Quotes about wasting
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“You cannot convince people to love you. This is an absolute rule. No one will ever give you love because you want him or her to give it. Real love moves freely in both directions. Don’t waste your time on anything else.”

Cheryl Strayed book Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

Source: Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

Love, People, Time

“I spent most of my dough on booze, broads and boats and the rest I wasted.”

Elmore Leonard book LaBrava

Source: LaBrava

“Life is wasted on the living.”

Douglas Adams book The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Source: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Life

“What's the point in wasting a perfectly good brick wall when you have someone to throw against it, that's what I always say.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

“I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)

1842
Source: Notebooks, The American Notebooks (1835 - 1853)

Autumn, Housing, Beauty

“The shoddy work of despair, the pointless work of pride, equally betray Creation. They are wastes of life.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Source: What Are People For?

Life, Despair

“Draw, Antonio; draw, Antonio; draw and don’t waste time.”

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet

Time, Drawing

“You think I'm gonna feel better eatin' a carrot? Get a grip. There's two idiots out there trying to kill me, and you think I'm gonna waste my last breath on a vegetable? (Lula)”

Janet Evanovich book Finger Lickin' Fifteen

Source: Finger Lickin' Fifteen

Feeling, Thinking

“I only suggest to you: Will you dwell on killing this man? You wish for revenge? If you do, he has already killed you by slow poison. So, let it go. Why waste your time? His life will see to his death.”

Lloyd Alexander (1924–2007) American children's writer

Source: The Golden Dream of Carlo Chuchio

Life, Death, Revenge, Time

“peace of mind and heart
arrives
when we accept what is:
having been
born into this
strange life
we must accept
the wasted gamble of our
days
and take some satisfaction in
the pleasure of
leaving it all
behind.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: The Pleasures of the Damned

Life, Pleasure, Peace, Heart

“Now could you please ask these idiots to stop pointing their bullets at me? It's terribly wasteful.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Bite Club

“All the human and animal manure which the world wastes, if returned to the land, instead of being thrown into the sea, would suffice to nourish the world.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

World, Animals, Sea

“Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long, and in the end, it's only with yourself”

Baz Luhrmann (1962) Australian film director, screenwriter and producer

Jealousy, Time

“.

There are times when I doubt everything. When I regret everything you've taken from me, everything I've given you, and the waste of all the time I've spent on us.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

Time

“That time we separated was my idea. I thought, well, I'm fifty years old and there might be someone else out there. People waste their happiness - that's what makes me sad. Everyone's so scared to be happy.”

Wally Lamb book She's Come Undone

Source: She's Come Undone

Happiness, People, Sadness, Idea

“With my mom, when someone was gone, they were gone. She didn't waste another minute thinking about them, and neither should you.”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Source: Lock and Key

Moms, Thinking

“Nothing has transformed my life more than realizing that it’s a waste of time to evaluate my worthiness by weighing the reaction of the people in the stands.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

Life, People, Time

“Standing up for yourself doesn't always involve verbal confrontation. Sometimes it's about not wasting energy on people who are negative.”

Sherry Argov (1977) American writer

Source: Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl—A Woman's Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship

People

“For thousands of years, you humans have been throwing in everything as you come across--hopes, dreams, wishes that never came true. Irresponsible waste management, if you ask me.”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

Dreams, Hope

“time wasted is not always a waste of time.”

Terri Blackstock (1957) American writer

Source: Seaside

Time

“Furthermore, worrying about people and problems doesn't help. It doesn't solve problems, it doesn't help other people, and it doesn't help us. It is wasted energy.”

Melody Beattie (1948) American writer

Source: Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

People, Problem, Help

“No love is ever wasted. Its worth does not lie in reciprocity.”

Neal A. Maxwell (1926–2004) Mormon leader

Love, Lie

“When a person should be spoken with, and you don't speak with them, you lose them. When a person shouldn't be spoken with and you speak to them, you waste your breath. The wise do not lose people, nor do they waste their breath.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

People, Personality

“You have grown abominably lazy, and you like gossip, and waste time on frivolous things, you are contented to be petted and admired by silly people, instead of being loved and respected by wise ones.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

Love, People, Time

“It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

People, Time, Motivational, Back To Work

“Wasting time with the wrong person is just time wasted.”

