"Misspent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... peculiar tenderness, connected with his youth, his genius, his excellent character, his blameless life, and early death. Life had been but a morning to Charlie Hubbard, but it was a glowing summer morning; its hours had not been wasted, abused, misspent; brief as they were, yet in passing they had brought blessings to himself, to his fellow-beings; and they had left to those who loved him the ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... the questions—who are we? and where are we? who is God? and what are we to God, and He to us?—namely, the science of being good, which deals not with time merely, but with eternity. No retirement, no loneliness, no period of earnest and solemn meditation, can be misspent which helps us ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... had my share of pastime, and I've done my share of toil, And life is short—the longest life a span. I care not now to tarry for the corn or for the oil, Or for the wine that maketh glad the heart of man; For good undone and time misspent and resolutions vain 'Tis somewhat late to trouble—this I know; I would live the same life over if I had to live again And the chances are I ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... hath been." "There stretches through the midst of Tuscany, I straight began: "a brooklet, whose well-head Springs up in Falterona, with his race Not satisfied, when he some hundred miles Hath measur'd. From his banks bring, I this frame. To tell you who I am were words misspent: For yet my name scarce sounds on rumour's lip." "If well I do incorp'rate with my thought The meaning of thy speech," said he, who first Addrest me, "thou dost speak of Arno's wave." To whom the other: "Why hath he conceal'd The title of ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... alive; and she, alas! had never thought of him—never considered his comfort in anything. Oh, remorse! If only she could have those times all over again, or even one of those times so recklessly misspent! He might have lost his life through that wetting. Or what if he lost his voice? Singers have notoriously delicate throats. But happily nothing so untoward had resulted; she was saved the blame of a crowning disaster—she knew, because ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... down in Kent The students' time is not misspent. Some of the arts at any rate Thrive in this Eden up-to-date; And doubtless each girl-gard'ner tries To win the term's Top-dressing Prize, Or trains her sense of paradox (While gathering "nuts" and "plums" and stocks) ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... along with the old-style architecture costs the five-story man the income of twenty-five floors. Save ten steps a day for each of twelve thousand employees and you will have saved fifty miles of wasted motion and misspent energy. ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... too, was passed In wanton sports and misspent time; And soon he stood on manhood's verge, A hardened wretch, prepared ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... the hunting-leopard kills because she loves to kill. So does Mirza. She destroys because she loves to destroy. A hunting-leopard and Mirza are the only two absolutely cruel creatures I have ever seen. Of course," he added, "I eliminate the English, who deem the day misspent unless they have killed something, and who give infinite pains and tenderness to the raising of pheasants, that they may slaughter a record number of them at a battue. Aside from a hunting-leopard and a hunting- Englishman, I know of no being so cruel as Mirza; no being ...
— The Turquoise Cup, and, The Desert • Arthur Cosslett Smith
... as frequently as I can your forming yourselves upon great principles and great models. Your time will be much misspent in every other pursuit. Small excellences should be viewed, not studied; they ought to be viewed, because nothing ought to escape a painter's observation, but for no ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... from his potations beyond a growing exhilaration; now, however, the wine was taking toll, and Lorelei felt a certain pity for him. Waste is shocking; it grieved her to see a man so blessed with opportunity flinging himself away so fatuously. The hilarity which greeted him on every hand spoke of misspent nights and a reckless prodigality that betokened long habitude. Only his splendid constitution—that abounding vitality which he had inherited from sturdy, temperate forebears—enabled him to keep up the pace; but Lorelei saw that he was already beginning ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... blue upwardness stood the tower of the Metropolitan Life Building, a reminder that humanity as a whole pays its premiums with decent regularity. They conned the nice gradations of tint in the spring foliage of Gramercy Park. They talked, a little soberly, of thrift, and of their misspent years. ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... station, the arriving place of one of those health resorts where people flock in their millions to enjoy a little peace and quiet together. He, no doubt as a punishment for a misspent youth, was the station-master; she was one of those many kind ladies who come to meet their relatives and to make their arrival even more peaceful and quiet ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 147, August 12, 1914 • Various
