Timeless Simplicity Quotes

“The industrialist was horrified to find the fisherman lying beside his boat, smoking a pipe. -  Why aren’t you fishing?, said the industrialist. -  Because I have caught enough fish for the day. -  Why don’t you catch some more? -  What would I do with them? -  Earn more money. Then you could have a motor fixed to your boat and go into deeper waters and catch more fish. That would bring you money to buy nylon nets, so more fish, more money. Soon you would have enough to buy two boats even a fleet of boats. Then you could be rich like me. - What would I do then? -  Then you could sit back and enjoy life. -  What do you think I’m doing now?”
― John Lane, Timeless Simplicity: Creative Living in a Consumer Society

“It is not things in themselves that trouble us, but our opinion of things,” he observed.”
― John Lane, Timeless Simplicity: Creative Living in a Consumer Society

“It is also to choose to live more mindfully. It is to have direct and wholehearted participation in life: the taste and touch of actual things; the experience of the moment; the delight inherent in creative doing. Lose the possibilities of such experiences and a sense of boredom can begin its subtle but insidious invasion of the human heart. It is then that we most feel the need to fill the vacuum with a consoling substitute: another dress, another computer game or holiday. It is not acquisitiveness but boredom which can lead to regular and compulsory shopping — ‘ retail therapy’ — as a relief from the lacuna of an unfulfilled life. My experience tells me that the”
― John Lane, Timeless Simplicity: Creative Living in a Consumer Society

“Do not let the possibilities of laughter pass you by. Become lighter hearted; let go of too serious a vein. Laughter costs nothing, and can make others as well as yourself feel relaxed, feel companionable, feel good. To feel good is of more value than a room full of expensive possessions. “The more we lose the power to live,” writes Ivan Illich, “the greater we depend upon the goods we acquire.” The power to live exuberantly is inherent in a light-hearted touch which doesn’t take everything, however serious, too seriously.”
― John Lane, Timeless Simplicity: Creative Living in a Consumer Society

“We are not the tree but one of its leaves; not the beach but one of its pebbles, not the sea but one of its waves. “It is no longer I that lives but life that lives in me.”
― John Lane, Timeless Simplicity: Creating Living in a Consumer Society

“Let’s go back to basics and remember that all we really have to do is put a roof over our heads and meals on the table. Beyond that our time can be better spent enjoying our lives, being with the people we love, creating things we love that don’t harm the earth, and contributing something meaningful to the world. ELAINE ST. JAMES”
― John Lane, Timeless Simplicity: Creating Living in a Consumer Society

“largely took for granted is now continuously undermined by a culture committed to mass marketing, mass consumption and mass media.”
― John Lane, Timeless Simplicity: Creative Living in a Consumer Society

“Originating in a system of mass production which generates vast quantities of products which need to be sold, it is the marketeers’ ambition to make us feel dissatisfied with what we already possess, to make us feel that we’d be happier, or more attractive, if we went out to purchase one or more of their products. It is, of course, a message that we can with some difficulty always choose to ignore. But even if we do so, we should still be careful to watch our step. For it is one thing to reject the sirencall of a particular manufacturer, but another to avoid the corrosive blandishments of an entire culture hell-bent on retailing everything under the sun. That”
― John Lane, Timeless Simplicity: Creative Living in a Consumer Society

“Originating in a system of mass production which generates vast quantities of products which need to be sold, it is the marketeers’ ambition to make us feel dissatisfied with what we already possess, to make us feel that we’d be happier, or more attractive, if we went out to purchase one or more of their products. It is, of course, a message that we can with some difficulty always choose to ignore. But even if we do so, we should still be careful to watch our step. For it is one thing to reject the sirencall of a particular manufacturer, but another to avoid the corrosive blandishments of an entire culture hell-bent on retailing everything under the sun. That culture insidiously feeds our discontent, our restlessness and dissatisfaction. However many products we choose to buy, more never proves enough. However much we accumulate, there is always another higher level of dissatisfaction. The feeling of peaceful acceptance that our ancestors largely took for granted is now continuously undermined by a culture committed to mass marketing, mass consumption and mass media. It will almost certainly be further undermined by the advancing technologies, specifically robots, engineered organisms and nanobots, which could (supposedly) create a utopian future of abundance where just about anything could be made cheaply, almost any disease cured and physical problem solved.”
― John Lane, Timeless Simplicity: Creative Living in a Consumer Society

“book Wild Hunger: The Primal Roots of Modern Addiction,16 the rejection of beauty, one of the ageless sources of regeneration, is at the root of much of the addiction which characterizes modern society. The wiser person seeks beauty in all things. He or she seeks to live a life that nourishes the soul, and “the depth of interiority and quality in which it flourishes”, as Thomas Moore writes. He or she discovers epiphanies in the contemplation of timeless realities, and seeks to move through the deep imagination, the royal road to the sacred.”
― John Lane, Timeless Simplicity: Creative Living in a Consumer Society

