"Misspent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in 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 ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... pray God to be forgiven,' she said, womanly pity for this forlorn ending of a misspent life thrilling in her voice, as hot tears coursed one another down her pale sweet face. 'Yes,' she repeated, ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... gall, and put him upon a course of harsh and indignant thought. The point is well stated by Hallam: "There seems to have been a period of Shakespeare's life when his heart was ill at ease, and ill content with the world or his own conscience: the memory of hours misspent, the pang of affection misplaced or unrequited, the experience of man's worser nature, which intercourse with ill-chosen associates peculiarly teaches,—these, as they sank down into the depths of his great mind, seem not only to have inspired into it ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... heart aching for sympathy and help and love. Mrs. Snowdon felt her worser self slip from her, leaving all that was true and noble to make her worthy of the test applied. Art she could meet with equal art, but nature conquered her. For spite of her misspent life and faulty character, the germ of virtue, which lives in the worst, was there, only waiting for the fostering sun and dew of love to strengthen it, even though the ...
— The Abbot's Ghost, Or Maurice Treherne's Temptation • A. M. Barnard
... 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
... 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 that's going on ...
— 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 we frankly confess ourselves ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... in setting to every man his hand, some to the carrying in of victuals, some munitions, some oars, and some one thing some another, but most are keeping their enemy from the wall of the road. But to be short, there was no time misspent, no man idle, nor any man's labour ill-bestowed or in vain. So that in short time this galley was ready trimmed up. Whereinto every man leaped in all haste, hoisting up the sails lustily, yielding themselves ...
— Voyager's Tales • Richard Hakluyt
... of the water front, for the notion of the South Seas was ever in my head. I loafed in the sunshine, sitting on the pier-edge, with eyes fixed on the lazy shipping. These were care-free, irresponsible days, and not, I am now convinced, entirely misspent. I came to know the worthies of the wharfside, and plunged into an under-world of fascinating repellency. Crimpdom eyed and tempted me, but it was always with whales or seals, and never with pearls or copra. I rubbed shoulders with eager necessity, scrambled ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... 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 ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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 and ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... your literary seminary, he will venture to present you with the inclosed hastily written lines, as a peace offering; but shall not be irritated beyond measure, should you choose to convert it into a burnt offering, as a just punishment for time misspent. ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... proceed to give an illustration of this. This principle applies to a misspent youth. The young are by God's Providence, exempted in a great measure from anxiety; they are as the apostles were in relation to their Master: their friends stand between them and the struggles of existence. They are not called upon ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... that no man ought to believe he understood himself, censured Locke as a superficial philosopher. What has happened? The philosophy of one has forced its way into general approbation, that of the other has carried no conviction and scarce any information to those who have misspent their time about it. To speak the truth, though it may seem a paradox, our knowledge on many subjects, and particularly on those which we intend here, must be superficial to be real. This is the condition of humanity. We are placed, as it were, in an intellectual twilight, where we discover ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... 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. ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... ashes, and the gelee au marisquin 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 ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... were closed and the warm hand cold. O, to recall the vanished face, the silent voice, the misspent years, the April days and their illusions! The Englishman took the monocle from his eye and looked at it, wondering what had ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... smackers, another fifty for the concession. In ten weeks, I could pay for the Bar-O and have—" The telephone rang. "If that's for me," said the little man to Aaron Logan, "get on that extension and listen to the story of a misspent life, for I'll try to get him to ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... tried to fix his attention thereon, till finally he closed the book, and leaning back in his chair, his brows contracted, and the lines about his mouth grew tense, as if his thoughts were anything but pleasing. As usual he was bemoaning his misspent hours. ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... no waste, No burning Might-have-been, No bitter after-taste, None to censure, none to screen, Nothing awry, nor anything misspent; Only content, content beyond content, Which hath ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... 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, ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... 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 ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... and down beneath the sheltering rock, when night had closed in, and the frosty stars were twinkling in the cold blue firmament, strange ghosts and fancies came crowding on him thick and fast. Down the long vista of a misspent, ruined life, he saw people long since forgotten trooping up towards him. His father tottered sternly on, as with a fixed purpose before him; his gipsy-mother, Madge, strode forward pitiless; and poor ruined Ellen, holding her child to her heart, ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... 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 with ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... the 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 ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... 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
