Living A Simple Life Quotes

I go about looking at horses and cattle. They eat grass, make love, work when they have to, bear their young. I am sick with envy of them. ~ Sherwood Anderson

I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both for the body and the mind. ~ Albert Einstein

The quality of life is so different in France. There is the possibility of living a simple life. I would never contemplate raising my daughter in LA. I would never raise any child there. ~ Johnny Depp

One can furnish a room very luxuriously by taking out furniture rather than putting it in. ~ Francis Jourdain

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! 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. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Every day try to help uplift physically, mentally, or spiritually suffering people, as you would help yourself
or your family. If, instead of living in the misery-making selfish way, you live according to the laws of God, then, no matter what small part you may be playing on the stage of life, you will know that you have been playing your part correctly, as directed by the Stage Manager of all our destinies. Your part, however small, is just as important as the biggest parts in contributing to the success of the Drama of Souls on the Stage of Life. Make a little money and be satisfied with it by living a simple life and expressing your ideals, rather than make lots of money and have worries without end. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda

First of all, merely by living a simple life with a heart dedicated to overcoming self-cherishing, we automatically benefit others. ~ Thubten Yeshe

A vocabulary of truth and simplicity will be of service throughout your life. ~ Winston Churchill

I have seen many atrocities, but they are outweighed by the kind deeds that may seem small, but when added together, create a strong human spirit. Perhaps you would benefit from living a simple life away from war and politics. ~ Carl Alves

I believe we would be happier to have a personal revolution in our individual lives and go back to simpler living and more direct thinking. ~ Laura Ingalls Wilder

The ordinary acts we practice every day at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest. ~ Thomas Moore

My riches consist not in the extent of my possessions but in the fewness of my wants. ~ Joseph Brotherton

I am a worried person with a stressed out soul, living a simple life with no capital. ~ Charlotte Eriksson

It was never a question of passing. It was a question of hiding. Behind Black and white perceptions of who we were
who they thought we were. Tropics. Plantations. Calypso. Cricket. We were the people with the musical voices and the coronation mugs on our parlor tables. I would be whatever figurine these foreign imaginations cared for me to be. It would be so simple to let others fill in for me. So easy to startle them with a flash of anger when their visions got out of hand
but never to sustain the anger for myself. It would be a life lived within myself. A life cut off. I know who I am but you will never know who I am. I may in fact lose touch with who I am. ~ Michelle Cliff

No parent should have to bury a child ... No mother should have to bury a son. Mothers are not meant to bury sons. It is not in the natural order of things.
I buried my son. In a potter's field. In a field of Blood. In empty, acrid silence. There was no funeral. There were no mourners. His friends all absent. His father dead. His sisters refusing to attend. I discovered his body alone, I dug his grave alone, I placed him in a hole, and covered him with dirt and rock alone. I was not able to finish burying him before sundown, and I'm not sure if that affected his fate ...
I begrudge God none of this. I do not curse him or bemoan my lot. And though my heart keeps beating only to keep breaking--I do not question why.
I remember the morning my son was born as if it was yesterday. The moment the midwife placed him in my arms, I was infused with a love beyond all measure and understanding. I remember holding my son, and looking over at my own mother and saying, "Now I understand why the sun comes up at day and the stars come out at night. I understand why rain falls gently. Now I understand you, Mother" ...
I loved my son every day of his life, and I will love him ferociously long after I've stopped breathing. I am a simple woman. I am not bright or learn-ed. I do not read. I do not write. My opinions are not solicited. My voice is not important ... On the day of my son's birth I was infused with a love beyond all measure and understanding ... The world tells me ~ Stephen Adly Guirgis

If Nature denies eternity to beings, it follows that their destruction is one of her laws. Now, once we observe that destruction is so useful to her that she absolutely cannot dispense with it from this moment onward the idea of annihilation which we attach to death ceases to be real what we call the end of the living animal is no longer a true finish, but a simple transformation, a transmutation of matter. According to these irrefutable principles, death is hence no more than a change of form, an imperceptible passage from one existence into another. ~ Marquis De Sade

