Wastefulness

“ May it not be that evolution has followed upon a course of waste deliberately willed and insisted on—and that without such waste, life—even material life—had not evolved to its present stage?
We see a certain wastefulness attaching to many of the most beautiful biological manifestations in the world. ”

“ The words of our Lord bid us also to beware of wastefulness: “Gather up the fragments, lest they be lost.” It is wrong to allow the gifts of God to be wasted. What is left over from our food should, if possible, be given to the poor, and, if not, to animals. ”

“ Surplus, waste, extravagance, wastefulness, superfluity, lavishness, exorbitance, superabundance, dissipation, intemperance, profusion, prodigality, 107redundance; increase, debauchery.
Ant. Frugality, economy; dearth, deficiency, defect, want, shortcoming, lack, need, poverty; failure, destitution, inadequacy, insufficiency, scantiness; temperance, sobriety. ”

“ And save the waste of spirit, you must find
Whatever waste there was of Elenor Murray
[Pg 58] Of love or faith, or time, or strength, great gain
In spite of early chances, father, mother,
Too loveless, negligent, or ignorant;
Her mother instinct never blessed with children.
I sometimes think no life is without use—
For even weeds that sow themselves, frost reaped
And matted on the ground, enrich the soil,
Or feed some life. Our eyes must see the end
Of what these growths are for, before we say
Where waste is and where gain. ”

“ For the contentions that loosen the very foundations of love, that crumble away all its fine traceries and carved work, about what miserable, worthless things do they commonly begin! A dinner underdone, too much oil consumed, a newspaper torn, a waste of coal or soap, a dish broken!—and for this miserable sort of trash, very good, very generous, very religious people will sometimes waste and throw away by double-handfuls the very thing for which houses are built and all the paraphernalia of a home established,— their happiness. ”

“ The waste, the waste, the waste of money and thought and energy and time and inspiration poured into wrong channels, unguided by intelligence, directed towards things that do not need to be done, and away from things that do need to be done! ”

“ All moral teaching, I have sometimes fancied, might be summed up in the one formula, 'Waste not.' Every element of which our nature is composed may be said to be good in its proper place; and therefore every vicious habit springs out of the misapplication of forces which might be turned to account by judicious training. The waste of sorrow is one of the most lamentable forms of waste. ”

“ But one awful, ugly, discouraging word, from a world standpoint, seemed written all over the [19] enterprise—Waste—waste of life, waste of time, waste of governments’ money, waste of all those things misguided humanity loves and fights for. ”

“ Imagine—unhappily you need exercise no great stretch of the faculty, the papers teem with too many instances—imagine a poor, woe-begone, miserable creature, destitute and friendless, without a home, without a meal; his tattered clothing displaying through every rent the shrunken form and wasted limbs to which hunger and want have reduced him. See him as night falls, plodding onwards through the crowded thoroughfares of the great city; his lack-lustre eye glazed and filmy; his pale face and blue lip actually corpse-like in their ghast-liness. ”

“ I think most of the clothes ugly and dirty, most of the food bad, the houses wretched, the schools starved and feeble, the amusements dull, the monetary methods silly, our ways of trading base and wasteful, our methods of production piecemeal and wasteful, our political arrangements solemnly idiotic. Most of my activities have been to get my soul and something of my body out of the customs, outlook, boredoms, and contaminations of the current phase of life. ”

“ HOW WE WASTE THREE-FOURTHS OF OUR MONEY The waste of Nature is great, and seems unavoidable: it is Nature's way. She is prodigal of time, of material, of life itself; and seems to have unlimited supplies to draw from. But the waste in our human processes is conspicuously absurd. ”

“ I lose myself in wonder at the loose ways, the strange process of waste, through which nature and fortune may deal on occasion with those whose faculty for application is all and only in their imagination and their sensibility. ”

