Simplicity

What's really important is to simplify. The work of most photographers would be improved immensely if they could do one thing: get rid of the extraneous. If you strive for simplicity, you are more likely to reach the viewer.
~ William Albert Allard, The Photographic Essay (American Photographer Master Series, 1989).

What awe we have ought to be reserved for the richness of the ways in which simplicity can masquerade as complexity.
~ Peter William (P.W.) Atkins, The Second Law (Scientific American Library Paperback; October 1994).

Your men of sense use simple words --
'Tis littleness is proudest.
~ William Thompson Bacon, Poems (1837). Simplicity

A kiss--a smile--a sigh--
The sweetest that love can give,
For what but these care I!
For these alone I live.
~ William Cox (W.C.) Bennett, from Songs by a Song-Writer (1859). A Kiss--A Smile--A Sigh

Our job is to sell our clients' merchandise ... not ourselves. Our job is to kill the cleverness that makes us shine instead of the product. Our job is to simplify, to tear away the unrelated, to pluck out the weeds that are smothering the product message.
~ Bill Bernbach, Bill Bernbach said ... (1989).

Dare to be dull.
~ William J. Bernstein, The Investor's Manifesto: Preparing for Prosperity, Armageddon, and Everything in Between (2009). Chapter 4. The Enemy in the Mirror

While the luxuries of life are produced in but small quantities, and at far distant spots, the essentials of life are almost everywhere abundant.
~ William Garden (W.G.) Blaikie, Better Days for Working People (1863). Chapter VI. Health Without Drugs

Singular & Particular Detail is the Foundation of the Sublime.
~ William Blake, in The Life of William Blake, Volume I (1863). Notes on Reynolds' Discourses (written c. 1798-1808; aka Annotations to The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds).

You are the vision, you are the image of the dream,
The voice among the stars, the silence in the stream;
A breath of the infinite poise, where space and time are spun,
And circling orbits wheel their planets round the sun.
~ William Stanley Braithwaite, The Vision

It's the little touches that make a future solid enough to destroy.
~ William S. Burroughs

Strip your psyche to the bare bones of spontaneous process, and you give yourself one chance in a thousand, to make the Pass.
~ William S. Burroughs

The mark of a basic sh[*]t is that he has to be right.
~ William S. Burroughs, The Place of Dead Roads (1983).

[To simplify] is very nearly the whole of the higher artistic process; finding what conventions of form and what detail one can do without -- and yet preserve the spirit of the whole.
~ Willa Sibert Cather

Through the vulgar error of undervaluing what is common, we are apt indeed to pass these by as of little worth. But as in the outward creation, so in the soul, the common is the most precious.
~ William Ellery Channing (D.D.), Address Introductory to the Franklin Lectures, Boston MA (September 1838). On Self-Culture

To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never -- in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common. This is to be my symphony.
~ William Henry Channing, (1841)

Faints the cold work till thou inspire the whole.
~ William Collins, from Odes on Several Descriptive and Allegoric Subjects (1746). Ode to Simplicity

In numbers warmly pure, and sweetly strong.
~ William Collins, from Odes on Several Descriptive and Allegoric Subjects (1746). Ode to Simplicity

A society that aims for the happiness and fulfillment of the largest possible number of people, and which is concerned for the ecological balance of the planet will see the necessity, the beauty and the wisdom of living more simply.
~ William S. Coperthwaite, quoted in Home work: Handbuilt Shelter (2004).

I want to live in a society where people are intoxicated with the joy of making things.
~ William S. Coperthwaite, A Handmade Life: In Search of Simplicity (2003). Life Work

Elegant as simplicity, and warm
As ecstasy.
~ William Cowper, from Poems by William Cowper of the Inner Temple, Esq. (1782). Table Talk (written in 1781)

Friends, books, a garden, and perhaps his pen,
Delightful industry enjoy'd at home,
And Nature, in her cultivated trim
Dress'd to his taste, inviting him abroad --
Can he want occupation who has these?
~ William Cowper, The Task (1785). Book III. The Garden

O friendly to the best pursuits of man,
Friendly to thought, to virtue, and to peace,
Domestic life in rural pleasure pass'd!
~ William Cowper, The Task (1785). Book III. The Garden

Simplicity is nature and truth.
~ William Danby, Thoughts on Various Subjects (1831).

