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Simplicity Quotes

Browse 2142 quotes about Simplicity.

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Simplicity Quotes

“Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness is the perfect companion to Mindfulness in Plain English. Written with the thoroughness and the masterful simplicity so characteristic of his teaching, Bhante Gunaratana presents essential guidelines for turning the Buddha's teachings on the Eightfold Path into living wisdom.”

PerfectStepsPathWrittenTeachingEssentialsMindfulnessSimplicityEightCharacteristicsCompanionGuidelinesThoroughnessPlain English
Author:Larry Rosenberg
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“Darwinian natural selection only yields adaptation to changing local environments, and better function in an immediate habitat might just as well be achieved by greater simplicity in form and behavior as by ever-increasing complexity.”

WellsMightFormNaturalEnvironmentGreaterBehaviorFunctionSimplicityLocalsComplexityYieldSelectionAdaptationNatural SelectionHabitatNatural Habitats
Book:Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms
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“No one knows how greatness comes to a man. It may lie in his blackness, sleeping, or it may lance into him like those driven fiery particles from outer space. These things, however, are known about greatness: need gives it life and puts it in action; it never comes without pain; it leaves a man changed, chastened, and exalted at the same time--he can never return to simplicity.”

KnowsMenNeedsGivingMayActionPainLyingSleepSpaceKnownKnow HowChangedGreatnessReturnSimplicityDrivenParticlesExaltedBlacknessFieryOuter SpaceWithout Pain
Book:Sweet Thursday
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“When I became thoroughly acquainted with the Greek and Roman authors, I thought it incumbent upon me to do something towards the honor of the place of my nativity, and to vindicate the rhetoric of this ancient forum of our Metropolis from the aspersions of the illiterate by composing A Treatise of the Alercation of the Ancients; wherein I have demonstrated that the purity, sincerity, and simplicity of their diction is nowhere so well preserved as amongst my neighbourhood.”

WellsHonorSimplicityAncientGreekPuritySincerityRhetoricComposingIlliterateForumsIncumbentsNeighbourhoodsMetropolisDictionNativityAspersion
Book:The Life and Works of John Arbuthnot, M.D.: Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians
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“Chantal's only ruse ... was her shattering simplicity. While a weak man or an imposter is always more complicated than the problem he is trying to solve, and thinking to encompass his adversary, merely keeps prowling interminably around himself, the heroic nature will throw itself into the heart of the danger to turn it to its own use, just as captured artillery is turned about and aimed at the backs of the fleeing enemy.”

ThinkingMenTryingHeartUseProblemTurnsEnemyDangerWeakSimplicityComplicatedSolveHeroicAdversariesCapturedFleeingShatteringImposterArtilleryWeak ManProwling
Author:Georges Bernanos
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“Going back into the history of a word, very often into Latin, we come back pretty commonly to pictures or models of how things happen or are done. These models may be fairly sophisticated and recent, as is perhaps the case with 'motive' or 'impulse', but one of the commonest and most primitive types of model is one which is apt to baffle us through its very naturalness and simplicity.”

MayDoneHappensCasesTypeModelsSimplicityThings HappenImpulseMotiveLatinPrimitiveSophisticated
Author:J. L. Austin
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“In products of the human mind, simplicity marks the end of a process of refining, while complexity marks a primitive stage. Michelangelo 's definition of art as the purgation of superfluities suggests that the creative effort consists largely in the elimination of that which complicates and confuses a pattern.”

MindHumansArtEndsProcessEffortCreativeStageProductsMarkSimplicityPatternsDefinitionsComplexityHuman MindPrimitiveEliminationRefining
Author:Eric Hoffer
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“The discovery of radioactivity created a momentary chaos in chemistry and physics; but it soon led to a fuller interpretation of the old ideas. It dispersed many difficulties, harmonized many discords, and yea, more! It shewed the substance of Universe as a simplicity of Light and Life, manners to compose atoms, themselves capable of deeper self-realization through fresh complexities and organizations, each with its own peculiar powers and pleasures, each pursuing its path through the world where all things are possible.”

WorldIdeasSelfLightUniversePleasurePathCapableDiscoveryAll ThingsOrganizationDifficultyChaosSimplicityDeeperPhysicsSelf RealizationRealizationMannersSubstanceComplexityInterpretationChemistryPeculiarAtomsMomentaryDiscordOld Ideas
Author:Aleister Crowley
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“Ernest Bevin had many of the strongest characteristics of the English race. His manliness, his common sense, his rough simplicity, sturdiness and kind heart, easy geniality and generosity, all are qualities which we who live in the southern part of this famous island regard with admiration.”

