Useless Quotes - Page 12

• As for my memory, I have a particularly good one. I never keep any record of my investigations or experiments. My memory files all these things away conveniently and reliably. I should say, though, that I didn’t cumber it up with a lot of useless matter.

  Charles Proteus Steinmetz

  Memories, Records, Matter

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• We have two useless gods who never leave our island, but like to dwell in it constantly, Poverty and Helplessness.

  Herodotus

  Islands, Two, Poverty

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• The useless search of philosophers for a cause of the universe is a regressus in infinitum (a stepping backwards into the infinite) and resembles climbing up an endless ladder, the recurring question as to the cause of the cause rendering the attainment of a final goal impossible.

  Ludwig Buchner

  Climbing, Goal, Finals

  Ludwig Büchner (1884). “Force and Matter: Or, Principles of the Natural Order of the Universe. With a System of Morality Based Thereon”

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• Theoretical Computer Science is just as useless as everything we mathematicians do.

  Jennifer Tour Chayes

  Science, Computer, Mathematics

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• . . . the fact that [English] has shed most of the old grammatical forms which time has rendered useless and scarcely intelligible, has made English a model, pointing the way which must be followed in building the Interlanguage. . .

  Sylvia Pankhurst

  Way, Facts, Building

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• Any woman who does not live for unselfish service is a useless cumberer of the earth.

  Anna Howard Shaw

  Women, Earth, Doe

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• A man who lacks reliability is utterly useless.

  Confucius

  Men, Reliability

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• It is the folly of weak-minded people, to imagine they are what flattery or conceit represents them; and that it is useless for them to be what they are not, since they seem already to have acquired the reputation of it.

  Norm MacDonald

  People, Reputation, Flattery

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• Fresh pitsand, however, in spite of all its excellence in concrete structures, is not equally useful in stucco, the richness of which, when the lime and straw are mixed with such sand, will cause it to crack as it dries on account of the great strength of the mixture. But river sand, though useless in "signinum" on account of its thinness, becomes perfectly solid in stucco when thoroughly worked by means of polishing instruments.

  Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

  Mean, Rivers, Excellence

  "De architectura". Book by Vitruvius. Book II, Chapter IV, Section 3,

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• A lofty mind always thinks nobly, it easily creates vivid, agreeable, and natural fancies, places them in their best light, clothes them with all appropriate adornments, studies others' tastes, and clears away from its own thoughts all that is useless and disagreeable.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Thinking, Light, Clothes

  "Reflections on Various Subjects". Book by François de La Rochefoucauld, www.gutenberg.org. 1678.

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• It seems to me that your doctor [Tronchin] is more of a philosopher than a physician. As for me, I much prefer a doctor who is anoptimist and who gives me remedies that will improve my health. Philosophical consolations are, after all, useless against real ailments. I know only two kinds of sickness--physical and moral: all the others are purely in the imagination.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Real, Philosophical, Doctors

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• Little minds mistake little objects for great ones, and lavish away upon the former that time and attention which only the latterdeserve. To such mistakes we owe the numerous and frivolous tribe of insect-mongers, shell-mongers, and pursuers and driers of butterflies, etc. The strong mind distinguishes, not only between the useful and the useless, but likewise between the useful and the curious.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Strong, Mistake, Butterfly

  Lord Chesterfield (1998). “Lord Chesterfield's Letters”, p.160, OUP Oxford

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• Show me a thoroughly contented person, and I will show you a useless one.

  Josh Billings

  Contentment, Show Me, Shows

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• Maybe it's understandable what a history of failures America's foreign policy has been. We are, after all, a country full of people who came to America to get away from foreigners. Any prolonged examination of the U.S. government reveals foreign policy to be America's miniature schnauzer -- a noisy but small and useless part of the national household.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Country, Government, America

  P.J. O'Rourke (1991). “PARLIAMENT OF WHORES A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government”

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• Who is it that does not voluntarily exchange his health, his repose, and his very life for reputation and glory? The most useless, frivolous, and false coin that passes current among us.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Doe, Coins, Reputation

  Michel de Montaigne (2015). “Montaigne's Essays: Top Essays”, p.262, 谷月社

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• No good play is a success; fine writing and high morals are useless on the stage. I have been scribbling twaddle for thirty-five years to suit the public taste, and I should know.

  W. S. Gilbert

  Writing, Years, Play

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• There is nothing more vulgar than a petty bourgeois life with its halfpence, its victuals, its futile talk, and its useless conventional virtue.

  Anton Chekhov

  Vapid, Mediocrity, Virtue

  "Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends: With Biographical Sketch". Book by Anton Chekhov, 1920.

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• To regard the excesses of the passions as maladies has so salutary an effect that this idea renders all moral sermons useless.

  Pierre-Claude-Victor Boiste

  Passion, Ideas, Excess

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• The arbitrary division of one's life into weeks and days and hours seemed, on the whole, useless. There was but one day for the men, and that was pay day, and one for the women, and that was rent day. As for the children, every day was theirs, just as it should be in every corner of the world.

  Alice Hegan Rice

  Children, Men, One Day

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• It is useless to check the vain dunce who has caught the mania of scribbling, whether prose or poetry, canzonets or criticisms,--let such a one go on till the disease exhausts itself. Opposition like water, thrown on burning oil, but increases the evil, because a person of weak judgment will seldom listen to reason, but become obstinate under reproof.

  Sarah Josepha Hale

  Oil, Water, Evil

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• There's only one way for an individual to remain upright, not to fall to pieces, not to sink into the mire of self-oblivionorself-contempt. That's calmly to turn away from everything, to say, "Enough!" and, folding one's useless arms across one's empty breast, to retain the ultimate, the sole attainable virtue, the virtue of recognizing one's own insignificance.

  Ivan Turgenev

  Fall, Self, Pieces

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• The age-old faith of lovers and poets in the power of love, stronger than death, that Finis vitae sed non amoris, is a lie, useless and not even funny.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Lying, Age, Stronger

  "Solaris". Book by Stanisław Lem. Chapter 14: "The Old Mimoid", p. 204, 1961.

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• Symmetrical equations are good in their place, but ' vector ' is a useless survival, or offshoot from quaternions, and has never been of the slightest use to any creature.

  Lord Kelvin

  Survival, Use, Vectors

  "A History of Vector Analysis : The Evolution of the Idea of a Vectorial System" by Michael J. Crowe, (p. 120), 1994.

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• For a few brief days the orchards are white with blossoms. They soon turn to fruit, or else float away, useless and wasted, upon the idle breeze. So will it be with present feelings. They must be deepened into decision, or be entirely dissipated by delay.

  Theodore L. Cuyler

  White, Decision, Feelings

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, (p. 186), 1895.

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• Giving other people advice is one of the most irritating and useless activities known to man.

  Barbara Mertz

  Men, People, Giving

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