"Waste of time" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... been time to settle them at leisure by a course of practice. The result is overlapping, friction which would be intolerable but for the good-natured forbearance which English people have for a state of confusion, waste of time and money in sending minutes, and in correspondence between different departments, and often delays which have had most unfortunate results. Does anyone know exactly what are the respective functions and powers of the Ministry of Reconstruction, the Ministry of Labour, the Board ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... predilection in favour of a true story, whenever it can be had. Mr Sims has written some tales under the title of "The Wigwam and the Cabin." They seem to be neither good nor bad;—it would be a waste of time to cast about for the exact epithet that should characterise them;—and in these tales we live much with the early settlers and the Red-skins. All his stories put together, had they twice their merit, are not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... little City and went to work to build the railway station; and after all, when Overholt looked at the Common and the College and remembered how happy he had been there, he began to feel that since dreams were nothing but dreams, except that they were a great waste of time and money, and of energy and endurance, he might possibly find some happiness again in the old life, if he could only ...
— The Little City Of Hope - A Christmas Story • F. Marion Crawford
... If you've the sort of intellect which cannot grasp the proof which Euclid gives of one of his propositions, no number of repetitions of it will help you in the least. That's a curious psychological law, but it is a law. Therefore it would be the merest waste of time for me to demonstrate to you again that Mrs. Lorimer and Miss King are the same person. I pass on to the next stage in our enquiry. Will Miss King murder her ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... our illicit amusements, our apparent waste of time, our persistent indifference, our frequent punishments and aversion for our exercises and impositions, earned us a reputation, which no one cared to controvert, for being an idle and incorrigible pair. Our masters treated us with contempt, and we fell into utter disgrace ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... The fantastic waste of time involved in such an elaborate forgery ... Forster trembled with indignation. And using the name of a dead man, above all a scientist who had died in the interests of research, leaving behind him a mystery which still troubled the Atomic Energy Commission, because nobody ...
— Warning from the Stars • Ron Cocking
... calmly to the discussion, remarked dryly that until the colonel definitely ascertained whether he had any lands to sell it would be a useless waste of time to make the trip. ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... wife, and with a general distrust of cooks' opinions, I told Amy that there was always scandal enough, and it was a waste of time to listen to it. But after she left me, I confess to a whole hour wasted in speculations and anxious reflections on Amy's communication, and also to having taken the Dominie away from his sermon for a like space of time ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... man entered the camp at dawn, the light of determination in his eyes and a new set to his jaw. His first plan of the Pottawattomie was right. The turn toward Lawrence had been a waste of time. He selected six men to accompany him on his mission, his four sons who had made up the Surveyor's party, his son-in-law, Henry Thompson, and Theodore Weiner. Owen, Salmon, Oliver and Frederick Brown knew every foot of the ground. They had carried the chain, set the markers and flags ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... awed. He had a great respect for Fallacy Street. "Oh, they won't have any room for me," said Harry, laughing. "I'm an awfully stupid old duffer. I haven't read anything at all, except a bit of Kipling—'Barrack-room Ballads'—seems a waste of time to ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... welcome and the caresses of little Weena. But next morning I perceived clearly enough that my curiosity regarding the Palace of Green Porcelain was a piece of self-deception, to enable me to shirk, by another day, an experience I dreaded. I resolved I would make the descent without further waste of time, and started out in the early morning towards a well near the ruins of ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... or three miles out of my way on account of you,' said Sol sullenly. 'And all this time lost. I don't see why you wanted to come here at all. I knew it would be a waste of time.' ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... there is something precious in poetical form; ay, and something durable. Many an exquisite lyric, with no great depth of feeling or reach of thought, has come down the stream of time, and will float upon it for ever. No doubt Dr. Johnson was right in calling it a waste of time to carve cherrystones, but precious stones are the more valued and admired for the art of the lapidary. Whitman did not cultivate versification. He almost despised it. He sneered at "dulcet rhymes." Yet this may hinder his access to posterity. Mr. Meredith hints as much in his sonnet entitled "An ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... enough of it," Bradley said to him privately while Councill was putting his team in the barn. "I'm better, but it begins to seem like a waste of time." ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... went back to his cooling coffee Anstice wondered vaguely what Sir Richard could have to say; but since speculation was mere idle waste of time he dismissed the matter from his mind and finished his ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... lesson may be, it is a dismal waste of time. Child after child stands up, reads for a minute or so, and then sits down, remaining idle and inert (except when an occasional question is addressed to him) for the rest of the time occupied by the so-called lesson. In this, as in most oral lessons, the elementary school child passes much of his ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... instruction in sex hygiene while the other may be utterly against anything of the sort. One may hold that the only useful physical exercise is that gained through games and athletics, while the other may favor formal gymnastics. One may believe in school gardens, and the other deem them a waste of time and money. One may believe that courses in infant hygiene should be provided for the girls in the upper grammar grades, while the other may hold that such instruction should be reserved for ...
— Health Work in the Public Schools • Leonard P. Ayres and May Ayres
... in their Orchiesis, each feeling had its corresponding movement. For me it means a number of things. When a woman is slender and pliant and smooth of step, and if she pleases me otherwise, then it is not waste of time!—Tonight I shall probably get drunk again," and he flicked the ash off his cigarette with his little finger; and even though Tamara was again annoyed with him, she could not help noticing that his hands were fine ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... sufficiently to murmur coldly his regret of this waste of time. For that was what, he supposed, the professor had ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... the whole day, for every member of a family; and, if the parents thus occasion the loss of an hour or two, to each individual, who, but for their delay in the morning, would be usefully employed, they, alone, are responsible for all this waste of time. Is it said, that those, who wish to rise early, can go to their employments before breakfast? it may be replied, that, in most cases, it is not safe to use the eyes or the muscles in the morning, till the losses of the night have been repaired by food. In addition to this, it may ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... Ember—together with a message artfully worded to fix her interest without giving comfort to the enemy, should it chance to go astray, the adventurer hesitated by the desk; and of a sudden was satisfied that such a move would be not only injudicious but waste of time; for, now that he paused to think of it, he surmised that the young woman—"young and good-looking", on Walker's word—who had called to see Colonel Stanistreet was none other than this same ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... married state, because the money and position was with them. And James had reached the point when he saw himself married in another six months, after he'd done the autumn work on his farm and could afford three days' holiday. He reckoned such a lapse would be largely waste of time, for money-making was his god; but a honeymoon appeared to be counted upon by Cora, and he'd yielded reluctantly in that particular. Then Mary Jane, she hoped to be wedded along with her brother, and counted on a very fine holiday with Nicholas after, and even thought of going so far as London ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... only his Staff knew anything. It is, indeed, marvellous how few engagements he made ever had to be broken, and how successful almost every Campaign of his has been, seeing at how short notice most of them were undertaken. In one of his diaries I found a bitter complaint of the waste of time involved in having to wait for three hours between the steamboat and train. "Why," he asks, "could they not have ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... wedding held on board the ship in Boston Harbor just as soon as they could get a parson on board. The little cabin was a bower of flowers and what the two girls lacked in gowns (both Danbury and Wilson insisting that to prepare a trousseau was a wholly unnecessary waste of time) they made up in jewels. The dinner which followed was worthy of the Astoria, for Togo, the Japanese steward, was given ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... They've a right to say anything they please. But it's a waste of time, there's nothing but guessing now. What's the use of guessing and wondering all through the winter. Are they going to keep on that ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... will be said that this is a scientific age, the world is so full of necessitous life that it is waste of time for young Ireland to brood upon tales of legendary heroes, who fought with enchanters, who harnessed wild fairy horses to magic chariots and who talked with the ancient gods, and that it would be much better for youth to be scientific and practical. Do not believe it, dear ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... said, with impatient and angry interruption, "if you think that a jargon of this kind be worthy a man of your acquirements and station, it is at least a waste of time to address it to me. I am led to conclude that you desire to make use of me for some purpose which I have a right to suppose honest and blameless, because all you know of me is, that I rendered to your relation services ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Thus the malevolent passions, such as anger, envy, hatred, revenge, and even avarice, are stirred up, where they should be particularly prevented, in the youthful breast. A spirit of gaming, which may be destructive of fortune, health, and morals, is engendered. A waste of time[56] is occasioned, inasmuch as other pursuits might be followed, which would be equally amusing, but conducive to the improvement of the mind. The nature of the abuse is unfolded likewise. It consists of making games of chance productive of ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... gradually driven away from the place where he had found the trail of Jumper the Hare. At last he saw a hole in an old log and into this he darted. Whitey couldn't get him there. Whitey knew this and he knew, too, that waiting for Shadow to come out again would be a waste of time. So Whitey ...