... to him, as he was drinking a mahogany-coloured liquid that was known by the name of tea, out of a tin mug, and eating a hunk of bread and jam, "I don't know whether or not I'm pleased to see you. You were safer in England. Once I misspent many months of my life in shielding you from the dangers of France. But France is a much more dangerous place nowadays, and I can't help you. You've come right into the thick of it. Just listen to the hell's delight ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... conceiving the title of any thing, to be of equal importance with the christening of a person; and surely where the etymology of a name of either person or thing can throw any light upon their respective histories, the time employed thereon can hardly be looked upon as either lost or misspent. But it unfortunately happens, as is almost always the case in regard to persons and things belonging to mythological eras, that the greatest confusion and perplexity exist in regard to the Indian titles which have been bestowed upon tobacco; and as ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... feelings of the sex, as she gazed at my exquisite lace, perfect ornamental work, and unequaled fineness. Still, her education and habits triumphed, and she would not commend what she regarded as ingenuity misspent, and ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... out, and meets her. There may be a hundred women in the room, or park, or tennis ground, wherever the tragedy (Love is a tragedy) commences. When the lights are low he comes back, and is low also. Wonders how men can be such brutes as to want dinner; thinks his life has been misspent; that he is unworthy to touch her hand; that he has wallowed in the fleshpots, and here is a way out of them. And if the man's nature be noble and sweet and true; if he has hitherto drifted adown the stream of circumstance because his fellows have also ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... Quebec awaited the blow; but the blow never fell, for at Montreal was a little band of seventeen heroes, led by a youth of twenty-five,—Adam Dollard,—who longed to wipe out the stain of a misspent boyhood by some glorious exploit in the service of the ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... of heaven! after the days misspent, After the nights of wild tumultuous thought, In that fierce passion's strong entanglement, One, for my peace too lovely fair, had wrought; Vouchsafe that, by thy grace, my spirit bent On nobler aims, to holier ways be brought; That so my foe, spreading ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... of the way in which a young friend, whom I do not choose to name, misspent his time and misapplied his talents. He took afterwards a better course, and became an useful member of society, respected, I believe, wherever ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... in the world still," said Jim, his own eyes full. He knew now his father and himself, and he knew the meaning of all the bitter and misspent life of the old days. He and his father were on a level ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... he lived for or against Socialism and yet at the end of a long and misspent life have said nothing that others had not said ...
— The Inhumanity of Socialism • Edward F. Adams
... thought to flee, More restless than the swallow in the skies: Though here awhile he learned to moralise, For Meditation fixed at times on him, And conscious Reason whispered to despise His early youth misspent in maddest whim; But as he gazed on Truth, his aching eyes ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... Kate could not do; and the longer she thought about it, the more miserable she grew. They went for a walk in the grand old park, which Kate would have enjoyed immensely at any other time, but conscience was reproving her for this misspent Sabbath, and then the loss of her money almost distracted her, for she was to receive her salary from Mrs. Maple by the quarter, and so it would be nearly three months before she had another penny she ...
— Kate's Ordeal • Emma Leslie
... late Mrs. Button, who had learned how he had misspent his time, gave him a merciless thrashing. Why should he be trapesing about with Sunday schools, she asked, with impolite embroidery, while his poor little brothers and sisters were crying in the street? She would learn him to Mess about with parsons and Sunday-school teachers. She was in process ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... thing that dried my tears was the recollection of the blind asylum of my youth, where the "inmates" never learned to walk without groping, where we were shown hideous bead furniture, too small for dolls, which was the result of their eager but misspent lives. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... hospitality they had found on the other side. It had not gone unrewarded; for I observed with interest that the ship's kettles, all but one, had been "placed." Three Lake County families, at least, endowed for life with a ship's kettle. Come, this was no misspent Sunday. The absence of the kettles told its own story: our Jews said nothing about them; but, on the other hand, they said many kind and comely things about the people they had met. The two women, in particular, had been charmed out of themselves by the sight of a young girl surrounded ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that sleeping Christian, nestled so cosily among the cushions in Cousin Abbie's morning-room, might have been startled and aroused, could she have realized that days like those would never come back to her; that being misspent they had passed away; that a new worker had come to drop seed into the unoccupied heart; that never again would Sadie be as fresh, and as guileless, and as easily won, as in those days which she had let slip in idle, aye, ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... Ambassador. He was at my house at dinner the other night and one of the ladies asked him: "Lieutenant, have you any darling little pet lyddite cartridges in your pocket?" Think of a young fellow who just loves bombs! Has loaded bombs for pets! How I misspent ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... who is contented with being a good hermit at the expense of being a bad citizen; who looks from his retreat upon a life wasted in the difficiles nugae of the most frivolous part of the world, nor redeems in the closet the time he has misspent in the saloon,—remember that for him seclusion loses its dignity, philosophy its comfort, benevolence