... 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 religion; his ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... to 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 weaknesses ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... forfeited, missing; derelict, adrift; misspent, misemployed, wasted; irreclaimable, incorrigible, abandoned; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... the Scotchman. "Dinna daunt yoursel' owermuch wi' the past, laddie. And for me—I'm not that presoomtious to think I can square up a misspent life as a man might compound wi's creditors. 'Gin HE forgi'es me, He'll forgi'e; but it's not a prayer up or a chapter doun that'll stan' between me and the Almighty. So dinna fret yoursel', but let ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... season, too, was passed In wanton sports and misspent time; And soon he stood on manhood's verge, A hardened wretch, ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... 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 ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... 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
... Also the sailors, who hung about the 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 many years previously, but had ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher
... killed at Gettysburg and nobody mourned him, not even his very own sister though Green Valley was duly proud of the way he died. Only on this one day did Green Valley remember the man whose death was the one and only worth while deed of a misspent life. But on this one day too Green Valley shunned the man who sent him to ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... Her mind was busy piecing out the facts of her brother's misspent life. As a little girl she remembered her big brother before he went away, good-natured, friendly, always ready to play with her. She was sure he had not been bad, only fatally weak. Even this man who had slain him was ready to testify ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... under its various organizations and names. A brief time upon occasion such as this given to a hurried review of the masterful epochs in the history of the great State of which our own county is so important a part, cannot be wholly misspent. ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... 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
... will be noted, moreover, that the ghost emphasises the treachery of which he has been the victim, in that he was sent into eternity "unhouseled, unaneled," as though momentary acts can make up for years wasted and misspent. As well might one scatter one's fortune in luxury and riotous living, and resolve to win it all back in a moment, as misuse these glorious powers of mind and will we bear within us, turn them to evil, steep them in iniquity, and then think to suddenly ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... 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 have prepared the way for him, is not likely to produce any thing ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... leave it implicitly to your honour and judgment to determine what share of the L200,000 left in your hands should be consigned to her. She may have been corrupted by her mother's principles. She may—Heaven forbid!—have fallen into evil courses, and wealth would be misspent in her hands. In that case a competence sufficing to save her from further degradation, from the temptations of poverty, would be all that I desire you to devote from my wealth. On the contrary, you may find in her one who, in all respects, ought to be my chief inheritor. All ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... however, have many spare moments at her disposal. We have already remarked that these are the moments of destiny. In the coming years she will look back upon these moments with real pride, or regret, according to how she spent, or misspent them. Let us begin all over again, with renewed interest and enthusiasm, and try to understand just ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... 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 old man, ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... 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 ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... benefit of others; 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 beneficently employed is virtue. Perfect happiness, in our present state, ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sudden thoughtfulness at waking, that first matutinal retrospection, and prospection, into things as they have been and are to be; and the lowness of heart, the blankness of hope which follows the first remembrance of some folly lately done, some word ill-spoken, some money misspent,—or perhaps a cigar too much, or a glass of brandy and soda-water which he should have left untasted? And when things have gone well, how the waker comforts himself among the bedclothes as he claims for himself to be whole all over, teres atque rotundus,—so to have managed his little ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... my temple, and my thumb the trigger. Mad with excitement as I was, ruined, dishonored, and now finally determined to make an end of my misspent life, my only surprise to this day is that I did not do so then and there. The despicable satisfaction of involving another in one's destruction added its miserable appeal to my baser egoism; and had fear or horror flown to my companion's face, I shudder to think I might have died ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... friends. Love then hath every bliss in store: 'Tis friendship, and 'tis something more. Each other every wish they give, Not to know love, is not to live.' 