"Misspent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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. ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... at home in the barn than at the house. For the stock saw no change in him. Believer or unbeliever, rationalist, evolutionist, he was still the same to them. Upon them, in reality, fell the ill consequences of his misspent or well-spent college life; for the money which might have gone for shingles and joists and more provender, had in part been spent on books describing the fauna of the earth and the distribution of species on its surface. Some had gone for treatises on animals under domestication, while his ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... Paul's trusting, boyish faith come to mind. Pierre lives over again in swift review years of a misspent past. With comprehensive view of its wasted, perverted chances, the broad compass of desolating ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... these estimates! It is proper that many of you should. You have misspent time enough. Awake your 'drowsy souls,' and shake off your stupid habits. Think of Napoleon breaking up the boundaries of kingdoms, and dethroning kings, and to accomplish these results, going through with an amount of mental and bodily labor that few constitutions would be equal to, ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... 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 and tendencies; the result being literally ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... Shylock's sense of it (to buy cheap and sell dear) into Antonio's sense of it: emphasized with the final i in tender "Cheri," and hushed to English calmness in our noble "Cherish." The reader must not think that any care can be misspent in tracing the connexion and power of the words which we have to use in the sequel. (See Appendix VI.) Much education sums itself in making men economize their words, and understand them. Nor is it possible ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... were aspiring to something beyond his previously humble and abridged reading. The reader may substitute for these names any others, of the superior order, that he may think more proper to stand in their place. It would therefore be animadversion or ridicule misspent, to make the charge of extravagance on this imagined course of a plain man's reading, with a specific reference to the authors here named, as if it had been meant that precisely these, by a peculiar selection, were to be the authors ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... a record round, and, so great is the enthusiasm for the game at this moment, that it is regarded as a great misfortune that the sun has set and there is no more light left for play. These are the times when the golfer's pulse beats strong, and he feels the remorse of the man with the misspent youth because he was grown up and his limbs were setting before ever ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... 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
... 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 weakness of thy ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... will sinners 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 secured to plead. A time was when a kind Saviour was expostulating ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... late. The clock strikes! Another day has vanished. Gone into the dim recesses of the past, leaving its record of misspent hours, false hopes, and disappointed expectations. May a morrow dawn that will bring recompense and requital for the sorrows of the days gone by, and a new order of things when there will be more starch in cuff and collar, and less ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... on his study-table, and for a time he vainly 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
... 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 no ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... the midst of Tuscany," I 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 ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... dissipation and disease. The gross, sensual mouth with its loose-hanging lips; the blotched and clammy skin; the pale, watery eyes with their inflamed rims and flabby pouches; the sunken chest, skinny neck and limbs; and the thin rasping voice—all cried aloud the shame of a misspent life. It was as clearly evident that he was a man of wealth and, in the eyes of the world, of ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... personnel, as the place supplies. It is to be expected that a portion will abuse this liberty, and waste their years. They do it at their peril. At the peril, among other disadvantages, of losing their degree, which should be conditioned on satisfactory proof that the student has not wholly misspent his time. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... of the country, in which I have now spent four months and more. It is like what happens when a friend dies; we accuse ourselves of having loved him too little, or loved him ill; or it is like our own death, when we look back upon life and feel that it has been misspent. ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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 ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... These lectures are of great 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
... swept 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 ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... back, it appeared to me that I had always been doing so. What had been the profit of the tongues which I had learnt? 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 not in a false position? Provided I had not misspent my time, would it have been necessary to ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... as a rule, had never known, a day of honesty and cleanliness in their misspent lives; whose fathers, brothers and constant companions were roughs, malefactors and, felons; whose mothers, wives and sisters were prostitutes, procuresses and thieves; men who had from infancy lived in an atmosphere of sin, until it saturated every fiber of their being as a dweller ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... with easy seriousness, "as I watch your achievements, that I can only look back on a misspent life. Why didn't I get in and make things? I'm horribly envious ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... frontiers, but will warm in sympathy with every noble cause the whole world through? That is what I see, Adele, as I lie here beside a shore upon which I shall never set my feet, and I say to you that if you and Amory go to the building of such a nation then indeed your lives are not misspent. It will come, and when it comes, may God guard it, may God