We know truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart, and it is from this last that we know first principles; and reason, which has nothing to do with it, tries in vain to combat them. The sceptics who desire truth alone labour in vain. We know that we do not dream, although it is impossible to prove it by reason, and this inability shows only the weakness of our reason, and not, as they declare, the general uncertainty of our knowledge. For our knowledge of first principles, as _space_, _time_, _motion_, _number_, is as distinct as any principle derived from reason. And reason must lean necessarily on this instinctive knowledge of the heart, and must found on it every process. We know instinctively that there are three dimensions in space, and that numbers are infinite, and reason then shows that there are no two square numbers one of which is double of the other. We feel principles, we infer propositions, both with certainty, though by different ways. It is as useless and absurd for reason to demand from the heart proofs of first principles before it will admit them, as it would be for the heart to ask from reason a feeling of all the propositions demonstrated before accepting them.
In the Old Testament and the New, miracles are wrought in connection with types. Salvation or an useless thing, if not to show that we must submit to the creature.--Figure of the sacraments.
Where none admire, 't is useless to excel; Where none are beaux, 't is vain to be a belle.
To a useless question we should answer only by silence.--ST. VINCENT FERRER.
The conversion of the Gentiles was only reserved for the grace of the Messiah. The Jews so long opposed them without success; all that Solomon and the prophets had said was useless. Wise men like Plato and Socrates could not persuade them.
Were there no rule to test them, miracles would be useless, and there would be no reason for belief.
To know what is useful and what useless, and to be skilful to provide the one and wise to scorn the other, is the first need for all industrious men.
Shun useless conversation. We lose by it both time and the spirit of devotion.--ST. THOMAS AQUINAS.
Give to the masses nothing to do, and they will topple down thrones and cut throats; give them the government here, and they will make pulpits useless, and colleges an impertinence.
It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
Knowledge is the treasure of the mind, but discretion is the key to it, without which it is useless. The practical part of wisdom is the best.
The useless men are those who never change with the years.
I was never interested in the obvious, or in the details one takes for granted, and everybody seemed to be addicted to the obvious, being astonished by it, and forever harping about the details which I had long ago weighted, measured, and discarded as irrelevant and useless. If you can measure it, don't. If you can weigh it, it isn't worth the bother. It isn't what you're after. It isn't going to get it. My wisdom was visual and as swift as vision. I looked, I saw, I understood, I felt, "That's that, where do we go from here?"
Passion is universal humanity. Without it religion, history, romance, art, would be useless.
To acquire purity of the soul, it is necessary to guard against passing judgment on our neighbor, or useless remarks on his conduct.--ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA.
Whatsoever thine ill, / It must be borne, and these wild starts are useless.
I know that many will say that this work is useless, and these are they of whom Demetrius said recked no more of the breath which made the words proceed from their mouth, than of the wind which proceeded from their body,--men who seek solely after riches and bodily satisfaction, men entirely denuded of that wisdom which is the food and verily the wealth of the soul; because insomuch as the soul is of greater value than the body, so much greater are the riches of the soul than those of the body. And often when I see one of these take this work in his hand, I wonder whether, like a monkey, he will not smell it and ask me if it is something to eat.
But miracles would be useless to heretics, for the Church, authorised by miracles which have already obtained credence, tells us that they have not the true faith. There is no doubt that they are not in it, because the first miracles of the Church exclude belief in theirs. Thus there is miracle against miracle, and the first and greatest are on the side of the Church.
It is useless to subdue the flesh by abstinence, unless one gives up his irregular life, and abandons vices which defile his soul.--ST. BENEDICT.
For a long time it puzzled me how something so expensive, so leading edge, could be so useless. And then it occured to me that a computer is a stupid machine with the ability to do incredibly smart things, while computer programmers are smart people with the ability to do incredibly stupid things. They are, in short, a perfect match.
No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.
So, here hath been dawning / Another blue day; / Think wilt thou let it / Slip useless away. / Out of Eternity / This new day is born; / Into Eternity / At night doth return. / Behold it aforetime / No eye ever did: / So soon it for ever / From all eyes is hid. / Here hath been dawning, &c.
If by differing we condemned, you would be right. Uniformity without diversity is useless to others, diversity without uniformity is ruinous for us. The one injures us without; the other within.
An idler is a watch that wants both hands, As useless if it goes as if it stands.
It is useless to deny with the tongue that which man gives credence to with the heart.
The genealogy of Jesus Christ in the Old Testament is intermixed with so many that are useless, that it cannot be distinguished. If Moses had kept only the register of the ancestors of Jesus Christ, that had been too plain. If he had not marked that of Jesus Christ, it had not been plain enough. But after all, whoso looks closely sees that of Jesus Christ distinctly traced through Tamar, Ruth, etc.
