Useless Quotes - Page 8

• The Gaelic League is founded not upon hatred of England, but upon love of Ireland. Hatred is a negative passion; it is powerful - a very powerful destroyer; but it is useless for building up. Love, on the other hand, is like faith; it can move mountains, and faith, we have mountains to move.

  Douglas Hyde

  Powerful, Moving, Passion

  Douglas Hyde (1986). “Language, lore, and lyrics: essays and lectures”, Irish Academic Pr

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• Only within the 20th Century has biological thought been focused on ecology, or the relation of the living creature to its environment. Awareness of ecological relationships is - or should be - the basis of modern conservation programs, for it is useless to attempt to preserve a living species unless the kind of land or water it requires is also preserved. So delicately interwoven are the relationships that when we disturb one thread of the community fabric we alter it all - perhaps almost imperceptibly, perhaps so drastically that destruction follows.

  Rachel Carson

  Land, Water, Community

  "Essay on the Biological Sciences". Good Reading, 1958.

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• It just seems to useless to have to work so hard, and nothing ever really seem to come from it.

  Tom Petty

  Work, Seems, Hard

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• Faith without works is like a song you can't sing. It's about as useless as a screen door on a submarine.

  Rich Mullins

  Song, Doors, Expression

  Song: Screen Door

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• Dad is a really surprising guy. Every time I think he's going to be useless, he ends up doing something amazing and saying exactly the right thing.

  Clare Balding

  Dad, Thinking, Guy

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• Without equity, pandemic battles will fail. Viruses will simply recirculate, and perhaps undergo mutations or changes that render vaccines useless, passing through the unprotected populations of the planet.

  Laurie Garrett

  Vaccines, Battle, Pandemics

  "'Contagion' is part reality, part fantasy, totally possible" by Laurie Garrett, www.cnn.com. September 13, 2011.

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• I have a little bit of a temper, but it's ... a useless temper, ... It doesn't accomplish anything, generally. It's just a lot of ranting and raving and nothing, so David (Chase) probably saw that and put it into the character.

  James Gandolfini

  Character, Saws, Littles

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• Wal-mart started selling “Vampire Home Defense Kits”, including holy water, crosses, stakes, mallets, and a book of quick blessings to bar vampires from your door. The fact that these kits were generally useless didn't bother me nearly as much as the idea of holy water being sold at wal-mart.

  Molly Harper

  Book, Home, Blessing

  Molly Harper (2009). “Nice Girls Don't Have Fangs”, p.19, Simon and Schuster

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• It does not take a great supernatural heroine or magical hero to save the world.We all save it every day, and we all destroy it -- in our own small ways -- by every choice we make and every tiniest action resulting from that choice.The next time you feel useless and impotent, remember what you are in fact doing in this very moment. And then observe your tiny, seemingly meaningless acts and choices coalesce and cascade together into a powerful positive whole.The world -- if it could -- will thank you for it.And if it does not... well, a true heroine or hero does not require it.

  Vera Nazarian

  Powerful, Hero, Choices

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• The universal nature has no external space; but the wondrous part of her art is that though she has circumscribed herself, everything which is within her which appears to decay and to grow old and to be useless she changes into herself, and again makes other new things from these very same, so that she requires neither substance from without nor wants a place into which she may cast that which decays. She is content then with her own space, and her own matter, and her own art.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Art, Space, Decay

  "Meditations". Book by Marcus Aurelius. Book VIII, 50,

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• It is quite useless to declare that all men are born free if you deny that they are born good . Guarantee a man's goodness and his liberty will take care of itself. To guarantee his freedom on condition that you approve of his moral character is formally to abolish all freedom whatsoever, as every man's liberty is at the mercy of a moral indictment which any fool can trump up against everyone who violates custom, whether as a prophet or as a rascal.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Character, Men, Liberty

  George Bernard Shaw (2015). “The Collected Plays of George Bernard Shaw (Illustrated): Including Renowned Titles like Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, The Inca Of Perusalem, Macbeth Skit, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion”, p.1375, e-artnow

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• Hypocrites act by virtue.... They frame many counterfeits of her, with which they make an ostentatious parade, in all public assemblies, and processions; but the original of what they counterfeit, and which may indeed be said to have fallen from heaven, they produce so seldom, that it is cankered by the rust of sloth, and useless from non-application.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Hypocrite, Hypocrisy, Heaven

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.32

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• The word "souvenir" has, of course, slightly extended itself in meaning until it now denotes almost anything either breakable or useless; but even today, ninety per cent of the items covered by the word are forgettable objects in which cigarettes can be left to go stale.

