Quotes & Sayings About Wasted Time In Life

Think only of what you desire, and expect only what you desire, even when the very contrary seems to be coming into your life. Make it a point to have definite results in mind at all times. Permit no thinking to be aimless. Every aimless thought is time and energy wasted, while every thought that is inspired with a definite aim will help to realize that aim, and if all your thoughts are inspired with a definite aim, the whole power of your mind will be for you and will work with you in realizing what you have in view. That you should succeed is therefore assured, because there is enough power in your mind to realize your ambitions, provided all of that power is used in working for your ambitions. — Christian D. Larson

I stagnated in prison a long time, and I have wasted most of my life. — Gary Gilmore

And once you live a good story, you get a taste for a kind of meaning in life, and you can't go back to being normal; you can't go back to meaningless scenes stitched together by the forgettable thread of wasted time. — Donald Miller

I bought a small bottle of beer for fifteen cents and sat on a bench in the clearing, feeling like an old man. The scene I had just witnessed brought back a lot of memories - not of things I had done but of things I had failed to do, wasted hours and frustrated moments and opportunities forever lost because time had eaten so much of my life and I would never get it back. — Hunter S. Thompson

Every hour you are not going after your passion, making your dreams a reality or defining your purpose is an hour you can't get back. Is what you're doing right now, this day, this moment getting you closer to where you want to be? If not, readjust your focus. It's your future. Go get it! — Elizabeth Bourgeret

Their attitude toward another aspect of organization shows the same bias. What of the "group life", the loss of individualism? Once upon a time it was conventional for young men to view the group life of the big corporations as one of its principal disadvantages. Today, they see it as a positive boon. Working with others, they believe, will reduce the frustration of work, and they often endow the accompanying suppression of ego with strong spiritual overtones. They will concede that there is often a good bit of wasted time in the committee way of life and that the handling of human relations involves much suffering of fools gladly. But this sort of thing, they say, is the heart of the organization man's job, not merely the disadvantages of it. "Any man who feels frustrated by these things," one young trainee with face unlined said to me, "can never be an executive". — William H. Whyte

Thirty was a big deal for me. It was the age where I reevaluated everything - how I approached life and how I thought about myself. When I look at my 20s, or when I look at any period in my life, I think about how much time I've wasted trying to find the right man. — Amy Adams

Trying to live in the past didn't work for me, and it's only now that I fully realize I'm incredibly lucky it didn't. Because it would have been all too sad to miss out on right now. That would have turned the past into a fraud. It would have meant all my happy memories were a lie. It would have meant all that time and all that love was a waste, leading up to a wasted future. It would have been the ultimate betrayal of everything I thought my whole life was about and everyone I cared about. All the people who loved me, in all the times and places of my life - all the people who made a lover out of me - they would have all been wrong about me. And it could have happened easily, just like that. It's scary to think of how I could have gotten stuck pining for the past. I was lucky to get a second chance. I thought I was too late, but it turns out I was just in time. — Rob Sheffield

[O]ne has to have endured a few decades before wanting, let alone needing, to embark on the project of recovering lost life. And I think it may be possible to review 'the chronicles of wasted time.' William Morris wrote in The Dream of John Ball that men fight for things and then lose the battle, only to win it again in a shape and form that they had not expected, and then be compelled again to defend it under another name. We are all of us very good at self-persuasion and I strive to be alert to its traps, but a version of what Hegel called 'the cunning of history' is a parallel commentary that I fight to keep alive in my mind. — Christopher Hitchens

But once, in his anger, Aidan had asked me whether I thought I had wasted my life, and I had told him no. No, I had not. But I had been wrong. And Tom Cardle has been right. For I had known everything, right from the start, and never acted on any of it. I had blocked it from my mind time and again, refused to recognize what was staring me in the face. I had said nothing when I should have spoken out, convincing myself that I was a man of higher character. I had been complicit in all their crimes, and people had suffered because of me. I had wasted my life. I had wasted every moment of my life. And the final irony was that it had taken a convicted pedophile to show me that in my silence, I was just as guilty as the rest of them. — John Boyne

