Simple Gifts Quotes

Adults can take a simple holiday for Children and screw it up. What began as a presentation of simple gifts to delight and surprise children around the Christmas tree has culminated in a woman unwrapping six shrimp forks from her dog, who drew her name. ~ Erma Bombeck

Through life, I want to walk gently. I want to treat all of life – the earth and its people – with reverence. I want to remove my shoes in the presence of holy ground. As much as possible, I want to walk in peace.

I want to walk lightly, even joyfully, through whatever days I am given. I want to laugh easily. I want to step carefully in and out of people's lives and relationships. I don't want to tread any heavier than necessary.

And throughout life, I think I would like to walk with more humility and less anger, more love and less fear. I want to walk confidently, but without arrogance. I want to walk in deep appreciation. I want to be genuinely thankful for life's extravagant, yet simple, gifts – a star-splattered night sky or a hot drink on an ice-cold day.

If life is a journey, then how I make that journey is important. How I walk through life. ~ Steve Goodier

Every day offers us simple gifts when we are willing to search our hearts for the place that's right for each of us. (January 15) ~ Sarah Ban Breathnach

It is evening. The moon is small, and new. There are stars, and a stream's sound, and I can hear the wings of insects, in the dark. I think what gifts we are given, such gifts
every day. ~ Susan Fletcher

We love to live a simple life ... we simply love the life we live though some would say its hard. ~ Dawud Wharnsby Ali

A Nelsonian solution provides a simple, predictable way to share without limit or hassle over digital networks, and yet doesn't destroy middle classes in the long term. ~ Jaron Lanier

This was the plan: we would take a holy and sacred picture of the King of Rock 'n' Roll, Elvis Presley, to the very summit of the earth; once there, we would place it with sincere reverence amongst the chimerical shimmering palaces of ice and snow and then (accompanied by some weird Zen magic) we would light joss sticks, dance about making screechy kung-fu noises, get off our faces, and that would be it: Planet Earth saved. Simple. ~ Mark Manning

She was sewing together the little proofs of his devotion out of which to make a garment for her tattered love and faith. He cut into the faith with negligent scissors, and she mended and sewed and rewove and patched. He wasted, and threw away, and could not evaluate or preserve, or contain, or keep his treasures. Like his ever torn pockets, everything slipped through and was lost, as he lost gifts, mementos
all the objects from the past. She sewed his pockets that he might keep some of their days together, hold together the key to the house, to their room, to their bed. She sewed the sleeve so he could reach out his arm and hold her, when loneliness dissolved her. She sewed the lining so that the warmth would not seep out of their days together, the soft inner skin of their relationship. ~ Anais Nin

My rule of thumb is to strike a balance by sticking to the classics and playing with color, texture, and print to give them a modern update. On any given day, I keep it simple with jeans or chinos and a comfortable dress shirt. ~ Tommy Hilfiger

The beautiful truth about service is that we are afforded countless opportunities to be its vehicle. Every interaction with another is an opportunity to serve. From simply letting someone into your lane in traffic, to holding a door, to a kind smile. This is all service. I am humbled by this simple truth. We are given the opportunity to express the most meaningful use of our lives every time we interact with another sentient being. ~ Chris Matakas

The next morning, I went over to pick them up. I'd spent the night thinking of more things I should tell them--everything about Chris I thought they needed to know.
It was all too much.
"I don't know how to tell you everything," I confessed to Bradley as he got into the car. I started to cry. "There's so many things and we have such a short amount of time."
"Just being here is all we need," he said. "I'm not an impersonator. I'm just here to feel Chris's life--I feel him here with me right now."
Bradley put me at ease and I calmed down. Back at the house, he and Clint became almost like family. Little bits of their personality came out as well--and I saw a glimmer of Clint's famous Dirty Harry character later on in the day when I had to leave to go to Bubba's basketball game.
They'd talked about coming with me--which frankly would have created an impossible circus. But I did give them the option. As they stood trying to make up their minds, I snapped into anxious mom mode.
"All right," I told them both. "You're welcome to come. But if you're coming, we're leaving now."
I guess my tone was a little too strident.
"So you want to get tough with me, huh, lady?" said Clint in his best Dirty Harry voice as he raised his eyebrow.
It's amazing how threatening a simple facial tic can be.
I left them home to study some of Chris's replica guns and gear. Our own already had its ample share of lawmen. ~ Taya Kyle

For DeHaven it was well worth the extra money to a federal budget that had always allocated more to war than it ever did to peaceful purposes. For a fraction of the cost of one missile he could purchase on the open market every work the library needed to round out its rare books collection. Yet politicians believed that missiles kept you safe, whereas actually books did, and for a simple reason. Ignorance caused wars, and people who read widely were seldom ignorant. ~ David Baldacci

...nothing in life is simple. It's all utter maddening chaos and contradicting emotions. ~ Sara Wolf

