"Frugality" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his mother had an inexhaustible treasure in their lamp, and might have had whatever they wished for, yet they lived with the same frugality as before, except that Aladdin dressed better; as for his mother, she wore no clothes but what she earned by spinning cotton. After their manner of living, it may easily be supposed that the money for which Aladdin had ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... store; When Caesar made a noble dame a wh***; In this the lust, in that the avarice Were means, not ends; ambition was the vice. That very Caesar, born in Scipio's days, Had aimed, like him, by chastity at praise. Lucullus, when frugality could charm, Had roasted turnips in the Sabine farm. In vain the observer eyes the builder's toil, But quite mistakes the scaffold for the pile. In this one passion man can strength enjoy, As fits give vigour, just when they destroy. Time, that on all things lays his lenient ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... capital or from property that is theirs by reason of years of frugality, industry, and thrift are penalized by being denied the right to vote. They are placed in the class with criminals, while the profligate, the tramp who works enough to obtain the means by which he can hold body and soul together, is able to qualify under the constitution of Russia and is entitled ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... 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, ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... frugality demanded that Mrs. Brenton should remove her best clothes, before she essayed to administer justice at short range. Scott, left to himself, played on contentedly the while, until his camp was rudely invaded by a foe clad in a second-best petticoat and a shoulder ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... nominated twenty years before fell in. He was made secretary to the island of Jamaica; and his whole income amounted to twelve hundred a year, a fortune which, for a single man, was in that age not only easy but splendid. He continued, however, to practise the frugality which he had learned when he could scarce spare, as Swift tells us, a shilling to pay the chairman who carried him to Lord Halifax's. Though he had nobody to save for, he laid up at least as much ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... parents or friends of the boys to dine with you. You live upon the fragments left by the boys, and have nothing worth asking them to; it will be a proof of your frugality, and they will the more readily ...
— The Academy Keeper • Anonymous
... may form habits of honesty, or knavery; truth, or falsehood; of industry, or idleness; frugality, or extravagance; of patience, or impatience; self-denial, or self-indulgence; of kindness, cruelty, politeness, rudeness, prudence, perseverance, circumspection. In short, there is not a virtue, nor a vice; not an act of body, nor of mind, to which we may ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... more evident, let us reverse the foregoing suppositions; and carrying everything to the opposite extreme, consider what would be the effect of these new situations. Suppose a society to fall into such want of all common necessaries, that the utmost frugality and industry cannot preserve the greater number from perishing, and the whole from extreme misery; it will readily, I believe, be admitted, that the strict laws of justice are suspended, in such a pressing emergence, and give place to the stronger motives ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... should be hailed rather as a philosopher, for while I watch the floating smoke I meditate on the vanity of man and his fleeting occupations. The moral of my tale is moderation; for my pipe is food and drink at once, and I know no better example of Nature's frugality than the fact that an ounce of tobacco provides me with a meal. Women delight in tea even as men prize tobacco. This difference in taste leads to friction of temper. Drinkers of tea inhale many a disagreeable whiff of tobacco, and lovers of tobacco are driven to accept many an unwelcome ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... it is understood that he was born shortly after the Jacobite rebellion of 1715, at Roslin, a picturesque village about six miles from Edinburgh. He became a tobacconist in Edinburgh, along with his brother John, and by the exercise of steady industry and frugality, he was enabled to purchase Spylaw, a small estate in the parish of Colinton, about four miles from Edinburgh, where he erected a snuff-mill on the banks of the Water of Leith, a small stream which flows through the finely-wooded ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... did, and so long as she was loved by this, the only being on earth she had ever been taught to love herself, Adrienne would not think an instant of the ills caused by the infirmities of age. She husbanded her money, with the utmost frugality, and contrived to save even a few sous daily, out of her own wages, to add to her grandmother's stock. This she could not have done, but for the circumstance of there being so much in the house of their early stores, to help eke out the supplies of the moment. But, at the end of a fortnight, ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... a widow of German parentage, whose husband had been a printer; but he and his seven children were all dead. Gunhilde, for such was her name, was old, poor, and lonely, and she became their housekeeper. Years of resolute toil and prudent frugality passed over the brothers, till they were no longer strangers in old London, nor inconsiderable among the inhabitants of the Row. Their press had done its part in the work of the times. They had printed the 'Book of Sports' and the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... The Spaniard, from highest to lowest, was proud, ignorant, and lazy. For a people endowed by nature with many noble qualities—courage, temperance, frugality, endurance, quickness of perception; a high sense of honour, a reverence for law—the course of the national history had proved as ingeniously bad a system of general education as ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... typical of the feeling in all Western America. The Chinese are considered stupid, because they are imperfectly acquainted with English. They are held to be base, because their dexterity and frugality enable them to underbid the lazy, luxurious Caucasian. They are said to be thieves; I am sure they have no monopoly of that. They