Virtues

"... I know that women are taught by other women that they must never admit the full truth to a man. But the highest form of affection is based on full sincerity on both sides. ..."

"To seek sincerity above all things is perhaps, at bottom, not to want to be transformed; it is to cling to yourself, to have a morbid love of yourself, just as you are, that is to say, false. It is to refuse release."

"Our natures are, indeed, elusively insubstantial — notoriously less stable and less inherent than the natures of other things. And insofar as this is the case, sincerity itself is bullshit."

"I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self respect. And it's these things I'd believe in, even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn't all she should be. I love her and it is the beginning of everything."

"Good manners without sincerity are like a beautiful dead lady."

"You can be sincere and still be stupid."

"We parry and fend the approach of our fellow-man by compliments, by gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We cover up our thought from him under a hundred folds. I knew a man who under a certain religious frenzy cast off this drapery, and omitting all compliment and commonplace, spoke to the conscience of every person he encountered, and that with great insight and beauty. At first he was resisted, and all men agreed he was mad. But persisting—as indeed he could not help doing—for some time in this course, he attained to the advantage of bringing every man of his acquaintance into true relations with him. No man would think of speaking falsely with him, or of putting him off with any chat of markets or reading-rooms. But every man was constrained by so much sincerity to the like plain dealing, and what love of nature, what poetry, what symbol of truth he had, he did certainly show him. But to most of us society shows not its face and eye, but its side and its back. To stand in true relations with men in a false age is worth a fit of insanity, is it not?"

"I think that the decision to be sincere is an artistic one."

"The temper I am of requires me to keep away from court. Heaven, when it sent me into the world, did not give me a soul suited to the air of courts. I do not find in myself the virtues necessary to succeed, and make my fortune there. My chief talent is to be frank and sincere."

"Bashful sincerity and comely love."

"There should be more sincerity and heart in human relations, more silence and simplicity in our interactions. Be rude when you’re angry, laugh when something is funny, and answer when you’re asked."

"Men are never convinced of your reasons, of your sincerity, of the seriousness of your sufferings, except by your death. So long as you are alive, your case is doubtful; you have a right only to their skepticism."

"When we have intelligence resulting from sincerity, this condition is to be ascribed to nature; when we have sincerity resulting from intelligence, this condition is to be ascribed to instruction. But given the sincerity, and there shall be the intelligence; given the intelligence, and there shall be the sincerity."

"“She seems very sincere,” Asura told Pieter. “A word with oddly positive connotations,” Peter said, nodding. “In my experience those who are most sincere are also the most morally suspect, as well as being incapable of producing or appreciating wit.”"

"Simpler manners, purer lives; more self-denial; more earnest sympathy with the classes that lie below us, nothing short of that can lay the foundations of the Christianity which is to be hereafter, deep and broad."

"“You’re sincere enough.” She laughed shortly. “Heaven protect the human race from the sincere idealist!”"

"主忠信。毋友不如己者。過，則勿憚改。"

"True simplicity regards God alone; it has its eye fixed upon Him, and is not drawn toward self; and it is as pleased to say humble as great things. All our uneasy feelings and reflections arise from self-love, whatever appearance of piety they may assume. The lack of simplicity inflicts many wounds. Go where we will, if we remain in ourselves, we shall carry everywhere our sins and our distresses. If we would live in peace, we must lose sight of self, and rest in the infinite and unchangeable God."

"As to our friend, I pray God to bestow upon him a simplicity that shall give him peace. Happy are they indeed who can bear their sufferings in the enjoyment of this simple peace and perfect acquiesence in the will of God."

"Simplicity and purity are the two wings by which a man is lifted above all earthly things. Simplicity is in the intention — purity in the affection. Simplicity tends to God,— purity apprehends and tastes Him."

""Blessed are the poor in spirit." Blessed are they who are stripped of every thing, even of their own wills, that they may no longer belong to themselves."

"If our love were but more simple, We should take Him at His word; And our lives would be all sunshine In the sweetness of the Lord."

"God would behold in you a simplicity which will contain so much the more of His wisdom as it contains less of your own."

"He sows June fields with clover, and the world Broadcasts with little common kindnesses. The plain good souls He sends us, who fulfill Life's homely duties in the daily path With cheerful heart, ambitious of no more Than to supply the wants of friend and kin, Yet serve God's higher love to human hearts; Giving a secret sweetness to the home, The hidden fragrance of a kindly heart, The simple beauty of a useful life, That never dazzles, and that never tires."

"Truth of a modest sort I can promise you, and also sincerity. That complete, praise-worthy sincerity which, while it delivers one into the hands of one's enemies, is as likely as not to embroil one with one's friends."

"Simplicity is a state of mind."

"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."

"A man is simple when his chief care is the wish to be what he ought to be, that is honestly and naturally human."

"Our life is frittered away by detail. … 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. … Simplify, simplify."

"[S]implicity is not so simple to attain."

"... actually fairy-stories deal largely, or (the better ones) mainly, with simple or fundamental things, untouched by Fantasy, but these simplicities are made all the more luminous by their setting."

"Humanity lives and always has lived on certain elemental provisions."

"Meryon succeeded in reaching the heights of his art, and achieved both splendour and simplicity through breadth of vision allied to technical skill."

"If we study the history of science we see happen two inverse phenomena, so to speak. Sometimes simplicity hides under complex appearances; sometimes it is the simplicity which is apparent, and which disguises extremely complicated realities. ...What is more complicated than the confused movements of the planets? What simpler than Newton's law? ...In the kinetic theory of gases, one deals with molecules moving with great velocities, whose paths, altered by incessant collisions, have the most capricious forms... The observable result is Mariotte's simple law. ...The law of great numbers has reestablished simplicity in the average. ...No doubt, if our means of investigation should become more and more penetrating, we should discover the simple under the complex, then the complex under the simple, then again the simple under the complex, and so on, without our being able to foresee what will be the last term. We must stop somewhere, and that science may be possible, we must stop when we have found simplicity. This is the only ground on which we can rear the edifice of our generalizations."

"Kirk: The more complex the mind, the greater the need for the simplicity of play."

"Simplicity is part of what I mean by beauty, but it is a simplicity of ideas, not simplicity of a mechanical sort that can be measured by counting equations or symbols."

"I do not dispute that arguments should be simplified to their maximum... but people often confuse complex ideas that cannot be simplified into a media-friendly statement as symptomatic of a confused mind. ...MBAs tend to blow up in financial markets, as they are trained to simplify... beyond... requirement. (...I am myself the unhappy holder of the degree.)"

"Denial of one's better self seals the lips or pollutes them. Fidelity to conviction opens them and truth blossoms in eloquence."

"Men should be what they seem; Or those that be not, would they might seem none!"

"To gain freedom is to gain simplicity."

"If you wish to be like a little child, study what a little child could understand — nature; and do what a little child could do — love."

"Simplicity is a part of faith."

"The greatest truths are the simplest: and so are the greatest men."

"Keep it simple, stupid."

"Christianity does not proceed from the simple in order then to become interesting, witty, profound, a poet, a philosopher, etc. No it is just the opposite: here one begins and then becomes more and more simple, arrives at the simple."

"Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate."

"Science can be very complicated, but there is nothing in its definition that implies it must be, or requires descriptions of science to be written in any sort of special language that only scientists understand. ... The detail and implications of Einstein's theory of relativity may be beyond the understanding of many of us, but it can be described in simple language, which is what Einstein himself used in his own writing."

"To me more dear, congenial to my heart, One native charm, than all the gloss of art."

"All religions are incorporated in the principle of Truth, Simplicity and Love."

"Anselm: Stop being so God Damn humble … You know God damn well that … that humility is defiance … simplicity today is sophisticated … simplicity is the ultimate sophistication today."