Useless Quotes - Page 38

• If you look over a list of medicinal recipes in vogue in the last century, how foolish and useless they are seen to be! And yet we use equally absurd ones with faith today.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Use, Recipes, Today

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.2865, Delphi Classics

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• Attack anything that makes you feel unworthy, inadequate, hopeless, powerless and useless. That is the evidence of the enemy. All those things need to be attacked with joy, with peace, with love and grace, with mercy, with kindness and the goodness of God.

  Graham Cooke

  Kindness, Joy, Grace

  FaceBook post by Graham Cooke from Jul 05, 2011

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• In a bureaucratic system, useless work drives out useful work.

  Milton Friedman

  Milton Friedman, William Richard Allen (1983). “Bright promises, dismal performance: an economist's protest”, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc.

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• As the economy unravels, as hundreds of millions of Americans confront the fact that things will not get better, life for those targeted by this culture of hate will become increasingly difficult. Rational debate will prove useless.

  Chris Hedges

  Hate, Get Better, Culture

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• We get a deal o' useless things about us, only because we've got the money to spend.

  George Eliot

  Useless Things, Consumerism, Deals

  George Eliot (2016). “The Mill On The Floss”, p.243, George Eliot

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• A useless life is an early death.
  [Ger., Ein unnutz Leben ist ein fruher Tod.]

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Life, Indolence, Early Death

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• it is not that religion is merely useless, it is mischievous. It is mischievous by its idle terrors; it is mischievous by its false morality; it is mischievous by its hypocrisy; by its fanaticism; by its dogmatism; by its threats; by its hopes; by its promises.

  Frances Wright

  Hypocrisy, Promise, Morality

  Frances Wright (1850). “A few days in Athens: being the translation of a Greek manuscript discovered in Herculaneum”, p.203

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• The typhoon came out of the sea first as a deep hollow roar. ... I was surrounded by the madness, the unreason, of uncontrolled, undisciplined energy. None of this made any sense. It was worse than useless - it was nature destroying its own creation - its own self. To create by the long process of growth and then to destroy by a fit of wild emotion - was this not madness, was this not unreason?

  Pearl S. Buck

  Self, Sea, Weather

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• Flowers belong to Fairyland: the flowers and the birds and the butterflies are all that the world has kept of its golden age--the only perfectly beautiful things on earth--joyous, innocent, half divine--useless, say they who are wiser than God.

  Ouida

  Beautiful, Flower, Butterfly

  Ouida (2016). “Bébée, or Two Little Wooden Shoes”, p.48, Ouida

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• We shall at all times chance upon men of recondite acquirements, but whose qualifications, from the incommunicative and inactive habits of their owners, are as utterly useless to others as though the possessors had them not.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Men, Chance, Habit

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.313

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• Courage is like the diamond,--very brilliant; not changed by fire, capable of high polish, but except for the purpose of cutting hard bodies useless.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Courage, Cutting, Fire

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.356

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• In 1815, M. Charles Francois-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of D-----. He was a man of seventy-five, and had occupied the bishopric of D----- since 1806. Although it in no manner concerns, even in the remotest degree, what we have to relate, it may not be useless, were it only for the sake of exactness in all things, to notice here the reports and gossip which had arisen on his account from the time of his arrival in the diocese.

  Victor Hugo

  Book, Men, Gossip

  Victor Hugo (1994). “Les Miserables Volume One”, p.3, Wordsworth Editions

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• Sensible people find nothing useless.
  [Fr., Il n'est rien d'inutile aux personnes de sens.]

  Jean de La Fontaine

  People, Sensible, Senses

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• I belong to an ancient, idle, wild and useless tribe, perhaps I am even one of the last members of it, who for many thousands of years, in all countries and parts of the world, has, now and again, stayed for a time among the hard-working honest people in real life, and sometimes has thus been fortunate enough to create another sort of reality for them, which in some way or another, has satisfied them. I am a storyteller.

  Isak Dinesen

  Country, Real, Hard Work

  Isak Dinesen, Karen Blixen (1987). “On Modern Marriage and Other Observations”

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• The business of life summons us away from useless grief, and calls us to the exercise of those virtues of which we are lamenting our deprivation.

  Samuel Johnson

  Grief, Exercise, Virtue

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy, Francis Pearson Walesby (1825). “Essay on the life and genius of Dr. Johnson [by Arthur Murphy] Poems. Rasselas, prince of Abissinia. Letters”, p.311

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• Music is essentially useless, as life is; but both have an ideal extension which lends utility to its conditions.

  George Santayana

  Music, Life Is, Utility

  'The Life of Reason' (1905) vol. 4, ch. 4

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• People talk about love as though it were something you could give, like an armful of flowers. And a lot of people give love like that -- just dump it down on top of you, a useless strong-scented burden.

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh

  Strong, Flower, People

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1974). “Locked rooms and open doors”, Not Avail

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• I have heard a good story of Charles Fox. When his house was on fire, he found all efforts to save it useless, and, being a good draughtsman, he went up to the next hill to make a drawing of the fire,--the best instance of philosophy I ever heard of.

  Robert Southey

  Philosophy, Drawing, Fire

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• It is useless attacking the insensible.

  Aesop

  Reality, Attacking, Insensible

  Aesop, Grimm, Andersen (1909). “Folk-Lore and Fable”

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• Psychotherapy, unlike castor oil, which will work no matter how you get it down, is useless when forced on an uncooperative patient.

  Abigail Van Buren

  Oil, Matter, Patient

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• Like other beautiful things in this world, its end (that of a shaft) is to be beautiful; and, in proportion to its beauty, it receives permission to be otherwise useless. We do not blame emeralds and rubies because we cannot make them into heads of hammers.

  John Ruskin

  Beauty, Beautiful, Hammers

  John Ruskin (2013). “The Stones of Venice -: The Sea Stories”, p.82, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Old age takes from the man of intellect no qualities save those that are useless to wisdom.

  Joseph Joubert

  Men, Age, Quality

  Joseph Joubert (1896). “Pensées of Joubert”

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• Sound waves do not die out. They travel forever and forever. All our sentences are immortal. Our useless bleatings circle the universe for all eternity.

  Fay Weldon

  Circles, Forever, Sound

  Fay Weldon (1984). “The Life and Loves of a She-Devil”, Pantheon

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• I really try to divorce myself from any thought of possible use of this stuff. That's part of the discipline. My only purpose while I'm working is to try to make interesting photographs, and what to do with them is another act - an alter consideration. Certainly while I'm working, I want them to be as useless as possible.

  Garry Winogrand

  Photography, Divorce, Discipline

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• My biggest fear is that I become useless or less useful by not being up to date - be it with technology, changing consumers, changing global situations. You continuously have to have a little level of paranoia that forces you to set the bar higher every day.

  Paul Polman

  Technology, Bars, Levels

  Source: www.smh.com.au

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