - simple, unassuming, a kind of peasant dignity, a naturalness inherent in her every move. The other, exemplified by the girl - smartness, sophistication, veneer without substance. I was conscious that I have now opted for the old woman's way, have thrown in my lot with a creature I would have jeered at a year ago. My present trip to the mountains is indeed a trip to that wellspring of naturalness she symbolized. And I admired my choice: the correct choice, the only choice for a sensitive and moral man in my dilemma. — Lee Smith

If I've learned anything at all from my years, it's the simple lesson that human beings are always more complicated, brave, long-suffering, and, ultimately, heroic than we ever guessed, and that none of us completely understands another, no matter how intimate we are with them. — James Lee Burke

No looking back. Life goes one way only. And whatever opinions you hold about the past have nothing to do with anything but your own damn weakness. Nothing changes what already happened. It will always have happened. You either let it break you down or you don't. A simple enough lesson ... — Charles Frazier

While Odo has mastered the simple human trick of making porridge, Peter has learned the difficult animal skill of doing nothing. He's learned to unshackle himself from the race of time and contemplate time itself. As far as he can tell, that's what Odo spends most of his time doing: being in time, like one sits by a river, watching the water go by. It's a lesson hard learned, just to sit there and be. — Yann Martel

Speak and live in simple sentences. Bring closure
put a period to
those experiences that you don't want to carry on forever and ever. Use commas in those places where you're still growing ... and use exclamation points at the end of every lesson. — Iyanla Vanzant

Saint Maximilian used to give spiritual conferences to the new men in his religious community, the novices. One day, he taught them a lesson they would never forget: "How to become a Saint." The future saint began by telling his listeners that sanctity isn't so hard. It's the result of a simple equation, which he wrote on the blackboard: "W + w = S." The capital W stands for God's Will. The small w stands for our wills. When the two wills are united, they equal Sanctity. — Michael Gaitley

We never learn to value what is simple; what is difficult is worthy to us. But, the beauty of life is in the simplicity. — Debasish Mridha

I would prefer," Pat said, his voice a little stiff, as if he expected resistance, "that I be the cosigner on the loan, if you go through with this. I know I'm not a famous billionaire, but I think my credit's just as good."
No, you're wrong about that," Tess said, shaking her head.
What?"
As far as I'm concerned, it's better. I'd much rather do business with you."
They shook on it. It was a deal, after all, not a time for hugging.
Favors, Arnie Vasso had once said. Your father knows all about favors. He had meant it as an insult, a sly reference to the corners the Monaghans and Weinsteins cut here and there. Now Tess saw it for the simple truth it was: Her father understood favors. How to do them, how to accept them, how to walk away when the price was too steep. It was a lesson she wouldn't mind learning someday.
Maybe this was the place to start. — Laura Lippman

The lesson is simple: it is absolutely crucial to give your staff the time and opportunity to keep their skills sharp. If you do not, then your organization will fall behind in the digital arena. — Anonymous

I learned an important lesson: Never take the obvious for granted. Once upon a time, it was so obvious that a four-pound rock would plummet earthward twice as fast as a two-pound rock that no one ever bothered to test it. That is, until Galileo Galilei came along and took ten minutes to perform an elegantly simple experiment that yielded a counterintuitive result and changed the course of history. — V.S. Ramachandran

Life goes one way only, and whatever opinions you hold about the past have nothing to do with anything but your own damn weakness. Nothing changes what already happened. It will always have happened. You either let it break you down or you don't. A simple enough lesson, yet hard for Luce to learn. She couldn't — Charles Frazier

Sometimes not much is just enough. — John O'Callaghan

It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a photograph, or a telephone or any other important thing - and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite - that is all he did. These object lessons should teach us that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple; and the lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do that. — Mark Twain

Because if there is one simple, single lesson I can impart to you, it's this: Don't waste time, because you don't have any time to waste. — Roxanne St. Claire

Where did it all begin? These are simple questions, but just as the humid summer air that can be felt but not touched, the answers are elusive. — Elmer Seward

For if there is one lesson worth retaining from the travails of the Cold War and the miseries it brought in its wake, it is the folly of seeking simple answers to complicated questions. It is a lesson which governments still show no sign of learning. — Philip Short

There is a l-life lesson here for all of us, is there, M-Mrs. Keeping?" he asked her. "We should all and always look upward, and all our t-troubles will be at an end?" She smiled. "If only life were that simple." "But for daffodils it is," he said. "We are not daffodils. — Mary Balogh

My mama taught me the most important lesson of all: "Sometimes you don't know why things happen until later." She still gets me through the dark days even to this day, because of that one day we sat in the grass, with my heart broken to smithereens, and she told me that one simple phrase that changed my life. — Jennifer Megan Varnadore

Really great moral teachers never do introduce new moralities: it is quacks and cranks who do that ... The real job of every moral teacher is to keep on bringing us back, time after time, to the old simple principles which we are all so anxious not to see; like bringing a horse back and back to the fence it has refused to jump or bringing a child back and back to the bit in its lesson that it wants to shirk. — C.S. Lewis

For the lesson of such stories [of resistance to Nazi atrocities] is simple and within everybody's grasp. Politically speaking, it is that under conditions of terror, most people will comply but some people will not , just as the lesson of the countries to which the Final Solution was proposed is that "it could happen" in most places but it did not happen everywhere . Humanly speaking, no more is required, and no more can reasonably be asked, for this planet to remain a place fit for human habitation. — Hannah Arendt

