Quotes & Sayings About Frugality

Grateful return for happiness conferred is not the method of exchange in a partnership. The comfort a man takes with his wife is not in the nature of a business partnership, nor are her frugality and industry. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

I have three treasures that I keep and prize: one is kindness, second is frugality, and third is not presuming to take precedence over others. By kindness one can be brave, by frugality one can reach out, and by not presuming to take precedence one can survive effectively. If one gives up kindness and courage, gives up frugality and breadth, and gives up humility for aggressiveness, one will die. The exercise of kindness in battle leads to victory, the exercise of kindness in defense leads to security. — Sun Tzu

I peeked at him out of the corner of my eye. He had a slight smirk on his face. I imagined he was mentally checking off a task in his planner.
Seduce date by talking about other girls
Impress date with number of awards you have received
Do not spend money on date
Make date watch corny movie in media center
Sneak in comments about your frugality
Put arm around date at exactly the halfway mark of the movie — Colleen Houck

I resolved to make a very rigid frugality supply my deficiency of fortune, to maintain unimpaired my independency, and to regard every object as contemptible except the improvement of my talents in literature. — David Hume

Thirteen virtues necessary for true success: temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity, and humility. — Benjamin Franklin

The best taxes are such as are levied upon consumptions, especially those of luxury; because such taxes are least felt by the people. They seem, in some measure, voluntary; since a man may choose how far he will use the commodity: They naturally produce sobriety and frugality, if judiciously imposed: And being confounded with the natural price of the commodity, they are scarcely perceived by the consumers. Their only disadvantage is that they are expensive in the levying. — David Hume

He that will not stoop for a pin will never be worth a pound. — Samuel Pepys

Frugality, quite simply, is about choosing the things you love enough to spend extravagantly on - and then cutting costs mercilessly on the things you don't love. — Ramit Sethi

...avarice and stinginess [are] not frugality — David McCullough

Should my decease happen in Newcastle I desire that my remains may be laid near the south porch in Saint Andrews churchyard near the remains of my dear wife, and that the least possible expence may be laid out on my interment. Charles Avison — Charles Avison

Just as lavishness leads easily to presumption, so does frugality to meanness. But meanness is a far less serious fault than presumption. — Confucius

Frugality and economy are virtues without which no household can prosper. Whatever the income, waste of all kinds should be most sternly repressed ... Economy and frugality must never, however, be allowed to degenerate into meanness. — Isabella Beeton

One of the better ways to simplify our lives is to follow the counsel we have so often received to live within our income, stay out of debt, and save for a rainy day. We should practice and increase our habits of thrift, industry, economy, and frugality. Members of a well-managed family do not pay interest; they earn it. — L. Tom Perry

Frugality is founded on the principal that all riches have limits. — Edmund Burke

There are very few men and women, I suspect, who cooked and marketed their way through the past war without losing forever some of the nonchalant extravagance of the Twenties. They will feel, until their final days on earth, a kind of culinary caution: butter, no matter how unlimited, is a precious substance not lightly to be wasted; meats, too, and eggs, and all the far-brought spices of the world, take on a new significance, having once been so rare. And that is good, for there can be no more shameful carelessness than with the food we eat for life itself When we exist without thought or thanksgiving we are not men, but beasts. — Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher

To live without that enchantment of beauty is to interpret frugality and simple living with a puritan literalism — John Lane

I have never heard about any perfect marriage. They say perfect marriages are made in heaven. Nobody comes back from there so maybe it is true, but what kind of marriage will those perfect marriages be? There will be no tension, there will be no individuality in the man or in the woman. They will never collide, they will never fight. They will be too sweet to each other. And too much sweetness brings diabetes! Marriage is an institution that teaches a man regularity, frugality, temperance, forbearance and many other splendid virtues he would not need had he stayed single. — Rajneesh

Hope drives us to invent new fixes for old messes, which in turn create ever more dangerous messes. Hope elects the politician with the biggest empty promise; and as any stockbroker or lottery seller knows, most of us will take a slim hope over prudent and predictable frugality. Hope, like greed, fuels the engine of capitalism. — Margaret Atwood

