Simplicity, Humility


“Humility, that low, sweet root, from which all heavenly virtues shoot.” — Thomas Moore, 19th-century Irish poet, satirist, composer and musician (from “Loves of the Angels: Third Angel’s Story”)

“Humility, like darkness, reveals the heavenly lights.” — Henry David Thoreau, 19th-century American essayist and nature writer (from “Walden”)

“Humility is the solid foundation of all the virtues.” — Confucius, ancient Chinese sage “Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box.” — Italian proverb

“A taste for simplicity cannot last for long.” — Eugene Delacroix, 19th-century French painter

“The problem with property is that it takes so much of your time.” — Willem de Kooning, 20th-century Dutch-American painter

“Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic disease of the twentieth century.” — Alexander Solzhenitzyn, 20th-century Nobel Prize-winning Russian novelist

“Take what you can use and let the rest go by.” — Ken Kesey, 20th-century American author “Less is more.” — Mies van der Rohe, 20th-century Dutch-American “Modernist” architect

“Less is a bore.” — Robert Venturi, 20th-century American post-Modernist architect

“Make a virtue of necessity.” — Geoffrey Chaucer, medieval English author

“You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?” — Steven Wright, 20th-century American humorist

“A good name is more desirable than great riches.” — Proverbs 22:1

“Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.” — Bible (Matthew 5:5)

“Do not sound a trumpet before thee as the hypocrites do . . . that they may have glory from men. . . . But when thou doest alms let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth.” — Bible (Matthew 6:1-4)

“The farther a man knows himself to be free from perfection, the nearer he is to it.” — Gerard Groote

“He who thinks he has no faults has one.” — Unknown

“The greatest truths are the simplest, and so are the greatest men.” — J.C. Hare

“Simplicity of character is no hindrance to the subtlety of intellect.” — John Morley, 19th- century British statesman

“If I have seen farther than other men it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” — Isaac Newton, 17th-century English mathematician and physicist