Squander Quotes

The original meaning of dilapidate (from the Latin dilapidare, to squander) was to allow a building to fall into a state of disrepair. In New York dilapidators are simply known as landlords. also ~ Ammon Shea

How clear, how lovely bright,
How beautiful to sight
Those beams of morning play;
How heaven laughs out with glee
Where, like a bird set free,
Up from the eastern sea
Soars the delightful day.

To-day I shall be strong,
No more shall yield to wrong,
Shall squander life no more;
Days lost, I know not how,
I shall retrieve them now;
Now I shall keep the vow
I never kept before.

Ensanguining the skies
How heavily it dies
Into the west away;
Past touch and sight and sound
Not further to be found,
How hopeless under ground
Falls the remorseful day. ~ A.E. Housman

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

Someday, emerging at last from the violent insight,
let me sing out jubilation and praise to assenting angels.
Let not even one of the clearly-struck hammers of my heart
fail to sound because of a slack, a doubtful,
or a broken string. Let my joyfully streaming face
make me more radiant; let my hidden weeping arise
and blossom. How dear you will be to me then, you nights
of anguish. Why didn't I kneel more deeply to accept you,
inconsolable sisters, and surrendering, lose myself
in your loosened hair. How we squander our hours of pain.
How we gaze beyond them into the bitter duration
to see if they have an end. Though they are really
our winter-enduring foliage, our dark evergreen,
our season in our inner year
, not only a season
in time
, but are place and settlement, foundation and soil
and home. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

You were there teaching me to squander, so that one day we might have nothing left except this love of You. But You are too good to me. When I ask You for Pain, You give me peace. Give it him too. Give him my peace-he needs it more. ~ Graham Greene

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

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

No job is more vital to our society than that of the manager. It is the manager who determines whether our social institutions serve us well or whether they squander our talents and resources. ~ Henry Mintzberg

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

We all have a grain of god in us. We do get opportunities to realize it, when moments in life demand selfless deeds of compassion from us. But we often squander them. ~ Ashok Kallarakkal

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

Ka is a wheel; its one purpose is to turn. The spin of ka always brings us back to the same place, to face and reface our mistakes and defeats until we can learn from them. When we learn from the past, the wheel continues to move forward, towards growth and evolution. When we don't, the wheel spins backward, and we are given another chance. If once more we squander the opportunity, the wheel continues its rotation towards devolution, or destruction. ~ Robin Furth

Perhaps I won't tire of her," Gray protested, just to be contrary. Because, apparently, that was how brothers behaved.
"Perhaps a dolphin will fly out of your arse. And here's an argument even you can't refuse. Grayson Shipping doesn't need a reputation for delivering damaged goods. You want me to hand George Waltham an impregnated governess?"
"I wouldn't get her with child. Give me that much credit, at least."
"I give you credit for nothing. Let's try this one last time, shall we? You made me this ship's captain. If I'm the captain, what I say goes. And I say you don't touch her. If you can't abide by my orders, take command of the ship yourself and let me go home."
"Go home and do what? Squander your fortune and talent on dirt farming?"
"Go home and take care of my own family. Go home and do what I damn well please, for once."
Cursing, Gray leaned against the wall. He knew Joss would make good on that threat, too. It hadn't been easy, coaxing his brother out of mourning. Gray had resorted to outright bullying just to convince him to take command of the Aphrodite, threatening to cut off his income unless he reported to London as agreed. But he needed Joss, if this shipping concern was to stay afloat. He'd worked too hard, sacrificed too much to see it fail.
And if Joss didn't become a willing partner, it all would have been in vain.
"Stay away from the girl, Gray."
Gray sighed. "We're on the same ship. I can't help but be near her ~ Tessa Dare

You're not beneath me. I'd never think that."

Yes, you are beneath her, he reminded himself, bracing against the forbidden bliss coursing through his veins. And don't dare imagine you'll ever be atop her. Or curled behind her. Or buried deep inside her while she -

Bloody hell. The fact that he could even think such a thing. He was crude, disgusting. So undeserving of even this slight caress. Her gesture was made out of guilt, offered in apology. If he took advantage, he would be a devil.

He knew all this.

But he flexed his arms anyway, drawing her close.

"You're worried you've hurt my feelings," he murmured.

She nodded, just a little.

"I don't have those."

"I forgot."

Amazing. He marveled at her foolishness. After all he'd said to her, she would worry about him? Within this small, slight woman lived so much untapped affection, she couldn't help but squander it on music pupils and mongrel dogs and undeserving brutes. What was it like, he wondered, to live with that bright, glowing star in her chest? How did she survive it?

If he kissed her deeply enough and held her tight - would some of its warmth transfer to him? ~ Tessa Dare

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

How can you squander even one more day not taking advantage of the greatest shifts of our generation? How dare you settle for less when the world has made it so easy for you to be remarkable?
- Seth Godin, sethgodin.com ~ Seth Godin

Most humans manage to squander their free time, as free time makes them dysfunctional, lazy, and unmotivated - the busier they get, the more active they are at other tasks. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

One today is worth two tomorrows. Lost time is never found again. Time is money. Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff that life is made of. You may delay, but time will not. ~ Benjamin Franklin

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

High tax rates in the upper income brackets allow politicians to win votes with class warfare rhetoric, painting their opponents as defenders of the rich. Meanwhile, the same politicians can win donations from the rich by creating tax loopholes that can keep the rich from actually paying those higher tax rates - or perhaps any taxes at all. What is worse than class warfare is phony class warfare. Slippery talk about 'fairness' is at the heart of this fraud by politicians seeking to squander more of the nation's resources. ~ Thomas Sowell

Time. Time. What is time? Swiss manufacture it, French hoard it, Italians squander it, Americans say it is money. Hindus say it does not exist. Know what I say? I say time is a crook. ~ Truman Capote

Without realizing what she was doing and more on an impulse than anything else, she leaned forward and kissed him. It was a simple, yet firm kiss and she pulled back after only a moment. But it sent a thrill through her.
He leaned down for another. But she put her finger on his lips to stop him.
"That was my reward to you," she said as they danced. "Don't squander it."
"Reward? he asked still seeming both surprised and delighted at this unexpected attention. "What for?"
"Why for living, Vaelros. And for doing so much else to help me. I will have you rewarded in state as well. But that was just from me."
She saw Vaelros flush and she gave him a brilliant smile. "You don't like my reward?" she asked.
"I do!" he replied. "I want only to learn how to earn more."
The music was fading. The song was ending. Luthiel stepped back and let her hands drop.
"A mysterious thing, my heart," she said. ~ Robert Fanney

We have responsibilities for others, not just across space but across time. We have responsibilities to people who came before us. They left us a world of institutions, ideas or possibilities for which we, in turn, owe them something. One of the things we owe them is not to squander them. ~ Tony Judt

If we lose our Money, it gives us some Concern. If we are cheated or robb'd of it, we are angry: But Money lost may be found; what we are robb'd of may be restored: The Treasure of Time once lost, can never be recovered; yet we squander it as tho' 'twere nothing worth, or we had no Use for it ... ~ Benjamin Franklin

We are in a good position and should not squander the opportunity to o the right thing. ~ Dennis Moore

Your life is not a countdown to your death, but a stepping stone for the lives that will live after you. Squander today, and you will find yourself useless tomorrow. ~ A.J. Darkholme

I love you," he whispered, rubbing his
jaw against her temple. "And you love me. I can feel it when you're in my arms." He felt her stiffen slightly
and draw a shaky breath, but she either couldn't or wouldn't speak. She hadn't thrown the words back in his face, however, so Ian continued talking to her, his hand roving over her back. "I can feel it, Elizabeth, but if you don't admit it pretty soon, you're going to drive me out of my mind. I can't work. I can't think. I make decisions and then I change my mind. And," he teased, trying to lighten the mood by using the one topic sure to distract her, "that's nothing to the money I squander whenever I'm under this sort of violent stress. It wasn't just the gowns I bought, or the house on Promenade..."

Still talking to her, he tipped her chin up, glorying in the gentle passion in her eyes, overlooking the doubt in their green depths. "If you don't admit it pretty soon," he teased, "I'll spend us out of house and home." Her delicate brows drew together in blank confusion, and Ian grinned, taking her hand from his chest, the emerald betrothal ring he had bought her unnoticed in his fingers. "When I'm under stress," he emphasized, sliding the magnificent emerald onto her finger, "I buy everything in sight. It took my last ounce of control not to buy one of these in every color. ~ Judith McNaught

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

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

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

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

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

It's harder than you might think to squander millions of dollars, but a flawed software development process is a tool well suited to the job. ~ Alan Cooper

Can you support the expense of a husband, hussy, in gaming, drinking and whoring? Have you money enough to carry on the daily quarrels of man and wife about who shall squander most? ~ John Gay