This is a crucial point, because it alerts us to the fact that, no matter how high-minded, idealistic, or altruistic a cause might appear - from ecology to cultural diversity to spirituality to world peace - the simple mouthing of intense support for that cause is not enough to determine why, in fact, that cause is being embraced. ~ Ken Wilber

He liked her; it was as simple as that. ~ Nicholas Sparks

Cross your fingers, throw salt over your shoulder, knock on wood ... simple folk remedies for unfortunate situations. Silly superstitions ... but were they based in truth from a past long forgotten? I didn't know, but it wouldn't hurt to just do it and let the Universe do its job if it was of a mind to. Don't you think? ~ Madelyn Alt

Of all the gifts You have offered to God, Your happiness-gift He treasures most. ~ Sri Chinmoy

Make for yourself a world you can believe in.
It sounds simple, I know. But it's not. Listen, there are a million worlds you could make for yourself. Everyone you know has a completely different one - the woman in 5G, that cab driver over there, you. Sure, there are overlaps, but only in the details. Some people make their worlds around what they think reality is like. They convince themselves that they had nothing to do with their worlds' creations or continuations. Some make their worlds without knowing it. Their universes are just sesame seeds and three-day weekends and dial tones and skinned knees and physics and driftwood and emerald earrings and books dropped in bathtubs and holes in guitars and plastic and empathy and hardwood and heavy water and high black stockings and the history of the Vikings and brass and obsolescence and burnt hair and collapsed souffles and the impossibility of not falling in love in an art museum with the person standing next to you looking at the same painting and all the other things that just happen and are. But you want to make for yourself a world that is deliberately and meticulously personalized. A theater for your life, if I could put it like that. Don't live an accident. Don't call a knife a knife. Live a life that has never been lived before, in which everything you experience is yours and only yours. Make accidents on purpose. Call a knife a name by which only you will recognize it. Now I'm not a very smart man, but I'm not a d ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

I try to keep in my mind the simple question: Am I trying to do good or make myself look good? Too many of our responsibilities get added to our plate when we are trying to please people, impress people, prove ourselves, acquire power, increase our prestige. All those motivations are about looking good more than doing good. ~ Kevin DeYoung

Praise the world to the angel, not what can't be talked about.
You can't impress him with your grand emotions. In the grand cosmos
where he so intensely feels, you're just a novice. So show
him some simple thing shaped for generation after generation
until it lives in our hands and in our eyes, and it's ours.
Tell him about things. He'll stand amazed, just as you did
beside the ropemaker in Rome or the potter on the Nile.
Show him how happy a thing can be, how innocent and ours;
how even grief's lament purely determines its own shape,
serves as a thing, or dies in a thing - and escapes
In ecstasy beyond the violin. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

By putting our house in order, we can live in our natural state. We choose those things that bring us joy and cherish what is truly precious in our lives. Nothing can bring greater happiness than to be able to do something as simple and natural as this. ~ Marie Kondo

The living used to wonder what happened after death. She said that whole religions were born and evolved around this one simple uncertainty. ~ Carrie Ryan

Snark functions as a device to punish human spontaneity, eccentricity, nonconformity, and simple error. Everyone is being snarked into line, ~ Ryan Holiday

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

In normal life people say, 'You're so different than on stage!' Offstage I'm down to earth, simple and a very goofy girl ... I like to make goofy faces, be dorky and not take things too seriously. I just love to laugh. ~ Nicole Scherzinger

Those boys got a way about 'em, Jules. They don't fuck around. They see somethin' they want, they get it. They're fuckin' famous for it. A woman don't stand a chance. He seem interested?"
" ... honestly, there's nothing to worry about. We went our separate ways. I'll be smarter, I'll be more quiet, I'll be
"
"Laid, good and simple. Crowe got a look at you, you're his. ~ Kristen Ashley

Our lives are fed by kind words and gracious behavior. We are nourished by expressions like 'excuse me' and other such simple courtesies ... Rudeness, the absence of the sacrament of consideration, is but another mark that our time-is-money society is lacking in spirituality, if not also in its enjoyment of life. ~ Edward M Hays

Please allow me to offer a simple financial plan. Invest in chocolate. Buy bars. Lots of bars. If we do enter anything approximating a real financial depression, you will not be able to improve your mood with gold. ~ Anita Renfroe

I'm honored to serve as mayor of my hometown where our founders started America with three simple words: 'We, the people.' And when they said 'people' they didn't mean 'corporations.' ~ Michael Nutter

Pablo Casals has this simple and sincere attitude of knowing where it's at - of saying, "This is the way it is." If I thought I could carry some of that into my life, I would be happy. ~ Leonard Nimoy

The safest way to try to get what you want is to try to deserve what you want. It's such a simple idea. It's the golden rule. You want to deliver to the world what you would buy if you were on the other end. ~ Charlie Munger

