On Simplicity

“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”

“Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.”

“For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and raiment let us be therewith content.”

“Admirable indeed was the virtue of Hui! With a single bamboo dish of rice, a single gourd dish of drink, and living in his mean narrow lane, he did not allow his joy to be affected by it.”

“Philosophy calls for plain living, but not for penance; and we may perfectly well be plain and neat at the same time.”

“He is a great man who uses earthenware dishes as if they were silver; but he is equally great who uses silver as if it were earthenware.”

“Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion.”

“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.”

“Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”

“'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free, 'tis the gift to come down where we ought to be.”

When a grocery tasting booth offered twenty four jams, three in a hundred shoppers bought one. When it offered six, forty in a hundred did.

“Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.”