watch over it and direct it!" His head had sunk gradually lower upon his breast and his lids had fallen slowly over his eyes which had been looking away out past Point Levi at the rolling woods and the ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... room of the most famous restaurant in the Bois. His morning attire was a model of correctness, his eyes were clear, his manner blithe, almost joyous. There was no possible indication in his appearance of his misspent hours. He was at once a genial and courteous host. Monsieur Decheles sat at his right hand; Monsieur Felix Brant on his left; Monsieur Pelleman opposite to him. The three men had arrived in an automobile together and had entered ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... hour, or some businessman breaks down in the prime of his years from some trifling over-anxiety which should have left no trace behind, the popular verdict may be, "Mysterious Providence"; but the wiser observer sees the retribution for the folly of those misspent days which enfeebled the childish constitution, instead of ripening it. One of the most admirable passages in the Report of Dr. Ray, already mentioned, is that in which he explains, that, though hard study at school is rarely the immediate cause of insanity, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... 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 ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... 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; ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... hurriedly, what had happened twelve hours ago on the bank of the Queen's Canal; and the thought of the misspent, crooked life that had ended in the black waters of that sluggish tideway made them all silent for a while. For death is in itself dignified, and demands respect for all with whom he has dealings. Many attain the distinction of vice in life, while more only reach the mere mediocrity of foolishness; ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... 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 ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... 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 found a lieutenant, ...
— The Brigade Commander • J. W. Deforest
... 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 not ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... there would be a mutiny in his favour, and accordingly carried on the siege for several days, without profiting by his perseverance; till, at length, having attended the ladies to their own house in the country, he began to look upon this adventure as time misspent, and resolved to discontinue his attack, in hopes of meeting with a more favourable occasion; being, in the meantime, ambitious of displaying in a higher sphere, those qualifications which his vanity told him were at ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... an ideal of virtue of the loftiest order. Accordingly, the Stoics were the first to preach what is called 'Cosmopolitanism;' for although, in their reference to the good of the whole, they confounded together sentient life and inanimate objects—rocks, plants, &c., solicitude for which was misspent labour—yet they were thus enabled to reach the conception of the universal kindship of mankind, and could not but include in their regards the brute creation. They said: 'There is no difference between the Greeks and Barbarians; the world is our city.' Seneca urges ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... my chief good: May God Almighty desert me, whenever it is! and whenever, for the sake of that, I can give up my title to that blessed hope which will stand me in stead, at a time when millions of gold will not purchase one happy moment of reflection on a past misspent life! ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... 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
... not misspent a moment of his time, "the thought of the last bitter hour" will not "come like a blight," and there will be no "sad images of the stern agony." The wise and good man, who has the unmixed reverence of the great and the humble, whose "hoary head is a crown ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... forfeited, missing; derelict, adrift; misspent, misemployed, wasted; irreclaimable, incorrigible, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... space than one five stories high. Getting along with the old-style architecture costs the five-story man the income of twenty-five floors. Save ten steps a day for each of twelve thousand employees and you will have saved fifty miles of wasted motion and misspent energy. ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... of a young prince, of manners eminently popular, produced upon the young nobility of the realm must be taken into account in the narrative of that life which was so brilliant and so misspent; so blessed at its onset, so dreary in its close—the life of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. Descended in the third degree from Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, Georgiana Spencer is said to have resembled her celebrated ancestress in the style of her beauty. She ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... three volumes of the Lady's Library dedicated to her by Steele in terms that have been supposed to imply resemblance between her and the 'perverse widow;' as being both readers, &c. Mrs Boevey is said also to have had a Confidant (Mary Pope) established in her household. But there is time misspent in all these endeavours to reduce to tittle-tattle the creations of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... him by Morgan, Foker took Pen's arm, and walked with him for some time silently puffing his cigar. At last, when they had reached Charing Cross on Arthur's way home to the Temple, Harry Foker relieved himself, and broke out with that eulogium upon poetry, and those regrets regarding a misspent youth which have just been mentioned. And all the way along the Strand, and up to the door of Pen's very staircase, in Lamb Court, Temple, young Harry Foker did not cease to speak about singing and ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... railway 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