Did you know that the average American spends six months of his or her life waiting for red lights to turn green? Six months wasted, waiting for permission to move on. Think of all the other stuff you could do with that time."
I was totally confused. "In the car?"
"In your life," he said. — Megan McCafferty

I don't know why people are so shy about expressing openly in front of the world their longing for each other, the most powerful and tender natural attraction, but they pretend to be proud or indifferent and they don't consider, especially if they're young, that the sands of our life have been measured by God unto the last grain and that every carelessly wasted second of love sinks irreversibly into eternity. — Angel Wagenstein

You're reaching out
And no one hears you cry
You're freaking out again
'Cause all your fears
Remind you another dream has come undone
You feel so small and lost like you're the only one
You wanna scream 'cause you're
Desperate
You want somebody, just anybody
To lay their hands on your soul tonight
You want a reason to keep believin'
That someday you're gonna see the light
You're in the dark
There's no one left to call
And sleep's your only friend
Well even sleep
Can't hide you from all those tears
And all the pain and all the days
You wasted pushin' them away
It's your life, it's time you face it — David Archuleta

I have wanted to "make books" since around the sixth grade, and I published my first book when I was in my late thirties. My point is that the time in between was not wasted - submarine service, marriage, college, bringing up three kids, starting a school for them, and so forth. This kind of life experience is not distracting you from your appointed task of writing. It is, rather, the roundabout blessing of giving you something to say. — Douglas Wilson

I've wasted a lot of time in my life. I've thought too much about what people will say or what they're gonna think. And sometimes it's over silly things like going to the grocery store or going to the post office. But there have been times when I really stopped myself from doing something special. All because I was scared someone might look at me and decide I wasn't good enough. But you don't have to bother with that nonsense. I wasted all that time so you don't have to. — Julie Murphy

You only get one life. And before you know it, it'll be over. You'll go to sleep one day in your twenties, then wake up in your fifties. The purpose of life isn't to sit around waiting for something to happen on a wing and prayer; you have to make it happen. You can spend your whole life searching for unsolved mysteries or waiting for someone to fall in love with you, but at the end of your life you'll realize you've wasted your time. You've missed all of the beauty in the world in search of a vague dream or an answer to a question that has none. The purpose of life isn't to wait for things to fall into your lap. The purpose of life is to live. — Brent Saltzman

Mortal man! You've wasted your time mostly with wrong and empty beliefs! And now you have started understanding that most important thing in life is existence! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

You are a fertile God. Many seeds are dropped into the soil. Many do not sprout. Yet beneath the appearance of waste nothing is wasted, nothing lost. Giant trees crash to the forest floor, decompose, and become the soil out of which the saplings arise. Similarly, in human affairs, movements are created, rise, do Your work in the world, decline, go back into the soil, and provide the rich humus out of which new life springs. Generations come and go. Sun and rain, winter and summer, seed time and harvest. Always Your Word remains constant. Your people are called over and over, generation after generation, back into this constancy, back to this mysterious fluid stability - the only security worth having. Can You not waste a little more time on us? — Michael D. O'Brien

Sometimes things happen in our lives that wake us up to the truth, about how short life is. It's then we wonder why we spent so much wasted time looking too far into the future. — Ron Baratono

What I tried to make clear in Good Calories, Bad Calories was that nutrition and obesity research lost its way after the Second World War with the evaporation of the European community of scientists and physicians that did pioneering work in those disciplines. It has since resisted all attempts to correct it. As a result, the individuals involved in this research have not only wasted decades of time, and effort, and money but have done incalculable damage along the way. Their beliefs have remained imperious to an ever-growing body of evidence that refutes them while being embraced by public-health authorities and translated into precisely the wrong advice about what to eat and, more important, what not to eat if we want to maintain a healthy weight and live a long and healthy life. — Gary Taubes

I labored in vain reciting the Three Histories
I wasted my time reading the Five Classics
I've grown old checking yellow scrolls
recording the usual everyday names
Continued Hardship was my fortune
Emptiness and Danger govern my life
I can't match riverside trees
every year with a season of green — Han-shan

