Our Centers for Ethics:

Quotations: Simplicity, humility

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Humility, that low, sweet root, from which all heavenly virtues shoot.
— Thomas Moore, Irish poet, satirist, composer and musician (1779-1852), from Loves of the Angels: Third Angels Story

Humility, like darkness, reveals the heavenly lights.
— Henry David Thoreau, American essayist and philosopher (1817-1862), from Walden

Humility is the solid foundation of all the virtues.
— Confucius (K'ung Fu-tzu), Chinese sage (551-479 B.C.)

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, French painter (1798-1863)

The problem with property is that it takes so much of your time.
— Willem de Kooning, Dutch-American painter (1904-1997)

Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic disease of the 20th century.
— Alexandr Solzhenitzyn, Russian novelist and historian (b. 1918)

Take what you can use and let the rest go by.
— Ken Kesey, American novelist (1935-2001)

Less is more.
— Mies van der Rohe, Dutch-American Modernist architect (1886-1969)

Less is a bore.
— Robert Venturi, American post-Modernist architect (b. 1925)

Make a virtue of necessity.
— Geoffrey Chaucer, English author (c. 1342-1400)

You can't have everything. Where would you put it?
— Steven Wright, American humorist (b. 1955)

A good name is more desirable than great riches.
— Bible, 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 d ...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, Dutch religious reformer (1340-1384)

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, English clergyman and writer (1796-1855)

Simplicity of character is no hindrance to the subtlety of intellect.
— John Morley, British statesman and writer (1838-1923)

If I have seen farther than other men it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
— Isaac Newton, English mathematician and physicist (1642-1727)

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