Remember that in giving any reason at all for refusing, you lay some foundation for a future request. – Arthur Helps, Essays Written in Intervals of Business, 1841

In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. – Henry David Thoreau

Life is really simple, but men insist on making it complicated. – Confucius

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak. – Hans Hofmann, Introduction to the Bootstrap, 1993