People who work out are so gullible. They think they'll live longer. Well, good luck to them. It's a shame most of them aren't bright enough to realise that the extra time added to their life when they're eighty and too old to do anything productive with it is roughly equal to all the time wasted in the gym when they're young and capable of having fun. — Toni Jordan

And how rare is it to find someone who shares your tastes? The one real fight they'd ever had was over David Foster Wallace. It was around the time of Wallace's suicide. A.J. had found the reverent tone of the eulogies to be insufferable. The man had written a decent (if indulgent and overlong) novel, a few modestly insightful essays, and not much else. "Infinite Jest is a masterpiece," Harvey had said. "Infinite Jest is an endurance contest. You manage to get through it and you have no choice but to say you like it. Otherwise, you have to deal with the fact that you just wasted weeks of your life," A.J. had countered. "Style, no substance, my friend." Harvey's face had reddened as he leaned over the desk. "You say that about any writer who was born in the same decade as you! — Gabrielle Zevin

I don't remember why it all went so wrong. I mean, I do remember. I remember what i did. I just don't remember why anymore. This - you and me - this feels so right. It just seems stupid - so stupid - that we had it before, and we let it go. We wasted so much time. I'm sorry.' She was close to tears.
'Hey. Don't. There's no point in that. It's the past, and that's where it belongs. This is us now. We're here.'
But where's here? We're hiding out. We're playing house. This isn't real life.'
'It feels real to me.'
'But it isn't. — Elizabeth Noble

Most dreams die a slow death. They're conceived in a moment of passion, with the prospect of endless possibility, but often languish and are not pursued with the same heartfelt intensity as when first born. Slowly, subtly, a dream becomes elusive and ephemeral. People who've lost their own dreams become pessimists and cynics. They feel like the time and devotion spent on chasing their dreams were wasted. The emotional scars last forever. — Dean Karnazes

You can get away with breaking all of the other rules at least once in a while, but you can't get away with breaking this one. Readers will accept almost anything from you if you don't make them feel they have wasted their time and money. Remember, you can bore readers in a lot of different ways. It doesn't necessarily take a dearth of action; too much action can get you the same result. Everything in writing, like in life, requires balance. — Terry Brooks

Time passes so slowly in a waiting room, as if all the wasted minutes of your life have been recycled and you are forced to endure them over again. — Barbara Ellen Brink

All the time God ever spent on you was wasted, an' your mother's had the same luck. I s'pose God's used to having creatures 'at He's made go wrong, but I pity your mother. Goodness knows a woman suffers an' works enough over her children, an' then to fetch a boy to man's estate an' have him, of his own free will an' accord, be a liar! Young man, truth is the cornerstone o' the temple o' character. Nobody can put up a good buildin' without a solid foundation; an' you can't do solid character buildin' with a lie at the base. Man 'at's a liar ain't fit for anything! Can't trust him in no sphere or relation o' life; or in any way, shape, or manner. You passed out your word like a man, an' like a man I took it an' went off trustin' you, an' you failed me. — Gene Stratton-Porter

I'd been a terrific student. I hadn't wasted a moment of my time in school, and I knew plenty about healing the troubled mind. But no one had taught me a thing about healing the soul — Diane Chamberlain

O youth! youth! you have no concerns, you possess, as it were, all the treasures of the universe, even grief is a comfort to you, even sadness suits your looks, you are self-assured and bold, you say: 'Look, I'm the only one alive!' while the very days of your life run away and vanish without a trace and without number and everything in you disappears like wax, like snow in the hear of the sun... And perhaps the entire et of your charm consists not in the possibility of doing everything, but in the possibility of thinking perhaps it consists precisely in the fact that you want only to scatter on the wind energies that you wouldn't know how to use for anything else, perhaps it consists in the fact that each one of us seriously regards himself as a spendthrift and seriously considers that he has the right to say: 'Oh, the things I could have done if only I hadn't wasted my time! — Ivan Turgenev

There will never be a point in my life where it is acceptable to waste time. — Carlos Wallace

For a long time I believed the opposite of passion was death. I was wrong. Passion and death are implicit, one in the other. Past the border of a fiery life lies the netherworld. I can trace this road, which took me through places so hot the very air burned the lungs. I did not turn back. I pressed on, and eventually passed over the border, beyond which lies a place that is wordless and cold, so cold that it, like mercury, burns a freezing blue flame. — Marya Hornbacher

