#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

Ah! how little knowledge does a man acquire in his life. He gathers it up like water, but like water it runs between his fingers, and yet, if his hands be but wet as though with dew, behold a generation of fools call out, 'See, he is a wise man!' Is it not so? ↗

— H. Rider Haggard

#foolishness #futility #humanity #intelligence #knowledge

So, it becomes an exercise in futility if you write something that does not express the film as the director wishes. It's still their ball game. It's their show. I think any successful composer learns how to dance around the director's impulses. ↗

— Danny Elfman

#around #ball #ball game #becomes #composer

Science has a simple faith, which transcends utility. It is the faith that it is the privilege of man to learn to understand, and that this is his mission. ↗

— Vannevar Bush

#his #learn #man #mission #privilege

Nothing leads so straight to futility as literary ambitions without systematic knowledge. ↗

— H. G. Wells

#knowledge #leads #literary #nothing #straight

A Cathedral Façade at Midnight Along the sculptures of the western wall I watched the moonlight creeping: It moved as if it hardly moved at all Inch by inch thinly peeping Round on the pious figures of freestone, brought And poised there when the Universe was wrought To serve its centre, Earth, in mankind’s thought. The lunar look skimmed scantly toe, breast, arm, Then edged on slowly, slightly, To shoulder, hand, face; till each austere form Was blanched its whole length brightly Of prophet, king, queen, cardinal in state, That dead men’s tools had striven to simulate; And the stiff images stood irradiate. A frail moan from the martyred saints there set Mid others of the erection Against the breeze, seemed sighings of regret At the ancient faith’s rejection Under the sure, unhasting, steady stress Of Reason’s movement, making meaningless. ↗

— Thomas Hardy

#faith #futility #moonlight #mortality #night

The fishes are also employed for the same purpose on any yard, which happens to be sprung or fractured. Thus their form, application, and utility are exactly like those of the splinters applied to a broken limb in surgery. ↗

— William Falconer

#any #application #applied #broken #employed

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

Dusting is a good example of the futility of trying to put things right. As soon as you dust, the fact of your next dusting has already been established. ↗

— George Carlin

#been #dust #established #example #fact