Now they are not useless, and are on the contrary fundamental Now it must be that the rule which he gives us be such as shall not impair the proof afforded by true miracles to the truth, which is the principal end of miracles.
The object sought in abstruse study is either a truth which cannot be known, or a vain thing which it is useless to know.
By what strange law of mind is it that an idea long overlooked, and trodden under foot as a useless stone, suddenly sparkles out in new light, as a discovered diamond?
It is impossible to insist too strongly upon the fact that efficient teachers of science and of technology are not to be made by the processes in vogue at ordinary training colleges. The memory loaded with mere bookwork is not the thing wanted--is, in fact, rather worse than useless--in the teacher of scientific subjects. It is absolutely essential that his mind should be full of knowledge and not of mere learning, and that what he knows should have been learned in the laboratory rather than in the library.
Let us not throw away any of our days upon useless resentment, or contend who shall hold out longest in stubborn malignity.
It is well to be weary and harassed by the useless search after the true good, that we may stretch our arms to the Redeemer.
Excessive distrust is not less hurtful than its opposite. Most men become useless to him who is unwilling to risk being deceived.
Whatever befalls us, though it is wise to be serious, it is useless and foolish, and perhaps sinful, to be gloomy.
Dictatorships can be indeed defined as systems in which there is a prevalence of thinking in destructive rather than in ameliorative terms in dealing with social problems. The ease with which destruction of life is advocated for those considered either socially useless or socially disturbing instead of educational or ameliorative measures may be the first danger sign of loss of creative liberty in thinking, which is the hallmarks of democratic society. [“Medical Science Under Dictatorship,” New England Journal of Medicine , Vol. 241, No. 2, July 14, 1949, p. 47.]
Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.
No Gentile from Moses to Jesus Christ according to the Rabbis themselves. The crowd of the Gentiles after Jesus Christ believed in the books of Moses and observed their essence and spirit, casting away only what was useless.
Emotion has no value in the Christian system save as it stands connected with right conduct as the cause of it. Emotion is the bud, not the flower, and never is it of value until it expands into a flower. Every religious sentiment; every act of devotion which does not produce a corresponding elevation of life, is worse than useless; it is absolutely pernicious, because it ministers to self-deception and tends to lower the line of personal morals.--_W. H. H. Murray._
A cultural inheritance may be acquired between dusk and dawn, and many have been so acquired. But the new "culture" was an inheritance of darkness, wherein "simpleton" meant the same thing as "citizen" meant the same thing as "slave." The monks waited. It mattered not at all to them that the knowledge they saved was useless, that much of it was not really knowledge now empty of content, its subject matter long since gone. Still, such knowledge had a symbolic structure that was peculiar to itself, and at least the symbol-interplay could be observed. To observe the way a knowledge-system is knit together is to learn at least a minimum knowledge-of-knowledge, until someday someday, or some century an Integrator would come, and things would be fitted together again. So time mattered not at all. The Memorabilia was there, and it was given to them by duty to preserve, and preserve it they would if the darkness in the world lasted ten more centuries, or even ten thousand years...
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
~Nothing.~--There is nothing useless to men of sense; clever people turn everything to account.--_Fontaine._
If the grain were separated from the chaff which fills the works of our National Poets, what is truly valuable would be to what is useless in the proportion of a mole-hill to a mountain.--_Burke._
No useless coffin enclosed his breast, / Not in sheet nor in shroud we wound him; / But he lay like a warrior taking his rest, / With his martial cloak around him.
The system, in its irrationality, has been driven by profit to build steel skyscrapers for insurance companies while the cities decay, to spend billions for weapons of destruction and virtually nothing for children’s playgrounds , to give huge incomes to men who make dangerous or useless things, and very little to artists, musicians, writers, actors. Capitalism has always been a failure for the lower classes. It is now beginning to fail for the middle classes.
If two men on the same job agree all the time, then one is useless. If they disagree all the time, both are useless. Darryl F. Zanuck
I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a means of settling international disputes... But once war is forced upon us, there is no other alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end.
When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are broken.
Half the sorrows of women would be averted if they could repress the speech they know to be useless--nay, the speech they have resolved not to utter.--_George Eliot._
Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.
Those to whom God has given Religion by an instinctive feeling are very blessed, and quite convinced. But as for those who have it not, we can give it them only by reasoning, waiting for the time when God himself shall impress it on their heart, without which faith is useless for salvation.
The Mortification of a member . . .is based on the Law of Degeneration. The useless member here is not cut off, but simply relieved as much as possible of all exercise. This encourages the gradual decay of the parts, and as it is more and more neglected it ceases to be a channel for life at all. So an organism "mortifies" its members. Natural Law, Mortification, p. 193.
Nothing that has ever lived is lost; nothing is useless; not a sigh, a joy, or a sorrow which has not served its purpose.
