Squandering Quotes

• When you waste a moment, you have killed it in a sense, squandering an irreplaceable opportunity. But when you use the moment properly, filling it with purpose and productivity, it lives on forever.

  Menachem Mendel Schneerson

  Opportunity, Forever, Inspire

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• If we have never been amazed by the very fact that we exist, we are squandering the greatest fact of all.

  Will Durant

  Facts, Amazed, Ifs

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• Health is so necessary to all the duties, as well as pleasures of life, that the crime of squandering it is equal to the folly.

  Samuel Johnson

  Health, Crime, Pleasure

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1840). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: With an Essay on His Life and Genius /c by Arthur Murphy, Esq”, p.84

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• The societies of consumption and squandering of material resources are incompatible with the idea of economic growth and a clean planet.

  Fidel Castro

  Ideas, Growth, Environmental

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• Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Love, Inspirational, Life

  Poor Richard's Almanack, June 1746

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• To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement.

  Mark Twain

  Writing, Achievement, Composition

  Mark Twain (1990). “Mark Twain's Letters, Volume 2: 1867-1868”, p.182, Univ of California Press

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• Anybody can have ideas-the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.

  Mark Twain

  Writing, Plain Language, Ideas

  Mark Twain (1990). “Mark Twain's Letters, Volume 2: 1867-1868”, p.183, Univ of California Press

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• To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence, is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself...Anybody can have ideas--the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.

  Mark Twain

  Writing, Light, Ideas

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• Existence is a strange bargain. Life owes us little; we owe it everything. The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.

  William Cowper

  Life, Happiness, Littles

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• What the problem was was this colossal redundancy, the squandering of brilliant technique on cheap material.

  Alan Hollinghurst

  Technique, Brilliant, Problem

  Alan Hollinghurst (2014). “The Line of Beauty: Picador Classic”, p.73, Pan Macmillan

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• We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Stars, Believe, Rocks

  Read Mercer Schuchardt, Chuck Palahniuk (2008). “You do not talk about Fight Club: I am Jack's completely unauthorized essay collection”, Benbella Books

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• To help U.S. workers, farmers and businesses, and Americas long-term economic security, Congress should take decisive action to bring about fair trade with China, instead of squandering this opportunity on a weak Republican bill.

  Joe Baca

  Opportunity, Long, Bills

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• ...if the citizens neglect their Duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made, not for the public good so much as for selfish or local purposes; corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the Laws; the public revenues will be squandered on unworthy men; and the rights of the citizen will be violated or disregarded.

  Noah Webster

  Selfish, Men, Rights

  Noah Webster (1835). “Instructive and Entertaining Lessons for Youth: With Rules for Reading with Propriety, Illustrated by Examples: Designed for Use in Schools and Families”, p.230

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• Spend the years of learning squandering Courage for the years of wandering Through a world politely turning From the loutishness of learning.

  Samuel Beckett

  Years, World, Wander

  Samuel Beckett (2007). “Collected Poems in English and French”, p.7, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Faith is an excitement and an enthusiasm: it is a condition of intellectual magnificence to which we must cling as to a treasure, and not squander on our way through life in the small coin of empty words, or in exact and priggish argument.

  George Sand

  Life, Intellectual, Flipping A Coin

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• Busy with the ugliness of the expensive success
  We forget the easiness of free beauty
  Lying sad right around the corner,
  Only an instant removed,
  Unnoticed and squandered.

  Dejan Stojanovic

  Lying, Busy, Forget

  "Serious Business". Poem by Dejan Stojanovic,

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• The Righteous Salaf were as fearful of their good deeds being squandered, or not being accepted, as the present generation is certain that their neglect would be forgiven.

  Hasan of Basra

  Forgiveness, Wisdom, Islamic

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• Squandering our gifts brings distress to our lives. As it turns out, it's not merely benign or 'too bad' if we don't use the gifts that we've been given; we pay for it with our emotional and physical well-being. When we don't use our talents to cultivate meaningful work, we struggle. We feel disconnected and weighted down by feelings of emptiness, frustration, resentment, shame, disappointment, fear, and even grief.

  Brené Brown

  Motivational, Meaningful, Disappointment

  Brené Brown (2010). “The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are”, p.123, Simon and Schuster

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• I seldom try to probe the mystery of my sloth. I have squandered a gigantic fortune of work hours... seems likely that I'll go on squandering till the very end.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Sloth, Trying, Goes On

  Christopher Isherwood, Don Bachardy (1983). “October”, London : Methuen

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• A man's labor is not only his capital but his life. When it passes it returns never more. To utilize it, to prevent its wasteful squandering, to enable the poor man to bank it up for use hereafter, this surely is one of the most urgent tasks before civilization.

  William Booth

  Work, Men, Civilization

  William Booth (1890). “In Darkest England, and the Way Out”

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• It is manifestly unjust that a privileged few should continue to accumulate excess goods, squandering available resources, while masses of people are living in conditions of misery at the very lowest level of subsistence.

  Pope John Paul II

  People, Excess, Levels

  Pope John Paul II (1998). “In my own words”

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• There are men regarded today as brilliant economists, who deprecate saving and recommend squandering on a national scale as the way of economic salvation; and when anyone points to what the consequences of these policies will be in the long run, they reply flippantly, as might the prodigal son of a warning father: 'In the long run we are all dead.' And such shallow wisecracks pass as devastating epigrams and the ripest wisdom.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Running, Father, Son

  Henry Hazlitt (2010). “Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics”, p.12, Crown Business

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• We are squandering our wealth. In many respects, to the extent that we persist in our imperial delusions, we're also going to squander our freedom...

  Andrew Bacevich

  Wealth, Delusion, Persist

  "Bill Moyers Journal", www.pbs.org. August 15, 2008.

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• And, conversely, she went on to herself, sneering at the Grand Duke's palace, poverty is wasted on the poor, who never know how to make the best of things, are only the rich without money, are just as useless at looking after themselves, can't handle their cash just like the rich can't, always squandering it on bright, pretty, useless things in just the same way.

  Angela Carter

  Useless Things, Cash, Way

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• If emancipation of the working classes requires their fraternal conncurrence, how are they to fulfill that great mission with a foreign policy in pursuit of criminal designs, playing upon national prejudices, and squandering in piratical wars the people's blood and treasure? It was not the wisdom of the ruling classes, but the heroic resistance to their criminal folly by the working classes of England, that saved the west of Europe from plunging headlong into an infamous crusade for the propagation of slavery on the other side of the Atlantic.

  Karl Marx

  War, Blood, Europe

  Karl Marx, David McLellan (2000). “Karl Marx: Selected Writings”, p.581, Oxford University Press, USA

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