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Wastefulness   /wˈeɪstfəlnəs/   Listen
Wastefulness

noun
1.
The trait of wasting resources.  Synonyms: thriftlessness, waste.  "The wastefulness of missed opportunities"
2.
Useless or profitless activity; using or expending or consuming thoughtlessly or carelessly.  Synonyms: dissipation, waste.  "Mindless dissipation of natural resources"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Wastefulness" Quotes from Famous Books



... classes, like our collegians, and these appointed persons to sell it to those who wished for it; and each member of the class shared his proportion of the profits. This answered a very good purpose; it checked the monopolizers and muckworms that infested our ship, and fattened on our wastefulness. It also benefitted those who did not choose to drink beer, or porter, as they call ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse

... cuffs and collars. We sell them so cheaply that some people wear three or four a day, while a careful person would make one suffice. When the collar was attached to the shirt, it served for a much longer time; what but cheapness and convenience can tempt to such wastefulness now? My family, at least the female portion, use these articles about as extravagantly, and I think your whole sex must be equally fond of indulging in the same lavish use of them,—otherwise the consumption could not be so great as you see ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... out the gas, with that instinct of economy which early wastefulness has implanted in me, and followed the Countess Suzanne through the suite of rooms and into the small reception-hall where ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers

... know what I mean. There will be no upper class, which is idleness and wastefulness; no middle class, the usurers, the gamblers of necessities, the war makers. One great body of equals shall issue forth. All ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath

... great piece of wastefulness, but the boys would have it. I'm sure I don't see where you're going to get time to learn everything. And you'll never know anything about housekeeping. I should be ashamed to ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas

... they diminish its product. It is, of course, impossible that the worker should not resent having to devote his life to making what is useless or mischievous, and to ministering to the irrational wastefulness of luxury. Christianity, in condemning the selfish and irresponsible use of money, seeks to remove one of the chief causes of social bitterness. Senseless extravagance is the best friend ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... equally obvious that these two necessary sanctities of thrift and dignity are bound to come into collision with the wordiness, the wastefulness, and the perpetual pleasure-seeking of masculine companionship. Wise women allow for the thing; foolish women try to crush it; but all women try to counteract it, and they do well. In many a home all round us at this moment, we know that the nursery rhyme is reversed. ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton

... of their separation; nay, boasting their exclusiveness, or their dissidence, commemorating with pride their secessions and disruptions. And even when they began to see something of the evils such tempers and such acts had brought in their train—the wastefulness of them, in regard alike to money, to men's toil, and gifts given by God for the use of the whole Church but confined in their exercise to some small section;—the injury to character, the multiform self-righteousness engendered by our schisms, the breaches of Christian justice ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various

... have your house at furnace heat in July," she said. "Mere wastefulness and self-indulgence! That is why Americans are old women at twenty. They are shrivelled and withered by the unhealthy lives they lead. Stuffing themselves with sweets and hot bread and never breathing ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... arose, many of us were unwilling and more of us unable to engage in the work of production. In some localities legislation was invoked to urge us toward the fields and gardens. We have shown ourselves a wasteful people, and in the wake of our wastefulness have followed a dismal train of disasters, cold, hunger, and many another form of distress. Deplore and repent of our prodigality as we may, the effects abide to remind us of our decline from the high plane of ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson

... capital in making the first payments for their land, and went heavily into debt for the balance. They became "land poor," and, in order to meet the instalments of purchase and the high interest on their mortgages, they invented a system of farming unprecedented in its wastefulness. The farm was treated as a mine, or, to use Mr. James J. Hill's metaphor, as a bank where the depositors are always taking out more than they put in. A corn crop, year after year, without rotation or fertilisers, satisfied the new conception ...
— The Rural Life Problem of the United States - Notes of an Irish Observer • Horace Curzon Plunkett

... Pinckney, she was galled by his attitude of criticism. Guardian or no guardian, he was a stranger; relation or no relation, he was a stranger, and what right had a stranger to dare to come and turn up his nose at the poor people or make remarks—he hadn't said a word—about the wastefulness ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... day holy doesn't deprive us of activity, but it changes the course of our action from paths of wastefulness to fields of the greatest good. There are many things to do on Sunday, and in the doing of some of them right at your hands, you will have discovered the best way for you to get the most out of one of God's greatest ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold

... vast numbers enrolled was excellent whenever experts were given a free hand. But this free hand was rare. One vital point only needs special notice here: the wastefulness of raising new regiments when the old ones were withering away for want of reinforcements. A new local regiment made a better "story" in the press; and new and superfluous regiments meant new and ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood

... 1914, there was a certain amount of fighting, as a rule the German when attacked made for his own lines and the protection of his anti-aircraft guns. This, though offensive carried to the extent of wastefulness of life is equally bad, was a serious mistake in all ways from his point of view, entailing as it did a tendency for the confidence of the troops and the morale of the air service to be undermined from the outset. The error was rectified, but only ...
— Aviation in Peace and War • Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes

... way. These buntings lay a large number of eggs, often dropping them on the ground, laying them in abandoned nests, or depositing them in nests in which incubation has already begun, in which case all of them are lost. However, in spite of this wastefulness the birds thrive, thousands of them being seen in flocks during ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser

... half-emptied plates of omelettes and fried potatoes,—one realizes how low prices for board in Paris are still compatible with the increased price of provisions, and why we must pay five dollars at home for accommodations for which we expend two here. The same wastefulness creeps into all the details of our hotel-life. If we want a glass of ice-water, for instance, we are straight-way supplied with a pitcher brimming over with huge crystal lumps of transparent ice. One-half the quantity would suffice ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various

... are to be ended, the imagination of man must end them. To the common mind, in spite of all its horrors, there is still something glorious in war. Preachers have preached against it in vain; economists have argued against its wastefulness in vain. The imagination of a great poet alone can finally show to the imagination of the world that even the glories of war are an empty delusion. Euripides shows us, as the centre of his drama, women battered and broken ...
— The Trojan women of Euripides • Euripides

