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1 " Simplicity is one complication that I can live without. "
2 " A single person is a manageable entity, whom you can either make friends with or leave alone. But half of a married couple is not exactly a whole human being: if the marriage is successful it is something a little more than that; if unsuccessful, a little less. In either case, a fresh complication is added to the already intricate business of friendship: as Clem had once remarked, you might as well try to dance a tarantella with a Siamese twin. "
― , Mrs. Miniver
3 " …95 percent of political commentary, whether spoken or written, is now polluted by the very politics it’s supposed to be about. Meaning it’s become totally ideological and reductive: The writer/speaker has certain political convictions or affiliations, and proceeds to filter all reality and spin all assertion according to those convictions and loyalties. Everybody’s pissed off and exasperated and impervious to argument from any other side. Opposing viewpoints are not just incorrect but contemptible, corrupt, evil […] Political discourse is now a formulaic matter of preaching to one’s own choir and demonizing the opposition. Everything’s relentlessly black-and-whitened…. Since the truth is way, way more gray and complicated than any one ideology can capture, the whole thing seems to me not just stupid but stupefying… How can any of this possibly help me, the average citizen, deliberate about whom to choose to decide my country’s macroeconomic policy, or how even to conceive for myself what that policy’s outlines should be, or how to minimize the chances of North Korea nuking the DMZ and pulling us into a ghastly foreign war, or how to balance domestic security concerns with civil liberties? Questions like these are all massively complicated, and much of the complication is not sexy, and well over 90 percent of political commentary now simply abets the uncomplicatedly sexy delusion that one side is Right and Just and the other Wrong and Dangerous. Which is of course a pleasant delusion, in a way—as is the belief that every last person you’re in conflict with is an asshole—but it’s childish, and totally unconducive to hard thought, give and take, compromise, or the ability of grown-ups to function as any kind of community. "
― David Foster Wallace , David Foster Wallace: The Interview
4 " He listened to their opinions, stated his own, and supported them with reasons; and from his being constantly occupied with such meditations, it resulted, that when in command no complication could ever present itself with which he was not prepared to deal. "
― Niccolò Machiavelli , The Prince
5 " Since Rose, he’d never wanted to be the right guy for anyone. He hadn’t wanted to carry that extra burden. He liked things nice and simple. But things sure as hell weren’t simple with Lena. They’d never been simple with Lena. Things with Lena had been one hundred shades of unadulterated complication from day one. That fact alone should have sent him running in the opposite direction with all the speed of an Olympic gold medalist. But no, here he stood. Holding on to her as if his life depended on it. Heaven help him, his life probably did depend on it. "
― Loren Mathis , Swift Strike (SEAL Team 14 Book 2)
6 " One of the great images to come down to us through Zen Buddhism is the encounter between an enlightened master and an advanced apprentice during the course of a shared meal. The apprentice, becoming fed up with the stress and waiting and the master’s apparent disregard for him, demands an explanation without complication of exactly how to become enlightened. The master asks, “Have you finished your rice?” “Yes,” says the apprentice. “Then go wash your bowl. "
― Darrell Calkins , Re:
7 " There are many shades in the danger of adventures and gales, and it is only now and then that there appears on the face of facts a sinister violence of intention- that indefinable something which forces it upon the mind and the heart of a man, that this complication of accidents or these elemental furies are coming at him with a purpose of malice, with a strength beyond control, with an unbridled cruelty that means to tear out of him his hope and his fear, the pain of his fatigue and his longing for rest: which means to smash, to destroy, to annihilate all he has seen, known, loved, enjoyed, or hated; all that is priceless and necessary- the sunshine, the memories, the future,- which means to sweep the whole precious world utterly away from his sight by the simple and appalling act of taking his life. "
― Joseph Conrad , Lord Jim
8 " The last thing she'd wanted was anything as complicated as a relationship, for it felt as though there we're though complication in her life already. "
― Nicholas Sparks , The Choice
9 " That’s not why I’m here. I’ve got a mission. I made a promise.” His chest expanded with a deep, ragged breath. “Ah, hell. Quit looking at me like you either want to shoot me or eat me up. I’m trying to do the right thing here.” Max’s rejection instantly sent her back to the times in her relationship with Richard when he’d rebuffed her advances. “I wasn’t very good, was I? I’m sor—” “Do not let that man come between us.” Max swiped his hand over his mouth and jaw and spun away. Just as quickly he faced her again and grabbed her wrist. “You call me whatever crass SOB you want to.” He pulled her hand to the front of his jeans and cupped it over the unmistakable warm bulge behind his zipper. “This is what you do to me. I don’t know why you and me fit together this good. If I could take you to bed right now and finish this, I would.” He released her and backed away, raising his hands in apology. “But that’s not what I’m here for. Neither one of us needs that kind of complication in our lives. I have to keep the mission in mind. I’m a cop. I have to think like a cop, not a...” “Not a what?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper. But he didn’t fill in the blank. “It’s not your job to deal with me. I’m damaged goods, Rosie. You can do better than me. "
― Julie Miller , Kansas City Secrets (The Precinct: Cold Case #2; The Precinct #26)
10 " Complexity begets ambiguity, which yields in all ways to prejudice and avarice. Complication does not so much defeat Men as arm them with fancy. "
― R. Scott Bakker , The White Luck Warrior (Aspect-Emperor, #2)
11 " You know what is the most complicated feature of human nature? It is the term complication itself. We are never satisfied with keeping things simple. We always tend to exaggerate even the simplest phenomenon of this planet. "
― Abhijit Naskar , What is Mind?
12 " It is a rule in paleontology that ornamentation and complication precede extinction. And our mutation, of which the assembly line, the collective farm, the mechanized army, and the mass production of food are evidences or even symptoms, might well correspond to the thickening armor of the great reptiles—a tendency that can end only in extinction. If this should happen to be true, nothing stemming from thought can interfere with it or bend it. Conscious thought seems to have little effect on the action or direction of our species. "
― John Steinbeck , The Log from the Sea of Cortez
13 " frustration, complication and misery are available in abundance, but so is God's grace. "
― Joyce Meyer
14 " Nature is not embarrassed by difficulties of analysis. She avoids complication only in means. Nature seems to be proposed to do much with little: it is a principle that the development of physics constantly supports by new evidence. "
15 " There was yet another disadvantage attaching to the whole of Newton’s physical inquiries, ... the want of an appropriate notation for expressing the conditions of a dynamical problem, and the general principles by which its solution must be obtained. By the labours of LaGrange, the motions of a disturbed planet are reduced with all their complication and variety to a purely mathematical question. It then ceases to be a physical problem; the disturbed and disturbing planet are alike vanished: the ideas of time and force are at an end; the very elements of the orbit have disappeared, or only exist as arbitrary characters in a mathematical formula. "
― George Boole
16 " Branches or types are characterized by the plan of their structure,Classes, by the manner in which that plan is executed, as far as ways and means are concerned, Orders, by the degrees of complication of that structure, Families, by their form, as far as determined by structure, Genera, by the details of the execution in special parts, andSpecies, by the relations of individuals to one another and to the world in which they live, as well as by the proportions of their parts, their ornamentation, etc. "
― Louis Agassiz , Essay on Classification
17 " Over complication only confuses the essence of things. "
― Steven Redhead , Life Is A Cocktail
18 " Extreme complication is contrary to art. "
19 " It's a very difficult thing losing a parent, but I think there's an added complication for me, because he was so well-loved and he had this very open charm that made people feel they had a personal relationship with him. "