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

What's friendship's realest measure?
I'll tell you. The amount of precious time you'll squander on someone else's calamities and fuck-ups. ~ Richard Ford

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

Why squander all that love on a phantasm when there seems too little love to go around on Earth as it is? Better ~ Irvin D. Yalom

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

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

If you've got the platform and the ability to make a difference, then this goes beyond 'should' and reaches the level of 'must.' You must make a difference or you squander the opportunity. Wasting the opportunity both degrades your own ability to contribute and, more urgently, takes something away from the rest of us. ~ Seth Godin

The men in grey were powerless to meet this challenge head-on. Unable to detach the children from Momo by bringing them under their direct control, they had to find some roundabout means of achieving the same end, and for this they enlisted the children's elders. Not all grown-ups made suitable accomplices, of course, but plenty did. [....] 'Something must be done,' they said. 'More and more kids are being left on their own and neglected. You can't blame us - parents just don't have the time these days - so it's up to the authorities.' Others joined in the chorus. 'We can't have all these youngsters loafing around, ' declared some. 'They obstruct the traffic. Road accidents caused by children are on the increase, and road accidents cost money that could be put to better use.' 'Unsupervised children run wild, declared others.'They become morally depraved and take to crime. The authorities must take steps to round them up. They must build centers where the youngsters can be molded into useful and efficient members of society.' 'Children,' declared still others, 'are the raw material for the future. A world dependent on computers and nuclear energy will need an army of experts and technicians to run it. Far from preparing children from tomorrow's world, we still allow too many of them to squander years of their precious time on childish tomfoolery. It's a blot on our civilization and a crime against future generations.' The timesavers were all in favor of such a policy, naturall ~ Michael Ende, Momo

Who am I? I'm a poet. My business? Writing.
How do I live? I live.
In my happy poverty I squander like a prince,
my poems and songs of love.
In hopes and dreams and castles-in-air,
I'm a millionaire in spirit . ~ Rodolfo La Bohmé

A nation's economic salvation does not lie in the amount of money its rich inhabitants can squander recklessly. A nation's economic salvation lies in the amount of money its inhabitants can save and invest after providing themselves with all the necessaries and all the reasonable comforts of life. ~ B.C. Forbes

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

Cities and landscapes are illustrations of our spiritual and material worth. They not only express our values but give them a tangible reality. They determine the way in which we use or squander our energy, time, and land resources. ~ Leon Krier

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

See the man they are fitting into the bottom slot. He is coughing badly. No, not pneumonia. Not tuberculosis. Nothing so picturesque. Gently, gently, stretcher-bearers… he is about done. He is coughing up clots of pinky-green filth. Only his lungs, Mother and Mrs. Evans-Mawington. He is coughing well to-night. That is gas. You've heard of gas. Haven't you? It burns and shrivels the lungs to… to the mess you see on the ambulance floor there. He's about the age of Bertie, Mother. Not unlike Bertie, either, with his gentle brown eyes and fair curly hair. Bertie would look up pleading like that in between coughing up his lungs… The son you have so generously given to the War. Cough, cough, little fair-haired boy. Perhaps somewhere your mother is thinking of you… boasting of the life she has so nobly given… the life you thought was your own, but which is hers to squander as she thinks fit. 'My boy is not a slacker, thank God.' Cough away, little boy, cough away. What does it matter, providing your mother doesn't have to face the shame of her son's cowardice? ~ Helen Zenna Smith

Time, because it is so fleeting, time, because it is beyond recall, is the most precious of human goods and to squander it is is the most delicate form of dissipation in which man can indulge. Cleopatra dissolved in wine a priceless pearl, but she gave it to Anthony to drink; when you waste the brief golden hours you take the beaker in which the gem is melted and dash its contents to the ground. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

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

We know it is good to receive, and we have been blessed by receiving not only as children, but also as adults. Yet Jesus taught that it is more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 20:35), and part of growing up is learning the art of giving. If we fail to learn this art, we will live unfulfilled lives, and in the end, chains of bondage will replace the bonds that keep our communities together. If we just keep taking or even trading, we will squander ourselves. If we give, we will regain ourselves as fulfilled individuals and flourishing communities. ~ Miroslav Volf

How many stories are there that have been lived, but will never be told? Far too many for me to squander the one that I'm living. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

