Useless Quotes - Page 20

• The unary Photograph has every reason to be banal, 'unity'
  of composition being the first rule of vulgar (and notably, of academic) rhetoric: 'The subject,' says one handbook for amateur photographers, 'must be simple, free of useless accessories; this is called the Search for Unity.

  Roland Barthes

  Simple, Unity, Accessories

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• I would call back at least for literature this world of shadows we are losing. In the mansion called literature I would have the eaves deep and the walls dark, I would push back into the shadows the things that come forward too clearly, I would strip away the useless decoration. I do not ask that this be done everywhere, but perhaps we may be allowed at least one mansion where we can turn off the electric lights and see what it is like without them.

  Junichiro Tanizaki

  Wall, Dark, Light

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• Terror consists mostly of useless cruelties perpetrated by frightened people in order to reassure themselves.

  Friedrich Engels

  Order, People, Frightened

  Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels (1942). “Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: selected correspondence, 1846-1895: with explanatory notes”

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• It is as useless to argue with those who have renounced the use of reason as to administer medication to the dead.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Use, Arguing, Reason

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• Only one person in a thousand knows the trick of really living in the present. Most of us spend fifty-nine minutes an hour living in the past, with regret for lost joys or shame for things badly done (both utterly useless and weakening) or in a future which we either long for or dread. . . . There is only one minute in which you are alive, this minute, here and now. The only way to live is by accepting each minute as an unrepeatable miracle. Which is exactly what it is-a miracle and unrepeatable.

  Storm Jameson

  Regret, Past, Long

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• Today children are disposed of because there is no food or because they are killed before being born – children are discarded. The elderly are disposed of, well, because they are useless, they do not produce, neither children nor the elderly produce; then, with more or less sophisticated systems they are slowly abandoned and now, as in this crisis it is necessary to recover some equilibrium, we are witnessing a third very painful discarding –the discarding of young people. Millions of young people… are discarded from work, are unemployed.

  Pope Francis

  Children, Elderly, People

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• Explaining "why" to a dog is pretty useless. You have to engage their instincts in order to change their behavior.

  Cesar Millan

  Dog, Order, Behavior

  Source: thecelebritycafe.com

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• Like Nietzsche's own writings on education, most of mine were relatively youthful ones. Both were inspired by a critical animus against prevailing trends in education: in Nietzsche's case, the production either of 'useless', dry-as-dust scholars or people 'useful' for the needs of an expanding industrial economy; in my case, a similar subjection of education to economic imperatives, but also to ideological obsessions, notably with promoting 'equality'.

  David E. Cooper

  Writing, Dust, People

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• My gentleman gives the law where he is; he will outpray saints in chapel, outgeneral veterans in the field, and outshine all courtesy in the hall. He is good company for pirates, and good with academicians; so that it is useless to fortify yourself against him; he has the private entrance to all minds, and I could as easily exclude myself, as him.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Law, Giving, Pirate

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Essays”, p.43, Xist Publishing

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• The monarchy is foremost a business, and it's important to them that the British public continue to finance the excessive luxurious lifestyles of the now quite enormous, wasteful and useless 'royal' family.

  Steven Morrissey

  Important, British Monarchy, Royal

  "Morrissey Slams Kate Middleton, Prince Harry & ‘Useless’ Royal Family" by Rebecca Adams, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 3, 2012.

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• Useless pursuits and conversations always about the same things absorb the better part of one's time, the better part of one's strength, and in the end there is left a life grovelling and curtailed, worthless and trivial, and there is no escaping or getting away from it—just as though one were in a madhouse or prison.

  Anton Chekhov

  Escaping, Prison, Ends

  Anton Chekhov (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov (Illustrated)”, p.2939, Delphi Classics

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• Again, somehow, one saw life, a pure bead. I lifted the pencil again, useless though I knew it to be. But even as I did so, the unmistakable tokens of death showed themselves. The body relaxed, and instantly grew stiff. The struggle was over. The insignificant little creature now knew death. As I looked at the dead moth, this minute wayside triumph of so great a force over so mean an antagonist filled me with wonder. Just as life had been strange a few minutes before, so death was now as strange.

  Virginia Woolf

  Struggle, Mean, Triumph

  Virginia Woolf (2017). “Essays Virginia Woolf”, p.446, Random House

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• I'm not afraid," Rafi said. "Why not?" "If I die tomorrow it will have been useless to have been afraid today.

  Mark Helprin

  Why Not, Today, Tomorrow

  Mark Helprin (2005). “A Soldier of the Great War”, p.197, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The great spiritual task facing me is to so fully trust that I belong to God that I can be free in the world--free to speak even when my words are not received; free to act even when my actions are criticized, ridiculed, or considered useless.... I am convinced that I will truly be able to love the world when I fully believe that I am loved far beyond its boundaries.

  Henri Nouwen

  Spiritual, Believe, Tasks

  Henri J. M. Nouwen (2017). “You are the Beloved: Daily Meditations for Spiritual Living”, Hachette UK

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• What is the use of voting? We know that the machines of both parties are subsidized by the same persons, and therefore it is useless to turn in either direction.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Party, Voting, Machines

  Woodrow Wilson, Ronald J. Pestritto (2005). “Woodrow Wilson: The Essential Political Writings”, p.115, Lexington Books

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• In the end, there is no ideal condition for creativity. What works for one person is useless for another. The only criterion is this: Make it easy on yourself. Find a working environment where the prospect of wrestling with your muse doesn't scare you, doesn't shut you down. It should make you want to be there, and once you find it, stick with it. To get the creative habit, you need a working environment that's habit-forming. All preferred working states, no matter how eccentric, have one thing in common: When you enter into them, they compel you to get started.

  Twyla Tharp

  Creativity, Wrestling, Creative

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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.

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• 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

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• I’m bored’ is a useless thing to say. I mean, you live in a great, big, vast world that you’ve seen none percent of. Even the inside of your own mind is endless; it goes on forever, inwardly, do you understand? The fact that you’re alive is amazing, so you don’t get to say ‘I’m bored.

  Louis C. K.

  Inspirational, Funny, Life

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• Fasts and vigils, the study of Scripture, renouncing possessions and everything worldly are not in themselves perfection, as we have said; theyare its tools. For perfection is not to be found in them; it is acquired through them. It is useless, therefore, to boast of our fasting, vigils, poverty, and reading of Scripture when we have not achieved the love of God and our fellow men. Whoever has achieved love has God within himself and his intellect is always with God.

  John Cassian

  Christian, Reading, Men

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