Small are the seeds fate does unheeded sow
Of slight beginnings to important ends.
~ Sir William Davenant, Gondibert (1651). Book 1, Canto 2

The whole, though larger than any of its parts, does not necessarily obscure their separate identities.
~ William Orville Douglas, U.S. v. Powers, 307 U.S. 214 (1939)

Little self-denials, little honesties, little passing words of sympathy, little nameless acts of kindness, little silent victories over favorite temptations -- these are the silent threads of gold which, when woven together, gleam out so brightly in the pattern of life that God approves.
~ Frederick William Farrar

Small things are best;
Grief and unrest
To rank and wealth are given;
But little things
On little wings
Bear little souls to heaven.
~ Frederick William Faber, Written In A Little Lady's Little Album

What keen enjoyment springs
From cheap and simple things!
~ William Schwenck (W.S.) Gilbert, from Songs of a Savoyard (1890). The Practical Joker

But this is life on earth, you can't have everything.
~ William Goldman, The Princess Bride: The 25th Anniversary Edition (December 1998). Introduction

Existence was really very simple when you did what you were told.
~ William Goldman, The Princess Bride (1973).

Any darn fool can make something complex; it takes a genius to make something simple.
~ Woodrow Wilson Guthrie

The laws of nature are distinguished by simplicity, and simplicity has an abiding charm.
~ William Hague, The Cultivation of Taste (c. 1841)

A thing is not vulgar merely because it is common.
~ William Hazlitt, Table-Talk; or, Original Essays (1821-1822). On Vulgarity and Affectation

Our strength lies in our weakness.
~ William Hazlitt, Characteristics: in the Manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims (1823).

Simplicity of character is the natural result of profound thought.
~ William Hazlitt, Characteristics: in the Manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims (1823).

By recognizing the intimate things that touch us we come to know and appreciate our world and ourselves more. By sharing these things with others we let them into our lives in a very special, personal way.
~ William J. Higginson, The Haiku Handbook: How to Write, Share, and Teach Haiku (1985).

Simplicity, without variety, is wholly insipid.
~ William Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty (1753). Chapter IV: Of Simplicity, or Distinctness

Moods and tastes and fashions change; people fancy now this and now that; but what is unpretentious and what is true is always beautiful and good, and nothing else is so.
~ William Dean Howells, Criticism and Fiction (1891).

They are rather helplessly frank, but not, I hope, with all their rather helpless frankness, offensively frank.
~ William Dean Howells (of the essays included in the book), My Literary Passions (July 1909). Introduction

Strive for simplicity! Not complexity!
~ William Morris (W.M.) Hunt, from Talks about Art (1878).

I am against bigness and greatness in all their forms, and with the invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, stealing in through the crannies of the world like so many soft rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, and yet rending the hardest monuments of man's pride, if you give them time. The bigger the unit you deal with, the hollower, the more brutal, the more mendacious is the life displayed.
~ William James, in The Letters of William James, Vol. 2 (1920). XII. Letter to Mrs. Henry Whitman, 7 June 1899

Tell him to live by yes and no -- yes to everything good, no to everything bad.
~ William James

The concrete man has but one interest, -- to be right. That to him is the art of all arts, and all means are fair which help him to it.
~ William James, from The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897). The Sentiment of Rationality

Go boldly forth, my simple lay,
Whose accents flow with artless ease,
Like orient pearls at random strung.
~ Sir William Jones, A Persian Song of Hafiz (1771)

All great truths are simple.
~ William George Jordan, The Kingship of Self-Control: Individual Problems and Possibilities (1899). VI: The Greatness of Simplicity

Simplicity means the survival, -- not of the fittest, but of the best.
~ William George Jordan, The Kingship of Self-Control: Individual Problems and Possibilities (1899). VI: The Greatness of Simplicity

Sonny, it ain't nothing 'till I call it.
~ William J. "Bill" Klem

[T]hings don't get any easier by putting them off.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge (1944).

