• There are things which a person only needs to use once before being able to dispense with them. So what prevents him from giving whatever it is to others, so that they can benefit from it? He has nothing to lose by it!

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Experiences in Life

  • He was made miserable by abundance, wretched by the good things he possessed, and still more wretched by the good things he still expected to receive.

    —St. Basil the Great, On Social Justice

  • “For while there is nothing so desirable that it does not become loathsome through continual enjoyment, what is taken rarely is enjoyed quite eagerly.”

    —St. Basil the Great, On Fasting and Feasts

  • “The antidote, then, isn’t to simply abstain from everything. Abstinence alone leaves a void. Rather, we must walk toward the activities that provide purpose in our daily lives—creativity, community, contribution—to walk away from our vices.”

    Crisis of Meaning
    The Minimalists

  • “The more you evolve into the best version of yourself, the more you’ll be required to give up.”

    —Anthony Moore, Living an Extraordinary Life Means Giving Up a Normal One

  • He uses two basic cameras—one digital, one film—without a zoom. “That simplifies things already,” he said.

    Michel Houellebecq, the Photographer

  • “What we’re often really craving is not the thing that we desire, but the reprieve we feel once we have relieved ourselves from the yearning of desire.”

    —Kass Sarll

  • Be simple, and firm in your simplicity. “The fashion of this world passeth away.” (1 Cor. vii. 31.) We shall vanish with it, if we make ourselves like it by reason of vanity; but the truth of God remains forever, and we shall dwell with it if it alone occupies our attention.

    —François Fénelon, Spiritual Progress

  • Wretched I was; and wretched is every soul bound by the friendship of perishable things; he is torn asunder when he loses them, and then he feels the wretchedness which he had ere yet he lost them.

    —St. Augustine, Confessions

  • “And remember: If you want maximum artistic freedom, keep your overhead low. A free creative life is not about living within your means, it’s about living below your means.”

    —Austin Kleon, Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad