Frugal Quotes

I have come to realize that truly rich people are rich not because they are frugal or they chose to be frugal, but because they are so grateful, contented and full of self-worth that they don't have to prove anything to anyone with material possessions. This way, they appear frugal. ~ Jan Mckingley Hilado

Be sober and temperate, and you will be healthy. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Vegetarian and frugal it may be, but the chickpea is one of the most versatile ingredients you could keep in your cupboards. ~ Yotam Ottolenghi

There is no English equivalent for the French word flâneur. Cassell's dictionary defines flâneur as a stroller, saunterer, drifter but none of these terms seems quite accurate. There is no English equivalent for the term, just as there is no Anglo-Saxon counterpart of that essentially Gallic individual, the deliberately aimless pedestrian, unencumbered by any obligation or sense of urgency, who, being French and therefore frugal, wastes nothing, including his time which he spends with the leisurely discrimination of a gourmet, savoring the multiple flavors of his city. ~ Cornelia Otis Skinner

In every interview I'm asked what's the most important quality a novelist has to have. It's pretty obvious: talent. Now matter how much enthusiasm and effort you put into writing, if you totally lack literary talent you can forget about being a novelist. This is more of a prerequisite than a necessary quality. If you don't have any fuel, even the best car won't run.The problem with talent, though, is that in most cases the person involved can't control its amount or quality. You might find the amount isn't enough and you want to increase it, or you might try to be frugal and make it last longer, but in neither case do things work out that easily. Talent has a mind of its own and wells up when it wants to, and once it dries up, that's it. Of course, certain poets and rock singers whose genius went out in a blaze of glory - people like Schubert and Mozart, whose dramatic early deaths turned them into legends - have a certain appeal, but for the vast majority of us this isn't the model we follow.
If I'm asked what the next most important quality is for a novelist, that's easy too: focus - the ability to concentrate all your limited talents on whatever's critical at the moment. Without that you can't accomplish anything of value, while, if you can focus effectively, you'll be able to compensate for an erratic talent or even a shortage of it. I generally concentrate on work for three or four hours every morning. I sit at my desk and focus totally on what I'm writing. I don't ~ Haruki Murakami

For it is true now, as it always was and always will be, that to be free is the same thing as to be pious, to be wise, to be temperate and just, to be frugal and abstinent, and to be magnanimous and brave; and to be the opposite of all these is the same as to be a slave. ~ Albert Pike

All of us, I suppose, like to believe that in a moral emergency we will behave like the heroes of our youth, bravely and forthrightly, without thought of personal loss or discredit. Certainly that was my conviction back in the summer of 1968. Tim O'Brien: a secret hero. The Lone Ranger. If the stakes ever became high enough - if the evil were evil enough, if the good were good enough - I would simply tap a secret reservoir of courage that had been accumulating inside me over the years. Courage, I seemed to think, comes to us in finite quantities, like an inheritance, and by being frugal and stashing it away and letting it earn interest, we steadily increase our moral capital in preparation for that day when the account must be drawn down. It was a comforting theory. It dispensed with all those bothersome little acts of daily courage; it offered hope and grace to the repetitive coward; it justified the past while amortizing the future. ~ Tim O'Brien

The amount of money you have has got nothing to do with what you earn.. people earning a million dollars a year can have no money and.. People earning $35,000 a year can be quite well off. It's not what you earn, it's what you spend. ~ Paul Clitheroe

Cultivate these, then, for they are wholly within your power: sincerity and dignity; industriousness; and sobriety. Avoid grumbling, be frugal, considerate, and frank; be temperate in manner and speech; carry yourself with authority. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Hammett was the ace performer ... He is said to have lacked heart; yet the story he himself thought the most of [The Glass Key] is the record of a man's devotion to a friend. He was spare, frugal, hard-boiled, but he did over and over again what only the best writers can ever do at all. He wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written before. ~ Raymond Chandler

(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

A rain-tight roof, frugal living, a box of colors, and God's sunlight through clear windows keep the soul attuned and the body vigorous for one's daily work. ~ Albert Pinkham Ryder

Thanks to my mother, people tell me I look younger than I am, especially without make-up. And I suppose my father had a part in making me more frugal with my money. ~ Dita Von Teese

Nature is a frugal mother, and never gives without measure. When she has work to do, she qualifies men for that and sends them equipped. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing else. ~ Andrew Carnegie