“ What could strike one more, for the immense occasion, than the measure that might be involved in it of desolating and heart-breaking waste, waste of quality, waste for that matter of quantity, waste of all the rich redundancies, all the light and all the golden store, which up to then had formed the very price and grace of life? ”

“ We may well talk of the waste of wood and water, of food and fire, but the real and unforgivable waste of modern civilization is the waste of ability and genius,—the killing of useful, indispensable men who have no right to die ”

“ It is one of health or pestilence—one of plenty or scarcity—one of doing what is right of our own accord, because it is right, or of being compelled, by troubles which we have brought upon ourselves, to undo what we have been doing for half a century, and finding, to our great disgust and humiliation, that we have expended countless treasures on an absurdity, and only sunk deeper into the mire every flounder which we made in the midst of our abominations. ”

“ A system of waste, in trifles, that does not add anything substantial to your happiness and certainly lays the foundation for a vast amount of disquietude, and almost certain embarrassment in money affairs, and consequent humiliations. ”

“ And on, still softer on, the music crept, And softly, at the pause, the listener died. 1862.
ON LIVERMEAD SANDS For waste of scheme and toil we grieve, For snowflakes on the wave we sigh, For writings on the sand that leave Naught for to-morrow's passer-by. Waste, waste; each knoweth his own worth, And would be something ere he sink To silence, ere he mix with earth, And part with love, and cease to think. Shall I then comfort thee and me, My neighbour, preaching thus of waste? Count yonder planet fragments; see, The meteors into darkness haste. ”

“ Indeed, how can one look from outside on the great waste of precious things, delicate discernment, quick feeling and sometimes stoical fortitude, involved in frivolous life, without a sense of sadness and indignation? ”

“ Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? ”

“ All these and a certain weirdness of beauty difficult to define give these great wastes a peculiar attraction of their own which only those who have spent much time there can understand and appreciate. ”

“ In thy name how many sins are committed, daily, hourly, minutely! Think of empty little arms—outstretched, clamoring—empty—while the dust-bin is full! Think of armless dolls smiling in the midst of decayed vegetables! ”

“ Let us take, for example, the habit of cleanliness. Where this habit prevails, there is much more enjoyment in life; but let a person of great cleanliness be surrounded by filth, his suffering is infinitely greater. ”

“ Physical waste is bad enough—- the waste of strength and health that could easily be retained by fresh air, open spaces, and decent food, and is so retained among well-to-do children. This physical waste has already created such a broad distinction that foreigners coming among us detect two species of the English people. But the mental waste is worse. It is a subject that Mr. ”

“ What have we to do, after this life, with food, and raiment, and houses, and earthly possessions? The food of the dead is the dust of the earth: they are cloathed only with worms and rottenness. They dwell in the house prepared for all flesh: their lands know them no more. All their worldly goods are delivered into other hands, and they have no more portion under the sun.
3. The case is the same with regard to the body. The moment the spirit returns to God, we are no longer stewards of this machine, which is then sown in corruption and dishonour. ”

“ Every sense was outraged by the accumulation of horrors that combined to disgust and horrify. Hunger, nakedness, thirst, heat, damp, and cold, all combined to swell the catalogue of their miseries and their woes. ”

“ I know not what unholy thoughts shot through my worn and weakened brain. I saw in the gloomiest colours a future of ceaseless struggle, of dependence, and of humiliation, which I was approaching by the dark gate of hunger; I felt a profound and utter disgust of life ”

“ After a while he'll get so that he can dispose of several things at once, and the time may come when I'll have to look over the rubbish to be sure that nothing valuable has gone, because throwing away is just as insidious a habit as any other. ”

“ And the most serious phase of all waste is not the waste of substance but the waste of self, of one's energy, capital, the lowering of morals, the undermining of character, the loss of self-respect which thrift encourages and promotes. ”

“ If there are inconveniences, and what is called ruin in the way, because we have so enervated and maimed ourselves, yet it would be like dying of perfumes to sink in the effort to reattach the deeds of every day to the holy and mysterious recesses of life. ”

