Squander Quotes & Sayings

Economists use the word consume to mean "utilize economic goods," but the Shorter Oxford Dictionary's definition is more appropriate to ecologists: "To make away with or destroy; to waste or to squander; to use up." The economies that cater to the global consumer society are responsible for the lion's share of the damage that humans have inflicted on common global resources. — Alan Thein Durning

There are two ways to be rich: to have more or need less. It's estimated that we squander about 30 percent of our energy leaving the lights on, the refrigerator door open, and so on. Then there is the enormous amount of food that we expend huge amounts of energy to raise and then throw away. — Bill Nye

You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, so all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last. You have all the fears of mortals and all the desires of immortals ... What foolish forgetfulness of mortality to defer wise resolutions to the fiftieth or sixtieth year, and to intend to begin life at a point to which few have attained. — Denis Diderot

Life is resilient! Sometimes, your lips may just squander the bliss of your heart. At times, you may even wish that the sky was red. But deep down there lies a seed of goodwill that sprouts only when the sky is actually blue! — Supriya Kaur Dhaliwal

The unspoken word is capital. We can invest it or we can squander it. — Mark Twain

An hour would be enough. An hour with my head on the pillow beside yours, foreheads touching, eyes locked with eyes (just the two of us, mind you, minus that sodding cat); an hour to smell the smell of you - garlic and all, I wouldn't mind, no, I wouldn't mind. An hour to press you close the whole length of our bodies and feel the shudder of your laugh. An hour to tell you I'm so glad I knew you. An hour, just an hour. I have time now like hedgehogs have fleas: I an lose it, waste it, squander it, kill it, and there will still be more to follow, but that hour I'll never have. Never. — A.P.

Wild beasts and birds are by right not the property merely of the people today, but the property of the unborn generations, whose belongings we have no right to squander. — Theodore Roosevelt

Consider what you would do with some of the many hours and a share of the energy that you now squander on people who contribute little or nothing to your income or happiness or development as a human being. — Nicholas Samstag

Why then seek to complete in a few decades what took the other nations of the world thousands of years? Why, in your hurry to subdue and utilize nature, squander her splendid gifts? You have opportunities such as mankind has never had before, and may never have again. — James Bryce

Most men eddy about Here and there-eat and drink, Chatter and love and hate, Gather and squander, are raised Aloft, are hurled in the dust, Striving blindly, achieving Nothing; and then they die- Perish;-and no one asks Who or what they have been. — Matthew Arnold

A good thing that is squandered upon bad folk is never remembered by them for good. — Sebastian Evans

Withhold no good impulse. You may fear that you will run to excess and squander too much, but those feelings are born of fear. In God's reality, the more you give of yourself-in feeling, generosity, self-expression, goodness, creativity, and love-the more you will be given. — Deepak Chopra

To squander a fortune in public money, billions and billions, stubbornly carrying on with a Concorde we can only sell to ourselves. — Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber

Don't squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar — Oscar Wilde

The truth is that as soon as we are no longer obliged to earn our living, we no longer know what to do with our life and recklessly squander it. — Andre Gide

A great man knows the value of greatness; he dares not hazard it, he will not squander it. — Walter Savage Landor

A capacity for interiority in the growing adult is threatened by the temptation to squander that capacity ruthlessly, to revel in hollowness. The syndrome especially plagues anyone who lives behind a mask ... A hundred ways to duck the question: how will I live with myself now that I know what I know? — Gregory Maguire

Others will give away large alms in order to be considered charitable people. Should they not give these out of their own wages, which so often they squander on trifles? If this has happened to you, do not forget that you are obliged to pay back to the person concerned all that you gave to the poor without the knowledge or consent of your employers. Then again, there is the one who has been entrusted by his employer with the supervision of the staff, or of workmen, who gives out wine and all sorts of other things to them if they ask him. — John Vianney

Each is under the most sacred obligation not to squander the material committed to him, not to sap his strength in folly and vice, and to see at the least that he delivers a product worthy the labor and cost which have been expended on him. — Anna Julia Cooper

