Every man wastes more than time enough

But, says one, our busy lives leave no time for study and reading. Our energies are exhausted and our time consumed in the harrowing duties of daily toil. We have no time for your ideal of continuous study. In reply I have only to point you to some of the world’s great workers to show the utter falsity of such a position. William Cullen Bryant edited a New York daily for many years; but even under the pressure of such great responsibility he managed to write poems and translate the Iliad of Homer into matchless English verse. Mr. Gladstone has been three times Prime Minister of England, and, with the weight of English State upon him, he is one of the most profound Greek scholars of the world, and has published numerous volumes written with most creditable literary skill. Every man wastes more than time enough to make him famous. Half an hour a day saved from the wasted moments of your life and devoted to any field of inquiry will make you master of it in a dozen years. Take the half hour that you wait for breakfast, save an hour in the evening and devote it to well-directed work and you will be astonished at the progress you will make in a single month. 

-- J. Clinton Ransom, “In School and Out of School” from The Successful Man in His Manifold Relations to Life (1886) via Manvotional: Your Education Doesn't End on Graduation Day