Quotes about wasting (1465 quotes, page 9)

“Oh shall I see the Thames again?
The prow-promoted gems again,
As beefy ATS
Without their hats
Come shooting through the bridge?
And "cheerioh" and "cheeri-bye"
Across the waste of waters die,
And low the mists of evening lie
And lightly skims the midge.”

John Betjeman (1906–1984) English poet, writer and broadcaster

"Henley-on-Thames", from New Bats in Old Belfries.
Poetry

Lie , Water

“We have a two-tier class system when it comes to personality style. To devalue introversion is a waste of talent, energy and happiness.”

Susan Cain (1968) self-help writer

Bielski, Zosia (interviewer), "Giving introverts permission to be themselves," The Globe and Mail, January 26, 2012.

Personality , Happiness

“Paul here is unhappy because unhappiness is second nature to him but more particularly because he has not the faintest idea of how to bring about his heart's desire. And I am unhappy because nothing is happening. Four people in four corners, moping, like tramps in Beckett, and myself in the middle, wasting time, being wasted by time.”

J.M. Coetzee book Slow Man

Slow Man (2004)

People , Idea , Nature , Time

“The best way to fill time is to waste it.”

Marguerite Duras (1914–1996) French writer and film director

Ce qui remplit le temps c'est vraiment de le perdre.
Wasting Time, from Practicalities (1987, trans. 1990).

Way , Time

“Would you be impressed if I said that the dead would help us counting

Every single moment that we waste our time?

All the time we're spending vaccinating this disease

I just get dizzy when I think of all the ways we try to hide our maladies

We wine (We wine!), we dine (We dine!), and everything is fine

Because it's not my fault

Now you're upset because you finally got the notion

That everything you had is spinning down the drain

Oh! Do you mean it when you beg and pray and plead?

Your "Giveittomegiveittomegiveittomegiveittome all those things we need"

And what, pray tell, will you whimper when your number will be called

You'll say "It's not my fault"

I had a dream last night where everyone was trying

Subconsciously I knew it was a lie

And when I woke I knew that it was time to pray

To make amends before the end, before my judgement day

I looked around, I stood alone, I knew what I had to say

I said "It's all my fault"”

Tomas Kalnoky (1980) American musician

"Would You Be Impressed?" from "Somewhere in the Between" (2007) http://risc.perix.co.uk/lyrics/sm/sitb/03/

Lie , Disease , Dreams , Way

“In Natal, apartheid is a deadly cancer in our midst, setting house against house, and eating away at the precious ties that bound us together. This strife among ourselves wastes our energy and destroys our unity. My message to those of you involved in this battle of brother against brother is this: take your guns, your knives, and your pangas, and throw them into the sea! Close down the death factories. End this war now!”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

Speech to a Rally, Durban (25 February 1990); Republished in: J. C. Buthelezi. Rolihlahla Dalibhunga Nelson Mandela: An Ecological Study http://books.google.com/books?id=dy_aBlwBYacC&pg=PA340, (2002), p. 340
1990s

Death , War , Housing , Sea

“Training, as practiced in much of corporate America, is an astonishing waste of resources.”

Tim Hurson (1946) Creativity theorist, author and speaker

Think Better: An Innovator's Guide to Productive Thinking

Training

“One evening at dinner, realizing that he had done nobody any favour throughout the entire day, he spoke these memorable words: "My friends, I have wasted a day."”
Atque etiam recordatus quondam super cenam, quod nihil cuiquam toto die praestitisset, memorabilem illam meritoque laudatam vocem edidit: "Amici, diem perdidi."

Sueton book The Twelve Caesars

Source: The Twelve Caesars, Titus, Ch. 8

“There was such a dense concentration of energy there [Vietnam], American and essentially adolescent, if that energy could have been channeled into anything more than noise, waste and pain it would have lighted up Indochina for a thousand years.”

Michael Herr book Dispatches

Dispatches (1977)

Pain , Light

“I would have failed, of course, but failure is the condition of the artist's life. What kind of failure would I have enjoyed, suffered? I know it was not all waste. My hopeless daubings taught me to look at the world with a painter's eye, despite the poor connection between eye and hand. And the smells of turpentine and linseed oil and paint-soaked rags still make my blood tingle. But words were my calling, and called to me, and I let fall the brush.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

My other life: John Banville http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/nov/30/my-other-life-john-banville?INTCMP=SRCH, The Observer (30 November 2008).

Life , World , Failure , Suffering

“According to a frequently cited definition, economics is the study of “best use of scarce resources.” The definition is incomplete. “Second best” use of resources, and outright wasteful uses, have equal claim to attention. They are the other side of the coin.”

Tjalling Koopmans (1910–1985) Dutch American economist

Source: Concepts of Optimality and Their Uses, 1975, p. 239: Lead sentence

Study

“His eye so dim,
So wasted each limb,
That, heedless of grammar, they all cried,
“THAT ’S HIM!
That ’s the scamp that has done this scandalous thing!
That ’s the thief that has got my Lord Cardinal’s Ring!””

Richard Harris Barham (1788–1845) British writer and priest

Poem: The Jackdaw of Rheims http://www.bartleby.com/246/108.html

“The zealous care with which J. M. W. Turner endeavoured to do his duty, is proved by a large existing series of drawings, exquisitely tinted, and often completely coloured, all by his own hand, of the most difficult perspective subjects—illustrating not only directions of line, but effects of light - with a care and completion which would put the work of any ordinary teacher to utter shame. In teaching generally — he would neither waste time nor spare it - he would look over a student's drawing at the Academy, point to a defective part, make a scratch on the paper at the side, say nothing. If the student saw what was wanted, and did it, Turner was delighted; but if the student could not follow. Turner left him.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

Quote, c. 1850's; describing Turner's perspective lectures; as quoted in The life of J.M.W. Turner, Volume II, George Walter Thornbury; Hurst and Blackett Publishers, London, 1862, p. 108

Light , Teachers , Time , Parting

“The key to understanding Crowley is the same as the key to understanding the Marquis de Sade. Both wasted an immense amount of energy screaming defiance at the authority they resented so much, and lacked the insight to see that they were shaking their fists as at abstraction.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: Aleister Crowley: The Nature of the Beast (1987), p. 29

Understanding

“What could he do?
Should have been a father.
But he never even made it to his twenties.
What a waste —
Army dreamers.
Ooh, what a waste of
Army dreamers.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Never for Ever (1980)

“Wasting our time? This is a waste of time, to live in peace and plenty with my wife and children? May I waste the rest of my life, then.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Homecoming saga, The Ships Of Earth (1994)

Life , Children , Peace , Time

“Capitalism has created its own irrationalities such as a vicious white racism, the tremendous waste associated with advertising, and the irrationality of incredible poverty in the midst of wealth and wastage even inside the biggest capitalist economies, such as that of the United States of America.”

