Useless Quotes - Page 37

• The whole idea of ideas in art is useless. Only have ideas about form.

  Matthew Collings

  Art, Ideas, Form

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• For those who do not wish to step away from consensus, the creative is useless at best; at worst, it is dangerous.

  Deena Metzger

  Creative, Wish, Steps

  Deena Metzger (2009). “Writing for Your Life: Discovering the Story of Your Life's Jou”, p.7, Harper Collins

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• I am afraid! It is not starving I fear, or talking to people, or even being alone. But I cannot bear to be useless and ineffectual. There must be some meaning to me, if not to my life; there must surely be some purpose that has my name written on it. If this is not so, if I am deceiving myself about this too, then why should I want to become real? What reason have I to live anywhere?

  Peter S. Beagle

  Real, Talking, Names

  Peter S. Beagle (2003). “A fine and private place: The last unicorn”

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• Every one who has a heart and eyes sees that you, working men, are obliged to pass your lives in want and in hard labor, which is useless to you, while other men, who do not work, enjoy the fruits of your labor that you are the slaves of these men, and that this ought not to exist.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Heart, Eye, Men

  "To the Working People". Complete Works, translated by Leo Wiener, Volume 24, p. 129, 1905.

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• A better distribution of incomes would increase that efficiency by diverting a great fund of wealth from the useless to the useful members of society. To cut off the income of the useless will not impair their efficiency. They have none to impair. It will, in fact, compel them to acquire a useful function.

  Walter Lippmann

  Cutting, Facts, Income

  Walter Lippmann, Julien C. Sprott (2015). “Drift and Mastery: An Attempt to Diagnose the Current Unrest”, p.74, University of Wisconsin Pres

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• Evil men of every degree will use you, flatter you, lead you on until you are useless; then, if the virtuous do not pity you, or God compassionate, you are without a friend in the universe.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Men, Evil, Degrees

  Henry Ward Beecher (1856). “Lectures to young men: on various important subjects”, p.134

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• You will hear words old and spent and useless like costumes left over from yesterday's parties.

  Cesare Pavese

  Party, Yesterday, Costumes

  Cesare Pavese, Geoffrey Brock (2002). “Disaffections: complete poems 1930-1950”, Copper Canyon Pr

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• Our passions are the chief means of self-preservation; to try to destroy them is therefore as absurd as it is useless; this would be to overcome nature, to reshape God's handiwork. If God bade man annihilate the passions he has given him, God would bid him be and not be; He would contradict himself. He has never given such a foolish commandment, there is nothing like it written on the heart of man, and what God will have a man do, He does not leave to the words of another man. He speaks Himself; His words are written in the secret heart.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Mean, Passion, Heart

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau (2009). “Emile: Or, On Education”, p.384, The Floating Press

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• It would be hard to conceive of any activity more useless than stamp collecting.

  Dave Barry

  Would Be, Stamp Collecting, Stamps

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• With useless endeavour Forever, forever, Is Sisyphus rolling His stone up the mountain!

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Forever, Mountain, Stones

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Masque Of Pandora”

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• Nothing useless is, or low; Each thing in its place is best; And what seems but idle show Strengthens and supports the rest.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Support, Lows, Shows

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1867). “The Poetical Works of H. W. Longfellow. Complete Edition”, p.134

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• Respectability is a very good thing in its way, but it does not rise superior to all considerations. I would not for a moment venture to hint that it was a matter of taste; but I think I will go as far as this: that if a position is admittedly unkind, uncomfortable, unnecessary, and superfluously useless, although it were as respectableasthe Church of England, the sooner a man is out of it, the better for himself, and all concerned.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Men, Thinking, Church

  1878 An Inland Voyage,'At Maubeuge'.

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• We waste half our strength in a useless regretting; We sit by old tombs in the dark too long.

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox

  Regret, Dark, Long

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox (2016). “Complete Poetical Works of Ella Wheeler Wilcox (Delphi Classics)”, p.665, Delphi Classics

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• To me, it appears no unjust simile to compare the affairs of this great Continent to the mechanism of a clock, each state representing some one or other of the smaller parts of it which they are endeavoring to put in fine order without considering how useless & unavailing their labor is unless the great Wheel or Spring which is to set the whole in motion is also well attended to & kept in good order.

  George Washington

  Spring, Order, Unjust

  George Washington, John Clement Fitzpatrick, David Maydole Matteson, United States George Washington Bicentennial Commission (1779). “The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745-1799”, p.301

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• By what strange law of mind is it that an idea long overlooked, and trodden under foot as a useless stone, suddenly sparkles out in new light, as a discovered diamond?

  Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Law, Ideas, Feet

  Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Beecher STOWE (2016). “Collected Works (Complete and Illustrated Editions: Uncle Tom's Cabin, Queer Little Folks, The Chimney-Corner, ...)”, p.364, Harriet Beecher Stowe

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• Nine tenths of modern science is in this respect the same: it is the produce of men whom their contemporaries thought dreamers - who were laughed at for caring for what did not concern them - who, as the proverb went, 'walked into a well from looking at the stars' - who were believed to be useless, if anyone could be such.

  Walter Bagehot

  Life, Stars, Caring

  Walter Bagehot (1873). “Physics and Politics: Or, Thoughts on the Application of the Principles of "natural Selection" and "inheritance" to Political Society”, p.187

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• The English also had a reputation, shared with the Dutch, for blowing up their ships to avoid capture. In 1611, for instance, the Spanish Admiral Don Pedro de toledo captured a Turkish pirate ship, but its English consort, 'being wont to seek a voluntary death rather than yield, blew up their ship when they saw resistance useless'. Blowing up their ships, or at least threatening to do so, would become standard pirate practice.

  Peter Earle

  Practice, Yield, Pirate

  Peter Earle (2013). “The Pirate Wars”, p.30, Macmillan

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• Gold is the most useless thing in the world. I am not interested in money but in the things of which money is merely a symbol.

  Henry Ford

  Wisdom, Useless Things, Gold

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• All the sutras in the world are useless. All the lectures of all the teachers don't really mean anything. They are only words. They point in a direction, that is their only use.

  Frederick Lenz

  Teacher, Mean, Use

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• It is useless saying that we do not accept the gods of the primitive world. In form, no; in essence, yes. The fact before us is that all ideas of gods can be traced to the earliest stages of human history.... There is an unbroken line of descent linking the gods of the most primitive peoples to those of modern man. We reject the world of the savage; but we still, in our churches, mosques, synagogues and temples, perpetuate the theories he built upon that world.

  Chapman Cohen

  Men, Ideas, Essence

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• Legislatures have no right to set up an inquisition and examine into the private opinions of men. Test-laws are useless and ineffectual, unjust and tyrannical.

  Oliver Ellsworth

  Men, Law, Atheism

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• The best idea ever thought of in the history of humanity is useless unless someone communicates it. It will die in the test tube. And in our case, what we're communicating here to people is not necessarily something they want to hear. And so, our demeanor - how we deliver this message - takes on crucial, crucial importance.

  Phil Plait

  Ideas, People, Humanity

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• Do not be tempted to invest in a sample of each golfing invention as soon as it makes its appearance. If you do, you will only complicate and spoil your game - and encumber your locker with useless rubbish.

  Harry Vardon

  Golf, Games, Temptation

  Harry Vardon (2010). “The Complete Golfer”, p.168, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Why is old considered useless? Because in old age, the emphasis shifts from doing to Being, and our civilization, which is lost in doing, knows nothing of Being. It asks: Being? What do you do with it?

  Eckhart Tolle

  Civilization, Age, Lost

  Eckhart Tolle (2006). “A New Earth (Oprah #61): Awakening to Your Life's Purpose”, p.173, Penguin

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• I know, that since life is our most precious gift, and as far as we can be absolutely certain, it's given to us to live but once, let us so live we will not regret years of useless virtue, and inertia, and timidity, and ignorance, and in our last moments we can say: 'All my life, all my conscious energies, have been dedicated to the most noble cause in the world, the liberation of the human mind and spirit - beginning with my own'.

  Maya Angelou

  Regret, Ignorance, Years

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