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

You have a big heart. I would never trade your mammoth, irrationally generous heart for a smaller, more frugal one. I love every square kilometer of it." A laugh tumbled from my lips and I lowered to the couch. "Really? It's that big?" "It should have its own zip code. And it's my third favorite thing about you. ~ Penny Reid

One of the greatest of liberals, Thomas Jefferson, the founder of the Democratic Party, once remarked: A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government. ~ Ronald Reagan

Pick up any book about personal finance and you're likely to read a 200-page mind-fuck about being cheap. Of course, these books don't overtly say, "Be cheap," but hide behind slippery phrases like "the simple life" or "frugal living." Some ~ MJ DeMarco

You've got to be frugal. If you want to make one peso and you spent two, you'll never make it. You must be very stupid if you don't know what you should save on. ~ John Gokongwei

If you've been frugal during your life and tried to save, you're penalised by the tax system. You pay tax on your wages, your savings and even your private pension. ~ Geoff Capes

For Age and Want save while you may; No morning Sun lasts a whole day. ~ Benjamin Franklin

I'm lucky because my dad taught me to be frugal and save. And that's important because I want to know that I don't have to take an acting job for two or three years if I don't want to and that I'll still be able to make my house and car payments and buy food for my dogs. ~ Ashley Greene

Americans, both politicians and voters, may have become corrupted by big government beyond redemption. A virtuous government requires a virtuous people. A frugal government requires a self-reliant people. A free country requires people who value liberty more than money. ~ Charley Reese

He buried her beside her husband. After the services were over and the few mourners had gone, he stood alone in a cold November wind and looked at the two graves, one open to its burden and the other mounded and covered by a thin fuzz of grass. He turned on the bare, treeless little plot that held others like his mother and father and looked across the flat land in the direction of the farm where he had been born, where his mother and father had spent their years. He thought of the cost exacted, year after year, by the soil; and it remained as it had been - a little more barren, perhaps, a little more frugal of increase. Nothing had changed. ~ John Edward Williams

As she crossed the defence team, Indrani saw Sesha sitting in a chair with his legs crossed and looking cool and composed. Mythili, who was by his side, was offering him coffee from a flask. As if they were in a cinema house waiting for the movie to resume after intermission. When everything pointed to an adverse verdict, how could he be so relaxed? He was typing something into his cell phone; perhaps tweeting. He had a massive following on Twitter. It ranged from simple appreciation for his administrative prowess to absolute fetish over everything about him - his trademark cotton pants and shirt, which had become a rage among his female fans, his Santro car, which had become a symbol of simplicity and his frugal dietary habits, which somehow raised him to a sainthood and absolved him of anything wicked. The more the mainstream media like TV and newspapers worked against him, the stronger was the support he got from his Twitter followers. ~ Hariharan Iyer

Even Socrates, who lived a very frugal and simple life, loved to go to the market. When his students asked about this, he replied, I love to go and see all the things I am happy without. ~ Jack Kornfield

Heuristic decision making is fast and frugal and is often based on the evaluation of one or two salient bits of information. We ~ Amitav Chakravarti

Montenegro (1877)

THEY rose to where their sovereign eagle sails,
They kept their faith, their freedom, on the height,
Chaste, frugal, savage, arm'd by day and night
Against the Turk; whose inroad nowhere scales
Their headlong passes, but his footstep fails,
And red with blood the Crescent reels from fight
Before their dauntless hundreds, in prone flight
By thousands down the crags and thro' the vales.
O smallest among peoples! rough rock-throne
Of Freedom! warriors beating back the swarm
Of Turkish Islam for five hundred years,
Great Tsernogora! never since thine own
Black ridges drew the cloud and brake the storm
Has breathed a race of mightier mountaineers.
Alfred Lord Tennyson, 1880 ~ Alfred Tennyson

If we stuck to the Constitution as written, we would have: no federal meddling in our schools; no Federal Reserve; no U.S. membership in the UN; no gun control; and no foreign aid. We would have no welfare for big corporations, or the "poor"; no American troops in 100 foreign countries; no NAFTA, GAT, or "fast-track"; no arrogant federal judges usurping states rights; no attacks on private property; no income tax. We could get rid of most of the agencies, and most of the budget. The government would be small, frugal, and limited. ~ Ron Paul