its hope, and even religion its balm. Knowledge unemployed may preserve us from vice; but knowledge ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... squares,—when we reflect upon the dreadful scepticism abounding in Park-lane, May-fair, Portland-place and its vicinity,—when we contemplate the abominable idols which these unhappy natives worship in their ignorance,—when we know that every thought, every act of their misspent life is dedicated to a false religion, when they make hourly and daily sacrifice ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... thankless forgetfulness of the hand from which it flowed? If such has been the case, let it be so no longer; but awake and rouse ye from your lethargic slumber, be true to yourselves, and remember that you are responsible beings, and will have to account for all the time and talents misspent and misapplied. Reflect seriously on the true end of existence and no longer fritter it away in vanity and folly. Think of all the good you might have done, not only by individual exertion, but by the influence of your example. Then reverse the picture and ask ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... aside from all things visible. And therefore you do but fancy an idol to yourselves, instead of God, when you apprehend him under the likeness of any visible or sensible thing, and so whatever love or fear or reverence you have, it is all but misspent superstition, the love ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... sake, O Chevalier John Paul, be a word spent, or misspent! In faded naval uniform, Paul Jones lingers visible here; like a wine-skin from which the wine is all drawn. Like the ghost of himself! Low is his once loud bruit; scarcely audible, save, with extreme ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... up, and poisons all the draught. First guilty conscience does the mirror bring, Then sharp remorse shoots out the angry sting, And anxious thoughts, within themselves at strife, Upbraid the long misspent, luxurious life. ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... Ned Taylor's misspent life came to an end a few weeks after his confession to Thomas Bradly of his connection with the awful death of Joe Wright. His internal injuries could not be healed; and, after many days and nights of terrible suffering, meekly and patiently borne, he passed ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... greater part of which I squandered in my youth in dissipation; but I perceived my error, and reflected that riches were perishable, and quickly consumed by such ill managers as myself, I further considered, that by my irregular way of living I wretchedly misspent my time; which is, of all things, the most valuable. Struck with these reflections, I collected the remains of my fortune, and sold all my effects by public auction. I then entered into a contract with some merchants, who traded by sea. I took the advice of such as I thought most capable, ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... misspent a moment of his time, "the thought of the last bitter hour" will not "come like a blight," and there will be no "sad images of the stern agony." The wise and good man, who has the unmixed reverence of the great and the humble, whose ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... man feels the burden of a misspent life; he cannot recall the past, nor make amends for its errors. But, withal, it is some relief that he can disclose his feelings to the ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... known By sighs, and tears, and grief alone. I greet her as the fiend, to whom belong The vulture's ravening beak, the raven's funereal song! She tells of time misspent, of comfort lost, Of fair occasions gone forever by; Of hopes too fondly nursed, too rudely crossed, Of many a cause to wish, yet fear to die; For what, except the instinctive fear Lest she survive, detains me here, When all the 'Life of Life' ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... Turks. In his old age, he became an anchorite near Boston, and wrote twenty-five volumes upon the subject of alchymy, the most important of which is the "Duodecim Portarum," already mentioned. Before he died, he seems to have acknowledged that he had misspent his life in this vain study, and requested that all men, when they met with any of his books, would burn them, or afford them no credit, as they had been written merely from his opinion, and not from proof; and that subsequent trial had made manifest to him that they were false ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... of Mrs. Gray brought the first great sorrow to the house of Robert Gray. It did its work in the heart of each who remained. It smote the husband with a conviction of misspent years, of a united fellowship in the things that perish so miserably instead of in those things which remain when all else is shaken. Had he but led his gentle wife, as was his opportunity, in ways of the Spirit, how different might have been their record together. And now the end had come for one, ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... made the dreamer to smile and to talk so in his sleep was when he saw that all the upward ways to the Celestial City ran through the land of Beulah. He saw also in his dream how all the pilgrims blamed themselves so bitterly now because they had misspent so much of their time and strength in the ways below, and so had not come sooner to see and to taste this blessed land. But, at the same time, as it was, they all rejoiced with a great joy because that, after all their delays ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... heaven's best boon to man." When the loose but gifted Byron lay in his Venetian exile he observed that, if it could be granted him to go back and live his misspent life over again, he would give his lucid and unintoxicated intervals to the composition, not of frivolous rhymes, but of essays upon political economy. Washington loved this exquisite