My last penny! I think I'll squander it on myself. I never feel badly about spending money my dad has earned honestly! I can't decide whether I should buy a balloon or a gumball. A gumball would taste mighty good, but a balloon would be a lot more fun ... I'll take a balloon! Sooner or later in life a person has to learn to make decisions! (Sees someone with a different color balloon) Gee, I wish I'd bought a RED balloon. ~ Charles M. Schulz

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

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

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

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

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

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

There is another apt Latin expression: Materiam superabat opus. (The workmanship is better than the material.) The material we've been given genetically, emotionally, financially, that's where we begin. We don't control that. We do control what we make of that material, and whether we squander it. ~ Ryan Holiday

The amount the rich could squander on occasions like these in a period of repeated disasters appears inexplicable, not so much with regard to motive as with regard to means. ~ Barbara W. Tuchman

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

I'd like to issue a call to realism for those of us in so-called developed industrial nations, who indulge in great horror at the gradual collapse of our own pathologically unsustainable mode of existence while ignoring the reality of the majority of this planet's residents, who do not in fact share the same dread or anxiety about losing what most of them, frankly, never had to squander in the first place. ~ Brian Awehali

It is far better for anyone to kill a single American soldier than to squander his efforts on other activities. ~ Osama Bin Laden

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

I had finally forged the dristic bones of my own fortune in this pristine palais. I would not squander that on a man whose truths were laced with lies, whose face was a mask, whose price was power. He could only be a curse. ~ Lyra Selene

How wonderful life is! How sad to squander it in bitterness, self-loathing and hate! ~ Marty Rubin

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

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

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

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

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

As adults our life is reduced to giving alms to others and receiving them in return. We squander our personalities in orgies of coexistence. ~ Fernando Pessoa

Don't squander beautiful moments by always trying to snap the perfect picture or record the event on film. Sometimes it's better to watch things as they happen with your own eyes, knowing that the memory of the experience will always be with you. ~ Rachel Nichols

To enjoy freedom ... we have of course to control ourselves. We must not squander our powers, helplessly and ignorantly, squirting half the house in order to water a single rose. ~ Virginia Woolf

Our only real pleasure is to squander our resources to no purpose, just as if a wound were bleeding away inside us; we always want to be sure of the uselessness or the ruinousness of our extravagance. ~ Georges Bataille

Why are you doing this? (Rafael)
Because life's too short to spend it fighting when you could be holding the one you love. And love's too rare to squander it with petty concerns. I'm lucky I have Chloe and I have no intention of letting a war I didn't start rob me of one second of my time with her. Go in peace, Dark-Hunter. (Apollite) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Peter sits with his back to the wall in the hallway. He looks up at me when I lean over him, his dark hair stuck to his forehead from the melted snow.
"Did you reset her?" he says.
"No," I say.
"Didn't think you would have the nerve."
"It's not about nerve. You know what? Whatever." I shake my head and hold up the vial of memory serum. "Are you still set on this?"
He nods.
"You could just do the work, you know," I say. "You could make better decisions, make a better life."
"Yeah, I could," he says. "But I won't. We both know that."
I do know that. I know that change is difficult, and comes slowly, and that it is the work of many days strung together in a long line until the origin of them is forgotten. He is afraid that he will not be able to put in that work, that he will squander those days, and that they will leave him worse off than he is now. And I understand that feeling--I understand being afraid of yourself.
So I have him sit on one of the couches, and I ask him what he wants me to tell him about himself, after his memories disappear like smoke. He just shakes his head. Nothing. He wants to retain nothing.
Peter takes the vial with a shaking hand and twists off the cap. The liquid trembles inside it, almost spilling over the lip. He holds it under his nose to smell it.
"How much should I drink?" he says, and I think I hear his teeth chattering.
"I don't think it makes a difference," I say.
"Okay. Well…h ~ Veronica Roth

In today's world, people are born into different circumstances, but unlike the pagans, each of us has an opportunity to change our circumstances based on our actions. Some who are born into families who are at the lowest end of the economic spectrum, but manage to create enormous wealth and prosperity for themselves and their families. Others are given tremendous wealth and opportunities, but squander them by making poor choices. Many of them let their inner Beast gain control, and they end up with nothing. ~ Celso Cukierkorn

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

Some day, when you are old and wrinkled and ugly, when thought has seared your forehead with its lines, and passion branded your lips with its hideous fires, you will feel it, you will feel it terribly. Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses. You will become sallow, and hollow–cheeked, and dull–eyed. You will suffer horribly… Ah! realise your youth while you have it. Don't squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar. These are the sickly aims, the false ideals, of our age. Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing… A new Hedonism - that is what our century wants. ~ Oscar Wilde