Walter Rodney book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Source: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), p. 19.

Wealth

“He that of such a height hath built his mind,
And rear'd the dwelling of his thoughts so strong,
As neither fear nor hope can shake the frame
Of his resolved powers; nor all the wind
Of vanity or malice pierce to wrong
His settled peace, or to disturb the same;
What a fair seat hath he, from whence he may
The boundless wastes and wilds of man survey?

And with how free an eye doth he look down
Upon these lower regions of turmoil?
Where all the storms of passions mainly beat
On flesh and blood: where honour, power, renown,
Are only gay afflictions, golden toil;
Where greatness stands upon as feeble feet,
As frailty doth; and only great doth seem
To little minds, who do it so esteem.”

Samuel Daniel (1562–1619) Poet and historian

To the Countess of Cumberland. Stanza 1

Fear , Peace , Hope , Strong

“We've all done things we shouldn't, it's just I did stuff at college, when nobody knew about it, so I'm not a saint. … I wasted time doing self-destructive things but it didn't work. I found out you can only dance on so many tabletops. I got that all out of my system and now I'm healthy and I'm grounded.”

Anne Hathaway (1982) American actress

Source: As quoted in "Anne Hathaway : I'm Not a Saint" in People magazine (20 February 2007) http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20012312,00.html

Time , Dance

“What tranquillity will there be in heaven! Who can express the fullness and blessedness of this peace! What a calm is this! How sweet and holy and joyous! What a haven of rest to enter, after having passed through the storms and tempests of this world, in which pride and selfishness and envy and malice and scorn and contempt and contention and vice are as waves of a restless ocean, always rolling, and often dashed about in violence and fury! What a Canaan of rest to come to, after going through this waste and howling wilderness, full of snares and pitfalls and poisonous serpents, where no rest could be found.”

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 302.

World , Peace , Envy , Selfishness

“In the United States dramatically, here fortunately much less so, the book store as we have known it is dying. In the United States it is now largely an emporium, featuring music, records, Christmas cards, a large range fo semi-cultural and kitsch products with books fighting for their actual spatial lives. In some of the great university towns such as New Haven, or Princeton, within the past decade, the last good book stores have had to close, and what we have now are text book emporia which are not book stores, but store-houses bracketed according to set reading lists: in other words—where there is none of the genius of waste which a great book store has, where you cannot find what you are not looking for, which is the very essence of a book store.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

Do Books Matter? (ed. Brian Baumfield), ISBN 0705700143, p. 27.
Do Books Matter?

Books , Music , Universe , Reading

“His manner of Studie was thus…About every three houres his man was to bring him a roll and a pott of Ale to refocillate his wasted spirits: so he studied and dranke, and munched some bread; and this maintained him till night, and then, he made a good Supper: now he did well not to dine, which breakes off one's fancy, which will not presently be regained: and 'tis with Invention as a flux, when once it is flowing, it runnes amaine: if it is checked, flowes but guttim [drop by drop]: and the like for perspiration, check it, and 'tis spoyled.”

John Aubrey book Brief Lives

"William Prynne"
Brief Lives

Study , Night

“What excites pleasure in me is the meeting and conversing with old friends. But it is very galling when my friends do not visit me because there is a biting wind, or the roads are muddy through the rain, or perhaps because they are sick. Then I feel isolated. Although I myself do not drink, yet I provide spirits for my friends, […]. In front of my house runs a great river, and there I can sit with my friends in the shadow of the lovely trees. […] When they come they drink and chat, just as they please, but our pleasure is in the conversation and not in the liquor. We do not discuss politics because we are so isolated here that our news is simply composed of rumors, and it would only be a waste of time to talk with untrustworthy information. We also never talk about other people's faults, because in this world nobody is wrong, and we should beware of backbiting. We do not wish to injure anyone, and therefore our conversation is of no consequence to anyone. We discuss human nature about which people know so little because they are too busy to study it.”

Shi Nai'an (1296–1372) Chinese writer

Variant translation by Lin Yutang: "When all my friends come together to my house, there are sixteen persons in all, but it is seldom that they all come. But except for rainy or stormy days, it is also seldom that none of them comes. Most of the days, we have six or seven persons in the house, and when they come, they do not immediately begin to think; they would take a sip when they feel like it and stop when they feel like it, for they regard the pleasure as consisting in the conversation, and not in the wine. We do not talk about court politics, not only because it lies outside our proper occupation, but also because at such a distance most of the news is based upon hearsay; hearsay news is mere rumour, and to discuss rumours would be a waste of our saliva. We also do not talk about people's faults, for people have no faults, and we should not malign them. We do not say things to shock people and no one is shocked; on the other hand, we do wish people to understand what we say, but people still don't understand what we say. For such things as we talk about lie in the depths of the human heart, and the people of the world are too busy to hear them." (The Importance of Living, 1937; pp. 218–219)
Preface to Water Margin

Love , People , Pleasure , World

“Eat not thy heart; which forbids to afflict our souls, and waste them with vexatious cares.”

Plutarch book Moralia

Moralia, Of the Training of Children

Soul , Affliction , Heart

“Diplomats were invented simply to waste time.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

On preparation for the Paris Peace Conference (November 1918)
Prime Minister

Time

“Write by WASTE. The government will open it if you use the other. The dolphins will be mad. Love the dolphins.”

Thomas Pynchon book The Crying of Lot 49

The Crying of Lot 49 (1966)

Love , Madness

“Value Time: Our time on the earth is limited. There are so many things to do in this limited life span. So you have to manage your day and time wisely. Don’t be a fool to waste your precious time and life.”

