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Simplicity Quotes

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Simplicity Quotes

“Because . . . most of us think that the point is something to do with work, or kids, or family, or whatever. But you don't have any of that. There's nothing between you and despair, and you don't seem a very desperate person.' 'Too stupid.' 'You're not stupid. So why don't you ever put your head in the oven?' 'I don't know. There's always a new Nirvana album to look forward to, or something happening in NYPD Blue to make you want to watch the next episode.' 'Exactly.' 'That's the point? NYPD Blue? Jesus.' It was worse than he thought. 'No, no. The point is you keep going. You want to. So all the things that make you want to are the point. I don't know if you even realize it, but on the quiet you don't think life's too bad. You love things. Telly. Music. Food.”

“So it is that the great man through his actions will not set out to harm others, nor make much of benevolence and charity; he does not make any move for gain, nor consider the servant at the gate as lowly; he will not barter for property and riches, nor does he make much of having turned them down; he asks for no one’s help, nor does he make much of his own self-reliance, nor despise the greedy and mean; he does not follow the crowd, nor does he make much of being so different; he comes behind the crowd, but does not make much of those who get ahead through flattery. The titles and honours of this world are of no interest to him, nor is he concerned at the disgrace of punishments. He knows there is no distinction between right and wrong, nor between great and little. I have heard it said, “The Tao man earns no reputation, perfect Virtue is not followed, the great man is self-less.” In perfection, this is the path he follows.”

“This much is clear to me: insofar as I am capable of feeling such pleasures as I believe Nick felt, I am strong; insofar as I am dependent on the pleasures made available by my salary and the things I own, I am weak. I feel much more secure in those pleasures for which I am dependent on the world, as Nick was for most of his, than in those for which I am dependent on the government or on a power company or on the manufacturers of appliances. And I am far from conceding anything to those who assume that the poor or anyone else can be improved by recourse to that carnival of waste and ostentation and greed known as “our high standard of living.” As Thoreau so well knew, and so painstakingly tried to show us, what a man most needs is not a knowledge of how to get more, but a knowledge of the most he can do without, and of how to get along without it. The essential cultural discrimination is not between having and not having or haves and have-nots, but between the superfluous and the indispensable. Wisdom, it seems to me, is always poised upon the knowledge of minimums; it might be thought to be the art of minimums.”

“When my late father died — now I'm in mourning for my late mother — that sense of grief and bereavement suddenly taught me that so many things that I thought were important, externals, etc., all of that is irrelevant. You lose a parent, you suddenly realize what a slender thing life is, how easily you can lose those you love. Then out of that comes a new simplicity and that is why sometimes all the pain and the tears lift you to a much higher and deeper joy when you say to the bad times, "I will not let you go until you bless me.”

“সরল বিশ্বাসের মূল্য তার সারল্যেই। কিছু পাব বলে আমরা ঈশ্বরে বিশ্বাস করি না, ঈশ্বরে বিশ্বাস করতে ভাল লাগে বলেই তা করি। যদি কেউ অন্যরকম করে, তবে তা দোকানদারি। বাবার সম্পত্তি পাব, তাই বাবাকে ভালবাসি-এ কেমন কথা?”

“Because we lack a divine Center our need for security has led us into an insane attachment to things. We really must understand that the lust for affluence in contemporary society is psychotic. It is psychotic because it has completely lost touch with reality. We crave things we neither need nor enjoy. 'We buy things we do not want to impress people we do not like'. Where planned obsolescence leaves off, psychological obsolescence takes over. We are made to feel ashamed to wear clothes or drive cars until they are worn out. The mass media have convinced us that to be out of step with fashion is to be out of step with reality. It is time we awaken to the fact that conformity to a sick society is to be sick. Until we see how unbalanced our culture has become at this point, we will not be able to deal with the mammon spirit within ourselves nor will we desire Christian simplicity.”

“I think that the most important thing we can do as cultural institutions, as learning institutions, is really help the public become more comfortable with ambiguity. As a nation, we really look for simple answers to complex questions, and you see where that's gotten us. I think that what you want to do is help people understand the shades of gray, the nuance, the debates. I think if we could do that, regardless of what history, what culture we're teaching people, what's important is if you can get people to grapple with complexity, then we'd be a better nation.”

“Only the extremely strong – those who don’t care what others think – can take an interest in unpopular memes: the truth memes, the Logos memes. Our world has a very simple set up. Emotionally powerful memes are enormously more successful and popular than intellectually powerful memes. The whole of human fate – everything about humanity, the entirety of human history – is bound to that single fact.”

“ياليت الزمان يعود، وسوالف الربح في غراش الكولا وغيرها. نتم نجرب ونشرب وما في فايدة. يالله يالله لو نربح غرشة مجانية! واللي حظه قوي بعد استهلاك صندووق كامل من الكولا يحصل فانية أو كرة عليها شعار الكولا، وهذا فعلاً كان يعتبر كنز بالنسبة لنا.”

“Life is naturally going to have ups and downs, comings and goings, pleasures and hardships, joy and pain. Let us be kind to ourselves, understanding that we are here to learn. And let us be kind to others, knowing that peace is the ultimate prize of life and nothing is worth more. Simply to side with peace is to disempower the ego's hold. In so doing, the natural, beautiful, and healing rhythms of life have a chance to start singing their sweet song in our listening ear.”

“If you trust in Nature, in the small Things that hardly anyone sees and that can so suddenly become huge, immeasurable; if you have this love for what is humble and try very simply, as someone who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier for you, more coherent and somehow more reconciling, not in your conscious mind perhaps, which stays behind, astonished, but in your innermost awareness, awakeness, and knowledge. - Mitchell translation”