Chapter 29, Time, 

From Part 4  "The Art of Arts"

One who wastes time is throwing away vital values, and one who has no manhood to match its great values degrades time to the level of his own littleness. If one's time is not valuable, it is because his life has no value. Time is then an indication and a measure of personal values. Out in Denver is the headquarters of a club called the On Timer's Tribe, whose laudable purpose is to get people to be always on time.

It is a truism that no time should ever be lost any more than diamonds should be lost from the finger or the ear, or money be lost from the pocket. In order to save time, one must use it, and he cannot use it unless he has a calling in which he can use it. If, in his calling, he has more time than he can use, he must enlarge the calling by putting more into it, or spend the leisure time in self-culture and philanthropy. Well does Prof. Matthews say, "it is a truism, which cannot be too often repeated, that lost wealth may be replenished by industry, lost knowledge by study, lost health by temperance or medicine, but lost time is gone forever."

"Every moment we now lose is so much character and advantage lost; as, on the other hand, every moment we now employ usefully is so much time wisely laid out at prodigious interest."

 

Time is vindictive. Mistreat it and it will punish you; be true to it, and it will afford you pleasure. Richard II. was a failure, and, as he neared the end, he cried out hopelessly: "I wasted time, and now doth time waste me." He who trifles with time is trifling with priceless treasures. He who uses other people's time carelessly is immoral. Even that which is spent in rest and recreation is to be spent with scrupulous sensitiveness to its intrinsic value and its value in preparing one for future labor.

 

No one can use time aright unless he uses it systematically. One's life plan must take into account the years of his life in the bulk; the separate years with their separate opportunities and duties; the various months and seasons of each current year, the days of the weeks as they pass by. He must plan the achievements of his lifetime; he must assign to the various years their proper part; he must use the seasons of each year for all that they can do; he must know what to do with each separate day of the week. The only way to keep from murdering time is to perfect each day's work on that day. Finish the duties of the forenoon before twelve, and keep the duties of the afternoon and the evening from crowding over into the next day. All our successful men understand the value of a systematic use of time.

— James S. Kirtley, The Young Man and Himself, pp 209-210.