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Inspirational Quotations #855

August 23, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi

A man who correctly guesses a woman’s age may be smart, but he’s not very bright.
—Lucille Ball (American Actor)

Imitation is a necessity of human nature.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (American Jurist, Author)

What is the people but a herd confused, a miscellaneous rabble, who extol things vulgar, and well weigh’d, scarce worth the praise? they praise and they admire they know not what, and know not whom, but as one leads the other.
—John Milton (English Poet)

When roused to rage the maddening populace storms, their fury-like a rolling flame, bursts forth unquenchable; but give its violence ways, it spends itself, and as its force abates, learns to obey and yields it to your will.
—Euripides (Ancient Greek Dramatist)

A man is not finished when he’s defeated; he’s finished when he quits.
—Richard Nixon (American Head of State)

In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery?
—Augustine of Hippo (Roman-African Christian Philosopher)

The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.
—Karl Marx (German Philosopher, Economist)

One’s feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into action … which bring results.
—Florence Nightingale (English Nurse)

Man and his deed are two distinct things. Whereas a good deed should call forth approbation, and a wicked deed disapprobation, the doer of the deed, whether good or wicked always deserves respect or pity as the case may be.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Every good act is charity. A man’s true wealth hereafter is the good that he does in this world to his fellows.
—Moliere (French Playwright)

Don’t give up. Courage is my conviction.
—Dhirubhai Ambani (Indian Businessperson)

A silent mouth is melodious.
—Irish Proverb

Fear of things invisible is the natural seed of that which every one in himself calleth religion.
—Thomas Hobbes (English Political Philosopher)

Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.
—Adlai Stevenson (American Diplomat)

One very important aspect of motivation is the willingness to stop and to look at things that no one else has bothered to look at. This simple process of focusing on things that are normally taken for granted is a powerful source of creativity…
—Edward de Bono (British Psychologist, Writer)

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotations #845

June 14, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi

Life itself is the proper binge.
—Julia Child (American Cook, Author)

Companies are rarely criticized for the things that they failed to try. But they are, many times, criticized for things they tried and failed at.
—Jeff Bezos (American Businessman)

Civilization, in the real sense of the term, consists not in the multiplication, but in the deliberate and voluntary reduction of wants. This alone promotes real happiness and contentment, and increases the capacity for service.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.
—Mary Oliver (American Poet)

When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.
—Ursula K. Le Guin (Science-fiction writer)

How much folly there is in human affairs.
—Persius (Roman Poet)

All great victories, be they in politics, business, art, or seduction, involved resolving vexing problems with a potent cocktail of creativity, focus, and daring. When you have a goal, obstacles are actually teaching you how to get where you want to go—carving you a path. “The Things which hurt,” Benjamin Franklin wrote, “instruct.”
—Ryan Holiday (American Author)

It takes time for a fruit to mature and acquire sweetness and become eatable; time is a prime factor for most good fortunes.
—The Vedas (Sacred Books of Hinduism)

Genius is an intellect that has become unfaithful to its destiny.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (German Philosopher)

Grown don’t mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown? What’s that suppose to mean? In my heart it don’t mean a thing.
—Toni Morrison (American Novelist)

Silence is the first door to spiritual eminence.
—Adi Shankaracharya (Indian Hindu Philosopher)

What we call education and culture is for the most part nothing but the substitution of reading for experience, of literature for life, of the obsolete fictitious for the contemporary real.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

Schools currently excel in encouraging children to express opinions, but are deficient in encouraging children to say, for example, “Oh, that’s different from my perspective … tell me more.”
—Warren Farrell (American Educator, Activist)

Pride is pleasure arising from a man’s thinking too highly of himself.
—Baruch Spinoza (Dutch Philosopher)

As time goes on, you’ll understand. What lasts, lasts; what doesn’t, doesn’t. Time solves most things. And what time can’t solve, you have to solve yourself.
—Haruki Murakami (Japanese Novelist)

