#simplicity

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. ↗

— Nick Hornby

#humor #life-lessons #simplicity #suicide #family

Virtue is under certain circumstances merely an honorable form of stupidity: who could be ill-disposed toward it on that account? And this kind of virtue has not been outlived even today. A kind of sturdy peasant simplicity, which, however, is possible in all classes and can be encountered only with respect and a smile, believes even today that everything is in good hands, namely in the "hands of God"; and when it maintains this proportion with the same modest certainty as it would that two and two make four, we others certainly refrain from contradicting. Why disturb THIS pure foolishness? Why darken it with our worries about man, people, goal, future? And even if we wanted to do it, we could not. They project their own honorable stupidity and goodness into the heart of things (the old God, deus myops, still lives among them!); we others — we read something else into the heart of things: our own enigmatic nature, our contradictions, our deeper, more painful, more mistrustful wisdom. ↗

— Friedrich Nietzsche

#common #morality #nihilism #people #simplicity

Happiness. Simple as a glass of chocolate or tortuous as the heart. Bitter. Sweet. Alive. ↗

— Joanne Harris

#bittersweet #chocolate #happiness #heart #simplicity

Manifest plainness, Embrace simplicity, Reduce selfishness, Have few desires. ↗

— Lao Tzu

#envy #greed #illusions #selfishness #simplicity

Like all magnificent things, it's very simple. ↗

— Natalie Babbitt

#philosophy #simplicity #simplicity

People who pride themselves on their "complexity" and deride others for being "simplistic" should realize that the truth is often not very complicated. What gets complex is evading the truth. ↗

— Thomas Sowell

#truth #simplicity

Any darn fool can make something complex; it takes a genius to make something simple. ↗

— Pete Seeger

#fool #genius #simplicity #simplicity

Jesus was a man for simple people. He didn't make his messages incredibly complex. If you were a person that had the eyes to see and the ears to hear... then his message was easily understood. ↗

— Brandon Andress

#ears #eyes #hear #jesus #jesus-christ

The line that describes the beautiful is elliptical. It has simplicity and constant change. It cannot be described by a compass, and it changes direction at every one of its points. ↗

— Rudolf Arnheim

#cannot #change #changes #compass #constant

Simplicity is the most deceitful mistress that ever betrayed man. ↗

— Henry Adams

#deceitful #ever #man #mistress #most