“All that time is lost which might be better employed.”
As quoted in A Dictionary of Quotations in Most Frequent Use: Taken Chiefly from the Latin and French, but comprising many from the Greek, Spanish, and Italian Languages, translated into English (1809) by David Evans Macdonnel
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Jean Jacques Rousseau 91
Genevan philosopher 1712–1778Related quotes
Source: Andre Cornelis (1886), Ch. 13
Context: Was I saved? Was I lost? All depended on the moment at which somebody might go into my stepfather's room. If my mother were to return within a few minutes of my departure; if the footman were to go upstairs with some letter, I should instantly be suspected, in spite of the declaration written by M. Termonde. I felt that my courage was exhausted. I knew that, if accused, I should not have moral strength to defend myself, for my weariness was so overwhelming that I did not suffer any longer. The only thing I had strength to do was to watch the swing of the pendulum of the timepiece on the mantelshelf, and to mark the movement of the hands. A quarter of an hour elapsed, half an hour, a whole hour.
It was an hour and a half after I had left the fatal room, when the bell at the door was rung. I heard it through the walls. A servant brought me a laconic note from my mother scribbled in pencil and hardly legible. It informed me that my stepfather had destroyed himself in an attack of severe pain. The poor woman implored me to go to her immediately. Ah, she would now never know the truth!
“Consider lost all the time in which you do not think of divinity.”
Sentences of Sextus
Dis aliter visum; or, Le Byron de nos Jours.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
[NewsBank, D-01, Bill Nye, the Science Guy, brings humor to normally serious field, The Daily Gazette, Schenectady, New York, March 9, 2005, Bill Buell]
Examination of Conscience upon Special Subjects, p. 81 http://books.google.com/books?id=z-4CAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA81
Examens particuliers sur divers sujets [Examination of Conscience upon Special Subjects] (1690)
“A great many people now reading and writing would be better employed keeping rabbits.”
As quoted in Writers on Writing (1986) by Jon Winokur, p. 24
