Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.   Lin Yutang

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.   Leonardo DaVinci

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Albert Einstein

Simplicity is indeed often the sign of truth and a criterion of beauty.
Mahlon Hoagland (Toward the Habit of Truth)

Purity and simplicity are the two wings with which man soars above the earth and all temporary nature.   Thomas a Kempis

Simplicity is the nature of great souls.   Papa Ramadas

Never again will I make the simple into the complex. Something of true value does not become more valuable because it becomes complicated. Experience and conditions come and go; complications arise and fall away, but the simple action of God is eternal in the universe.
Donald Curtis, 7/97 Science of Mind Magazine, p. 53

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius-- and a lot of courage-- to move in the opposite direction.  E. F. Schumacker

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.  Charles Mingus

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.
Hans Hofmann, (Introduction to the Bootstrap, 1993)

The sculptor produces the beautiful statue by chipping away such parts of the marble block as are not needed - it is a process of elimination.
Elbert Hubbard

The concepts are described simply, but the work of integrating them into your personal reality and attaining the goal of enlightenment, self-realization is probably the hardest thing you will ever do.

Personally, I look for elegant simplicity as a mark of truth.

Generally speaking, people like to make simple things complicated, to get a sense of accomplishment and feed the ego. I call it "macrame projects"... taking something simple and tying it into elaborate knots, and giving the knots fancy names and showing it off, patting themselves on the back saying "look at me! I am so clever!".

Of course, the ego who takes pride in its mastery of macrame will not understand the elegance and superiority of simplicity. Nor will it understand that all the pride in complexity it has attained must eventually be surrendered, to attain the elegant simplicity of self-realization.

One of my students had a remarkable experience, following her tummo initiation, and it was so startling, she worte to me asking for feedback:

About a week or so after we did the Tummo initiation my husband and I got into a huge fight. Some place in the middle of that fight all of a sudden I -knew- that everything was a lie or not true. Everything. Everything I had ever seen, learned heard or encountered was not true. All of my beliefs were baloney. It really blew my mind. Threw me off balance. For a few weeks after I would see or hear or think of something and I would think and know -that's not true. I felt very unbalanced. What do I believe now? How do I live? Where do I go with this? If everything I have believed in isn't true what now?

What she discovered, is the most profound and basic truth... and the answer to her question, is to just BE. It is ego, that manufactures all these ideas of purpose, belief, destiny and it is ego that has the questions. The Self, simply KNOWS, without needing to think.

A Zen Master has a silent mind, and acts in perfection, without thought. "Know nothing, be everything. Be nothing, know everything." Within that contradiction, is the experience of self realization. To attain it, all illusions of knowing must fall away.

Some of my past students have gone on to become teachers in their own right, and I am proud of them, but also surprised at how many of them have taken the elegant simplicity of my teachings and turned them into elaborate macrame projects, often adding things that are not true as well as making too much complexity of what is true. Sometimes, for the sake of the marketplace... an image of being the keeper of grand, complex and mysterious secrets sells better.

There are a lot of mystery schools that are all macrame projects... partly, because people expect the mysteries to be complicated. They are not.

Truth is simple, straight forward, lovely and elegant.

More quotes on simplicity.

As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.
Henry David Thoreau

The ordinary arts we practice every day at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest.
Thomas More

The aspects of things that are most important to us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity.
Prof. Ludwig Wittgenstein

I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both for the body and the mind.
Albert Einstein

A little simplification would be the first step toward rational living, I think.
Eleanor Roosevelt (My Days)

Simplicity of character is no hindrance to the subtlety of intellect.
John Morley, 19th-century British statesman

The happiest heart that ever beat Was in some quiet breast That found the common daylight sweet, And left to Heaven the rest.
John V. Cheney

Reduce the complexity of life by eliminating the needless wants of life, and the labors of life reduce themselves.
Edwin Way Teale ("February 4" Circle of the Seasons)

The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life's plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life.
Robert Louis Stevenson

A man must be able to cut a knot, for everything cannot be untied; he must know how to disengage what is essential from the detail in which it is enwrapped, for everything cannot be equally considered; in a word, he must be able to simplify his duties, his business and his life.
Henri Frederic Amiel

To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter ... to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird's nest or a wildflower in spring—these are some of the rewards of the simple life.
John Burroughs

Our life is frittered away by detail... Simplify, simplify, simplify! ... Simplicity of life and elevation of purpose.
Henry David Thoreau ("Where I Lived and What I Lived For" Walden)

Some of these quotes were found at http://www.heartquotes.net/Simplicity.html