Useless Quotes - Page 33

• You could never teach other people anything that mattered. The important things they had to learn for themselves, almost always by making mistakes, so that the lessons arrived too late to help. Experience was in that sense useless. It was precisely what could not be passed along in a lesson.

  Kim Stanley Robinson

  Mistake, People, Important

  Kim Stanley Robinson (2009). “Galileo's Dream”, p.651, Spectra

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. [...] It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. [...] It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Wall, Mistake, Men

  SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, Choi Hyun (2016). “A Study in Scarlet”, p.13, ebookspub

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The art of splitting hairs four ways. This is the department of useless techniques. Mechanical Avunculogratulation, for example, is how to build machines for greeting uncles. We're not sure, though, if Pylocatabasis belongs, since it's the art of being saved by a hair. Somehow that doesn't seem completely useless.

  Umberto Eco

  Art, Uncles, Hair

  4 Copy quote

• For it may safely be said, not that the habit of ready and correct observation will by itself make us useful nurses, but that without it we shall be useless with all our devotion.

  Florence Nightingale

  Nurse, May, Devotion

  Florence Nightingale (1860). “Notes on Nursing: What it Is, and what it is Not”, p.160

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is useless to talk with those who do not understand one and troublesome to talk with those who criticize from a feeling of superiority. Especially one-sided persons are troublesome. Few are accomplished in many arts and most cling narrowly to their own opinion.

  Murasaki Shikibu

  Art, Feelings, Opinion

  Amy Lowell, Murasaki Shikibu, Annie Shepley Omori, Kochi Doi (2003). “Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan”, p.24, Courier Corporation

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• I thought, "Why? and how did we evolve with this weak, and useless passion in tact within the deep heart's core?" And the answer as I've formulated it to myself is that empathy is the engine that powers all the best in us.

  Meryl Streep

  Passion, Heart, Empathy

  8 Copy quote

• If we are understood, more words are unnecessary; if we are not likely to be understood, they are useless.

  Charles II of England

  Unnecessary, Understood, Ifs

  "Hudibras" by Samuel Butler, edited by Henry George Bohn, (Part 1, Canto 1), 1859.

  34 Copy quote

  Show source

• Many people are busy trying to find better ways of doing things that should not have to be done at all. There is no progress in merely finding a better way to do a useless thing.

  Henry Ford

  Useless Things, People, Progress

  65 Copy quote

• Nor can they understand why a totally useless substance like gold should now, all over the world, be considered far more important than human beings, who gave it such value as it has, purely for their own convenience.

  Thomas More

  Important, Gold, Substance

  14 Copy quote

• The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming.

  Cheryl Strayed

  Jobs, Sex, Reading

  Cheryl Strayed (2013). “Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Someone Who’s Been There”, p.248, Atlantic Books Ltd

  38 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is useless for large companies of believers to spend long hours begging God to send revival. Unless we intend to reform we may as well not pray. Unless praying men have the insight and faith to amend their whole way of life to conform to the New Testament pattern there can be no true revival.

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  Men, Long, Religion

  7 Copy quote

• Where error is irreparable, repentance is useless.

  Edward Gibbon

  Errors, Repentance, Irreparable

  Edward Gibbon (2008). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.35, Cosimo, Inc.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• A religion that costs nothing is worth nothing. A cheap Christianity, without a cross, will prove in the end a useless Christianity, without a crown.

  J. C. Ryle

  Christian, Religion, Deep Thought

  J.C. Ryle (2015). “Holiness: It's Nature, Hindrances, Difficulties, and Roots”, p.106, Letcetera Publishing

  94 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have not so great a struggle with my vices, great and numerous as they are, as I have with my impatience. My efforts are not absolutely useless; yet I have never been able to conquer this ferocious wild beast.

  John Calvin

  Struggle, Effort, Vices

  8 Copy quote

• And don't forget: time is meant to be wasted, love fails and death is useless.

  Charles Bukowski

  Chaos, Forget, Failing

  65 Copy quote

• It would add much to human happiness, if an art could be taught of forgetting all of which the remembrance is at once useless and afflictive, that the mind might perform its functions without encumbrance, and the past might no longer encroach upon the present.

  Samuel Johnson

  Art, Memories, Past

  Samuel Johnson (2009). “Samuel Johnson: Selected Writings”, p.82, Harvard University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Much is now being said about evangelism; but before we get effective evangelism, we have to get effective evangelists. Evangelism is useless unless it is the work of one devoted to God, willing and glad to suffer all things for God, penetrated by the attractiveness of God. New machinery, adaptations and adjustments, are not the first need... but more devoted, adoring, sacrificial souls.

  Evelyn Underhill

  Soul, Suffering, Firsts

  Evelyn Underhill (1960). “The Mount of Purification”

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• Far best is he who is himself all-wise, and he, too, good who listens to wise words; But whoso is not wise or lays to hear another's wisdom is a useless man.

  Hesiod

  Wise, Wisdom, Men

  14 Copy quote

• If I am incompetent, I am useless, the people of India will see that.

  Rahul Gandhi

  People, India, Incompetent

  10 Copy quote

• I am very much interested in the so-called useless object. I mean, it takes perfect craftsmanship, beautiful material carefully measured and crafted, but at the same time it’s really useless.

  Ai Weiwei

  Beautiful, Mean, Perfect

  "Change" on PBS, Episode 1, Season Six, April 2012.

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is my belief that in our mad world where there is so much pain, rivalry, hatred, violence, inequality, and oppression, it is people who are weak, rejected, marginalized, counted as useless, who can become a source of life and of salvation for us as individuals as well as for our world. And it is my hope that each one of you may experience the incredible gift of the friendship of people who are poor and weak, that you too, may receive life from them. For they call us to love, to communion, to compassion and to community.

  Jean Vanier

  Pain, Compassion, Our World

  193 Copy quote

• Rain which falls upon the sea is useless; so is food for one who is satiated; in vain is a gift for one who is wealthy; and a burning lamp during the daytime is useless.

  Chanakya

  Rain, Fall, Sea

  26 Copy quote

• Surrounded and absorbed, we tread like Etruscans on the edge of useless law; we pray to the giver of prayer, we give the cane whistle in ceremony, we swing the heavy silver chain of incense burners. Migration makes new citizens of Rome.

  Elizabeth Cook-Lynn

  Prayer, Swings, Rome

  Elizabeth Cook-Lynn (1983). “Seek the House of Relatives”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The idea of the past is as useless as the idea of the future. Both could be invoked by anybody about anything. There is never any more beauty than there is now. There is no more joy or wonder or sorrow than there is now, nor perfection, nor any more evil nor any more good than there is now.

  Richard Flanagan

  Past, Ideas, Evil

  Richard Flanagan (2016). “Gould's Book of Fish”, p.423, Random House

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• The greatest gift of life on the mountain is time. Time to think or not think, read or not read, scribble or not scribble -- to sleep and cook and walk in the woods, to sit and stare at the shapes of the hills. I produce nothing but words; I consumer nothing but food, a little propane, a little firewood. By being utterly useless in the calculations of the culture at large I become useful, at last, to myself.

  Philip Connors

  Sleep, Thinking, Mountain

  7 Copy quote