science; such names as Baker, Beckwith, Judson, Smith, are imperishably ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... circumstances; and which even the corporal himself had in part owned in a letter which he had written to the said Casey's father. However, while he lay in Newgate, he seemed heartily affected with sorrow for his misspent life, which he said was consumed as is too frequent among soldiers, either in idleness or vice. He added, that in Spain he had made serious resolutions of amendment with himself, but was hindered from performing them by his companions, who were continually seducing him into ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... good deal, and we found that we had quite a lot in common, having visited the same places and regarded many things from practically the same point of view. He took the trouble to be very entertaining," said Rose, with a pretty blush. "And his trouble was not misspent. I am convinced that he enjoyed the afternoon even more than I did. We also enjoyed the evening," she added. "He is an excellent dancer. We suited ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... noble cause the whole world through? That is what I see, Adele, as I lie here beside a shore upon which I shall never set my feet, and I say to you that if you and Amory go to the building of such a nation then indeed your lives are not misspent. It will come, and when it comes, may God guard it, may God watch over it and direct it!" His head had sunk gradually lower upon his breast and his lids had fallen slowly over his eyes which had been looking away out past Point Levi at the rolling ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... her by Steele in terms that have been supposed to imply resemblance between her and the 'perverse widow;' as being both readers, &c. Mrs Boevey is said also to have had a Confidant (Mary Pope) established in her household. But there is time misspent in all these endeavours to reduce to tittle-tattle the creations of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... as gall to his parched, disordered palate. He made himself so intensely disagreeable that poor Heloise thenceforth swore an enmity against his compatriots, which endured to the end of her brief misspent existence. "Gredin d'Anglais, va!" she was wont to say, grinding her little white teeth melodramatically, whenever she recalled that dreary entertainment, and the failure of her simple stratagems to enliven her ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... road for a great many years. The animals were all old, and there was a shabby great elephant whose look of general discouragement went to my heart, for it seemed as if he were miserably conscious of a misspent life. He stood dejected and motionless at one side of the tent, and it was hard to believe that there was a spark of vitality left in him. A great number of the people had never seen an elephant before, and we heard a thin little old man, who stood near us, say ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... my sadness Those fair days of youth and gladness! Moments of delightful madness Gone, alas, for evermore! Vain regrets for misspent powers, Wasted chances, faded flowers, Vex my lonely spirit sore. Had I only known before! Let me cherish in my sadness Those fair days of youth and gladness! Moments of delightful madness Gone, alas, ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... that you knew something of arithmetic by this time! Making up for misspent time, I see. Paying old debts is ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... to hug the earth very intimately, to belong most indispensably, with an effect of permanence, of orderliness and dignity that brought to mind instinctively the term estate, and caused Sally to recall (with misspent charity) the fulsome frenzy of a sycophantic scribbler ranting of feudal aristocracies, representative houses, and ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... which the latter years of few reflecting men can be free, religion would suffice to comfort him. Yes, religion could console him for the loss of any worldly good, but was his religion of that active sort which would enable him so to repent of misspent years as to pass those that were left to him in a spirit of hope for the future? And such repentance itself, is it not a work of agony and of tears? It is very easy to talk of repentance, but a man has to walk over hot ploughshares before he can complete it; to ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... turn the clod, and wheel the compost home, But elegance, chief grace the garden shows And most attractive, is the fair result Of thought, the creature of a polished mind. Without it, all is Gothic as the scene To which the insipid citizen resorts, Near yonder heath; where industry misspent, But proud of his uncouth, ill-chosen task, Has made a heaven on earth; with suns and moons Of close-rammed stones has charged the encumbered soil, And fairly laid the zodiac in the dust. He, therefore, who would see his flowers disposed Sightly and in just order, ere he gives The beds ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... flows hotly in my veins. Full three-and-twenty years I now have lived, And naught achieved for immortality. I am aroused—I feel my inward powers— My title to the throne arouses me From slumber, like an angry creditor; And all the misspent hours of early youth, Like debts of honor, clamor in mine ears. It comes at length, the glorious moment comes That claims full interest on the intrusted talent. The annals of the world, ancestral fame, And glory's echoing trumpet urge me on. Now is the blessed hour at length arrived That opens ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... The misspent days and years of the past became like so many reproachful ghosts, and he realized that he had idled away the precious seed-time of his life, or, rather, had been busy sowing thorns and nettles, that had grown all too quickly and rankly. Thousands