The typical Anarchist, then, may be defined as follows: A man perceptible by the spirit of revolt under one or more of its forms, - opposition, investigation, criticism, innovation, - endowed with a strong love of liberty, egoistic or individualistic, and possessed of great curiosity, a keen desire to know. These traits are supplemented by an ardent love of others, a highly developed moral sensitiveness, a profound sentiment of justice, and imbued with missionary zeal." To the above characteristics, says Alvin F. Sanborn, must be added these sterling qualities: a rare love of animals, surpassing sweetness in all the ordinary relations of life, exceptional sobriety of demeanor, frugality and regularity, austerity, even, of living, and courage beyond compare.[2] — Emma Goldman

Frugality is the mother of all virtues. — Justinian I

Frugality is misery in disguise. — Publilius Syrus

He who will not economize will have to agonize — Confucius

My parents were born in 1912; they graduated from college into the Depression. They kept notebooks of every nickel they spent, and these habits of frugality from having grown up so poor never left them. — Roz Chast

Associate yourself with men of good quality, if you esteem your reputation. Be not apt to relate news, if you know not the truth thereof. Speak no evil of the absent, for it is unjust. Undertake not what you cannot perform, but be careful to keep your promise. There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth, and pursue it steadily. Nothing but harmony, honesty, industry and frugality are necessary to make us a great and happy nation. — George Washington

Success is not necessarily about connections, or cutting corners, or chamba - the three Cs of bad business. Call it trite, but believe me: success can be achieved through hard work, frugality, integrity, responsiveness to change, and most of all, boldness to dream. — John Gokongwei

I'm old enough to remember in the 1930s and the 1940s when thrift, frugality, was considered an important virtue. — Edmund Phelps

Frugality is good if liberality be joined with it. The first is leaving off superfluous expenses; the last is bestowing them to the benefit of others that need. The first without the last begets covetousness; the last without the first begets prodigality. — William Penn

We really never, never threw anything away. You think you know about recycling? We invented it. We had to. We were desperate. Sometimes maybe the only thing we had to work with was a couple of leftover baked potatoes from the weekend, and that was all there was to eat. Didn't matter to us that much. Ma just baked them again. Twice-Baked Potatoes really were kind of a treat for us, and we'd never complain when she served them. — Clara Cannucciari

Frugality is for the vulgar. — Francois Rabelais

Frugality is one of the most beautiful and joyful words in the English language, and yet one that we are culturally cut off from understanding and enjoying. The consumption society has made us feel that happiness lies in having things, and has failed to teach us the happiness of not having things. — Elise Boulding

But in the present day men cast off gentleness, and are all for being bold; they spurn frugality, and retain only extravagance; they discard humility, and aim only at being first. Therefore they shall surely perish. — Laozi

Vices are simply overworked virtues, anyway. Economy and frugality are to be commended but follow them on in an increasing ratio and what do we find at the other end? A miser! If we overdo the using of spare moments we may find an invalid at the end, while perhaps if we allowed ourselves more idle time we would conserve our nervous strength and health to more than the value the work we could accomplish by emulating at all times the little busy bee.
I once knew a woman, not very strong, who to the wonder of her friends went through a time of extraordinary hard work without any ill effects.
I asked her for her secret and she told me that she was able to keep her health, under the strain, because she took 20 minutes, of each day in which to absolutely relax both mind and body. She did not even "set and think." She lay at full length, every muscle and nerve relaxed and her mind as quiet as her body. This always relieved the strain and renewed her strength. — Laura Ingalls Wilder

The Depression taught me what frugality means and the importance of not losing money. — Irving Kahn

There is a wise old saying 'Eat it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without'. Thrift is a practice of not wasting anything. Some people are able to get by because of the absence of expense. They have their shoes resoled, they patch, they mend, they sew, and they save money. They avoid installment buying, and make purchases only after saving enough to pay cash, thus avoiding interest charges. Frugality means to practice careful economy. — James E. Faust

What all this adds up to is the view that nature is there as a resource to be used by man for his self-interest and profit. But, frugality being a virtue, the resource should be "conserved" as much as possible. — George Lakoff

Without frugality none can be rich, and with it very few would be poor. — Samuel Johnson

Gaining money by my industry and frugality, I lived very agreeably ... — Benjamin Franklin

Without industry and frugality, nothing will do; with them, everything. — Benjamin Franklin

