turn to good account

1. Use for one's benefit, as in He turned the delay to good account, using the time to finish correspondence. This idiom, first recorded in 1878, uses account in the sense of “a reckoning.”

Example Sentences

There is no capacity of our nature, no element of human society which the gospel of Christ cannot sanctify and turn to good account.

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Mistakes and failures—even sin itself, He can, by means of the contrition which it causes, turn to good account, as He did in the cases of St Mary Magdalen, of St Peter, and of innumerable others.

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Mentally, too, was he no less improved, and the process by which that desirable state of things had come about was, in his own words, that his ups and downs had knocked all the nonsense out of him, and prepared him to appreciate and turn to good account his luck when it came.

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Anyhow it is a distinct Negro characteristic, which Junker was able to turn to good account during the building of his famous Lacrima station in Ndoruma's country.

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Even their failures when rightly interpreted, may turn to good account.

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