had been spent on his education; ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... it; I can't even pray. One absurd idea possesses me—that Singleton will have the Legion now; and he's a slack drill-master—he is, indeed!... I've a million things to think of—an idle life to consider, a misspent career to repent, but the time is too short, Ormond.... Perhaps all that will ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... promise to be mine, or even to love me, till I have proved myself worthy of your affection. My past life has been one of thoughtlessness and inaction, but it shall be my endeavor in future to atone for those misspent years. Your image will ever be with me as a bright spirit from whose presence I cannot flee, and whisper hope when my energies would fail. I only ask your remembrance till I am worthy to claim your love. If you do not see me or hear from me at the end of five years, you may believe that I have failed ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... once more at their revels. He gave them a final magnificent banquet, at which they noticed that he was silent and preoccupied. Immediately afterward he retired to a grotto, where he passed his days alone, entreating God to pardon the misspent years of youth and to direct him in the right way. Here he had a vision of Jesus Christ nailed to the cross. It is probably impossible to prove a vision; but that this one was real to Francis, at least, we may ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... faith come to mind. Pierre lives over again in swift review years of a misspent past. With comprehensive view of its wasted, perverted chances, the broad compass of desolating and desolated perspective ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... the way in which it must be worked. I was greatly impressed by what he said." "Just fancy!" exclaimed a colleague, "wasting all that time in talking about a scheme which will never come to anything!" But M. Venizelos knew that the time was not misspent. President Wilson was at first nowise disposed to lend a favorable ear to the claims of Greece, which he thought exorbitant, and down to the very last he gave his support to Bulgaria against Greece whole-heartedly. The Cretan statesman passed many an ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... Conjectures; I shall beg leave to subjoyn my own: and if what at present I offer, may seem more probable, or account for this Story with more likelyhood, than what hath hitherto been advanced, I shall not think my time altogether misspent: But if this will not do, I shall never trouble my head more about them, nor think my self any ways concerned to write on this Argument again. And I had not done it now, but upon the occasion of Dissecting this Orang-Outang, or wild Man, which being a Native of Africa, and brought from ...
— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson
... machine of government is worked here. There are in it also many interesting details of the last war, which, in general, may be relied on. It may be considered as the small history of great events. I am in hopes, when you shall have read them, you will not think I have misspent your money for them. My method for making out this assortment was, to revise the list of my own purchases since the invoice of 1785, and to select such as I had found worth your having. Besides this, I have casually met with and purchased some few ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... crowding shoots which never can be of any use. If these are cut out at this time, the sap which would go to mature them will be directed into the valuable parts of the forming bush. Summer pruning prevents misspent force, and it may be kept up with great advantage from year to year. This is rarely done, however; therefore early in spring the bushes must receive a good annual pruning, and the long shoots and ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... her riches, and the persecution of popery. She occasionally revolts against her fellow-servants, who lay bare her spoils, who tell of her frauds and oppressions, who remind her of her origin, and upbraid her with the profligacy of her misspent life. But she is much more frequently employed in forming offensive and defensive leagues with her fellows in the corporations, showing the advantages of injustice and oppression, in confounding the charter of her servitude with the title-deeds of her employers, in asserting ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... wharves to jump off of, Wunpost had decided upon the Valley of Death. And if, in following after him to rob him of his mine, Pisen-face Lynch should succumb to the heat, that might justly be considered a visitation of Providence to punish him for his misspent life. Or at least so Wunpost reasoned and, remembering the gun under Lynch's knee, he decided to ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... and prayer, and patience,—many a tale is told which God alone sees, and which he approves. The needy tell a tale, in their unrelieved wants and unpitied sufferings. The oppressed tell a tale, that goes up into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. The vicious tell a tale of wo, and misspent opportunity, and wasted power. Let us think of it, I beseech you! Each one of us in his sphere of action is developing a plot which surely tells in character,—which is fast running into a ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... too great worth to waste one precious moment. An hour lost is that much of life lost. For all the time spent in idleness, you had just as well not have lived at all. By rightly using each moment you will build up a character that will stand a monument upon the tomb of the dead past. Moments misspent are life and character gone, and no imprint is left on the hearts of men to tell that we have lived. How many golden moments are flying away into eternity unladen with any fruit from your life? Learn to value time. Redeem it because ...