I believe that a plain word spoken because it must be said, free from malice or self-seeking, can be no lasting offence to any one, whereas, what end is there to the wrong and damage that come of half-hearted speech, of words spoken in vagueness, hypocrisy, and cowardice?
~ William Morris, Lecture delivered at the Wedgewood Institute, Burslem Town Hall, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England (13 October 1881). Art and the Beauty of the Earth (originally published in "The Architect" as The Condition and Prospects of Art; 29 October 1881)

Simplicity of life, even the barest, is not a misery, but the very foundation of refinement: a sanded floor and whitewashed walls, and the green trees, and flowery meads, and living waters outside; or a grimy palace amid the smoke with a regiment of housemaids always working to smear the dirt together so that it may be unnoticed; which, think you, is the most refined, the most fit for a gentleman of those two dwellings?
~ William Morris, from Hopes and Fears for Art (1882). The Prospects of Architecture in Civilisation (lecture delivered at the London Institution, 10 March 1880)

There it is. Take it.
~ William Mulholland, Declared at the initial gate opening of the Owens Valley/Los Angeles Aqueduct (5 November 1913).

All truth is simple ... is that not doubly a lie?
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

These small things -- nutrition, place, climate, recreation, the whole casuistry of selfishness -- are inconceivably more important than everything one has taken to be important so far.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

One should never increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything.
~ William of Ockham

No Bull, just Bill.
~ FoxNews Channel promo for Bill O'Reilly "The No-Spin Zone" (2001).

Nothing will sustain you more potently than the power to recognize in your humdrum routine, as perhaps it may be thought, the true poetry of life -- the poetry of the commonplace, of the ordinary man, of the plain, toil-worn woman, with their loves and their joys, their sorrows and their griefs.
~ William Osler, Farewell address given to American and Canadian Medical students, McGill University (1892). The Student Life

I prefer the honestly simple to the ingeniously wicked.
~ William Penn

Nothing from nothing leaves nothing
You gotta have something, if you wanna be with me.
~ William Everett ("Billy") Preston, Nothing From Nothing (1974 single).

This country is not where it is today on account of any one man. It is here on account of the real common sense of the Big Normal Majority.
~ Will Rogers

Be master of your petty annoyances and conserve your energies for the big, worthwhile things. It isn't the mountain ahead that wears you out - it's the grain of sand in your shoe.
~ Robert William Service

A morsel for a monarch.
~ William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra. Act I, scene v

And simple truth miscalled simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill.
~ William Shakespeare, Sonnet 66

Beauty, truth, and Grace in all simplicity.
~ William Shakespeare, The Phoenix and the Turtle, Threnos (c.1601).

Great floods have flown
From simple sources.
~ William Shakespeare, All's Well that Ends Well. Act II, scene i

Have more than thou showest,
Speak less than thou knowest,
Lend less than thou owest.
~ William Shakespeare, King Lear. Act I, scene iv

Having nothing, nothing can he lose.
~ William Shakespeare, King Henry VI, Part III. Act III, scene iii

I pray thee, understand a plain man in his plain meaning.
~ William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice. Act III, scene v

In simple and pure soul I come to you.
~ William Shakespeare, Othello. Act I, scene i

More matter, with less art.
~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet. Act II, scene ii

Nothing is
But what is not.
~ William Shakespeare, Macbeth. Act I, scene iii

O God! methinks it were a happy life,
To be no better than a homely swain;
To sit upon a hill, as I do now,
To carve out dials quaintly, point by point,
Thereby to see the minutes how they run,
How many make the hour full complete;
How many hours bring about the day;
How many days will finish up the year;
How many years a mortal man may live.
~ William Shakespeare, King Henry VI, Part III. Act II, scene v