I'm so frugal, you wouldn't believe it. ~ Serena Williams

Capitals are increased by parsimony, and diminished by prodigalityand misconduct. By what a frugal man annually saves he not onlyaffords maintenance to an additional number of productive hands?but?he establishes as it were a perpetual fund for the maintenance of an equal number in all times to come. ~ Adam Smith

The Quaker upbringing was not strict, but it was frugal. Extremely frugal. One was always encouraged to give away one's worldly goods. ~ Kathy Baker

I have always had a reputation for being frugal - less kind people might call me cheap. But my interest in building up a nest egg goes back to those days in Arnhem when I learned that money can grow, just like trees. ~ Audrey Hepburn

Man wants but little, nor that little long; How soon must he resign his very dust, Which frugal nature lent him for an hour! ~ Edward Young

Where's the incentive to be frugal with life's pleasures, to save up the pages in your favourite book for later, if you're going to be plunged into the darkened abyss at some arbitrary hour? If life is a book, then read it while you can. Don't save up any pages for later, because there might not be one. ~ Pete McCarthy

I lost a world the other day. Has anybody found? You'll know it by the rows of stars around it's forehead bound. A rich man might not notice it; yet to my frugal eye of more esteem than ducats. Oh! Find it, sir, for me! ~ Emily Dickinson

In the 1930s, the Nazis borrowed the frugal image of the one-pot meal, putting it to ideological use. In 1933, Hitler's government announced that Germans should put aside one Sunday, from October to March, to eat a one-pot meal: Eintopf. The idea was that people would save enough money in this way to donate whatever was saved to the poor. Cookbooks were hastily rewritten to take account of the new policy. One recipe collection listed no fewer than sixty-nine Eintopfs, including macaroni, goulash, Irish stew, Serbian rice soup, numerous cabbagey medleys, and Old German potato soup. ~ Bee Wilson

I bid you peace - said at the end of every TV episode of The Frugal Gourmet ~ Jeff Smith

Wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner. ~ Pope Leo XIII

By fate, not option, frugal Nature gave One scent to hyson and to wall-flower, One sound to pine-groves and to water-falls, One aspect to the desert and the lake. It was her stern necessity : all things Are of one pattern made; bird, beast, and flower, Song, picture, form, space, thought, and character Deceive us, seeming to be many things, And are but one. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

We profess to be republicans, and yet we neglect the only means of establishing and perpetuating our republican forms of government; that is, the universal education of our youth in the principles of Christianity by means of the Bible; for this divine book, above all others, favors that equality among mankind, that respect for just laws, and all those sober and frugal virtues which constitute the soul of republicanism. ~ Benjamin Rush

There was a little plate of hothouse nectarines on the table, and there was another of grapes, and another of sponge-cakes, and there was a bottle of light wine ... 'This is my frugal breakfast ... Give me my peach, my cup of coffee, and my claret.' ~ Charles Dickens

Being frugal doesn't mean slashing your spending or depriving yourself of things that you enjoy. It means knowing the value of a dollar and making every effort to spend it wisely. ~ Frank Sonnenberg

Answering Emily
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How Frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!
~Emily Dickinson

Is it really so hard to love this man
Which to your siren's calls been lured?
Cannot his kiss traverse the oceans depths
Piggy-backed upon his word?

Neither frigate, freighter nor chariot,
Hitched to Hermes's heels,
Can convey the breadth of purest love
That this heart truly feels. ~ Beryl Dov

Judging Pius by what he did not say, one could only damn him. With images of piles of skeletal corpses before his eyes; with women and young children compelled, by torture, to kill each other; with millions of innocents caged like criminals, butchered like cattle, and burned like trash - he should have spoken out. He had this duty, not only as pontiff, but as a person. After his first encyclical, he did reissue general distinctions between race-hatred and Christian love. Yet with the ethical coin of the Church, Pius proved frugal; toward what he privately termed "Satanic forces," he showed public moderation; where no conscience could stay neutral, the Church seemed to be. During the world's greatest moral crisis, its greatest moral leader seemed at a loss for words.

