Echoes

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

Good design is as little design as possible. Less, but better — because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials. Back to purity, back to simplicity.

It is not a daily increase, but a daily decrease. Hack away the unessential.

Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.

The Tao is like a bellows: it is empty yet infinitely capable. The more you use it, the more it produces; the more you talk of it, the less you understand.

The approach to style is by way of plainness, simplicity, orderliness, sincerity.

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety.

He is richest who is content with the least, for contentment is the wealth of nature.

To achieve style, begin by affecting none.

Prefer the specific to the general, the definite to the vague, the concrete to the abstract.

I eat only what is enough to sustain my life. My food is bread, soup, an egg, and a little meat. And the amount I eat is no more than my body can easily digest.

Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.

With parsimony a little is sufficient; without it nothing is sufficient; but frugality makes a poor man rich.

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.

Human subtlety...will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature, because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.

If you wish to have leisure for your mind, either be a poor man, or resemble a poor man. Study cannot be helpful unless you take pains to live simply; and living simply is voluntary poverty.

As designers, we have a great responsibility. I believe designers should eliminate the unnecessary. That means eliminating everything that is modish because this kind of thing is only short-lived.

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.

Good design is unobtrusive. Products fulfilling a purpose are like tools. They are neither decorative objects nor works of art. Their design should therefore be both neutral and restrained, to leave room for the user's self-expression.

You see how few things you have to do to live a satisfying and reverent life? If you can manage this, that's all even the gods can ask of you.

Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.