Living smaller doesn’t mean not owning your whole being, it means taking up less of a carbon footprint and requiring fewer distractions to live well. Here are some inspiring quotes about living a life of minimalism to do so.

1. Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful. -William Morris

2. Poverty is my pride. -Muhammed

3. With a few flowers in my garden, half a dozen pictures and some books, I live without envy. -Lope de Vega

4. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness. -Henry David Thoreau

6. Live simply so that others may simply live. -Elizabeth Ann Seton

7. Reduce the complexity of life by eliminating the needless wants of life, and the labors of life reduce themselves. -Edwin Way Teale

8. Small rooms or dwellings discipline the mind, large ones weaken it. -Leonardo Da Vinci

9. The simplest things are often the truest. -Richard Bach

10. Less is more. -Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

11. Simplicity is an acquired taste. Mankind, left free, instinctively complicates life.-Katharine Fullerton Gerould

12. Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction. -E.F. Schumacker

13. The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less. -Socrates

14. One can furnish a room very luxuriously by taking out furniture rather than putting it in. -Francis Jourdain

15. Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like. -Will Rogers

16. If one had taken what is necessary to cover one’s needs and had left the rest to those who are in need, no one would be rich, no one would be poor, no one would be in need. -Saint Basil

17. The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak. -Hans Hofmann

18. There are two ways to be rich: One is by acquiring much, and the other is by desiring little. -Jackie French Koller

19. One of the advantages of being born in an affluent society is that if one has any intelligence at all, one will realize that having more and more won’t solve the problem, and happiness does not lie in possessions, or even relationships: The answer lies within ourselves. If we can’t find peace and happiness there, it’s not going to come from the outside. -Tenzin Palmo