Look at all the Eastern writers who've written great Western literature. Kazuo Ishiguro. You'd never guess that The Remains of the Day or Never Let Me Go were written by a Japanese guy. But I can't think of anyone who's ever done the reverse
any Westerner who's written great Eastern literature. Well, maybe if we count Lawrence Durrell - does the Alexandria Quartet qualify as Eastern literature?"
"There is a very simple test," said Vikram. "Is it about bored, tired people having sex?"
"Yes," said the convert, surprised.
"Then it's western. ~ G. Willow Wilson

The truer you are to yourself, the greater your gifts will manifest themselves. ~ Tiffany L. Jackson

If you know someone who has lost a child, and you're afraid to mention
them because you think you might make them sad by reminding them that
they died
you're not reminding them. They didn't forget they died. What
you're reminding them of is that you remembered that they lived, and
... that is a great gift. ~ Elizabeth Edwards

She'd never trusted her own natural impulses and instincts Among her greatest fears was the possibility that she might never discover and develop her deepest talents and intuitions. Her special gifts. Her life would be wasted in pursuing the goals set for her by other people. Instead, she wanted to reclaim a power and authority - a primitive, irresistible force - that transcended gender roles. She dreamed of wielding a raw magic that predated civilization itself. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Simple people with less education, sophistication, social ties, and professional obligations seem in general to have somewhat less difficulty in facing this final crisis than people of affluence who lose a great deal more in terms of material luxuries, comfort, and number of interpersonal relationships. It appears that people who have gone through a life of suffering, hard work, and labor, who have raised their children and been gratified in their work, have shown greater ease in accepting death with peace and dignity compared to those who have been ambitiously controlling their environment, accumulating material goods, and a great number of social relationships but few meaningful interpersonal relationships which would have been available at the end of life. ~ Elisabeth Kubler Ross

If a brand wants to build social communities, capital and influence, it must become the chief celebrant of its community, not its celebrity. This simple shift in approach unlocks enormous transformative potential for brands. ~ Simon Mainwaring

There's a great blunder which we commit. Through communication, we try to control people ... The fact is that nobody can control anybody. All you can do is flow. You can flow with each other, like rivers and streams flow with each other and they all end up in the same ocean. All things come from God and all things go to God. It's a very simple formula which you have learned. ~ Harbhajan Singh Yogi

So Musa was a simple god, a god of few words. His thick beard and strong arms made him seem like a giant who could have wrung the neck of any soldier in any ancient pharaoh's army. Which explains why, on the day when we learned of his death and the circumstances surrounding it, I didn't feel sad or angry at first; instead I felt disappointed and offended, as if someone had insulted me. My brother Musa was capable of parting the sea, and yet he died in insignificance, like a common bit player, on a beach that today has disappeared, close to the waves that should have made him famous forever. ~ Kamel Daoud

All that in idea seemed simple became in practice immediately complex; as the waves shape themselves symmetrically from the clifftop but to the swimmer among them are divided by steep gulfs and foaming crests. Still the risk must be run; the mark made. ~ Virginia Woolf

Above all else, know this: Be prepared at all times for the gifts of God and be ready always for new ones. For God is a thousand times more ready to give than we are to receive ~ Meister Eckhart

My wife and I love to host wine and cheese parties. They are simple and elegant and you don't have to put a lot of effort and time into it. ~ Tyler Florence

I see all these people talking about acting as a great spiritual thing. It's not. There's no great mystery to acting. It's a very simple thing to do, but you have to work hard at it. It's about asking questions and using your imagination. ~ Eddie Marsan

Hygge is about appreciating the simple pleasures in life and can be achived on a shoestring budget. ~ Meik Wiking

Simple foods connect with your body's needs in complex ways. ~ Bryant McGill

My singing ... I'll just say it simple as possible: it's just godly. ~ Michael Jackson

Saying something is far too simple is a doubter's way or trying to make the world more complex so he won't have answers. ~ Adam P. Knave

Those who are firm, enduring, simple and unpretentious are the nearest to virtue. ~ Confucius

I just think that where that kiss was heading is someplace that's a lot easier for you than it is for me. My life is very structured. Very simple. Very sane. ~ Ann Evans

After you've written a story, the thing to do is sell it. Sounds simple, and it is, if one will follow certain basic principles of salesmanship. ~ Erle Stanley Gardner

Jesse squeezed her breasts ardently. "I just love your round parts, Miss Althea. They are just about the best things I ever felt in my life."
He proved his enthusiasm for them by kneading, manipulating, and caressing until Althea was standing on her tiptoes, every muscle in her body straining to give him better access.
"Oh, Miss Althea," he said finally, removing his hands from her body. "This is the most fun I ever had in my life."
He was breathing as if he'd just run up the mountain, pulling Granny Piggott on the skid. ~ Pamela Morsi

How happy I am that my heart can feel the simple, harmless bliss of the person who brings to his table a cabbage he has grown himself, not just the cabbage alone but all the good days, the beautiful morning he planted it, the lovely evenings he watered it, and as he had his joy in its advancing growth, he enjoys it all again in the one moment. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe