In today’s world, we’re constantly bombarded with information. And if you’re like most people, your life is a constant juggling act. There never seems to be enough time to do everything you want to do.
With so many things vying for our attention, it can be tough to focus on what’s important. But if we want to be successful, we need to learn how to focus on the essential.
Simplifying your life can help you:
- Declutter your work life
- Deal with overwhelm
- Be more productive and less busy
- Take back control of your time
As Greg McKeown explains in Essentialism, the idea is to become a master of discerning only what is absolutely essential and then getting rid of everything else in your life that is not.
These simplify quotes shed some light on how we can do just that. Let’s get right into it!
Quotes About Simplifying Life
Remember that if you don’t prioritize your life someone else will.
Greg McKeown
As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.
Henry David Thoreau
Voluntary simplicity means going fewer places in one day rather than more, seeing less so I can see more, doing less so I can do more, acquiring less so I can have more.
John Kabat-Zinn
Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials.
Lin Yutang
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius–and a lot of courage–to move in the opposite direction.
Ernst F. Schumacher
Progress is man’s ability to complicate simplicity.
Thor Heyerdahl
Simplicity is making the journey of this life with just baggage enough.
Charles Warner
Clutter and confusion are failures of design, not attributes of information.
Edward R. Tufte
If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly noticeable, those things can unexpectedly become great and immeasurable.
Rainer Maria Rilke
The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
William James
The height of sophistication is simplicity.
Clare Boothe Luce
The greatest ideas are the simplest.
William Golding
In character, in manner, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
A simple man will have only what he needs, and he will know the difference between what he needs and what he wants. We feel that whatever we want, we desperately need. But before we possess the world, to our wide surprise we see that the world has already possessed us.
Sri Chinmoy
The greatest wealth is to live content with little.
Plato
Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification.
Martin H. Fischer
When you are enthusiastic about what you do, you feel this positive energy. It’s very simple.
Paulo Coelho
Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.
Steve Jobs
The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.
Hans Hofmann
Only those who have patience to do simple things perfectly ever acquire the skill to do difficult things easily.
James J. Corbett
Reduce the complexity of life by eliminating the needless wants of life, and the labors of life reduce themselves.
Edwin Way Teale
You must begin to think of yourself as becoming the person you want to be.
David Viscott
Nothing is easier than to simplify life and them make a philosophy about it. The trouble is that the resulting philosophy is true only of that simplified life.
Walter Lippmann
People want very much to simplify their lives enough so that they can control the things that make it possible to sleep at night.
Twyla Tharp
I make myself rich by making my wants few.
Henry David Thoreau
Lao Tzu
Simple in actions and in thoughts, you return to the source of being.
When you consciously choose to be ordinary, you become extraordinary.
Jaggi Vasudev
The more you try to simplify things the more you complicate them. You create rules, build walls, push people away, lie to yourself and ignore true feelings. That is not simplifying things.
Cecelia Ahern
The best way to find out what we really need is to get rid of what we don’t.
Marie Kondo
The whole idea of a stereotype is to simplify. Instead of going through the problem of all this great diversity – that it’s this or maybe that – you have just one large statement; it is this.
Chinua Achebe
Have nothing in your home that you do not know to be useful and believe to be beautiful.
William Morris
Segmenting your sample is one of the easiest ways to simplify.
Bobby Bragan
Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.
John Maeda
Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.
Henry David Thoreau
Minimalism is the intentional promotion of the things we most value and the removal of anything that distracts us from it.
Joshua Becker
Simplification is one of the most difficult things to do.
Jonathan Ive
The greatest step towards a life of simplicity is to learn to let go.
Steve Maraboli
Simplification establishes an unspoken emphasis on relationship.
Kim John Payne
What’s really important is to simplify. The work of most photographers would be improved immensely if they could do one thing: get rid of the extraneous. If you strive for simplicity, you are more likely to reach the viewer.
William Albert Allard
Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.
Lin Yutang
Simplifying isn’t meant to leave your life empty, it’s meant to leave space in your life for what you really want to do. Know what those things are before you start.
Leo Babauta
Order and simplification are the first steps toward the mastery of a subject. The actual enemy is the unknown.
Thomas Mann
When you forget about the how, go back to the why.
Charlotte Eriksson
I am learning…that a man can live profoundly without masses of things.
Richard E. Byrd
How many undervalue the power of simplicity! But it is the real key to the heart.
William Wordsworth
Simplicity of living, if deliberately chosen, implies a compassionate approach to life. It means that we are choosing to live our daily lives with some degree of conscious appreciation of the condition of the rest of the world.
Duane Elgin
Essentialism is not about how to get more things done; it’s about how to get the right things done. It doesn’t mean just doing less for the sake of less either. It is about making the wisest possible investment of your time and energy in order to operate at our highest point of contribution by doing only what is essential.
Greg Mckeown
Live simply so that others may simply live.
Mahatma Gandhi
Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand…
Henry David Thoreau
There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.
Leo Tolstoy
Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Our life is frittered away by detail.
Henry David Thoreau
All the masters tell us that the reality of life – which our noisy waking consciousness prevents us from hearing – speaks to us chiefly in silence.
Karlfried Graf Durckheim
Simple in actions and in thoughts, you return to the source of being.
Lao Tzu
If water derives lucidity from stillness, how much more the faculties of the mind!
Chuang Tzu
To have a quiet mind is to possess one’s mind wholly…
Hamilton Mabie
Silence is…the natural context from which we listen. Silence is also the natural context from which we speak.
Cornelius Plantinga, Jr
You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.
Greg McKeown
In the point of rest at the center of our being, we encounter a world where all things are at rest in the same way. Then a tree becomes a mystery, a cloud a revelation, each man a cosmos of whose riches we can only catch glimpses. The life of simplicity is simple, but it opens to us a book in which we never get beyond the first syllable.
Dag Hammarskjold
Voluntary simplicity involves both inner and outer condition. It means…sincerity and honesty within, as well as avoidance of exterior clutter…The degree of simplification is a matter for each individual to settle for himself.
Richard Gregg
What if we stopped celebrating being busy as a measurement of importance? What if instead we celebrated how much time we had spent listening, pondering, meditating, and enjoying time with the most important people in our lives?
Greg McKeown
As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything, you should keep it. If you were to give it up in a mood of self-sacrifice or out of a stern sense of duty, you would continue to want it back, and that unsatisfied want would make trouble for you. Only give up a thing when you want some other condition so much that the thing no longer has any attraction for you, or when it seems to interfere with that which is more greatly desired.
Mahatma Gandhi
The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.
Hans Hofman
Simplicity is an exact medium between too little and too much.
Sir Joshua Reynolds
Bringing simplicity into our lives requires that we discover the ways in which our consumption either supports or entangles our existence.
Duane Elgin
Simplify your life. Don’t waste the years struggling for things that are unimportant. Don’t burden yourself with possessions. Keep your needs and wants simple and enjoy what you have. Don’t destroy your peace of mind by looking back, worrying about the past. Live in the present. Simplify!
Henry David Thoreau
Have nothing in your home that you do not know to be useful and believe to be beautiful.
William Morris
In everything, love simplicity.
Saint Francis de Sales
See how nature – trees, flowers, grass – grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence…
Mother Teresa
My heart is tuned to the quietness that the stillness of nature inspires.
Hazrat Inayat Khan
Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like the leaves of Autumn.
John Muir
All real and wholesome enjoyments possible to man have been just as possible to him since first he was made of the earth…
John Ruskin
Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.
Emily Dickinson
I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures.
Lao Tzu
There is enchantment right in front of you, waiting for you to notice.
Janet Luhrs
We eat every day, and if we do it…with a focus and care it can be a wonderful thing. It changes the quality of your life.
Alice Waters
What I love most is an abundance of simple food of perfect quality and staggering freshness, very simply and respectfully treated, tasting strongly of itself.
Sybille Bedford
How good it is to eat fruit tasty and ripe from the tree and vegetables fresh and crisp from the field.
Peace Pilgrim
To pluck and eat.
John Milton
This cabbage, these carrots, these potatoes, these onions … will soon become me. Such a tasty fact!
Mike Garofalo
Taste the feast by Nature spread.
Samuel Johnson
Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.
Confucius
The family is one of nature’s masterpieces.
George Santayana
If the family were a container, it would be a nest, an enduring nest, loosely woven, expansive, and open.
Letty Cottin Pegrebin
Feelings of worth can flourish only in an atmosphere where individual differences are appreciated, mistakes are tolerated, communication is open, and rules are flexible – the kind of atmosphere that is found in a nurturing family.
Virginia Satir
Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.
Jane Howard
Family, friends, community – these are the sources of the greatest love and joy we experience as humans…
David Suzuki
The better part of one’s life consists of his friendships.
Abraham Lincoln
A true friend is the greatest of all blessings.
Duc De La Rochefoucauld
The glory of friendship is…the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive…
Anais Nin
To have a friend is to have one of the sweetest gifts that life can bring; to be a friend is to have a solemn and tender education of soul from day to day.
Amy Robertson Brown
In all ranks of life the human heart yearns for the beautiful; and the beautiful things that God makes are his gift to all alike.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
…for someone visiting earth for the first time, the real treasures here would all be free. The smell of a sunlit prairie, the taste of a cold cup of spring water, the crunch of trackless snow underfoot, these are some of the earth’s supreme treasures. On intergalactic maps, if there are such things, the place where we live must surely be designated as a magical garden in space, a place of astounding beauty.
Steve Van Matre
Joy in looking and comprehending is nature’s most beautiful gift.
Albert Einstein
Look. This is your world!…Look at the greatness of the whole thing. Look! Don’t hesitate – look! Open your eyes. Don’t blink, and look, look – look further.
Chogyam Trungpa
Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty…
John Ruskin
I once had a sparrow alight on my shoulder for a moment while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.
Henry David Thoreau
Plain question and plain answer make the shortest road out of most perplexities.
Mark Twain
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.
Henry David Thoreau
The truly rich are those who enjoy what they have.
Yiddish Proverb
The call to simplicity and freedom is a reminder that our worth comes not from the amount of our involvements, achievements, or possessions, but from the depth and care which we bring to each moment, place, and person in our lives.
Richard A. Bower
The only wealth is life.
Saint Francis of Assisi
The aim should be to obtain the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption. The cultivation and expansion of needs, is the antithesis of wisdom. It is also the antithesis of freedom and peace…
E.F. Schumacher
Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint.
Daniel Webster
Many a man thinks he is buying pleasure, when he is really selling himself to it.
Benjamin Franklin
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Albert Einstein
Can anything be more absurd than to make so much the more provision for life’s journey, as there is less of that journey left.
Cicero
…the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.
Henry David Thoreau
Free men must live simple lives and have simple pleasures.
William Morris
If you ask people what kinds of activities bring them pleasure, it’s usually contact with nature, things that are creative, and relationships with people, and the things we do to live simply bring us all of those satisfactions.
Jeanne Roy
Joy comes not through possession or ownership but through a wise and loving heart.
Buddha
It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
It is those who have enough but not too much who are the happiest.
Peace Pilgrim
…very little is needed to make a life happy.
Marcus Aurelius
A Final Word
Our lives can become so busy and cluttered that we forget to take time for ourselves. We’re constantly doing things, but never just being. Simplifying your life is about taking a step back from the chaos and not focusing on what needs to be done next, but instead thinking of all the wonderful things in our life that have already been accomplished.
Which simplify quotes resonate with you? Share them in the comments!
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