Thich Nhat Tu (1969) Vietnamese philosopher

Engaged Buddhism, Social Change and World Peace (2014)

Life , Fools , Time

“The free enterprise policies that produce solely for waste and for profit and that promote a consumerist mentality rather than one of need are damaging to the environment. I am in no sense defending the centralised economies of eastern Europe. They have polluted the north sea and rivers just as industries in Britain and North America have destroyed rivers, wasted natural resources and ruined people's lives by their form of pollution. It is not good enough to promote an economic system that produces for waste and to promote environmental controls in western Europe and North America to look after our environment if at the same time we transfer that destruction of the environment to poorer Third-world countries, either by exporting toxic waste and letting those countries get rid of it by whatever means they can, because they are desperate for foreign currency, or by promoting the destruction of the rain forests, through raping those countries to collect debt payments, when they can make them only by destroying all their natural resources. We live in an age when we have an opportunity to improve our environment and save ourselves from mass destruction through climatic change and environmental disasters.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1990/jan/15/environmental-protection-bill in the House of Commons (15 January 1990).
1990s

People , Age , World , Nature

“Education,” he smiled, “is never a waste of time.”

Robert Lynn Asprin (1946–2008) American science fiction and fantasy author

Source: Time Scout (1995), Chapter 9 (p. 175)

Education , Smile , Time

“He awoke. He was alive. He wasted no time on prayer or thanks but continued the business of survival.”

Alfred Bester book The Stars My Destination

Source: The Stars My Destination (1956), Chapter 1 (p. 19).

Business , Time

“But why should we hear about body bags and deaths, and how many, what day it's gonna happen, and how many this or that or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it's not relevant. So, why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that, and watch him (her husband, former president George H. W. Bush) suffer?”

Barbara Bush (1925–2018) former First Lady of the United States

Addressing the question of how much television news she'd recently been watching, in light of the enormous media attention given to likely outcomes in a U.S. war with Iraq. The interview took place two days prior to the start of the Iraq War, Good Morning America (18 March 2003)

Death , Beauty , Suffering

“If the society toward which we are developing is not to be a nightmare of exhaustion, we must use the interlude of the present era to develop a new technology which is based on a circular flow of materials such that the only sources of man's provisions will be his own waste products.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1970s, Economics As a Science, 1970, p. 147

“I remember sitting down once, [at] three in the morning and probably the only person awake in Stevens Point […] *imitates typing with his fingers* And I stop, and I think: "This is crap! I've spent years of my life writing crap. This will never be published - it isn't good… I've wasted years of my life!" *shrugs and types on* You do it because you like the process. I mean… you write because you like to write.”

Patrick Rothfuss (1973) American fantasy writer

Suvudu interview with Shawn Speakman, June 2010 http://sf-fantasy.suvudu.com/2011/01/video-interview-patrick-rothfuss.html

Life , Thinking , Personality

“Politeness iz often wasted, but it iz a good and cheap mistake tew make.”

Josh Billings (1818–1885) American humorist

Josh Billings: His Works, Complete (1873)

“Before we were old enough to practise at the nets with the Burslem men, we played most of our cricket on waste land that had been trampled flat by the clogs and boots of generations of miners.”

Bernard Hollowood (1910–1981) English cricketer

Cricket on the Brain (1970)

Men

“… I shall not waste any time on such miserable twaddle as to say that I ought to have been elected. … It is the undoubted right of the people to change their servants, and to remove one and displace him with another at any time they choose, for a good reason, for a bad reason, or for no reason at all. If we are to remain a free people, it is the duty of public servants not grumpily and sourly to accept the verdict of the majority, but joyously to accept that verdict....”

Henry Fountain Ashurst (1874–1962) United States Senator from Arizona

"Ashurst Out" http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,801964-2,00.html. Time (September 23, 1940)

People , Change , Time

“And whether there is a heaven or hell here, or hereafter, every good man has enough to do to make this world a little better than it is. Millions of lives are wasted in the vain effort to find the origin of things, and the destiny of man. This world has been neglected. We have been taught that life should be merely a preparation for death.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

"To the Indianapolis Clergy." The Iconoclast (Indianapolis, IN) (1883)

Life , Death , World , Hell

“What I set myself to do was this, to write a sort of grammar of thirteenth-century architecture, and to illustrate it with carefully measured details. I moreover resolved, when I did measure details or buildings, to do the part I wanted, and not to waste time by trying to make a finished drawing by means of the surroundings. The plan of the book fell through, for I had scarcely been at work two months before the advertisement of M. Viollet-le-Duc's Dictionary appeared, and I then continued tho drawings for my own instruction and without any intention of publication.”

William Burges (1827–1881) English architect

William Burges, Architectural Drawings, London, 1870. p. 1; As cited in American Architect and Building News. 1881. Vol. 9. p. 236

Books , Appearance , Time , Parting

“The keenest pangs the wretched find
Are rapture to the dreary void,
The leafless desert of the mind,
The waste of feelings unemployed.”

George Gordon Byron The Giaour

Source: The Giaour (1813), Line 957.

Feeling

“If I do not waste time, I am wasting my time.”

James Richardson (1950) American poet

#146
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)

Time

“Play to your strengths. If you’re not the “warm & fuzzy” voice, don’t waste time trying to be that. Work at what you’re naturally good at, then make it better. Challenge people to challenge you. And know when to stop talking.”

Larry Brantley (1966) American stand-up comedian

Larry Brantley – the heart (and voice) behind Wishbone! http://hollyfranklin.com/larrybrantley/ (September 17, 2016)

People , Nature , Time

“Who can over estimate the progress of the world if all the money wasted in superstition could be used to enlighten, elevate and civilize mankind?”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

"Some Mistakes of Moses" (1879) http://www.archive.org/stream/somemistakesmose00ingeuoft/somemistakesmose00ingeuoft_djvu.txt Section II, "Free Schools".

Money , World

“The mountains of things we throw away are much greater than the things we use. In this, if in no other way, we can see the wild and reckless exuberance of our production, and waste seems to be the index.”

