What Is Slow Living?

Browsing through the net, I came across numerous definitions for slow living.

This is what Wikipedia says:

Unsurprisingly, its practice promises a healthier, more fulfilling, and meaningful life by spending the right amount of our limited time on earth on the things we value most.

Kyle Kowalsky’s made an extraordinary and valuable in-depth post about Living Slow to help us understand the philosophy and the concept behind this lifestyle.

This is a list of the best and most impactful slow-living quotes out there. Let them inspire you on your journey to a simpler and more fulfilling life!

Here are some of his thoughts that explains it best:

• Slow living is taking a long-term view of your own life and the world around you.

• Slow living is a life philosophy, a state of mind and being, a reflective approach, and a methodical process to daily life.

• Slow living is nourishing and savoring the minutes instead of counting them.

• Slow living is conscious, intentional, mindful, and living deeply.

• Slow living is the connection with yourself, those around you, and the world.

For me, slow living is a lifestyle choice that helps unchain ourselves from the hectic, frenetic, and happiness-diminishing parts of our everyday life.

It means simplifying life in a modern and complicated world. It means gaining control, learning to say no to useless stress and to enjoy and savor life more. It means more freedom.

And because its philosophy correlates with minimalism and simplicity in so many ways, I thought of making a list of the most beautiful quotes for slow living to get you inspired on your journey to a more meaningful life.

So here we go, have fun reading!

55 Inspirational Slow Living Quotes For A Beautiful Life

Let these short quotes speak to your heart. They carry powerful messages that will for sure enhance the quality of your life. Help yourself go slow in our overwhelming and stressful modern world and live the best life you possibly can.

1. “Slow living provides an opportunity to step back, pay attention, and question the ways we use technology, to recalibrate our relationship with the constantly switched-on, logged-in world.” – Brooke McAlary

2. “We may feel productive when we’re constantly switching between things, constantly doing something, but in all honesty, we’re not. We’re just distracted.” – Leo Babauta

3. “Slow living is all about creating time and space and energy for the things that matter most to us in life, so ask yourself what you stand to gain.” – Brooke McAlary

4. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” – Leonardo da Vinci

5. “Slow living is a curious mix of being prepared and being prepared to let go. Caring more and caring less. Saying yes and saying no. Being present and walking away. Doing the important things and forgetting those that aren’t.” – Brooke McAlary

6. “There is more to life than increasing its speed.” – Mahatma Gandhi

7. “In order to seek one’s own direction, one must simplify the mechanics of ordinary, everyday life.” – Plato

8. “The great benefit of slowing down is reclaiming the time and tranquility to make meaningful connections–with people, with culture, with work, with nature, with our own bodies and minds” – Carl Honoré

9. “The more you have, the more you are occupied. The less you have, the freer you are.” – Mother Teresa
   

10. “Hygge is humble and slow. It is choosing rustic over new, simple over posh, and ambiance over excitement. In many ways, hygge might be the Danish cousin to slow and simple living.” – Meik Wiking in The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living

11. “Reduce the complexity of life by eliminating the needless wants of life, and the labors of life reduce themselves.” – Edwin Way Teale

12. “There are more things to gain from eliminating excess than you might imagine: time, space, freedom, and energy, for example.”
    – Fumio Sasaki

13. “Slow living isn’t about determining how little we can live with – it’s about working out what we simply can’t live without.” – Nathan Williams

14. “Collect moments, not things.”  – Paulo Coelho

15. “Keep only those things that speak to your heart. Then take the plunge and discard all the rest.”- Marie Kondō

16. “Contentment comes not so much from great wealth as from few wants.” – Epictetus

17. A minimalist realizes that acquiring stuff doesn’t make us happy. That earning more and having more are meaningless. That filling your life with busy-ness and freneticism isn’t desirable, but something to be avoided. A minimalist values quality, not quantity, in all forms.” – Leo Babauta

18. “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” – Lao Tzu

19. “It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.” – Seneca

20. “The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.” – Socrates

21. “Slow living is less of a style and more a deeply personal mentality.” – Nathan Williams

22. “Slow down in your pursuit of happiness and it’s more likely to catch up with you.” – Ernie J Zelinski

23. “Be a curator of your life. Slowly cut things out until you’re left only with what you love, with what’s necessary, with what makes you happy.” – Leo Babauta

24. “Taking time for ourselves, especially when we’re overwhelmed and don’t want to, helps declutter the mind. Everyone has twenty minutes a day to clear their mental clutter.” – Joshua Fields Millburn

25. “Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.” – Lin Yutang

26. “I finally figured it out. Instead of working so hard to make ends meet, work on having fewer ends.” – Courtney Carver

27. “A great principle of minimalism is using the minimum amount of resources, which accords perfectly with our present-day need for sustainability.” – Dr. Prem Jagyasi

28. “If one’s life is simple, contentment has to come. Simplicity is extremely important for happiness. Having few desires, feeling satisfied with what you have, is very vital: satisfaction with just enough food, clothing, and shelter to protect yourself from the elements.”
    – Dalai Lama

29. “I’ve found that the less stuff I own, the less my stuff owns me.” – Nathan W. Morris

30. “There are two ways to be rich: One is by acquiring much, and the other is by desiring little.” – Jackie French Koller

31. “Ultimately, minimalism is the thing that gets us past the things so we can focus on life’s most important things—which actually aren’t things at all.” – Joshua Fields Millburn

32. “If we want more healing and peace in the world, let us each start with our homes, our relationships, our mindsets, and ourselves.”
    – Lisa J. Shultz

33. “The first step in crafting the life you want is to get rid of everything you don’t.” – Joshua Becker

34. “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. Schumacher

35. “Purity and simplicity are the two wings with which man soars above the earth and all temporary nature.”
    – Thomas Kempis

36. “Simplicity is the glory of expression.”
    – Walt Whitman

37. “The simplest things are often the truest.”
    – Richard Bach

38. “It is always the simple that produces the marvelous.”
    – Amelia Barr

39. “It is preoccupation with possession, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly.”
    – Bertrand Russell

40. “Simplicity is making the journey of this life with just baggage enough.” – Charles Dudley Warner

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

42. “There is only today, with holes in our pockets, with time spilling out. We cannot keep it for tomorrow.” – Erin Loechner

43. “More was never the answer. The answer, it turned out, was always less.” – Cait Flanders

44. “To live a pure unselfish life, one must count nothing as one’s own in the midst of abundance.” – Buddha

45. “Reduce what you have. Decrease what you want.”
    – Jonathan Star

46. “The idea of the modern has been superseded; the challenge today is to return to the small scale, the hand made, to local distribution – because today what we call ‘modern’ is out of date.”- Carlo Petrini
    

47. “For Me, A Calm House Equals A Calm Heart Equals A Calm Life.” – Erica Layne

48. “Let the people in your life find their own way, just as you are finding yours. If you want others to see the joy in less, live joyfully with less.” – Courtney Carver

49. You have succeeded in life when all you really want is only what you really need.” – Vernon Howard

50. “Simplicity boils down to two steps: Identify the essential. Eliminate the rest.” – Leo Babauta

51. “The slow philosophy is not about doing everything in tortoise mode. It’s less about the speed and more about investing the right amount of time and attention in the problem so you solve it.“ – Carl Honoré

52. “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

53. “In the rush of today’s world, and with more than half of us now living in cities, the majority of people are less and less connected with the spectacle of nature.”– Louise Leakey

54. “The more we gave up, the more we gained.”
    – Courtney Ellis

55. “Slowing down is sometimes the best way to speed up.” – Mike Vance

Great reads about Slow Living to get you started:

The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down: How to Be Calm and Mindful in a Fast-Paced World by Haemin Sunim

In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed by Carl Honoré

Chasing Slow: Courage to Journey Off the Beaten Path by Erin Loechner

Slow: Simple Living for a Frantic World by Brooke McAlary

Present Over Perfect: Leaving Behind Frantic for a Simpler, More Soulful Way of Living by Shauna Niequist

Final Thoughts

Slow living does not necessarily mean pushing the pause button or doing everything at a tortoise pace. It’s more about living consciously, finding your priorities, and devoting enough time to what you value most.

So I hope you got inspired by these thoughtful and impactful quotes for slow living. Look back at them whenever you feel life is just rushing by and you feel overwhelmed by the pace of our modern world.

I regularly update this post as I come across new slow-living quotes, so check back for more inspiration! Feel free to add more quotes in the comments below and I’ll add them to the list.

Which one did you like best?

Keep Reading:

How To Stop Always Wanting More?
Simplicity and Happiness: Why A Simple Life Is A Happy Life
How To Learn To Live With Less For Beginners

Ray Arya

Ray is a frugal minimalist who loves to travel and live in his self-converted camper van. He writes about the benefits of downsizing, decluttering, saving money, building wealth, and the freedom that results from the power of less. Minimalray.com is for everyone who seeks a meaningful life and is committed to contentment.