Small things make base men proud.
~ William Shakespeare, King Henry VI, Part II. Act IV, scene i

I did never know so full a voice issue from so empty a heart: but the saying is true 'The empty vessel makes the greatest sound.'
~ William Shakespeare, King Henry V. Act IV, scene iv

This is the short and the long of it.
~ William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor. Act II, scene ii

'Tis better to be brief than tedious.
~ William Shakespeare, King Richard III. Act I, scene iv

[T]oo light winning
Make the prize light.
~ William Shakespeare, The Tempest. Act I, scene ii

He has been born a saunterer, and makes it plain to the well-meaning who approach him with a yoke and wages that they are not for him. For him the social contract does not exist, nor the conventional standards of value.
~ William Sime, from To and Fro; or, Views from Sea and Land (1884). Some Faces. The Village Idiot

It is plain enough that the Forgotten Man and the Forgotten Woman are the very life and substance of society. They are the ones who ought to be first and always remembered.
~ William Graham Sumner, in The Forgotten Man and Other Essays (1918). The Forgotten Man (1883 article)

It is not necessary to be in a big place to do big things.
~ William A. "Billy" Sunday, from "Billy" Sunday, The Man and His Message (1914). Chapter V. Playing the New Game

Little keys can open big locks. Simple words can express great thoughts.
~ William Arthur Ward

[W]e never forsake the plain, obvious, easy and natural sense, unless where the nature of the thing itself, parallel places, or evident reason, afford a solid and sufficient reason for so doing.
~ William Whiston, A New Theory of the Earth (1696). Introduction

Mathematics, the science of the ideal, becomes the means of investigating, understanding and making known the world of the real. The complex is expressed in terms of the simple.
~ William Frank (F.) White, from A Scrap-Book Of Elementary Mathematics (1908). The Nature of Mathematical Reasoning

Don't be too clever for an audience. Make it obvious. ... Make the subtleties obvious also.
~ Billy Wilder, Billy Wilder in Hollywood (1977).

Blending sweet grace with austere discipline.
~ Isaac Williams, The Baptistry; or, The Way of Eternal Life (1842). Image 13. The Music of the City of God

so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
~ William Carlos Williams, from Spring and All (1923). The Red Wheelbarrow

What you see is what you get!
~ Clerow "Flip" Wilson (as character, Geraldine), The Flip Wilson Show (1970-74).

Nonchalance is the ability to remain down to earth when everything else is up in the air.
~ Earl Wilson

Common sense is a much rarer quality than genius. ... It is this quality that instructs us when to speak, when to be silent, when to act, when be still -- and, moreover, it teaches us what to speak and what to suppress, what to do and what to forbear.
~ William Wirt, in Memoirs of the Life of William Wirt, Volume II (1849). Chapter XI. Letter to Elizabeth Wirt; 18 May 1826

How men undervalue the power of Simplicity! but it is the real key to the heart.
~ William Wordsworth, in Conversations at Cambridge (1836). The Poet Wordsworth And Professor Smythe

I would be -- for no knowledge is worth a straw --
Ignorant and wanton as the dawn.
~ William Butler Yeats, from The Wild Swans at Coole (1917). The Dawn

Clear thinking becomes clear writing; one can't exist without the other.
~ William K. Zinsser, On Writing Well (1990 edition). 2. Simplicity

[P]lain talk will not be easily achieved in corporate America. Too much vanity is on the line. Executives of every level are prisoners of the notion that a simple style reflects a simple mind. Actually a simple style is the result of hard work and hard thinking; a muddy style reflects a muddy thinker or a person too lazy to organize his thoughts.
~ William K. Zinsser, On Writing Well (1976). 16. Business Writing: Writing in Your Job

Simplify, prune and strive for order.
~ William K. Zinsser, On Writing Well (1976). 5. The Audience