HeartKindEasyCommonRaceQualityRegardSimplicityCommon SenseGenerosityIslandsCharacteristicsRoughAdmirationStrongestSouthernManlinessKind HeartGeniality
Author:Ernest Bevin
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“I am not a romantic. I am a domestic animal. I do not sigh and yearn for extravagant displays of passion, for the grand affair, the world well lost for love. I know all that, and know that it leaves you lonely. No, what I crave is the simplicity of routine. An evening walk, arm in arm, in fine weather. A game of cards. Time for idle talk. Preparing a meal together.”

KnowsWorldWellsTogetherRomancePassionGamesLostWalksAnimalArmsFineLonelyAffairSimplicityWeatherCardsEveningMealsRoutineDisplayIdlePreparingSighCraveExtravagantFine Weather
Author:Anita Brookner
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“The one infinite is perfect , in simplicity , of itself, absolutely, nor can aught be greater or better, This is the one Whole, God , universal Nature , occupying all space, of whom naught but infinity can give the perfect image or semblance.”

GivingWholeSpacePerfectGreaterUniversalInfiniteSimplicityInfinitySemblance
Book:Giordano Bruno; his life and thought: With annotated translation of his work, On the infinite universe and worlds
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“To be at one with God is to be at peace. The child simplicity is the greatest agency in bringing this full and complete realization, the child simplicity that recognizes its true relations with the Father's life. There are people I know who have come into such a conscious realization of their oneness with this Infinite Life, this Spirit of Infinite Peace, that their lives are fairly bubbling over with joy.”

PeopleKnowsChildrenJoySpiritFatherConsciousRelationInfiniteSimplicityInner PeaceOnenessRealizationAgencyInfinite LifeTrue Relation
Book:In Tune with the Infinite
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“Elegant in its simplicity and practicality, Lee has distilled many powerful leadership strategies into the lessons many of us learned as children. They are no less relevant to our working lives. At its core, Creating Magic is a collection of stories that reminds us to demonstrate care and respect for every member of the team and to focus our efforts not our ourselves but on the people we lead.”

PeopleChildrenStoriesCarePowerfulEffortFocusMagicTeamLessonsMembersCreatingStrategySimplicityCoreCollectionsRelevantElegantPracticalityWorking Life
Author:George Bodenheimer
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“Three principles - the conformability of nature to herself, the applicability of the criterion of simplicity, and the utility of certain parts of mathematics in describing physical reality - are thus consequences of the underlying law of the elementary particles and their interactions. Those three principles need not be assumed as separate metaphysical postulates. Instead, they are emergent properties of the fundamental laws of physics.”

NeedsRealityLawCertainThreePrinciplesConsequenceMathematicsFundamentalsPropertySimplicityPhysicsInteractionMetaphysicalParticlesCriteriaEffectivenessDescribingUnreasonableLaws Of Physics
Author:Murray Gell-Mann
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“We favor hypotheses for their simplicity and explanatory power, much as the architect of the world might have done in choosing which possibility to create.”

WorldDoneMightPossibilitySimplicityFavorsArchitectHypothesis
Book:The Emergence of Probability: A Philosophical Study of Early Ideas about Probability, Induction and Statistical Inference
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“Were it not for Occam's Razor, which always demands simplicity, I'd be tempted to believe that human beings are more influenced by distant causes than immediate ones. This would especially be true of overeducated people, who are capable of thinking past the immediate, of becoming obsessed by the remote. It's the old stuff, the conflicts we've never come to terms with, that sneaks up on us, half forgotten, insisting upon action.”

PeopleThinkingBelieveHumansActionPastCausesStuffTermHuman BeingsHalfBecomingDemandConflictCapableSimplicityForgottenBeing TrueObsessedTemptedSneakRazorsInsistingOld StuffOccam's Razor
Author:Richard Russo
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“Like music or art, mathematical equations can have a natural progression and logic that can evoke rare passions in a scientist. Although the lay public considers mathematical equations to be rather opaque, to a scientist an equation is very much like a movement in a larger symphony. Simplicity. Elegance. These are the qualities that have inspired some of the greatest artists to create their masterpieces, and they are precisely the same qualities that motivate scientists to search for the laws of nature. LIke a work of art or a haunting poem, equations have a beauty and rhythm all their own.”

ArtLawArtistPassionNaturalQualityMovementLogicScientistLaysInspiredSimplicityRhythmMathematicalWorks Of ArtMasterpieceEquationsEleganceHauntingLaws Of NatureSymphonyProgressionEvokeOpaqueMathematical Equations
Book:Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the Tenth Dimension
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