Theme
Simplicity
Less is more, focus, and cutting to what counts.
Every quote here is provenance-checked. AI will happily put a fake quote on a beautiful slide — these are the ones you can actually use, with the right name on them.
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Verified quotes about simplicity
Each is traced to a real source and correctly credited. ✓ Free to use = public domain, cleared for commercial reuse. Open one for a paste-ready credit line and its reuse status.
“A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart”
“Confine yourself to the present”
“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not”
“Drama is life with the dull bits cut out”
“Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense”
“Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair”
“Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter”
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived”
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye”
“It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing”
“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well”
“One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture”
“Silence at the proper season is wisdom, and better than any speech”
“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand”
“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched”
“The perfect is the enemy of the good”
“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid”
“The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see”
“Very little is needed to make a happy life”
“He who is not satisfied with a little is satisfied with nothing”
“I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter”
“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need”
“If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun”
“The most important thing is to enjoy your life - to be happy”
“The way to do is to be”
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Don’t get caught out
Commonly shared about simplicity — but misattributed
Popular simplicity lines that get pinned on the wrong name. If you use one, credit it correctly.
“A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song”
ReallyJoan Walsh Anglund · not Maya Angelou
“A constitution should be short and obscure”
ReallyCharles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord · not Napoleon Bonaparte
“A penny saved is a penny earned”
ReallyUnknown — a traditional English proverb · not Benjamin Franklin
“A picture is worth a thousand words”
ReallyArthur Brisbane (popularized by Fred R. Barnard) · not Confucius
“Be moderate in everything, including moderation”
ReallyUnknown — earliest documented in Wallace Rice (1927) · not Socrates
“Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and remove one piece of jewelry”
ReallyUnknown — an anonymous fashion adage · not Coco Chanel
“Cleanliness is next to godliness”
ReallyJohn Wesley (popularizer of a pre-existing saying)
“Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty”
ReallyJoseph Addison · not Socrates
“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are”
ReallySquire Bill Widener
“Do what you can, with what you've got, where you are”
ReallySquire Bill Widener · not Theodore Roosevelt
“Elegance is the only beauty that never fades”
ReallyAudrey Hepburn
“Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you'll look back and realize they were the big things”
ReallyRobert Brault · not Kurt Vonnegut
“Gilding the lily”
ReallyWilliam Shakespeare
“I learned long ago never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it”
ReallyAnonymous (popularized by Cyrus S. Ching) · not George Bernard Shaw
“I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time”
ReallyBlaise Pascal · not Mark Twain
“If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough”
ReallyUnknown — a modern saying · not Albert Einstein
“It isn't the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it's the pebble in your shoe”
ReallyAnonymous · not Muhammad Ali
“It's easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time”
ReallyUnknown originator