“Frugality is founded on the principle that all riches have limits.”

— Edmund Burke

Speech on the Independence of Parliament (1780)

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Edmund Burke 270

Anglo-Irish statesman 1729–1797

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“I lost a world the other day. Has anybody found? You'll know it by the rows of stars around it's forehead bound. A rich man might not notice it; yet to my frugal eye of more esteem than ducats. Oh! Find it, sir, for me!”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Source: Final Harvest: Emily Dickinson's Poems

“I thank God, I have been able, by adopting Principles of strict Economy and Frugality, to keep my principal, I mean my Country-Estate, unimpaired.”

George Mason (1725–1792) American delegate from Virginia to the U.S. Constitutional Convention

Letter to his son, George Mason V. (8 January 1783)

“When the rich plunder the poor of his rights, it becomes an example of the poor to plunder the rich of his property, for the rights of the one are as much property to him as wealth is property to the other and the little all is as dear as the much. It is only by setting out on just principles that men are trained to be just to each other; and it will always be found, that when the rich protect the rights of the poor, the poor will protect the property of the rich.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

1790s, Letter to the Addressers (1792)
Context: It is from a strange mixture of tyranny and cowardice that exclusions have been set up and continued. The boldness to do wrong at first, changes afterwards into cowardly craft, and at last into fear. The Representatives in England appear now to act as if they were afraid to do right, even in part, lest it should awaken the nation to a sense of all the wrongs it has endured. This case serves to shew that the same conduct that best constitutes the safety of an individual, namely, a strict adherence to principle, constitutes also the safety of a Government, and that without it safety is but an empty name. When the rich plunder the poor of his rights, it becomes an example of the poor to plunder the rich of his property, for the rights of the one are as much property to him as wealth is property to the other and the little all is as dear as the much. It is only by setting out on just principles that men are trained to be just to each other; and it will always be found, that when the rich protect the rights of the poor, the poor will protect the property of the rich. But the guarantee, to be effectual, must be parliamentarily reciprocal.

“That no free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people, but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue, and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.”

George Mason (1725–1792) American delegate from Virginia to the U.S. Constitutional Convention

Article 15
Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776)

“Being an art form, verse cannot be "free" in the sense of having no limitations or guiding principle.”

William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) American poet

As quoted in Free Verse. Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics 2nd ed (1975)
General sources

“Pleasure limits the scope of human possiblity-the pleasure principle is a principle of homeostasis. Desire, on the other hand, finds its boundary, its strict relation, its limit, and it is in the relation to this limit that it is sustained as such, crossing the threshold imposed by the pleasure principle.”

Jacques Lacan (1901–1981) French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist

Of The Subject of Certainty p. 31
The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho Analysis (1978)

“All arguments based on the unequal status of texts are questionable. In principle, all ancient readings have an equal status, without relation to the text or translation in which they are found.”

Emanuel Tov (1941) Israeli biblical scholar and linguist

Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 3rd ed. (2012), p.272

“And with respect to the mode in which these general principles affect the secure possession of property, so far am I from invalidating such security, that the whole gist of these papers will be found ultimately to aim at an extension in its range; and whereas it has long been known and declared that the poor have no right to the property of the rich, I wish it also to be known and declared that the rich have no right to the property of the poor.”

John Ruskin book Unto This Last

Essay III: "Qui Judicatis Terram," section 54.
Unto This Last (1860)

“The United States was founded on the belief that all men are created equal. Every Election Day, millions of Americans of all races, religions, and backgrounds step into voting booths throughout the Nation. Whether they are rich or poor, old or young, each of them has an equal share in choosing the path that our country will take. And every ballot they cast is a reminder that our founding principles are alive and well.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

radio address https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/11/20081101.html (1 November 2008)
2000s, 2008

“…nor have I found occasion to depart from the plan… the rejection of the whole doctrine of series in the establishment of the fundamental parts both of the Differential and Integral Calculus. The method of Lagrange… had taken deep root in elementary works; it was the sacrifice of the clear and indubitable principle of limits to a phantom, the idea that an algebra without limits was purer than one in which that notion was introduced. But, independently of the idea of limits being absolutely necessary even to the proper conception of a convergent series, it must have been obvious enough to Lagrange himself, that all application of the science to concrete magnitude, even in his own system, required the theory of limits.”

Augustus De Morgan (1806–1871) British mathematician, philosopher and university teacher (1806-1871)

The Differential and Integral Calculus (1836)

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