Jonathan Scott Quotes

In tight quarters, it's important to choose small-scale items.

The best way to maximize storage in a small space is with custom cabinets.

I don't believe in having spaces in the home that don't get used. We pay so much for square footage that to waste it is criminal.

I live in an old house with no closets and no built-ins. I hate big cupboards.

I got in the habit of giving away a book as soon as I've finished it because I lived in a housing co-op at Cambridge and had no space to keep books.

With small spaces in particular you have to really follow the rule that if it's not absolutely beautiful or absolutely functional, then get rid of it.

I think kitchen real estate is very valuable, so something has to perform multiple functions for me to give it space in my drawers.

Small rooms or dwellings discipline the mind, large ones weaken it.

There are two ways to be rich: to have more or need less. It's estimated that we squander about 30 percent of our energy leaving the lights on, the refrigerator door open, and so on. Then there is the enormous amount of food that we expend huge amounts of energy to raise and then throw away.

I stay in one room, and it's easier to live there, to control it, to make it warm. It seems to me a convenient way to live, and it's cheap.

We continue to be spilled on by consumerism even though we know it doesn't make us happy.

With material wealth and in a culture where many of us defines our self-worth by what we have and what we own and what we achieve, it's very hard to comprehend that there are enclaves all over our big country in which people are very purposefully choosing to maintain different values.

Live simply; make compassionate choices when it comes to food.

Speed is one of the great curses of modern civilization, obsession with speed leads to quantitative approach; we come to believe that more is better. This is very materialistic, we have to realize that it is the quality of life, quality of relationships, quality of food, medicine, education and everything else which matters.

People need things. I don't live a monk's existence, I'm a consumer, but I try to do it to the level that doesn't feel like there's an overabundance of something.

I go on the bus, I walk. A friend left his car recently at my house and I took it out one day just for 15 minutes and it was terrible. You know why? I felt like I was back in LA again. Four or five years ago, when I had a car and I had been out of the city I wouldn't feel I was back until I got in the car, you know. But now I feel off the grid. I feel that I am not part of the culture. And because I don't have a car I don't really go anywhere to buy things. In fact, I have been in a slow process of selling and giving away everything I own.

My father's nature turned out no waste product; he had none of that useless stuff in him that lies in heaps near factories. He took his own happiness with him.

He will always be a slave who does not know how to live upon a little.

The greatest part of what we say and do is really unnecessary. If a man takes this to heart, he will have more leisure and less uneasiness.

In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely; as the pursuits of the simpler nations are still the sports of the more artificial.

We have come to accept bigger and bigger things as meaning greater and greater efficiency, more and more prosperity and more and more freedom. The two do not go together of necessity.

The consumption society has made us feel that happiness lies in having things, and has failed to teach us the happiness of not having things.

If all the world Should in a pet of temp'rance, feed on pulse, Drink the clear stream, and nothing wear but frieze, Th' All-giver would be unthank'd, would be unprais'd.

The world has not yet learned the riches of frugality.

I do think if you aim for quality, it's not so much about consumerism. The idea is 'Buy less, choose well, make it last.'