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer

Pt. 2
Travels With Charley: In Search of America (1962)

Way , Mountain

“When it was all gone, the dream of floating toward bursting stars, and the flesh returned to hold my blood in its prosaic channels, when the room returned, the dirty sordid room, the vacant meaningless ceiling, the weary wasted world, I felt nothing but the old sense of guilt, the sense of crime and violation, the sin of destruction.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Source: Ask the Dust (1939), Chapter Sixteen

World , Dreams , Star , Sense

“White magic is supposedly utilized only for good or unselfish purposes, and black magic, we are told, is used only for selfish or "evil" reasons. Satanism draws no such dividing line. Magic is magic, be it used to help or hinder. The Satanist, being the magician, should have the ability to decide what is just, and then apply the powers of magic to attain his goals. Nature, in her ineffable wisdom, wastes nothing. Seemingly useless but parasitic or destructive persons should be used like clay pigeons: for target practice.”

Anton LaVey book The Satanic Bible

The Satanic Bible (1969)

Wisdom , Nature , Evil , Help

“Why waste knowledge?… No company can afford to waste knowledge. Failure of management to breakdown barriers between activities… is one way to waste knowledge. People that are not working together are not contributing their best to the company. People as they work together, feeling secure in the job reinforce their knowledge and efforts. Their combined output, when they are working together, is more than the sum of their separate”

W. Edwards Deming (1900–1993) American professor, author, and consultant

Source: Quality, Productivity and Competitive Position, (1982), p. 352–353

People , Way , Feeling , Failure

“You don't have to own squirrels and starlings to get enjoyment from them … One day, we would like an end to pet shops and the breeding of animals. [Dogs] would pursue their natural lives in the wild … they would have full lives, not wasting at home for someone to come home in the evening and pet them and then sit there and watch TV.”

Ingrid Newkirk (1949) British-American activist

The Chicago Daily Herald, 1990 March 1.
1990s

Dogs , Home , Nature , Animals

“And in the year AH 698 (AD 1298) he appointed Ulugh Khan to the command of a powerful army, to proceed into the country of Gujarat… Ulugh Khan carried off an idol from Nahrwala… and took it to Dihli where he caused it to be trampled under foot by the populace; then he pursued Rai Karan as far as Somnat, and a second time laid waste the idol temple of Somnat, and building a mosque there retraced his steps.”

`Abd al-Qadir Bada'uni book Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh

Sultan ‘Alau’d-Din Khalji (AD 1296-1316) Patan and Somnath (Gujarat)
Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh

Time , Country

“Whoe'er thou art, thy Lord and master see,
Thou wast my Slave, thou art, or thou shalt be.”

George Granville, 1st Baron Lansdowne (1666–1735) 1st Baron Lansdowne

Inscription for a Figure representing the God of Love. See Genuine Works. (1732) I. 129. Version of a Greek couplet from the Greek Anthology.

Art

“It is natural for government and business leaders to want to make the best of a bad situation. For example, articles on Watergate postulated that we are now better off because the crisis demonstrated the strength of a democracy. Some contend that the Exxon Valdez oil spill had a good side in that there were many "lessons learned". THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE! I do not subscribe to the "I have to fail to learn and improve" theory. A set-back leading to "experience and growth" is one thing; total failure is another. Few corporations could sustain as much bad press as Exxon, not to mention the opportunity cost of billions of dollars that could have been applied more profitably elsewhere. An organization's most precious resources are its time, energy (individual and corporate) and capital. They should be directed toward increasing profit, providing better service and improving the organization's reputation. They should not be wasted on damage control. Yet we continue to hear stories of crisis situations that drain organizations of that valuable energy and focus.”

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

Source: Crisis Management: A Model For Managers (1993), p. 4-5

Democracy , Failure , Business , Nature

“Of course, if you find someone who has meditated like my Master made me meditate, very happily you can take advantage of him. I am ready to help you in that case. Do not follow the false one; do not waste your life.”

Ajaib Singh (1926–1997) Sant Ajaib Singh (11 September 1926 – 6 July 1997) was born in Maina, Bhatinda district, Punjab, India. He …

Ref. http://www.ajaibbani.org/remain_firm_on_the_truth.htm.

Life , Help , Falseness

“Like a marble statue placed,
Looking o'er the watery waste,
With its white fixed gaze;
There the Goddess sits, her eye
Raised to the unpitying sky;”

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

The Monthly Magazine

“Oh, you'll not be any poorer if you smile along your way,
And your lot will not be harder for the kindly things you say.
Don't imagine you are wasting time for others that you spend:
You can rise to wealth and glory and still pause to be a friend.”

Edgar Guest (1881–1959) American writer

It Isn't Costly, stanza 3, p. 15.
A Heap o' Livin' (1916)

Smile , Way , Imagination , Time

“I didn’t think anyone outside of LA would read Less Than Zero. I thought The Rules of Attraction would be a huge hit. I assumed people would react to American Psycho as a comedy. I thought I showcased some of my best writing in The Informers. And I was totally caught off-guard by the amount of good reviews and bad reviews Glamorama elicited. I’ve stopped guessing because I’m always wrong. And quite honestly: I don’t care. Writing the book is the main thing. Waiting for a reaction: a waste of time. But, obviously, I hope people respond to the book in a favorable way. I don’t want people to dislike it. But I don’t really mind if they do.”

Bret Easton Ellis book Lunar Park

http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780307264305&view=auqa

People , Books , Hope , Way

“Musing on the phrase ‘waste of time.’ So much more complex than it appears. Many ‘wastes of time’—small talk, daydreaming—are imperatives.”

Tom Peters (1942) American writer on business management practices

October 7, 2013.
Tom Peters Daily, Weekly Quote

Appearance , Time

“It is in these acts called trivialities that the seeds of joy are forever wasted, until men and women look round with haggard faces at the devastation their own waste has made, and say, the earth bears no harvest of sweetness—calling their denial knowledge.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Middlemarch (1871)

Women , Men , Knowledge , Joy

““I was afraid you wouldn’t take me seriously.”
“I did. But I am preparing,” the duke said, “to revise that opinion. Stop playing and tell me what you want.”
“And you’ll give it to me?”
“What do you think? If it’s reasonable, I’ll consider it. If it’s not, I have the resources to annoy you very much as you’ve been annoying me. It’s true I have more scruples—but I’m willing to suspend them. I also have more money, you see—lots more money. I wasn’t planning to waste any of it on you, but I could be convinced to change my mind.””

