#Utility Quotes

“But earthlier happy is the rose distill'dThan that which withering on the virgin thornGrows, lives, and dies in single blessedness.”

“In Nature, all is useful, all is beautiful”

“Nothing is arbitrary, nothing is insulated in beauty. It depends forever on the necessary and the useful. The plumage of the bird, the mimic plumage of the insect, has a reason for its rich colors in the constitution of the animal. Fitness is so inseparable an accompaniment of beauty, that it, has been taken for it.”

“Thought makes everything fit for use.”

“Every way of classifying a thing is but a way of handling it for some particular purpose.”

“The sciences, even the best,-mathematics and astronomy,-are like sportsmen, who seize whatever prey offers, even without being able to make any use of it.”

“True ideas lead us into useful verbal and conceptual quarters as well as directly up to useful sensible termini. They lead to consistency, stability and flowing human intercourse.”

“The beautiful is as useful as the useful." He added after a moment’s silence, "Perhaps more so.”

“I don't think there's a thing I own that I will ever get the benefit of except through doing things with it.”

“Nature is thoroughly mediate. It is made to serve. It receives the dominion of man as meekly as the ass on which the Saviour rode.It offers all its kingdoms to man as the raw material which he may mould into what is useful. Man is never weary of working it up.”

“...the science of calculation also is indispensable as far as the extraction of the square and cube roots: Algebra as far as the quadratic equation and the use of logarithms are often of value in ordinary cases: but all beyond these is but a luxury; a delicious luxury indeed; but not be in indulged in by one who is to have a profession to follow for his subsistence.”

“Beauty is as useful as the useful. More so, perhaps. (Le beau est aussi utile que l'utile. Plus peut-etre.)”

“The punishment of criminals should be of use; when a man is hanged he is good for nothing.”

“Let the punishments of criminals be useful. A hanged man is good for nothing; a man condemned to public works still serves the country, and is a living lesson.”

“I believe that there never was a creator of a philosophical system who did not confess at the end of his life that he had wasted his time. It must be admitted that the inventors of the mechanical arts have been much more useful to men that the inventors of syllogisms. He who imagined a ship towers considerably above him who imagined innate ideas.”

“It must be confessed that the inventors of the mechanical arts have been much more useful to men than the inventors of syllogisms.”

“It never was in the power of any man or any community to call the arts into being. They come to serve his actual wants, never to please his fancy.”

“The most useful man in the most useful world, so long as only commodity was served, would remain unsatisfied. But, as fast as he sees beauty, life acquires a very high value.”

“But a compassion for that which is not and cannot be useful and lovely, is degrading and futile.”

“Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.”

“I try not to invent things that people don't need.”

“Anything that won't sell, I don't want to invent. Its sale is proof of utility, and utility is success.”

“A jackass has that kind of strength, and puts it to a useful purpose, and is valuable to the world because he is a jackass; but anobleman is not valuable because he is a jackass. It is a mixture that is always ineffectual, and should never have been attempted in the first place. And yet, once you start a mistake, the trouble is done and you never know what is going to come of it.”

“If what you want to tell me is neither True nor Good nor even Useful, why tell it to me at all”

“The State is to make what is useful. The individual is to make what is beautiful.”

“Knowledge is the antidote to fear,-Knowledge, Use and Reason, with its higher aids.”

“The interminable forests should become graceful parks, for use and delight.”

“Oh, no doubt the cod is a splendid swimmer - admirable for swimming purposes but not for eating.”

“And tell him it's quite true that the best of the philosophers are of no use to their fellows; but that he should blame, not the philosophers, but those who fail to make use of them.”

“A weed is a plant we've found no use for yet.”

“In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful, because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it is thereforeuseful, because it is symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.”

“Creativity or talent, like electricity, is something I don't understand but something I'm able to harness and use.”

“The useful may be trusted to further itself, for many produce it and no one can do without it; but the beautiful must be specially encouraged, for few can present it, while yet all have need of it.”

“They teach in academies far too many things, and far too much that is useless.”

“Whatever can be useful to those starving millions is beautiful to my mind.”

“The reality of the building does not consist in the roof and walls, but in the space within to be lived in.”

“But that which is useful is the better.”

“And can anything else that is useful be accomplished without change? Do you not see then that for yourself also to change is just the same, and equally necessary for the universal nature?”

“I bought me a spy-glass some weeks since. I buy but a few things, and those not till long after I begin to want them, so that when I do get them I am prepared to make a perfect use of them and extract their whole sweet.”

“Clay is moulded to make a vessel, but the utility of the vessel lies in the space where there is nothing. . . . Thus, taking advantage of what is, we recognize the utility of what is not.”

“What is fruitful alone is true.”

“Fire and water are not of more universal use than friendship.”

“Thirty spokes meet in the hub. Where a wheel isn't is where it's useful. Hollowed out, clay makes a pot. Where the pots not is where it's useful. Cut doors and windows to make a room. Where the room isn't, there's room for you. So the profit in what is, is in the use of what isn't.”

“Thirty spokes are joined in the wheel's hub. The hole in the middle makes it useful.”

“Instrumental or mechanical science is the noblest and above all others, the most useful.”

“Clay is fashioned into vessels; it is on their empty hollowness that their use depends. Doors and windows are cut out to make a dwelling, and on the empty space within, its use depends. Thus, while the existence of things may be good, it is the non-existence in them that makes them serviceable.”

“Men subsequently put whatever is newly learned or experienced to use as a plowshare, perhaps even as a weapon: but women immediately include it among their ornaments.”

“The value comes from what is there, but the use comes from what is not there.”

“Nothing can have value without being an object of utility.”

“To use is necessary. And if you can't be used, then you're useless.”