#utility

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

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

— William Shakespeare

#futility #hopelessness #life #life

People forget already how much utility they get out of the Internet - how much utility they get out of e-mail, how much utility they get out of even simple things like brochureware online. ↗

— Jeff Bezos

#e-mail #even #forget #get #how

I trust in nature for the stable laws of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant and autumn garner to the end of time. ↗

— Robert Browning

#beauty #end #garner #i #laws

Utility is when you have one telephone, luxury is when you have two, opulence is when you have three - and paradise is when you have none. ↗

— Doug Larson

#none #opulence #paradise #telephone #three

Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity, quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. ↗

— Benito Mussolini

#believes #considerations #considers #development #fascism

There is an increasingly pervasive sense not only of failure, but of futility. The legislative process has become a cruel shell game and the service system has become a bureaucratic maze, inefficient, incomprehensible, and inaccessible. ↗

— Elliot Richardson

#bureaucratic #cruel #failure #futility #game

When I was a fairly precocious young man I became thoroughly impressed with the futility of the hopes and strivings that chase most men restlessly through life. Moreover, I soon discovered the cruelty of that chase, which in those years was much more carefully covered up by hypocrisy and glittering words than is the case today. By the mere existence of his stomach everyone was condemned to participate in that chase. The stomach might well be satisfied by such participation, but not man insofar as he is a thinking and feeling being. ↗

— Albert Einstein

#life

Man makes plans . . . and God laughs. ↗

— Michael Chabon

#futility #humor

Without the hope of posterity, for our race if not for ourselves, without the assurance that we being dead yet live, all pleasures of the mind and senses sometimes seem to me no more than pathetic and crumbling defences shored up against our ruin. ↗

— P.D. James

#pessimism #posterity #the-future #men