... virtually nothing of Brodie. Now and then smoke from a camp-fire; once or twice the charred coals where Brodie's men had been before him. Upon these camp sites he looked contemptuously; carelessness and wastefulness were two things he hated in a woodsman, and always he found them in Brodie's wake. Also he found bottles. Further, he was of the opinion that he could go in the dark to the particular canon in which the illicit still made its output of bad moonshine ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory

... capability of indignation that belongs to the thorough-paced housekeeper, and this had been pretty actively roused by the artifice and wastefulness of the child; in fact, many of my lady readers must own that they should have felt just so in her circumstances; but Marie's words went beyond her, and ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... community of nature and origin in man, reinforced by a vivid realisation of the sufferings of others, and appealing forcibly to the tender and sympathetic feelings, have co-operated with the economical considerations drawn from the wastefulness and comparative inefficiency of slave labour, and with what may be called the self-regarding reason of the hardening and debasing effect of slave-owning on the character of the ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler

... scientific knowledge of their sexual nature. Puritanic and academic taboo of sex in education and religion is as disastrous to human welfare as prostitution or the venereal scourges. "We are compelled squarely to face the distorting influences of biologically aborted reformers as well as the wastefulness of seducers," Dr. Edward A. Kempf recently declared. "Man arose from the ape and inherited his passions, which he can only refine but dare not attempt to castrate unless he would destroy the fountains of energy that maintain civilization and make ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger

... Democrats. Of the unsaleable nature of my writings I had an amusing memento one morning from our own servant girl. For happening to rise at an earlier hour than usual, I observed her putting an extravagant quantity of paper into the grate in order to light the fire, and mildly checked her for her wastefulness; "La, Sir!" (replied poor Nanny) "why, it is ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... for a bold uncovered head. You are conversant with a widow's fancies.... Ay, you are ready with your widowhood: Two men have had you, chilled their bosoms with you, And trusted that they held a precious thing— Yet your mean passionate wastefulness poured out Their lives for joy of seeing something done with. Cannot you wait this time? ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various

... tourists who enjoyed themselves by shooting the beautiful birds and interesting saurians of the region—mere wanton killing, with never any stop to pick up the bodies of these creatures. It reminded me of the old wastefulness in the North,—the exhaustive fishing of the rivers and streams, especially the trout-streams; the killing of deer by hundreds; and the wanton extermination of the buffalo. Wonderful to me were the great springs of the region—springs so large that the little steamer could ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... is true that between these forays the pirates were given to the wildest excesses, and were anything but a desirable addition to a community, yet there are always plenty of people who are willing to profit by the wastefulness and dissipations of others. Many of the buccaneers, accordingly, had homes which they visited in the intervals of their cruises, where, although their business was well known, they were in a certain sense respected. However, before the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... know she couldn't?" said her husband. "What business have you to spend money for milk—what business have you wi' money at all?" he inquired, suspiciously; for he saw in this wastefulness a cause for the recent strange scarcity of whisky; and he felt he had been deeply wronged. His quarrel with Hayes had also been disregarded, and this made him further angry with his wife, and he strictly charged her never to have ...
— A Sailor's Lass • Emma Leslie

... concoction, and a further search discovered a dark yellow lump stowed away in the corner of a cupboard evidently destined for such an end. It was wonderfully hard; Bridgie's fingers ached with the strain of cutting it, and she shook her pretty head solemnly over the wastefulness of servants in not using up materials before their freshness was lost. She had intended to use the whole of the piece, but it took so long to prepare that she stopped half-way, and to judge by the mellow brownness of the pudding when she peeped at it in the oven, quality ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... the steam railroad service. No estimate seems to have ever been attempted of the many times greater number who perished more indirectly through the injurious effects of bad industrial conditions. What chattel-slave system ever made a record of such wastefulness ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy

... abundance of facts in the world which look like anything but love;—the ruthless and merciless punishment of carelessness and ignorance, the dark laws of heredity, the wastefulness and cruelty of disease, the dismal acquiescence of stupid, healthy, virtuous persons, without sympathy or imagination, in the hardships which they were strong enough to bear unscathed. One of the prime terrors of ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... Logical thought separates the rational from the irrational. Its use avoids the wastefulness of the trial-and-error method. By its insistent employment, dormant powers of reasoning are awakened, and the danger that attends instinctive, spontaneous, impulsive, or emotional acceptance of conclusions (page 9) is lessened. The ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College

... the Socialist regime the earth would, as by a magician's wand, be transformed into a paradise. Over-population, bad harvests, the maladjustment of international demand and supply, and individual folly, laziness, wastefulness, improvidence, and passion would apparently no longer have the same unfortunate consequences which they have now. "The struggle for individual existence disappears...."[60] "The words 'poor' and 'charity' will be expunged from the dictionary as relics of a barbarous past."[61] ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... specifically, for "contrariety is a difference of form," as stated in Metaph. x, text. 13, 14. Now vices that differ according to excess and deficiency are contrary to one another, as illiberality to wastefulness. Therefore they ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... Mountain, the French ranch in Harney and the Cummins ranch on the John Day were exceptions. In the fights at these places some of the Indians were killed and the houses were burned out of revenge. With characteristic Indian wantonness and wastefulness hundreds of cattle were shot down, only the tongue being taken out for food. They, however, would come back as buffalo and cover the land with plenty. But horses were everywhere taken, and when that armed, mounted and tufted host ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson

... returned Miss Dartle. 'Well, I'm very glad to hear it! Now, I know what to do! That's the advantage of asking. I shall never allow people to talk before me about wastefulness and profligacy, and so forth, in connexion with ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... full career of vanity and wastefulness which a young girl might indulge in, and wondering how Carrie could contemplate such a course when she had so little, as ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser

... things that are not even used after they are bought is sheer wastefulness, and to buy everything that tempts you, whether you can afford to pay for it or not, is, if you can not afford it, verging on ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... their way through college. Funds were supplied, also, from friends outside, who were glad to aid such a worthy enterprise. The great need among private agencies is fuller co-operation with one another and with public boards and institutions. Then duplication of effort, misunderstandings, and wastefulness are avoided, and the hope of a decline in ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... not even now, fresh from contact with his sister's dying hope, could he raise himself to any flattering vision of the future; and the woman he loved, with that intimate tenacity of affection which is the poetry of kinship, was to be taken from him by this cruel wastefulness of premature death. Could any man be more alone than he would be? And then suddenly a consciousness fell upon him which made him ashamed. In the neighbouring room his ear was caught now and then by an almost imperceptible, ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... vague custom we have schools, and instead of swaying multitudes academic example; but many a discord and mannerism survive simply because the musician is so suggestible, or so lost in the tumult of production, as never to reconsider what he does, or to perceive its wastefulness. ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... child," said I; "women are by nature, as compared with men, the care-taking and saving part of creation,—the authors and conservators of economy. As a general rule, man earns and woman saves and applies. The wastefulness of woman is commonly the ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... on his table and after that, assured that wastefulness would cost him nothing now, he set two bear-drip candles going, one at each end of the cabin. The illumination filled the single room. There was little for it to reveal—the table he had made, a chair, a battered little sheet-iron stove, and the humped up blanket ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood

... deplored before. The body of protest against unnecessary and unrighteous wars becomes steadily larger, bolder, and more outspoken; the public conscience is more troubled by them; more and more men perceive their wastefulness and wrong, and discern the more excellent way; and to-morrow the total of protesting insight and morality shall be great enough to tip the balance and hold the tempted, ruffling nation to self-restraint, respect for others, and respect for civilization. There was much less war in Christendom ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... supposed to show that the animals have undergone changes in size and that such vast masses require untold ages to accumulate. The first is a biological problem. As for the second, the elements of savage voracity and wastefulness, of uncertainty as to cubical contents on uneven surface, and of the number of mouths to fill, make it hazardous to construct a chronological table on a shell-heap. Hudson's village sites in Patagonia contain pottery, and that ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... Gathering up the reticule with a nervous sweep of the hand, she departed from the theatre, her eyes full of tears. And amid all the wild confusion in her brain one little thought flashed clear and was gone: the wastefulness of paying for a whole night's entertainment and then only getting ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett

... open, but here they were fiercely protected with walls and fences and notice-boards. The land was evidently very precious. I had wandered into truly civilized country, where land and manners were too highly cultivated to please me, and I again regretted the rocky wastefulness that I ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... his energy, his public spirit and indisputable devotion to the furtherance of the Colony's interests, been able to grapple successfully with the giant evil? Has he effectually gained the ear of our masters in Downing Street regarding the inefficiency and wastefulness of Governor Irving's pet department? We presume that his success has been but very partial, for otherwise it is difficult to conceive the motive for [59] retaining the army of officials radiating from that office, with the chief under whose supervision so many architectural and other scandals ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas

... ostentatious display, a desire to outshine others, is a vice of our age, and especially of our country. Some one has said that "investigation would place at the head of the list of the cause of poverty, wastefulness inherited ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... oppose further introduction of anything not essential to national self-preservation, or helpful to national, self-development. Fail he well, might, and without shame; but he could hope at least to save something of worth from the drift of wreckage. The wastefulness of Western life had impressed him more than its greed of pleasure and its capacity for pain: in the clean poverty of his own land he saw strength; in her unselfish thrift, the sole chance of competing with the Occident. ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn

... form of wastefulness and extravagance prevailed in town and country,—nowhere more than at Philadelphia, under the very eyes of Congress,—luxury of dress, luxury of equipage, luxury of the table. We are told of one entertainment at which eight hundred pounds were spent in pastry. As I read the private letters ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... energetic and "forehanded," and without the slightest approach to intentional cruelty, looked to his wife to "keep up her end of the log." He tolerated no wastefulness, and expected to be well fed and comfortable; and comfort with this Yankee mother's son implied tidiness. To meet his view, as well as to satisfy her own conscience, his partner became a model manager, a ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland

... mentioned without my being called also a miser and a usurer of the worst possible sort; whereas my accusers justify themselves in everything, and say that, 'though we have wasted our money, we have started a demand for the higher amenities of life, and therefore encouraged industry with our wastefulness, a far better way of doing things than that practised by Kostanzhoglo, who lives like ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... he returned to Ireland, wedded a maid of whom he had dreamed during all his exile, and settled down there to beggar himself in a life of bibulous ease, gaming, fox-hunting, and wastefulness generally. After some years the wife died, and James Lynch drifted naturally into the conspiracy which led to the first rising for the Pretender, involving himself as deeply as possible, and at its collapse flying once more to France, ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic

... hope he'll bear in mind as it's his mother's family as he owes it to," said Mrs. Glegg. "If he hadn't had them to take after, he'd ha' been poorly off. There was never any failures, nor lawing, nor wastefulness in our family, ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... we buy. It is said that an American ship can be distinguished from the ships of other nations in harbor by the flocks of gulls that hover around to feast on the food thrown overboard. Whether this is true or not, Americans have a reputation for wastefulness. It has been called our chief national sin. It is said that a family in France can live in comfort on what an American family in the same circumstances ordinarily throws away. An average load of garbage in New York City has been shown to contain ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn

... would not have cared much for either of these poets. And yet, so far as straightforwardness in dealing with a subject, and complete though quiet realisation of it goes to make up intensity of poetic mood, Chaucer amply justifies his critic. There is no wastefulness or explosiveness about the old writer. He does his work silently, and with no appearance of effort. His poetry shines upon us like a May morning; but the streak over the eastern hill, the dew on the grass, the wind that bathes the brows of the wayfarer, are not there by haphazard: they are ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... character was not without noble traits, among which a chastity rare for the time, and a liberality and beneficence bordering on wastefulness were prominent. Many of his laws and regulations breathed the spirit of Christian justice and humanity, promoted the elevation of the female sex, improved the condition of slaves and of unfortunates, and gave free play to the efficiency of the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... ostentation, the milliners and tailors, the hairdressers, dancing masters, chefs and lackeys. "You understand," he said, "that in a society dominated by the fact of commercial competition, money is necessarily the test of prowess, and wastefulness the sole criterion of power. So we have, at the present moment, a society with, say, thirty per cent of the population occupied in producing useless articles, and one per cent occupied in destroying them. And this is not all; for ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... it is a serious evil. Our revenue should be ample to meet the ordinary annual demands upon our Treasury, with a sufficient margin for those extraordinary but scarcely less imperative demands which arise now and then. Expenditure should always be made with economy and only upon public necessity. Wastefulness, profligacy, or favoritism in public expenditures is criminal. But there is nothing in the condition of our country or of our people to suggest that anything presently necessary to the public prosperity, security, or honor should ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison

... with justice and mercy. I have come to this conclusion, not only from my own observation, but from what our rulers say of themselves. Honorable Senators have risen in their places again and again, and told the people of the wastefulness and corruption of the present administration. Others have set forth, with equal clearness, the ignorance of our rulers on the question ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... closest economy in the house, though she was too sensible to stint herself in food in view of her constant toil. But one day she detected Mrs. Allen, with her small cunning and her determination to carry her point, practicing a little wastefulness. Edith turned on her with such fierceness that she never dared to repeat the act. Indeed, Edith was becoming very much what she was before Zell ran away, only in addition there was something akin, at times, to Zell's own hardness and recklessness, ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... taxes would be their ruin! The interests of a great nation, among themselves, are often contrary to each other, and each seems alternately to predominate and to decline. "The sting of taxation," observes Mr. Hallam, "is wastefulness; but it is difficult to name a limit beyond which taxes will not be borne without impatience when faithfully applied." In plainer words, this only signifies, we presume, that Mr. Hallam's party would tax us without "wastefulness!" ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... Netherlanders in those days, not watery beams of theological moonshine, fantastical catechism-making, intermingled with scenes of riot and wantonness, which drove old John of Nassau half frantic; with banquetting and guzzling, drinking and devouring, with unchristian flaunting and wastefulness of apparel, with extravagant and wanton dancing, and other lewd abominations; all which, the firm old reformer prophesied, would lead to the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... he returned admiringly, "but thar's something downright takin' in foolishness as long as a woman is pretty. I don't mind it, an' I don't reckon ma would unless it turned to wastefulness. Is thar' any hope you've changed yo' mind since the last ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow

... and pride and confidence in him; but it was full of other feelings, too, which he could not fathom. His trouble was clearer to her than to him; as heavy to bear. To her mind, trained in all the minutiae of domestic economy, the Warden family lived in careless wastefulness. That five women—for Dora was older than she had been when she began to do housework—should require servants, seemed to this New England-born girl mere laziness and pride. That two voting women over twenty should prefer being supported ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... garden helps, and helps greatly, to solve the problem of the feeding of the nations; and that every housewife who practises strict economy puts herself in the ranks of those who serve the nation. This is the time for America to correct her unpardonable fault of wastefulness and extravagance. Let every man and every woman assume the duty of careful, provident use and expenditure as a public duty, as a dictate of patriotism which no one can now expect ever to be excused ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson

... quality. He filled the copper kettle on the stove, carried in the water for Jimmy's morning bath, cleaned the mouse cage. He even insisted on peeling the little German potatoes, until Harmony cried aloud at his wastefulness and took ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... MacGrawler. That worthy Mentor, perceiving that there was an inherent turn for dissipation and extravagance in our hero, resolved magnanimously rather to bring upon himself the sins of treachery and malappropriation than suffer his friend and former pupil to incur those of wastefulness and profusion. Contrary therefore to the agreement made with Paul, instead of giving that youth the half of those profits consequent on his brilliant lucubrations, he imparted to him only one fourth, and, with the utmost tenderness for Paul's salvation, applied the other ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... evils we have to consider on the part of servants are, briefly, ignorance, wastefulness, untidiness, pertness, or downright impudence, and what is called 'independence,' a term which all housekeepers thoroughly understand. I leave out of the category the vices of intemperance and dishonesty, which, although lamentably prevalent among the class ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... delicate dinners were continued every day; and one evening, when Antony playfully blamed her wastefulness, and said that it was not possible to fare in a more costly manner, she told him that the dinner of the next day should cost ten thousand ses-tertia, or three hundred thousand dollars. This he would not believe, and laid her a wager that she would fail in her promise. ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... ordinarily attain an efficiency of thirty per cent. of their capabilities. The turnover in employment was three times what it should have been. Three hundred men were hired for every hundred steadily at work, and the men at work did only a third of the work they could have done. The total wastefulness of man rivaled the ghastly wastefulness of ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... is an interesting story in itself. To compress it into a sentence, we might say that the telephone has completed the labor-saving movement which started with the McCormick reaper in 1831. It has lifted the farmer above the wastefulness of being his own errand-boy. The average length of haul from barn to market in the United States is nine and a half miles, so that every trip saved means an extra day's work for a man and team. Instead of travelling back and forth, often to ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson

... girl. We who were her neighbors were full of gayety, which was but the reflected light from her beaming countenance. It was not the first time that I was full of wonder at the waste of human ability in this world, as a botanist wonders at the wastefulness of nature, the thousand seeds that die, the unused provision of every sort. The reserve force of society grows more and more amazing to one's thought. More than one face among the Bowdens showed that only opportunity and stimulus ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett

... provisions, poor Mrs. Simmons is absolutely at sea. If even for one six months in her life she had been a practical cook, and had really had the charge of the larder, she would not now be haunted, as she constantly is, by an indefinite apprehension of an immense wastefulness, perhaps of the disappearance of provisions through secret channels of relationship and favoritism. She certainly could not be made to believe in the absolute necessity of so many pounds of sugar, quarts of milk, and dozens of eggs, not to mention spices ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... the insensate pride that mothers have in their children's faults, as their quick tempers, or their wastefulness, or their revengefulness, expressed itself in her tone; and it was perhaps this that ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... Wastefulness is opposed to meanness by the very species of its act, since it exceeds the rule of reason, whereas meanness falls short of it. Yet nothing hinders this from being directed to the end of another vice, such as ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... a house in St. Louis, and Fred went into his father's business. At the end of a year, he was mutely appealing to his mother for sympathy. At the end of two, he was drinking and in open rebellion. He had learned to detest his wife. Her wastefulness and cruelty revolted him. The ignorance and the fatuous conceit which lay behind her grimacing mask of slang and ridicule humiliated him so deeply that he became absolutely reckless. Her grace was only an uneasy wriggle, her audacity was the result of ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather

... it, while I try to convince you that art, and all aesthetic activity, is important as a type of the only kind of pleasure which reasonable beings should admit of, the kind of pleasure which tends not to diminish by wastefulness and exclusive appropriation, but to increase by sympathy, the ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee

... than the original. Except for the name on the outside of the tin, the two commodities cannot be told apart. No doubt the imitator has likewise made a fortune. If so, both fortunes have been amassed from a foible to whose blatant uselessness and wastefulness even a Bond Street jeweller or a de-luxe hotel chef would be ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir

... an inquiry concerning that wastefulness of Americanas, but got no satisfactory reply. Kit took the tattered old paper from her hand, and turned it over because of the face of Singleton staring at him from the other side of the page. It was the account of the inquest, ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan

... were a subject people; Europe had discovered America and forgotten it, and in America the arrival of Europeans was recalled only in traditions. But, like other nations, the Toltecs became a prey to self-confidence, to luxury, to wastefulness, and to deadening superstitions. Already the fierce tribes of the North were lurking on the confines of their country in a faith of speedy conquest, and at times it seemed as if the elements were ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... but being, as they were, ardent, emotional natures, they had contrived to extract the best kind of pleasure out of books, art, and music; and the only trace that survived in Hugh's father of the old narrow days, was a deep-seated hatred of wastefulness and luxury, which, in a man of generous nature, produced certain anomalies, hard for his children, living in comparative wealth and ease, to interpret. His father, the boy observed, was liberal to ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... let me dwell a moment on two or three of the most prominent faults of our women, pronounced such by all the world. Of these, the most mischievous and glaring, the most ruinous in thousands of cases, is extravagance. Wastefulness is almost become a trait of our society. American women, especially, are profuse and lavish of money in dress, in equipage, in furniture, in houses, in entertainments, in every particular of life. Everywhere this ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... pavement, exposed to sun and rain, cast down the wrong side up, and as it were thrown away, as when the stones of the Jewish sanctuary were poured out in every street. Nothing reveals the sculptural opulence of Italy like this apparent wastefulness. It seems to proclaim that Italy can afford to make nothing of what would elsewhere be judged worthy of shrines. We say to ourselves, "If such be the things she throws away, what must be her jewels?" ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various

... great wastefulness and violent temper and pride, which made it most difficult to deal with him. He had been entrusted with the commissariat, as with all my other occupations I could not be bothered to sort out and weigh the food for each man at each meal. Alcides would not understand ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... Ohio Glass Works, where his abilities soon began to be recognized. Instead of working now with tingling enthusiasm for Nance and the honeysuckle cottage, he worked doggedly and furiously to meet the increasing expense of Birdie's wastefulness and the maintenance ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice

... matter of fact, "Faith Missions" are decidedly wasteful of means in the conduct of their work. If, in some ways, they practice more economy, in other matters of greatest importance, there is deplorable wastefulness. For, they are wanting both in continuity and in wise management and sane direction. As history has shown, they also easily degenerate into very prudential methods and sensational forms of advertisement which destroy the very faith which the missions were supposed ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones

... the manager, "just cleaned up a deficit in last year's business. Wastefulness and inattention have been the rule heretofore. The autumn clip will leave a small profit over all expenses. Next ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry

... truths can be tolerated—of the kind that takes twenty to the inch; but great truths are apt to be explosive and should therefore be avoided, for they might burst the whole society. This is a propos of a book which Hans Kampe has written, exposing the wastefulness and antiquated condition of the so-called "new system" of railway management introduced, or supposed to have been introduced, by Kampe's and Ravn's brother-in-law, the supervisor-general Riis. The way for Hans to make a career, declares the worldly wise Ravn, is not to oppose the source of promotion ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... the physician to regulate the expenditure of vital force according to the income. He must stop all leaks and guard against wastefulness. ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... Impotence.— N. impotence; inability, disability; disablement, impuissance, imbecility; incapacity, incapability; inaptitude, ineptitude, incompetence, unproductivity[obs3]; indocility[obs3]; invalidity, disqualification; inefficiency, wastefulness. telum imbelle[Lat], brutum fulmen[Lat], blank, blank cartridge, flash in the pan, vox et proeterea nihil[Lat], dead letter, bit of waste paper, dummy; paper tiger; Quaker gun. inefficacy &c. (inutility) 645[obs3]; failure &c. 732. helplessness ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... and philanthropist of no mean proportion, said, "Play must be forbidden in any and all of its forms. The children shall be instructed in this matter in such a way as to show them, through the presentation of religious principles, the wastefulness and folly of all play. They shall be led to see that play will distract their hearts and minds from God, the Eternal Good, and will work nothing but harm to their ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben

... unnecessary for me to say that the more highly cultured they became the more our race improved. Learning never made poor mothers. Ignorance does that. Do not keep education out of the home. Keep out folly, low desires, sordid ambitions, uncultivated tastes, narrow-mindedness, envy, strife, wastefulness, inordinate pleasures, and every evil thing that comes from an empty, ignorant mind. Keep out the darkness; let in the light. It is not God's way to give capacity and desire for noble things, and then shut the ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan

... duties during this time. But, after all, it wasn't astonishing. The moments were too occupied for weariness of soul; our minds rioted with the thought, "He's getting done! Let's get on with it! Let's finish him." And if at times one reflected on the barrenness, the wastefulness of war, there still remained the satisfying of the instinct to do one's work well. The pioneers had done their very best, and made quite a house of our mess, even finding glass to put in the windows. I don't know that the ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)

... Hannah continued her catechising, much to Frank's discomfort. She commented severely upon the wastefulness of ...
— The Telegraph Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... and solemn sententiousness. "Know that in an elaborately organised society, waste has its moral uses. Know further that nothing is more contrary to the truth than the proverb that enough is as good as a feast. Know still further that though the habit of wastefulness may have its dangers, it is not nearly so dangerous as the habit of self-righteousness, or as the habit of nearness, both of which contract the soul until it's more like a prune than a plum. Be a plum, my child, and let who ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett

... the creation of public debts by county, city, and other local authorities. The rule "pay as you go" leads to economy in public as well as in private affairs; while the power to contract debts opens the door to wastefulness, ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard

... the camper has stamped itself upon American life and thought. Venturesomeness, physical and moral daring, resourcefulness in emergencies, indifference to negligible details, wastefulness of materials, boundless hope and confidence in the morrow, are characteristics of the American. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the "good American" has been he who has most resembled a good camper. He has had robust health—unless or until he has abused it,—a tolerant ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry

... would go twice as far if we could gore it," said Eleanor, laughing. "But there's no waste like the wastefulness of ignorance; and oh, Margery, it's the gores I'm afraid of! If skirts were only made the old-fashioned way, like a flannel petticoat! So many pieces all alike—run them together—hem the bottom—gather the top—and there you are, with everything ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... various substances, including such directly practical applications as rough surfaces versus smooth surfaces for stoves, the best color for clothing in summer and in winter, and the like. He promulgated his ideas far and wide, and demonstrated all over Europe the extreme wastefulness of current methods of using fuel. To a certain extent his ideas were adopted everywhere, yet on the whole the public proved singularly apathetic; and, especially in America, an astounding wastefulness in the use of fuel is the general custom now as it was a century ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams

... begged Janith to let him rent a super mech. And she had scoffed at his wastefulness. Yet, now that he remembered it again, there had been a wistful note of ...
— Second Sight • Basil Eugene Wells

... only be struck by the clogging of our social activities through this system of leaving everything to private enterprise; he would also be struck by the immense wastefulness. Everywhere he would see things in duplicate and triplicate; down the High Street of any small town he would find three or four butchers—mostly selling New Zealand mutton and Argentine beef as English—five or six grocers, three or four milk shops, one or two big drapers and three or four ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells

... after a fierce struggle in 193, and the Roman ladies might now adorn themselves with more than half an ounce of gold, wear robes of divers colours and ride in their carriages through any street they pleased.[81] The first enactment which attempted to control the wastefulness of the table was an Orchian law of 181, limiting the number of guests that might be invited to entertainments. Cato was consistent in opposing the passing of the measure and in resisting its repeal. He recognised a futile law when he saw it, but he did not wish this futility to be admitted.[82] ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... the interest on the debt were to remain unpaid twenty-four hours, your body corporate, as you call it, would die a natural death; and what would then become of your knights—barro-knights?—and barren enough some of them are getting to be by their wastefulness and extravagance. Get thee married, Jack, and settle prudently. There is neighbor Silverpenny has an only daughter of a suitable age; and a good hussy is she in the bargain. The only daughter of Oliver Silverpenny will ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... impotence; inability, disability; disablement, impuissance, imbecility; incapacity, incapability; inaptitude, ineptitude, incompetence, unproductivity^; indocility^; invalidity, disqualification; inefficiency, wastefulness. telum imbelle [Lat.], brutum fulmen [Lat.], blank, blank cartridge, flash in the pan, vox et proeterea nihil [Lat.], dead letter, bit of waste paper, dummy; paper tiger; Quaker gun. inefficacy &c (inutility) 645 [Obs.]; failure &c 732. helplessness &c adj.; prostration, paralysis, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... for the interests of both parties. The gradual and inevitable process of ruin which exhibits itself in the long run on every property involving slavery, naturally suggests some element of decay inherent in the system; the reckless habits of extravagance and prodigality in the masters, the ruinous wastefulness and ignorant incapacity of the slaves, the deterioration of the land under the exhausting and thriftless cultivation to which it is subjected, made it evident to me that there were but two means of maintaining a prosperous ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... called upon for aid, and, whereas they were ordered to "dress six of the plumpest fowl in the hennery," they brought a dozen, and for "one likely shoat," they made ready two. Nor, when they were upbraided for wastefulness, were they a whit abashed, but John demanded, ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond

... Rose Mary turned away to her table he licked out his pink tongue and bobbed his head toward the milk crocks, while his solemn eyes conveyed his desire without words. Peter's vocabulary was both new and limited, and he was at all times extremely careful against any wastefulness of it. His lips quivered as if in uncertainty as to whether he was to be left out of this lactic deal, and ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess

... Austrian bank-notes,—in fact, of the same worth as that "Brandon Money" of which Sol. Smith once brought away a hatful from Vicksburg, and was fain to swap it for a box of cigars. The South cannot long hold out under the wastefulness of war, unless relief come. "With bread and gunpowder one may go anywhere," said Napoleon,—but with limited hoecake and no gunpowder, even Governor Wise would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various