... But even those who seem most opposed to the glory of religion are not in that respect useless for others. We draw from them the first argument, that here is something supernatural, for a blindness of that kind is not natural, and if their folly renders them so opposed to their own good, it will serve to guarantee others against it, by the horror of an example so deplorable, and a folly so worthy of compassion.
Gold is the most useless thing in the world. I am not interested in money but in the things of which money is merely a symbol.
The history of the Church is a history of the invisible as well as of the visible Church; which latter, if disjoined from the former, is but a vacant edifice; gilded, it may be, and overhung with old votive gifts, yet useless, nay, pestilentially unclean; to write whose history is less important than to forward its downfall.
The acquisition of any knowledge is always of use to the intellect, because it may thus drive out useless things and retain the good. For nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first known.
With useless endeavour Forever, forever, Is Sisyphus rolling His stone up the mountain!
The life of an uneducated man is as useless as the tail of a dog which neither covers its rear end, nor protects it from the bites of insects.
_Probability._--The zeal of the saints to seek the truth, was useless if the probable is certain.
The intellect will always profit by the acquisition of any knowledge whatsoever, for thus what is useless will be expelled from it, and what is fruitful will remain. It is impossible either to hate or to love a thing without first acquiring knowledge of it.
Therefore I do not here undertake to prove by natural reasons either the existence of God or the Trinity, or the immortality of the soul, nor anything of that sort, not only because I do not feel myself strong enough to find in nature proofs to convince hardened atheists, but also, because this knowledge without Jesus Christ is useless and barren. Though a man should be persuaded that the proportions of numbers are immaterial truths, eternal, and dependent on a first truth in whom they subsist, and who is called God, I should not consider him far advanced towards his salvation.
Plato's scheme was impossible even in his own day, as Bacon's "New Atlantis" in his day, as Calvin's reform in his day, as Goethe's "Academe" in his. Out of the good there was in all these men, the world gathered what it could find of evil, made its useless Platonism out of Plato, its graceless Calvinism out of Calvin, determined Bacon to be the meanest of mankind, and of Goethe gathered only a luscious story of seduction, and daintily singable devilry.
It is not only impossible but useless to know God without Jesus Christ. They have not withdrawn from him, but drawn near; they have not abased themselves, but....
He was gone, and I did not have time to tell him what I had just now realized: that I forgave him, and that she forgave us, and that we had to forgive to survive in the labyrinth. There were so many of us who would have to live with things done and things left undone that day. Things that did not go right, things that seemed okay at the time because we could not see the future. If only we could see the endless string of consequences that result from our smallest actions. But we can’t know better until knowing better is useless. And as I walked back to give Takumi’s note to the Colonel, I saw that I would never know. I would never know her well enough to know her thoughts in those last minutes, would never know if she left us on purpose. But the not-knowing would not keep me from caring, and I would always love Alaska Young, my crooked neighbor, with all my crooked heart.
No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it for anyone else.
That friendship, which is exerted in too wide a sphere, becomes totally useless.
"Yes, and I feel bad about rendering their useless carci into dogfood..."
_The arrangement._--I might well have taken this discourse in some such order as the following: To show the vanity of every state of life, to show the vanity of ordinary lives, and then the vanity of philosophic lives, sceptics, stoics; but the order would not have been kept. I know a little what it is, and how few people know it. No human science can keep it. Saint Thomas did not keep it. Mathematics keep it, but these are useless by reason of their depth.
Suppose we put a tax upon learning? Learning, it is true, is a useless commodity, but I think we had better lay it on ignorance; for learning being the property but of a very few, and those poor ones too, I am afraid we can get little among them; whereas ignorance will take in most of the great fortunes in the kingdom.--_Fielding._
Intelligence is a luxury, sometimes useless, sometimes fatal. It is a torch or a fire-brand according to the use one makes of it.--_Fernan Caballero._
A useless life is an early death.
There are two kinds of truth: the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The first of these is science, and the second is art. Neither is independent of the other or more important than the other. Without art science would be as useless as a pair of high forceps in the hands of a plumber. Without science art would become a crude mess of folklore and emotional quackery. The truth of art keeps science from becoming inhuman, and the truth of science keeps art from becoming ridiculous.
Therefore those to whom God has given Religion by an instinctive feeling, are very blessed, and justly convinced. But to those who have it not we can give it only by reasoning, waiting for the time when God shall impress it on their hearts, without which faith is human only, and useless for salvation.
