Simple Yet Complicated Quotes & Sayings

You know, you're a little complicated after all."
"Oh no," she assured him hastily. "No, I'm not really - I'm just a - I'm just a whole lot of different simple people. — F Scott Fitzgerald

[ The Finest Hours] reminded me a lot of a film I did called Unstoppable in that you have a driving thriller aspect of the film and it's not all that complicated of a story and there's a simple elegance to it. I liked that. It is also driven by a really strong romance and ordinary men doing extraordinary things. I love that. — Chris Pine

Killing was a relatively simple matter--a blow to the head, a knife to the throat--complicated only by how much one cared about the pain or terrors animals felt in dying.... The animal also died a second death. Severed from the form in which it had lived, severed from the act that had killed it, it vanished from human memory as one of nature's creatures. — William Cronon

If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is. — John Von Neumann

Basic Economics 101. It's the most complicated simple subject there is. — Rush Limbaugh

That my complicated life could be made so simple was astounding. — Cheryl Strayed

I'm a simple man without a lot of complicated twists and turns. Look down my throat and you can see out my ass. — Liu Cixin

It's not that simple."

"Or that complicated. — Roni Loren

In an incongruity, as these cases exemplify, the innovative solution has to be clearly definable. It has to be feasible with the existing, known technology, and with easily available resources. It requires hard developmental work, of course. But if a great deal of research and new knowledge is still needed, it is not yet ready for the entrepreneur, not yet 'ripe'. The innovation that successfully exploits an incongruity between economic realities has to be simple rather than complicated, 'obvious' rather than grandiose. — Peter F. Drucker

The world is complicated, so people seek complicated solutions. And there's nothing wrong with that because simple answers don't usually work. But sometimes the answers are simple and people still refuse to see them. - Edgar Roy — David Baldacci

Life is never simple or without challenges. If it is, it will not last long. So stop worrying that because your life is complicated you're doing something wrong. Enjoy the lessons in life, and the chaos they bring. It means you're alive! — Shane E. Bryan

The ability of nonintelligent people to understand the most complicated mechanisms and to use them has always been to me a cause of astonishment: their inability to understand simple questions is even more astonishing. The general acceptance of simple ideas is difficult and rare, and yet it is only when simple, fundamental, ideas have been accepted that further progress becomes possible on a higher level. — George Sarton

It was all very strange and complicated. It looked as though nothing were quite so simple as it seemed; it looked as though the people we thought we knew best carried secrets that they didn't even know themselves. Charley had a sudden inkling that human beings were infinitely mysterious. The fact was that you knew nothing about anybody. — W. Somerset Maugham

One day at a time. One dream at a time. And one could say it's right and one could say it's wrong. And probably both would be right. Because life is both complicated and simple. Which is why there are cookies. — Fredrik Backman

I never go straight to the point if I can go the most difficult way. Why be simple when you can be complicated? — Kristin Scott Thomas

That the fundamental aspects of heredity should have turned out to be so extraordinarily simple supports us in the hope that nature may, after all, be entirely approachable. Her much-advertised inscrutability has once more been found to be an illusion due to our ignorance. This is encouraging, for, if the world in which we live were as complicated as some of our friends would have us believe we might well despair that biology could ever become an exact science. — Thomas Hunt Morgan

Four simple chambers.
A thousand complicated doors.
One of them is yours. — Jill Alexander Essbaum

Complicated? You go to dinner with Andrew Brenner and you fuck me? No, that's not complicated," he smiled bitterly. "I mean this is fun and all, Hadley. This is really fucking great. But, don't tell me you don't date people when all you really mean is you don't take me seriously. And don't tell me something is complicated when it's actually really simple. — Audrey Bell

As is well known the principle of virtual velocities transforms all statics into a mathematical assignment, and by D'Alembert's principle for dynamics, the latter is again reduced to statics. Although it is is very much in order that in gradual training of science and in the instruction of the individual the easier precedes the more difficult, the simple precedes the more complicated, the special precedes the general, yet the min, once it has arrived at the higher standpoint, demands the reverse process whereby all statics appears only as a very special case of mechanics. — Carl Friedrich Gauss

There's a lot that can be said about holding hands. Such a simple gesture, and yet it yells things. This person is mine, it says. It anchors two people together and keeps them rooted. Hands tell complicated stories, and by holding hands, the stories are combined. Lifeline to lifeline. — R.K. Ryals

What you are is a complicated girl with simple needs. You need your books and time to read, and you need a few friends and you need someone-not to take care of you, but to care for you. If you have all those things, you'll always be alright. — Brian Morton

