There are two ways to get enough: one is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.

 —G.K. Chesterton

All human toil is for the mouth, yet the appetite is not satisfied.

 —Ecclesiastes

Contentment is natural wealth; luxury, artificial poverty.

 —Socrates

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.

—Samuel Johnson

We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.

 —George Bernard Shaw

A strange species we are. We can stand anything God and nature can throw at us save only plenty. If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much, and I would have it on its knees, miserable, greedy, sick.

 —John Steinbeck

Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like.

 —Will Rogers

We always pay dearly for chasing after what is cheap.

 —Alexandr Solzhenitsyn

Christmas is a school for consumerism — in it we learn to equate delight with materialism. We celebrate the birth of One who told us to give everything to the poor by giving each other motorized tie racks.

 —Bill McKibben

That happiness is to be attained through limitless material acquisition is denied by every religion and philosophy known to mankind, but is preached incessantly by every American television set.

 —Robert Bellah