A man often pays dear for a small frugality. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The children are innocent until proven guilty. For their sake, not ours, we must soldier on, muddling our way toward frugality, simplicity, liberty, community, until some kind of sane and rational balance is achieved between our ability to love and our cockeyed ambition to conquer and dominate everything in sight. No wonder the galaxies recede from us in every direction, fleeing at velocities that approach the speed of light. They are frightened. We humans are the Terror of the Universe. — Edward Abbey

If frugality were established in the state, and if our expenses were laid out to meet needs rather than superfluities of life, there might be fewer wants, and even fewer pleasures, but infinitely more happiness. — Oliver Goldsmith

Consumerism has worked very hard, with the help of popular psychology ('Just do it!') to convince people that indulgence is good for you, whereas frugality is self-oppression. It — Yuval Noah Harari

Frugality is one thing, avarice another. — Horace

We're not very good when we're spending other people's money. — Jason Jennings

1. Turn all care out of your head as soon as you mount the chaise.
2. Do not think about frugality: your health is worth more than it can cost.
3. Do not continue any day's journey to fatigue.
4. Take now and then a day's rest.
5. Get a smart seasickness if you can.
6. Cast away all anxiety, and keep your mind easy.
This last direction is the principal; with an unquiet mind neither exercise, nor diet, nor physic can be of much use. — Samuel Johnson

Be studious in your profession, and you will be learned. Be industrious and frugal, and you will be rich. Be sober and temperate, and you will be healthy. Be in general virtuous, and you will be happy. At least you will, by such conduct, stand the be. — Benjamin Franklin

The spirit of commerce is frugality, economy, moderation, labor, ponderance, tranquillity, order, and rule. So long as this spirit subsides, the riches it produces have no bad effect. The mischief is when excessive wealth destroys the spirit of commerce, then it is that the conveniences of inequality ... are felt. — Baron De Montesquieu

Moved by deep love, a man is courageous.
And with frugality, a man becomes generous,
And he who does not desire to be ahead of the
world becomes the leader of the world. — Lao-Tzu

As boys should be educated with temperance, so the first greatest lesson that should be taught them is to admire frugality. It is by the exercise of this virtue alone they can ever expect to be useful members of society. — Oliver Goldsmith

Frugality, I've learned, has its own cost, one that sometimes lasts forever. — Nicholas Sparks

The importation of foreigners into a country that has as many inhabitants as the present employments and provisions for subsistence will bear, will be in the end no increase of people, unless the new comers have more industry and frugality than the natives, and then they will provide more subsistence, and increase in the country; but they will gradually eat the natives out. Nor is it necessary to bring in foreigners to fill up any occasional vacancy in a country for such vacancy will soon be filled by natural generation. — Benjamin Franklin

Rome herself was no longer new. She had grown old and decrepit. The republic of Cicero had degenerated into the despotism of Caesar. Tyrant after tyrant had seized power at the price of much bloodshed. Devotion to family, hard work, and frugality had been replaced by an addiction to pleasure and power. A welfare state based on conquest and slave labor bought the loyalty of the mob with free bread and gladiator games. The people were all too ready to trade their liberty for creature comforts. — Marcellino D'Ambrosio

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery. — Charles Dickens

The great blessing of private property, then, is that people can benefit from their own industry and insulate themselves from the negative effects of others' actions. It is like a set of invisible mirrors that surround individuals, households or firms, reflecting back on them the consequences of their acts. The industrious will reap the benefits of their industry; the frugal the consequences of their frugality; the improvident and the profligate likewise. They receive their due, which is to say they experience justice as a matter of routine. — Tom Bethell

Frugality is enjoying the virtue of getting good value for every minute of your life energy and from everything you have the use of. — Vicki Robin

Wealth can only be accumulated by the earnings of industry and the savings of frugality. — John Tyler

The way to wealth depends on just two words, industry and frugality. — Benjamin Franklin

Let frugality and industry be our virtues. — John Adams

People don't realize how easy they have it these days. Most kids have never known what it's like to go without anything. They want something, they get it. If there isn't enough money, they charge it. We never wanted anything because we never realized we could have anything. We never missed what we never had. Things were much simpler back then, and we were stronger for it. We worked together to keep the house in order, to put food on the table. We kept things going. — Clara Cannucciari