... of the 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 he ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... 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 for free lunches in frowsy ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... in attending love feasts, council meetings and regular appointments. In body he was robust, vigorous and active: in spirit he had long reaches of faith and hope and love. This incited him to great activity; and I often heard him say: "An hour misspent or trifled away is just so much time given ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... 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 ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... National Gallery of Berlin makes me gnash my teeth. The sight of so much misspent labour, of the acres of canvases deluged with dirty, bad paint, raises my bile. We know that all things are relative, and because Germany has produced few painters worthy of the name that after all it doesn't much matter—there is Italy and ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... toll, and Lorelei felt a certain pity for him. Waste is shocking; it grieved her to see a man so blessed with opportunity flinging himself away so fatuously. The hilarity which greeted him on every hand spoke of misspent nights and a reckless prodigality that betokened long habitude. Only his splendid constitution—that abounding vitality which he had inherited from sturdy, temperate forebears—enabled him to keep up the pace; but Lorelei saw that he was already beginning to show ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... looked tired, and as if they had been on the road for a great many years. The animals were all old, and there was a shabby great elephant whose look of general discouragement went to my heart, for it seemed as if he were miserably conscious of a misspent life. He stood dejected and motionless at one side of the tent, and it was hard to believe that there was a spark of vitality left in him. A great number of the people had never seen an elephant before, ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... and your nose bleeds; you are stricken with Spanish mildew, and you smell vilely—but you are immortal. You have been a disgrace to the service, but Fate in her gentle irony has redeemed you, permitting you, in one brief moment of your misspent life, to save to your country the command of the seas—to guide, with your subconscious intelligence, the finest battle-ship the science of the world has constructed to glorious victory, through the fiercest sea-fight the world has known. Rise up, ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... Sad memory weaves No veil to hide the past; And as we trace our weary way, And count each lost and misspent day, We sadly find at last— Nothing but leaves! ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody
... 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
... the antiquity of his first guard. In two minutes I had his whole budget of the art laid bare to me; he had but four parries—quarte and tierce for the high lines, with septime and second for the low ones—and had never seen a counter-parry or lunge in the whole course of his misspent life. ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... selfless man alive; and she, alas! had never thought of him—never considered his comfort in anything. Oh, remorse! If only she could have those times all over again, or even one of those times so recklessly misspent! He might have lost his life through that wetting. Or what if he lost his voice? Singers have notoriously delicate throats. But happily nothing so untoward had resulted; she was saved the blame of a crowning disaster—she knew, because she had heard ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... 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 to think for themselves: the burden is borne by others. ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... Bordeaux, with high, mysterious walls along the street's over which hang dusty branches of trees or vines sneaking mischievously out of bounds. A woe-begone trolley creaks through the narrow streets and heart-broken cabmen mourning over the mistakes of misspent lives, larrup disconsolate horses over stony streets as they creak and jog and wheeze ahead of the invisible crows that seem always to be hovering above ready to batten upon their rightful provender. For an hour in ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... said 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
... 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, resourceful, adaptable, cheerful. Then multiply such ant-hills by thousands and you have China. ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... 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 ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... 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 ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... time he spent in his recovery from the attacks of his enemy, or rather enemies of a misspent youth, he could not surmise. He did at last stir from his place and look with subdued melancholy into a world of woe. He recalled the visitor, the man who wrote for newspapers, and in a panic ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... sense of sin' inevitably follows. It is the discontent, the regret, in the light of a higher knowledge, for the: lost opportunities, for a past life which has been uncontrolled by any unifying purpose, misspent in futile undertakings, wasted, perhaps, in follies and selfish caprices which have not only harmed ourselves but others. Although we struggle, yet by habit, by self-indulgence, by lack of a sustained purpose, we have formed a character from which escape seems hopeless. And we realize that ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... best boon to man." When the loose but gifted Byron lay in his Venetian exile he observed that, if it could be granted him to go back and live his misspent life over again, he would give his lucid and unintoxicated intervals to the composition, not of frivolous rhymes, but of essays upon political economy. Washington loved this exquisite science; such names as ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... whether three dances with some other fellow mean anything more to Her than charity. He gets cold chills every time he reflects that at any minute a member of some royal family may pass by and notice Her, and that he will have to promote international spasms by hashing him. He realizes that he has misspent his life; that football is a boy business; that frats are foolish, and that there ought to be a law giving every college graduate a job paying at least two thousand dollars a year on graduation. He is nervous, feverish, ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... 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 ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... maintaining their Conjectures; I shall beg leave to subjoyn my own: and if what at present I offer, may seem more probable, or account for this Story with more likelyhood, than what hath hitherto been advanced, I shall not think my time altogether misspent: But if this will not do, I shall never trouble my head more about them, nor think my self any ways concerned to write on this Argument again. And I had not done it now, but upon the occasion of Dissecting this Orang-Outang, ...
— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson
... 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 ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb
... the creature made in His own image. What else do we mean when we say under all horror and agony that befalls, 'It is God's will—God's will be done.' Base unbeliever though I am, I could not speak the words. Oh, she has something we have not. Her poor, little misspent life has changed itself into a shining thing, though it shines and glows only in this hideous place. She herself does not know of its shining. But Drunken Bet would stagger up to her room and ask to be told what ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... will observe a most dramatic account of human nature, under the controlling power of the Holy Ghost. The woman whom she had long visited was at last conquered. The city of the soul was successfully bombarded. The sorrow for sin, the sad lamentation over a misspent life, the flinging of her arms round the neck of the missionary, the urgent request, "Oh, pray for me, that the Lord may have mercy on me, and save my poor soul," together with the statement of transition from shadow to sunshine, from grief to joy, from alienation to adoption, ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... Antiquaries at a distance. If the knowledge of Polite Literature has its use, there is certainly a merit in illustrating the Perfect Models of it; and the Learned World will think some years of a man's life not misspent in so elegant an employment. I shall conclude what I had to say on this Performance, by observing that the fame of it increased from year to year; and the demand for copies was so urgent, that their price rose to four or five times the original value, before it came ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... former section. Her jealousy, saith Gomesius, was the cause of both their deaths: King Philip died for grief a little after, as [6166]Martian his physician gave it out, "and she for her part after a melancholy discontented life, misspent in lurking-holes and corners, made an end of her miseries." Felix Plater, in the first book of his observations, hath many such instances, of a physician of his acquaintance, [6167]"that was first mad ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... due, How that day wasted is; and should there be a few At the year's end that shew more goodly to the sight, If haply here I find some days not wasted quite, If a small portion of them I have pass'd aright, Then shall I think the year not wholly was misspent, And that my Diary has been ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... though to judge from the internal evidence afforded by the style, not many years later. The second author was Fernando de Roxas, bachelor of law, as he informs us, who composed this work as a sort of intellectual relaxation, during one of his vacations. The time was certainly not misspent. The continuation, however, is not esteemed by the Castilian critics to have risen quite to the level of ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... bright young heart, had all gone by. Perchance that sleeping Christian, nestled so cosily among the cushions in Cousin Abbie's morning-room, might have been startled and aroused, could she have realized that days like those would never come back to her; that being misspent they had passed away; that a new worker had come to drop seed into the unoccupied heart; that never again would Sadie be as fresh, and as guileless, and as easily won, as in those days which she had let slip in idle, ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... 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 ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... the results of many marriages among their friends, they 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, ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... not 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 ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... 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 the ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... begged him to preside once more at their revels. He gave them a final magnificent banquet, at which they noticed that he was silent and preoccupied. Immediately afterward he retired to a grotto, where he passed his days alone, entreating God to pardon the misspent years of youth and to direct him in the right way. Here he had a vision of Jesus Christ nailed to the cross. It is probably impossible to prove a vision; but that this one was real to Francis, at least, we may judge by its effects. Thenceforth he devoted himself ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... the delicious 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 ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... and 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 ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... 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 ...
