Being Frugal Quotes

“Isn't Glen an accountant? We're all frugal." These days, by necessity.
"You might be frugal, but Glen is cheap. For Valentine's Day, he actually suggested that we go to a card shop, exchange cards in the aisle, then put them back because he didn't see the use in spending the money!"
"Okay, that's cheap."
Libby huffed. "I swear, if he cuts up my Bloomingdale's card, I'll cut off his pecker.”

— Stephanie Bond

“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

“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

“Nothing in this universe is complex to understand than the universe itself. Everything else is as frugal as a cold wave.”

— Aniruddha Sastikar

“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

“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

“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

“A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which 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, and this is necessary to close the circlue of our felicities.”

— Thomas Jefferson

“It's more frugal to wear ties that are given to you.”

— Jim Flaherty

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

— Richard C. Armitage

“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

“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

“My grandfather could barely read. My grandmother had a sixth-grade education. They were people who were industrious. They were frugal.”

— Clarence Thomas

“I drive a tiny Toyota iQ. I'm quite frugal and often cut my own hair.”

— Carol Vorderman

“And a musician has to learn to be frugal and to carefully manage financial affairs.”

— Charlie Byrd

“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

“My parents were both in the army for 20 years and then worked in government departments; but they had gone through the Great Depression and known lean times. They always remained extremely frugal and lived far below their means.”

— Veronica Webb

“Polaroid by its nature makes you frugal. You walk around with maybe two packs of film in your pocket. You have 20 shots, so each shot is a world.”

— Patti Smith

“When you concentrate on agriculture and industry and are frugal in expenditures, Heaven cannot impoverish your state.”

— Xun Zi

“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

“She believed in public service; she felt she had to roll up her sleeves and do something useful for the war effort. She organized a Comfort Circle, which collected money through rummage sales. This was spent on small boxes containing tobacco and candies, which were sent off to the trenches. She threw open Avilion for these functions, which (said Reenie) was hard on the floors. In addition to the rummage sales, every Tuesday afternoon her group knitted for the troops, in the drawing room
washcloths for the beginners, scarves for the intermediates, balaclavas and gloves for the experts. Soon another battalion of recruits was added, on Thursdays
older, less literate women from south of the Jogues who could knit in their sleep. These made baby garments for the Armenians, said to be starving, and for something called Overseas Refugees. After two hours of knitting, a frugal tea was served in the dining room, with Tristan and Iseult looking wanly down.”

— Margaret Atwood

“Jeff Smith was the Julia Child of my generation. When his television show, 'The Frugal Gourmet,' made its debut on PBS in the 1980s, it conveyed such genuine enthusiasm for cooking that I was moved for the first time to slap down cold cash for a collection of recipes.”

— Alton Brown

“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

“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

“I'm known for value for money. I was brought up to be frugal, and it's definitely a factor in my success. I was born in the Fifties, which was a frugal era, and my family had to be very careful with money out of necessity.”

— John Caudwell

“I'm so frugal, you wouldn't believe it.”

— Serena Williams

“I was always the frugal kid growing up because I was saving for college. Or I was always that kid that was like, 'I'm going to save my babysitting money so I can eat an expensive dinner when I go to Europe.'”

— Shailene Woodley

“I have three precious things which I hold fast and prize. The first is gentleness; the second is frugality; the third is humility, which keeps me from putting myself before others. Be gentle and you can be bold; be frugal and you can be liberal; avoid putting yourself before others and you can become a leader among men.”

— Lao Tzu

“I'm frugal. I'm not a very acquisitive woman. I never waste food. If you prepare your own food, you engage with the world, it tastes alive. It tastes good.”

— Vivienne Westwood

“And a workman, even of the lowest and poorest order, if he is frugal and industrious, may enjoy a greater share of the necessaries and conveniences of life than it is possible for any savage to acquire.”

— Adam Smith

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

— Yotam Ottolenghi

“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

“You have to be ready for hard work and frugal spending to get the idea off the ground.”

— Garrett Camp

“I'm frugal. It's often cheaper to take the subway. And I'm an environmentalist, which my mother instilled in me, so I really believe in public transportation. And finally, I love the proximity to people in the subway.”

— Chloe Sevigny

“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

“Wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner.”

— Pope Leo XIII

“If nature has been frugal in her gifts and endowments, there is the more need of art to supply her defects. If she has been generous and liberal, know that she still expects industry and application on our part, and revenges herself in proportion to our negligent ingratitude. The richest genius, like the most fertile soil, when uncultivated, shoots up into the rankest weeds; and instead of vines and olives for the pleasure and use of man, produces, to its slothful owner, the most abundant crop of poisons.”

— David Hume

“Mark what and how great blessings flow from a frugal diet; in the first place, thou enjoyest good health.”

— Horace

“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

“Fortune provides a man's table with luxuries, virtue with only a frugal meal.”

— Democritus

“So if you want a culture where people work hard, & pay attention to detail, focus on the customer, are frugal: you have to do it yourself.”

— Sam Altman

“Safe Despair it is that raves- Agony is frugal. Puts itself severe away For its own perusal.”

— Emily Dickinson

“How frugal is the chariot that bears a human soul.”

— Emily Dickinson

“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

“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

“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

“Make the best use of both time and money. Add industry and frugal dealings if they pay very well and if you're free to it.”

— Benjamin Franklin

“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

“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

“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