frugality
idea · 3 works · 3 mentions · 5 anchored passages
moderation · a frugal and honest system of legislation · frugalitas · simplicity · temperance
in the texts
Tusculan Disputations
A Roman virtue term analyzed as encompassing fortitude, justice, and prudence, opposed to worthlessness (nequitia).
Frugality, as I think, is from \"fruit\" (frux), than which nothing better comes from the earth;
but I am not sure whether that virtue may rightly be called frugality, which among the Greeks has a narrower meaning, who call frugi men chrēsimous, that is, merely useful;
But because neither he who through fear has abandoned his post, which is cowardice, nor he who through avarice has not returned a deposit secretly given, which is injustice, nor he who through rashness has managed an affair badly, which is folly, is wont to be called frugi, therefore frugality has embraced three virtues — fortitude, justice, prudence (although this indeed is common to the virtues, …
Construction Construed and Constitutions Vindicated
The republican virtue of restrained, honest public expenditure, presented as essential to preserving liberty.
It would account to a great extent, for our deviation so rapidly from that frugality, deemed essential to the preservation of liberty by almost all the real patriots who have ever appeared.
the recommendations of frugality as indispensable to the continuance of our free form of government, so often recommended, and so steadily practised by two of the wisest and most virtuous patriots who ever blessed a nation (Washington and Jefferson) derided;
Letters to Lucilius
The ideal of living with minimal possessions and without concern for outward show, contrasted with luxury and false shame.
I do not yet dare to carry my frugality openly.
He who blushes at a shabby carriage will boast of a costly one.
Oh, how great was the glory of the age, that a triumphant general, a censor, and what is above all these, a Cato, was content with a single nag, and not even with a whole one!