1) Temperance ... drink not to elevation. (2) Silence ... avoid trifling conversations. (3) Order: Let all your things have their places ... (4) Resolution ... perform without fail what you resolve. (5) Frugality ... i.e. waste nothing. (6) Industry: Lose no time; be always employ'd ... (7) Sincerity: Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently ... (8) Justice: Wrong none by doing injuries ... (9) Moderation: Avoid extremes; forbear resenting ... (10) Cleanliness: Tolerate no uncleanliness in body ... (11) Tranquility: Be not disturbed at trifles ... (12) Chastity (13) Humility : Imitate Jesus ... — Benjamin Franklin

There may be frugality which is not economy. A community, that withholds the means of education from its children, withholds the bread of life and starves their souls. — Horace Mann

If young men and young women are brought up to consider frugality contemptible, and industry degrading, it is vain to expect they will at once become prudent and useful, when the cares of life press heavily upon them. — Lydia Maria Francis Child

I'm a practitioner of elegant frugality. I don't feel comfortable telling other people what to do, so I just try and lead by example. — Amory Lovins

Industry and frugality, as the means of procuring wealth ... thereby [secures] virtue, it being more difficult for a man in want to act always honestly ... — Benjamin Franklin

What a pair they were - a Mistborn who felt guilty wasting coins to jump and a nobleman who thought balls were too expensive. — Brandon Sanderson

(P162) The great blessing of private property, then, is that people can benefit from their own industry and insulate themselves from the negative effects of others' actions. It is like a set of invisible mirrors that surround individuals, households or firms, reflecting back on them the consequences of their acts. The industrious will reap the benefits of their industry, the frugal the consequences of their frugality; the improvidant and the profligate likewise. They receive their due, which is to say they experience justice as a matter of routine. Private property institutionalises justice. This is its great virtue, perhaps dwarfing all others. We may say with the economists that private property "internalizes the externalities," or with the philosophers that it gives rise to "social justice. — Tom Bethell

With parsimony a little is sufficient; without it nothing is sufficient; but frugality makes a poor man rich. — Seneca The Younger

I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out. — Jeff Bezos

Working conditions for me have always been those of the monastic life: solitude and frugality. Except for frugality, they are contrary to my nature, so much so that work is a violence I do to myself. — Albert Camus

The worst kind of shame is being ashamed of frugality or poverty. — Livy

Frugality without creativity is deprivation. — Amy Dacyczyn

The purity of unison singing, unaffected by alien motives of musical techniques, the clarity, unspoiled by the attempt to give musical art an autonomy of its own apart from the words, the simplicity and frugality, the humaneness and warmth of this way of singing is the essence of all congregational singing. This, — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Why they were loaded with bags of beans and peas and anything else they happened to pick up when they were still some distance away from the street where the first blind man and his wife lived, for that is where they are going, is a question that could only occur to someone who has never in his life suffered shortages. — Jose Saramago

The doctor's wife was not particularly keen on the tendency of proverbs to preach, nevertheless something of this ancient lore must have remained in her memory, the proof being that she filled two of the bags they had brought with beans and chick peas, Keep what is of no use at the moment, and later you will find what you need, one of her grandmothers had told her, the water in which you soak them will also serve to cook them, and whatever remains from the cooking will cease to be water, but will have become broth. It is not only in nature that from time to time not everything is lost and something is gained. — Jose Saramago

Industry, perseverance, and frugality make fortune yield. — Benjamin Franklin

I hold it the duty of the executive to insist upon frugality in the expenditure, and a sparing economy is itself a great national source. — Andrew Johnson

The Bible warns us against greed and selfishness, it does encourage frugality and thrift. — Billy Graham

I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them. — John Stuart Mill

In short, the way to wealth, if you desire it, is as plain as the way to market. It depends chiefly on two words, industry and frugality; that is, waste neither time nor money, but make the best use of both. Without industry and frugality nothing will do, and with them everything. He that gets all he can honestly, and saves all he gets (necessary expenses excepted), will certainly become rich, if that Being who governs the world, to whom all should look for a blessing on their honest endeavours, doth not, in his wise providence, otherwise determine. — Benjamin Franklin

The world has not yet learned the riches of frugality. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Frugality is a handsome income. — Desiderius Erasmus

Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom. No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles. — Patrick Henry

Acquire Riches by Industry and Frugality. — Benjamin Franklin

But even if they did have that kind of money rattling around in their pockets, actually spending it would offend their native frugality. — Neal Stephenson

Poverty is a divine stepmother who does for youths what their own mothers were unable to do. It introduces them to frugality, to the world and to life. — Honore De Balzac

Because of deep love, one is courageous. Because of frugality, one is generous. Because of not daring to be ahead of the world, one becomes the leader of the world. — Laozi

A cardinal principle of the gospel is to prepare for the day of scarcity. Work, industry, frugality are part of the royal order of life. — Keith B. McMullin

1. TEMPERANCE. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation. 2. SILENCE. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation. 3. ORDER. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time. 4. RESOLUTION. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve. 5. FRUGALITY. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing. 6. INDUSTRY. Lose no time; be always employ'd in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions. 7. SINCERITY. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you... — Benjamin Franklin

My stove is old. My wallpaper is old. It's the same wallpaper from when I moved here and I never changed it. Why would I change it? I just keep it clean. If you take better care of things, you can hold onto them longer. That's how I still run things. If it works, I keep it. If it doesn't, I see if I can use it for something else. If I can't, and I usually can, I toss it. — Clara Cannucciari

[T]he more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer ... [taking] away from before their eyes the greatest of all inducements to industry, frugality, and sobriety, by giving them a dependence of somewhat else than a careful accumulation during youth and health for support in age and sickness. — Benjamin Franklin

A dash of frugality is a good thing for everyone. — Jason Chaffetz

O the sad frugality of the middle-income mind. O the humorless neatness of an intellectuality which buys mass-produced candlesticks and carefully puts one at each end of every philosophical mantlepiece! How far it lies from the playfulness of Him who composed such odd and needless variations on the themes of leaf and backbone, eye and nose! A thousand praises that it has only lately managed to lay its cold hand on the wines, the sauces, and the cheeses of the world! A hymn of thanksgiving that it could not reach into the depths of the sea to clamp its grim simplicities over the creatures that swim luminously in the dark! A shout of rejoicing for the fish who wears his eyeballs at the ends of long stalks, and for the jubilant laughter of the God who holds him in life with a daily bravo at the bravura of his being! — Robert Farrar Capon

Frugality includes all the other virtues. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

If war can indeed be turned into a relic, then the virtue of greed will recede further. From a given society's standpoint, one big upside of wanton material acquisition has traditionally been the way it drives technological progress-which, after all, helps keep societies strong. In the nineteenth century, Russia ans Germany had little choice about modernizing; in those days stasis invited conquest. But if societies no longer face conquest, breakneck technological advance is an offer they can refuse, and frugality a luxury people can afford. — Robert Wright

Industry is fortune's right hand, and frugality its left. — John Ray

Righteousness, or justice, is, undoubtedly of all the virtues, the surest foundation on which to create and establish a new state. But there are two nobler virtues, industry and frugality, which tend more to increase the wealth, power and grandeur of the community, than all the others without them. — Benjamin Franklin

So much for industry, my friends, and attention to one's own business; but to these we must add frugality if we would make our industry more certainly successful. A man may, if he knows not how to save as he gets, keep his nose all his life to the grindstone, and die not worth a grout at last. — Benjamin Franklin

Our superintendence in instruction and discipline is the office of the Word, from whom we learn frugality and humility, and all that pertains to love of truth, love of humanity, and love of excellence. And so, in a word, being assimilated to God by participation in moral excellence, we must not retrograde into carelessness and sloth. But labor, and faint not. — Clement Of Alexandria

If it were not my purpose to combine barbarian things with things Hellenic, to traverse and civilize every continent, to search out the uttermost parts of land and sea, to push the bounds of Macedonia to the farthest Ocean, and to disseminate and shower the blessings of the Hellenic justice and peace over every nation, I should not be content to sit quietly in the luxury of idle power, but I should emulate the frugality of Diogenes. But as things are, forgive me Diogenes, that I imitate Herakles, and emulate Perseus, and follow in the footsteps of Dionysos, the divine author and progenitor of my family, and desire that victorious Hellenes should dance again in India and revive the memory of the Bacchic revels among the savage mountain tribes beyond the Kaukasos ... — Alexander The Great

Frugality may be termed the daughter of Prudence, the sister of Temperance, and the parent of Liberty. — Samuel Johnson