Greg Behrendt (1963) American comedian

Source: He's Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys

Time, Personality

“Long books, when read, are usually overpraised, because the reader wants to convince others and himself that he has not wasted his time.”

E.M. Forster book Aspects of the Novel

Source: Commonplace Book (1985), p. 11
Source: Aspects of the Novel

Books, Time, Reading

“But after a moment a sense of waste and ruin overcame him. There they were, close together and safe and shut in; yet so chained to their separate destinies that they might as well been half the world apart.”

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence

World, Sense

“People are strange: They are constantly angered by trivial things, but on a major matter like totally wasting their lives, they hardly seem to notice.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

People, Anger

“You ask me why I do not write something… I think one's feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions and into actions which bring results.”

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing

Letter to a friend, quoted in The Life of Florence Nightingale (1913) by Edward Tyas Cook, p. 94

Feeling, Thinking

“Let's never try to get even with our enemies, because if we do we will hurt ourselves far more than we hurt them. Let's do as General Eisenhower does: let's never waste a minute thinking about people we don't like.”

Dale Carnegie book How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

Source: How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948), p. 101.

People, Thinking, Hurt

“There is no good reason. Don't waste your life waiting for good reasons… You'll wait and wait.”

Susan Minot (1956) American author and screenwriter

Source: Evening

Life, Waiting

“Three things see no end-
A flower blighted ere it bloomed,
A message that was wasted,
And a journey that was doomed.”

Mercedes Lackey book By the Sword

Source: By the Sword

Flowers

“Romantics might like to think of themselves as being composed of stardust. Cynics might prefer to think of themselves as nuclear waste.”

Simon Singh book Big Bang

Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe, Fourth Estate, ISBN 0-00-716220-0

Thinking

“I guess we often get the deep blues, both of us, and wonder what it all means- the people, the buildings, the day by day things, the waste of time, of ourselves.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

People, Time

“Men who believe that they are accomplishing something by speaking speak in a different way from men who believe that speaking is a waste of time.”

Neal Stephenson book Cryptonomicon

Source: Cryptonomicon

Men, Way, Time

“Perhaps in the world's destruction it would be possible at last to see how it was made. Oceans, mountains. The ponderous counterspectacle of things ceasing to be. The sweeping waste, hydroptic and coldly secular. The silence.”

Cormac McCarthy book The Road

Source: The Road

World, Mountain, Silence

“Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life?”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Life

“There will always be people for and against you, and its pointless wasting time trying to win over some of the people who are against you. Spend time with people who are for you. Those realtionships are worth it.”

Cathy Hopkins (1953) English writer

People, Time

“Okay, this is the wisdom. First, time spent on reconnaissanse is never wasted. Second, almost anything can be improved with the addition of bacon. And finally, there is no problem on Earth that can't be ameliorated by a hot bath and a cup of tea.”

Jasper Fforde (1961) British novelist

Source: Shades of Grey

Wisdom, Problem, Time, Tea

“Specifically, I’d like to debate whether cannibalism ought to be grounds for leniency in murders, since it’s less wasteful.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

“Don’t waste another day of your life grieving over something that you cannot do anything about. Let God give you a new beginning. Your mistakes are not enough to stop God if you don’t let them.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

Life, God

“When I was young, I was so interested in baseball that my family was afraid I'd waste my life and be a pitcher. Later they were afraid I'd waste my life and be a poet. They were right.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Life, Family

“Thank you for sending me a copy of your book. I'll waste no time reading it.”

Moses Hadas (1900–1966) American classical philologist

Books, Time, Reading

“Nothing you do for children is ever wasted. They seem not to notice us, hovering, averting our eyes, and they seldom offer thanks, but what we do for them is never wasted.”

Garrison Keillor (1942) American radio host and writer

Source: Leaving Home‎ (1987), p. 20

Children

“It's such a waste to be subtle and vicious with people who don't even know that you're being subtle and vicious”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

People

“This is our time. Until that time stops - for one of us, for both – it is our time. Now. Will you waste it, because you are afraid?”

Diana Gabaldon book Drums of Autumn

Source: Drums of Autumn

Time

“And don't waste time worshipping Harmony. Doing goodthe worship.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Alloy of Law

Time

“You…you need to move on,” I managed. Yes, that was a sound reason. “You need to find someone else. You know I don’t—that I can’t. Well, you know. You’re wasting your time with me.”