[N]o country can squander itself to prosperity on the ruin of its taxpayers. — Herbert Hoover

Social Security is inherently unsound for the simple reason that it's a political program run by politicians for political purposes ... Social Security operates on a very simple principle: the politicians take your money from you and squander it. — Harry Browne

One of the most terrifying things I fear is not my potential, but how much regret I'll die with should I never use it. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

The fact that God can bring character development and personal growth out of any situation is conditional on people's willingness to submit to God's will. God is sovereign over every life, but those who yield their will to him will be shaped according to his purposes. When God directs a life for his purposes, all of life is a school. No experience, good or bad, is ever wasted (Rom. 8:28). God doesn't squander people's time. He doesn't ignore their pain. He brings not only healing but growth out of even the worst experiences. Every relationship can be God's instrument to mature a person's character. — Henry T. Blackaby

Do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made out of. — Benjamin Franklin

Our culture is what we did together. What did Walt Whitman represent for all of us? What was his message to us? That is an inheritance, and when we squander that inheritance we act outside. We don't know who we are; we don't know where we are. — Wynton Marsalis

A woman had to choose her own particular unhappiness carefully. That was the only happiness in life: to choose the best unhappiness. An unwise move, good God, you could squander everything. — Lorrie Moore

I still like boiled potatoes with the skins on," he said, "and I do not want a man standing in back of my chair, laughing up his sleeve at me while I am taking the potatoes' jackets off." Of pleasure and material things he was wary. "I have never known what to do with money after my expenses were paid. I can't squander it on myself without hurting myself," he said, "and nobody wants to do that. — David Halberstam

Pirate gold isn't a thing to be hoarded or utilized. It is something to squander and throw to the four winds, for the fun of seeing the golden specks fly. — Kate Chopin

You have amazing gifts. Don't squander them. Don't give them out meaninglessly, don't abuse them, don't take them for granted. You are the weapon you carry with you till the day you die.
-Tatiana and Alexander — Paullina Simons

Hypochondriacs squander large sums of time in search of nostrums by which they vainly hope they may get more time to squander. — Mortimer Collins

On Internment, you can be anything you dream
a novelist or a singer, a florist or a factory worker. You can spend entire afternoons watching clouds so close it's as though you're riding on them. Your life is yours to embrace or to squander. There's only one rule: You don't approach the edge. If you do, it's already over. My brother is proof of that. He has successfully quieted my delusions I held about seeing the ground for myself. — Lauren DeStefano

Like more than one Englishman in New York, he looked upon Americans as hopeless children whom Providence had perversely provided with this great swollen fat fowl of a continent. Any way one chose to relieve them of their riches, short of violence, was sporting, if not morally justifiable, since they would only squander it in some tasteless and useless fashion, in any event. — Tom Wolfe

Nature has endowed each of us with a capacity for kindly feelings: let us not squander them on others. — Marquis De Sade

Before beginning [to try to prove Fermat's Last Theorem] I should have to put in three years of intensive study, and I haven't that much time to squander on a probable failure. — David Hilbert

As long as you have a beating heart, it's never too late. But you do need to get on with it [. . .] every second you squander is an affront to an unforgiving universe. — Andrea Waltz

Be strong-be strong in the discipline of self. How many otherwise good men squander their strength and dissipate their will and literally destroy their lives because they have not the power of self-discipline. — Gordon B. Hinckley

It's about how some people carelessly squander what others would sell their souls to have: a healthy, pain-free body. And why? Because they're too blind, too emotionally scarred, or too self-involved to see past the earth's dark curve to the next sunrise. Which always comes, if one continues to draw breath. — Stephen King

A trader does not squander his body as fodder or his soul as alms. — John Galt

Some people try to live a life without criticism by shrinking themselves. They try to make themselves invisible. And you know what happens then? It's not just that they diminish themselves, fail to live their best lives, and squander their time. All of that happens, of course. But you know what else happens? People criticize them for being invisible. — Eric Greitens