Ellen Kushner book The Privilege of the Sword

Part IV, Chapter VI (p. 404)
The Privilege of the Sword (2006)

Money , Thinking , Change

“Without really wanting to at all, they pay calls and carry on conversations, sit out their hours at desks and on office chairs; and it is all compulsory, mechanical and against the grain, and it could all be done or left undone just as well by machines; and indeed the never ending machinery that prevents their being, like me, the critics of their own lives and recognizing the stupidity and shallowness, the hopeless tragedy and waste of the lives they lead, and the awful ambiguity grinning over it all. And they are right, right a thousand times to live as they do, playing their games and pursuing their business, instead of resisting the dreary machine and staring into the void as I do, who have left the track.”

Hermann Hesse book Steppenwolf

Steppenwolf (1927)

Stupidity , Game , Business , Time

“The fountain of content must spring up in the mind, and he who hath so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief he proposes to remove.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Life , Spring , Nature , Knowledge

“Now we live in an amazing, amazing world and it’s wasted on the crappiest generation of spoiled idiots.”

Louis C.K. (1967) American comedian and actor

Conan http://www.thatvideosite.com/v/94 (2006)

World

“We are all such a waste of our potential, like three-way lamps using one-way bulbs.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Way

“Wherever you can win a lady's ring and greeting, take it – it will rid you of the dumps. Waste no time, but kiss and embrace her. It will bring you good fortune and raise your spirits, granted she be chaste and good.”

Wolfram von Eschenbach book Parzival

Swa du guotes wîbes vingerlîn
mügest erwerben unt ir gruoz,
daz nim: ez tuot dir kumbers buoz.
du solt zir kusse gâhen
und ir lîp vast umbevâhen:
daz gît gelücke und hôhen muot,
op si kiusche ist unde guot.
Bk. 3, st. 127, line 26; p. 75.
Parzival

Kiss , Time

““Sultãn Mahmûd started again in AH 863 (AD 1458-59) for punishing the Rajpûts. When he halted at ÃhãD, Prince Ghiyãsu’d-Dîn and Fidan Khãn were sent towards Kîlwãrã and Dîlwãrã in order to lay waste those lands. They destroyed those lands and attacked the environs of Kumbhalmîr….“When they came to the presence of the Sultãn and praised the fort of Kumbhalmîr, the Sultãn started for Kumbhalmîr next day and went ahead destroying temples on the way. When he halted near that fort, he mounted his horse and went up a hill which was to the east of the fort in order to survey the city. He said, ‘It is not possible to capture this fort without a siege lasting for several years’…”159”

Nizamuddin Ahmad (1551–1594) historian

Sultãn Mahmûd Khaljî of Malwa (AD 1436-1469) Kelwara and Delwara (Rajasthan)
Tabqãt-i-Akharî

Way , Horse

“Nothing but a speck we seem
In the waste of waters round,
Floating, floating like a dream, —
Outward bound.”

Dinah Craik (1826–1887) English novelist and poet

"Outward Bound"; Poems Since 1860
Poems (1866)

Dreams , Water

“Waste not your Hour, nor in the vain pursuit
Of This and That endeavour and dispute;
Better be jocund with the fruitful Grape
Than sadden after none, or bitter, Fruit.”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

The Rubaiyat (1120)

“Like to a leafless tree,
Dry river bed, or house in pathless waste,
Is gentle blood that hath no courtesy.”

Francesco Berni (1497–1535) Italian poet

Ben è un ramo senza foglia,
Fiume senz' acqua e casa senza via,
La gentilezza senza cortesia.
LXIV, 61
Rifacimento of Orlando Innamorato

Tree , Housing

“Sooltan Mahmood, in the year AH 863 (AD 1485), again marched against the Rajpoots. On arriving at the town of Dhar, he detached Gheias-ood-Deen to lay waste the country of the Kolies and Bheels. In this excursion the Prince penetrated to the hills of Koombulmere, and on his return, having given the King some description of that fortress, Sooltan Mahmood resolved to march thither. On the next day he moved for that purpose, destroying all the temples on the road…”

Firishta (1560–1620) Indian historian

Sultãn Mahmûd Khaljî of Malwa (AD 1435-1469) On Way to Kumbhalgadh (Rajasthan)
Tãrîkh-i-Firishta

Country

“Question: Is not the person who has been transported to interior detachment freed from external exercises?
Answer: One sees few people reach the condition you describe without their strength being wasted. The efforts of those who really achieve it affect them to the marrow. And so, when they realise what is to be done and left undone, they continue to practise the usual exercises, performing them more or less frequently as their strength and the occasion permit.
Question: Where do the pangs of conscience and other anxieties of seemingly good people come from, as well as the unrestrained latitude (of conscience) in other people?
Answer: Both types are focusing their attention on their own image but in different ways; the one group spiritually, the other bodily.”

Henry Suso (1295–1366) Dominican friar and mystic

The Exemplar, The Little Book of Truth

People , Way , Exercises , Question

“O England's hate is my love unsleeping, Gwynedd my land,
Golden on every hand to the myriad reaping.
For her bounty of mead I love her, winter content,
Where turbulent wastes of the sea but touch and are spent;
I love her people, quiet peace, rich store of her treasure
Changed at her prince's pleasure to splendid war.”

Hywel ab Owain Gwynedd poet

Caraf trachas Lloegyr, lleudir goglet hediw,
ac yn amgant y Lliw lliwas callet.
Caraf am rotes rybuched met,
myn y dyhaet my meith gwyrysset.
Carafy theilu ae thew anhet yndi
ac wrth uot y ri rwyfaw dyhet.
"Gorhoffedd" (The Boast), line 3; translation from Robert Gurney Bardic Heritage (London: Chatto & Windus, 1969) p. 39.