— Whitefoot the Wood Mouse • Thornton W. Burgess
... is your Rosie to practise? One lesson a week is of very little use anyway, but unless she practises a good deal it'll only be a waste of time." ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... or no college; all you have to do in the latter case is to put on a little more steam. And remember that some of the world's sages of the practical have closed their life's wisdom with the deliberate opinion that a college education is a waste of time, and an over-refinement of ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... Johnson, Addison, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats. One thing leads to another. Why is Marlowe here? Mrs. Chailey, I presume. But what's the use of reading if you don't read Greek? After all, if you read Greek, you need never read anything else, pure waste of time—pure waste of time," thus speaking half to himself, with quick movements of his hands; they had come round again to the circle of books on the floor, ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... the interest of the people than to the interest of the aristocracy. But he has not shown this. Therefore he has not proved his proposition on his own principles. To quote history would be a mere waste of time. Every schoolboy, whose studies have gone so far as the Abridgments of Goldsmith, can mention instances in which sovereigns have allied themselves with the people against the aristocracy, and in which the nobles have allied themselves with the people against ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... organization, which would render possible frequent consultations and free control on a big scale, would completely meet my views. But I imagined the lunches, the dinners, the suppers and the noise, the waste of time, the verbosity and the bad taste which that mixed provincial company would inevitably bring into my house, and I made haste ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... time there was in the wards an elderly man, who for months had been vainly trying to recruit his strength. He had not been a prisoner, but had been sent to the rear on account of feebleness. Now John Bump thought it a great waste of time to be staying here in the hospital, where he was doing no good to the nation, while, if he were at home, he might be acquiring quite a fortune from his "profession," for he was a chair-maker. His descriptive ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... been in the habit of receiving it from the larger "manufacturer" in Bolton or in Manchester, but the cotton yarn he had hitherto supplied himself, using the yarn spun by his own family or purchased by himself in the neighbourhood. The difficulty of obtaining a steady, adequate supply, and the waste of time involved in trudging about in search of this necessary material, operated more strongly as the market for cotton goods expanded and the pressure of work made itself felt.[45] It was this pressure which we shall see acting as chief stimulus to the ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... The act performed without such aim in view is stigmatized by them as carnal lust, as a sin. Some even say that such an act is equivalent to an act of prostitution. To argue the question with such people would be a waste of time. It is not fair to impugn the good faith, the sincerity of your opponents, because I have convinced myself that the most insane, most bizarre notions may be held by otherwise sane people in perfect sincerity. But we cannot help questioning the reasoning faculties ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... interested in watching her methods with the people. A chief wished to see the Principal, and said he was anxious to place two more boys with him in the Institute. She told Mr. Macgregor to say he would see him after they had eaten. The business-like Principal thought this a waste of time, but she held that he must not cheapen himself—if he made food of more importance than the education of their boys they would think him dignified and respect him. And ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... with a puzzled smile. How much of this was acting? How much, if anything, an expression of true feeling? Was she actually persuaded it was waste of time to contend against him? Or was she shrewdly playing upon his not unfriendly disposition toward her