— Kate's Ordeal • Emma Leslie
... of being hanged on account of his 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 ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... perceived 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 ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... bouquets of the passing passions of a day, not caring to wait for the unfading crowns of amaranth. If the artist will stoop to linger in the Circean hall of the senses, he must not be astonished if good and earnest men should reproach him with the triviality of a misspent and egotistic life. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... 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. Clear quick—the ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... the dreadful scepticism abounding in Park-lane, May-fair, Portland-place and its vicinity,—when we contemplate the abominable idols which these unhappy natives worship in their ignorance,—when we know that every thought, every act of their misspent life is dedicated to a false religion, when they make hourly and daily sacrifice to that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various
... Master general that now is, and also from his predecessor, vnto your renoumed grandfather K. Edward of famous memory, and sundry times vnto your highnes also, to haue restitution made for their goods taken from them: whereby they haue nothing at al preuailed, but heaping losse vpon losse haue misspent their time and their charges: both because they were not permitted to propound and exhibit their complaints and letters before your maiesty, and also for diuers other impediments. Certain of them also considering how others of their countriemen had laboured in vain, and fearing the like successe, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... who has the unmixed reverence of the great and the humble, whose "hoary head is a crown of glory," approaches his grave "like one who wraps the drapery of his couch about him, and lies down to pleasant dreams." "I wasted time, and now doth time waste me!" is the cry of a misspent life. If you have cast away a portion of your existence, I beg of you to transfix this public notice before your companions that they may profit ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... no wise cultivates his talent for the 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. ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Rake's Progress,[1] where a letter from the manager is brought to him to say that his play "will not do?" Here all is easy, natural, undistorted, but withal what a mass of woe is here accumulated!—the long history of a misspent life is compressed into the countenance as plainly as the series of plates before had told it; here is no attempt at Gorgonian looks, which are to freeze the beholder—no grinning at the antique bedposts—no face-making, ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... hundred women in the room, or park, or tennis ground, wherever the tragedy (Love is a tragedy) commences. When the lights are low he comes back, and is low also. Wonders how men can be such brutes as to want dinner; thinks his life has been misspent; that he is unworthy to touch her hand; that he has wallowed in the fleshpots, and here is a way out of them. And if the man's nature be noble and sweet and true; if he has hitherto drifted adown ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... stood, 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
... plan of a story. Out of the mass that they have read they may have retained a great many facts; but being without connection or object, they are nearly useless. Bad habits are formed, their reading is to no purpose, and their time, therefore, misspent. ...
— Our Gift • Teachers of the School Street Universalist Sunday School, Boston
... have had my share of pastime, and I've done my share of toil, And life is short—the longest life a span. I care not now to tarry for the corn or for the oil, Or for the wine that maketh glad the heart of man; For good undone and time misspent and resolutions vain 'Tis somewhat late to trouble—this I know; I would live the same life over if I had to live again And the chances are I go where ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... sapless; when my teeth would shake in my jaws, even supposing they did not drop out. No going a-wooing then, no labouring, no eating strong flesh and begetting lusty children then; and I bethought me how, when all this should be, I should bewail the days of my youth as misspent, provided I had not in them founded for myself a home, and begotten strong children to take care of me in the days when I could not take care of myself; and thinking of these things I became ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... 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 ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... service toward the real objects of the expedition. When the land forces did at last besiege Lisbon, Drake was unwilling or unable to force his way up the Tagus to co-operate with them, and for this he was afterward warmly blamed by Norris. He defended himself by stating that the time misspent by the English at Corunna, had been well employed by the Spaniards in fortifying Lisbon; and we fully believe that neither fear nor jealousy would have made him hesitate at anything which he thought to be for the good of the service. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... candle." I read the sixth book over with the most exquisite delight, and had gone half through it a second time, when the pleasing ideas of Elysian Fields, deceased worthies walking in them, sincere lovers enjoying their languishment without pain, compassion for the unhappy spirits who had misspent their short daylight, and were exiled from the seats of bliss for ever; I say, I was deep again in my reading, when this mixture of images had taken place of all others in my imagination before, and lulled me into a dream, from which I am just awake, to my great disadvantage. The happy mansions ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... to carry on the war against the Turks. In his old age, he became an anchorite near Boston, and wrote twenty-five volumes upon the subject of alchymy, the most important of which is the "Duodecim Portarum," already mentioned. Before he died, he seems to have acknowledged that he had misspent his life in this vain study, and requested that all men, when they met with any of his books, would burn them, or afford them no credit, as they had been written merely from his opinion, and not from proof; and that subsequent trial had made manifest to him that they ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... friends with a peculiar tenderness, connected with his youth, his genius, his excellent character, his blameless life, and early death. Life had been but a morning to Charlie Hubbard, but it was a glowing summer morning; its hours had not been wasted, abused, misspent; brief as they were, yet in passing they had brought blessings to himself, to his fellow-beings; and they had left to those who loved him the ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... perfect to her, and yet Isabelle went to her luncheon with the bubbling Mr. Bliss sad at heart. She was such an outsider, such a stranger to her husband's inner self! That it was to be expected, her own fault, the result of the misspent years of married life made it none ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... as good as that of other folks he lived with. You don't suppose he had any misgivings, provided he was in the City early enough in the morning; or slept badly, unless he indulged too freely over-night; or twinges of conscience that his life was misspent? He thought his life a most lucky and reputable one. He had a share in a good business, and felt that he could increase it. Some day he would marry a good match, with a good fortune; meanwhile he could take his ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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 into slimness Across ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... minute or two later and were received by the shiftless one with the objurgations due to what he considered misspent energy. ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... heard went home into her soul, And joyful feelings rose which she could scarce control. The pleasant service o'er, the teacher with her went Into that filthy street, nor thought her time misspent. ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... interesting details of the last war, which, in general, may be relied on. It may be considered as the small history of great events. I am in hopes, when you shall have read them, you will not think I have misspent your money for them. My method for making out this assortment was, to revise the list of my own purchases since the invoice of 1785, and to select such as I had found worth your having. Besides this, I have casually met ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... capacities of his superiors and equals. "If I could drink like Kirby or Crowninshield, or if there was any other cursed thing a man could do in this hole," he had wretchedly repeated to himself, after each misspent occasion, and yet already he was looking forward to them as part of a 'sub's' duty and worthy his emulation. Already the dream of social recreation fostered by West Point had been rudely dispelled. Beyond the garrison circle of Colonel ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... professor. "Is it possible that you have so soon forgotten the capabilities of this little toy of mine? Be silent, man, if you do not wish your sinful, misspent life to come to a sudden and violent end. I give you your choice: Will you die where you stand, or will you ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... of the blind asylum of my youth, where the "inmates" never learned to walk without groping, where we were shown hideous bead furniture, too small for dolls, which was the result of their eager but misspent lives. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... pleasures here, but the food. I am suffering from gastric nostalgia. I was so hungry for something sharp and sour last night that I bought a bottle of horse-radish and ate it in cold blood. Today my digestive apparatus is slumped and I feel like the ragged edge of a misspent career. ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... these Numidian mountains dwells: Thus with prevention having mischief fled, Old Marius finds a world of many hells, Such as poor simple wits have oft repin'd; But I will quell, by virtues of the mind, Long years misspent in many luckless chances, Thoughts full of wrath, yet little worth succeeding, These are the means for those whom fate advances: But I, whose wounds are fresh, my heart still bleeding, Live to entreat this blessed boon from fate, That I might die with grief to live in state. Six hundred suns with ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... superfluous by commercial products. I will tell you what I think. A sound schooling should teach manner of thought rather than matter. It should have a dual aim—to equip a man for hours of work, and for hours of leisure. They interact; if the leisure is misspent, the work will suffer. As regards the first, we cannot expect a school to purvey more than a grip of general principles. Even that is seldom given. The second should enable a man to extract as much happiness as possible out of his spare time. The secret of happiness ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... seemed, was quite out of his mind. These were the outward manifestations; but what chords trembled and smarted within, we could only guess. What regrets for good resolves unfulfilled, and remorse for years misspent, made hideous these sore and panting hearts? The moonlight pierced through the thick foliage of the wood, and streamed into our faces, like invitations to a better life. But the crippled and bleeding could not see or feel it,—buried in the shelves ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... drawer, desiring me to examine all, and to make memorandums of them as well as I could. He was hardly able to support himself; and his spirits were so low, that I found difficulty in commanding my voice so far as to give him the assurance he should find on his return that my time had not been misspent. ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous
... one who could properly be called a gentleman. "The truly ingenious and strong men of France are here (i.e. among the industrial classes) making money, while the politician, literary, etc. etc. class is mere play-actorism." His summary before leaving at the close of a week, rather misspent, is: "Articulate-speaking France was altogether without beauty or meaning to me in my then diseased mood; but I saw traces of the ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... paced up 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, joined the others, ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... 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
... sneaked home late Mrs. Button, who had learned how he had misspent his time, gave him a merciless thrashing. Why should he be trapesing about with Sunday schools, she asked, with impolite embroidery, while his poor little brothers and sisters were crying in the street? She would learn him to Mess about with parsons and Sunday-school ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... much of life lost. For all the time spent in idleness, you had just as well not have lived at all. By rightly using each moment you will build up a character that will stand a monument upon the tomb of the dead past. Moments misspent are life and character gone, and no imprint is left on the hearts of men to tell that we have lived. How many golden moments are flying away into eternity unladen with any fruit from your life? Learn to value ...
— Food for the Lambs; or, Helps for Young Christians • Charles Ebert Orr
... item stood for some real pleasure. If he could afford pudding twice a week, you know that twice a week the man ate with genuine gusto and was physically happy; while if you learn that a rich man has seven courses a day, ten to one the half of them remain untasted, and the whole is but misspent money and a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... alive"—tends to increase the poverty of Ireland, "does not prevent the recurrence of famine, distress, and discontent," and that "a great deal of the money nominally meant to be spent on productive works has been misspent and wasted." They also dwelt, with emphasis, on official figures showing the extravagance of Civil Government in Ireland, the cost having risen from 1s. 10d. per head of the population in 1820 to 19s. 7d. per ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... reconciled to my stomach, which no longer performs its usual functions.' And his talk, we are told, during the fortnight that preceded his death, was not regret for a life we should, in seriousness, call misspent, but because partridges and pheasants no longer suited his condition, and he was obliged to be reduced to boiled meats. No one, however, could tell what might also be passing in his heart. We cannot always judge of a life, any more ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... from his manhood's prime, Sees not the spectre of his misspent time? And, through the shade Of funeral cypress planted thick behind, Hears no reproachful whisper on the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... with youth, love, hope, and a joy that fills the heart with a fulness and ecstasy of happiness that leaves nothing further to be desired. Let the rosy meshes fall, and hoary age, or the long list of hours of a misspent life, hold up another scene, in which despair contends with the waning hours, and sombre clouds obscure the future! Then the world is always old, always sad, hard, and cold; and man learns too late that ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... way in which leisure is very generally misspent in school—and alas, outside, too!—not in managing one's own affairs, but in managing and discussing the affairs of others. At such times the remarks may be superlatively pleasant, but they are more often superlatively disagreeable. It may be said with truthfulness that they are almost ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... accuser, and fifteen of the damned, dragging forward two devils. "Lest you lay the blame of every wrongful service upon the children of Adam," said the accuser, "here are two of your old angels who misspent their time above as much as the two who were last before the court. Here is a rogue quite as worthless as that one at Shrewsbury the other day, when the Interlude of Doctor Faustus was being played, amidst all manner of most ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... 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
... that we had quite a lot in 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 suited each ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... golden season, too, was passed In wanton sports and misspent time; And soon he stood on manhood's verge, A hardened wretch, prepared ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... range that was desolate and drear, When 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 the crusted snow, and I knew not where it went. ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... curious crowds of people who 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 ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... country's sake, O Chevalier John Paul, be a word spent, or misspent! In faded naval uniform, Paul Jones lingers visible here; like a wine-skin from which the wine is all drawn. Like the ghost of himself! Low is his once loud bruit; scarcely audible, save, with extreme tedium in ministerial ante-chambers; ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... 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; ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... that had been so full of belief were all at once empty, and the memory of them rang hollow and false, because Hope had cheated him, luring him on, only to forsake him at the great moment. Every hour he had spent on the work had been misspent; he saw it all now, and the most perfect of his faultless calculations only proved that science was a blatant fraud and a snare that had cost him all he had, his wife, his boy's future, and his own self-respect. How could he ever look at his wretched failure again? How could ...