I'm not sure I'd go back and do anything over in my life. I've definitely had my fair share of failures and moments where I wasted my time or that of other people, but if I did those moments over, I'd have missed out on so many lessons. — Trip Adler

Remember this, if you can
there is nothing, nothing more precious than time. You probably feel you have a measureless supply of it, but you haven't. Wasted hours destroy your life just as surely at the beginning as at the end
only in the end it becomes more obvious. — Herman Wouk

It isn't necessarily easier if you know what it is you're meant to do
but at least you don't waste time in questioning or doubting. If you're honest
well, that isn't necessarily easier, either. Though I suppose if you're honest with yourself and know what you are, at least you're less likely to feel that you've wasted your life, doing the wrong thing. — Diana Gabaldon

As a kid, I used to fear that my life would be wasted. I would agonize over how I was going to live this finite life. We only have so much time, after all, and I didn't want my only experiences with different cultures to be on TV or in the pages of National Geographic. I wanted to visit the Kansas plains, the Virginia battlefields, and the California coast. I wanted to see the world instead of being stuck in just one part of it. I wanted to feel the energies of new places and different people, and I wanted to experience the glories of history. — Zak Bagans

No one sighs regretfully on his deathbed and says, "I can't believe I wasted all that time with my wife and kids," "volunteering at the soup kitchen," or "growing in my spirituality." No one ever says, "I should have spent more time watching TV and playing Angry Birds on my phone." In my own life, nothing has given my life more meaning and satisfaction than my Catholic faith and the love of my — Arthur C. Brooks

Though not everything is so easy in doing, ponder before you say something is far difficult to do! When you think of the difficulty in getting it done, think and think again; you may have spent the same time you should have used for the utmost preparations that could have made the difficulty you look at but cannot see the panacea on something else, or you are not finding the necessary time, wit, courage, tenacity and the will power to release your whole and true self to master the very act and art of making difficult things easier! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

We also need to be willing to make room in our lives for the impending birth of our dreams. This might mean emptying our life of clutter such as wasted time, energy, resources, or draining relationships. These things can jeopardize our dreams by distracting us at a time when we should be more focused than ever. — Christine Caine

I have been incredibly lucky," he said. "Lucky in my life. Oh, I know some people would not say so. They'd say I hadn't stuck with anything, or that I hadn't made any money. They'd say I wasted that time when I was down-and-out. But that's not true.
"I heard the call," he said, raising his eyebrows, half smiling at himself. "Seriously. I did. I heard the call to get out of the box. Out of the got-to-do-something-big box. Out of the ego box. — Alice Munro

Destroying our confidence in the natural virtues, because they are not promises of what we are going to be, but only a wasted reminder of what God created man to be. We want to cling to our natural virtues, while all the time God is trying to get us in contact with the life of Jesus Christ - a life that can never be described in terms of natural virtues. It is the saddest thing to see people who are trying to serve God depending on that which the grace of God never gave them. They are depending solely on what they — Oswald Chambers

The Desert Fathers believed that the wilderness had been created supremely valuable in the eyes of God precisely because it had no value to men. The wasteland was the land that could never be wasted by men because it offered them nothing. There was nothing to attract them. There was nothing to exploit. The desert was the region in which the Chosen People had wandered for forty years, cared for by God alone. They could have reached the Promised Land in a few months if they had traveled directly to it. God's plan was that they should learn to love Him in the wilderness and that they should always look back on the time in the desert as the idyllic time of their life with Him alone. The desert was created simply to be itself, not to be transformed by men into something else. — Thomas Merton

Thack seemed to sort something out for a moment.
"Sometimes I watch him when he's playing with Harry or digging in the yard. And I think: This is it, this is the guy I've waited for all my life. Then this other voice tells me not to get used to it, that it'll only hurt more later. It's funny. You're feeling this enormous good fortune and waiting for it to be over at the same time."
"You seem happy," Brian ventured.
"I am."
"Well ... that's a lot. I envy you that."
Thack shrugged. "All we've got is now, I guess. But that's all anybody gets. If we wasted that time being scared ... "
"Absolutely. — Armistead Maupin