Love , Hate , War , People

“But now in this Valley of Humiliation poor Christian was hard put to it, for he had gone but a little way before he espied a foul Fiend coming over the field to meet him; his name is Apollyon. Then did Christian begin to be afraid, and to cast in his mind whether to go back, or to stand his ground. But he considered again, that he had no Armor for his back, and therefore thought that to turn the back to him might give him greater advantage with ease to pierce him with his Darts; therefore he resolved to venture, and stand his ground. For thought he, had I no more in mine eye than the saving of my life, 'twould be the best way to stand.
So he went on, and Apollyon met him. Now the Monster was hideous to behold, he was cloathed with scales like a Fish (and they are his pride) he had Wings like a Dragon, feet like a Bear, and out of his belly came Fire and Smoke, and his mouth was as the mouth of a Lion. When he was come up to Christian, he beheld him with a disdainful countenance, and thus began to question with him.
Apollyon: Whence come you, and whither are you bound?
Christian: I am come from the City of Destruction, which is the place of all evil, and am going to the City of Zion.
Apollyon: By this I perceive thou art one of my Subjects, for all that Country is mine; and I am the Prince and God of it. How is it then that thou hast run away from thy King? Were it not that I hope thou mayest do me more service, I would strike thee now at one blow to the ground.
Christian: I was born indeed in your Dominions, but your service was hard, and your wages such as a man could not live on, for the wages of Sin is death; therefore when I was come to years, I did as other considerate persons do, look out if perhaps I might mend my self.
Apollyon: There is no Prince that will thus lightly lose his Subjects, neither will I as yet lose thee. But since thou complainest of thy service and wages be content to go back; what our Country will afford, I do here promise to give thee.
Christian: But I have let myself to another, even to the King of Princes, and how can I with fairness go back with thee?
Apollyon: Thou hast done in this, according to the Proverb, Changed a bad for a worse: but it is ordinary for those that have professed themselves his Servants, after a while to give him the slip, and return again to me: do thou so to, and all shall be well.
Christian: I have given him my faith, and sworn my Allegiance to him; how then can I go back from this, and not be hanged as a Traitor?
Apollyon: Thou didst the same to me, and yet I am willing to pass by all, if now thou wilt yet turn again, and go back.
Christian: What I promised thee was in my nonage; and besides, I count that the Prince under whose Banner now I stand, is able to absolve me; yea, and to pardon also what I did as to my compliance with thee: and besides, (O thou destroying Apollyon) to speak truth, I like his Service, his Wages, his Servants, his Government, his Company, and Country better than thine: and, therefore, leave off to perswade me further, I am his Servant, and I will follow him.
Apollyon: Consider again when thou art in cool blood, what thou art like to meet with in the way that thou goest. Thou knowest that for the most part, his Servants come to an ill end, because they are transgressors against me, and my ways. How many of them have been put to shameful deaths! and besides, thou countest his service better than mine, whereas he never came yet from the place where he is, to deliver any that served him out of our hands; but as for me, how many times, as all the World very well knows, have I delivered, either by power or fraud, those that have faithfully served me, from him and his, though taken by them, and so I will deliver thee.
Christian: His forbearing at present to deliver them, is on purpose to try their love, whether they will cleave to him to the end: and as for the ill end thou sayest they come to, that is most glorious in their account. For for present deliverance, they do not much expect it; for they stay for their Glory, and then they shall have it, when their Prince comes in his, and the Glory of the Angels.
Apollyon: Thou hast already been unfaithful in thy service to him, and how doest thou think to receive wages of him?
Christian: Wherein, O Apollyon, have I been unfaithful to him?
Apollyon: Thou didst faint at first setting out, when thou wast almost choked in the Gulf of Dispond; thou didst attempt wrong ways to be rid of thy burden, whereas thou shouldest have stayed till thy Prince had taken it off: thou didst sinfully sleep and lose thy choice thing: thou wast also almost perswaded to go back, at the sight of the Lions; and when thou talkest of thy Journey, and of what thou hast heard, and seen, thou art inwardly desirous of vain-glory in all that thou sayest or doest.
Christian:All this is true, and much more, which thou hast left out; but the Prince whom I serve and honour, is merciful, and ready to forgive: but besides, these infirmities possessed me in thy Country, for there I suckt them in, and I have groaned under them, been sorry for them, and have obtained pardon of my Prince.
Apollyon: Then Apollyon broke out into a grievous rage, saying, I am an enemy to this Prince: I hate his Person, his Laws, and People: I am come out on purpose to withstand thee.
Christian: Apollyon beware what you do, for I am in the King's Highway, the way of Holiness, therefore take heed to your self.
Apollyon: Then Apollyon straddled quite over the whole breadth of the way, and said, I am void of fear in this matter, prepare thy self to die, for I swear by my Infernal Den, that thou shalt go no further, here will I spill thy soul; and with that, he threw a flaming Dart at his breast, but Christian had a Shield in his hand, with which he caught it, and so prevented the danger of that. Then did Christian draw, for he saw 'twas time to bestir him; and Apollyon as fast made at him, throwing Darts as thick as Hail; by the which, notwithstanding all that Christian could do to avoid it, Apollyon wounded him in his head, his hand and foot; this made Christian give a little back: Apollyon therefore followed his work amain, and Christian again took courage, and resisted as manfully as he could. This sore combat lasted for above half a day, even till Christian was almost quite spent. For you must know that Christian by reason of his wounds, must needs grow weaker and weaker.
Then Apollyon espying his opportunity, began to gather up close to Christian, and wrestling with him, gave him a dreadful fall; and with that, Christian's Sword flew out of his hand. Then said Apollyon, I am sure of thee now, and with that, he had almost prest him to death, so that Christian began to despair of life. But as God would have it, while Apollyon was fetching of his last blow, thereby to make a full end of this good Man, Christian nimbly reached out his hand for his Sword, and caught it, saying, Rejoice not against me, O mine Enemy! when I fall, I shall arise; and with that, gave him a deadly thrust, which made him give back, as one that had received his mortal wound: Christian perceiving that, made at him again, saying, Nay, in all these things we are more than Conquerors, through him that loved us. And with that, Apollyon spread forth his Dragon's wings, and sped him away, that Christian saw him no more….”

John Bunyan The Pilgrim's Progress

Source: The Pilgrim's Progress (1678), Part I, Ch. IX : Apollyon

Love , Life , Death , God

“It gives my brain a rest, painting flowers. I don't feel the same tension as when I have a model in front of me. When I paint flowers, I put on colours and try out values boldly, without worrying about wasting a canvas. I wouldn't dare to do it with a figure; I'd be afraid of spoiling the whole thing. And the experience I gain this way is then applied to my pictures.”

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) French painter and sculptor

Source: undated quotes, Renoir – his life and work, 1975, p. 196 : quote on painting flowers, to art-buyer George Riviere, who was watching a flower still-life of Renoir.