... only go over the experiences of the past two years, to compare the receipts of merchants who cater to the working-classes and the statements of savings-banks throughout the country, to read the story of how the foreign-born are learning the habit of criminal wastefulness as taught them ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok

... general fact at the bottom. They may say it is government, climate, soil, want of capital, they may say what they please, but it is the devil of laziness that is in them, or of passion, that comes out in eating, in gluttony, in drinking and drunkenness, in wastefulness on every side. I do not say that the laboring classes in modern society are poor because they are self-indulgent, but I say that it unquestionably would be wise for all men who feel irritated that they are so unprosperous, if they would take heed to the moral condition ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... of highways, bridges, streets, and expenses of police in general; whatever falls on parishes, towns, or counties, in the form of a tax or rate, is generally ill-administered, and the wastefulness increases with wealth. The difficulty of controling or redressing those evils proceeds from the same spirit pervading all the separate administrations. Government alone can remedy this; and it is both the interest and duty of the government to keep a strict watch over every body ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair

... for the pleasures of the table, and, like Isabella, was temperate even to abstemiousness in his diet. [47] He was frugal in his domestic and personal expenditure; partly, no doubt, from a willingness to rebuke the opposite spirit of wastefulness and ostentation in his nobles. He lost no good opportunity of doing this. On one occasion, it is said, he turned to a gallant of the court noted for his extravagance in dress, and laying his hand on his own doublet, ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott

... coming into a period which may be fairly characterized as a conservation of our national resources. Wastefulness in public business and private enterprise has been displaced by constructive economy. This has been accomplished by bringing our domestic and foreign relations more and more under a reign of law. A rule of force has been giving way to a rule of reason. We have substituted ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Calvin Coolidge • Calvin Coolidge

... the cost of kitchen and cellar, and calculate how many pounds of meat each of our tall lackeys consumes per diem, I should not speedily be plagued into grey hairs and wrinkles? I hope we are rich enough to support their wastefulness. And if we are not—why, vogue la galere—when we are ruined the King must do something for Fareham—make him Lord Chancellor. His Majesty is mighty sick of poor old Clarendon and his lectures. Fareham has a long head, and would do as well ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... farming to exploiting has brought out in full view the wastefulness of the farmer economy which is being succeeded by exploitation. The whole doctrine of conservation belongs in this transition. Economy means, literally, housekeeping. The same meaning appears in the word husbandry. ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson

... have come to a head at once; and he hated everything—hated the people he had met, and the things they did, and the things they had tempted him to do. He hated the way he had got his money, and the way he had spent it. He hated the idleness and wastefulness, the drunkenness and debauchery, the meanness ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair

... During the war we had gone into many kinds of war work and had thus been forced to depart from our principle of a single product. This had caused many new departments to be added. The office force had expanded and much of the wastefulness of scattered production had crept in. War work is rush work and is wasteful work. We began throwing out everything that did not contribute to the ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford

... employed to build in Scotland, as they are very generally in England, does not seem to have occurred to your correspondent; I confess it did to me, but considered, to mention it in my trifling "Domestic Hint," quite unnecessary, since, had their wastefulness been hitherto unknown to their employers, it might henceforth, if they pleased "to take a hint," be by them materially checked. In days when the complaint of poverty is universal, when the working classes find it difficult to carry on any employment which shall bring ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 543, Saturday, April 21, 1832. • Various

... — I've got to get over the river; and my little woman'll have something cooked for me; and if I wa'n't there to eat it I shouldn't hear the last of my wastefulness." ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner

... To some readers this fatality may seem a mere luxury of pathos. But it is an essential part of the scheme of the poem. The poet must state his acceptance of life, not only in its splendid and tragic dangers, but in its cruelty and pathetic wastefulness. He must know the worst of it in order to put the best of it to the proof. The worst passes, the best continues—that is the secret enthusiasm of Mr. Masefield's song. Our final vision is of the ship in safety, holding her course to harbour in a ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd

... invariable abundance and wastefulness of bush-farming; no trace of the economy of land, which need perforce be practised in older countries, but an extravagance about the very zigzag fences, which unprofitably occupied, with a succession of triangular ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... quarter-day, bringing fresh confusion, in those inexplicable household expenses, and a miserable sense of wastefulness, and unfaithfulness to her charge. She thought of John's advice, to make her husband attend, if she found her means insufficient; and set herself to draw up a statement of the case, to lay before him; but she grew more ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... entertain harmful opinions of others, which will cause you to deal with them unjustly, and you will suffer consequent remorse. To think you are asphyxiated, denotes you will have trouble which you will needlessly incur through your own wastefulness and negligence. To try to blow gas out, signifies you will entertain enemies unconsciously, who will destroy you if you ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... little nervous when I thought of going over the figures with Polly,—she was such a judicious spender of money. But I knew her criticism would not be severe, for she was hand-in-glove with me in the project. I tried to find fault with myself for wastefulness, but some excellent excuse would always crop up. "Your water tower is unnecessary." "Yes, but it adds to the landscape, and it has its use." "You have put up too much fencing." "True, but I wanted to feel secure, and the old fences were such nests of weeds and rubbish." "You have spent too much money ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter

... island-hills seemed afloat, as in a sea—a sea made of dream-stuff and flushed with colors faint and rich; and dear me, the depth of the sky, and the beauty of the strange new cloud-forms, and the glory of the sunshine, the lavishness, the wastefulness of it! The vigor and freshness and inspiration of the air and the sunwell, it was all just as Olive Schreiner had made ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... usurp property, and declare that, being the Nation, whatever belongs to the Nation belongs to them. The forests of Alsace are laid waste, the seignorial as well as communal, and wantonly destroyed with the wastefulness of children or of maniacs. "In many places, to avoid the trouble of removing the woods, they are burnt, and the people content themselves with carrying off the ashes."—After the decrees of August 4th, and in spite ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... could keep quiet no longer, she was obliged to speak out, and she burst into a tirade against people who called themselves pious, and yet, wilfully shutting their eyes, were about to plunge into wicked wastefulness. She ate as she talked, however, and she had brought up John Wesley, and was about to give her notion of what he would have had to say about a fancy church for a Thorbury congregation, when the plates ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton

... together. He wanted to write a note. So I agreed to let him use it if he wouldn't take it out of my sight and on condition that he didn't write more than five or six line's. But when he made as if he was going to sharpen it, I threatened him with an ax. Can you beat that for wastefulness? These low-down rich don't know the meaning of frugality. Why, if I hadn't stopped him he might have whittled off five thousand dollars' worth of lead, just like that. I also had to caution him about bearing down too hard while ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon

... as senior curate, he had felt the alteration most heavily. He had to be, or to refuse to be, my Lady's instrument in her various appeals; he came in for her indignation at wastefulness, and at the unauthorised demands on the Rector; he had to feel what it was to have no longer unlimited resources of broth and wine to fall back upon at the Rectory; he had to supply the shortcomings of the new staff brought in on lower terms—and ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and gaunter than ever that morning, and as he looked around the great Hall, he shook his head at its faded grandeur reprehensively, as if he could, if time permitted, deliver a sermon on the prodigality, the wicked wastefulness, which had brought ruin on the house, and rendered it necessary for him to extend his charity to ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice

... required almost every month, in fact, all sorts of things that could not possibly be dispensed with. One might strike a dish or two out of the daily menu, and even go without wine; but evenings came when it was absolutely necessary to take a cab. And, apart from all this, one had to reckon with the wastefulness of the children, the disorder in which the discouraged wife left the house, and the despair of the husband, who was convinced that he would never extricate himself from his difficulties, even should his salary some day be raised to as high a figure as 4000 ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... far as the parable reveals his history, he was not like him found again: he, like his brother, went astray; but unlike him, refused to come back. The father was grieved as much by the sullen, dry, hard, cold, dead formality of his elder son, as by the prodigal wastefulness of the younger, without getting the sorrow balanced by a subsequent joy. Whited sepulchre! what will thy residence in the house, and thy constant and punctilious profession avail thee while thou art planting daggers in thy father's heart, and nursing vile hypocrisy in thy own? ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... millions have been provided by voluntary gifts for the Red Cross, Knights of Columbus, Hebrew Charities, and Christian Associations. The people are turning to their places of worship with a new religious fervor. Everywhere selfishness is giving way to service, idleness to industry, wastefulness ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge

... plate of poached eggs cooked in a pan not over clean; saintliness in the enforced attention which she gave to Keziah's rambling stories of her pigs and her chickens, her mother's ailments, Jenny's shortcomings in the matter of sweepings and savings, Tim's wastefulness in the garden over the kailrunts, and the hardships of life on a lone woman left with only a huzzy to look after her; saintliness in the repression of that proud, fastidious self to which Keziah's familiarity and snuff, Jenny's familiarity and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various

... other waste paper, in which the children are entirely unhampered by such injunctions as, "Be careful and get it just right the first time, because you can't have another paper if you waste this piece." The possible danger of cultivating wastefulness is less serious and more easily overcome than the very probable danger of dwarfing and cramping the power of expression. Here, if anywhere, the rule holds good that we learn to do by doing, and abundant practice is essential ...
— Primary Handwork • Ella Victoria Dobbs

... rude couch to another. As to supplies, hardly a man in a regiment knew how to make out a requisition for rations or for clothing, and easy as it is to rail at "red tape," the necessity of keeping a check upon embezzlement and wastefulness justified the staff bureaus at Washington in insisting upon regular vouchers to support the quartermaster's and commissary's accounts. But here, too, men were gradually found who had ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... prone to speak of the resources of this country as inexhaustible; this is not so. The mineral wealth of the country, the coal, iron, oil, gas, and the like, does not reproduce itself, and therefore is certain to be exhausted ultimately; and wastefulness in dealing with it to-day means that our descendants will feel the exhaustion a generation or two before they otherwise would. But there are certain other forms of waste which could be entirely stopped—the waste of soil by washing, for instance, which is among the most ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... keep down the growth of forests. In the military periods of Roman and other invasions, large timber was required for offensive and defensive operations; and in our generation, when the population there is exceedingly diminished, the ignorance, the bad government, and the wastefulness of uncivilisation, produce the same result of destroying or hindering ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn

... the Medway, and their guns were heard in London. Peace became necessary, and in August Clarendon was dismissed from office. The discord between the crown and Parliament paralyzed the nation, and the wastefulness of Charles kept him always poor. By the treaty of Dover in 1670 he became a pensioner of Louis XIV. The Cabal followed, probably the worst ministry England ever saw; and in 1672, at Clifford's suggestion, the exchequer was closed and the debt repudiated to provide funds ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... it was not to the country as it existed for the feudal noble of the North. Boar and stag hunts had no attraction for quiet men of business; forests stocked with wild beasts where vineyard and cornfield might have extended, would have seemed to them the very height of wastefulness, discomfort, and ugliness. Pacific and businesslike, they merely transferred to the country the habits of thought and of life which had arisen in the city. Not for them any imitation of the feudal ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee

... The wastefulness of the settlers with the noble trees of this country is shocking, Monsieur Le Quoi, as doubt less you have noticed. I have seen a man fell a pine, when he has been in want of fencing stuff, and roll his first cuts ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper



Words linked to "Wastefulness" :   squandering, wasteful, waste of energy, waste of material, waste of money, highlife, improvidence, prodigality, high life, boondoggle, lavishness, shortsightedness, waste of effort, activity, waste of time, extravagance



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