Nothing Left over ― A Plain and Simple Life

?Toinette Lippe is a woman whose wisdom is as deep as it is unassuming.”
? Brother David Steindl-Rast, O.S.B.

This book on ?interior housekeeping” illuminates the true measure of a life lived in terms of usefulness and integrity rather than accomplishment or possessions. With subtle wit, wonderfully evocative language, and clear-eyed wisdom gleaned from her own experience, Toinette Lippe teaches us how to discern what is essential and let go of what is not. Her brilliant meditation shows us how to move through the day with elegant economy and grace.

?Toinette Lippe has used her marvelous gift of word imagery to make her point that a lifetime of simply complete moments emerges as a very full life indeed.”
?Sylvia Boorstein,
author of It’s Easier Than You Think

?An important book for anyone who has ever wondered what really matters.”
?Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.,
author of Kitchen Table Wisdom

Toinette Lippe was born in London, where she began her publishing career. In 1964 she came to New York City ?for a year,” worked at Simon and Schuster for three years, and then at Alfred A. Knopf as reprint rights director and editor for thirty-two years. In 1989, while still at Knopf, she founded Bell Tower, an imprint publishing books that nourish the soul, illuminate the mind, and speak directly to the heart, and she remained its editorial director for twenty years. Her own first book, Nothing Left Over: A Plain and Simple Life was first published in 2002 and her second, Caught in the Act: Reflections on Being, Knowing, and Doing, in 2004. In 2011 Vintage published a new edition of the Gia-fu Feng/Jane English translation of the Tao Te Ching, which Toinette edited at Knopf/Vintage in 1972 and which has sold more than a million copies. She and Jane English refreshed and revised the original translation, adding over a hundred new photographs by Jane and a foreword by Toinette, who is now listed as one of the translators.

After fifty years in publishing Toinette abandoned editorial work and devotes herself to East Asian brush painting, which she taught at the Educational Alliance for four years and now teaches on the Upper West Side of New York City. You can view and purchase her paintings and cards at www.toinettelippe.com.