Sunday, September 4, 2011 – Choosing Austerity
Americans have always been able to handle austerity and even adversity. Prosperity is what is doing us in. ~ James Reston
So-called ”austerity” – the stoic injunction – is the path towards universal destruction. It is the old, the fatal, competitive path. ”Pull in your belt” is a slogan closely related to ”gird up your loins” or the guns-butter metaphor. ~ Wyndham Lewis
Where life is colorful and varied, religion can be austere or unimportant. Where life is appallingly monotonous, religion must be emotional, dramatic and intense. Without the curry, boiled rice can be very dull. ~ C. Northcote Parkinson
Too austere a philosophy makes few wise men; too rigorous politics, few good subjects; too hard a religion, few persons whose devotion is of long continuance. ~ Charles de Saint-Evremond
The engine which drives enterprise is not thrift, but profit. ~ John Maynard Keynes
The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling. ~ Ambrose Bierce
Thrift comes too late when you find it at the bottom of your purse. ~ Seneca
Industry, thrift and self-control are not sought because they create wealth, but because they create character. ~ Calvin Coolidge
The thrift that does not make a man charitable sours into avarice. ~ M. W. Harrison
Frugality may be termed the daughter of Prudence, the sister of Temperance, and the parent of Liberty. ~ Samuel Johnson
Frugality is misery in disguise. ~ Publilius Syrus
The reward of energy, enterprise and thrift is taxes. ~ William Feather
I’m spending a year dead for tax reasons. ~ Douglas Adams
We’ll hold the distinction of being the only nation in the history of the world that ever went to the poor house in an automobile. ~ Will Rogers
Very many people spend money in ways quite different from those that their natural tastes would enjoin, merely because the respect of their neighbors depends upon their possession of a good car and their ability to give good dinners. As a matter of fact, any man who can obviously afford a car but genuinely prefers travels or a good library will in the end be much more respected than if he behaved exactly like everyone else. ~ Bertrand Russell
Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with course and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: “Is this the condition that I feared?” ~ Seneca
Each class preaches the importance of those virtues it need not exercise. The rich harp on the value of thrift, the idle grow eloquent over the dignity of labor. ~ Oscar Wilde
We can pay our debts to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves. ~ John Buchan
When debts are not paid because they cannot be paid, the best thing to do is not talk about them, and shuffle the cards again. ~ Camilo Jose Cela
Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons. ~ Woody Allen
Money is the opposite of the weather. Nobody talks about it, but everybody does something about it. ~ Rebecca Johnson
Lack of money is the root of all evil. ~ George Bernard Shaw
The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated. ~ H. L. Mencken
It is pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness; poverty and wealth have both failed. ~ Kin Hubbard
I used to have a drug problem, but now I have enough money. ~ David Lee Roth
We owe something to extravagance, for thrift and adventure seldom go hand in hand. ~ Jennie Churchill
Just Above Sunset 