Chuck Feeney Quotes

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

Inexpensive is good.

Kristin Brown looks as though she could have been mailed first-class to New York for about a dollar and a half.

The disparity between a restaurant's price and food quality rises in direct proportion to the size of the pepper mill.

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.

They take great pride in making their dinner cost much; I take my pride in making my dinner cost so little.

Were I Diogenes, I would not move out of a kilderkin into a hogshead, though the first had had nothing but small beer in it, and the second reeked claret.

Let him who has enough ask for nothing more.

If you've ever really been poor you remain poor at heart all your life. I've often walked when I could very well afford to take a taxi because I simply couldn't bring myself to waste the shilling it would cost.

The gods gave me a father who ruled over me and rid me of any trace of arrogance and showed me that one can live in a palace without bodyguards, extravagant attire, chandeliers, statues, and other luxuries. He taught me that it is possible to live instead pretty much in the manner of a private citizen without losing any of the dignity and authority a ruler must possess to discharge his imperial duties effectively.

If you wish to make Pythocles rich, do not add to his store of money, but subtract from his desires.

A tablecloth restaurant is still one of the great rewards of civilization.

Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need - a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.

People need to understand. If they go to a show on Broadway and find seventy people working but only fifty spectators, how much would the ticket cost? That's what El Bulli's about. There are seventy actors who are playing for just fifty spectators. Is the price expensive? It's relative. How much does a normal dinner at a five-star hotel restaurant cost? Four hundred dollars. It's the same as El Bulli. But you can also think of it this way: How much would it cost to eat something that nobody else is eating?

Let there be wealth without tears; enough for the wise man who will ask no further.

I don't need a Rolls-Royce, I don't need a house in the country, I don't need to live in the south of France. I'm quite happy as I am.

Knowledge both enlarges and multiplies our Desires, and the fewer things a Man wishes for, the more easily his Necessities may be supply'd.

If we can't be free at least we can be cheap.

Better a dish of husks to the accompaniment of a muted lute than to be satiated with stewed shark's fin and rich spiced wine of which the cost is frequently mentioned by the provider.

The price of reliability is the pursuit of the utmost simplicity. It is a price which the very rich may find hard to pay.

But for me, dinner at a fine restaurant was the ultimate luxury. It was the very height of civilization. For what was civilization but the intellect's ascendancy out of the doldrums of necessity (shelter, sustenance and survival) into the ether of the finely superfluous (poetry, handbags and haute cuisine)? So removed from daily life was the whole experience that when all was rotten to the core, a fine dinner could revive the spirits. If and when I had twenty dollars left to my name, I was going to invest it right here in an elegant hour that couldn't be hocked.

Simple routine have a greater impact. It is not just to cut costs that we avoid luxury hotels. We do not need fancy cars, posh titles, tailor made uniforms or other status symbols.

How simple and frugal a thing is happiness.