A central lesson of science is that to understand complex issues (or even simple ones), we must try to free our minds of dogma and to guarantee the freedom to publish, to contradict, and to experiment. Arguments from authority are unacceptable. — Carl Sagan

Durga wore a simple sea-green dress and a lei of lotus flowers ... "Take this," it has no special power except that the blooms will not fade, but it will serve a purpose on your voyage. I want you to learn the lesson of the lotus. This flower springs forth from muddy waters. It raises its delicate petals to the sun and perfumes the world while, at the same time, its roots cling to the elemental muck, the very essence of the mortal experience. Without that soil, the flower would wither and die." She placed the lei over my neck. "Dig down and grow strong roots, my daughter, for you will stretch forth, break out of the waters and find peace on the calm surface at last. You will discover that if you hadn't stretched, you would have drowned in the deep, never to blossom or share your gift with others. — Colleen Houck

People in danger typically try to put as much distance as possible between them and their attacker. They believe that space equals safety. But they are wrong, and often get hurt as a result. You see, when your enemies are close, when their bodies are pressed flush against yours, at that range they can do very little damage. They need distance to swing a punch, to extend their hands and choke your neck. Distance to reach down and unzip a zipper. The lesson is simple: Dictate your space. Keep your enemies as close as possible until you are ready to give them space. And when you give them that space, use it to destroy them. — Alessandra Torre

Nothing brings home the fragility of the banking system or the potency of a financial crisis more vividly than writing about these issues from the eye of the storm. Watching the world's central bankers and finance officials grappling with the current situation - trying one thing after another to restore confidence, throwing everything they can at the problem, coping daily with unexpected and startling shifts in market sentiment - reinforces the lesson that there is no magic bullet or simple formula for dealing with financial panics. — Liaquat Ahamed

A consumer-finance agency is a good thing, but it would do well to teach consumers a simple lesson: if you don't understand the deal you're making, don't make it. — James Surowiecki

The basic cause of all our difficulties is immaturity. That's why I talk so much about peace within ourselves as a step toward peace in our world. If we were mature, war would not be possible and peace would be assured. In our immaturity we do not know the laws of the universe, and we think evil can be overcome by more evil. One symptom of our immaturity is greed, making it difficult for us to learn the simple lesson of sharing ... — Peace Pilgrim

For me and Michelle, this visit has therefore held special meaning. Throughout my life, including my work as a young man on behalf of the urban poor, I have always found inspiration in the life of Gandhiji and in his simple and profound lesson to be the change we seek in the world. And just as he summoned Indians to seek their destiny, he influenced champions of equality in my own country, including a young Martin Luther King — Barack Obama

A man can spend his whole existence never learning the simple lesson that he has only one life and that if he fails to do what he wants with it, nobody else really cares.
Louis Auchincloss — Louis Auchincloss

The third lesson and tip actually comes from two of my favorite political philosophers: Mao Zedong and Mother Teresa - not often coupled with each other, but the two people I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point, which is, you're going to make choices; you're going to challenge; you're going to say, 'Why not?'; you're going to figure out how to do things that have never been done before. — Anita Dunn

The big lesson of Reagan is: To think that he was some sort of simple figurehead and didn't do the thinking and simply read a script in front of him woefully underestimates him. Ronald Reagan was an extremely intelligent person with a real V8 engine under his hood. — Eugene Jarecki

Ara?"
She jerked her face up. "Huh? Where were we?"
But his expression had grown serious, the lesson forgotten. He interlaced his fingers and said, "We are bound."
"Bound?"
He collected a piece of rope, knotting it.
"Oh, you mean bound?"
He gave a nod, then drew in the sand.
An infinity symbol? "Clever demon, how did you know that ... ?"
He was gazing at her with a question in his eyes.
"Bound forever?" And somehow she met his gaze and lied, "Yes, demon. Bound forever."
As if to make her feel guiltier, he gathered her into his arms, cupping her face against his broad chest. His voice a deep rumble, he said, "Carrow is Malkom's."
She wanted to sob.
"Yes?"
"Yes," she answered, wishing that it could be so simple between them. Demon meets girl. Girl might be falling for demon. — Kresley Cole

There's a simple, but oft-neglected lesson here: to sustain success, you have to be willing to abandon things that are no longer successful. — Gary Hamel

If there is one lesson for U.S. foreign policy from the past 10 years, it is surely that military intervention can seem simple but is in fact a complex affair with the potential for unintended consequences. — Fareed Zakaria

The lesson I have to teach is this: Leave all creative energies uninhibited. Merely organize society to act in harmony with this lesson. Let society's legal apparatus remove all obstacles the best it can. Permit these creative know-hows freely to flow. Have faith that free men and women will respond to the Invisible Hand. This faith will be confirmed. I, Pencil, seemingly simple though I am, offer the miracle of my creation as testimony that this is a practical faith, as practical as the sun, the rain, a cedar tree, the good earth. — Leonard E. Read

Sometimes kids ask how I've been able to write so many books. The answer is simple: one word at a time. Which is another good lesson, I think. You don't have to do everything at once. You don't have to know how every story is going to end. You just have to take that next step, look for that next idea, write that next word. — Andrew Clements