are called cruel; the Anglo-Saxon and the cheerful Irishman may each reflect before he bears the accusation. I am told, again, that ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and had wide possessions in Asia Minor and Northern Africa. Wealth had flowed abundantly into the imperial city, and with it pride, corruption, and oppression. The great grew greater, the poor poorer, and the old simplicity and frugality of Rome were replaced by overweening luxury and greed ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... of the piano scores of all my operas, out of which whole acts are repeatedly performed at concerts and at choral unions. At the beginning of the winter I shall go again to Paris to have something performed and to put my opera matter into order. You cannot imagine what joy one finds in frugality if one knows that thereby the noblest thing, freedom, is assured; you know how long I was brewing in my blood the Dresden catastrophe, only I had no presentiment of the exact hurricane which would drive me thence; but you are thoroughly convinced that ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... domestic probity and discipline. If she possesses handmaids, she teaches them their work in the kitchen or at the loom; if she possesses none, she brings up her big daughters in the right ways of modesty, frugality, and obedience to the gods; and her tall sons religiously obey her when she sends them out to chop the firewood in the rain ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... these easy luxuries you may buy from a little hunchback the local weekly periodical, the Vita Nuova, for three centimes (the two centimes left from your sou, if you are under the spell of this magical frugality, will do to give the waiter). My young friend was sitting on his father's knee and helping himself to the half of a strawberry-ice with which his mamma had presented him. He had so many misadventures with his spoon that this lady ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... without an army, navy, officers, coast-defence, or national credit, for the avowed purpose of securing free trade and sailors' rights by measures which the mercantile community rejected. In its progress, the want of discipline, forts, ships, munitions of war, credit abroad, and frugality at home, was most severely felt; and the principal honor derived from it arose from the exploits of the few frigates left to us by improvidence and parsimony, from the achievements of the Northern troops of Scott, Brown, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... could only make such Swiss cheese here," he said, "we should not be so poor. Generally speaking, I found after my modest investigations in that country that they are ahead of us in every respect. We have everything to learn from them: their frugality, their diligence, their long working ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... are not capable of being imitated, and even outdone in many of their most striking effects, by the worst of vices. Malignity and envy will carve much more deeply, and finish much more sharply, in the work of retrenchment, than frugality and providence. I do not, therefore, wonder that gentlemen have kept away from such a task, as well from good-nature as from prudence. Private feeling might, indeed, be overborne by legislative reason; and a man of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... his affliction was that he was left almost penniless. With all the thrift, frugality, and self-denial of mother and aunt, they had been able to leave the youth hardly anything at all when they died. The humble home, with all its belongings, was sold for less than the mortgage, and Tom found himself ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... can have no prudential reason to rejoice that her daughter has formed such a connection. It is this family I lately visited, and by which I am pressed to return, for they know the necessity there is for me to live with the utmost frugality, and hopeless of my succeeding in town, they invite me to partake of their little fortune, and as I cannot mend my prospects, to avoid making them worse." The letter ends with an earnest appeal to Burke to help him to any honest occupation that may enable him ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... dreadful monotony of our wearisome march; but each succeeding twenty-four hours our loads became visibly lighter, as our supplies were rapidly diminishing. It had already become apparent that even in the exercise of the greatest frugality, our stock of provisions would not last until we could reach the settlements, so some of the most expert shots were selected to hunt for game; but even in this they were not successful, the very birds seeming to have abandoned the country in ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... some acquaintance among the young people of the town, that were lovers of reading, with whom I spent my evenings very pleasantly; and gaining money by my industry and frugality, I lived very agreeably, forgetting Boston as much as I could, and not desiring that any there should know where I resided, except my friend Collins, who was in my secret, and kept it when I wrote to him. At length, an incident happened that sent me back again ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... and drink, however, the Bulgarians' habits are usually governed by an intense frugality. The country gives no very rich return to the peasant. He almost invariably marries young and has a large family. The household budget thus leaves very little margin over from the strictly necessary food-expenses. That margin the Bulgarian prefers in the ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox
... am now going to send you, is an unhappy Story in low Life, and will recommend it self, so that you must excuse the Manner of expressing it. A poor idle drunken Weaver in Spittle-Fields has a faithful laborious Wife, who by her Frugality and Industry had laid by her as much Money as purchased her a Ticket in the present Lottery. She had hid this very privately in the Bottom of a Trunk, and had given her Number to a Friend and Confident, who had promised ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... reasonably. Fortune's goods ought not to be so highly prized as the reason of many prizes them, and as my habits, in spite of reason's dissent and remonstrances, compel me to prize them. They contribute less to your happiness, and that industry and frugality which supplies their place, you look upon without disgust; with even some ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... it is that cardinal virtue, prudence; so I beg you will sit down, and either compose or borrow a panegyric. If you are going to borrow, apply to[97] ... to compose, or rather to compound, something very clever on my remarkable frugality; that I write to one of my most esteemed friends on this wretched paper, which was originally intended for the venal fist of some drunken exciseman, to take dirty notes in a ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... endless service of beauty. Of course, a woman—but never the animal; the spirit always. Born in the spirit, served in the spirit, ending in the spirit. A direct contradiction, you see, to nature and common sense, frugality and the sacred symbol of ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... present owner, who was too wise, if even he had been of an ostentatious disposition, not to have sedulously resisted its promptings. The jealousy of the nation of brothers was easily excited, and departure from simplicity and frugality was apt to be commented upon by domiciliary visits, and the eager imposition of fanciful fines. That portion of the vast building occupied by Prosper Alix and the citoyenne Berthe, his daughter, presented an appearance of well-to-do comfort and modest ease, which contrasted ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the irretrievable loss of human life; I lamented that the bravest and noblest were swept away the first; that the gentlest and most domestic were the earliest mourners; that frugality was supplanted by intemperance; that order was succeeded by confusion; and that your Majesty was destroying the glorious plans you alone ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... that she meant to be a friend to her all her life, and only wished that her mamma, in order to enable her to do so, would add a little to her weekly allowance, and she would manage it with all the frugality possible. ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... would have been easier than the imposition of a P50 poll tax. To compel them to take up agriculture was out of the question in a Colony where there was so little guarantee for their personal safety. The frugality, constant activity, and commendable ambition of the Celestial clashes with the dissipation, indolence and want of aim in life of the native. There is absolutely no harmony of thought, purpose, or habit between the Philippine Malay native ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... serve with humility persons of the three regenerate orders, viz., Brahmanas, Kshatriyas and Vaisyas. The religion of the house-holder, O chief of the Nagas, consists in doing good to all creatures. Frugality of fare and observance of vow in due order, constitute merit (for persons of all classes) in consequence of the connection that exists between the senses and the duties of religion.[1933] "Who am I? Whence have I come? What are others to me and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... he lived a quiet life in Boston, unmarried, fond of books, and practicing unusual frugality for a person in liberal circumstances. He had a singular abhorrence of luxury, waste, and ostentation. He often said that the cause of more than half the bankruptcies was spending too much money. Nothing could induce him to accept personal service. He was one of those men who wait upon themselves, ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... of the sheep and the costs of his prosecution, he becomes a grievous burden to the honest tax-payer, who has to supply him with chaplains, schoolmasters, surgeons, cooks, bakers, tailors, and a whole host of servants in livery to minister to his wants, and so unfit him for the practice of economy, frugality, and other kindred virtues when his fetters are cut. Under a law based on the principle of restitution, the man of good character and industrious habits might be able to find sureties to enable him to discharge his debt to the State under the ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... canyon flowed on, more peacefully than the river cleaving its center. There was much to do and much to learn. It was, actually, a monastic existence, compounded of frugality, abstinence, continence and devotion to scholarly pursuits. Within a year, gardens flourished; within two years herds grazed the grassy slopes; within three years cloth was being woven on looms in the ancient ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... A turbulent minority had destroyed all the benefits of the able administration of Henry. Incapable ministers, the creatures of court intrigue, squandered in a few years the treasures which Sully's economy and Henry's frugality had amassed. Scarce able to maintain their ground against internal factions, they were compelled to resign to other hands the helm of European affairs. The same civil war which armed Germany against itself, excited ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... the early fathers of the republic; displaying before the eyes of the people a model wherein the loftiest genius, the most varied and profound learning, the most fervid patriotism ever sinking self in country, the severe simplicity and frugality which should ever shine along the track of a true republican statesman, and an escutcheon undebased by a solitary vice, were united in all their fair and grand proportions; how, in his happy home, he dispensed, freely and without price, the marvellous stores of learning ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... will be attributed to our new government, which are now taking their rise from that industry and frugality into the practice of which the people have been forced from necessity. I really believe that there never was so much labour and economy to be found before in the country as at the present moment. If they persist ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... Newport and Beverly and Bar Harbor in summer, he had learned how to spend it, had watched admiringly how others spent their wealth. He had begun to educate his family in spending,—in using to brilliant advantage the fruits of thirty years' hard work and frugality. With his cousin Caspar Porter he maintained a small polo stable at Lake Hurst, the new country club. On fair days he left the lumber yards at noon, while Alexander Hitchcock was still shut in behind the dusty glass doors of his ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... and honorably in regard to money matters, keeping an exact account of her expenditures, and carefully guarding against any extravagances; and while her