He remained firm. “It’s my time to waste.”

Richelle Mead book The Indigo Spell

Source: The Indigo Spell

Time

“The best way to waste your life is by taking notes. The easiest way to avoid living is to just watch.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Lullaby (2002)

Life, Way

“But whatever you do, find the God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated passion of your life, and find your way to say it and live for it and die for it. And you will make a difference that lasts. You will not waste your life.”

John Piper (1946) American writer

Source: Don't Waste Your Life

Life, God, Way, Passion

“My hopes for a relationship with her were wholly unreal, whereas my ongoing misery, and frustration, were an all-too-horrible reality. Was groundless, hopeless romantic obsession any way to waste the rest of my life?”

Donna Tartt book The Goldfinch

Source: The Goldfinch

Life, Hope, Way, Reality

“People surprise you, Frank, with just how fuckin stupid they are. I mean, do you actually realize how much adult conversation is spent on this fuckin business? Facts treated like they were opinions just for the simple purpose of talking about it longer? Some people might think that's interesting, bub, but I'll tell you. It's romanticizing a goddamn rock by calling it a mountain range to me. People waste a helluva lot of time they could be putting to useful purposes. This is a game. See it and forget about it.”

Richard Ford The Sportswriter

Source: The Sportswriter (1986), p. 104

People, Stupidity, Mountain, Game

“No tears, please. It's a waste of good suffering.”

Clive Barker book The Hellbound Heart

Source: The Hellbound Heart

Tear, Suffering

“If a person has a contribution to make, he must make it in public. If learning is not made public, it is a waste.”

Chaim Potok book The Chosen

Source: The Chosen

Learning, Personality

“Even a broken heart doesn't warrant a waste of good paper.”

Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle

Source: I Capture the Castle

Heart

“Feeling sorry for yourself, and your present condition, is not only a waste of energy but the worst habit you could possibly have.”

Dale Carnegie (1888–1955) American writer and lecturer

Feeling

“It can only take a moment to waste the rest of your life.”

Chuck Palahniuk Snuff

Source: Snuff

Life

“Do I look like the kind of person who wastes time turning goats into pin cushions?”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Night World, No. 1

Time, Personality

“Talk not of wasted affection, affection never was wasted;
If it enrich not the heart of another, its waters, returning
Back to their springs, like the rain, shall fill them full of refreshment;
That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie

Part II, section 1.
Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie (1847)

Spring, Water, Heart

“I held her
wrists and then I got it through the eyes: hatred,
centuries deep and true. I was wrong and graceless and
sick. all the things I had learned had been wasted.
there was no creature living as foul as I
and all my poems were
false.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Learning, Falseness

“O Beautiful, for smoggy skies, insecticided grain

for strip-mined mountains' majesty, above the asphalt plain

America, America, man sheds his waste on thee

and hides the pines, with billboard signs, from sea to oily sea.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Class Clown (1972)

Beauty, Mountain, Sea

“Our time here is brief, our risk enormous. Don't waste the one or increase the other, if you please.”

Stephen King The Dark Tower

Source: The Dark Tower

Time

“If you spend too much time trying to find out what is good or bad about someone else, you'll forget your own soul and end up exhausted and defeated by the energy you have wasted in judging others.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Source: Aleph (2011)
Context: What we aim to do is calm the spirit and get in touch with the source from which everything comes, removing any trace of malice or egotism. If you spend too much time trying to find out what is good or bad about someone else, you’ll forget your own soul and end up exhausted and defeated by the energy you have wasted in judging others.

Soul, Time, Forgetting

“I'm a toxic waste byproduct of God's creation.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

God

“If a segment of one's force is located where it is not sufficiently busy with the enemy, or if the troops are on the march - that is, idle - while the enemy is fighting, then these forces are being managed uneconomically. In this sense they are being wasted, which is even worse than using them inappropriately.”

Carl von Clausewitz book On War

On War (1832), Book 3

Business, Sense, Fight

“Here we go again,’ he thought. ‘Drink and reminiscence. Another day of wasted time. They’re right when they say we drink too much out here. And we slobber too much over ourselves…. We’re all sorry for ourselves because we’re not big executives or artists or happily married men in a civilized temperate climate.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Beds in the East (1959)

Men, Drink, Time

“Tombed in the solid night of starless space;
From nearest living orb so far removed,
That light, of all material things most swift,
Myriads on myriads of earth's years must speed,
Ere the mere outskirts of that Stygian gloom,
If ever, it might reach,-at rest eterne,
Lies the cold wreck of an extinguished sun.
Prime glory once of all heaven's radiant host;
Body, for soul of purest light most fit-
'Tween its first darkening, and eclipse complete,
Streamed years which might eternity appear;
While into ether, like the particles,
Invisible, which are the breath of flowers,
The mighty bulk its softer elements
Still ever was exhaling. As when flesh
And sinew of earth's monster Mastodon,
By the slow wasting of the elements,
All are dissolved, and hard, enduring bones
Alone remain,- even so, of this immense,-
When, by the ocean waves of centuries,
Millions succeeding millions, worn away,-
The adamantine skeleton alone,
In darkness, silence, utter solitude,
A ruin for eternity, was left.”

Edwin Atherstone (1788–1872) British writer

Israel in Egypt, Book the First (1861)

Soul, Flowers, Solitude, Light

“I was born a vegetarian. … I feel there is no need to cause another living thing pain or harm. There are so many other things we can eat. I have never eaten meat in my life, and I’m 5 foot 10 and not exactly wasting away. A wise man once said, ‘Animals are my friends, and I’m not in the habit of eating my friends.’ That is exactly how I feel.”

Joss Stone (1987) English singer and actress

Reported in "Introducing Joss Stone’s Vegetarian PSA", in peta2.com (13 March 2007) http://www.peta2.com/heroes/introducing-joss-stone-vegetarian-psa/. Also quoted in "Soul diva Stone in veggie ad", in Mirror.co.uk (15 March 2007) http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/soul-diva-stone-in-veggie-ad-458507.

Life, Pain, Feeling, Animals

“Leaders and managers do not have to risk lives, profit, or mission failure because they failed to plan for a crisis. Do not allow yourself to be put on the defense by changing circumstances. No one enjoys wasting time, but don't be reluctant to call a meeting just to discuss something that might happen. Remember the oil filter theory. Rather than disobey your instincts and proceed with the status quo or embark on a risky course, invest some planning time in your business. Control your risks. Identify important decision points. Forecast potential crisis. Apply the six hour model. A little time spent discussing your business is never wasted.”

Wheeler L. Baker (1938) President of Hargrave Military Academy

Source: Crisis Management: A Model For Managers (1993), p. 74

Failure, Business, Decision, Change

“This loving person is a person who abhors waste — waste of time, waste of human potential. How much time we waste. As if we were going to live forever.”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

LOVE (1972)

Love, Time, Personality

“If there’s one piece of wisdom that this simple pilgrim would like to impart upon you: have the courage to start with the customer. My biggest regrets are the moments that I let a lack of data override my intuition on what’s best for our customers. This leadership change gives you some breathing room to break bad habits and deliver sustainable customer happiness — don’t waste the opportunity!”

Andrew Mason (1981) businessman

Groupon CEO: “I Was Fired Today.” http://allthingsd.com/20130228/groupon-dumps-andrew-mason-as-ceo (February 28, 2013)

Wisdom, Happiness, Courage, Change

“They might have occurred if either General Dreedle or General Peckem had once evinced an interest in taking part in orgies with him, but neither ever did, and the colonel was certainly not going to waste his time and energy making love to beautiful women unless there was something in it for him.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Catch-22 (1961)

Love, Women, Making love, Beauty

“And this is Love! Oh! why should woman love;
Wasting her dearest feelings, till health, hope,
Happiness, are but things of which henceforth
She'll only know the name?”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Love
The Improvisatrice (1824)

Love, Happiness, Health, Hope

“To know oneself as well as one can; to avoid self-deception and foster no illusions; to learn what one can about the plain natural truth of things, and make one's valuations accordingly; to waste no time in speculating upon vain subtleties, upon "things which are not and work not"; — this perhaps is hardly the aim of an academic philosophy, but it is what a practical philosophy keeps steadily in view. Because the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius so consistently does keep just this in view, it still remains, and for those who can take it will probably always remain, the best of handbooks to the art of living.”

