I don’t need a lot of money. Simplicity is the answer for me. Linda McCartney
You might get 85 years on this planet – don’t spend 65 paying off a lifestyle you can’t afford. Cait Flanders
Ten years from now it won’t really matter what shoes you wore today, how your hair looked, or what brand of clothes you wore. What will matter is how you lived, how you loved, and what you learned along the way. Marc and Angel
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. Jon Kabat-Zinn
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane. Marcus Aurelius
None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty. Henry David Thoreau
How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbour says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy. Marcus Aurelius
He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has. Epictetus
It would add very much to the pleasure of life and to its sanctity if we cultivated the habit of seeing what is beautiful and divine in ordinary things, though this is not easy, because our natural tendency is to think and talk most of what is extraordinary. Alfred Rowland
All goes back to the earth, and so I do not desire pride of excess or power, but the contentments made by men who have had little: the fisherman’s silence receiving the river’s grace, the gardener’s musing on rows. Wendell Berry
We really must understand that the lust for affluence in contemporary society is psychotic. It is psychotic because it has completely lost touch with reality. We crave things we neither need nor enjoy. Richard Foster
The Master said, “A true gentleman is one who has set his heart upon the Way. A fellow who is ashamed merely of shabby clothing or modest meals is not even worth conversing with”. Analects 4.9 Confucius
To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not, rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common – this is my symphony. William Henry Channing
To the Technocrats: Have mercy on us. Relax a bit, take time out for simple pleasures. For example, the luxuries of electricity, indoor plumbing, central heating, instant electronic communication and such, have taught me to relearn and enjoy the basic human satisfactions of dipping water from a cold clear mountain stream; of building a wood fire in a cast-iron stove; of using long winter nights for making music, making things, making love; of writing long letters, in longhand with a fountain pen, to the few people on this earth I truly care about. Edward Abbey
I’ve heard my teacher say, where there are machines, there are bound to be machine worries; where there are machine worries, there are bound to be machine hearts. With a machine heart in your breast, you’ve spoiled what was pure and simple; and without the pure and simple, the life of the spirit knows no rest. Zhuangzi
Poor food and water for dinner, a bent arm for a pillow – that is where joy resides. For me, wealth and renown without honor are nothing but drifting clouds. Confucius
I go about looking at horses and cattle. They eat grass, make love, work when they have to, bear their young. I am sick with envy of them. Sherwood Anderson
I think we’ve been oversold the value of more and undersold the value of less. Greg McKeown
Teach us delight in simple things, and mirth that has no bitter springs. Rudyard Kipling
