Unproductive Effort Quotes

Verily, I do not want to be like the ropemakers: They drag out their threads and always walk backwards.

If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.

I can't say that I knocked on every door, but the few that I did didn't respond the way I wanted them to, so I think it was kind of disenchanting enough for me to go back to being subterranean.

When I force things, it just doesn't go well.

Chess is a sad waste of brains.

I'm always working on stuff. But they never materialize. I'm always working on movies and TV shows.

And never since harvests were ripened, / Or laborers born, / Have men gathered figs of the thistle, / Or grapes of the thorn!

Depend upon it, Sir, nothing will come of them!

I got an ant farm; them fellas didn't grow sh*t.

Unproductive effort is never a good thing.

It is always annoying when you cannot play and cannot help the team.

Working for a federal agency was like trying to dislodge a prune skin from the roof of the mouth. More enterprise went into the job than could be justified by the results.

Birds buildbut not I build; no, but strain, Time's eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes. Mine,O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.

The wages of pedantry is pain.

Very few people possess true artistic ability. It is therefore both unseemly and unproductive to irritate the situation by making an effort. If you have a burning, restless urge to write or paint, simply eat something sweet and the feeling will pass.

Energy wasted on negative ends.

If you are looking for a needle in a haystack, why make the haystack bigger.

About the use of language: it is impossible to sharpen a pencil with a blunt axe. It is equally vain to try to do it with ten blunt axes instead.

Forasmuch as many people study more to have knowledge than to live well therefore ofttimes they err and bring forth little fruit or none.

Much outcry, little outcome.

It is useless work that darkens the heart.

Answers are not obtained by putting the wrong question and thereby begging the real one.

he had been making an unsuccessful effort to write something about nothing in particular