The things meant to serve your life have started running it.
The Simple Life · Charles Wagner, 1895
Room for Life is a 24-episode audio course on The Simple Life, the book Theodore Roosevelt urged Americans to read, written in 1895 by the Paris pastor Charles Wagner. The complete text is beside it, newly translated from the French. Warm, observant and often funny, Wagner shows how preparations, possessions and appearances crowd out the life they were meant to serve.
Everything is arranged except an hour together
Two days before the wedding, the couple is arguing about place cards. Both are tired, both want the day to be beautiful, and neither can remember the last evening they simply spent together. Nothing on the list was unreasonable: the venue, the flowers, the seating plan, the one detail a friend says they cannot possibly skip. One by one, the arrangements have taken the room they were meant to make.
Charles Wagner opens The Simple Life, published in Paris in 1895, in a house just like it. At the Blanchards’ it is Friday, Yvonne is to be married on Tuesday, and the family rushes from dressmakers and jewelers to lawyers’ offices and formal dinners. The one calm place is Grandmother’s room, where voices drop at the door. “Rest a little; belong to each other,” she tells the young couple. “That is what matters most.” Wagner takes her side, “I am of Granny’s opinion,” and the whole book grows from that agreement. The many things that complicate our lives, he argues, come down to one cause: “the confusion of the secondary with the essential.” We tend and decorate the frame and neglect the picture, and the picture is the person, with conscience, character and will.
Room for Life
The first 4 episodes, free.
The introduction and the first lessons of the course, exactly as they sound in the app. No sign-up.
Keep going with The Simple Life
The complete course has 24 episodes and 144 minutes of audio. One purchase per book, no subscription.
See all 24 episodesThe full course is coming to the App Store with Audeno.
What you will explore
Simplicity begins inside
On the road Wagner meets three men: one in a carriage, one in shoes, one barefoot. The barefoot one, he says, is not necessarily the simplest. “Simplicity is a state of mind,” and it depends on what a person lives for. For uncertain days he offers a method in three words, rooted in his Christian faith: “trust, hope, and be good.” This part of the course is free to hear.
Words you can lean on
Wagner asks that speech be as simple as thought, sincere and reliable, and he notices that the more newspapers people read, the less clearly they see. “A machine that spends all its steam whistling has none left to turn its wheels.” The course carries this into a conversation full of pleasant words and no clarity, and into the small help still within reach when other people’s troubles seem too large to touch.
Needs that grow, joy that can’t be bought
Needs, Wagner observes, grow the more we feed them: with a chicken in the pot people ask for a goose, and with the goose they want a turkey. Joy works the other way. “Joy is not in things; it is in us,” and it pushes up through hard, simple lives like a plant between paving stones. The course follows him to the people who never get a rest, and to the gift of taking their place for an hour.
The emperor who never came
A mayor knocked down the walls of his family house to receive the Emperor, moved his own family into a few cramped rooms, and waited. “He did live to see the end of the Empire, but never the Emperor.” From there Wagner asks whom our homes, our rank and our children’s upbringing are really for: “do not confuse what you have with what you are,” and teach children to “sound their own note.”
Is this book for you?
- You spent the week arranging things for the people you love and hardly saw them.
- Every new purchase was going to be the last one you needed.
- Home has become a place you pass through between appointments.
Room for Life
- ↗Free
Room for Life
Introduction · 3 min · There are days when everything seems to be moving. We work, answer messages, buy things, make arrangements, improve our lives.
- 01Free
Everything Is Ready. Where Are We?
Lesson · 6 min · The wedding is only days away. Gifts arrive, orders are adjusted, relatives do their best.
- 02Free
Simplicity from Within
Lesson · 6 min · What makes a person simple? Modest clothes, a small home, giving up expensive possessions?
- 03Free
Trust, Hope, and Goodness
Lesson · 7 min · There is no answer yet. Will the job offer come?
- ❝In the full course
Goodness We Can Recognize
Author’s words · 5 min · Now we will give the floor to Wagner himself. You will hear the closing passage of his chapter on simple thought.
- 04In the full course
Words You Can Rely On
Lesson · 6 min · Today we will enter an ordinary conversation that somehow makes life harder. There are plenty of agreeable words, yet very little clarity.
- 05In the full course
The Small Things That Hold Life Up
Lesson · 6 min · There can be so much news of other people’s suffering that our hand stops even before offering a small piece of help. What can it mean when we cannot put everything right?
- ↺In the full course
The Evening We Got Back
Review · 5 min · Let several of Wagner’s ideas meet in one evening. We have talked about what matters most, about trust, clear words, and the good action within reach.
- 06In the full course
When Desires Take Charge
Lesson · 6 min · You once thought: this would be enough. You got what you wanted and enjoyed it.
- 07In the full course
Making Room for Joy
Lesson · 6 min · We remember some evenings for years, even when we can no longer recall the food. We remember someone laughing, a conversation becoming unexpectedly honest, the ease of sitting together.
- ❝In the full course
A Respite for Those Who Keep Going
Author’s words · 5 min · In the previous lesson, we explored joy and the people who need a genuine respite. Now listen to a complete section of Wagner’s chapter.
- 08In the full course
Bringing Yourself to Your Work
Lesson · 6 min · The repair shop should already be closed. The last repaired laptop is on the counter when its owner finally walks through the door.
- 09In the full course
A Good Life Without an Audience
Lesson · 6 min · Can a life be significant while remaining almost unnoticed? Today Wagner invites us away from the stage where everyone seeks attention, toward the people who sustain the everyday world.
- 10In the full course
A Home to Return To
Lesson · 6 min · This lesson begins with an almost comic story about a renovation. It will help us ask whom we are actually creating our homes for.
- ↺In the full course
What Makes a Life Feel Rich
Review · 4 min · Let us pause again and bring together needs, pleasure, work, unnoticed goodness, and home. A question runs through them: what makes life feel rich when experienced from within?
- 11In the full course
Beauty with a Voice of Its Own
Lesson · 6 min · Why do we want to leave one perfectly furnished room quickly, yet linger in another, quite ordinary one? Wagner looks for traces of a living person in beauty.
- 12In the full course
Strength That Makes Room for Others
Lesson · 6 min · Around some people, we become guarded. We choose words anxiously and fear appearing insignificant.
- 13In the full course
Helping Someone Become Themselves
Lesson · 6 min · An adult already knows what a child’s future should look like. They do so much for that future that they sometimes forget to hear the child.
- 14In the full course
Being Yourself, Living with Others
Lesson · 6 min · In this lesson, we will gather the movement of the whole book. Wagner began with people so busy preparing a celebration that they almost lost the chance to enjoy each other.
- ?In the full course
More Freedom Among Responsibilities
Conversation · 8 min · After a book like this, we may want to do more than nod along with Wagner. We may want to ask him about our actual days.
- ?In the full course
Joy That Need Not Wait for Permission
Conversation · 8 min · Let us continue our conversation with the book. This time, we will stay with joy, tiredness, and companionship.
- ?In the full course
Your Own Voice Among Others
Conversation · 9 min · Now let us take the conversation into the places where our wishes meet somebody else’s: home, family, and work. Wagner wants people to become themselves while keeping a living connection with others.
- ?In the full course
Something to Stand On
Conversation · 8 min · There are a few questions left that touch the foundations of Wagner’s outlook. How do we listen to his faith?
- ❝In the full course
Bringing Hands and Hearts Together
Author’s words · 4 min · To close, let us return to the book itself. Wagner ends with memory, respect, and human connection.
In the author’s words
A few lines from the book, kept in context: each one leads to its place in the text.
The essential leads, the secondary obeys, and order is born of simplicity.
But not everyone has a tradition to preserve. All the more reason to redouble our efforts in building and nurturing family life. For this, we need neither a large household nor spacious rooms. To make a home, we need the spirit of home. Just as the smallest village can have its history and moral character, the smallest dwelling can have a soul.
Since the sun still rises, since the earth flowers again, since the bird builds its nest, since the mother smiles at her child, let us have the courage to be human and entrust the rest to the One who has numbered the stars. As for me, I wish I could find burning words for anyone whose heart sinks in this disillusioned age: take courage, hope again; the person surest to err least is the one who dares to hope most. The most naive hope is closer to truth than the most reasoned despair.
The Simple Life
The Simple Life began at a wedding. The publisher Armand Colin heard Wagner’s wedding address on the simple life in the home, wrote to him the next day asking for a book, and six months later it appeared. Readers passed it from hand to hand. It is a pastor’s book, rooted in Christian faith, and a sharp observer’s too: monkeys let loose in a painter’s studio, a stone breaker humming on a road in the Vosges, Paris street sweepers at dawn. Its subject is what Wagner called the first of all subjects, “the use and the ordering of life.” Audeno’s English and Ukrainian texts are new, complete translations from the French edition of 1908.
14 chapters · about 42,000 words
Contents
- Preface to the Ninth Edition
- Preface to the First Edition
- The Complicated Life01
- The Spirit of Simplicity02
- Simple Thought03
- Simple Speech04
- Simple Duty05
- Simple Needs06
- Simple Pleasure07
- The Mercenary Spirit and Simplicity08
- Advertising and the Unnoticed Good09
- Worldliness and Home Life10
- Simple Beauty11
- Pride and Simplicity in Social Relations12
- Education for Simplicity13
- Conclusion14
Get the full course
Room for Life: The Simple Life
Free
- The full text of the book
- Every quote, with its place in the text
- The introduction and the first three lessons
- Texts offline; each lesson stays on your iPhone after its first play
One purchase, $4.99 in the US
- All 24 episodes of the audio course
- Every language the course has, now and later
- Restore on any iPhone with your Apple Account
- No subscription
Coming soon to the App Store in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Ukraine. Until then, the free episodes and the full text of this book are here on this site.
Questions
Is The Simple Life a book about minimalism?
Not in the sense of owning as little as possible. Wagner rejects both the miser’s idea that the simple life is the cheap life and the gloomy kind of austerity that makes a merit of giving up everything that smiles, shines and charms. He writes that “simple is no more a synonym for ugly than luxurious, overloaded, elaborate, or costly is a synonym for beautiful,” and he defends a cared-for home, clothes with character and wealth put to good use. What he asks for is order: “Everything in its place, everything in its rank!”
Is The Simple Life a religious book?
Wagner was a Protestant pastor, and his Christian faith runs openly through the book: trust in the will that gave us life, hope, and goodness. At the heart of the Christian faith, he writes, God came to dwell among us in human form and wished to be known by that sign alone. It is a generous faith. A religion is good, he says, if it makes forgiveness easier and increases your respect for the conscience of others, “whatever its name.” The course lets you hear his faith in his own words, and its last conversation asks how to listen to it, whether or not you share it.
How long is the course, and what is free?
24 episodes, nearly two and a half hours in all: an introduction, 14 lessons of about six minutes each, two recaps, four conversations after the book and three readings of Wagner’s own pages, the last of them the book’s closing paragraphs. The complete text of the book, its quotes, the introduction and the first three lessons are free in the Audeno app on iPhone. One purchase, 4.99 USD in the US and adjusted by country, opens the whole audio course in English and Ukrainian, and in any language added later. No subscription, and the course can be downloaded for listening offline.
What does the purchase open?
The complete audio course of this book, all 24 episodes, in every language it has now and every language added later. One purchase at the App Store price, $4.99 in the United States, adjusted by country. No subscription.
Can I listen offline?
Yes. Each lesson downloads the first time you play it and then stays on the iPhone; a course you own can be downloaded whole for listening with no connection. The text and quotes are inside the app.
Also in Audeno
The Simple Life
Room for Life is a 24-episode audio course on The Simple Life, the book Theodore Roosevelt urged Americans to read, written in 1895 by the Paris pastor Charles Wagner. The complete text is beside it, newly translated from the French. Warm, observant and often funny, Wagner shows how preparations, possessions and appearances crowd out the life they were meant to serve.
Coming soon to the App Store. Until then, the free episodes and the full text of this book are here on this site.