#utility

Philosophy as practice does not mean its restriction to utility or applicability, that is, to what serves morality or produces serenity of soul. ↗

— Karl Jaspers

#mean #morality #philosophy #practice #produces

Time after time have nations, ay, and rich and strong nations, learned in the arts, been, and passed away to be forgotten, so that no memory of them remains. This is but one of several; for Time eats up the works of man. ↗

— H. Rider Haggard

#fallen-nations #futility #inevitability #knowledge #learning

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

— Victor Hugo

#utility #beauty

The cabman looked at the pieces of silver, which, appearing very minute in his big, grimy palm, symbolised the insignificant results which reward the ambitious courage and toil of a mankind whose day is short on this earth of evil. ↗

— Joseph Conrad

#life-is-short #courage

...futility is being sorry while doing nothing to remove the cause ... ↗

— John Geddes

#futility #sorry #wise-words #change

There is, in the Army, a little known but very important activity appropriately called Fatigue. Fatigue, in the Army, is the very necessary cleaning and repairing of the aftermath of living. Any man who has ever owned a gun has known Fatigue, when, after fifteen minutes in the woods and perhaps three shots at an elusive squirrel, he has gone home to spend three-quarters of an hour cleaning up his piece so that it will be ready next time he goes to the woods. Any woman who has ever cooked a luscious meal and ladled it out in plates upon the table has known Fatigue, when, after the glorious meal is eaten, she repairs to the kitchen to wash the congealed gravy from the plates and the slick grease from the cooking pots so they will be ready to be used this evening, dirtied, and so washed again. It is the knowledge of the unendingness and of the repetitious uselessness, the do it up so it can be done again, that makes Fatigue fatigue. ↗

— James Jones

#chores #domesticity #fatigue #futility #repetition

The order that our mind imagines is like a net, or like a ladder, built to attain something. But afterward you must throw the ladder away, because you discover that, even if it was useful, it was meaningless. ↗

— Umberto Eco

#method #order #utility #imagination

Life ... is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. ↗

— William Shakespeare

#futility #hopelessness #life #life

[T]he scale of a man's evil is not entirely to be measured by its practical consequences. Men commit evil within the scope available to them. ↗

— Theodore Dalrymple

#utility #men

If there really had been a Mercutio, and if there really were a Paradise, Mercutio might be hanging out with teenage Vietnam draftee casualties now, talking about what it felt like to die for other people's vanity and foolishness. ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#futility #shakespeare #shakespeare