But the Vatican did not work by words alone. By 20 October, when Pius put his name to Summi Pontficatus, he was enmeshed in a war behind the war. Those who later explored the maze of his policies, without a clue to his secret actions, wondered why he seemed so hostile toward Nazism, and then fell so silent. But when his secret acts are mapped, and made to overlay his public words, a stark correlation emerges. The last day during the war when Pius publicly said the word "Jew" is also, in fact, the first day history can document his choice to help kill Adolf Hitler. ~ Mark Riebling

Grandmother had had to be frugal all her life, and so she had a weakness for extravagance. She watched the basin and the barrels and every crevice in the granite fill with water and overflow. She looked at the mattresses out being aired and the dishes that were washing themselves. She sighed contentedly, and, absorbed in thought, she filled a coffee cup with precious drinking water and poured it over a daisy. ~ Tove Jansson

1. It is necessary for me to be extremely frugal for some time, till I have paid what I owe. 2. To endeavor to speak truth in every instance; to give nobody expectations that are not likely to be answered, but aim at sincerity in every word and action - the most amiable excellence in a rational being. 3. To apply myself industriously to whatever business I take in hand, and not divert my mind from my business by any foolish project of suddenly growing rich; for industry and patience are the surest means of plenty. 4. I resolve to speak ill of no man whatever.17 ~ Walter Isaacson

When you adopt a frugal lifestyle, start by re-examining your daily routines to make sure that you don't spend any more money than is necessary to get the job done - whatever that job may be. ~ Leah Ingram

Mutability is the badge of infirmity. It is seldom that a man continues to wish and design the same thing two days alike. Now he is for marrying; and now a mistress is preferred to a wife. Now he is ambitious and aspiring; presently the meanest servant is not more humble than he. This hour he squanders his money away; the next he turns miser. Sometimes he is frugal and serious; at other times profuse, airy, and gay. ~ Pierre Charron

Raising myself and caring for my brothers and sisters allowed me the benefit of a lot of information that I wouldn't have otherwise gotten. I had to be frugal, thoughtful, resourceful. I didn't have anyone to tell me, 'You can't.' ~ Sandra Lee

In those hours when the night is still dark and cold, we see Alokananda waking up to the faint sound of stifled sobs. The sheets besides her are creaseless, sleepless. She gets up silently, her body: blank, a patchwork of frugal impulses. She gathers the warmth of her Pashmina shawl around her, the shawl that she knows still hides threads from a shirt or two of his: remnants of embraces, once feisty and long forgotten.'
('Left from Dhakeshwari') ~ Kunal Sen

I felt once more how simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. Nothing else. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

I'm growing fonder of my staff;
I'm growing dimmer in my eyes;
I'm growing fainter in my laugh;
I'm growing deeper in my sighs;
I'm growing careless of my dress;
I'm growing frugal of my gold;
I'm growing wise; I'm growing
yes,
I'm growing old. ~ John Godfrey Saxe

Be generous but not extravagant, be frugal but not miserly. ~ Anonymous

We have really good data that show when you take patients and you really inform them about their choices, patients make more frugal choices. They pick more efficient choices than the health care system does. ~ Donald Berwick

The coward reckons himself cautious, the miser frugal. ~ Henry Home, Lord Kames

And a musician has to learn to be frugal and to carefully manage financial affairs. ~ Charlie Byrd

Frugal is an old-fashioned, mostly unused word and frugality is is an old-fashioned mostly unused virtue that has been waiting for hard times to come back. The Scots have another word for it - canny.

Keith Smith, Hard Times Handbook, 1984 ~ Keith Smith

I am strongly drawn to a frugal life and am often oppressively aware that I am engrossing an undue amount of the labor of my fellow men. ~ Albert Einstein

Being frugal, conscious of making money, is not a negative thing. That sensibility of creating value and finding value and reinvesting in those customers is what separates great restaurants from the average ones. ~ Joe Bastianich

Were a man to order his life by the rules of true reason, a frugal substance joined to a contented mind is for him great riches; for never is there any lack of a little. ~ Lucretius

How simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea ... All that is required to feel that here and now is happiness is a simple, frugal heart. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

When engaged in safe occupations, and living in healthy countries, men are much more apt to be frugal, than in unhealthy, or hazardous occupations, and in climates pernicious to human life. Sailors and soldiers are prodigals ... War and pestilence have always waste and luxury, among the other evils that follow in their train. ~ John Rae

Safe Despair it is that raves- Agony is frugal. Puts itself severe away For its own perusal. ~ Emily Dickinson