husband is industriously at work, she should seek to encourage him, by her own frugality, to be economical, thrifty, enterprising and prosperous in his business, that he may be better enabled, as years go by and family cares press more heavily on each, to afford all the comforts and perhaps some of the luxuries of a happy home. No condition is hopeless ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... Stingy Willis acted upon the principle, "a penny saved is a penny gained,"—denied himself every luxury, and lived with extreme frugality, as the man who kept the meat-market and grocery at the corner frequently testified. Even in the coldest weather, a fire was never kindled in the house till evening; for over its dying embers the solitary man made his coffee the following morning. A basket of coal lasted him a week, and he sifted ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... grass, and they gather round it, and forget their toils in speculations upon the future. But the morrow draws on, with its demands upon their strength; so they lay them down to rest. In due course they reach Albany, then a small Dutch town filled with Dutch people, Dutch comforts and frugality, and Dutch cabbage. This in those days was one of the outposts of civilization. Beyond was a wilderness-land but little known. Some necessaries are purchased, and again our little company launch away. They reach ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... are the Lucanians of old. "They bring them up from childhood in the woods among the shepherds," says Justinus, "without servants, and even without any clothes to cover them, or to lie upon, that from their early years they may become inured to hardiness and frugality, and have no intercourse with the city. They live upon game, and drink nothing but water or milk." But the majority of modern Sila shepherds are shrewd fellows of middle age (many of them have been to America), ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... wasteful people, and in the wake of our wastefulness have followed a dismal train of disasters, cold, hunger, and many another form of distress. Deplore and repent of our prodigality as we may, the effects abide to remind us of our decline from the high plane of industry, frugality, and conservation of leisure. Nor can we hope to avert a repetition of this crisis unless education comes in to guide ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... began to gnaw it; but, in the instant when he had cut the string, the severed bow leaped forcibly up, and wounded him in the breast, so that he departed in the agonies of death. This I meant, when I cited the verse, Frugality should ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... shillings. Also, what is the least amount of porridge (without milk or sugar), haricot beans, or lentil soup, that will preserve a person from starvation, if he takes nothing else, and works fourteen hours a day? I intend imitating my Teutonic rivals in frugality, as well as in languages; any dietetic hints (especially from Scotchmen), would therefore be welcomed by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 11, 1893 • Various
... which I have described the above prospect, I felt fully convinced of the frugality and industry of these savages. The regularity of their plantations, and the order with which they carry on their various works, differ greatly from most of their brethren in the South Seas, as here the chiefs and their families set ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... the course. This was another unexpected stroke, as I was more than seventy miles distant from home: however, I retired to a little ale-house by the road-side, and in this place, the usual retreat of indigence and frugality, I laid me down patiently to wait the issue of my disorder. I languished here for near three weeks; but at last my constitution prevailed, though I was unprovided with money to defray the expences of my entertainment. It is possible the anxiety from this last circumstance alone might have brought ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... course should drive the people out of the country (for to a coalition therein they will never come), it will be hard to find another people that will stay long or stand under any considerable burden in it, seeing it is not a country where men can subsist without hard labour and great frugality. ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... the boy an interesting table containing the days of the week, at the head of seven columns, and opposite cross-columns below were the virtues he aimed to acquire—patience, temperance, frugality and the like. The book contained a table for every week in the year. It had been his practise, at the end of each day, to enter a black mark opposite the virtues in which ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... mutual interest require. In the 'Home' thus provided; which embraces security, freedom of action, and social enjoyment, the Directors desire to create and sustain mutual sympathy, trust, and good-will, and to employ those agencies which tend most to mature habits of frugality, self-respect, and ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... institutions by rewards and immunities for the promotion of agriculture, arts, sciences, commerce, trades, manufactures, and a natural history of the country; to countenance and inculcate the principles of humanity and general benevolence, public and private charity, industry and frugality, honesty and punctuality in all their dealings; sincerity, good humor, and all social affections and generous sentiments among the people." I must confess that, had the words of that little constitutional enactment been ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... Egypt freely permitted, not only the quality and proportion of what they ate and drank to be prescribed them, (a thing customary in Egypt, whose inhabitants were all sober, and whose air inspired frugality,) but even that all their hours, and almost every action, should be under the regulation ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... du Boloney while th' prisidint iv th' Fr-rinch places a goold wreath on his fair brow an' says: 'In th' name iv th' ar-rts an' science, undher th' motto iv our people, "Libertinity, insanity, an' frugality," I crown ye th' champeen soapmaker iv th' wurruld. [Cheers.] Be ye'er magnificint invintion ye have dhrawn closer th' ties between Paris an' Goshen, Indyanny [frantic applause], which I hope will niver be washed away. I wish ye much success as ye climb th' lather iv fame.' Th' invintor is thin ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... those in front was Macintosh, for whom the wilful waste of a bullet was almost an impossibility, frugality and marksmanship combining to render the task painful to his feelings. He prided himself on his shooting, and did not like even to appear to make a miss. Not able to catch a glimpse of a foe where he was, he crept thirty yards higher, to a ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... lace-women, embroiderers, and sit with them sometimes twice a day upon French intelligences; and then come forth varied like nature, or oftener than she, and better by the help of art, her emulous servant. This do I affect: and how will you be able, lady, with this frugality of speech, to give the manifold but necessary instructions, for that bodice, these sleeves, those skirts, this cut, that stitch, this embroidery, that lace, this wire, those knots, that ruff, those roses, this girdle, that fanne, the t'other scarf, these gloves? ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... the days of Plato to those of Rousseau, have recommended as the fundamental law of a perfect republic. This theory results, it must be acknowledged, from principles of reasoning most flattering to the human character. If industry, frugality, and disinterested integrity were alike the virtues of all, there would, apparently, be more of the social spirit, in making all property a common stock, and giving to each individual a proportional title to the wealth of the whole. Such is the basis upon which Plato forbids, in ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... clean and neat; and it may be said with truth that the artisans and handicraftsmen live at Florence even better than the citizens themselves: for whereas the former change from tavern to tavern, according as they find good wine, and only think of joyous living; the latter in their homes, with the frugality of merchants, who for the most part make but do not spend money, or with the moderation of orderly burghers, never exceed mediocrity. Nevertheless there are not wanting families, who keep a splendid table and live like nobles, such as ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... intelligent culture of the soil, there habits of patient industry must be formed. The alternations of summer and winter excite to forethought and providence, and the comparative poverty of the soil will prompt to frugality. Man naturally aspires to improve his condition by all the means within his power. He becomes a careful observer of nature, he treasures up the results of observation, he compares one fact with another and notes their relations, and he makes new experiments to test his ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... Alcibiades left the fleet, and, instead of going to Athens, went straight to Sparta, where he took up his abode. Here the changeable youth adopted the Spartan dress, lived with the utmost simplicity and frugality, and even used the laconic mode ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... on foot, or drove shabby old carriages till the axle-trees gave way. Even to his highest diplomatic agents, who resided at London and Paris, he allowed less than a thousand pounds sterling a year. The royal household was managed with a frugality unusual in the establishments of opulent subjects, unexampled in any other palace. The King loved good eating and drinking, and during great part of his life took pleasure in seeing his table surrounded by guests; yet the whole charge of his kitchen was brought ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... enabled its frequenter to follow the proper study of man, mankind. The triumphant conclusion was that a well-regulated coffee-house was "the sanctuary of health, the nursery of temperance, the delight of frugality, an academy of ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... Confucianist ritual consumed so much money that many families fell into debt and, if they were unable to pay off the debt, sank from the upper into the lower class. In order to maintain the upper class, therefore, there must be more frugality. Mo Ti's teaching won great influence. He and his successors surrounded themselves with a private army of supporters which was rigidly organized and which could be brought into action at any time ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... to his fellow soldiers, and while he indulged the prejudices of his new subjects, he affected in his dress and manners to maintain the ancient fashion of his country. He grasped with a rapacious, that he might distribute with a liberal hand; his primitive indigence had taught the habits of frugality; the gain of a merchant was not below his attention; and his prisoners were tortured with slow and unfeeling cruelty to force a discovery of their secret treasure. According to the Greeks, he departed from Normandy with only five followers on horse-back, and thirty on foot; ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... our language which is a great instance of our frugality in words, and that is the suppressing of several particles which must be produced in other tongues to make a sentence intelligible. This often perplexes the best writers, when they find the relatives "whom," "which," or "they," at their mercy, whether they may have admission or not; and ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... ch. 38, on Abstinence and Production. Believers in the glut theory usually condemn efforts to encourage frugality among the masses, calling it the "fallacy ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... or tape is still used as a primitive 'encadrement'. In a letter dated August 15, 1758, to his cousin, Mrs. Lawder (Jane Contarine), Goldsmith again refers to this device. Speaking of some 'maxims of frugality' with which he intends to adorn his room, he adds—'my landlady's daughter shall frame them with the parings of my black waistcoat.' ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... upon usury, will at last compel the sons and daughters of English families to acquaint themselves with the principles of providential economy; and to learn that food can only be got out of the ground, and competence only secured by frugality; and that although it is not possible for all to be occupied in the highest arts, nor for any, guiltlessly, to pass their days in a succession of pleasures, the most perfect mental culture possible to men is founded on ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... pass from one country to another you will find this difference in tendencies to action. In Germany, for example, you will find something that amounts almost to a national fervor for economy and frugality. You will find it expressing itself in the care with which the German housewife does her marketing. You will find it expressing itself in the intensive methods of agriculture, through which scarcely a square inch of arable land is permitted to lie fallow,—through ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... and a house with one apartment, that I may be free of all perturbation, that I may be serene and docile to what the mind shall speak, and quit and road-ready for the lowest mission of knowledge or good will, is frugality for ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Instructions upon Money, Time, Management of Provisions, Firing, Utensils, Choice of Provisions, Modes of Cooking, Stews, Soups, Broths, Puddings, Pies, Fat, Pastry, Vegetables, Modes of Dressing Meat, Bread, Cakes, Buns, Salting or Curing Meat, Frugality and Cheap Cookery, Charitable Cookery, Cookery for the Sick and Young Children. ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... Lord Stanhope ("History of England," v., 131) quotes a letter of Dr. Franklin to one of his friends in America, in which, after deploring the impossibility of preventing the act from being passed, he expresses a hope that "frugality and industry will go a great way toward indemnifying us." And he complied with Mr. Grenville's request to select a person to act as Distributor of Stamps in Pennsylvania whom he thought likely ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... to better account where they are not gratuitously lavished, and where either the parents and connections are possessed of certain property which enables them to procure the instruction for their children, or where, by their frugality and other serious and self-denying habits, they contribute, as far as they can, to benefit their offspring in this way. Surely, whether we look at the usefulness and happiness of the individual, or the ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... encounter might have been scarcely accidental on his part. She walked with him as far as the Conservatoire. In the light of the open street she thought he looked pale and hollow-cheeked; she wondered if it was from his enforced frugality, and was trying to conceive some elaborate plan of obliging him to accept her hospitality at least for a ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... to secure his independence. For this purpose he must spare from his means in order to be independent in his condition. Industry enables men to earn their living; it should also enable them to learn to live. Independence can only be established by the exercise of forethought, prudence, frugality, and self-denial. To be just as well as generous, men must deny themselves. The ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... happy content at Elmwood. His father, whom he once speaks of as a "Dr. Primrose in the comparative degree," had lost a large portion of his property, and literary journals in those days sent very small checks to young authors. So humble frugality was an attendant upon the high thinking of the poet couple, but this did not matter, since the richest objects of their ideal world could be had without price. But clouds suddenly gathered over their beautiful lives. Four children were born, three of whom died in infancy. ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... of Scandinavian history well illustrates the influence of habits of frugality upon national character: "The Danes were approaching, and one of the Swedish bishops asked how many men the province of Dalarna ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... almost every cranny of his nature. He who knows like St. Paul both how to spare and how to abound has a great knowledge; for if we take account of all the virtues with which money is mixed up—honesty, justice, generosity, charity, frugality, forethought, self-sacrifice, and of their correlative vices, it is a knowledge which goes near to cover the length and breadth of humanity, and a right measure in getting, saving, spending, ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... the impression that at the time of my visit there was no lack of food in England, but I fear that I have not done justice to the frugality of the people, much of which was self-imposed for the purpose of helping to win the war. On very, good authority I have been given to understand that food was less abundant during the winter just past; partly because of the effect of the severe weather on our American railroads, which had ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... surrounded by the rude cabins of his dusky peasantry. The more democratic, homogeneous village life of middle-class Englishmen reproduced itself in New England, where the houses of the settlers clustered about the village meeting-house and schoolhouse, and where habits of industry, frugality, and sobriety characterized every local group. In this new village life there came to be a stronger feeling of self-respect, and under the hard conditions of life in a new continent there developed a ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... ambition of Mr. Pendennis had always been to be a gentleman. It takes much time and careful saving for a provincial doctor, whose gains are not very large, to lay by enough money wherewith to purchase a house and land: but besides our friend's own frugality and prudence, fortune aided him considerably in his endeavour, and brought him to the point which he so panted to attain. He laid out some money very advantageously in the purchase of a house and ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... already? And if the dear gentleman had two or three thousand less, might he be less happy on that account? No, surely; for it would render a greater prudence on my humble part necessary, and a nearer inspection, and greater frugality, on his own; and he must be contented (if he did not, as now, perhaps, lay up every year) so long as he lived within his income.—And who will say, that the obligation to greater prudence ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... proposed. Situation of the author's house. His frugality in his furniture. The beauties of the country. His love of retirement, and choice of his friends. A description of the morning. Hymn to the sun. Contemplation of the Heavens. The existence of God inferred from a view of the beauty and ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... in the principle of the State, the heroes of the French Revolution rather perceived in social defects the source of political abuses. Thus Robespierre saw in great poverty and great riches only an obstacle to pure democracy. Consequently, he desired to establish a general Spartan frugality. ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... the victim alternately of careless indifference or of extravagant generosity. He received kicks and half-dollars intermittently, and pocketed both with stoical fortitude. But under this treatment he presently lost the docility and frugality which was part of his inheritance, and began to put his small wits against his tormentors, until they grew tired of their own mischief and his. But they knew not what to do with him. His pretty nankeen-yellow skin debarred him from the white "public school," while, although as a heathen he might ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... continues long. Rank and dignities succeed to the primitive simplicity. Unprincipled, vain, insolent, corrupt, and venal men put on God's livery to serve the Devil withal; and luxury, vice, intolerance, and pride depose frugality, virtue, gentleness, and humility, and change the altar where they should be servants, to a throne ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... LXXIII. His frugality in the furniture of his house appears even at this day, from some beds and tables still remaining, most of which are scarcely elegant enough for a private family. It is reported that he never lay upon a bed, but such as was low, and meanly furnished. He seldom wore any garment but what was made ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... communicate to my reader part of a letter I have received from an ingenious friend at Amsterdam, where there is a very noble theatre; though the manner of furnishing it with actors is something peculiar to that place, and gives us occasion to admire both the politeness and frugality of the people. ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... they sought, "they were content to earn a bare subsistence by a life of frugality and toil. They asked nothing from the soil but the reasonable returns of their own labor. No golden vision threw a deceitful halo around their path.... They were content with the slow but steady progress of their social polity. They patiently ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... are often praised for their thoroughness, industry, frugality, and thrift. These qualities are not natural to them. They received them from their rulers, and especially from Frederick William the First. He was an example to his people, and his son carried on the paternal tradition. Both Kings acted not only with thoroughness, industry, frugality, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... extravagance and recklessness about money. If some Shetlanders are improvident, it is the system which has made them so; and if it be a fact that so many have saved money, it proves that under a better system the people of Shetland would compare favourably with those of any other district in frugality and foresight. If the fisherman had his money in his hand, it is not likely that he would forget rent day and the time of short supplies which he has often to pass ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... millions absolutely free, as the Chinese are, from one such vice as drunkenness; in whose cities may be seen—what all our legislative and executive skill cannot secure—streets quiet and deserted after nine or ten o'clock at night. Add to this industry, frugality, patriotism,[:] and a boundless respect for the majesty of office: it then only remains for us to acknowledge that China is after all "a nation of much talent, and, in ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... was visiting Charles Chambers at Leamington when he saw Elliston. That he did see him there we know from Raymond's book, where an amusing occurrence is described, illustrating Munden's frugality. It seems that Lamb, Elliston and Munden drove together to Warwick Castle. On returning Munden stopped the carriage just outside Leamington, on the pretext that he had to make a call on an old friend—a regular device, as Elliston explained, to avoid ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... moral a consideration.—To proceed therefore to those considerations which will be more striking to us: How can we reasonably expect economy or frugality (or anything indeed but riot and waste) from creatures who have an interest, and must therefore have views, different ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... son of a feuar in the southern part of Dumfriesshire, who, by dint of frugality, had hoarded together from three to four hundred pounds. This sum he was resolved to employ in setting up his son in business; and, in pursuance of this resolution, at the age of fourteen William was bound as an apprentice ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... on his way. His new companion, Donald Ferguson, was a sedate Scotchman, and a thoroughly reliable man. He was possessed to the full of the frugality characteristic of the race to which he belonged, and, being more accustomed to traveling than Tom, saved our hero something in the matter of expense. He was always ready to talk of Scotland, which he evidently thought the finest country in the world. He admitted that Glasgow was ...
— The Young Adventurer - or Tom's Trip Across the Plains • Horatio Alger
... to the memory of James Nicholson, late stuard of William and Mary College. Was born in the Town of Invenck, North Britton, ano 1711, died the 22nd of January, 1773. Frugality—industry, and simplicity of manners and independence of Soul Adorned his ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... least the temptation, was already some months old; and when a bill for eight hundred pounds, payable to himself, was suddenly placed in Joseph's hand, it brought matters to an issue. He retained that bill, which, to one of his frugality, meant wealth; and he promised himself to disappear among the crowds at Waterloo, or (if that should prove impossible) to slink out of the house in the course of the evening and melt like a dream into the millions of London. By a peculiar interposition of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... has had its fill of mere exhortations to industry, frugality and perseverance. For some thousands of years men have preached to the lazy man, "Be industrious," and to the timid man, "Be bold." But such phrases never have solved and never can solve the problem for the man who feels himself lacking in both ...
— Psychology and Achievement • Warren Hilton
... downward. He must have injured himself severely, he might have been killed, if two young gentlemen had not darted forward below and caught him in their arms. Once more set the right way up, Ibsen softly thanked his saviours with much frugality of phrase—"Tak, mine Herrer!"—tenderly touched an abraded surface of his top-hat, and ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... to speak of small fortunes attributed by the economists to forethought and frugality, when we know that mere saving in itself brings in nothing, so long as the pence saved are not used to ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... that, in some measure, he prepared the way for Lycurgus towards the instruction of the Spartans. From Crete Lycurgus passed to Asia, desirous, as is said, to compare the Ionian expense and luxury with the Cretan frugality and hard diet, so as to judge what effect each had on their several manners and governments; just as physicians compare bodies that are weak and sickly with the healthy and robust. There also, probably, ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... frugality he has made himself master of any situation into which he has been placed, and none will deny that his achievements along all lines have ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... who could ensure their lasting qualities? Watt shows good judgment in suggesting that Wilkinson, the famous foundryman, should be taken into partnership. He urges his enterprising partner to apply the pruning knife and cut down expenses naively assuring him that "he was practising all the frugality in his power." As Watt's personal expenses then were only ten dollars per week, a smile rises at the prudent Scot's possible contribution to reduction in expenditure. But he was on the right lines, and at least gave Boulton the benefit of example. Watt was never disposed ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... Emperor after Emperor worshipped the Buddha. Even Tenchi, who profoundly admired the Confucian philosophy and whose experience of the Soga nobles' treason might well have prejudiced him against the faith they championed; and even Temmu, whose ideals took the forms of frugality and militarism, were lavish in their offerings at Buddhist ceremonials. The Emperor Mommu enacted a law for the better control of priests and nuns, yet he erected the temple Kwannon-ji. The great Fujiwara statesmen, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... Mr. Arkwright, son of Sir Richard, is between seventy and eighty, and by the power of unparalleled capital and habits of frugality, he is considered the most wealthy person in Europe. I heard his accumulations estimated at six, eight, and even ten millions; and he spends but 2 or L3,000. per annum. He has eight children, and provides liberally for them, and I heard ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... who confined wine to the shops of the apothecaries, that its use might be prohibited save under the direction of physicians. What a stroke of wisdom! It is doubtless to preserve the seeds of that antique frugality, emblematic of the golden age, that persons are found to this day, like you and me, who drink nothing but water, and are persuaded they possess a prevention or a cure for every ailment, provided our ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... a condition of comparative poverty is compatible with character in its highest form. A man may possess only his industry, his frugality, his integrity, and yet stand high in the rank of true manhood. The advice which Burns's father gave him was ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... real pang that I tore myself away from the Frugality Exhibition, where the culinary demonstrations were most enthralling. Just before leaving, however, I watched a wonderfully tasty hash being compounded with oddments of rabbit and banana flour. It exhaled an aroma which I hated to leave—even ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... summer. These were our only provisions. During the journey we did not sup till after sunset, and we breakfasted in the morning upon a piece of dry bread, which we had baked in the ashes the preceding evening, without either salt or leven. The frugality of these Bedouins is indeed without example; my companions, who walked at least five hours every day, supported themselves for four and twenty hours with a piece of dry black bread of about a pound and a half weight, without any other kind of nourishment. ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... the example of the ancient tribunes. [401] These extraordinary spectacles might deceive or flatter the people; and their own vanity was gratified in the vanity of their leader. But in his private life he soon deviated from the strict rule of frugality and abstinence; and the plebeians, who were awed by the splendor of the nobles, were provoked by the luxury of their equal. His wife, his son, his uncle, (a barber in name and profession,) exposed the contrast of vulgar manners ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... notably temperate in his diet, and by no means a gastronome. In his long seclusion in a Buddhist cloister he had acquired habits of severe simplicity and frugality, as a preparation for the exercise of those powers of mental concentration for which he was remarkable. At these morning repasts it was his custom to detain me in conversation relating to some topic of interest derived from his studies, or in ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... done, he would dispense with regular meals. He desired, too, that, on my return, I should be acquainted that he wished to see me in his own room at about nine o'clock; and, meanwhile, he directed that he should be left undisturbed. I found my little wife full of astonishment at Mr. Smith's strange frugality and seclusion, and very curious to learn the object of the interview he had desired with me. At nine o'clock ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... prodigality, waste; preposterousness, enormity, exorbitance, immoderation. Antonyms: economy, thrift, frugality. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming |