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotations #830

March 1, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi

Love comes like lightning, and disappears the same way. If you are lucky, it strikes you right. If not, you’ll spend your life yearning for a man you can’t have.
—Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (Indian-born American Novelist)

To each individual the world will take on a different connotation of meaning-the important lies in the desire to search for an answer.
—T. S. Eliot (American-born British Poet)

From a distance it is something; and nearby it is nothing.
—Jean de La Fontaine (French Poet)

My God, give me neither poverty nor riches, but whatsoever it may be thy will to give, give me, with it, a heart that knows humbly to acquiesce in what is thy will.
—Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (German Writer)

Fortune may find a pot, but your own industry must make it boil.
—John Gay (English Poet, Dramatist)

War is a curtain of dense black fabric across all the hopes and kindliness of mankind. Yet always it has let through some gleams of light, and not–I am not dreaming–it grows threadbare, and here and there and at a thousand points the light is breaking through.
—H. G. Wells (English Novelist, Historian)

I’m a perfectionist, so I can drive myself mad – and other people, too. At the same time, I think that’s one of the reasons I’m successful. Because I really care about what I do.
—Michelle Pfeiffer (American Film Actress)

The one happiness is to shut one’s door upon a little room, with a table before one, and to create; to create life in that isolation from life.
—Eleonora Duse (Italian Actress)

One-half of the people of this nation to-day are utterly powerless to blot from the statute books an unjust law, or to write there a new and a just one.
—Susan B. Anthony (American Civil Rights Leader)

True love is a discipline in which each divines the secret self of the other and refuses to believe in the mere daily self.
—William Butler Yeats (Irish Poet)

Nonviolence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our being.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

One of the worst forms of mental suffering is boredom, not knowing what to do with oneself and one’s life. Even if man had no monetary, or any other reward, he would be eager to spend his energy in some meaningful way because he could not stand the boredom which inactivity produces.
—Erich Fromm (German Social Philosopher)

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotations #813

November 3, 2019 By Nagesh Belludi

Everybody is so talented nowadays that the only people I care to honor as deserving real distinction are those who remain in obscurity.
—Thomas Hardy (English Novelist, Poet)

Even for practical purposes theory generally turns out the most important thing in the end.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (American Jurist, Author)

Better know nothing than half-know many things.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (German Philosopher, Scholar)

Five things are requisite to a good officer—ability, clean hands, despatch, patience, and impartiality.
—William Penn (American Entrepreneur)

Let’s not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.
—H. L. Mencken (American Journalist, Literary Critic)

Mere color, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

The great end of life is not knowledge, but action.
—Thomas Henry Huxley (English Biologist)

In the old days villains had moustaches and kicked the dog. Audiences are smarter today. They don’t want their villain to be thrown at them with green limelight on his face. They want an ordinary human being with failings.
—Alfred Hitchcock (British-born American Film Director)

It may be long before the law of love will be recognized in international affairs. The machineries of government stand between and hide the hearts of one people from those of another.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Any kind of lasting success is rooted in honesty.
—Russell Simmons (American Music Promoter)

What morality requires, true statesmanship should accept.
—Edmund Burke (British Philosopher, Statesman )

Great dancers are not great because of their technique; they are great because of their passion.
—Martha Graham (American Choreographer)

It didn’t occur to me until later that there’s another truth, very simple: greed in a good cause is still greed.
—Stephen King (American Novelist)

This loving person is a person who abhors waste—waste of time, waste of human potential. How much time we waste. As if we were going to live forever.
—Leo Buscaglia (American Motivational Speaker)

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotations #798

July 21, 2019 By Nagesh Belludi

It’s the moment you think you can’t that you realize you can.
—Celine Dion (Canadian Singer)

Children, you must remember something. A man without ambition is dead. A man with ambition but no love is dead. A man with ambition and love for his blessings here on earth is ever so alive.
—Pearl Bailey (American Singer, Actress)

Men trust their ears less than their eyes.
—Herodotus (Ancient Greek Historian)

Pain is the deepest thing we have in our nature, and union through pain and suffering has always seemed more real and holy than any other.
—Arthur Henry Hallam (English Essayist, Poet)

I suppose that leadership at one time meant muscle; but today it means getting along with people.
—Indira Gandhi (Indian Head of State)

Living never wore one out so much as the effort not to live.
—Anais Nin (French-American Essayist)

The beginning of pride and hatred lies in worldly desire, and the strength of your desire if from habit. When an evil tendency becomes confirmed by habit, rage is triggered when anyone restrains you.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (Persian Muslim Mystic)

Do what you can to show you care about other people, and you will make our world a better place.
—Rosalynn Carter (American Humanitarian, First Lady)

To love and to be loved is the greatest happiness.
—Swami Chinmayananda (Indian Hindu Teacher)

Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.
—Bertrand A. Russell (British Philosopher, Mathematician)

To regard human beings as tools—as instruments—for the use of other human beings is not only unscientific but it is repugnant, stupid and short sighted. Tools are made by man but have not the autonomy of their maker—they have not man’s time-binding capacity for initiation, for self-direction, and self-improvement.
—Alfred Korzybski (Polish-American Philosopher)

It is possible to believe that all the past is but the beginning of a beginning, and that all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn. It is possible to believe that all the human mind has ever accomplished is but the dream before the awakening.
—H. G. Wells (English Novelist, Historian)

This is important: to get to know people, listen, expand the circle of ideas. The world is crisscrossed by roads that come closer together and move apart, but the important thing is that they lead towards the good.
—Pope Francis (Religious Leader)

Medicine deals with the states of health and disease in the human body. It is a truism of philosophy that a complete knowledge of a thing can only be obtained by elucidating its causes and antecedents, provided, of course, such causes exist. In medicine it is, therefore, necessary that causes of both health and disease should be determined.
—Avicenna (Persian Physician, Philosopher, Polymath)

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotations #784

April 14, 2019 By Nagesh Belludi

It is not as a means of procuring my own happiness that I give in charity, but I love charity that I may do good to the world.
—The Jataka Tales (Genre of Buddhist Literature)

There are three roads to ruin; women, gambling and technicians. The most pleasant is with women, the quickest is with gambling, but the surest is with technicians.
—Georges Pompidou (French Statesman)

The greatest gift a parent can give a child is unconditional love. As a child wanders and strays, finding his bearings, he needs a sense of absolute love from a parent. There’s nothing wrong with tough love, as long as the love is unconditional.
—George H. W. Bush (American Head of State)

A man in love is incomplete until he has married. Then he’s finished.
—Zsa Zsa Gabor (Hungarian-born Film Actress)

We may never be strong enough to be entirely nonviolent in thought, word and deed. But we must keep nonviolence as our goal and make strong progress towards it.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Perseverance is failing nineteen times and succeeding the twentieth.
—Julie Andrews (British Actress, Singer)

I think that one can have luck if one tries to create an atmosphere of spontaneity.
—Federico Fellini (Italian Filmmaker)

The worst part of success is trying to find someone who is happy for you.
—Bette Midler (American Actress, Singer)

Every time I appoint someone to a vacant position, I make a hundred unhappy and one ungrateful.
—Louis XIV of France (King of France)

The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and human responsibility.
—Vaclav Havel (Czech Dramatist, Statesman)

A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.
—Ezra Pound (American Poet, Critic)

We must not always judge of the generality of the opinion by the noise of the acclamation.
—Edmund Burke (British Philosopher, Statesman )

Famous men have the whole earth as their memorial.
—Pericles (Athenian Statesman)

It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.
—William Tecumseh Sherman (American Military General)

Failure really isn’t terrible if you can say to yourself, hey, I know I’m gonna be successful at what I want to do some day. Failure doesn’t become a big hangup then because it’s only temporary. If failure is absolute, then it would be a disaster, but as long as it’s only temporary you can just go and achieve almost anything.
—Jerry Della Femina (American Advertising Executive)

The last day of the old year was one of those bright, cold, dazzling winter days, which bombard us with their brilliancy, and command our admiration but never our love.
—Lucy Maud Montgomery (Canadian Novelist, Children’s Writer)

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotations #773

January 27, 2019 By Nagesh Belludi

It’ll take a smart person with passion over someone with years of experience any day. People with intelligence and passion will get the problem solved, no matter what.
—Carol Bartz (American Businesswoman)

Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family —but to a solitary and an exile his friends are everything.
—Willa Cather (American Novelist)

A diplomat is a person who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip.
—Caskie Stinnett (American Travel Writer, Humorist)

Let war stay abroad; it makes no difficulty in coming, for the man who will have in him a strong desire for glory. I disapprove of a bird’s battling in its own home.
—Aeschylus (Greek Poet)

If all the rich and all of the church people should send their children to the public schools they would feel bound to concentrate their money on improving these schools until they met the highest ideals.
—Susan B. Anthony (American Civil Rights Leader)

Show me a good loser and I will show you a loser.
—Paul Newman (American Actor, Philanthropist)

Half the work that is done in this world is to make things appear what they are not.
—Elias Root Beadle (American Clergyman)

The important thing in my view is not to pin the blame for a mistake on somebody, but rather to find out what caused the mistake.
—Akio Morita (Japanese Entrepreneur, Engineer)

Taxes are not good things, but if you want services, somebody’s got to pay for them so they’re a necessary evil.
—Michael Bloomberg (American Businessperson)

Home is a place not only of strong affections, but of entire unreserved; it is life’s undress rehearsal, its backroom, its dressing room, from which we go forth to more careful and guarded intercourse, leaving behind us much debris of cast-off and everyday clothing.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (American Abolitionist)

Those who grumble at the little thing that has fallen to their lot to do will grumble at everything. Always grumbling they will lead a miserable life…. But those who do their duty putting their shoulder to the wheel will see the light, and higher and higher duties will fall to their share.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

Whatever you do, don’t play it safe. Don’t do things the way they’ve always been done. Don’t try to fit the system. If you do what’s expected of you, you’ll never accomplish more than others expect.
—Howard Schultz (American Businessman)

A man has as much right as a woman to a good cry now and again. The snow gave me shelter; the horse understood and gave me the time.
—Robert Frost (American Poet)

The goal ever recedes from us? The greater the progress the greater the recognition of our unworthiness? Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment. Full effort is full victory.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Surround yourself only with people who are going to take you higher.
—Oprah Winfrey (American TV Personality)

To be of use in the world is the only way to happiness.
—Hans Christian Andersen (Danish Author)

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotations #772

January 20, 2019 By Nagesh Belludi

I promise to keep on living as though I expected to live forever. Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old only by deserting their ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up interest wrinkles the soul.
—Douglas MacArthur (American Military Leader)

It is necessary to try to pass one’s self always; this occupation ought to last as long as life.
—Christina, Queen of Sweden (Swedish Monarch)

You must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose.
—Indira Gandhi (Indian Head of State)

Happiness radiates like the fragrance from a flower, and draws all good things toward you. Allow your love to nourish yourself as well as others. Do not strain after the needs of life. It is sufficient to be quietly alert and aware of them. In this way life proceeds more naturally and effortlessly. Life is here to Enjoy!
—Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (Indian Hindu Religious Leader)

When lip service to some mysterious deity permits bestiality on Wednesday and absolution on Sunday, cash me out.
—Frank Sinatra (American Singer)

Man, a dunce uncouth, errs in age and youth: babies know the truth.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne (English Poet)

Hatred comes from the heart; contempt from the head; and neither feeling is quite within our control.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (German Philosopher)

It’s not within anyone’s power to save the world, but it is within your power to add whatever you can with a loving and caring and peaceful heart.
—Jack Kornfield (American Buddhist Teacher, Author)

The best thing that can happen to a human being is to find a problem, to fall in love with that problem, and to live trying to solve that problem, unless another problem even more lovable appears.
—Karl Popper (Austrian-born British Philosopher)

The secret of all effective originality in advertising is not the creation of new and tricky words and pictures, but one of putting familiar words and pictures into new relationships.
—Leo Burnett (American Journalist)

In order to build anything great, you have to be an optimist, because by definition you are trying to do something that most would consider impossible. Optimists most certainly do not listen to leading indicators of bad news.
—Andrew Grove (Hungarian-born American Businessperson)

Spirituality means waking up. Most people, even though they don’t know it, are asleep. They’re born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep, they die in their sleep without ever waking up. They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing that we call human existence.
—Anthony de Mello (Indian-born American Theologian)

Beauty is the first present nature gives to women and the first it takes away.
—George Brossin Mere (French Intellectual, Author)

Adversity not only draws people together, but brings forth that beautiful inward friendship.
—Soren Kierkegaard (Danish Philosopher, Theologian)

The applause of a single human being is of great consequence.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotations #761

November 4, 2018 By Nagesh Belludi

We Japanese enjoy the small pleasures, not extravagance. I believe a man should have a simple lifestyle—even if he can afford more.
—Masaru Ibuka (Japanese Entrepreneur, Engineer)

Silence accompanies the most significant expressions of happiness and unhappiness: those in love understand one another best when silent, while the most heated and impassioned speech at a graveside touches only outsiders, but seems cold and inconsequential to the widow and children of the deceased.
—Anton Chekhov (Russian Short Story Writer)

A lie told often enough becomes truth.
—Vladimir Lenin (Russian Revolutionary Leader)

To be or not to be is not a question of compromise. Either you be or you don’t be.
—Golda Meir (Israeli Head of State)

The art of leadership is saying no, not yes. It is very easy to say yes.
—Tony Blair (British Statesman)

I know no better augury of a young man’s future than true filial devotion. Very rarely does one go morally wrong, whose passionate love to his mother is a ruling force in his life, and whose continual desire is to gladden her heart. Next to the love of God, this is the noblest emotion. I do not remember a single instance of a young fellow going to the bad who was tenderly devoted to his parents.
—John Thain Davidson (British Presbyterian Preacher)

Look for the woman in the dress. If there is no woman, there is no dress.
—Coco Chanel (French Fashion Designer)

The opposite of good is not evil, it is indifference.
—Abraham Joshua Heschel (American Jewish Rabbi)

Maybe it was because like not only finds like; it can’t even escape from being found by its like. Even when it’s just like in one thing, because even them two with the same like was different.
—William Faulkner (American Novelist)

From the Hindu perspective, each soul is divine. All religions are branches of one big tree. It doesn’t matter what you call Him just as long as you call. Just as cinematic images appear to be real but are only combinations of light and shade, so is the universal variety a delusion. The planetary spheres, with their countless forms of life, are naught but figures in a cosmic motion picture. One’s values are profoundly changed when he is finally convinced that creation is only a vast motion picture and that not in, but beyond, lays his own ultimate reality.
—George Harrison (English Singer)

There are two kinds of people who lose money: those who know nothing and those who know everything.
—Henry Kaufman (American Economic, Financial Consultant)

Hatred ever kills, love never dies; such is the vast difference between the two. What is obtained by love is retained for all time. What is obtained by hatred proves a burden in reality for it increases hatred.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Rhythm is the basis of life, not steady forward progress. The forces of creation, destruction, and preservation have a whirling, dynamic interaction.
—Kabbalah Teaching (Jewish Mystical, Theosophical Tradition)

That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
—Henry David Thoreau (American Philosopher)

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotations

Why I’m Frugal

October 1, 2018 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Frugality Over the Ages: Frugality as a Virtue

Frugality Over the Ages

From Socrates to Thoreau, from Franklin to Gandhi, philosophers, moralists, and spiritual leaders have identified frugality as a virtue and associated simple living with wisdom, integrity, and happiness. The Cynics were the first to reject wealth, power, sex, fame, and other desires in favor of a simple life free of all possessions. Diogenes the Cynic (portrayed in image) famously lived in a wine barrel and had no worldly goods.

For the Puritans, the love of material consumption was an evil; their spiritual doctrine stressed, in the words of the American historian Edmund Morgan,

A man was but the steward of the possessions he accumulated. If he indulged himself in luxurious living, he would have that much less with which to support church and society. If he needlessly consumed his substance, either from carelessness or from sensuality, he failed to honor the God who furnished him with it.

Founding Father Benjamin Franklin, a doyen of the self-improvement movement, listed frugality as one of the 13 virtues he followed as a young man. Between 1732 and 1757, Franklin published such famous aphorisms in his Poor Richard’s Almanack as “be industrious and frugal, and you will be rich,” “beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship,” and “he that goes a-borrowing goes a-sorrowing.”

For the American philosophers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, frugality or “transcendental simplicity” was a means to a higher end. In Man the Reformer (1841,) Emerson wrote, “Economy is a high, humane office, a sacrament, when its aim is grand; when it is the prudence of simple tastes, when it is practiced for freedom, or love, or devotion.” For Thoreau, “high thinking was preferable to high living;” he wrote in Walden (1854,) “Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meager life than the poor”.

Thoreau inspired the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy. After suffering a mental breakdown in the late 1870s, Tolstoy, who was born into Russian nobility, rejected his family’s estate and serfdom. He renounced his decadent, racy lifestyle and engaged in a revolutionary brand of Christianity based on spiritual and material austerity.

Tolstoy’s philosophy showed the way for the creation of utopian communities of simple, self-sufficient living—the most famous example being the “Tolstoy Farm” ashram that Mahatma Gandhi established in South Africa. Gandhi was the quintessence of simplicity and sported austere homespun clothing. He famously said, “you may have occasion to possess or use material things, but the secret of life lies in never missing them,” and “our civilization, our culture, our [nation] depend not upon multiplying our wants—self-indulgence, but upon restricting our wants—self-denial.”

Frugality is a Moral Virtue

The distinguished career coach Marty Nemko once wrote, “I even take care to tear-off single sheets of toilet paper. Because I’m cheap? No. Because it’ll help the environment? No. I just think wasting is wrong.” That, in a nutshell, is why I’m frugal.

For me, frugality suggests an appropriate limit on individual and collective desires; it denies the materialistic expectations that the modern society imposes upon us.

Frugality is not some form of world-denying asceticism or austerity. It is a part of principled stewardship of not only the resources I’ve been blessed with but also of myself.

Frugality is about forgoing a subset of desires—as part of a quest for an abundant life. In other words, frugality restricts my indulgence of materialistic appetite, with the intention that I leave space for the cultivation of diverse forms of pleasure.

When I started to work while still in college, frugality was an element of my quest for financial independence. It became the lynchpin of a deliberate set of lifestyle choices and values. But my focus on achieving financial freedom never let me pining for the pleasures I might have had.

Six years ago, I gave up a corporate job and significant earnings in favor of a simpler life with plenty of discretionary time and money for world travel, leisure, learning, culture, and meaning.

Idea for Impact: Enjoying a rich life is more important than zealously stewarding one’s savings and investments.

Living frugally, with the particular intention of achieving financial freedom, requires a good measure of renunciation. This renunciation is easiest when one regards it not as deprivation, but as a deliberate choice in a trade-off for an enriched life.

Filed Under: Living the Good Life, Personal Finance Tagged With: Attitudes, Balance, Giving, Materialism, Money, Philosophy, Simple Living

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About: Nagesh Belludi [hire] is a St. Petersburg, Florida-based freethinker, investor, and leadership coach. He specializes in helping executives and companies ensure that the overall quality of their decision-making benefits isn’t compromised by a lack of a big-picture understanding.

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