Quotes & Sayings About Wastefulness

Had you but seen it, I promise you, your high-minded principles would have melted like candle wax. Never would you have wished such beauty away. — Jennifer Donnelly

2. The banality of time torments us, the tedium of existence mocks us, and many minor incidences irritate human beings. While we seek to inscribe a personal place in a finite realm, we live in a world without any actual boarders known as the universe. Human wastefulness, suffering, and cruelty know no bounds. Irrespective of all the unfortunate occasions in life that prove painful, stressful, sorrowful, or dreary, all misfortunate setbacks along with the shattering monotony of human existence are part of the vicissitudes of living a sentient life. If a person can view the enigmas of life from a detached perspective that respects life without worrying about the ultimate tragedy of all existence, when we return to the void from which we came, life will appear as a dream, a phantasm. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Isn't it crazy? Rich people in the United States don't even know how to use money properly. — Barbara Kingsolver

State interference in economic life, which calls itself economic policy, has done nothing but destroy economic life. Prohibitions and regulations have by their general obstructive tendency fostered the growth of the spirit of wastefulness. — Ludwig Von Mises

The second reason for the failure of industrial agriculture is its wastefulness. In natural or biological systems, waste does not occur. And it is easy to produce examples of nonindustrial human cultures in which waste was or is virtually unknown. All that is sloughed off in the living arc of a natural cycle remains within the cycle; it becomes fertility, the power of life to continue. In nature death and decay are as necessary - are, one may almost say, as lively - as life; and so nothing is wasted. There is really no such thing, then, as natural production; in nature, there is only reproduction. But — Wendell Berry

in Japan, buying a lot of stuff for your children is considered indulgent. Wastefulness was frowned upon. Shopping bags should be saved to reuse many times, not recycled after one purchase. — Christine Gross-Loh

Feel what it's like to truly starve, and I guarantee that you'll forever think twice before wasting food. — Criss Jami

Mindfulness of the resources we have and respect for where we live, eat, and sleep is a good starting point. Being conscious of your consumption, what goes in and out, will help cut down on wastefulness. — Joy Bryant

My mom would spy by satellite, turning down the air conditioning, colder and colder, with a tapping keystroke via her wireless connection, chilling that house, that one room, meat locker cold, ski-slope cold, spending a king's ransom on Freon and electric power, trying to make some doomed ten bucks' worth of pretty pink flowers last one more day. — Chuck Palahniuk

Outside the youth center, between the liquor store
and the police station,
a little dogwood tree is losing its mind;
overflowing with blossomfoam,
like a sudsy mug of beer;
like a bride ripping off her clothes,
dropping snow white petals to the ground in clouds,
so Nature's wastefulness seems quietly obscene.
It's been doing that all week:
making beauty,
and throwing it away,
and making more. — Tony Hoagland

I believe in the admission of women to the full rights of citizenship and share in government, on the express grounds that few women keep house so badly or with such wastefulness as chancellors of the exchequer keep the state. — Theodore Parker

Yes, he scorned his family's decadent ways, but perhaps that wasn't so much about the money per se, but rather the wastefulness of it; the lack of energy and drive it represented, as if the Ransomes were - like that postmodern throng of the famous-for-being-famous set - some odd collection of spoiled Emperor-brats walking a red carpet without any discernible talent to clothe them. The things the Ransomes - and their once-large fortune - could have accomplished ... they could have changed the world, or at least impacted it in positive ways. — Roberta Pearce

In the not-for-profit world, there can be wastefulness because there's not the desperate urgency of when you're on a clock. — Twyla Tharp

Our consciousness is also raised by the cruelty and wastefulness of natural selection. Predators seem beautifully 'designed' to catch prey animals, while the prey animals seem equally beautifully 'designed' to escape them. Whose side is God on? — Richard Dawkins

Eating a piece of meat, at its most efficient, we could say is like throwing away six times that amount of food every time you eat it because you're recycling all those calories through it. I know a lot of people who came to this issue not through animal welfare but through wastefulness. — Jonathan Safran Foer

If nothing else, school teaches that there is an answer to every question; only in the real world do young people discover that many aspects of life are uncertain, mysterious, and even unknowable. If you have a chance to play in nature, if you are sprayed by a beetle, if the color of a butterfly's wing comes off on your fingers, if you watch a caterpillar spin its cocoon
you come away with a sense of mystery and uncertainty. The more you watch, the more mysterious the natural world becomes, and the more you realize how little you know. Along with its beauty, you may also come to experience its fecundity, its wastefulness, aggressiveness, ruthlessness, parasitism, and its violence. These qualities are not well-conveyed in textbooks. — Michael Crichton

In a society dominated by the fact of commercial competition, money is necessarily the test of prowess, and wastefulness the sole criterion of power. So — Upton Sinclair

I wrapped up the remaining half burrito and tossed it into the trash can. Molly watched this act of wastefulness with an expression like she had just seen her entire family die in a fire. — David Wong

Every thought, every action, every statement should have meaning. — Carlos Wallace

Extravagant wastefulness in time might prove the most productive thing you choose for yourself. — Shelly Miller

Do not waste ... Don't waste the vegetable-washing water, splash it on the grapefruit tree instead ... Don't waste anything made of glass or plastic because glass and plastic can be reused ad nauseam ... Don't waste ... a string for retying, a rubber band for conquering dry noodles or hair, rice bags for dishcloths, fish bones for fertilizer ... Anything that comes out of the earth must be returned to the earth ... "If everyone uses more than their share, how can the earth support us?" — Thanhha Lai

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

The wastefulness of indiscriminate plunder impoverishes a country, while it adds nothing to the support of the army; policy, as well as humanity to the inhabitants, dictates that all levies should be made according to established rules, and under the charge of discreet and competent officers. — Ambrose Burnside

We debate sometimes what is to be the future of this nation when we think that in a few years public affairs may be in the hands of the fin-de-siecle gilded youths we see about us during the Christmas holidays. Such foppery, such luxury, such insolence,was surely never practiced by the scented, overbearing patricians of the Palatine, even in Rome's most decadent epoch. In all the wild orgy of wastefulness and luxury with which the nineteenth century reaches its close, the gilded youth has been surely the worst symptom. — Booth Tarkington

As for mending, I think its good to take the time to fix something rather than throw it away. Its an antidote to wastefulness and to the need for immediate gratification. You get to see a whole process through, beginning to end, nothing abstract about it. You'll always notice the fabric scar, of course, but there's an art to mending. If you're careful, the repair can actually add to the beauty of the think because it is a testimony to its worth. — Elizabeth Berg

One survival technique is a lack of wastefulness; the African puts everything to use. — David Lamb

As to the reserved and withdrawn areas, excluding and excepting only the national parks, it is manifest that justice, equality, and dignity for these States require that ultimately all should be ceded to the States wherein they lie. The theory that the Western States can not intelligently and wisely administer these areas, for example, the forest reserves, is based on the delinquencies and wastefulness of the States to the eastward which had their resources and their opportunity, and in some cases, as States, misused and abused their rights. This constitutes no reason as to why the same right which they enjoyed should be denied to the Western states. — Charles Edwin Winter

Ugh. Would that Christmas could just be, without presents. It is just so stupid, everyone exhausting themselves, miserably haemorrhaging money on pointless items nobody wants: no longer tokens of love but angst-ridden solutions to problems. [...] What is the point of entire nation rushing round for six weeks in a bad mood preparing for utterly pointless Taste-of-Others exam which entire nation then fails and gets stuck with hideous unwanted merchandise as fallout? If gifts and cards were completely eradicated, then Christmas as pagan-style twinkly festival to distract from lengthy winter gloom would be lovely. But if government, religious bodies, parents, tradition, etc. insist on Christmas Gift Tax to ruin everything why not make it that everyone must go out and spend £500 on themselves then distribute the items among their relatives and friends to wrap up and give to them instead of this psychic-failure torment? — Helen Fielding

The new century will see unimaginable levels of wastefulness and extravagance, but it will also be an age in which the individual human being acquires a true and universally recognised value. — Peter Robinson

When you are on a time bound purposeful journey, rest is not just idleness but wastefulness. — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

We must surely appear to the world as exactly what we are: a nation that organizes its economy around consuming twice as much oil as it produces, and around the profligate wastefulness of the wars and campaigns required to defend such consumption. In recent years we have defined our national interest largely in terms of the oil fields and pipelines we need to procure fuel. — Barbara Kingsolver

Writing is an act of love. If it is not it is only handwriting. It consists in obeying the driving force of plants and trees and in broadcasting sperm far around us.
The richness of the world is in its wastefulness. — Jean Cocteau

For me, everything is about Jesus and Father and the Holy Spirit, and relationships, and life is an adventure of faith lived one day at a time. Any aspirations, visions and dreams died a long time ago and I have absolutely no interest in resurrecting them (they would stink by now anyway). I have finally figured out that I have nothing to lose by living a life of faith. I know more joy every minute of every day than seems appropriate, but I love the wastefulness of my Father's grace and presence. For me, everything in my life that matters, is perfect! — William P. Young

[Fritz Haber's] greatness lies in his scientific ideas and in the depth of his searching. The thought, the plan, and the process are more important to him than the completion. The creative process gives him more pleasure than the yield, the finished piece. Success is immaterial. "Doing it was wonderful." His work is nearly always uneconomical, with the wastefulness of the rich. — Richard Willstatter

Knowledge without action is wastefulness and action without knowledge is foolishness. — Al-Ghazali

As businessmen caught a glimpse of the potentialities inherent in endlessly expanding the wants of people under consumerism, forced draft or otherwise, many began to see blue skies ... What was needed was strategies that would make Americans in large numbers into voracious, wasteful, compulsive consumers-and strategies that would provide products assuring such wastefulness. Even where wastefulness was not involved, additional strategies were needed that would induce the public to consume at ever-higher levels. — Vance Packard

We must fight against negativeness - especially bureaucracy, corruption and wastefulness. — Nong Duc Manh

The requirement of conspicuous wastefulness is ... present as a constraining norm selectively shaping and sustaining our sense of what is beautiful. — Thorstein Veblen