I always believe in going hard at everything, whether it is Latin or mathematics, boxing or football, but at the same time I want to keep the sense of proportion. It is never worth while to absolutely exhaust one's self or to take big chances unless for an adequate object. I want you to keep in training the faculties which would make you, if the need arose, able to put your last ounce of pluck and strength into a contest. But I do not want you to squander these qualities. — Theodore Roosevelt

The besetting evil of our age is the temptation to squander and dilute thought on a thousand different lines of inquiry. — John Herschel

By the age of twenty-five, [Louis T. Wigfall] had managed to squander his considerable inheritance, settle three affairs of honor on the dueling ground, fight in a ruthless military campaign against the Seminoles, consume a small lakeful of bourbon, win an enviable reputation in whorehouses throughout the South, and get hauled before a judge on charges of murder. Three years after that, he took the next logical step and went into Texas politics. — Adam Goodheart

Negative habits eat you up. They're the biggest roadblocks that prevent you from realising your fullest potential; and the very first step towards crafting real change is to become aware of all the destructive habits that squander you! An awareness of what needs to be improved, tackled, or abandoned will go a long way in restructuring your life. Make a list of all the lousy habits that you want to eliminate; and then roust them out of your life, before they chomp you up completely. Axe them, uproot them, throw them into the ocean and never look back. — Manprit Kaur

This life is only a test' is a counter-productive mindset; it encourages wishful thinking toward and elusive and likely non-existent afterlife while often enabling the believer to squander this life as somehow less important. — David G. McAfee

Physical pleasure is a sensual experience no different from pure seeing or the pure sensation with which a fine fruit fills the tongue; it is a great unending experience, which is given us, a knowing of the world, the fullness and the glory of all knowing. And not our acceptance of it is bad; the bad thing is that most people misuse and squander this experience and apply it as a stimulant at the tired spots of their lives and as distraction instead of a rallying toward exalted moments. — Rainer Maria Rilke

A writer takes earnest measures to secure his solitude and then finds endless ways to squander it. — Don DeLillo

Time does not care how precious it is, how hard you are working not to squander it. Time passes. — Melissa Kantor

Don't squander precious ignorance by researching it away. — Richard Dawkins

There are just three things that you can do with Money:
save, give, or invest. Somehow in here in America, with all our creativity, we have invented a fourth use for money:
we can squander it — Celso Cukierkorn

Over the years, Americans in particular have been all too willing to squander their hard-earned independence and freedom for the illusion of feeling safe under someone else's authority. The concept of self-sufficiency has been undermined in value over a scant few generations. The vast majority of the population seems to look down their noses upon self-reliance as some quaint dusty relic, entertained only by the hyperparanoid or those hopelessly incapable of fitting into mainstream society. — Cody Lundin

Dost thou love life? then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of, — Benjamin Franklin

If you squander on a holyday, you will want on a workday unless you have been sparing. — Plautus

We must strive for freedom if we strive for self-knowledge. The task of self-knowledge and of further self-development is of such importance and seriousness, it demands such intensity of effort, that to attempt it any old way and amongst other things is impossible. The person who undertakes this task must put it first in his life, which is not so long that he can afford to squander it on trifles. — G.I. Gurdjieff

Lotto [10w]
If lotto winners squander their winnings,
why not on me? — Beryl Dov

The wisdom to be on the throne of one's life must surpass the wisdom of the one being ruled, otherwise I will squander the whole of my life in the most appalling ways. By virtue of that reality, I would be wise to get out of the chair and invite God to have a seat. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Life and death are of supreme importance. Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost. Each of us should strive to awaken. Awaken! Take heed, do not squander your life. — Dogen

I said Matt was too perfect. I was tired of trying to love him, tired of the burden of being loved. How could anyone live with all that devotion and understanding? The scale was tilted so far in my favor it felt like an unbearable weight, a fortune I was compelled to squander. — James Whitfield Thomson

On Monday I received a letter from Golden Days, a Philadelphia juvenile, accepting a short story I had sent there and enclosing a cheque for five dollars. It was the first money my pen had ever earned; I did not squander it in riotous living, neither did I invest it in necessary boots and gloves. I went up town and bought five volumes of poetry with it
Tennyson, Byron, Milton, Longfellow, Whittier. I wanted something I could keep for ever in memory of having arrived. — L.M. Montgomery

In zen, it is a cardinal sin to waste time. To waste time is to squander the here and now, which, if you think about it, is all that we have. — Philip Toshio Sudo

If dost thou love life, then Do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of, as Poor Richard says. — Benjamin Franklin

Money is that dear thing which,
if you're not careful, you can squander
your whole life thinking of ... — Mary Jo Salter

Love is a rare and precious thing. Squander it at your peril. — Wayne Gerard Trotman

Although he kept late hours, Roger Mifflin was a prompt riser. It is only the very young who find satisfaction in lying abed in the morning. Those who approach the term of the fifth decade are sensitively aware of the fluency of life, and have no taste to squander it among the blankets. — Christopher Morley

They say that life is an accident, driven by sexual desire, that the universe has no moral order, no truth, no God.

Driven by insatiable lusts, drunk on the arrogance of power, hypocritical, deluded, their actions foul with self-seeking, tormented by a vast anxiety that continues until their death, convinced that the gratification of desire is life's sole aim, bound by a hundred shackles of hope, enslaved by their greed, they squander their time dishonestly piling up mountains of wealth.

"Today I got this desire, and tomorrow I will get that one; all these riches are mine, and soon I will have even more. Already I have killed these enemies, and soon I will kill the rest. I am the lord, the enjoyer, successful, happy, and strong, noble, and rich, and famous. Who on earth is my equal? — Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

How we squander our sorrows, gazing beyond them
into the sad wastes of duration,
to see if maybe they have a limit. — Rainer Maria Rilke

None of this seemed to be getting us much further so far as Widmerpool was concerned. I waited for development. General Conyers did not intend to be hurried. I suspected that he might regard this narrative he was unfolding in so leisurely a manner as the last good story of his life; one that he did not propose to squander in the telling. That was reasonable enough. — Anthony Powell

And I refuse to be governed by fear. The life stretching before me is that of a queen. It's a life I chose. Fought for, even. I cannot - will not - squander it on dread. — Rae Carson

Fishing provides time to think, and reason not to. If you have the virtue of patience, an hour or two of casting alone is plenty of time to review all you've learned about the grand themes of life. It's time enough to realize that every generalization stands opposed by a mosaic of exceptions, and that the biggest truths are few indeed. Meanwhile, you feel the wind shift and the temperature change. You might simply decide to be present, and observe a few facts about the drifting clouds ... Fishing in a place is a meditation on the rhythm of a tide, a season, the arc of a year, and the seasons of life ... I fish to scratch the surface of those mysteries, for nearness to the beautiful, and to reassure myself the world remains. I fish to wash off some of my grief for the peace we so squander. I fish to dip into that great and awesome pool of power that propels these epic migrations. I fish to feel- and steal- a little of that energy. — Carl Safina

Rebirth is almost impossible without the darkness ... I tell myself I am experiencing the death of myself as mother, the death of myself as a younger woman
precious old lives going by the wayside. Of course, I should let myself grieve. To deny the grief is to squander a transforming and radiant possibility. — Sue Monk Kidd

Those who love much, do much and accomplish much, and whatever is done with love is done well ... Love is the best and noblest thing in the human heart, especially when it is tested by life as gold is tested by fire. Happy is he who has loved much, and although he may have wavered and doubted, he has kept that divine spark alive and returned to what was in the beginning and ever shall be.
If only one keeps loving faithfully what is truly worth loving and does not squander one's love on trivial and insignificant and meaningless things then one will gradually obtain more light and grow stronger. — Vincent Van Gogh

Learn when to fear, and how to fear, and how much to fear, before you squander all you have left. — Janet Morris

I know what it's like to squander all your hours and all your tears and all your heart on something which turns out to be nothing. Don't waste your time. — Sophie Kinsella

The masses do not see the Sirens. They do not hear songs in the air. Blind, deaf, stooping, they pull at their oars in the hold of the earth. But the more select, the captains, harken to a Siren within them ... and royally squander their lives with her. — Nikos Kazantzakis

FORD SAID, "I'LL BELT THE EARTH WITH DEPENDABLE MOTOR CARS," AND HE DID! His decision to trust his own judgment has already piled up a fortune far greater than the next five generations of his descendents can squander. For the benefit of those seeking vast riches, let it be remembered that practically the sole difference between Henry Ford and a majority of the more than one hundred thousand men who work for him, is this
FORD HAS A MIND AND CONTROLS IT, THE OTHERS HAVE MINDS WHICH THEY DO NOT TRY TO CONTROL. — Napoleon Hill

Real Men no longer drive Corvettes. Despite being able to squander gas with the best of them, even today's least enlightened Real Man finds the notion of a $17,000 plastic car with no trunk somewhat absurd. — Bruce Feirstein

To-day is thine to spend, but not to-morrow; Counting on morrows breedeth bankrupt sorrow: O squander not this breath that Heaven hath lent thee; Make not too sure another breath to borrow. — Omar Khayyam

Bodily delight is a sense experience, just like pure seeing or the pure feeling with which a lovely fruit fills the tongue; it is a great boundless experience which is given us, a knowing of the world, the fullness and the splendour of all knowing. Our acceptance of it is not bad; what is bad is that almost all men misuse and squander this experience, and apply it as a stimulus to the weary places of their life, a dissipation instead of a rallying for the heights. Mankind have turned eating, too, into something else: want on the one hand, and superfluity on the other, have dulled the clarity of this need, and all those deep, simple necessities by which life renews itself have become similarly dull. — Rainer Maria Rilke

All the best novels are about one thing: how we go on. The characters must survive the fallout of their own cowardice, folly, denial or misguided passion. They squander what matters most, and still they pick up the pieces. — Julia Glass

For those who dispair that their lives are without meaning and without purpose, for those who dwell in a lonelines so terrible that it has withered their hearts, for those who hate because they have no recognition of the destiny they share with all humanity, for those who would squander their lives in self-pity and in self-destruction because they have lost the saving wisdom with which they are born, for all these and many more, hope waits in the dreams of a dog, where the scared bature of life may be clearly experienced without all but binding filter of human need, desire, greed, envy and endless fear. And here, in dream woods and fields, along with the shores of dream seas, with the profound awareness of the playful presence abiding in all things, Curtis is able to prove what she thus far only dared to hope is true: that although her mother never loved her, there is one who always has. — Dean Koontz

All human beings are born with the same creative potential. Most people squander theirs away on a million superfluous things. I expend mine on one thing and one thing only: my art. — Pablo Picasso

Making the choice to cast someone in a lead role is a big one. You don't want to squander your opportunity. — Lisa Cholodenko

Squander your riches far from this unfeeling body to which no season, either spiritual or sensual, makes any difference. — Antonin Artaud

But the fact that the middle classes are working themselves to the bone, using their sweat and taxes to finance such pointless and pretentious research leaves me speechless. Every gray morning, day after gloomy day, secretaries, craftsmen, employees, petty civil servants, taxi drivers and concierges shoulder their burdens so that the flower of French youth, duly housed and subsidized, can squander the fruit of all that dreariness upon the altar of ridiculous endeavors. — Muriel Barbery

When humans act like animals, they become the most dangerous of animals to themselves and other humans, and this is because of another critical difference between humans and animals: Whereas animals are usually restrained by the limits of physical appetites, humans have mental appetites that can be far more gross and capacious than physical ones. Only humans squander and hoard, murder and pillage because of notions. — Wendell Berry

Mr. Suttree it is our understanding that at curfew rightly decreed by law and in that hour wherein night draws to its proper close and the new day commences and contrary to conduct befitting a person of your station you betook yourself to various low places within the shire of McAnally and there did squander several ensuing years in the company of thieves, derelicts, miscreants, pariahs, poltroons, spalpeens, curmudgeons, clotpolls, murderers, gamblers, bawds, whores, trulls, brigands, topers, tosspots, sots and archsots, lobcocks, smellsmocks, runagates, rakes, and other assorted and felonious debauchees.
I was drunk, cried Suttree. — Cormac McCarthy

I tried to show my affection and gratitude with small attentions, but he would not allow it; he was not used to receiving affection, although it was his nature to squander it on others. — Isabel Allende

But we also believe that part of our mission in life is to find our bliss and follow it. Life is a precious and delicate gift. How much of that gift do we squander out of fear? — Dianne Sylvan

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

As we cannot afford to squander our natural resources of minerals, food, and beauty, so we cannot afford to discard any human resources of brains, skills, and initiative, even though it is women who possess them ... a woman is just as much an ordinary human being as a man, with the same individual preferences, and with just as much right to the tastes and preferences of an individual. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Rather than squander the surplus on tax breaks for the rich, we should add a prescription drug benefit to the Medicare program, shore up Social Security, fortify our defense, provide a quality public education and offer economic assistance to rural areas. — Bennie Thompson

Our health care approaches squander billions on extravagant treatment regimes that end up accomplishing little, as a society we refuse to adopt the small, even tiny adjustments that could easily reduce the clawing uncertainties that now degrade millions. — Robert Martensen

Fossil fuels are merely a part of the "natural capital" which we steadfastly insist on treating as expendable, as if it were income, and by no means the most important part. If we squander our fossil fuels, we threaten civilisation; but if we squander the capital represented by living nature around us, we threaten life itself. — Ernst F. Schumacher

Listen to me instead of your financial manager: It's okay to spend money, to save it, to give it away, to worry over it. It's just money. Your only enemy in life is time. Do be miser with time: hoard it, treasure it, don't squander a single minute of it. — Cassandra King

It's our responsibility to pass on what we inherited, not to squander it, but to build on it. — Christine Gregoire

The future of our children is a trust we have been given. To conserve and grow, not to squander wastefully on needless excesses. The earth is a trust, to protect and to honor. Our home, our livelihood, our future rests in the quality of our stewardship. Let us become better stewards. — Helen Caldicott

I don't want to talk to anyone, lest I squander your words' echo, which ripples like a shine over mine and lends their sound a richness. — Rainer Maria Rilke

At the same time, Ambrosio had given me a brief glimpse of a different, compelling sort of life, a life in which there seemed to be more time for family and conversation, for stories and food, a life I was desperate to lead now as an antidote to my own. It was okay to squander a day, a week, a year, sitting in that telling room, summoning ghosts, because no one saw it as squandering. No, if you squinted a little bit, maybe what seemed like wasted time was, in fact, true happiness. — Michael Paterniti

To carry the spirit of peace into war is a weak and cruel policy. When an extreme case calls for that remedy which is in its own nature most violent, and which, in such cases, is a remedy only because it is violent, it is idle to think of mitigating and diluting. Languid war can do nothing which negotiation or submission will do better: and to act on any other principle is, not to save blood and money, but to squander them. — Thomas B. Macaulay

Ignorance is a treasure of infinite price that most men squander, when they should cherish its least fragments; some ruin it by educating themselves, others, unable to so much as conceive of making use of it, let it waste away. Quite on the contrary, we should search for it assiduously in what we think we know best. Leaf through a dictionary or try to make one, and you will find that every word covers and masks a well so bottomless that the questions you toss into it arouse no more than an echo. — Paul Valery

Do not delude yourself, tomorrow is not guaranteed; and even if good fortune brings you your tomorrow, there is no guarantee those you love will be a part of it. Do not squander your precious, limited time. Value what love you have in your life - nothing is more valuable. Make it known to those who matter. — Wayne Gerard Trotman