"It is curious how many people have got the idea that to live a simple life a person must live like a hermit, or in a hovel, or in a bare room, adopt uncouth ways, and disregard everything either modern or beautiful. They do not seem to be able to get it into their heads that there are two ways of achieving the simple life.
One is by not wanting things, and being cheerful and happy without them. The other is steadfastly and bravely toiling for what you want- and getting it. A definite aim, or a definite determination to be cheerful in aimlessness; either of these is a recipe for the simple life.
Simplicity, with all that it implies, is a state much to be desired in thinking, in dressing and in living; but this does not mean crude, comfortless ways of doing things, or negligent ways of dressing. Make home happy; hold loved ones first in your heart; leave off fussing over fashionable ways of living; be natural, and you will be living the simple life, though you clean house by electricity, entertain hospitably, and you have every convenience known to man. The quality of the individual is what determines the simple life, never her surroundings."
The Girls Annual. 1919.
The Brocante Round-Up! 
The Brocante Round-Up! 
The Autumn House 
Notes From Isolation 
How true!
I completely agree.
I just spent a blissful hour, stretchout beneath the branches of an old tree, on a beautiful autumn day, reading a dusty old book.
My idea of heaven. 🙂
Simply stated, and so very true.
again..so true.
Very true, and written almost a hundred years ago–so why do so many people today never seem to figure this out?