Simplicity is beauty
Alfred Yiu is a graduate of the University of Hong Kong. He has 15 years' experience in tutoring students for HKCEE and A-level exams and has also written English textbooks.
My main concern as an English teacher is that my students have good material to help them appreciate the beauty of the language. I hope that with the help of these wonderful quotations you are all convinced that simplicity is beauty. Try to imitate the style and make it your own. If you can use them in your writing, that is a big bonus. What makes them so wonderful is the ideas they convey.
Fate chooses our relatives, you choose your friends.
The manner of giving is worth more than the gift.
Happiness is the art of never holding in your mind the memory of any unpleasant thing that has passed.
People must help one another, it is nature's law.
The principal thing an inquisitive child learns is how little adults know.
If a man hasn't discovered something that he would die for, he isn't fit to live.
Don't part with your illusions. When they have gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.
It is true that liberty is precious - so precious that it must be rationed.
Liberty, too, must be limited in order to be possessed.
A simple arithmetic for a long life is to take happiness, subtract tension, divide worries and multiply exercise.
Lukewarm water won't take a locomotive anywhere, nor will lukewarm purpose lift a person to any noticeable height of achievement.
In the affluent society, no useful distinction can be made between luxuries and necessaries.
It is the malady of our age that the young are so busy teaching us that they have no time left to learn.
Love is moral even without legal marriage, but marriage is immoral without love.
Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.
Neglect a personal grievance for 48 hours and it will die of malnutrition.
We do not stop playing because we are old; we grow old because we stop playing.
Punishment is not for revenge, but to lessen crime and reform the criminal.
The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.
We might all be successful if we followed the advice we give other people.
Most of us can do more than we think we can, but actually do less than we think we do.
In war, whichever side may call itself the victor, there are no winners, but all are losers.
Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well.