My soul feels lighter at the mere sight of him. Complicated feels simple. Unlikely feels inevitable. Only he makes me feel this way - like I can climb whatever mountain life puts in our path. ~ J.A. DeRouen

what a life would be if i could just live in the mountains dense with greenery, sit by my window and read my favourite books. ~ Arushi Singh

Girls aside, the other thing I found in the last few years of being at school, was a quiet, but strong Christian faith – and this touched me profoundly, setting up a relationship or faith that has followed me ever since.

I am so grateful for this. It has provided me with a real anchor to my life and has been the secret strength to so many great adventures since.

But it came to me very simply one day at school, aged only sixteen.

As a young kid, I had always found that a faith in God was so natural. It was a simple comfort to me: unquestioning and personal.

But once I went to school and was forced to sit through somewhere in the region of nine hundred dry, Latin-liturgical, chapel services, listening to stereotypical churchy people droning on, I just thought that I had got the whole faith deal wrong.

Maybe God wasn't intimate and personal but was much more like chapel was … tedious, judgemental, boring and irrelevant.

The irony was that if chapel was all of those things, a real faith is the opposite. But somehow, and without much thought, I had thrown the beautiful out with the boring. If church stinks, then faith must do, too.

The precious, natural, instinctive faith I had known when I was younger was tossed out with this newly found delusion that because I was growing up, it was time to 'believe' like a grown-up.

I mean, what does a child know about faith?

It took a low point a ~ Bear Grylls

Without realizing what she was doing and more on an impulse than anything else, she leaned forward and kissed him. It was a simple, yet firm kiss and she pulled back after only a moment. But it sent a thrill through her.
He leaned down for another. But she put her finger on his lips to stop him.
"That was my reward to you," she said as they danced. "Don't squander it."
"Reward? he asked still seeming both surprised and delighted at this unexpected attention. "What for?"
"Why for living, Vaelros. And for doing so much else to help me. I will have you rewarded in state as well. But that was just from me."
She saw Vaelros flush and she gave him a brilliant smile. "You don't like my reward?" she asked.
"I do!" he replied. "I want only to learn how to earn more."
The music was fading. The song was ending. Luthiel stepped back and let her hands drop.
"A mysterious thing, my heart," she said. ~ Robert Fanney

Success, as we categorize it, is a simple and pitiable thing. It's only a matter of degree of wanting, and accident. Wanting plays the major role in everybody's life--accident all the others. The only condition any of us can be sure of in this universe is wanting. How tepid or burning hot the want is depends on accident. But since accident isn't really as accidental as we'd like to think--accident is the great fooler and comforter of mankind--we become 'successful' exactly to the degree we want. ~ Edna Robinson

Origins and History of Consciousness
III.
It's simple to wake from sleep with a stranger,
dress, go out, drink coffee,
enter a life again. It isn't simple
to wake from sleep into the neighborhood
of one neither strange nor familiar
whom we have chosen to trust. Trusting, untrusting,
we lowered ourselves into this, let ourselves
downward hand over hand as on a rope that quivered
over the unsearched ... . We did this. Conceived
of each other, conceived each other in a darkness
which I remember as drenched in light.
I want to call this, life.
But I can't call it life until we start to move
beyond this secret circle of fire
where our bodies are giant shadows flung on a wall
where the night becomes our inner darkness, and sleeps
like a dumb beast, head on her paws, in the corner. ~ Adrienne Rich

The word 'pranayama', often referred to as alternate breathing, comes from the Sanskrit meaning 'extension of life force' or 'extension of breath'. At times, we are going to have days where we are bombarded with one task after another.

