The supreme good is like water, which nourishes all things without trying to. It is content with the low places that people disdain. Thus it is like the Tao. In dwelling, live close to the ground. In thinking, keep to the simple. In conflict, be fair and generous. In governing, don't try to control. In work, do what you enjoy. In family life, be completely present. When you are content to be simply yourself and don't compare or compete, everybody will respect you.
Our free trade plan is quite simple. We say that every [citizen] shall have the right to buy whatever he wants, wherever he wants, at his own good pleasure, without restriction or discouragement from the state.
...she took her hand and raised her brush. For a moment it stayed trembling in a painful but exciting ecstacy in the air. Where to begin?--that was the question at what point to make the first mark? One line placed on the canvas committed her to innumerable risks, to frequent and irrevocable decisions. All that in idea seemed simple became in practice immediately complex; as the waves shape themselves symmetrically from the cliff top, but to the swimmer among them are divided by steep gulfs, and foaming crests. Still the risk must run; the mark made.
It struck me that our history is contained in the home we live in, that we are shaped by the ability of these simple structures to resist being defiled
Converse with a mind that is grandly simple, and literature looks like word-catching. The simplest utterances are worthiest to bewritten, yet are they so cheap, and so things of course, that, in the infinite riches of the soul, it is like gathering a few pebbles off the ground, or bottling a little air in a phial, when the whole earth and the whole atmosphere are ours.
When an honest writer discovers an imposition it is his simple duty to strip it bare and hurl it down from its place of honor, no matter who suffers by it; any other course would render him unworthy of the public confidence.
...of two simple men I saw today on the pier in the midst of the crowd, parting the parting of dear friends, the one to remain hung on the other's neck and passionately kissed him. While the one to depart tightly pressed the one to remain in his arms.
The merciful precepts of Christ will at last suffuse the Code and it will glow with their radiance. Crime will be considered an illness with its own doctors to replace your judges and its hospitals to replace your prisons. Liberty shall be equated with health. Ointments and oil shall be applied to limbs that were once shackled and branded. Infirmities that once were scourged with anger shall now be bathed with love. The cross in place of the gallows: sublime and yet so simple.
How much is enough? How much does anyone require? Can I be both kind and tough? Can I put faith before desire? Right now, for all time, I vow to try . . . I volunteer to be simple, I volunteer to love, Every living thing like a mountain stream that flows out o'er the land. I volunteer for the journey from here to heaven's gate. I will do my part I place my heart in Your gracious hands . . . How then shall we live? Let us live lightly as a feather. How much shall we give? Let us give everything, together One heart, one mind, all humankind... I volunteer.
Ornate rhetorick taught out of the rule of Plato.... To which poetry would be made subsequent, or indeed rather precedent, as being less suttle and fine, but more simple, sensuous, and passionate.
In theory, cars are fairly simple. If they don't start, it's either the fuel system or the electrical system. Teach yourself about the path of each in your engine and tracing it is fairly straightforward. But at the beginning, mastering each new system seems like an unreachable shore. The car is effectively a black box.
Simple exchanges can break down walls between us, for when people come together and speak to one another and share a common experience, then their common humanity is revealed. We are reminded that we're joined together by our pursuit of a life that's productive and purposeful, and when that happens mistrust begins to fade and our smaller differences no longer overshadow the things that we share. And that's where progress begins.
The best conversation is rare. Society seems to have agreed to treat fictions as realities, and realities as fictions; and the simple lover of truth, especially if on very high grounds, as a religious or intellectual seeker, finds himself a stranger and alien.