Of all the varied elements of human life, simplicity is perhaps the one that charms us most deeply and permanently.
There is simplicity in thought. We like people to say what they mean, or, mean nothing, then keep still, not wrap up nonentity in cloudy grandiloquence, which wearies ears and minds both.
There are simplicity in art. The elaborate has its place, large developments of phase and color and ornament, magnificent and munificence. But what pleases us and holds us most and longest is the quiet, simple touch that comes from the heart and goes to it.
There is simplicity in life. Most of us are always seeking complications, wealth, luxury, remote and subtle pleasures, which allure us and elude us and deceive us. But when we are young we are happy with simple things, and when we grow old—and wise—we are likely to turn to simple things once more and to find that they content us.
There is simplicity in character, and it is needless to point out the charm and restfulness of it, the minute comfort and security.
And of course there are elements of excess that injure simplicity as they injure other things. In the old country phrase, “simple” meant “feeble-minded,” and we wlll have a certain prejudice against simplicity in that sense. Also, there is what the French call so aptly simplesse, the effort at simplicity, the labored affectation of it, which is one of the most repellant things in the world.
The truth is that highly civilized, analytical, sophisticated spirits cannot easily maintain simplicity. They may worship it, but they can hardly achieve it, or re-achieve it, in its exquisite white innocence and its adorable charm. But with a reasonable effort can at least keep before them the ideal of eschewing the artificial, the elaborate, the pretentious, and of seeking, so far as possible, directness and lucidity of thought and the plain, substantial, satisfying, permanent interests of life.
--Youth’s Companion.
From the front page of The Mooresville Enterprise, Thursday, July 12, 1923
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