“Those with a fully developed sense of being alive and engaged in a lifelong task of collaboration with other human beings, are those who are most likely to be living an unfettered life, a simple life, and one in which there is time for people. Those who are harried and preoccupied by work, acquisition and the quest for success, are those most likely to have sacrificed family and friends.”
― John Lane, Timeless Simplicity: Creative Living in a Consumer Society

“When we are at peace with our environment we are at peace with ourselves.”
― John Lane, Timeless Simplicity: Creative Living in a Consumer Society

“You were born with a singular talent and a singular destiny, a singular character and a singular vocation. Discover it! Be it! or become it! Nothing else — not even the wealth of the richest man in Britain, Hans Rausing, who owned £5.6 billion in 2000 — will give you as much contentment as the knowledge that you are following the path of your character.”
― John Lane, Timeless Simplicity: Creative Living in a Consumer Society

“also pushes us to inflate; to be puffed up with expectations, to be something bigger than we are, to imagine we are an eagle when our destiny lies with the larks.”
― John Lane, Timeless Simplicity: Creative Living in a Consumer Society

“But individuals preoccupied with comparing themselves with others, and never prioritizing what they actually want, are in danger of living a falsehood.”
― John Lane, Timeless Simplicity: Creative Living in a Consumer Society

“The great legacy of the past is its slowness, its patience, its human scale, its measured human pace and undisturbed quietness. These remain the sanest objectives of anyone seeking to simplify.”
― John Lane, Timeless Simplicity: Creative Living in a Consumer Society

“Responding in an open and flexible manner is the key to an increased understanding of others. Responding with the heart rather than the head is the key to love. Responding to life with a positive attitude is the key to enthusiasm and creativity. Responding with an aggressive, blaming, resentful approach induces depression and, in the final analysis, misery and self-hatred.”
― John Lane, Timeless Simplicity: Creative Living in a Consumer Society

“This reaction can in its turn determine the next stage in the karmic cycle of events — what we decide to do, and the spirit in which we do it. Life, then, is to a large extent in our own hands. One of the Confucian ideals is that “the archer, when he misses the bullseye, turns and seeks the cause of the error in himself.”
― John Lane, Timeless Simplicity: Creative Living in a Consumer Society

“In other words, what happens to us does not necessarily produce contentment or unhappiness; rather, the state of contentment or unhappiness comes from how we perceive and interpret these occurrences.”
― John Lane, Timeless Simplicity: Creative Living in a Consumer Society

“Temperantia means knowing when enough is enough.”
― John Lane, Timeless Simplicity: Creative Living in a Consumer Society

“what provides us with a permanent sense of well-being, and what gives only transitory pleasure.”
― John Lane, Timeless Simplicity: Creative Living in a Consumer Society

“Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind,”
― John Lane, Timeless Simplicity: Creative Living in a Consumer Society

“Money, then, is a screen on to which we project our unconscious emotional life: our primal anxieties about future deprivation, cold and dearth, our miserliness and desire for power, as well as the goodness in our natures.”
― John Lane, Timeless Simplicity: Creative Living in a Consumer Society

“Every psychologist knows that self-realization cannot be achieved within lives overburdened by haste and clutter, the chains of unrewarding work and money worries.”
― John Lane, Timeless Simplicity: Creative Living in a Consumer Society

“Simplifying a life means one and only one thing: cutting back on the less essential things and activities to allow more time and space for those which give a deeper nourishment and more fulfilling satisfaction”
― John Lane, Timeless Simplicity: Creative Living in a Consumer Society

“An occupation offered as a service is generally more fulfilling than one done solely for cash.”
― John Lane, Timeless Simplicity: Creative Living in a Consumer Society

“Work that fails to bring life and livelihood together is out of gear.9 And if it is out of gear for many today, does it always have to be”
― John Lane, Timeless Simplicity: Creative Living in a Consumer Society

“There’s a kind of insanity in continuing to waste yourself, suffering long unproductive years for the sake of commitments you entered into at a younger age and which you are now too busy working (and commuting) to enjoy.”
― John Lane, Timeless Simplicity: Creative Living in a Consumer Society

“If you have somehow failed to figure out your special gift, or maybe failed to break through the cultural barriers that prevent its realization, have no fear. Have the courage of those who have already done so, and take your life in your hands.”
― John Lane, Timeless Simplicity: Creative Living in a Consumer Society

“In its place they urge consideration of an alternative path: a mindful, unhurried, intentional and appreciative approach to living.”
― John Lane, Timeless Simplicity: Creative Living in a Consumer Society