April 23

True goodness is always simple.

Simplicity is so attractive and so profitable that it is surprising how so few people are simple.

1

Do not search for happiness beyond the sea. Thank the Almighty that he has made necessary things simple, and complicated things unnecessary.

— Gregory Skovoroda

2

All good things are cheap, all bad are very dear.

— Thoreau

3

Society never advances. For every thing that is given, something is taken. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts. The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does not observe; the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind.

A wise person, by discarding everything superfluous, ultimately returns to what is necessary.

— Emerson

4

Our expense is almost all for conformity.

— Emerson

5

Serve the common cause—do the work of love—by word, temperance and effort: i.e. refrain from saying a bad word, refrain from doing something that would make things worse, overcome timidity and false shame and do and say what should be said, what is good, what is loving—these are all tiny, unnoticeable deeds and words, and it is out of these mustard seeds that the tree of love grows from, whose branches cover the whole world.

6

There is no need to search for heroic deeds. If only you begin to do that which is demanded of you now in the circumstances you find yourself in, in the best way possible, in a Christian way, to your utmost, then your life will be complete, and you will not need to search for exploits.

7

Every great deed is done under the conditions of inconspicuousness, modesty and simplicity: you cannot plow, nor build, nor graze cattle, nor even think under thunder and brilliance. Great, true deeds are always simple and modest.

The people who want to appear simple are the least simple of all. Deliberate simplicity is the biggest and most unpleasant artificiality.