Prodigality Quotes

If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be, as Poor Richard says, “the greatest prodigality'; since, as he elsewhere tells us, 'Lost time is never found again'; and 'What we call time enough always proves little enough'. Let us then up and be doing, and doing to the purpose; so by diligence shall we do more with less perplexity.

It is not that we have so little time but that we lose so much. ... The life we receive is not short but we make it so; we are not ill provided but use what we have wastefully.

Prodigality of Time produces Poverty of Mind as well as of Estate.

If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be the greatest prodigality.

Experiences are savings which a miser puts aside. Wisdom is an inheritance which a wastrel cannot exhaust.

Only the wasteful virtues earn the sun.

Frugality is good if liberality be joined with it. The first is leaving off superfluous expenses; the last is bestowing them to the benefit of others that need. The first without the last begets covetousness; the last without the first begets prodigality.

If a man is prodigal, he cannot be truly generous.

Prodigality is indeed the vice of a weak nature, as avarice is of a strong one; it comes of a weak craving for those blandishments of the world which are easily to be had for money, and which, when obtained, are as much worse than worthless as a harlot's love is worse than none.

That plenty should produce either covetousness or prodigality is a perversion of providence; and yet the generality of men are the worse for their riches.

Nothing lies on our hands with such uneasiness as time. Wretched and thoughtless creatures! In the only place where covetousness were a virtue we turn prodigals.

It is better to burn the candle at both ends, and in the middle, too, than to put it away in the closet and let the mice eat it.

[Meanness] is more ingrained in man's nature than Prodigality; the mass of mankind are avaricious rather than open-handed.

Courage is generosity of the highest order, for the brave are prodigal of the most precious things.

Hope is a prodigal young heir, and experience is his banker.

Gaming is the child of avarice, but the parent of prodigality.

The vegetable life does not content itself with casting from the flower or the tree a single seed, but it fills the air and earth with a prodigality of seeds, that, if thousands perish, thousands may plant themselves, that hundreds may come up, that tens may live to maturity; that, at least one may replace the parent.

The genius-in work and in deed-is necessarily a squanderer: the fact that he spends himself constitutes his greatness.

We of an older generation can get along with what we have, though with growing hardship; but in your full manhood and womanhood you will want what nature once so bountifully supplied and man so thoughtlessly destroyed; and because of that want you will reproach us, not for what we have used, but for what we have wasted...So any nation which in its youth lives only for the day, reaps without sowing, and consumes without husbanding, must expect the penalty of the prodigal whose labor could with difficulty find him the bare means of life.

Laughter is easier minute by minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word.

We deny that it is fun to be saving. It is fun to be prodigal. Go to the butterfly, thou parsimonious sluggard; consider her ways and get wise.

For washing his hands, none sels his lands.

Corrupt influence is itself the perennial spring of all prodigality, and of all disorder; it loads us more than millions of debt; takes away vigor from our arms, wisdom from our councils, and every shadow of authority and credit from the most venerable parts of our constitution.

Hee will spend a whole yeares rent at one meales meate.

Tis strange the miser should his cares employTo gain those riches he can ne'er enjoy;Is it less strange the prodigal should wasteHis wealth to purchase what he ne'er can taste?