Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction. – E.F. Schumacher (Thanks, Arly)

If you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days. – Annie Dillard, “Seeing,” Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, 1974

Outward simplicity befits ordinary men, like a garment made to measure for them; but it serves as an adornment to those who have filled their lives with great deeds: they might be compared to some beauty carelessly dressed and thereby all the more attractive. – Jean De La Bruyere

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