Once I started trying to give positive reviews, though, I began to understand how much happiness I took from the joyous ones in my life
and how much effort it must take for them to be consistently good=tempered and positive. It is easy to be heavy; hard to be light. We nonjoyous types suck energy and cheer from the joyous ones; we rely on them to buoy us with their good spirit and to cushion our agitation and anxiety. At the same time, because of a dark element in human nature, we're sometimes provoked to try to shake the enthusiastic, cheery folk out of their fog of illusion
to make them see that the play was stupid, the money was wasted, the meeting was pointless. Instead of shielding their joy, we blast it. — Gretchen Rubin

Now I often think of the first time I received artillery fire, and the subsequent obliteration of the enemy observation post. I'll never know how many men manned the OP, but in memory I fix the number at two, and though at the time I was angry that the pompus captain took the handset from me and stole m y kills, I have lately been thankful he insisted on calling the fire mission, ans sometimes when I am feeling hopeful or even religious, I think that buy taking my two kills the pompous captain handed me life, some extra moments of living for myself or that I can offer others, though I have no idea to use or disuse these extra moments, or if I've wasted them already. — Anthony Swofford

You see, even though back when I was drinking I thought nothing bad ever happened to me, something did. Time passed. A lot of time passed. In bars, at parties with people I didn't care for. It was always the drink. It wasn't about love or reading the Sunday paper in bed. Or housebreaking a puppy. Or anything that people call 'life.' It was about drinking. So actually, something bad, very bad, did happen to me. I wasted my life. And now, what little I have left, I want. — Augusten Burroughs

I used to think only people like Mother Teresa and Gandhi had a mission in life. We all have one. How do you find it? You listen to your life.

All those dead-end jobs? There's no such thing. In God's economy, nothing is ever wasted. The dots all connect in time. — Regina Brett

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

Have learned in life, there will always be some things that we really want but they are just not ever going to surface in our life. We have to take a bow and keep it moving because you never know the reason why it was not put there. It could simply be because there is something better just waiting. Never chase after people or things, unless it is a common effort. Patience is a virtue, wasted time is a something you will never get back. - AHCIII — A.H. Carlisle III

True intelligence is pure love which does not exclude or waste anything.
Not even a grain of sand is excluded or wasted. There are no exceptions in what is set free and in what is in service to this setting free.
Life, the formless, form and fragrance, knows exactly what it is doing.
Life is pure, unfiltered Intelligence flowing as whatever shape is now appearing.
It is alive and it is all calling us Home.
Do you hear the grain of sand calling your name?
It says, "Love."
Do you sense the truth of it?
If not, lean in and 'listen' again -
this time with the whole of your being. — Dhyana Stanley

There is no effort in time wasted by remembering the truth. A lie requires an effort of life and wasted time to remember because one lie tends to become a lifestyle that destroys. — Richard Diaz

When happiness makes a guest appearance in one's life,it's important to make the most of it.It may not stay around for long and when it has gone wouldn't it be terrible to think that all the time one could have been happy was wasted worrying when the happiness would be taken away. — Marian Keyes

During this very, very long poem
You could have connected
Maybe you are connecting
Maybe we're connecting
See, I believe that the only things that really matter
In the grand scheme of life are God and people
And if people are made in the image of God
Then when you spend your time with people
It's never wasted

- A Very Long Poem, by Marty Schoenleber III — Colleen Hoover

Red eyes, clogged vessels, tanned cells and septum holes,
She came up to me with an ashtray, and a bunch of tobacco rolls,
I mean, how can I fill the gap that you've created??
How could I switch the clock back to the past, for the time I have wasted?
I have gone a sedate now; the heart has stopped pumping zeal into my head,
And for the hole in my heart, which is so dead now, which has run out of life now,
I carry the loads of moments that you've endowed. — Nishikant

Mary was fond of her own thoughts, and could amuse herself well sitting in twilight with her hands in her lap; for, having early had strong reason to believe that things were not likely to be arranged for her peculiar satisfaction, she wasted no time in astonishment and annoyance at that fact. And she had already come to take life very much as a comedy in which she had a proud, nay, a generous resolution not to act the mean or treacherous part. — George Eliot

We cannot separate our lives from time. Why is it that we are so extravagant, so thoughtless, in our waste of time, especially in youth, when we cling so tenaciously to life? You cannot separate a wasted hour from the same duration of your life. If you waste your time, you must waste your life. If you improve your time, you cannot help improving your life. — Orison Swett Marden

The short time we actually focus on today's journey is often wasted on complaining, grumbling, wishing to be in a different place, or simply and mindlessly going through the motions of life. — Lysa TerKeurst

The world didn't have words to measure hate. There were tons, yards, years. Volts, knots, watts. Ronan could explain how fast his car was going. He could describe exactly how warm the day was. He could specifically convey his heart rate. But there was no way for him to tell anyone else exactly how much he hated Aglionby Academy.
Any unit of measurement would have to include both the volume and the weight of the hate. And it would also have to include a component of time. The days logged in class, wasted, useless, learning skills for a life he didn't want. No single word existed, probably, to contain the concept. All, perhaps. He had all the hate for Aglionby Academy.
Thief? Aglionby was the thief. Ronan's life was the dream, pillaged. — Maggie Stiefvater

I believe it is the responsibility of each of us to pass on whatever we have learned in our time here. If I reach enlightenment after meditating in a cave for 10 years, but do not pass on this teaching and it dies with me, this was a wasted life. I believe we are here to help one another, and each of us has a unique wisdom that we should do our best to convey to others. — Chris Matakas

And then the kissing started again. There was no avoiding it, not when we were together like this, far away from the real world of our normal lives. The setting was too perfect. He was too perfect, despite being one of the most imperfect people I knew. And honestly, we'd wasted far too much time with doubts and games. The one thing you learn from constantly having your life in danger is that you'd better not waste it. — Richelle Mead

Seriously, I think it is a grave fault in life that so much time is wasted in social matters, because it not only takes up time when you might be doing individual private things, but it prevents you storing up the psychic energy that can then be released to create art or whatever it is. It's terrible the way we scotch silence & solitude at every turn, quite suicidal. I can't see how to avoid it, without being very rich or very unpopular, & it does worry me, for time is slipping by , and nothing is done. It isn't as if anything was gained by this social frivolity, It isn't: it's just a waste. — Philip Larkin

I have been studying for forty years, which is to say forty wasted years; I teach others yet am ignorant of everything; this state of affairs fills my soul with so much humiliation and disgust that my life is intolerable. I was born in Time, I live in Time, and do not know what Time is. I find myself at a point between two eternities, as our wise men say, yet I have no conception of eternity. I am composed of matter, I think, but have never been able to discover what produces thought. I do not know whether or not I think with my head the same way that I hold things with my hands. Not only is the origin of my thought unknown to me, but the origin of my movements is equally hidden: I do not know why I exist. Yet every day people ask me questions on all these issues. I must give answers, yet have nothing worth saying, so I talk a great deal, and am confused and ashamed of myself afterwards for having spoken. — Voltaire

No effort is ever wasted, although some pay dividends later than you think. Do not imagine that you "wasted your time" because something didn't turn out right. There is no such thing as "waste" in the Universe. Everything - everything - yields benefit. It's true. And your life will show you this. So don't decry the "effort that failed." All things lead to your highest good. You just may not know it yet. — Neale Donald Walsch

One of the great events in my life was my first meeting with Edison. This wonderful man, who had received no scientific training, yet had accomplished so much, filled me with amazement. I felt that the time I had spent studying languages, literature and art was wasted; though later, of course, I learned this was not so. — Nikola Tesla

I was near-delirious. Gazing up at the pillared skyline, I knew that I was surveying a tremendous work of man. Buying myself a drink in the smaller warrens below, in all their ethnic variety (and willingness to keep odd and late hours, and provide plentiful ice cubes, and free matchbooks in contrast to English parsimony in these matters), I felt the same thing in a different way. The balance between the macro and the micro, the heroic scale and the human scale, has never since ceased to fascinate and charm me. Evelyn Waugh was in error when he said that in New York there was a neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistook for energy. There was, rather, a tensile excitement in that air which made one think - made me think for many years - that time spent asleep in New York was somehow time wasted. Whether this thought has lengthened or shortened my life I shall never know, but it has certainly colored it. — Christopher Hitchens

When I look back on my past and think how much time I wasted on nothing, how much time has been lost in futilities, errors, laziness, incapacity to live; how little I appreciated it, how many times I sinned against my heart and soul-then my heart bleeds. Life is a gift, life is happiness, every minute can be an eternity of happiness. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

If there is anything in life to worry about at all, it's your wasted yesterday. Unfortunately, before you worry about it, you have to waste today doing so. Never worry! — Israelmore Ayivor

I'd wasted too much time over the past twelve months considering how bad my life could get, but as I sat alone in the deserted hospital corridor, my very worst fears had never felt more real. Pete was fighting for his life, and there was every chance he could lose. — Garrett Leigh

Already, in the last few decades, you have realized the utter futility of of encumbering yourselves with superfluous possessions that have no useful virtue, but which, for various sentimental reasons, you continue to hoard, thus lessening your life's efficiency by using for it time and attention that should have been applied to the practical work of life's accomplishments. (The Miracle of the Lily - 1928) — Clare Winger Harris

(It starts with)
One thing, I don't know why
It doesn't even matter how hard you try
Keep that in mind, I designed this rhyme
To explain in due time
All I know
time is a valuable thing
Watch it fly by as the pendulum swings
Watch it count down to the end of the day
The clock ticks life away
It's so unreal
Didn't look out below
Watch the time go right out the window
Trying to hold on but didn't even know
Wasted it all just to
Watch you go
I kept everything inside and even though I tried, it all fell apart
What it meant to me will eventually be a memory of a time when I tried so hard
And got so far
But in the end
It doesn't even matter
I had to fall
To lose it all
But in the end
It doesn't even matter — Linkin Park

We have a finite amount of time and energy in our lives. Time and energy spent on soul-sucking cretins is lost forever. That's life wasted. Life is too short to waste it on people who think we need fixing or that we are there to be their slaves. Love yourself enough to spend your life wisely, giving generously to people who deserve it and avoiding people who suck you dry. Your life is no less important than anyone else's, so do not waste it on someone who thinks it is. — Tess M. Stevens

When relationships have outlived their shelf life, people often realize that at some level, they are sticking it our because they once thought in the light of their divine love that the other person would change. Sorry for breaking the poetic hope here, but that doesn't happen. People are like rubber bands. They may be able to stretch from time to time and do some amazing things, but in general they are who they are. If manipulation and machinations on your side get them to behave the way you want, I will set my clock on the fact that they will return to their previous way of behaving, or they will keep faking it. To be in a relationship with someone who is not really there doesn't make sense. People who aren't cooperating feel like a project to us, like something for us to rescue or fix. Rescuing is the province of firefighters and fairy tales, but it's not real life. The stance of sticking it out in hopes of redemption is an old story and one that has wasted many lives. — Ramani Durvasula

The chief beauty about time is that you cannot waste it in advance. The next year, the next day, the next hour are lying ready for you, as perfect, as unspoiled, as if you had never wasted or misapplied a single moment in all your life. You can turn over a new leaf every hour if you choose. — Arnold Bennett

In his classic
account of the life of the Nuer of the Sudan, British anthropologist E. E. Evans-Pritchard
(1940:103) noted that
the Nuer have no expression equivalent to "time" in our language, and they cannot,
therefore, as we can, speak of time as though it were something actual, which passes,
can be wasted, can be saved, and so forth. I don't think they ever experience the
same feeling of fighting against time because their points of reference are mainly
the activities themselves, which are generally of a leisurely character. Events follow
a logical order, but they are not controlled by an abstract system, there being no
autonomous points of reference to which activities have to conform with precision.
Nuer are fortunate. — Richard H. Robbins

In a strange way, I envied the quality of Morrie's time even as I lamented its diminishing supply. Why did we bother with all the distractions we did? — Mitch Albom