'Or love, or money,' Time replied, 'Were men the question to decide, 140 Would bear the prize: on both intent, My boon's neglected or misspent. 'Tis I who measure vital space, And deal out years to human race. Though little prized, and seldom sought, Without me love and gold are nought. How does the miser time employ? Did I e'er see him life enjoy? By me forsook, the hoards he ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... memory weaves No veil to screen the past: As we retrace our weary way, Counting each lost and misspent day, We find, sadly, at last, Nothing ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... 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
... meaning of life, to taste for the first time the sweets of an untrammelled freedom. No sooner does M. Bartholdi's beneficent matron smile upon you, than you cast off the chains of an ancient slavery. You forget in a moment the years which you have misspent under the intolerable burden of a monarch. Be you Pole or Russ, Briton or Ruthenian, you rejoice at the mere sight of this marvel, in a new hope, in a boundless ambition. Unconscious of what awaits you, you surrender yourself so eagerly to ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... I e'er repay the friendly debt? No, doubly no;—yet should these rhymings please, I shall roll on the grass with two-fold ease: For I have long time been my fancy feeding With hopes that you would one day think the reading Of my rough verses not an hour misspent; Should it e'er be so, what a rich content! Some weeks have pass'd since last I saw the spires In lucent Thames reflected:—warm desires To see the sun o'er peep the eastern dimness, And morning shadows streaking ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... essays which might have been written in those misspent hours, in those days of youth when Elia was at his best, before the sorrowful touches of Time had been left upon his genius; think of the exquisite letters his friends might have received, and which would have enriched all the coming time; think of the inimitable drolleries which would ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... lead slugs, and who, under the influence of improper stimulants, could recite stirring scenes from the tragedies of Shakespeare. There was Buzby—old Buzby, who went about from office to office leaving his obituary set up by his own hand, conveying the impression that at last the end had come to a misspent life. Then there was J. N. Free—the "Immortal J. N.," as he called himself, a gaunt, cadaverous figure in broad hat and linen duster, with hair flowing over his shoulders, who stalked into the offices at unseemly hours to "raise the veil" of ignorance and error, and "relieve the pressure" ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... contrary, face to 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, ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... writer. On inquiring, to their mutual surprise they were told, that the gentleman had left there early in the morning, having discharged his lodgings, and that they were unable to say whither he had gone. To hunt for a man without a clew, in the city of London, is usually time misspent Of this Moseley was perfectly sensible, and disregarding a proposition of Peter's, he returned to his own lodgings. The proposal of the steward, if it did not do much credit to his sagacity, was much in favor of his perseverance and enterprise. It was no other than that ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... hundred crowns. Thus Sebastiano assumed the friar's habit, and straightway felt his soul changed thereby, for, perceiving that he now had the means to satisfy his desires, he spent his time in repose without touching a brush, and recompensed himself with his comforts and his revenues for many misspent nights and laborious days; and whenever he happened to have something to do, he would drag himself to the work with such reluctance, that he might have been going to his death. From which one may learn how much our reason and the little wisdom of men are deceived, in that very ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... thing she was quite confident; wherever her husband had spent or misspent his life (if any part of so successful a whole could really have been misspent), it was not in England. He was un-English in a hundred superficial ways—in none that cut deep. With all his essential cynicism, there was the breadth and tolerance ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... given us that we may take care for eternity; and eternity will not be too long to regret the loss of our time if we have misspent it.—FENELON. ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... 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
... That will suffice. I'll never insult my Maker by fawning for pardon in the fag hour of a misspent life." ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... the ghost tell him? How it must wander through the world without rest, in atonement for Marley's cruelties and his neglect of other people. It laments his misspent life. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... years of experiment, we cast it all aside, and decided to rely entirely upon our own investigations. Truth and error were everywhere so intimately mixed as to be undistinguishable. Nevertheless, the time expended in preliminary study of books was not misspent, for they gave us a good general understanding of the subject, and enabled us at the outset to avoid effort in many directions in which results ...
— The Early History of the Airplane • Orville Wright
... were best, perhaps, as bachelors. They considered themselves free to act as they pleased; and this freedom became notorious by the life-long dissipation of March, and by the free living of Edgecumbe, who died at forty-five after a life misspent at the gaming-table. That he possessed a bright mind and ingenious wit is proved by his verses and by the estimate of his friends. The amusing coat of arms which the friends designed for White's Club was painted by him, while he was one of the first to recognise ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... were swarming out of the tortuous, narrow streets into the main thoroughfare to watch them pass, or to accompany them, running beside their horses. She divined at once, by the passionate curiosity their entry aroused, that he had misspent his leisure in spreading through the city lying reports of their immense importance and ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... was just what 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
... of iniquity; and Sabbath days, instead of going to 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 by ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb
... is. (Applause.) It may never be your fate to have any share in war's convulsions, and you may have no opportunity of doing what the Zulus would call, "Washing your spears." Do not on that account think that your time has been misspent, or regret the preparation which is the best means of preventing any disaster falling upon your country. The training you have here received will certainly not only pay well in giving you those habits of mind ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... wake, And we wonder where we went In the bark Thro' the dark, But our wonder is misspent; For no day can cast a light On the dreamings of ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... 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 ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... 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 ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... into contact a great deal with the literary and Parliamentary people, which our colleagues know little about, as also with the clergy and the judges. I should not be willing to make it the habit of my life, but it is time not misspent during the years of our abode here. . . . The good old Archbishop of York is dead, and I am glad I paid my visit to him when I did. Mr. Rogers has paid me a long visit to-day and gave me all the particulars of his death. It was a subject I should not have introduced, for of that ...
— Letters from England 1846-1849 • Elizabeth Davis Bancroft (Mrs. George Bancroft)
... 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
... the Sailor Swede had a crazy fit, and he got to talking queer. He talked of his home in Oregon and the peach trees all in bloom, And the fern head-high, and the topaz sky, and the forest's scented gloom. He talked of the sins of his misspent life, and then he seemed to brood, And I watched him there like a fox a hare, for I knew it was not good. And sure enough in the dim dawn-light I missed him from the tent, And a fresh trail broke through ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... 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: ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... 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. ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... doing, working like a Trojan, because occupation takes his mind off the painful picture of his misspent opportunity and his destroyed natural instinct. When fighting for gold he forgets his appalling poverty of the really worth-while things in ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... out in two breaks, leaving his rival a hopeless distance behind. When he had finished, Spencer, with a severe air, said to him: "To play billiards in an ordinary manner is an agreeable adjunct to life; to play as you have been playing is evidence of a misspent youth." A man who was not an egotist and a philosopher, however much he disliked the outcome of the game, would have attempted some phrases of commendation. But Spencer's view was, that anything which rendered a player ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to Sylvia. He started on swiftly, and for a time the bitter thoughts seemed to fade, but when he paused at last, breathless, under the Arc de Triomphe, the bitterness and the wretchedness of the whole thing—yes, of his whole misspent life came back with a pang. Then the face of the prisoner, stamped with the horrible grimace of fear, grew in the shadows ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... 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 ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... 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. ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... to see 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 of his wicked life, his family excluded ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... feared. A tired and sleepy youngster, almost dropping with the heavy somnolence of wearied adolescence, he stumbled on through the trials of an undiscernible and unfamiliar footing, lifting his heavy riding-boots sluggishly over imaginary obstacles, and fearing the while lest his toil were labor misspent. It was a dry camp, he felt dolefully certain, or there would have been more noise in it. He fell over a sleeping sergeant, and said to him hastily, "Steady, man—a friend!" as the half-roused soldier clutched his rifle. Then he ...
