The crucial step towards leading a simpler life isn’t – as we might initially suppose – to get rid of things. It’s to ask ourselves what our true longings are and what are the ends at which we are aiming. Simplicity isn’t so much a life with few things and commitments in it, as a life with the right, necessary things, attuned to our flourishing.

When we don’t properly know why we’re doing something, we don’t know how much of it we need in our life.

It is secure knowledge of our purpose that is our guide to editing down the complexity of our lives.

our lives grow more complicated the less we stop to ask what things are for, why we are doing them and how we really feel about them.

we could retire to connect more deeply with our own minds, to develop our creative potential, to keep a handle on anxiety or to explore who we could be if we stopped caring so much about what other people thought of us.

Part of why we feel the need for so many new experiences may simply be that we are so bad at absorbing the ones we have had.

I read so I can learn to be content. Nothing more, nothing less.

the point of life isn’t to have the ‘right’ reactions, just our own, very honest, ones.

It is precisely during these apparently empty hours of reflection that life’s real work unfolds – hours in which our worst mistakes can be caught, and our best opportunities identified.