— Food for the Lambs; or, Helps for Young Christians • Charles Ebert Orr
... face with the Chinese at home, one is overwhelmed by an impression of power,—actual power, potential power, power of the individual, power of the group, power well used, power misspent. The impression is almost stunning. You seem to be watching a community of ants, persistent, untiring, organized, only the ant-hill is a town, and the ants are men physically strong, gluttons for work, resourceful, adaptable, cheerful. Then multiply such ant-hills ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... half through it a second time, when the pleasing ideas of Elysian Fields, deceased worthies walking in them, sincere lovers enjoying their languishment without pain, compassion for the unhappy spirits who had misspent their short daylight, and were exiled from the seats of bliss for ever; I say, I was deep again in my reading, when this mixture of images had taken place of all others in my imagination before, and lulled me into a dream, from which I am just awake, to my great disadvantage. ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... imagine that under the preaching of Paul sudden conviction of a life misspent may have been produced with sudden personal attachment to the Galilean who, until then, had been despised. There may have been prompt release of unsuspected powers, and as prompt an imprisonment for ever of meaner ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... cheap and sell dear) into Antonio's sense of it: emphasized with the final i in tender "Cheri," and hushed to English calmness in our noble "Cherish." The reader must not think that any care can be misspent in tracing the connexion and power of the words which we have to use in the sequel. (See Appendix VI.) Much education sums itself in making men economize their words, and understand them. Nor is it ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... Corrigan with all his shaking nerves and soul. Even murder occurred to him in a vague sort of way. Five days he went without the taste of tobacco—he who had smoked all day and thought the night misspent in which he had not awakened for a pipeful or two under ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... called a gentleman. "The truly ingenious and strong men of France are here (i.e. among the industrial classes) making money, while the politician, literary, etc. etc. class is mere play-actorism." His summary before leaving at the close of a week, rather misspent, is: "Articulate-speaking France was altogether without beauty or meaning to me in my then diseased mood; but I saw traces of the inarticulate ... ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... miss, and me heart bleeds for such as you. 'Tis well ye have a hope of paradise, for, if all you say is true, ye must go from this world cheated and hungry like meself. Ye have one comfort that I have not—'tis not your own doing. Ye've not misspent your life as I have done. What does it all show but that life is a game where each man, good or bad, takes his chance. The cards fall against you and against me without care of what we are. I can only say I take me chances as I take the rain ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... resist the grace of God, and spend the precious time given to seek and find it in thoughtless folly? What can they do, on such a bed of distress, who have no God? Time misspent and gone—opportunities unimproved and gone—calls resisted never to be repeated—death hunting the soul through every avenue of life—a dreadful, unknown, unthought of eternity at hand—an awful Judge, and no Advocate secured to ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... deemed his greatest work will be preserved by its subject; some of his minor poems have merit enough in their execution to ensure their preservation; and no one who studies poetry as an art will think his time misspent in perusing the whole, if he have any real love for the art he is pursuing. The youth who enters upon that pursuit without a feeling of respect and gratitude for those elder poets, who by their labours ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... meeting, he would go with the same set of boys to a place of amusement and sin, a little way out of the city. In a short time, this evil company had erased every tender affection from his bosom. On one of these misspent Sabbaths, he fell in with a rough set of lawless boys, and got into a fight with them, and was seen thus engaged ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb
... pray with and for him," Bell thought, as she went next to her brother, mourning her misspent days, and feeling her courage giving way when at last she stood in his presence and met ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... seemed to me, in my pessimism, and seems to me still, in my memory of all that ghastly fighting, that the fine mechanism of the Second Army applied to those battles in Flanders was utterly misspent, that after the first heavy rains had fallen the offensive ought to have been abandoned, and that it was a frightful error of judgment to ask masses of men to attack in conditions where they had not a dog's chance of victory, except at a cost ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... he derived great benefit from his comparatively limited study and practice of law; and that the little time he had given up to it had been far from being misspent. But the opening which now presented itself introduced him to a field of activity much more suited to his talents and his tastes. He liked the study of law better than its practice; for his early training had not been of a kind to reconcile him to standing up strongly for clients and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the intolerable restraint of a tranquil life, and, at last, in the hope of a larger liberty, he enlisted for a drummer in the Norfolk Militia, stationed at the moment in Edinburgh Castle. A brief, insubordinate year, misspent in his country's service, proved him hopeless of discipline: he claimed his discharge, and henceforth he was free to follow the one craft for which nature and his own ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... whenever it is! and whenever, for the sake of that, I can give up my title to that blessed hope which will stand me in stead, at a time when millions of gold will not purchase one happy moment of reflection on a past misspent life! ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... what a misspent life I looked back upon, never losing hold, God be praised, of the sure belief in His promises of pardon and acceptance in Christ. I certainly saw that a want of sympathy, an indifference to the feelings of others, want of ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Shall we look back upon wrongs to our fellow men and sins toward God? It seems to me that the keenest regrets that ever come to a soul on earth are the regrets that come to him who, during his last hours on earth, has to view a misspent life. ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... him as he lay writhing in agony, his sunken eyes gleaming wildly, rolling and tossing from side to side, while great drops of perspiration stood upon his forehead, continually lamenting his misspent time, and the life he had led! He took my hand in his cold, bony fingers, thanking me that I did not so despise him, that I could not come to see him in his sorrow and affliction. Generally, however, when he raved and talked ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... harbor or on the quay-side, or who sat in their boats mending their nets and spinning their yarns one to another, were sources of much interest, so that we felt two or three days of life in their company would not be dull nor misspent. Moreover, the merchant, whose ship it was that carried Sir Thurstan's goods, showed us much attention, and would have us to his house to talk with him and tell him of our uncle, whose acquaintance he had made ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher
... guidance of the canon of wasted effort works out so happy a result. The result is quite as often a virtually complete suppression of all elements that would bear scrutiny as expressions of beauty, or of serviceability, and the substitution of evidences of misspent ingenuity and labor, backed by a conspicuous ineptitude; until many of the objects with which we surround ourselves in everyday life, and even many articles of everyday dress and ornament, are such as would not be tolerated except ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... weakened her purpose and partially paralysed her arm. When the noble Commonwealth went forward to the renewed and general conflict which succeeded the concentrated one in which it had been the chief actor, the effect of those misspent twelve years ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... be foolish, it surely is not less foolish because an honest and misspent lifetime has been ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... council meetings and regular appointments. In body he was robust, vigorous and active: in spirit he had long reaches of faith and hope and love. This incited him to great activity; and I often heard him say: "An hour misspent or trifled away is just so ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... British laws in consequence of a visit he paid to England after the war, for the purpose of carrying out a speculation which ended unfortunately. It was satisfactory to hear that he lived to become a changed man, truly repenting of his misspent life, and thankful that he had been spared ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... thought his life was good enough. It was as good as that of other folks he lived with. You don't suppose he had any misgivings, provided he was in the City early enough in the morning; or slept badly, unless he indulged too freely over-night; or twinges of conscience that his life was misspent? He thought his life a most lucky and reputable one. He had a share in a good business, and felt that he could increase it. Some day he would marry a good match, with a good fortune; meanwhile he could take his pleasure decorously, and sow his wild oats as some of the young ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sands of the desert And the slimy tropic south, Or his dreams of a northern fortune Are as ashes in his mouth. He loses the best life holds for man His existence means discontent Still he goes his way, until comes the day When he quits it—a life misspent. ...
— Rhymes of a Roughneck • Pat O'Cotter
... Do my pupils ever find any difficulty in correlating the series as they may find it? 2. What training must they have in order to do so? 3. Is any time misspent in trying to discover a non-existing relation? 4. What are the eleven Latin prepositions here given? 5. How are they usually learned? 6. Is ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... places a common practise. After the boddy hath been attended to in all its proper officies it be a good sign if the eyes do shut of themselves, if not then but a few years sen it was held to be the work of some evil spirits in some cases owing to a misspent life. In those days it was the common thing for to get or borrow a pair of leaden sigs (charms) from some wise dame or good neighbour, the like of those made by Betty Strother and others wise in such matters. They being magic made did ward ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... have much in you, though you do look like the last whisper of a misspent life. Well, men can't cry just when they want to, though a woman knows they cry oftener than any man ever sees. You have to take it out ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... of self-reproach swept over him as he retraced the wanderings of his misspent years—misspent as regarded the service of his Creator, however prosperous in the eyes of the world! The past came back like a dream. His innocent childhood, spent under the vigilant care of a saintly mother; his boyhood, with its keener joys—all tempered by ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... personnel, as the place supplies. It is to be expected that a portion will abuse this liberty, and waste their years. They do it at their peril. At the peril, among other disadvantages, of losing their degree, which should be conditioned on satisfactory proof that the student has not wholly misspent his time. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... rare occasions when old Silas Todd led the service, the time was not misspent, in the opinion of the Watchman. Silas Todd was one of the pillars of the church and when the local preacher failed to appear, which contingency sometimes arose in the season of bad roads, the duty of preaching a sermon generally devolved upon him. He was a pious little man, bent and thin, ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... house was dark and lonely as an abandoned habitation. It seemed, indeed, that bright and full of youthful light as Vesta Philbrook was, she was only one warm candle in the gloom of this great and melancholy monument of her father's misspent hopes. Before she could warm it into life and cheerfulness, it would encroach upon her with its chilling gloom, like an insidious cold drift of sand, smothering her beauty, burying her quick heart away from the world for which it ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... my time? Surely I was; and, as I looked back, it appeared to me that I had always been doing so. What had been the profit of the tongues which I had learned? had they ever assisted me in the day of hunger? No, no! it appeared to me that I had always misspent my time, save in one instance, when by a desperate effort I had collected all the powers of my imagination, and written the "Life of Joseph Sell;" but even when I wrote the Life of Sell, was I not in a false position? ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... memory weaves No veil to screen the past: As we retrace our weary way, Counting each lost and misspent day, We find, sadly, ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... played. If he don't see it that way, he best do all he knows. You an' this darn old scallawag have got just five minutes to hit the trail clear of this camp. The whole outfit of you. Guess you wouldn't get that much time only for the age of this bunch of the tailings of a misspent life. Clear. ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... to Maubert, standing for long months within his straw covered hut, or standing in the roadway in front of it, demanding passports. Every day, for many months past, he remembered his misspent permission and cursed the way he had passed it. Passed it in so futile a manner. Things might have been so different. His companions often chaffed him about it, chaffed him rudely. For he had never seen fit to tell them that he had not gone ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... with all the strength of his bare and sinewy arm. So, alternately beating and beaten, they made their dolorous way through the beautiful woods and under the amber arches of the fading beech-trees, where the calm strength and majesty of Nature might serve to rebuke the foolish energies and misspent strivings of mankind. ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of course, be a matter of lifelong regret that two years so important in one's education should have been passed in such a way,—still, they were not wholly misspent. From a teacher named Monroe, [2] who then lived near Salisbury, I borrowed Draper's Chemistry, little thinking that I would one day count the author among my friends. A book peddler going his rounds offered a collection of miscellaneous books at auction. I ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... along the street's over which hang dusty branches of trees or vines sneaking mischievously out of bounds. A woe-begone trolley creaks through the narrow streets and heart-broken cabmen mourning over the mistakes of misspent lives, larrup disconsolate horses over stony streets as they creak and jog and wheeze ahead of the invisible crows that seem always to be hovering above ready to batten upon their rightful provender. For an hour in the morning before our train left for Paris we chartered ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... manner was perfect to her, and yet Isabelle went to her luncheon with the bubbling Mr. Bliss sad at heart. She was such an outsider, such a stranger to her husband's inner self! That it was to be expected, her own fault, the result of the misspent years of married life made it ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... the lesson of your experience, throwing aside the experience itself, as you would cast aside the skin of an orange from which the juice had been extracted. Don't fill the areas of your mortal mind with rubbish—with memories of "benefits forgot;" or loves unrequited; or friendships broken; or misspent hours; or ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... Oak, "you have about the same ideas on love-affairs as I have and you'll sympathize with me in this thing. When I got in to dinner last night, the gang gave me the hottest jolly of my misspent life. They're all alike; they can't understand having a straight friendship for a girl without it's being a puppy-love. So they tumble at once that my driving you means I'm yours for keeps. That sort of a thing makes me tres fatigue ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... get through the four in season for my turn at the Athenaeum. These lectures are of great importance to me, for, if well done, they place me alone among the artists; I being the only one who has as yet written a course of lectures in our country. Time bestowed on them is not, therefore, misspent, for they will acquire me reputation which will yield wealth, as mother, I hope, will ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse |
