#utility

We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless. ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#art #uselessness #utility #art

Even at that time the hope of leaving behind messages in bottles on the flood of barbarism bursting on Europe was an amiable illusion: the desperate letters stuck in the mud of the spirit of rejuvenesence and were worked up by a band of Noble Human-Beings and other riff-raff into highly artistic but inexpensive wall-adornments. Only since then has progress in communications really got into its stride. Who, in the end, is to take it amiss if even the freest of free spirits no longer write for an imaginary posterity, more trusting, if possible, than even their contemporaries, but only for the dead God? ↗

— Theodor W. Adorno

#futility #god #writing #communication

Felix had gone to live in a lotus land of his imagination. Where what is desired is dreamed of as already happened, where obstacles dissolve under the weight of desire, and where reality has vanished entirely. ↗

— Iain Pears

#cloud-cuckoo-land #desires #dreams #futility #imagination

It is not a single cowardice that drives us into fiction's fantasies. We often fear that literature is a game we can't afford to play — the product of idleness and immoral ease. In the grip of that feeling it isn't life we pursue, but the point and purpose of life — its facility, its use. ↗

— William H. Gass

#indolence #luxury #purpose #utility #life

The hardest thing of all is to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat. ↗

— Confucius

#knowledge #religion #religion

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity. ↗

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

#futility #hate #i #lived #only

The architect should strive continually to simplify; the ensemble of the rooms should then be carefully considered that comfort and utility may go hand in hand with beauty. ↗

— Frank Lloyd Wright

#beauty #carefully #comfort #considered #continually

Art indeed is a term referring to the social source and to the social utility of creative acts. ↗

— Laura Riding

#art #creative #indeed #referring #social

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