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

Love is our greatest achievement. Don't ever forget that. Don't squander it. Seek it. Experience it. Savor it every day that you can, because you never know when a rogue wave might sweep you away. ~ Julianne MacLean

I believe this movement will prevail.
I don't mean it will defeat, conquer, or create harm to someone else.
Quite the opposite.
I don't tender the claim in an oracular sense.
I mean that the thinking that informs the movement's goals will reign. It will soon suffuse most institutions, but before then, it will change a sufficient number of people so as to begin the reversal of centuries of frenzied self-destructive behavior. Some say it is too late, but people never change when they are comfortable. Helen Keller threw aside the gnawing fears of chronic bad news when she declared, "I rejoice to live in such a splendidly disturbing time!" In such a time, history is suspended and thus unfinished. It will be the stroke of midnight for the rest of our lives.
My hopefulness about the resilience of human nature is matched by the gravity of our environmental and social condition. If we squander all our attention on what is wrong, we will miss the prize: In the chaos engulfing the world, a hopeful future resides because the past is disintegrating before us. If that is difficult to believe, take a winter off and calculate what it requires to create a single springtime. It's not too late for the world's largest institutions and corporations to join in saving the planet, but cooperation must be on the planet's terms. The "Help Wanted" signs are everywhere. All people and institutions including commerce, governments, schools, churches and cities, need to learn fro ~ Paul Hawken

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

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

Regarding the need to pray, the anarch is again no different from anyone else. But he does not like to attach himself. He does not squander his best energies. He accepts no substitute for his gold. He knows his freedom, and also what it is worth its weight in. The equation balances when he is offered something credible. The result is ONE.

There can be no doubt that gods have appeared, not only in ancient times but even late in history; they feasted with us and fought at our sides. But what good is the splendor of bygone banquets to a starving man? What good is the clinking of gold that a poor man hears through the wall of time? The gods must be called.

The anarch lets all this be; he can bide his time. He has his ethos, but not morals. He recognizes lawfulness, but not the law; he despises rules. Whenever ethos goes into shalts and shalt-nots, it is already corrupted. Still, it can harmonize with them, depending on location and circumstances, briefly or at length, just as I harmonize here with the tyrant for as long as I like.

One error of the anarchists is their belief that human nature is intrinsically good. They thereby castrate society, just as the theologians ("God is goodness") castrate the Good Lord. ~ Ernst Junger

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

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

You and your organization have the power to change everything. To create remarkable products and services. To over deliver. To be the best in the world. How dare you squander that resource by spreading it too thin. How dare you settle for mediocre just because you're busy coping with too many things on your agenda, racing against the clock to get it all done. ~ Seth Godin

If you were really humble you would be great, because humility would never squander the magnificent gift of life. ~ Bryant McGill

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

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

We have years to converse with someone, to blurt and rant, to explain our desires and anger and regrets - and oh how we squander those moments. ~ Jeffery Deaver

We've been very patient over the years but this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reset the rules for the River Murray and we're determined not to squander that opportunity. ~ Jay Weatherill

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

Charity, like nature, abhors a vacuum. Next to putting it in a bank, men like to squander their superfluous wealth on those to whom it is sure to be doing the least possible good. ~ William Hazlitt

Here the earth, as if to prove its immensity, empties itself. Gertrude Stein said: 'In the United States there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is. That is what makes America what it is.' The uncluttered stretches of the American West and the deserted miles of roads force a lone traveler to pay attention to them by leaving him isolated in them. This squander of land substitutes a sense of self with a sense of place by giving him days of himself until, tiring of his own small compass, he looks for relief to the bigness outside -- a grandness that demands attention not just for its scope, but for its age, its diversity, its continual change. The isolating immensity reveals what lies covered in places noisier, busier, more filled up. For me, what I saw revealed was this (only this): a man nearly desperate because his significance had come to lie within his own narrow ambit. ~ William Least Heat-Moon

We have so many opportunities in first world countries. Let's not squander them by focusing on obstacles-real or imaginary! ~ Catherine DeVrye

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

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

I intend to marry Michael, and squander all his money and run his life, and make sure he never again consorts with wicked women or gambles with licentious men. I promise I will henpeck him until he has no life beyond what I allow him, and when we die, I will lie in his arms through all eternity. ~ Christina Dodd