Way , Feeling , Flowers , Painting

“They rode on. They rode like men invested with a purpose whose origins were antecedent to them, like blood legatees of an order both imperative and remote. For although each man among them was discrete unto himself, conjoined they made a thing that had not been before and in that communal soul were wastes hardly reckonable more than those whited regions on old maps where monsters do live and where there is nothing other of the known world save conjectural winds.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Source: Blood Meridian (1985), Chapter XII

Men , World , Soul , Communication

“Young Knight learn to love God and revere women so that your honour grows. Practice knighthood and learn the Art that dignifies you, and brings you honour in wars. Wrestle well and wield lance, spear, sword, and dagger manfully, whose use in others' hands is wasted. Strike bravely and hard there! Rush to strike or miss. Those with wisdom loath the one forced to defend. This you should grasp: All arts have length and measure. Whatever you undertake, use deliberation. In earnest or in play, be of good cheer and vitality, so you may be attentive and with good courage ponder what action you should take, so that none may touch you, since good courage and strength make your enemies hesitate. Keep in mind to give no-one any advantage. Avoid foolhardiness, do not attempt to match four or six opponents at once. Restrain your ambition, this will benefit you. He is a courageous man who can stand against his equal, while it is no shame to flee from four or six.”

Johannes Lichtenauer (1300–1389) Founder and grand master of the German School of Swordsmanship

MS 3227a

Love , Wisdom , Women , God

“Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resources. A vegetarian diet is better. … I think it’s important that people think about what they are doing and that includes what they are eating.”

Nicholas Stern, Baron Stern of Brentford (1946) British economist and academic

Interview with The Times; as quoted in "Lord Stern: 'People should give up eating meat to halt climate change'" https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/climatechange/6442164/Lord-Stern-People-should-give-up-eating-meat-to-halt-climate-change.html, The Telegraph (27 October 2009).

People , World , Thinking , Water

“In AH 871 (AD 1466-67) he started for the conquest of Karnãl [Girnãr] which is now known as JûnãgaDh. It is said that this country had been in the possession of the predecessors of Rãi Mandalîk for the past two thousand years… Sultãn Mahmûd relied on the help of Allãh and proceeded there; on the way he laid waste the land of SoraTh… From that place the Sultãn went towards the temple of those people. Many Rajpûts who were known as Parwhãn, decided to lay down their lives, and started fighting with swords and spears in (defence) of the temple… Sultãn Mahmûd postponed the conquest of the fort to the next year… and returned to Ahmadãbãd.”

Mahmud Begada (1458–1511) Sultan of Gujarat

Junagadh (Gujarat). Burhãn-i-Ma‘sir, in Uttara Taimûra Kãlîna Bhãrata, Persian texts translated into Hindi by S.A.A. Rizvi, 2 Volumes, Aligarh, 1958-59. Vol. II, p. 214

People , Way , Past , Help

“A key characteristic of the engineering culture is that the individual engineer’s commitment is to technical challenge rather than to a given company. There is no intrinsic loyalty to an employer as such. An employer is good only for providing the sandbox in which to play. If there is no challenge or if resources fail to be provided, the engineer will seek employment elsewhere. In the engineering culture, people, organization, and bureaucracy are constraints to be overcome. In the ideal organization everything is automated so that people cannot screw it up. There is a joke that says it all. A plant is being managed by one man and one dog. It is the job of the man to feed the dog, and it is the job of the dog to keep the man from touching the equipment. Or, as two Boeing engineers were overheard to say during a landing at Seattle, “What a waste it is to have those people in the cockpit when the plane could land itself perfectly well.” Just as there is no loyalty to an employer, there is no loyalty to the customer. As we will see later, if trade-offs had to be made between building the next generation of “fun” computers and meeting the needs of “dumb” customers who wanted turnkey products, the engineers at DEC always opted for technological advancement and paid attention only to those customers who provided a technical challenge.”

Edgar H. Schein (1928) Psychologist

Edgar H. Schein (2010). Dec Is Dead, Long Live Dec: The Lasting Legacy of Digital Equiment Corporation. p. 60

People , Dogs , Loyalty

“With what moral authority can they speak of human rights — the rulers of a nation in which the millionaire and beggar coexist; the Indian is exterminated; the black man is discriminated against; the woman is prostituted; and the great masses of Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, and Latin Americans are scorned, exploited, and humiliated? How can they do this — the bosses of an empire where the mafia, gambling, and child prostitution are imposed; where the CIA organizes plans of global subversion and espionage, and the Pentagon creates neutron bombs capable of preserving material assets and wiping out human beings; an empire that supports reaction and counter-revolution all over the world; that protects and promotes the exploitation by monopolies of the wealth and the human resources of whole continents, unequal exchange, a protectionist policy, an incredible waste of natural resources, and a system of hunger for the world?”

Fidel Castro (1926–2016) former First Secretary of the Communist Party and President of Cuba

Speech on the 25th anniversary of the Moncada Barracks attack (26 July 1978) http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1978/esp/f260778e.html

Hunger , World , Support , Nature

“All the books that I have seen about the science and the economics of global warming, including the two books under review, miss the main point. The main point is religious rather than scientific. There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible. … Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

The New York Review of Books (12 June 2008)

Books , Religion , Science

“I have told you before that Gladstone has shown much heart in this business. He has a strong aversion to the waste of money on our armaments. He has much more of our sympathies. He has more in common with you and me than any other man of his power in Britain.”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Letter to John Bright (1860) on the negotiations for his free trade treaty with France, quoted in W. E. Williams, The Rise of Gladstone to the Leadership of the Liberal Party, 1859 to 1868 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1934), p. 20.
1860s

Money , Business , Strong , Heart

“In the desert a fountain is springing,
In the wide waste there still is a tree,
And a bird in the solitude singing,
Which speaks to my spirit of thee.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Stanzas to Augusta (1816), reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Spring , Bird , Solitude , Tree

“How many women thus waste life away the prey of discontent, who might have practised as physicians, regulated a farm, managed a shop, and stood erect, supported by their own industry, instead of hanging their heads surcharged with the dew of sensibility, that consumes the beauty to which it at first gave lustre.”

Mary Wollstonecraft book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Source: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Ch. 9

Life , Women , Beauty , Support

“I’ve been swimming for 25 years, and I don’t think there is one swim that I have done where someone didn’t say beforehand, ‘I don’t think it’s possible’ or ‘You’ll never make it’. If someone tells you that you can’t achieve your dream, don’t waste good time arguing. Walk away and do it.”