This simple yet effective meditation only takes a couple of minutes and its calming qualities can be felt almost immediately. It is one of the easiest meditation techniques to apply. This practice is well worth applying at least three or four times a day (somewhere private) to develop emotional balance and evenness of mind, especially in the working environment. ~ Christopher Dines

We're musicians. We make music for a living. It's that simple. Nothing else matters. ~ Eddie Van Halen

Hoever dewlls on beauty tends to become beautiful; there will be a grace and charm to expressing itself through that person which no one can fail to recognize and appreciate. ~ Ernest Holmes

For what she'd asked him, in her real voice, a voice that only the heart could hear, was a simple question:

Have you ever once loved another human creature so much that her life was more precious to you than your own?

And his heart had replied in words just as plain:
"Yes," it said, and the power of it nearly blinded her. ~ Sasha Soren

A habit as simple as arriving late or constantly procrastinating can show what you rank at the bottom of your scale of priorities - and also what you rank at the top. What do you hold as important and unimportant in this life? Just take a look at your habits. They will speak for themselves - and most likely, they will speak to others as well. ~ Jarrid Wilson

She must rest for a moment. And, resting, looking from one to the other vaguely, the old question which traversed the sky of the soul perpetually, the vast, the general question which was apt to particularise itself at such moments as these, when she released faculties that had been to the strain, stood over her, paused over her, darkened over her. What is the meaning of life? That was all - a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. ~ Virginia Woolf

Sounds simple, doesn't it, this notion of simplicity? Simple things done simply by a simple person. But it's not as simple as it seems. ~ Fennel Hudson

I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage with my books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post, which any human power can give. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Nowadays we live in a world where poor teenagers are willing to maim and murder for a pair of tennis shoes or a designer coat; this is not a consequence of poverty. In dire situations of poverty at earlier times in our nation's history, it would have been unthinkable to the poor to murder someone for a luxury item. While it was common for individuals to steal or attack in the interests of acquiring resources - money, food or something as simple as a winter coat to ward off the cold - there was no value system in place that made a life less important than the material desire for an inessential object. ~ Bell Hooks

How does life build the vital currents that we live from? Where does the magnetic force that pulls me toward this friend's house originate? What are the essential moments that made this presence into a vital pole for me? What are the secret events that mold particular affections and, through them, love of country? How little stir the real miracles cause! How simple are the most vital events! There is so little to say about the instant I want to recall that I have to relive it in a dream and speak to this friend. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

But it so happens that everything on this planet is, ultimately, irrational; there is not, and cannot be, any reason for the causal connexion of things, if only because our use of the word "reason" already implies the idea of causal connexion. But, even if we avoid this fundamental difficulty, Hume said that causal connexion was not merely unprovable, but unthinkable; and, in shallower waters still, one cannot assign a true reason why water should flow down hill, or sugar taste sweet in the mouth. Attempts to explain these simple matters always progress into a learned lucidity, and on further analysis retire to a remote stronghold where every thing is irrational and unthinkable.

If you cut off a man's head, he dies. Why? Because it kills him. That is really the whole answer. Learned excursions into anatomy and physiology only beg the question; it does not explain why the heart is necessary to life to say that it is a vital organ. Yet that is exactly what is done, the trick that is played on every inquiring mind. Why cannot I see in the dark? Because light is necessary to sight. No confusion of that issue by talk of rods and cones, and optical centres, and foci, and lenses, and vibrations is very different to Edwin Arthwait's treatment of the long-suffering English language.

Knowledge is really confined to experience. The laws of Nature are, as Kant said, the laws of our minds, and, as Huxley said, the generalization of observed facts.

It is, t ~ Aleister Crowley

even skeptics have granted and recognized His unparalleled life and impact. Here, for example, is an opinion from a highly respected scholar, the famed historian W. E. H. Lecky: The character of Jesus has not only been the highest pattern of virtue, but the strongest incentive in its practice, and has exerted so deep an influence, that it may be truly said that the simple record of three years of active life has done more to regenerate and to soften mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists.1 ~ Ravi Zacharias

The single craziest thing about being a priest, he'd found, was that celibacy was simultaneously the most private and most public aspect of his life. One of his linguistics professors, a man named Samuel Goldstein, had helped him understand the consequences of that simple fact. Sam was Korean by birth, so if you knew his name, you knew he was adopted. "What got me when I was a kid was that people knew something fundamental about me and my family just by looking at us. I felt like I had a big neon sign over my head flashing ADOPTEE," Sam told him. "It's not that I was ashamed of being adopted. I just wished that I had the option of revealing it myself. ~ Mary Doria Russell

I want a simple, ordinary life ... like humans enjoy. ~ Deborah Harkness

I'm pretty squeaky clean. No big tragedies in my childhood or adolescence or adulthood. I've had a very easygoing, simple life. ~ Vera Farmiga

There is a grandeur in this view of life, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful are being evolved ~ Charles Darwin

It might be something as simple as saying the right word to the right person at the right time-and that could change the course of history. You never really know. But the whole thing is to work at the process of being in sync with the universe, so that everything will align at the proper time so that you can deliver that which is your life mission. And that's why we're here as individuals. And then there's our contribution to the collective. It makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? ~ Herbie Hancock

It is quite simple: put passion ahead of training. Feel out in any way you can what you most want to do in science, or technology, or some other science-related profession. Obey that passion as long as it lasts. Feed it with the knowledge the mind needs to grow. Sample other subjects, acquire a general education in science, and be smart enough to switch to a greater love if one appears. But don't just drift through courses in science hoping that love will come to you. Maybe it will, but don't take the chance. As in other big choices in your life, there is too much at stake. Decision and hard work based on enduring passion will never fail you. ~ Edward O. Wilson

To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter ... to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird's nest or a wildflower in spring - these are some of the rewards of the simple life. ~ John Burroughs

Some people have sex by putting fishhooks in each other. Couple this act with a simple understanding of the basic function of all living creatures to expand and contract. Now, try that with fishhooks. ~ Sarah Schulman

When you discard arrogance' cool gritty, and a few other things that get in the way, sooner or later you will discover that simple, childlike, and mysterious secret known to those of the uncared block: life is fun. ~ Benjamin Hoff

Women give men a place to go. A man is a useless piece of equipment whose purpose is lost if it were not for women ...
It's like this. A man might go out and get a job, but only for someplace to go during the day. And he's only working that job to give the money to his wife. And then, if he does really well ... to buy her good jewelry. And only because she asks for it. Diamonds aren't a man's idea. The first woman sent the first man into a hole in the ground, and when he emerged with the first diamond she looked at it and said, 'It's too small. Dig farther. Men are not ambitious outside of their desire to impress women. A woman, in return, gives a man's life shape. A context. A place to go. It's very simple. ~ Adriana Trigiani

For most of my life I had operated under a simple schematic of winning and losing, but cancer was teaching me a tolerance for ambiguities. ~ Lance Armstrong

It's pretty simple, really, when you think about it: We all start out as little fishes in our daddy's pants, and we all end up a Thanksgiving feast for the worms, and in the meantime we have to find a couple good reasons to give a fuck. ~ Tiffanie DeBartolo

Yes, we are raw. Yes, we are in the dark belly of a whale. Yes, we ache. Who can be Jesus' "little sunbeam" at such a time? Would Jesus even want such a thing? He is after much more than happiness in our lives. He is after a sustaining joy and he will give us that joy by giving us himself, whether through the small gifts of life that bring us gladness or through the dark night of suffering. Sweeping affliction under the rug of our heart, therefore, is simple denial, an act of cowardice, and act of ungratefulness. We must dare to look it square in the eyes. ~ Ben Palpant

Nothing has given me more hope recently than to observe how simple conversations give birth to actions that can change lives and restore our faith in the future. There is no more powerful way to initiate significant social change than to start a conversation. When a group of people discover that they share a common concern, that's when the process of change begins. ~ Margaret J. Wheatley