Elegance of language may not be in the power of all of us; but simplicity and straight forwardness are. Write much as you would speak; speak as you think. If with your inferior, speak no coarser than usual; if with your superiors, no finer.
— Alford
Simplicity is natures first step, and the last of art.
The price we pay for the complexity of life is too high. When you think of all the effort you have to put in --telephonic, technological and relational --to alter even the slightest bit of behavior in this strange world we call social life, you are left pining for the straightforwardness of primitive peoples and their physical work.
I have a simple life. I mean, you just give me a drum roll, they announce my name, and I come out and sing. In my job I have a contract that says I'm a singer. So I sing.
What is conceived well is expressed clearly.
Partial culture runs to the ornate, extreme culture to simplicity.
Outward simplicity befits ordinary men, like a garment made to measure for them; but it serves as an adornment to those who have filled their lives with great deeds: they might be compared to some beauty carelessly dressed and thereby all the more attractive.
To simplify complications is the first essential of success.
The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.
The most complex things are the simplest.
All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.
Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge.
When thought is too weak to be simply expressed, it's clear proof that it should be rejected.
Every contrivance of man, every tool, every instrument, every utensil, every article designed for use, of each and every kind, evolved from a very simple beginnings.
Life is really simple, but men insist on making it complicated.
Simplicity is a pleasant thing in children, or at any age, but it is not necessarily admirable, nor is affectation altogether a thing of evil. To be normal, to be at home in the world, with a prospect of power, usefulness, or success, the person must have that imaginative insight into other minds that underlies tact and savoir-faire, morality and beneficence. This insight involves sophistication, some understanding and sharing of the clandestine impulses of human nature. A simplicity that is merely the lack of this insight indicates a sort of defect.
A refined simplicity is the characteristic of all high bred deportment, in every country, and a considerate humanity should be the aim of all beneath it.
A taste for simplicity cannot endure for long.
Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it.
I don't understand complicated problems. I only understand simple ones.
Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler.
When the solution is simple, God is answering.
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
God always takes the simplest way.
Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.
The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms.
Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great.
It the proof of high culture to say the greatest matters in the simplest way.
It is the childlike mind that finds the kingdom.
Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works.
The whole is simpler than the sum of its parts.
The obvious is that which is never seen until someone expresses it simply.
Nothing is true, but that which is simple.
There is repetition everywhere, and nothing is found only once in the world.
Simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds.
Behind the complicated details of the world stand the simplicities: God is good, the grown-up man or woman knows the answer to every question, there is such a thing as truth, and justice is as measured and faultless as a clock. Our heroes are simple: they are brave, they tell the truth, they are good swordsmen and they are never in the long run really defeated. That is why no later books satisfy us like those which were read to us in childhood --for those promised a world of great simplicity of which we knew the rules, but the later books are complicated and contradictory with experience; they are formed out of our own disappointing memories.
My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.
There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies. And the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.
The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.
Understanding reduces the greatest to simplicity, and lack of its causes the least to take on the magnitude.
The art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity.
I hate American simplicity. I glory in the piling up of complications of every sort. If I could pronounce the name James in any different or more elaborate way I should be in favor of doing it.
Life will not bear refinement. You must do as other people do.
Simplicity is the intention, purity in the affection; simplicity turns to God, purity unites with and enjoys him.
In our systems work through simplicity, consistency, and repetition.
To me, the extraordinary aspect of martial arts lies in its simplicity. The easy way is also the right way, and martial arts is nothing at all special; the closer to the true way of martial arts, the less wastage of expression there is.
The height of cultivation runs to simplicity. Halfway cultivation runs to ornamentation.
It's not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.
The noble simplicity in the works of nature only too often originates in the noble shortsightedness of him who observes it.
Simplicity in character, in manners, in style; in all things the supreme excellence is simplicity.
The wisest keeps something of the vision of a child. Though he may understand a thousand things that a child could not understand, he is always a beginner, close to the original meaning of life.
Order and simplification are the first steps towards the mastery of a subject.
I have always observed that to succeed in the world a person must seem simple, yet wise.
Simplicity of life, even the barest, is not a misery, but the very foundation of refinement; a sanded floor and whitewashed walls and the green trees, and flowery meads, and living waters outside; or a grimy palace amid the same with a regiment of housemaids always working to smear the dirt together so that it may be unnoticed; which, think you, is the most refined, the most fit for a gentleman of those two dwellings?
I paint from the top down. From the sky, then the mountains, then the hills, then the houses, then the cattle, and then the people.
We struggle with the complexities and avoid the simplicities.
See it big, and keep it simple.
Simplicity is the seal of truth.
— Proverb
Never do anything standing that you can do sitting, or anything sitting that you can do lying down.
It is far more difficult to be simple than to be complicated; far more difficult to sacrifice skill and easy execution in the proper place, than to expand both indiscriminately.
Simplicity is the peak of civilization.
Intellectual comradeship requires that you think your thoughts through to the place where you can make the complex seem simple, the obscure quite clear.
The trouble with so many of us is that we underestimate the power of simplicity. We have a tendency it seems to over complicate our lives and forget what's important and what's not. We tend to mistake movement for achievement. We tend to focus on activities instead of results. And as the pace of life continues to race along in the outside world, we forget that we have the power to control our lives regardless of what's going on outside.
Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.
Everything is simpler than you think and yet more complex than you imagine.
The trouble with measurement is its seeming simplicity.
When a thought is too weak to be expressed simply, it should be rejected.
No matter how complicated a problem is, it usually can be reduced to a simple, comprehensible form which is often the best solution.
— Wang, An
Simplicity is making the journey of this life with just baggage enough.
Seek simplicity but distrust it.
The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.
The great things in life are what they seem to be. And for that reason, strange as it may sound to you, often are very difficult to interpret (understand). Great passion are for the great of souls. Great events can only be seen by people who are on a level with them. We think we can have our visions for nothing. We cannot. Even the finest and most self-sacrificing visions have to paid for. Strangely enough, that is what makes them fine.
I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex.
The complex develops out of the simple.