Alex Spanos Quotes

I don't like paying too much for anything or wasting it. I think that I'm more of a balanced individual rather than a dichotomy.

At home, growing up, we weren't really poor. We had everything we needed, we just didn't have what we wanted.

I traveled with my mother, Lela, and there was never enough money. I always had to roll down my silk stockings and carry a doll when we bought train tickets so I could go half-fare. If we had $3, we always figured how to tip for the trunks and still eat.

Nature uses as little as possible of anything.

My parents were born in 1912; they graduated from college into the Depression. They kept notebooks of every nickel they spent, and these habits of frugality from having grown up so poor never left them.

I was called McG since the day I was born because we were broke and there were three Joes in the house.

I wear cheap shoes. I don't even wear socks.

I grew up with nothing, and I know that I don't need anything to be happy. We were wearing second-hand clothing and eating leftovers, and I was so happy. Five-star hotels and private pick-ups hasn't changed that.

Most of us have heard the saying, 'Cleanliness is next to godliness.' That's a sentiment I value, but another virtue has inspired me to revise that saying. As far as I'm concerned, what's next to godliness is resourcefulness.

My parents were really poor. We never bought books because you could go to the library. It would be stupid to buy one.

My father died when I was two years old. But my mother was quite capable. She raised three children with his war pension which was peanuts. Yet we did not want for anything. We grew up with a certain parsimony, which is a nice thing. Then if life gives you more good, otherwise you get used to. I'm still thrifty.

All things are cheap to the saving, dear to the wasteful

Philosophy ... should not pretend to increase our present stock, but make us economists of what we are possessed of.

Mend your clothes and you may hold out this year.

A penny spar'd is twice got.

It does not require money to be neat, clean and dignified.

Nature is no spendthrift, but takes the shortest way to her ends.

It is true thrift to use the best ingredients available and to waste nothing.

If our family was poor, of what did our poverty consist? If our clothes were torn the torn places only let in the sun and wind. In the winter we had no overcoats, but that only meant we ran rather than loitered.

Waste not want not. I am not being wasted. Why do I want?

Boots and shoes are the greatest trouble of my life. Everything else one can turn and turn about, and make old look like new; but there's no coaxing boots and shoes to look better than they are.

You go to developing countries today and you'll find automobiles that you haven't seen since you're childhood and that's because they really are valuable, they're taken care of, they're repaired, and when something breaks, they just don't buy a new one, they actually fix it.

I loved Christmas. We had a really great time. But there wasn't - it was all - you had to be happy with, you know, an orange and a couple of walnuts, you know, in your stocking.

Search out the wisdom of nature, there is depth in all her doings; she seemeth prodigal of power, yet her rules are the maxims of frugality.

There is goodness as well as greatness in simplicity, not in wealth.