— The Little City Of Hope - A Christmas Story • F. Marion Crawford
... 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
... these adolescents may be in the ranks of those who complain of their inability to obtain homes. This has prompted people to urge that a compulsory savings scheme should be instituted to guard young people from the evils of misspent leisure and to develop in them that sense of reliability which ...
— Report of the Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents - The Mazengarb Report (1954) • Oswald Chettle Mazengarb et al.
... alternative remaining is to make this avowal, or be forgotten by you. I do not ask you now to promise to be mine, or even to love me, till I have proved myself worthy of your affection. My past life has been one of thoughtlessness and inaction, but it shall be my endeavor in future to atone for those misspent years. Your image will ever be with me as a bright spirit from whose presence I cannot flee, and whisper hope when my energies would fail. I only ask your remembrance till I am worthy to claim your love. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... he would walk it off, forget, bury everything, and then go back 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
... lean and shaggy, and poorly fed, you will be likely to toil all your life because of misspent energy and dislike of details of work. Correct ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... and were disappointed? Shall we look back upon wrongs to our fellow men and sins toward God? It seems to me that the keenest regrets that ever come to a soul on earth are the regrets that come to him who, during his last hours on earth, has to view a misspent life. ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... may leave something to regret in the way of time misspent; but Goethe the man was no dawdler, no easy-going Epicurean. On the whole, he made the most of himself, and stands before the world a notable instance of a complete life. He would do the work which was given ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... of a bucket overnight was frozen into a thick cake in the morning, the thermometer indicating 18 degrees. The nights I pass in these fearful regions are more dreadful than the days, for "night is the time for care, brooding o'er days misspent, when the pale spectre of despair comes to our lonely tent;" and often when I lay me down I fall into a dim and death-like trance, wakeful, yet "dreaming dreams no mortals had ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... to her? She's all soul, she is, and can write poetry or compose music, as easy as I could drink a glass of beer. Beer?—damme, that's all I'm fit for, is beer. I am a poor, ignorant little beggar, good for nothing but Foker's Entire. I misspent my youth, and used to get the chaps to do my exercises. And what's the consequences now? O, Harry Foker, what a confounded little fool you ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was as irreproachable as she was lovely. Of her rascally husband she had happily seen nothing during all those years of more or less lonely adventure; and the end of this tragic union was now near. One day in October 1817, the Captain ended his misspent days in tragedy. He had drifted through dissipation and crime to the King's Bench prison; and in a fit of frenzy—or, as some say, in a drunken quarrel—had flung himself to his death through a window ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... death-room be not at all places 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 matters. They being magic made did ward off not only from about the bed but from the room itself ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... to earth after death. On the other hand, when a life has been lived to the full, 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 ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... Chicago and northern Illinois. The young captain did 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; 4 to 7, study; 7 to 8, exercise; 8 to 10, ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... thy city prison broke, Martial, thy wail for life misspent, And so, through London's noise and smoke My heart replies ...
— Grass of Parnassus • Andrew Lang |