— The Brigade Commander • J. W. Deforest
... chapel, the mellow towers of the college, all in a clear light of infinite brightness and freshness. He could not restrain his tears, and went back to his bed shaken with sobs, yet aware that it was a luxurious sorrow; it was not sorrow for misspent days; there were carelessnesses and failures innumerable, but no dark shadows of regret; it was rather the thought that the good time was over, that he had not realised, as it sped away, how infinitely sweet it had been, and the thought that it was indeed over and done with, ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 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 ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... misspending 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 ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... 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 ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... now recover That golden "Then" misspent, passed by, We shall not meet as loved and lover Here, or hereafter, you and I. My time for loving you is over, Love has no future, ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... he could spend a million dollars a year on those people, and not have a misspent ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith
... when the spirit has had time to realize its ambitions or to find out their futility, when the duties of life have been performed and satisfaction rests upon the brow of an aged man or woman; or when the life has been misspent and the pangs of conscience have worked upon the man and shown him his mistakes; when, in fact, the spirit has learned the lessons of life, as it must have to come to old age; then it may be likened to the seed of the ripe fruit which ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... sunlight, the house seemed 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, ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... considerable property, the 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, and resolving ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... not give up his law studies. He wrote and affixed to his desk a card which contained his own daily orders: "So aim to spend your time that at night, when looking back at the disposal of the day, you find no time misspent, no hour, no moment even, which has not resulted in some benefit, no action which had not a purpose in it. Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays: Rise at 5 o'clock; 5 to 10, study; 10 to 1, copy; 1 to 4, business; ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... possibility of a useful life, a noble destiny. Whether it be the mercenary Greek vending his wares on the street corner, or the roaming Italian with his harp strapped over his shoulder, or the dissolute man behind prison bars paying the penalty of misspent days—all are invested with latent power and talent to fill a loftier place in the world. But, unfortunately, while most men have the desire, not all have the determination to rise above the ordinary and the common ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given
... for twenty-four hours. I took the night train to Pisa, where I purposed catching the express from Rome. But the express came slouching along in a hands-in-the-pocket sort of way, and was over half-an-hour late, and would not bestir itself to pick up the misspent, lost moments between Pisa and Genoa, the consequence of which was that the train for Nice had gone on without waiting, and accordingly those who desired to prosecute their journey in that direction were obliged to loiter about in the small hours of the morning between a restaurant, half asleep, ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... also in much.' 'And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man's, who shall give you that which is your own?' (Luke 16:10,12). See here an objection made against a further supply, or rather against such a supply as some would have, because they have misspent, or been unfaithful in what they have already had. If thou, therefore, hast been faulty here, go, humble thyself to thy friend, and beg pardon for thy faults that are past, when thou art desiring ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... but by the refined understanding going 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 and fear ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... the cross, that he might die like a rogue, as he was in his life; behold the Lord Jesus, when this wicked one, even now, desireth mercy at his hands, tells him, and that without the least reflection upon him, for his former misspent life, "To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise" (Luke 23:43). Let no man turn this grace of God into wantonness. My design is now to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... which were made the dingier by their own iron bars proper, and the heavy shadow of Temple Bar. If your business necessitated your seeing "the House," you were put into a species of Condemned Hold at the back, where you meditated on a misspent life, until the House came with its hands in its pockets, and you could hardly blink at it in the dismal twilight. Your money came out of, or went into, wormy old wooden drawers, particles of which flew ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... fashion to wallow on all fours with young Arabs. I made one or two strokes, not amiss, that called forth huge applause; and then returned, rather regretfully, to my sand-heap, to meditate on my own misspent youth, a subject that very rarely ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... 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
... Union sympathies. His family would not believe his guilt, and looked on him as a martyr. They sent out a brother and sister to look into the matter, but these too found proof which left them no chance to doubt. The whole ghastly revelation of a misspent life lay before them. Even Plummer's wife, whom he loved very much and who was a good woman, was at last convinced of what at first she could not believe. Plummer had been able to conceal from even his wife the least suspicion that he was not an honorable man. His wife was east in the ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... in the world. Immediately it followed, Why has God done this to me? What have I done to be thus used? My conscience presently checked me in that inquiry, as if I had blasphemed; and methought it spoke to me like a voice, "Wretch! dost thou ask what thou hast done? Look back upon a dreadful misspent life, and ask thyself, what thou hast not done? Ask, why is it that thou wert not long ago destroyed? Why wert thou not drowned in Yarmouth Roads; killed in the fight when the ship was taken by the Sallee man of war; devoured by the ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... not harshly,—much of sin Dwelleth every heart within; In its closely caverned cells, Many a wayward passion dwells. By the many hours misspent, By the gifts to error lent, By the wrongs thou didst not shun, By the good thou hast not done, With a lenient spirit scan The ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders |
