The superfluous, a very necessary thing. — Voltaire
The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials. — Lin Yutang
Most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you'll have more time, and more tranquillity. Ask yourself at every moment, 'Is this necessary?' — Marcus Aurelius
Don`t make unimportant things important — Dai Vernon
Nothing is cheap which is superfluous, for what one does not need, is dear at a penny. — Plutarch
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem — William of Ockham
We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities. — Oscar Wilde
Unnecessary possessions are unnecessary burdens. — Peace Pilgrim
Very often the law of extremity demands an attention to irrelevance. — Janet Frame
These small things - nutrition, place, climate, recreation, the whole casuistry of selfishness - are inconceivably more important than everything one has taken to be important so far. — Friedrich Nietzsche
Being Essential Quotes
Jesus didn't come to tell us the answers to the questions of life, he came to be the answer. — Timothy Keller
Of all the arts, abstract painting is the most difficult. It demands that you know how to draw well, that you have a heightened sensitivity for composition and for colors, and that you be a true poet. This last is essential. — Wassily Kandinsky
It is essential to our interest and the security of our colonies that the several nations or tribes of Indians... who live under our protection, should not be molested or disturbed. — George III
Go to the Madonna. Love her! Always say the Rosary. Say it well. Say it as often as you can! Be souls of prayer. Never tire of praying, it is what is essential. Prayer shakes the Heart of God, it obtains necessary graces! — Pio of Pietrelcina
A well informed public opinion is essential to the growth of political and social awareness. Only he who is informed can comment intelligently on his nation's development and only by such comments can errors be corrected and progress stimulated — Haile Selassie
Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy. — Edmund Burke
I know that aiming at perfection has its drawbacks. It makes you go into details that you can avoid but that is the only way you can achieve excellence. So, in that case, being finicky is essential. — J. R. D. Tata
The media is absolutely essential to the functioning of a democracy. It's not our job to cozy up to power. We're supposed to be the check and balance on government. — Amy Goodman
The idea that a congressman would be tainted by accepting money from private industry or private sources is essentially a socialist argument. — Newt Gingrich
Be beautiful if you can, wise if you want to, but be respected - that is essential. — Anna Gould
The minimum could be defined as the perfection that an artefact achieves when it is no longer possible to improve it by subtraction. This is the quality that an object has when every component, every detail, and every junction has been reduced or condensed to the essentials. it is the result of the omission of the inessentials. — John Pawson
Why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. — J. K. Rowling
I feel a sudden clear focus and perspective. There is no time for anything inessential. — Oliver Sacks
The art of concentration is a continual letting go. We let go of what is inessential or distracting. We let go of a thought or a feeling, not because we are afraid of it or because we can’t bear to acknowledge it as a part of our experience; but, because it is UNNECESSARY. — Sharon Salzberg
Failure means a stripping away of the inessential. — J. K. Rowling
There are essential and inessential insanities. The later are solar in character, the former are linked to the moon. — Tom Robbins
There are essential and inessential insanities... Inessential insanities get one in trouble with oneself. Essential insanities get one in trouble with others. It's always preferable to be in trouble with others. In fact, it may be essential. — Tom Robbins
The premonition of death may for many be a stimulus to novelty of experience: the imminence of death serves to sweep away the inessential preoccupations for those who do not flee from the thought of death into triviality. — David Riesman
There are certain inessential activities-moths of precious time-and it is worse to busy yourself with the trivial than to do nothing. — Baltasar Gracian
I've taught the better class of tourist both to see and not to see; to lift their eyes above and beyond the inessentials, and thrill to our western Nature in her majesty. — Jonathan Raban
Any translation which intends to perform a transmitting function cannot transmit anything but information -- hence, something inessential. This is the hallmark of bad translations. — Walter Benjamin
To know anything of a poet but his poetry is, so far as the poetry is concerned, to know something that may be entertaining, even delightful, but is certainly inessential. — John Drinkwater
Art is not some inessential frippery - it is the nation's means of intelligently regarding itself. To cripple or stigmatize the arts is to doom one's nation to a life of incuriosity, dullness, literalness and the worst kind of rank materialism. — George Saunders
When the government is trying to penny-pinch and, at the same time, trying to keep a defense expenditure and so forth, which are regarded as quote unquote essential, the education is regarded inessential. — Amartya Sen
Those who consider the inessential to be essential
And see the essential as inessential
Don't reach the essential,
Living in the field of wrong intention — Buddha
The instinctive need to be the member of a closely knit group fighting for common ideals may grow so strong that it becomes inessential what these ideals are. — Konrad Lorenz
Candlesticks and incense not being portable into the maintop, the sailor perceives these decorations to be, on the whole, inessential to a maintop mass. Sails must be set and cables bent, be it never so strict a saint's day; and it is found that no harm comes of it. Absolution on a lee-shore must be had of the breakers, it appears, if at all; and they give plenary and brief without listening to confession. — John Ruskin
I tried to explain to her the significance of the great poet, but without much success, The Waste Land not figuring very largely in Mam's scheme of things. "The thing is," I said finally, "he won the Nobel Prize." "Well," she said, with that unerring grasp of inessentials which is the prerogative of mothers, "I'm not surprised. It was a beautiful overcoat." — Alan Bennett
In a society that celebrates the inessential, architecture can put up a resistance, counteract the waste of forms and meanings and speak its own language. — Peter Zumthor
There is an intense but simple thrill in setting off in the morning on a mountain trail, knowing that everything you need is on your back. It is a confidence in having left the inessentials behind and of entering a world of natural beauty that has not been violated, where money has no value, and possessions are a dead weight. The person with the fewest possessions is the freest. Thoreau was right. — Paul Theroux
And everything else will then turn out to be unimportant and inessential except this: father, child, and love. And then, looking at the simplest things, we will all say, Could we have not learned this long ago? Has this not always been embedded in everything that is? — Pope John Paul II
Kindness, as we will see, has many facets. But its essence is as simple as can be. We will find that kindness is a way of making _less_ effort. It is the most economic attitude there is, because it saves us much energy that we might otherwise waste in suspicion, worry, resentment, manipulation, or unnecessary defense. It is an attitude that, by eliminating the inessential, brings us back to the simplicity of being. — Piero Ferrucci
[Presently, science undergraduates] do not learn to write clearly and briefly, marshalling their points in due and aesthetically satisfying order, and eliminating inessentials. They are inept at those turns of phrase or happy analogy which throw a flying bridge across a chasm of misunderstanding and make contact between mind and mind. — William Lawrence Bragg
It is a triumph of life that old people lose their memories of inessential things. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Poetry, the best of it, is lunar and is concerned with the essential insanities. Journalism is solar (there are numerous newspapers named The Sun, none called The Moon) and is devoted to the inessential. — Tom Robbins
In Conclusion
Which quotation resonated with you best? Did you enjoy our collection of inessential quotes? Or may be you have a slogan about inessential to suggest. Let us know using our contact form.
Citation
Feel free to cite and use any of the quotes in this collection of inessential quotations. For popular citation styles(APA, Chicago, MLA), please use this citation page.