  Alan Coren

  Today, Cigarette, Ninety

  Alan Coren (2008). “Chocolate and Cuckoo Clocks: The Essential Alan Coren”, p.183, Canongate Books

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• Read as little as possible of literary criticism - such things are either partisan opinions, which have become petrified and meaningless, hardened and empty of life, or else they are just clever word-games, in which one view wins today, and tomorrow the opposite view. Works of art are of an infinite solitude, and no means of approach is so useless as criticism.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Art, Clever, Mean

  "Letters to a Young Poet". Book by Rainer Maria Rilke. Letter Three (April 23, 1903), 1929.

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• Il est non seulement impossible, mais inutile de conna|"tre Dieu sans Je  sus-Christ. It is not only impossible, but also useless to recognize God without Jesus.

  Blaise Pascal

  Jesus, Impossible, Christ

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• "There is nothing," says a correspondent of the New York Times, "which the business world discards as unpractical and useless so much as the quiet, thinking scholar. But this is the man who makes revolutions. Politicians are mere puppets in the hands of men of thought.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  New York, Men, Thinking

  "Intuitions and Summaries of Thought" by Christian Nestell Bovee, Vol. I, (p. 84), 1862.

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• L'homme est une passion inutile. Man is a useless passion.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Passion, Men

  'L'Être et le nèant' (1943) pt. 4, ch. 2

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• Labour is good for a man, bracing up his energies to conquest, And without it life is dull, the man perceiving himself useless.

  Martin Farquhar Tupper

  Men, Energy, Dull

  Martin Farquhar Tupper (1860). “Tupper's Complete Poetical Works: Containing "Proverbial Philosophy," "A Thousand Lines," "Hactenus," "Geraldine," and "Miscellaneous Poems"”, p.85

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• To a poet nothing can be useless.

  Samuel Johnson

  Poet

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1840). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: With an Essay on His Life and Genius /c by Arthur Murphy, Esq”, p.463

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• To cultivate the memory we should confide to it only what we understand and love: the rest is a useless burden; for simply to know by rote is not to know at all.

  John Lancaster Spalding

  Memories, And Love, Burden

  John Lancaster Spalding (1901). “Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion”

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• Freedom without organization of work would be useless. The child left free without means of work would go to waste, just as a new-born baby, if left free without nourishment, would die of starvation.The organization of the work, therefore, is the cornerstone of this new structure of goodness [in education], but even that organization would be in vain without the liberty to make use of it.

  Maria Montessori

  Baby, Children, Mean

  Maria Montessori (2014). “Montessori's Own Handbook”, p.62, Montessori Helper

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• I don't know who the great lawyers are, and I presume you can't get to them. I know of no case where it can be said for certain that they took part. They defend some people, but you can't get them to do that through your own efforts, they only defend the ones they want to defend. But I assume a case they take on must have progressed beyond the lower court. It's better not to think of them at all, otherwise you'll find the consultations with the other lawyers, their advice and their assistance, extremely disgusting and useless.

  Franz Kafka

  Thinking, People, Effort

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• I do not approve the maxim which desires a man to know a little of everything. Superficial knowledge, knowledge without principles, is almost always useless and sometimes harmful knowledge.

  Luc de Clapiers

  Knowledge, Men, Desire

  Jean de La Bruyère, Luc de Clapiers marquis de Vauvenargues (1903). “La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims”

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• Dynamic ecstasy is absolute romanticism , absolute heroism . And here I return to my point. From my point of view, after the catastrophe which we feel and think is universal, a catastrophe resulting from an excess of useless dynamism of useless progress, of useless realism, of useless technology, after this an unattainable democracy is to be reached through the conception and realization of a new romanticism.

  Juan Ramon Jimenez

  Technology, Thinking, Views

  "Heroic Reason" by Juan Ramon Jimenez (p. 231), 1957.

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• It is useless work that darkens the heart.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Work, Heart

  "The Dispossessed". Book by Ursula K. Le Guin, 1974.

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