Albert Jay Nock (1870–1945) American journalist

Source: Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (1943), p. 304-305

Truth, Art, Nature, Learning

“Good Reader, I suspect I may have written some Things twice; if not the same in Words, yet in Sense, which I desire you to pass by favourably; forasmuch as you may well think, it was as difficult and dull a Thing for me, in so great a Number of independent Sentences, to find out the Repetitions, as it would be in a vast Heap of different Coins and Medals, confusedly thrown together, to pick out here and there one that bore the same and like Inscription, with some other among them. Besides the Pains, such a Search would cost me more Time, than I can afford it; for my Glass of Life running now low, I must not suffer one Sand to fall in waste, nor spend one Minute in picking of Straws. And moreover, my aged Eyes being grown weak and dim, I fear they will become quite dark, by much perusing and poring; or at least so far, so as to render me unable to perfect several Papers now lying by me, which I would willingly make a Present of to you.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Excerpt from Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II, To the Reader (Prefatory Remarks).
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727)

Life, Pain, Age, Fear

“Objectively speaking, the history of North Korean state has been one of an ambitious social if brutal experiment that ended in a very ugly disaster. Essentially, the 70 years of the Kim Family's rule have been the wasted years. The Kim family did not merely build one of the world’s most “perfect” Stalinist dictatorships, but also managed to transform into a basket case what once, in the 1940s, was the most advanced industrial economy of East Asia outside Japan. However, one should not expect that such a pessimistic, if honest, view of North Korea’s past, is going to be enthusiastically embraced by those North Koreans who bother to care about such matters.”

Andrei Lankov (1963) Russian academic

Get Ready For Selective Amnesia (November 2015)

World, Family, History, Past

“Now it is not our purpose here to condemn this world, from the standpoint of some "holiday-world" of philosophy. No words need be wasted on saying that this work-a-day world is very much with us, that in it the foundations of our physical existence are secured, without which no one can philosophize at all! Nevertheless, let us also recall, that among the voices which fill the workplace and the markets ("How do you get this or that item of daily existence?" "Where do you get that?" etc.) — in the midst of all these voices suddenly one calls above the rest: "Why is there anything at all, and not nothing?" — asking that age-old question, which Heidegger called the basic question of all metaphysics! Must we explicitly state how unfathomable this philosopher's question is, in comparison with that everyday world of needs and purposefulness? If such a question as this were asked, without introduction or interpretation, in the company of those people of efficiency and success, wouldn't the questioner be considered rather … mad?”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), The Philosophical Act, pp. 66—67

People, Age, World, Question

“Every one should keep a mental waste-paper basket and the older he grows the more things he will consign to it — torn up to irrecoverable tatters.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Waste-Paper Baskets
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIV - Higgledy-Piggledy

“I believe that the greatest trick of the devil is not to get us into some sort of evil but rather have us wasting time. This is why the devil tries so hard to get Christians to be religious. If he can sink a man's mind into habit, he will prevent his heart from engaging God.”

Donald Miller book Blue Like Jazz: nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality

Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

God, Evil, Time, Heart

“Like beauteous flowers which vainly waste their scent
Of odours in unhaunted deserts.”

William Chamberlayne (poet)

Pharonida (1659), Part II, Book IV.

Flowers

“Black propaganda and negative politics do not and will not work here or elsewhere, simply because of one thing - it is based on a lie. As Rex Gatchalian, spokesperson of Senator Grace Poe said earlier, "The recent story being circulated that Senator Chiz had abandoned Senator Grace is baseless and barefaced lie. If the people behind this story plan to drive a wedge between the two candidates, they should stop wasting their time as the two candidates continue to fight the battle together, side-by-side. The Poe-Escudero tandem remains strong despite all the black propaganda hurled against them. It's disgusting that certain groups continue to destroy our candidates - first individually and now as a tandem."”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Escudero, F. [Francis]. (2015, December 28). Retrieved from Official Facebook Page of Francis Escudero https://www.facebook.com/senchizescudero/posts/10153773916510610/ <br class="br">2015, Facebook

People, Lie, Strong, Time

“Muhammad ibn Tughlaq “led forth his army to ravage Hindostan. He laid the country waste from Kanauj to Dalmau [on the Ganges, in the Rai Baréli District, Oudh], and every person that fell into his hands he slew. Many of the inhabitants fled and took refuge in the jungles, but the Sultan had the jungles surrounded, and every individual that was captured was killed.””

Muhammad bin Tughluq (1290–1351) Turkic Sultan of Delhi

Vincent Arthur Smith, The Oxford History of India: From the Earliest Times to the End of 1911 (Clarendon Press, 1920), 241-2. as quoted in Spencer, Robert (2018). The history of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS.

Personality, Country

“6. You realize that if 10 million people saw the movie once, each wasting 3 hours of their lives, that 30 million hours have been wasted, and that if each person lived an average of 70 years, 3,424 years, or 49 lives will have been wasted watching the Titanic. James Cameron has effectively murdered 49 people. (Not necessarily a reason to cry, but it is to a sap that saw Titanic in the first place).”

Maddox (1978) American internet writer

Reasons to cry during the movie "Titanic" http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=cry_titanic. <br class="br">The Best Page in the Universe

People, Personality, Cry

“We all have that heritage, no matter what old land our fathers left. All colors and blends of Americans have somewhat the same tendencies. It's a breed — selected out by accident. And so we're overbrave and overfearful — we're kind and cruel as children. We're overfriendly and at the same time frightened of strangers. We boast and are impressed. We're oversentimental and realistic. We are mundane and materialistic — and do you know of any other nation that acts for ideals? We eat too much. We have no taste, no sense of proportion. We throw our energy about like waste. In the old lands they say of us that we go from barbarism to decadence without an intervening culture. Can it be that our critics have not the key or the language of our culture? That's what we are, Cal — all of us. You aren't very different.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

East of Eden (1952)

Children, Color, Sense, Time

“As you probably know, I'm often accused of intellectual exhibitionism and all forms of elitism. Although I can understand this point of view, it's a rather wasted argument because, if we regard areas of information as being elite and therefore somehow not usable, it means our centre-ground of activity becomes very, very impoverished.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

In an interview in the Washington DC City Paper, 6 Apr 1990
Interviews

Understanding

“There are moments when the Spirit moves among men and the breath of the Lord is abroad upon the waters of our being; there are others when it retires and men are left to act in the strength or the weakness of their own egoism. The first are periods when even a little effort produces great results and changes destiny; the second are spaces of time when much labour goes to the making of a little result. It is true that the latter may prepare the former, may be the little smoke of sacrifice going up to heaven which calls down the rain of God's bounty…. Unhappy is the man or the nation which, when the divine moment arrives, is found sleeping or unprepared to use it, because the lamp has not been kept trimmed for the welcome and the ears are sealed to the call. But thrice woe to them who are strong and ready, yet waste the force or misuse the moment; for them is irreparable loss or a great destruction…. In the hour of God cleanse thy soul of all self-deceit and hypocrisy and vain self-flattering that thou mayst look straight into thy spirit and hear that which summons it. All insincerity of nature, once thy defence against the eye of the Master and the light of the ideal, becomes now a gap in thy armour and invites the blow. Even if thou conquer for the moment, it is the worse for thee, for the blow shall come afterwards and cast thee down in the midst of thy triumph. But being pure cast aside all fear; for the hour is often terrible, a fire and a whirlwind and a tempest, a treading of the winepress of the wrath of God; but he who can stand up in it on the truth of his purpose is he who shall stand; even though he fall, he shall rise again; even though he seem to pass on the wings of the wind, he shall return. Nor let worldly prudence whisper too closely in thy ear; for it is the hour of the unexpected, the incalculable, the immeasurable. Mete not the power of the Breath by thy petty instruments, but trust and go forward…. But most keep thy soul clear, even if for a while, of the clamour of the ego. Then shall a fire march before thee in the night and the storm be thy helper and thy flag shall wave on the highest height of the greatness that was to be conquered.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

1918 (The Hour of God)
India's Rebirth

Men, God, Truth, Fear

“Tis not for Spring to think on all
The sear and waste of Autumn's fall:”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Canto I
The Troubadour (1825)

Spring, Autumn, Thinking

“If the student got little from his mates, he got little more from his masters. The four years passed at college were, for his purposes, wasted. Harvard College was a good school, but at bottom what the boy disliked most was any school at all. He did not want to be one in a hundred — one per cent of an education. He regarded himself as the only person for whom his education had value, and he wanted the whole of it.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Education, School, Boy, Personality

“Handel and Shakespeare have left us the best that any have left us; yet, in spite of this, how much of their lives was wasted.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Waste
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VIII - Handel and Music

“My physics teacher used to say Diogenes shouldn’t have wasted his time looking for an honest man,” Shirl said, “he should have been looking for somebody who thought for himself.”

Connie Willis Bellwether

Source: Bellwether (1996), Chapter 3 “Tributaries”, Section 4 (p. 127)

Teachers, Time

“Hell is when we look back during that fraction of a second and know that we wasted an opportunity to dignify the miracle of life. Paradise is being able to say at that moment: “I made some mistakes, but I wasn’t a coward.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

I lived my life and did what I had to do.”
Aleph (2011)

Life, Hell

“It's not so important what you [high school students] work on, so long as you're not wasting your time. Work on things that interest you and increase your options, and worry later about which you'll take.”

Paul Graham (1964) English programmer, venture capitalist, and essayist

"What You'll Wish You'd Known", January 2005

School, Time

“At that Mother got proper blazing,
"And thank you, sir, kindly," said she.
"What, waste all our lives raising children
To feed ruddy Lions? Not me!"”

Marriott Edgar (1880–1951) British poet

"Albert and the Lion", line 69.
Albert, 'Arold and Others (1938)

Children

“Contemporary art -- the field we are usually working in because there's money -- is mostly concerned with systems or systematic concepts. In the context of their work, artists adapt models of individual art-specific or economic or political systems like in a laboratory, to reveal the true nature of these systems by deconstructing them. So would it be fair to say that by their chameleon-like adaptation they are attempting to generate a similar system? Well… the corporate change in the art market has aged somewhat in the meantime and looks almost as old as the 'New Economy'. Now even the last snotty brat has realized that all the hogwash about the creative industries, sponsoring, fund-raising, the whole load of bullshit about the beautiful new art enterprises, was not much more than the awful veneer on the stupid, crass fanfare of neo-liberal liberation teleology. What is the truth behind the shifting spheres of activity between computer graphics, web design and the rest of all those frequency-orientated nerd pursuits? A lonely business with other lonely people at their terminals. And in the meantime the other part of the corporate identity has incidentally wasted whole countries like Argentina or Iceland. That's the real truth of the matter.”

Johannes Grenzfurthner (1975) Austrian artist, writer, curator, and theatre and film director

Interview on Furtherfield http://www.furtherfield.org/interviews/interview-johannes-grenzfurthner-monochrom-part-1

Money, People, Truth, Age

“I tried to explain to her the significance of the great poet, but without much success, The Waste Land not figuring very largely in Mam's scheme of things.
"The thing is," I said finally, "he won the Nobel Prize."
"Well," she said, with that unerring grasp of inessentials which is the prerogative of mothers, "I’m not surprised. It was a beautiful overcoat."”

Alan Bennett (1934) English actor, author

Introduction, p. x (1994).
Writing Home (1994)

Beauty, Success

“Every time I meet a child I think, who knows what’s going on in her life, whether she was just bullied or whether she had a bad day at school or whether she lost a parent — that interaction that we have with that individual, that child for that moment, could change their life … so we can’t waste this spotlight. It is temporary and life is short, and change is needed. And women are smarter than men.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

Speaking at a women's forum at the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington, alongside former first lady Laura Bush, as quoted in "Michelle Obama: ‘Women are smarter than men’" in The Washington Times (6 August 2014) http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/aug/6/michelle-obama-women-are-smarter-than-men/ <br class="br">2010s

Life, Women, Men, School

“Alas! for him whose youthful fire
Is vowed and wasted on the lyre,—
Alas! for him who shall essay,
The laurel's long and dreary way!
Mocking will greet, neglect will chill
His spirit's gush, his bosom's thrill;
And, worst of all, that heartless praise
Echoed from what another says.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Canto I
The Troubadour (1825)

Youth, Way