burn the candle at both ends

Cultural  

1. To do more than one ought to; to overextend oneself: “His doctor said that his illness was brought on by stress and recommended that he stop burning the candle at both ends.”

---

burn the candle at both ends Idioms  

1. Exhaust one's energies or resources by leading a hectic life. For example, Joseph's been burning the candle at both ends for weeks, working two jobs during the week and a third on weekends. This metaphor originated in France and was translated into English in Randle Cotgrave's Dictionary (1611), where it referred to dissipating one's wealth. It soon acquired its present broader meaning.

---

Example Sentences

Because we can, because we're young, we push ourselves too hard, we burn the candle at both ends, she said, which created problems that arose when people where in their 50s.

From BBC • Jan. 19, 2026

One thinks of what a journalist wrote about another hard-living star: “Keith Richards doesn’t so much burn the candle at both ends as apply a blow torch to the middle.”

From Washington Post • May 18, 2021

“I didn’t just burn the candle at both ends, I was also finding new ends to light.”

From New York Times • Oct. 24, 2020

In a LinkedIn post last year, The Huffington Post president and editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington revealed that she’s often asked if young people pursuing their dreams should burn the candle at both ends?

From Time • Jul. 24, 2015

In a life of tense intellectual effort, a certain smoothness of emotional tenor were to be desired; or we burn the candle at both ends.

From Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Stevenson, Robert Louis