It's more frugal to wear ties that are given to you. ~ Jim Flaherty

I am for a government rigorously frugal & simple, applying all the possible savings of the public revenue to the discharge of the national debt; and not for a multiplication of officers & salaries merely to make partisans, & for increasing, by every device, the public debt, on the principle of its being a public blessing. ~ Thomas Jefferson

I fear a Man of frugal speech - I fear a Silent Man - Haranguer - I can overtake - Or Babbler - entertain - But He who weigheth - While the Rest - Expend their furthest pound - Of this Man - I am wary - I fear that He is Grand - ~ Emily Dickinson

Over the last decades, the travel industry and media have unwittingly teamed up to create the gap this book aspires to fill. I read a lot of travel sections, travel sites, and travel magazines, and I realized one day I was getting punch-drunk on how fantastic everything was. There s just so much Escape, Undiscovered, Quaint, Top 10 Most Amazing . . . , Secret Beaches, Incredible Islands, Savvy, Frugal, Best Ever. These adjectives just don t connect with most of my experiences on the road life, misadventure, and a dose of Murphy s Law often get in the way. ~ Doug Lansky

Small, slow growth is the best I expect from an investment. I'm a real saver: frugal - like my parents. ~ Richard C. Armitage

The problem with talent, though, is that in most cases the person can't control its amount or quality. You might find the amount isn't enough and you want to increase it, or you might try to be frugal you make it last longer, but in neither case do things work out easily. Talent has a mind of its own and wells up when it wants to, and once it dries up, that's it. ~ Haruki Murakami

Taking food alone tends to make one hard and coarse. Those accustomed to it must lead a Spartan life if they are not to go downhill. Hermits have observed, if for only this reason, a frugal diet. For it is only in company that eating is done justice; food must be divided and distributed if it is to be well received. ~ Walter Benjamin

Be in general virtuous, and you will be happy. ~ Benjamin Franklin

It is right that the influence of the Government should be known in every humble home as the guardian of frugal comfort and content, and a defense against unjust exactions, and the unearned tribute persistently coveted by the selfish and designing. It is right that efficiency and honesty in public service should not be sacrificed to partisan greed; and it is right that the suffrage of our people should be pure and free. ~ Grover Cleveland

There is a secret key to nurturing your health. This key is an essential secret transmission that any person aiming to take good care of himself must understand and observe. The secret is in the single word decrease. Decrease means to reduce all of your ten thousand affairs and avoid increasing them. Be frugal in everything or, in other words, decrease your desires ~ Kaibara Ekken

The Yankee: In acuteness and perseverance, he resembles the Scotch. In frugal
neatness, he resembles the Dutch. But in truth, a Yankee is nothing else on earth
but himself. ~ Frances Trollope

I drive a tiny Toyota iQ. I'm quite frugal and often cut my own hair. ~ Carol Vorderman

Every wife ought to answer for her man. If the husband be engaged in a seditious club, or drinks mysterious healths, or be frugal of his candles on a rejoicing night, let her look to him and keep him out of harm's way; or the world will be apt to say, she has a mind to be a widow before her time. She ought, in such cases, to exert the authority of the curtain lecture; and if she finds him of a rebellious disposition, to tame him, as they do birds of prey, by dinning him in the ears all night long. ~ Joseph Addison

You have to be ready for hard work and frugal spending to get the idea off the ground. ~ Garrett Camp

A constitution founded on these principles introduces knowledge among the people, and inspires them with a conscious dignity becoming freemen; a general emulation takes place, which causes good humor, sociability, good manners, and good morals to be general. That elevation of sentiment inspired by such a government, makes the common people brave and enterprising. That ambition which is inspired by it makes them sober, industrious, and frugal. ~ John Adams

There is tremendous satisfaction in working your tail off to hit a goal, then winning. It is worth the work. ~ Dave Ramsey

Change is inevitable. And in a way, change is a sort of magic. However, not everyone believes in something as frugal as the unexplained. ~ Katlyn Charlesworth

I have a real passion for driving. Earlier on in my life I wanted to be a race car driver. But I don't pay an extortionate amount of money for cars. I'm pretty frugal. ~ John Barrowman

He now paid the allowance that permitted his son to live in frugal idleness. ~ Joseph O'Neill