#usefulness

[God] is able to take your life, with all of the heartache, all of the pain, all of the regret, all of the missed opportunities, and use you for His glory. ↗

— Charles R. Swindoll

#glory-of-god #god #pain #usefulness #life

I mean a man whose hopes and aims may sometimes lie (as most men's sometimes do, I dare say) above the ordinary level, but to whom the ordinary level will be high enough after all if it should prove to be a way of usefulness and good service leading to no other. All generous spirits are ambitious, I suppose, but the ambition that calmly trusts itself to such a road, instead of spasmodically trying to fly over it, is of the kind I care for. ↗

— Charles Dickens

#contentment #diligence #generosity #service #usefulness

It's more useful to have someone fear you than respect you. ↗

— J. Cornell Michel

#apocalyptic #fear #fearful #important #respect

It is inevitable that those to whom is vouchsafed a long life of usefulness should outlive the friends of their youth. ↗

— Cleveland Abbe

#inevitable #life #long #long life #outlive

It is a remarkable honor to receive a Nobel Prize, because it not only recognizes discoveries, but also their usefulness to the advancement of fundamental science. ↗

— Peter Agre

#also #because #discoveries #fundamental #honor

The press briefing today I believe has lost much of its usefulness. ↗

— Marlin Fitzwater

#briefing #i #i believe #lost #much

A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor — such is my idea of happiness. ↗

— Leo Tolstoy

#conduct-of-life #contentment #country #happiness #life

Experiments were not attempted at that time, we did not believe in the usefulness of the concept anyway, and I finished my thesis in 1962 with a feeling like an artist balancing on a high rope without any interested spectators. ↗

— Richard Ernst

#anyway #artist #attempted #balancing #believe

Two important characteristics of maps should be noticed. A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness. ↗

— Alfred Korzybski

#characteristics #correct #important #map #maps

But today’s society is characterized by achievement orientation, and consequently it adores people who are successful and happy and, in particular, it adores the young. It virtually ignores the value of all those who are otherwise, and in so doing blurs the decisive difference between being valuable in the sense of dignity and being valuable in the sense of usefulness. If one is not cognizant of this difference and holds that an individual’s value stems only from his present usefulness, then, believe me, one owes it only to personal inconsistency not to plead for euthanasia along the lines of Hitler’s program, that is to say, ‘mercy’ killing of all those who have lost their social usefulness, be it because of old age, incurable illness, mental deterioration, or whatever handicap they may suffer. Confounding the dignity of man with mere usefulness arises from conceptual confusion that in turn may be traced back to the contemporary nihilism transmitted on many an academic campus and many an analytical couch. ↗

— Viktor E. Frankl

#existentialism #human-dignity #meaning #nihilism #usefulness