Lewis Pugh (1969) Environmental campaigner, maritime lawyer and endurance swimmer

p 261
21 Yaks And A Speedo (2013)

Dreams , Thinking , Time

“I am not bloodthirsty. I am working for my country and the coming generations. I can't waste my time on a few young idiots. I don't believe the tortures attributed to the SAVAK are as common as people say, but I can't run everything. Besides, we have ways of using psychological pressure that are much more effective than torture… My people have every kind of freedom, except the freedom to betray.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

As quoted in Gérard de Villiers (1975), The Imperial Shah: An Informal Biography, page 259
Attributed

People , Way , Freedom , Time

“The time that I've taken
I pray is not wasted
Have I already tasted
My piece of one sweet love”

Sara Bareilles (1979) American pop rock singer-songwriter and pianist

"One Sweet Love"
Lyrics, Careful Confessions (2004)

Love , Time

“Today, our developed nations live in opulence, excess and waste, with the consequences that our environment is degrading and the climate is wreaked.”

Jacques Dubochet (1942) Nobel prize winning Swiss chemist

French: Aujourd'hui, nos nations développées vivent dans l'opulence, l'excès et le gaspillage avec pour conséquences notre environnement qui se dégrade et le climat boulversé.
Source, in French: Jacques Dubochet, Parcours, Éditions Rosso, 2018, page 209 (ISBN 9782940560097).

“Russian forests crash down under the axe, billions of trees are dying, the habitations of animals and birds are laid waste, rivers grow shallow and dry up, marvelous landscapes are disappearing forever…. Man is endowed with creativity in order to multiply that which has been given him; he has not created, but destroyed. There are fewer and fewer forests, rivers are drying up, wildlife has become extinct, the climate is ruined, and the earth is becoming ever poorer and uglier.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Act I
Uncle Vanya (1897)

Bird , Tree , Animals

“I want to cry out to these young girls: Stop! Think!... For heaven's sake, don't fall down the rabbit hole of the lesbian scene. You will never escape, and your talent will wither on the vine. Your energy will be wasted and absorbed in repetition without progression. Women alone are Spenser's Bower of Bliss, enclosed, comfortable, and dangerous.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 82

Women , Girl , Thinking , Cry

“It is a bitter thing that each of us must finally be blown out like a candle, and have the unique ardor of his individual flame choked off, and sucked utterly away like smoke in the dark. Do we ever accept this in our hearts, any of us? The waste of knowledge! It never ceases to be…infuriating.”

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

Prologue, “Shag Margold’s Eulogy of Nifft the Lean, His Dear Friend” (p. 5; ellipsis in the original)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

Knowledge , Heart

“Metaphysical rebellion is a claim, motivated by the concept of a complete unity, against the suffering of life and death and a protest against the human condition both for its incompleteness, thanks to death, and its wastefulness, thanks to evil.”

Albert Camus book The Rebel

Part 2: Metaphysical Rebellion
The Rebel (1951)

Life , Death , Motivation , Suffering

“3135. Every one is for denying, extenuating, or throwing the Blame on others, and never will confess a Fault, and take it upon himself; but this, instead of getting it excused and pardoned aggravates it, and makes it worse, and angers the Party concerned, and so it doth Mischief instead of Good. I advise therefore (unless it be a furious, unforgiving Person, and the Thing be a Crime that must not be owned) frankly to own it, to shew how thou wast brought into it, and wish thou hadst not done it. It's likely this ingenuous dealing and throwing thyself upon his Kindness, may work upon his good Nature, and so the storm may pass off without more Mischief; but this must be managed artfully in a middle Way between Sneaking and Arrogancy.”

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

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727)

Way , Nature , Personality , Anger

“He did not waste time in a vain search for a place in history.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

“Socrates,” p. 67
The Sun Watches the Sun (1999), Sequence: “A Stone and a Word”

History , Search , Time

“Request Magazine: And now we're back to suicide. Some months have passed now since Kurt [Cobain] killed himself. Judging from his suicide note, it seems as if he thought there was something that was being demanded of him by the music industry or fans or someone, that he either couldn't or didn't want to deliver.
Cornell: I wouldn't even bother trying to guess. I'm not going to understand it no matter how hard I try. I understand being suicidal, but not for the reasons that I ever would be, and it would likely have nothing to do with anybody else. Therefore, it just becomes a waste of time. I don't really think its going to help anything for people to sit around and theorize how this guy who really didn't talk much to anybody felt or why he did what he did. Maybe it had nothing to do with anything. Maybe it was just a smoke screen. Somebody who is going to be taking a lot of drugs and is going to be suicidal, you can bet there's going to be lots of smoke screens. Or maybe that's entirely what it was. We'll never know.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

Interview with Request Magazine, October 1994 http://web.stargate.net/soundgarden/articles/request_10-94.shtml,
On depression and suicide

People , Music , Guy , Understanding

“I reflected, while I chatted with the woman I had been asked to ‘take in’, that civilized man practises a strange ingenuity in wasting on tedious exercises the brief span of his life.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Moon and Sixpence

Source: The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Ch. 6, p. 22

Life , Exercises

“Minutes and seconds are strictly city preoccupations. In the city people hurry, hurry so as not to waste a single minute, and fail to realize that they are throwing a lifetime away.”

Giovannino Guareschi (1908–1968) Italian journalist, cartoonist and humorist

The Dance of the Hours
Don Camillo and the Prodigal Sun (1952)

People

“I had warned my father that my viva might mean a second. It meant a third, and I was overcome with regret, not, I am ashamed to say, for the giddy nights, but for the sober ones. I had not done much work, but I had done some. Had I known I was only to get a third I would not have wasted my time.”

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) British writer

"Is Oxford Worth the Money?", Sunday Dispatch, 10 July 1938, page 12. Quoted in "The Sayings of Evelyn Waugh", edited by Donat Gallagher, Duckworth Sayings Series

Time , Night

“Shall I, wasting in despair,
Die because a woman’s fair?
Or make pale my cheeks with care,
’Cause another’s rosy are?
Be she fairer than the day,
Or the flowery meads in May,
If she be not so to me,
What care I how fair she be?”

George Wither (1588–1667) English poet

The Shepherd's Resolution; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "If she undervalue me, What care I how fair she be?", Sir Walter Raleigh, Poem.

Despair