Dissipation Quotes

• Self-sacrifice which denies common sense is not a virtue. It's a spiritual dissipation.

  Margaret Deland

  Spiritual, Sacrifice, Self

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• An anguish of longing would boil up inside me; a hysterical thirst for contradictions and contrasts would appear, and I would embark on dissipations.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Longing, Reason, Hysterical

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• They had both noticed that a life of dissipation sometimes gave to a face the look of gaunt suffering spirituality that a life of asceticism was supposed to give and quite often did not.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Giving, Suffering, Asceticism

  Katherine Anne Porter (2015). “Ship of Fools: A Novel”, p.359, Open Road Media

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• Even the most powerful human being has a limited sphere of strength. Draw him outside of that sphere and into your own, and his strength will dissipate.

  Morihei Ueshiba

  Strength, Being Strong, Art

  Morihei Ueshiba, John Stevens (2010). “The Art of Peace”, p.154, Shambhala Publications

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• Our normal human tendencies are distraction and dissipation. We begin one task, then get seduced by some other option, and lose our focus. We drift away from what is difficult and we know to be true, to what is comfortable and socially condoned.

  Daniel Pinchbeck

  Focus, Independence, Tasks

  Daniel Pinchbeck (2012). “The 2012 Collection”, p.205, Penguin

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• You have to gather your energy together...conserving it and insulating it from dissipation in every direction other than that of your purpose.

  Walter Russell

  Secret, Together, Energy

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• On the approach of spring, I withdraw without reluctance from the noisy and extensive scene of crowds without company, and dissipation without pleasure.

  Edward Gibbon

  Spring, Crowds, April

  "Memoirs". Book by Edward Gibbon, Vol. i. p. 116, 1796.

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• Dissipation is a form of self-sacrifice.

  Eric Hoffer

  Sacrifice, Self, Despair

  Eric Hoffer (1996). “The Passionate State of Mind”

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• You can live with victory over the desires of your flesh. Habits, attitudes, desires, worries, and dissipation must yield as you exercise authority over your mind, emotions, and will.

  Adrian Rogers

  Attitude, Exercise, Yield

  Adrian Rogers (2002). “The Incredible Power of Kingdom Authority: Getting an Upper Hand on the Underworld”, p.7, B&H Publishing Group

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• Among other common lies, we have the silent lie - the deception which one conveys by simply keeping still and concealing the truth. Many obstinate truth-mongers indulge in this dissipation, imagining that if they speak no lie, they lie not at all.

  Mark Twain

  Lying, Indulge In, Deception

  Mark Twain (2000). “The Jumping Frog: And 18 Other Stories”, p.28, Book Tree

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• Revolution is everywhere, in everything. It is infinite. There is no final revolution, no final number. The social revolution is only one of an infinite number of numbers: the law of revolution is not a social law, but an immeasurably greater one. It is a cosmic, universal law - like the laws of the conservation of energy and of the dissipation of energy (entropy).

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Inspirational, Art, Law

  "A Soviet Heretic : Essays by Yevgeny Zamyatin". 1970.

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• The mind is but too naturally prone to pleasure, but too easily yielded to dissipation

  Fanny Burney

  Mind, Pleasure

  Frances Burney, Fanny Burney (2015). “Complete Works of Frances Burney (Delphi Classics)”, p.32, Delphi Classics

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• I kept it for myself like a keepsake, as if sharing the memory might lead to its dissipation.

  John Green

  Memories, Might, Keepsakes

  John Green (2008). “Looking for Alaska”, p.116, Penguin

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• To dream magnificently is not a gift given to all men, and even for those who possess it, it runs a strong risk of being progressively diminished by the ever-growing dissipation of modern life and by the restlessness engendered by material progress. The ability to dream is a divine and mysterious ability; because it is through dreams that man communicates with the shadowy world which surrounds him. But this power needs solitude to develop freely; the more one concentrates, the more one is likely to dream fully, deeply.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Running, Dream, Strong

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• How ungenerously in later life we disclaim the virtuous moods of our youth, living in retrospect long, summer days of unreflecting dissipation.

  Evelyn Waugh

  Summer, Long, Retrospect

  Evelyn Waugh (2012). “Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder”, p.64, Penguin UK

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• Luxury and dissipation, soft and gentle as their approaches are, and silently as they throw their silken chains about the heart, enslave it more than the most active and turbulent vices

  Hannah More

  Heart, Luxury, Vices

  Hannah More (1835). “The Works of Hannah More”, p.341

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• What portion in the world can the artist have, Who has awakened from the common dream, But dissipation and despair?

  William Butler Yeats

  Dream, Artist, Despair

  William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.135, Wordsworth Editions

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• Order is the law of nature, the universal trend, the cosmic direction. If time is an arrow, that arrow points toward order. The future is pattern, organization, union, intensification; the past, randomness, confusion, disintegration, dissipation.

  Alan Lightman

  Past, Order, Law

  Alan Lightman (2011). “Einstein's Dreams”, p.44, Vintage

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• If a state should pass laws forbidding its citizens to become wise and holy, it would be made a byword for all time. But this, in effect, is what our commercial, social, and political systems do. They compel the sacrifice of mental and moral power to money and dissipation.

  John Lancaster Spalding

  Wise, Sacrifice, Law

  John Lancaster Spalding (1901). “Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion”

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• Look at your [English] ladies of quality are they not forever parting with their husbands - forfeiting their reputations - and is their life aught but dissipation? In common genteel life, indeed, you may now and then meet with very fine girls - who have politeness, sense and conversation - but these are few - and then look at your trademen's daughters - what are they? poor creatures indeed! all pertness, imitation and folly.

  Fanny Burney

  Girl, Daughter, Husband

  "The Early Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney". Vol. 1, p. 47, journal entry, November 17, 1768.

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• Social dissipation, as witnessed in the ball-room, is the abettor of pride, the instigator of jealousy, it is the sacrificial altar of health, it is the defiler of the soul, it is the avenue of lust and it is the curse of every town in America.

  Thomas De Witt Talmage

  Pride, America, Dancing

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• Anger and the thirst of revenge are a kind of fever; fighting and lawsuits, bleeding,--at least, an evacuation. The latter occasions a dissipation of money; the former, of those fiery spirits which cause a preternatural fermentation.

  William Shenstone

  Revenge, Anger, Fighting

  William Shenstone, Samuel Johnson, Robert Dodsley (1807). “Essays on men and manners; with aphorisms, criticisms, impromptus, fragments, etc”, p.151

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• Liberty is a blessing so inestimable, that, wherever there appears any probability of recovering it, a nation may willingly run many hazards, and ought not even to repine at the greatest effusion of blood or dissipation of treasure.

  David Hume

  Running, Blessing, Blood

  David Hume (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of David Hume (Illustrated)”, p.874, Delphi Classics

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• The one prudence in life is concentration; the one evil is dissipation: and it makes no difference whether our dissipations are coarse or fine; property and its cares, friends and a social habit, or politics, or music, or feasting. Everything is good which takes away one plaything and delusion more, and drives us home to add one stroke of faithful work.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Work, Home, Differences

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.353

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• Life is hard, we say. An oyster's life is worse. She lives motionless, soundless, her own cold ugly shape her only dissipation.

  M. F. K. Fisher

  Life, Oysters, Shapes

  Joan Reardon, M.F.K. Fisher (2014). “The Art of Eating”, p.163, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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