“ What an incalculable waste of mind does the world exhibit! And even when all artificial and unnecessary obstructions are taken out of the way, what an immense waste must it always present, while in so gross a corporeal tenement! for were it free to exhibit its true nature, we cannot doubt its power of unwearied and incessant activity. ”

“ What abundance, under pretence of cleanliness and neatness, is spent in needless curiosity about rooms, and furniture, and accommodations, and matters of mere pride, vain-glory, and ostentation, covered with the honest name of decency! What abundance is wasted in entertainments, and unnecessary visits, compliments, ceremony, and servitude to the humours of men of vanity! ”

“ Fields rescued by themselves from the waste should ripen under their own eyes. Thus, with a rude plenty, care and luxury alike cut off, no heartburnings, no vanity, a cultivated temper and coarse raiment—they and their families, and some neighbours of kindred dispositions, would really enjoy the earth, and the being God had given them. ”

“ Many times you have felt that it was a dirty, useless, expensive habit, and you get thoroughly disgusted with it, and perhaps you quit it for a short time, and then how surprised and disgusted you feel because you find what an awful hold it has got on you. ”

“ Even unto this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling-place; and we toil, working with our own hands: being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we endure; being defamed, we entreat: we are made as the filth of the world, the offscouring of all things, even until now.—I Cor. ”

“ I have rendered my mind unable to enjoy the ordinary aliments of nature; and I have wasted, by a premature indulgence, my resources and my powers, till I have left my heart, without a remedy or a hope, to whatever disorders its own intemperance has engendered. ”

“ True, there is a man employed to clear away the garbage; but, when this is done, they have no water, saving what they beg, and not a drop can they spare to wash down the gutters. Wherever a sunbeam alights, you see it steaming with the filth, and behold the golden ray dimmed with the vapoury and deadly exhalations. ”

“ By the same rule, a person who may have been accustomed to luxury and dainty food, but is obliged, for the first time, to feed on loathsome bread and nauseous water, feels doubly the misery of his condition. ”

“ Bear in mind this accusation of waste which can constantly be made, from a certain stand-*point against all forms of joy evolved by the art of living—possibly against all forms of joy that you can name; for all joy entails an expenditure of energy, and for those who do not realise the value of joy such expenditure must necessarily seem wasteful. ”

“ We know some would cry out against such waste of valuable ground; we plead for it nevertheless to a greater or less extent, according to circumstances. Is everything to be for the mouth and nothing for the eye? ”

“ Of all wastes, the greatest waste that you can commit is the waste of labour. If you went down in the morning into your dairy, and you found that your youngest child had got down before you; and that he and the cat were at play together, and that he had poured out all the cream on the floor for the cat to lap up, you would scold the child, and be sorry the milk was wasted. But if, instead of wooden bowls with milk in them, there are golden bowls with human life in them, and instead of the cat to play with—the devil to play with ”

“ Unthrifty garbage can.
O wasteful and slackminded offspring
Of a cheese-witted peasantry,
Fallen in evil ways
While in service to the Peking profiteers,
When half the world is starving
You would toss away
A practicable mouse-patty
Or an undamaged rice-cake—
When you die
And your miserable wraith
Approaches the Pagoda of the Immortals
May even that lean and gristly portion of your spirit
Which is worth saving
Be tossed without hesitation
Into the purgatorial incinerator. ”

“ Therefore, we made ourselves comfortable with such simple fare as contents a servant of the Lord, and our provisions supplied, and having sung a goodly hymn and given ourselves over to an hour or so of prayer for the pleasing of our souls, some among us fell to talking of the nature of the surrounding waste, recalling that from heathen times it hath had the name of being a place of most evil and supernatural resort. ”

“ Similarly, the filth and poverty permitted or ignored in the midst of us are as dishonourable to the whole social body, as in the body natural it is to wash the face, but leave the hands and feet foul. ”