Seneca the Younger Quotes

We must not think of the things we could do with, but only of the things that we can't do without.

I was extravagant in the matter of cameras - anything photographic - I had to have the best. But that was to further my work. In most things I have gone along with the plainest - or without.

It is only luxury and avarice that make poverty grievous to us; for it is a very small matter that does our business, and when we have provided against cold, hunger, and thirst, all the rest is but vanity and excess.

I just spend my money on the essentials. Just basically food and shelter.

I really don't require a whole lot in life.

I've learned that you don't need a lot in life. If it can't fit into a suitcase, you don't really need it.

I have a few toys. But I live very simply.

I like simplicity; I don't need luxury.

It frequently happens that an element of the standard of living which set out with being primarily wasteful, ends with becoming, in the apprehension of the consumer, a necessary of life.

People say, 'Well everybody needs a cellphone.' Well, what does 'need' mean? Do you need an iPad? How about a computer? A printer?

I really don't need luxury.

You don't have to make things which are just expensive.

I don't need a lot: I've got a telly, a computer - what else can you get me?

What I can't fit into my suitcase is probably something I don't need.

The rest of the world lives to eat, while I eat to live.

As I sat down, though, I realized that you can get used to certain luxuries that you start to think they're necessities, but when you have to forgo them, you come to see that you don't need them after all. There was a big difference between needing things and wanting things--though a lot of people had trouble telling the two apart--and at the ranch, I could see, we have pretty much everything we'd need but precious little else.

Adequacy is sufficient. All else is superfluous.

I'm not the poorest president. The poorest is the one who needs a lot to live.

Revenue on the consumption of foreign articles is paid cheerfully by those who can afford to add foreign luxuries to domestic comforts.

Simplicity of life, even the barest, is not a misery, but the very foundation of refinement.

When the farmer has got his house, he may not be the richer but the poorer for it, and it be the house that has got him... a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.

Nature...does not act by means of many things when it can do so by means of a few.

so few in reality are the true necessities of man

Love is a luxury. It's something that people are allowed to indulge in when they're not simply trying to survive and keep other people alive.

No more things should be presumed to exist than are absolutely necessary.