Life is sometimes very complicated, but we can purposely learn to enjoy the simple yet powerful and beautiful things God has created! — Joyce Meyer

Bandaged. The wound is mortal and yet you do not die. That is its own impossible agony. But grief is not simple sadness. Sadness is a feeling that wants nothing more than to be sat with, held, and heard. Grief is a journey. It must be moved through. With a rucksack full of rocks, you hike through a black, pathless forest, brambles about your legs and wolf packs at your heels. The grief that never moves is called complicated grief. It doesn't subside, you do not accept it, and it never - it never - goes to sleep. This is possessive grief. This is delusional grief. This is hysterical grief. Run if you will, this grief is faster. This is the grief that will chase you and beat you. This is the grief that will eat you. — Jill Alexander Essbaum

[Golf]is deceptively simple, endlessly complicated. A child can play it well, and a grown man can never master it. Any single round of it is full of unexpected triumphs and perfect shots that end in disaster. It is almost a science, yet it is a puzzle without an answer. It is gratifying and tantalizing, precise and unpredictable. It requires complete concentration and total relaxation. It satisfies the soul and frustrates the intellect. It is at the same time, rewarding and maddening. And it is without doubt the greatest game mankind has ever invented. — Arnold Palmer

I think people make it out to be something that's complicated, maybe because there are a million emotions involved and we all haven't become mind readers yet, but it's not, it's terribly simple. You like who you like and maybe if you're lucky they like you too. — Kayti Nika Raet

I learned a lot about lead; you don't have to blow your cookies in the first bar. It is much harder to be simple that to be complicated during solos. — Tommy Bolin

I want to be with you. It's as simple, and as complicated as that. — Charles Bukowski

The human being is so complicated in some ways, and yet so simple in others. Sometimes, we need complex medication regimens. Yet, sometimes, we just need a good cry. — Vironika Tugaleva

Never do anything complicated when something simple will serve as well. It's one of the most important secrets of living. — Erich Maria Remarque

I like simple food, seasoned with just salt, pepper, oil and vinegar. Complicated food and complicated lives are never good. — Sirio Maccioni

He'd set down his drink and leaned in. "Fine. You want me to elaborate, I will. Here's the deal: I'm a guy. Generally speaking, we're pretty simple folk. I know women always want to think we have these deep, romantic, and emotionally angsty thoughts going on in our heads, but in reality? Not so much. You women have layers and you're complicated and mysterious and you say one thing, but you really mean another, and it's this whole tricky package that intrigues us and scares us and challenges us all at the same time. But men aren't like that. You talk about me not letting you in, but maybe what you don't realize is this: there is no in." He pointed to himself. "It's all right here on the surface, Jessica. What you see is what you get. — Julie James

She couldn't think of anyone else who remotely resembled him. He was complicated, almost contradictory in so many ways, yet simple, a strangely erotic combination. On the surface he was a country boy, home from war, and he probably saw himself in those terms. Yet there was so much more to him. Perhaps it was the poetry that made him different, or perhaps it was the values his father had instilled in him, growing up. Either way, he seemed to savor life more fully than others appeared to, and that was what had first attracted her to him. — Nicholas Sparks

Life is simple unless we find a way to make it complicated. — Jack White

The road to climate stability is straight and the solutions simple, and yet scientists, economists, industrialists and politicians are busy making them complicated — Satish Kumar

Hate is the darkness, that's no good. And yet we've got to hate Fascists, and that's considered perfectly all right. How is that possible? It's because we hate them in the name of the light, I guess, whereas they hate only in the name of darkness. We hate hate itself, and for this reason our hate is better than theirs.
But that's why it's more difficult for us. For them everything is very simple, but for us it's more complicated. We've got to become a little bit like them in order to fight them so we become a little bit unlike ourselves. But they don't have that problem; they can do away with us without any qualms. We first have to do away with something inside ourselves before we can do away with them. Not them; they can simply remain themselves, that's why they're so strong. But they'll lose in the end, because they have no light in them. The only thing is, we mustn't become too much like them, mustn't destroy ourselves altogether, otherwise they'll have won in the end ... — Harry Mulisch

Myra wasn't simple or complicated. She was different. She was not perfect, not even close but her flaws were intresting. She always had an opinion, something to say about everything.Most interesting thing about her is that she never said something to please, yet she was nice to be around. — Parul Wadhwa

Society, and the family as its psycho social agent, has to solve a difficult problem: How to break a person's will without his being aware of it? Yet by a complicated process of indoctrination, rewards, punishments, and fitting ideology, it solves this task by and large so well that most people believe they are following their own will and are unaware that their will itself is conditioned and manipulated. — Erich Fromm

As the grand discordant harmony of the celestial bodies may be explained by the simple principles of gravity and impulse, so also in that more wonderful and complicated microcosm, the heart of man, all the phenomena of morals are perhaps resolvable into one single principle, the pursuit of apparent good; for although customs universally vary, yet man in all climates and countries is essentially the same. — Charles Caleb Colton

I'm THAT complicated, mysterious, yet content with the "simple" things in life. Don't try to understand me; you won't figure me out. But you're free to like me the way I am. — Marwa Ayad

Simple answers to the most difficult questions:

1. Why do humans find it difficult to express themselves?

To relate to the movies and books, later.


2. Why do humans make everything look so big, beautiful & complicated?

Ego feels good.


3. Why do humans want to protect the nature?

Because they can't even protect themselves. Moreover, they are guilty conscious.


4. What is romance?

It is complicated as far as humans are concerned.


5. What is love?

The complicated part of the fourth question.


6. What is unconditional love?

Not there yet.


7. Who is God?

Sixth leads you to the seventh.


8. Who am I?

Ask yourself.


9. What is loneliness?

Potential energy wasted on learned answers.


10. What is happiness?

All of the above. — Saurabh Sharma

And if you need to read that sentence again, no shame. It's complicated - as complicated as the sovereignty of God. Yet as simple as if. Gustave Eiffel did not build his tower so Lora and I could kiss on top of it. Nevertheless, his if made it possible. And it's your ifs that open doors of opportunity for others, most of whom you won't meet on this side of eternity. But make no mistake about it, every little if makes an exponential difference across time and eternity. History — Mark Batterson

I am living a simple life with a complicated mind and I have yet to find a state of mind where I feel safe with who I am, where I am, with what I do. — Charlotte Eriksson

Maybe that's a haiku, maybe not, it might be a little too complicated," said Japhy. "A real haiku's gotta be as simple as porridge and yet make you see the real thing, like the greatest haiku of them all probably is the one that goes 'The sparrow hops along the veranda, with wet feet.' By Shiki. You see the wet footprints like a vision in your mind and yet in those few words you also see all the rain that's been falling that day and almost smell the wet pine needles."

(The Dharma Bums, Chap. 8) — Jack Kerouac

Whatever a work of art may be, the artist certainly cannot dare to be simple. He must have a nature as complicated and as violent, as totally unsuggestive of the word innocence, as a modern war. — Rebecca West

It has often been said that the more unusual the murder the easier it is to solve, but this is a theory I don't believe. Nothing is easy, nothing is simple, and you should think of your investigations as a complicated experiment: look at what remains constant and look at what changes, ask the right questions and don't be afraid of wrong answers, and above all rely on observation and rely on experience. — Peter Ackroyd

He felt as though his heart were a bomb, a complicated bomb that would result in a simple explosion, wrecking the world without rocking it. — Nathanael West

Green Arrow was a very complicated character to take on because he has archaic weaponry. Catwoman, I think is more of a simple archetype to grasp, so it will be about nuance. But I think you need three or four issues before you say, 'Ah ha! Now I really know how to write this character!' You're carrying them around with you. — Ann Nocenti

I analyse in my own way, in very simple, no-jargon language. If somebody is talking in very complicated way, I never like that. — Gautam Adani

A complex society is not necessarily more advanced than a simple one; it has just adapted to conditions in a more complicated way. — Peter Farb

Any process can be improved. Defects that are invisible to the knowledgeable may be obvious to newcomers. The simplest solutions are the best. Repeating all these anecdotes isn't rote monotony - it's calculated strategy. "The rest of us try to muddle around with complicated contradictory goals and it makes it harder for people to help us," says his friend Danny Hillis. "Jeff is very clear and simple about his goals, and the way he articulates them makes it easy for others, because it's consistent. — Brad Stone

People think the Bible is too complicated for the average person to understand. People tend to be wrong. It's too complicated for the unsaved person, yes, it's foolishness to him. But for those who are in Christ, it's a magnificent journey of simplicity. Depth, richness, but simplicity. It's the fact that the natural man can't believe that life with Christ is so simple that cause the great "complexity" argument. Stop, take a breath, and believe that it's as simple as it appears. — Alan De Jager

A magpie flies like a frying pan!'8 he could write, with the joy of discovering something new in the world. And it is that joy, that childish delight in the lives of creatures other than man, that I love most in White. He was a complicated man, and an unhappy one. But he knew also that the world was full of simple miracles. — Helen Macdonald

I came at last to a recognition of myself as, in part, a Tom Sawyer who wanted everything done according to the rules of romantic fiction, and complicated simple solutions with his absurd adolescent, book-born nonsense. — Robertson Davies

Friendship is a simple thing, and yet complicated; friendship is on the surface, something natural, something taken for granted, and yet underneath one could find worlds. — Jamaica Kincaid

I have often asked myself whether, given the choice, I would choose to have manic-depressive illness. If lithium were not available to me, or didn't work for me, the answer would be a simple no ... and it would be an answer laced with terror. But lithium does work for me, and therefore I can afford to pose the question. Strangely enough, I think I would choose to have it. It's complicated ... — Kay Redfield Jamison

To Sherman, a large, complicated national government was contrary to "the true spirit and genius of republican government," which should be small and simple: — Mark David Hall

That view of the Cross, it cannot be denied, runs counter to the mind of the natural man. It is not, indeed, complicated or obscure; on the contrary it is so simple that a child can understand, and what is really obscure is the manifold modern effort to explain the Cross away in such fashion as to make it more agreeable to human pride. — J. Gresham Machen

Educators take something simple and make it complicated. Communicators take something complicated and make it simple. — John C. Maxwell

If I have learned anything as a scientist, it is that one should not make things complicated when a simple explanation will do. — Ivar Giaever

These metaphysic rights entering into common life, like rays of light which pierce into a dense medium, are, by the laws of nature, refracted from their straight line. Indeed in the gross and complicated mass of human passions and concerns, the primitive rights of men undergo such a variety of refractions and reflections, that it becomes absurd to talk of them as if they continued in the simplicity of their original direction. The nature of man is intricate; the objects of society are of the greatest possible complexity: and therefore no simple disposition or direction of power can be suitable to man's nature, or to the quality of his affairs. When I hear the simplicity of contrivance aimed at and boasted of in any new political constitutions, I am at no loss to decide that the artificers are grossly ignorant of their trade, or totally negligent of their duty. — Edmund Burke

Simple is hard enough. Who needs complicated? — Teri Terry

I have this natural want to ... when things sound very easy and straightforward, something inside me always makes me want to take a left turn. If it comes to me and it's too simple, there has to be a more complicated route. I will complicate things like that at times. — Chino Moreno

There is no feeling so simple that it is not immediately complicated and distorted by introspection. — Andre Gide

Right and wrong as moral principles do not change. They are applicable and reliable determinants whether the situations with which we deal are simple or complicated. There is always a right and wrong to every question which requires our solution. — Ezra Taft Benson

I'm a big fan of simplicity, especially with songs and I try not to make them complicated. I just make them simple and let people absorb that message themselves. That's my theory. — Graham Russell

Science talks about very simple things, and asks hard questions about them. As soon as things become too complex, science can't deal with them ... But it's a complicated matter: Science studies what's at the edge of understanding, and what's at the edge of understanding is usually fairly simple. And it rarely reaches human affairs. Human affairs are way too complicated. — Noam Chomsky

learned that life is as simple or as complicated as you make it. I had chosen to simplify my life to include only the best things: my family, friends, and the mountains. — Jeff Alt

Books proliferate, and occasionally sell in very large numbers, which claim to have found the rule, or small set of rules, which will guarantee business success. But business is far too complicated, far too difficult an activity to distil into a few simple commands ... It is failure rather than success which is the distinguishing feature of corporate life. — Paul Ormerod

Don't make your life complicated. Adapt to every circumstance. — Lailah Gifty Akita

I think the best shortcut is to choose really simple recipes. Because I think you can make simple recipes that are as delicious as complicated ones. — Ina Garten

I don't think we do simple. We do complicated."
"We're older now. Smarter."
"No," she said. "I don't think so. I think we make each other stupid."
He was in her space now, backing her up. She could feel the heat of his body. Smell soap and musk, which called to the most primitive part of her brain: You want this.
"Fine," he said. "Let's be stupid. — Serena Bell

The first of a thousand lies. Truth flowed to Micah Quill, was sucked in and disappeared, and emerged again looking ever so much like it used to, but changed subtly, at the edges, where none would notice, so that simple truth became a complicated fabric indeed, one that could wrap you up so tightly and close you off from the air until you suffocated in it. — Orson Scott Card