in the hope that it would spare her in the hour of ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... simple, unsuspicious-looking law has caused more evil to the human race, more waste of time and loss of life, more consumption of human means, than would buy up at the present moment all the slavery existing in ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... of the main islands of the Hawaiian group; the steamer visits it usually but once a month; and the best way to see it without unnecessary waste of time is to take passage in a schooner, so timing your visit as to leave you a week or ten days on the island before the steamer arrives to carry ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... waste of time," said the chief psychophysician, shaking his white-maned head vigorously. "You cannot expect a patient who has shown no positive response to drugs and therapy to respond ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova
... anonymous letters. The argument from inferiority, at all events, is one which may be urged with at least equal force against every claimant that has ever been mentioned, with the single exception of Burke; and it would be a waste of time to prove that Burke was not Junius. And what conclusion, after all, can be drawn from mere inferiority? Every writer must produce his best work; and the interval between his best work and his second best work may be very wide indeed. Nobody will say ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sweep of black lash, through which the clear blue of his eyes had a way of shining with a pleading, softening lustre, immensely effective. It was an accepted fact that when Mr. Dartmouth turned on this battery of eyes and lash, resistance was a forgotten art and protest a waste of time. Miss Penrhyn did not prove an exception to the rule. She hesitated, then answered, with a little laugh, as if amused at herself, "Well, yes, ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Dear child: it has broken itself. The change has come in spite of my childish vow. [She rises]. Do you mind if I go into the woods for a walk by myself? This chat of ours seems to me an unbearable waste of time. I have so ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... these in Kippis, Chalmers, Gorton, or Rose would be a waste of time; and although agreeing to some extent with the Utilitarians, that we have all that was worth preserving of the Antediluvians, there is, I think, here and there a name worth resuscitating, possessing claims to a niche in our "Antiquary's Newspaper;" ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 195, July 23, 1853 • Various
... much good sense in the suggestion that I resigned myself to the inevitable waste of time, and I had my reward. About eleven a message came over the wire: "Motor Pirate seen near Towcester going in ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... reading Wilkie Collins and Bret Harte in an Italian translation, and when he yawned in our faces and left the cafe early, it was because the night before the Dago's Woman in White or Luck of Roaring Camp had kept him up until long after dawn, though really he knew it was a waste of time since anybody had only to get himself half seas over and he'd talk any darned ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... was Mr. Furze's practice always to make out his accounts himself. It was a pure waste of time, for he would have been much better employed in looking after his men, and any boy could have transcribed his ledger. But no, it was characteristic of the man that he preferred this occupation—that he took the ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... at this interruption, for Short had apparently returned to his slumbers, but we now saw that he had emerged from the banner and was standing behind us, fully dressed (I discovered later on that he had discarded dressing and undressing as frivolous waste of time), a queer uncouth figure with his long touzled black hair and sallow, unhealthy face. He had a short clay pipe firmly set between his teeth, and his large lips were parted in a smile. He held his head slightly ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... I wouldn't have done it, Margery," said Dolly. "Don't bother me with silly questions now; I've got to figure on tacking again so as to make that turn with the least possible waste of time." ...
— A Campfire Girl's Happiness • Jane L. Stewart
... ascended into a chamber, and washed in a bath, by the side of which a good supper was quickly laid and served. And God knows if they drank often and deeply. To speak of the wines and viands would be a waste of time, and, to cut the story short, there was plenty of everything. In this most happy condition passed the great part of this sweet but short night; kisses often given and often returned, until they desired nothing ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... To go in search of the layer-out of bodies, who exists only here and there in the country-side, would be almost always waste of time; the favourable month, April, would elapse before my cage was suitably populated. To run after him is to trust too much to accident; so we will make him come to us by scattering in the orchard an abundant collection of dead Moles. To this carrion, ripened by the sun, ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... stopped without any foolish waste of time in argument. I asked if a boat would be sent to us, or if we would have ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... was distinctly immoral; card-playing led directly to gambling with all its attendant evils; theatre-going characterized the conduct of the more disreputable denizens of great cities. Fiction was not absolutely forbidden; but the most lenient regarded it as a great waste of time, and the boy who desired its solace on any large scale was under the frequent necessity of seeking the seclusion ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... spoken of—it was his whim to insist that he was as lively as any boy. He had come to America as full of hope as the best of them; and now he was the chief problem that worried his son. For every one that Jurgis spoke to assured him that it was a waste of time to seek employment for the old man in Packingtown. Szedvilas told him that the packers did not even keep the men who had grown old in their own service—to say nothing of taking on new ones. And not only was it the rule here, it was the rule everywhere in ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... the others had joined us on the terrace. They had all been up to fix their hats on, because even if you have been out, and are running out again just after, you always have to take your hat off, and make a toilette for dejeuner; it does seem waste of time. The Baronne is considered quite eccentric because she keeps hers on sometimes. I had not even a parasol. Godmamma looked as if she thought it almost indecent. Presently Jean and the Marquis came out of the smoking-room and joined us. The Marquis at once began ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... generalisation. Take your three statements. 'It is good for a nation to have a war.' You mean, I suppose, that, in spite of the loss of the best stock and the disabling of strong young men, and the disintegration of families, and the hideous waste of time and money—subtracting all that—there is a balance ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... in itself absurd, and carries with it its own refutation. It would be manifestly impossible for the city to be "built" in so short a time, and, moreover, it would have been sheer waste of time for the Prince to have employed himself in such a way. The sentence was probably introduced merely to account for that city having been ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... satisfying, and I think it a great waste of time to be always reading," Mrs. M'Crawney replied with a touch of asperity. Her husband's love of books and willingness to spend money upon them was always a sore point with her, only Katherine did not know that, "And I wouldn't have a strange girl about the house, ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... teaches one thing one day, and another the next day. But from the point of view of Emerson there is no such thing as inconsistency. Every man is each day a new man. Let him be to-day what he is to-day. It is immaterial and waste of time to consider what he once was or ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... there were four handsome ones in the district. What were their names? Florrie Woods, Melissa Foster—no, Melissa Palmer—Emma Scott, and Jennie May Ferguson. Can she be one of them? No, it is a flagrant waste of time and gray matter supposing it. That girl couldn't be a Florrie or a Melissa or an Emma, while Jennie May is completely out of the question. Well, there is some bewitchment in the affair. Of that I'm convinced. So I'd better ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... means hours of time spent in cutting around the petals of an intricate flower picture, or printing painstakingly on a difficult cardboard surface what her local newspaper would be glad to print for her, thus making a slip to thumb tack on her board without a minute's waste of time. ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... effort was to recover some of the oars. This was not accomplished without a considerable waste of time and a good deal of exertion. On the dismantled embarkation there was not a stick that could be used for rowing; and it was necessary to propel it ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... reign,—excellent gold, I have no doubt, but each bearing the same awfully proper image and superscription. There are no blanks in the matrimonial lottery nowadays, but the prizes are all of a value, and there is but one kind of article given for the ticket. Courtship is an absurdity and a sheer waste of time. If a man could but close his eyes in a ball-room, dash into a bevy of muslin beauties, carry off the fair one that accident gives to his arms, his raid would be as reasonable and as likely to produce happiness as the more ordinary methods of ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... 'I shall take it as a favour if you'll put me through with as little waste of time as possible, for, to tell you the truth, I want that shilling, and the sooner I get it the nearer I shall be to ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... was my own fault for going down to Tom's—I will say that too. What did I want with country air? I had not been ailing anything. I had always considered a fortnight in Tom Brisket's company a frightful waste of time. I was never without an excellent appetite, and I measured forty-one inches round the chest, one inch for every year of my life, I had said jocosely, only yesterday, before I returned to town, but there was no jocosity in me when I was at ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... not a more productive source Of waste of time to the young mind Than dress; as it regards our hours My view ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... a solicitor," Mrs. Milvain interposed, rather resenting the waste of time involved in talking about fictitious people when you might be talking about real people. "But you wouldn't remember ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... Finding it waste of time to seek for water and wood with which to remast the Castries and repair the Mascarin, which leaked a good deal, Marion started on the 10th of March for New Zealand, and reached ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... twenty-four years." He turned and explained casually to Waters. "He was taken in as a foundling, you know. Quite against my advice. And then, at the end of the twenty-four years, the bad blood of his father came out, and he showed himself in his true colors. Fearful waste of time to us all—of course, we had ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... handicraft exhibited in court, might have on the mind of the jury, he dwelt upon every ward and winding—on the story of the iron chest—on the evident poverty of the locksmith, and yet his apparent waste of time—and asked if all this work were not intended to insure success in some vast design? He believed that a verdict would be immediately followed by a confession, for he thought Amos guilty, and succeeded in making the belief pretty general among ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... Bob, charmed with Dashall's irony, and willing to provoke it farther; "and pray, when this art of driving is thoroughly learned, what does it tend to but a waste of time, a masculine enjoyment, and a loss of feminine character—of that sweet, soft and overpowering submission to and reliance on the other sex, which, whilst it demands our protection and assistance, arouses our dearest ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... no one sufficiently acquainted with these creatures to classify them he decided reluctantly to work them up himself. For about eight years much of his spare time was given to this painfully exacting work. He expresses himself as fearing it was a waste of time. Few systematic workers will agree with him. He did his work so well that it has been unnecessary for anyone to do it again. In addition it gained him the esteem of a new circle of scientists and that ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... been sheer waste of time—to say nothing of its also implying a want of confidence in my wife—if I had attempted to set things right by disputing Mercy's conclusion. I could only satisfy her that not so much as the shadow of disappointment or mortification rested ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... answered with a start, almost as if he were wrenching himself free from some deep abstraction. "I should not think of trying to do such a thing! It would be a mere waste of time. Besides, there is no real risk—no risk that we are not prepared to run." He looked proudly round at the eager, laughing faces of the youngsters who were, till to-morrow night, still under ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... seriously about other so-called proofs, would be waste of time. They prove nothing except Pope's extreme anxiety to justify his wild hypothesis of a dark conspiracy. Pope was jealous, spiteful, and credulous. He was driven to fury by Tickell's publication, which had the appearance of a competition. But angry as he was, he could find ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... there are some who would decry the importance which the courts attach to the observance of the rules of natural justice. 'When something is obvious,' they may say, 'why force everybody to go through the tiresome waste of time involved in framing charges and giving an opportunity to be heard? The result is obvious from the start.' Those who take this view do not, I think, do themselves justice. As everybody who has anything to do with the law well knows, the path of the law is strewn with examples ...
— Judgments of the Court of Appeal of New Zealand on Proceedings to Review Aspects of the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Mount Erebus Aircraft Disaster • Sir Owen Woodhouse, R. B. Cooke, Ivor L. M. Richardson, Duncan
... the original process of supplanting hand labor by machinery, but bids fair to be relatively small hereafter, since fewer men go through long and costly apprenticeships, and since the operator of one machine can usually learn to operate another with little waste of time. ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... waste of time, I'm tellin' ye, but two days I'll give ye, Sandy, for auld sake's sake, as you say. A friendship of half a hundred years should mean something to us. For your sake I'd let the lad go, God knows, and there's my han' upon it, but as I said, that ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... another's fight; A deed (she cried) this hand shall make ye rue, Which I intend, shall vanquished both." The knight Sought fierce Marphisa's fury to subdue With gentle speech; but full of such despite He found her, and inflamed with such disdain, All parley was a waste of time ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... off," said Miss Sally Ruth, not unkindly. "If you came over to warn me about filling up on Artillery Punch, your duty's done—I've never been entertained by the Chatham Artillery, and I don't ever expect to be. I suppose it was intended for you to be a born goose, Appleby, so it'd be a waste of time for me to fuss with you about it. Go on home, now, do, and let Caesar put you to bed. Tell him to tie a wet rag about your head and to keep it wet. That'll help ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... was a tedious place," said Joanna. Like a great many busy people she did not like walking, which she always looked upon as a waste of time. Martin could seldom persuade her to come ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... censured and deprecated. I am no advocate of such duelling. But in cases where the laws of the country give no redress for injuries received, where public opinion not only authorizes, but enjoins resistance, it is needless and a waste of time to denounce the practice. It will be persisted in as long as a manly independence, and a lofty personal pride in all that dignifies and ennobles the human character, shall continue to exist. If a man be smote on one cheek in public, and he turns the other, which is also smitten, and he offers ...
— The Code of Honor • John Lyde Wilson
... this little instrument Tycho had to evade the vigilance of his conscientious tutor, who felt it his duty to interdict all such occupations as being a frivolous waste of time. It was when Vedel was asleep that Tycho managed to escape with his cross staff and measure the places of the heavenly bodies. Even at this early age Tycho used to conduct his observations on those thoroughly sound principles which lie at the foundation ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... performance; that it excites the prejudices of some people against us; and you quote the sharp remarks of David's Harp, the organ of the Dunkers. You urge that such things can be nothing more than the play of boys and girls, and are something worse than mere waste of time, for they set young people to thinking of the theatre, which is irretrievably sunk and only harmful. In your character of trustee, you are sorry it has been done, and beg that it ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... against poetry, that it is a waste of time, the mother of lies, the nurse of abuse, and rejected by Plato, Sidney asserts that a thing which moves men to virtue so effectively as poetry cannot be a waste of time; that since poetry pretends not to literal ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... Erling, with a light laugh, "thou knowest that it is merely waste of time to affect indignation. I know thee too well to be deceived. Come, what is it that ye would consult me about? not the forging of a battle-axe or spear-head, ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... waste of time, an' a loss of work; about that business I have something to say to your mother an' you to—night, afther the supper, when the rest goes ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... apples and gooseberries; while, if those of the glacial period once again obtained, open asparagus beds would be superfluous, and the training of fruit [15] trees against the most favourable of mouth walls, a waste of time and trouble. ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... until—well, I'm pretty expert. And roping! I can build a loop, jump through it, do straight and fancy catches like a cowboy. I worked at it for months, years it seemed to me. I knew very well it was a ridiculous waste of time, but I'll never forget how proud dad was when I learned the 'butterfly.' That was my reward. Horses used to frighten me blue, but I learned to ride well enough. In fact, it has been a keen disappointment to him that I won't enter the ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... boats," says Urbs to Rus, "and it is not the pleasantest thing in the world to be obliged to pick your way through the river streets to the ferry, or wait at stations. However, you probably calculated the waste of time and the trouble before you decided ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... respectable subjects, such as a gentleman could hang on his wall; a general with a star, or the likeness of Prince Kutuzoff; but, here I see nothing but paintings of mujiks in their shirt-sleeves, servants, and such like cattle—a mere waste of time and colours. He has taken the likeness of that blackguard of his, whose bones I shall assuredly break, for the thief has pulled the nails out of all my locks and window-hasps—a scoundrel! Just look; there's a subject for you! a picture ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... directly