Gold cannot be used for currency as long as it is mixed with the quartz and rock in which it lies imbedded. So your soul is useless to God till taken out from sin and earthliness and selfishness, in which it lies buried. By the regenerating power of the Spirit you must be separated unto Christ, stamped with His image and superscription, and made into a divine currency, which shall bear His likeness among men. The Christian is, so to speak, the circulating medium of Christ, the coin of the realm by whom the great transactions of mercy and grace to a lost world are carried on. As the currency stands for the gold, so does the Christian stand for Christ, representing His good and acceptable will.--_A. J. Gordon._
You are glad to know general rules, thinking by that to introduce difficulties, and render all useless. We shall stop you, my good father; truth is one, and strong.
Suspicion is very often a useless pain.
We have heard much of Faraday's gentleness and sweetness and tenderness. It is all true, but it is very incomplete. You cannot resolve a powerful nature into these elements, and Faraday's character would have been less admirable than it was had it not embraced forces and tendencies to which the silky adjectives "gentle" and "tender" would by no means apply. Underneath his sweetness and gentleness was the heat of a volcano. He was a man of excitable and fiery nature; but through high self-discipline he had converted the fire into a central glow and motive power of life, instead of permitting it to waste itself in useless passion. "He that is slow to anger" saith the sage, "is greater than the mighty, and he that ruleth his own spirit than he that taketh a city." Faraday was not slow to anger, but he completely ruled his own spirit, and thus, though he took no cities, he captivated all hearts.
Better to be strong than pretty and useless.
The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.
Of these there are false and true. There must be a mark whereby to know them, or they would be useless.
But there, you will say, is everything contained in one word. Yes, but that is useless, if not explained, and when we begin to explain it, as soon as the precept is opened which contains all the others, they issue in that first confusion which you wished to avoid. Thus when they are all enclosed in one they are concealed and useless, as in a box, and never appear but in their natural confusion. Nature has established them all without enclosing one in the other.
My success and my misfortunes, the bright and the dark days I have gone through, everything has proved to me that in this world, either physical or moral, good comes out of evil just as well as evil comes out of good. My errors will point to thinking men the various roads, and will teach them the great art of treading on the brink of the precipice without falling into it. It is only necessary to have courage, for strength without self-confidence is useless.
To examine ourselves is good; but useless unless we also examine Environment. To bewail our weakness is right, but not remedial. The cause must be investigated as well as the result. And yet, because we never see the other half of the problem, our failures even fail to instruct us. After each new collapse we begin our life anew, but on the old conditions; and the attempt ends as usual in the repetition--in the circumstances the inevitable repetition--of the old disaster. Natural Law, Environment, p. 265.
Everything in life is miraculous. For the sigil taught me that it rests within the power of each of us to awaken at will from a dragging nightmare of life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits, to see life as it really is, and to rejoice in its exquisite wonderfulness. If the sigil were proved to be the top of a tomato-can, it would not alter that big fact, nor my fixed faith.
Otia si tollas, periere Cupidinis arcus=--Remove the temptations of idleness, and Cupid's bow is useless.
An idler is a watch that wants both hands; / As useless if it goes as if it stands.
If the foot had always been ignorant that it belonged to the body, and that there was a body on which it depended, if it had only had the knowledge and the love of self, and if it came to know that it belonged to a body on which it depended, what regret, what confusion for the past life, for having been useless to the body from which its whole life was derived, which would have reduced it to nothing if it had rejected it and separated it from itself, as it held itself apart from the body. What prayers for its preservation in the body, with what submission would it allow itself to be governed according to the will which rules the body, even to consent, if need be, that it should be cut off, or it would lose its character of member. For each member must be content to perish for the body, for which alone the whole exists.
I cannot think we are useless or Usen would not have created us. He created all tribes of men and certainly had a righteous purpose in creating each.
To a poet nothing can be useless.
Il n'est rien d'inutile aux personnes de sens=--There is nothing useless to people of sense.
I have known some men possessed of good qualities which were very serviceable to others, but useless to themselves; like a sun-dial on the front of a house, to inform the neighbours and passengers, but not the owner within.= (?)
Christmas time is here, by Golly; Kill the turkeys, ducks and chickens; Disapproval would be folly; Mix the punch, drag out the Dickens; Deck the halls with hunks of holly; Even though the prospect sickens, Fill the cup and don't say when... Brother, here we go again. On Christmas day, you can't get sore; Relations sparing no expense'll, Your fellow man you must adore; Send some useless old utensil, There's time to rob him all the more, Or a matching pen and pencil, The other three hundred and sixty-four! Just the thing I need... how nice. It doesn't matter how sincere Hark The Herald-Tribune sings, It is, nor how heartfelt the spirit; Advertising wondrous things. Sentiment will not endear it; God Rest Ye Merry Merchants, What's important is... the price. May you make the Yuletide pay. Angels We Have Heard On High, Let the raucous sleighbells jingle; Tell us to go out and buy. Hail our dear old friend, Kris Kringle, Sooooo... Driving his reindeer across the sky, Don't stand underneath when they fly by! -- Tom Lehrer