Quotes about wasting
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Cheryl Strayed photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Nathaniel Hawthorne photo

“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)

Wendell Berry photo
Janet Evanovich photo
Charles Bukowski photo
Rachel Caine photo
Victor Hugo photo
Baz Luhrmann photo
David Levithan photo
Wally Lamb photo
Sarah Dessen photo
Brené Brown photo

“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

“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

Rick Riordan photo

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

Terri Blackstock (1957) American writer

Source: Seaside

“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

Confucius photo
Louisa May Alcott photo
Henry Ford photo
Greg Behrendt photo

“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

E.M. Forster photo
Edith Wharton photo
Charles Bukowski photo
Florence Nightingale photo

“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

“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

Mercedes Lackey photo
Simon Singh photo
Charles Bukowski photo
Neal Stephenson photo
Cormac McCarthy photo
Henry David Thoreau photo

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

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist
Jasper Fforde photo
Joyce Meyer photo
Robert Frost photo
Garrison Keillor photo
Ayn Rand photo
Diana Gabaldon photo
Brandon Sanderson photo

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

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Alloy of Law

Richelle Mead photo
Chuck Palahniuk photo
John Piper photo
Donna Tartt photo
Richard Ford photo

“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

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow photo
Charles Bukowski photo
George Carlin photo
Stephen King photo
Paulo Coelho photo

“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.”

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.

Chuck Palahniuk photo

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

Source: Fight Club

Carl von Clausewitz photo
Anthony Burgess photo
Joss Stone photo

“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.

Leo Buscaglia photo
Andrew Mason photo
Joseph Heller photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Albert Jay Nock photo
Thomas Fuller (writer) photo
Andrei Lankov photo
Samuel Butler photo

“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

Francis Escudero photo
Muhammad bin Tughluq photo

“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.

Maddox photo
John Steinbeck photo
Peter Greenaway photo
Sri Aurobindo photo

“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

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“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)

Henry Adams photo
Samuel Butler photo

“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

Connie Willis photo
Paulo Coelho photo
Paul Graham photo

“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)

Johannes Grenzfurthner photo

“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

Alan Bennett photo
Michelle Obama photo

“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/
2010s

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Alfred Russel Wallace photo

“I thought of the long ages of the past, during which the successive generations of this little creature had run their course — year by year being born, and living and dying amid these dark and gloomy woods, with no intelligent eye to gaze upon their loveliness; to all appearance such a wanton waste of beauty. Such ideas excite a feeling of melancholy. It seems sad that on the one hand such exquisite creatures should live out their lives and exhibit their charms only in these wild inhospitable regions, doomed for ages yet to come to hopeless barbarism; while, on the other hand, should civilized man ever reach these distant lands, and bring moral, intellectual, and physical light into the recesses of these virgin forests, we may be sure that he will so disturb the nicely-balanced relations of organic and inorganic nature as to cause the disappearance, and finally the extinction, of these very beings whose wonderful structure and beauty he alone is fitted to appreciate and enjoy. This consideration must surely tell us that all living things were not made for man. Many of them have no relation to him. The cycle of their existence has gone on independently of his, and is disturbed or broken by every advance in man’s intellectual development; and their happiness and enjoyments, their loves and hates, their struggles for existence, their vigorous life and early death, would seem to be immediately related to their own well-being and perpetuation alone, limited only by the equal well-being and perpetuation of the numberless other organisms with which each is more or less intimately connected.”

The Malay Archipelago (1869)

Paolo Bacigalupi photo