to him," continued Rathbawne, "because I knew that it would be purely and simply a waste of time to parley with the lesser officials who are either helpless or frankly his tools. I knew, too, that no satisfactory result would come of appealing to him, but I wanted to give him the chance. All I asked of him was an assurance that the ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... survey my past life, I discover nothing but a barren waste of time, with some disorders of body, and disturbances of the mind, very near to madness,[289] which I hope He that made me will suffer to extenuate many faults, and excuse ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... her at dinner-time, partly because she deserves it, and partly to make her think herself so good that she will eat something, just to maintain her new character. I question whether one hour of all her life was given to thoughts of food; in her great days to eat seemed to her to be waste of time, and afterwards she only ate to boast of it, as something she had done to please us. She seldom remembered whether she had dined, but always presumed she had, and while she was telling me in all good faith what the meal consisted ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... at home in the company of harlots and debauchees." George T. Lemon says: "No Church in Christendom commends or even excuses the dance. All unite to condemn it." The late Episcopal bishop of Vermont, writes: "Dancing is chargeable with waste of time, interruption of useful study, the indulgence of personal vanity and display, and the premature incitement of the passions. At the age of maturity it adds to these no small danger to health by late hours, flimsy dress, ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... sense of grim, sardonic humor, we would appreciate how ridiculous is the life we lead, how utterly absurd is our waste of time, our dissipation of the few days and hours vouchsafed us. We are just so many cicadas drumming out the hours and disappearing. We have abundance of wit, and a good deal of humor of a superficial kind, but the penetrating vision ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... a family cannot extenuate the guilt of neglecting private devotion or public duties; it cannot exculpate a neglect of the word or the ordinances of God; and to be "cumbered about much serving," is not only waste of time, but unfits the mind for profitable intercourse, and is likely to produce an unhappy effect ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... he is not averse to Greek. In these days the classics are looked upon as waste of time. Political economy and profiteering are more useful. As he says, a man of the type of Carnegie would die in a Greek city. I am not sure whether this is not unfair. The real use of Greek is that it teaches culture. There is use in Plato's philosophy; it is quite as useful ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... I could. But we have no books. Maman thinks it a waste of time, except for the men who must do business and write letters. Can you ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... of us trying to oppose Bella," said her son. "She is determined that Ethel shall make a brilliant match and in her eyes this would be a waste of time. No, Mother, the best thing for you and me to do is to travel along the lines of the least resistance. Come,—dinner is ...
— How Ethel Hollister Became a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real loser—in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a peace-maker the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good man. There ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... the rooms; but one improvement suggested itself to Anna which would certainly not have occurred to her tidy aunt; if she had thought of it, she would have scouted the idea as useless, and a frivolous waste of time. ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... get the "Clipper," and tried to find the agents by looking over it as she stood beside the stand. This could not be done so easily. Thirteenth Street was a number of blocks off, but she went back, carrying the precious paper and regretting the waste of time. ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... young-womanhood; looking forward to taking her place beside her when the time came for her first steps in the world. But here, again, Imogen's clear-cut choice interfered. Imogen considered girlish frivolities a foolish waste of time; she would take her place in the world when she was fully equipped for the encounter; she was not yet equipped to her liking and she declared herself resolved ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... trading trip to the Eastern Sea," he confided. "Of course, to carry eastern goods again to the East would be a waste of time, so I am reserving my western goods for the caravan and clearing out the ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole
... Arabian Nights." He gave this to Abe, and the latter at once started to read it aloud by the wood-fire in the evenings. His mother, his sister Sally, and Dennis were his audience. His father thought the reading only waste of time and said, "Abe, your mother can't work with you pesterin' her like that," but Mrs. Lincoln said the stories helped her, and so the reading went on. When he came to the story of how Sindbad the Sailor went too close to the ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... 'tis time to smile again: O world, how apt the poor are to be proud! If one should be a prey, how much the better To fall before the lion than the wolf! [Clock strikes.] The clock upbraids me with the waste of time.— Be not afraid, good youth, I will not have you: And yet, when wit and youth is come to harvest, Your wife is like to reap a proper man. There ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Collins edition] |
