"Waste of energy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of corned beef and cabbage for dinner," she said, "and I'll make David that pudding he's so fond of. After all, it's kind of nice to have someone to plan and think for. It always did seem like a waste of energy to fuss over cooking things when there was nobody but ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... brutal name. "I know, too, the connection between the opium running and the gold-dust swindle; you told me that; but I can't see yet why there was any necessity to compel me to keep my hands off that fellow, since we were all out for him, though on different errands. Seems to me a lot of useless waste of energy when he could have been taken weeks ago if you had made me acquainted with ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... the way for this universal decline were the spread of Gallicanism and Jansenism with the consequent waste of energy to which these controversies led, the state of lethargy produced by the enslavement of the Church, the withdrawal of ecclesiastical students, the suppression of the Society of Jesus, and the rejection ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... divine instinct of a mother for their children's interest: I have stood by with mingled admiration and pity, and said to myself: "How nobly she is doing the work without teaching! How much more nobly would she have done it had she been taught! She is now doing her work at the most enormous waste of energy and of virtue: had she had knowledge, thrift would have followed it; she would have done more work with far less trouble. She will probably kill herself if she goes on; while sound knowledge would have saved her health, saved her heart, saved her friends, and helped ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... ideals and all that is dear to humanity. In all the world there is not a human being who has not contributed something to the awful cost and the loss due to the destruction of property, the stopping of industry, the waste of energy and the curtailment of human endeavor in the interest of civilization, and the effects which the struggle has had upon the world cannot even be approximated ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... foreign war; it was engrossed with its domestic troubles. There had been three French ministries in two weeks; and the trial of Madame Caillaux for the murder of Gaston Calmette, editor of the Paris Figaro, was monopolizing all the nation's capacity for emotion. Colonel House saw that it would be a waste of energy to take up his mission at Paris—there was no government stable enough to make a discussion worth while. He therefore immediately left ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... more quickly than the temporary buildings of the workmen's city, which includes 5,000 men at least, and who are mingling the sounds of hammers on the buildings they are putting up for their temporary accommodation, with the crash of the buildings they are tearing down. It seemed almost a waste of energy two days ago, but the different gangs are already eating their way towards the heart of the great masses of wreckage that block the streets in ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... At the beginning of work with the typewriter, there is much waste of energy and much fatigue. The waste of energy comes from using unnecessary muscles, and the fatigue is partly due to this waste of energy. But even apart from this waste of energy, an habituated act is performed with less fatigue. The various muscles concerned become better able to do their ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... "Sheer waste of energy, I am compelled to call it," said Jurgen, aloud, just as he noticed there were two other men on ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... that he had made the implication by his use of the past tense, but gave up the idea as involving a waste of energy. "How old is this chap, Banks; the son?" ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... as in the Treasury that Mr. Boutwell meant to invite no support, and cared to receive none, Adams had only the State and Interior Departments left to serve. He wanted no better than to serve them. Opposition was his horror; pure waste of energy; a union with Northern Democrats and Southern rebels who never had much in common with any Adams, and had never shown any warm interest about them except to drive them from public life. If Mr. Boutwell turned him out of the Treasury with the indifference or contempt ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... useless, standing in the middle of the table, while you are in an easy-chair by the fireside; and as for the tape-and-spark contrivance, it is the introduction of machinery into the softest joys of life. The fire is best. It is near you, and you drop your burning spill into it with a minimum waste of energy. The proper fire for pipes is one in a cheerful blaze. If your spill is carelessly constructed the flame runs up into your fingers before you know what you are doing, so that it is as well to marry and get your wife to make ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... suspected that it was a regrettable waste of energy to send missionaries into heathen parts of the globe when there remain so many unenlightened corners in our own land. It almost seems now as if I had been guided here. It is true that my husband has gone, but that shall not distress me. ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... varying descriptions of the "bowed-staccato" and its method of production. Of course it is highly probable that some players attain it differently to others, but as I see no anatomical reason for such differences of action it seems a waste of energy to mechanically produce what already exists in nature. I have no doubt a great deal of this gratuitous variegation of staccato technique comes from teachers not fully understanding their own movements, or perceiving ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... such as I now enjoy to follow upon it! With man's infinitely pathetic power of resignation, one sees the thing on its better side, forgets all the worst of it, makes out a case for the resolute optimist. Oh, but the waste of energy, of zeal, of youth! In another mood, I could shed tears over that spectacle of rare vitality condemned to sordid strife. The pity of it! And—if our conscience mean anything at all—the ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... maximum theoretical efficiency obtainable in electric transmission of power, and that one half of the current must be necessarily wasted or turned into heat. The lecturer could never be reconciled to a law necessitating such a waste of energy, and had maintained, without disputing the accuracy of Jacobi's law, that it had reference really to the condition of maximum work accomplished with a given machine, whereas its efficiency must be governed by ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various |
