#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

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

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

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

He suddenly found himself on the precipice of utility. ↗

— J. F. Powers

#himself #precipice #suddenly #utility

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

The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility. ↗

— Martin Luther King, Jr.

#because #cannot #catharsis #defeat #emotional

I am somewhat exhausted; I wonder how a battery feels when it pours electricity into a non-conductor? ↗

— Arthur Conan Doyle

#electricity #energy #exhaustion #futility #sherlock-holmes

The wise hero must realise how terrible it will be, when all the wealth of this world lies waste, as now in various places throughout this middle-earth walls stand, blown by the wind covered with frost, the buildings storm-swept. The halls decay, their lords lie deprived of joy, the whole hearth-troop has fallen, proud by the wall. from THE WANDERER, lines 73-80 ↗

— Anonymous

#beautiful-writing #destruction #futility #haunting #middle-earth

Where utility ends and decoration begins is perfection. ↗

— Jack Gardner

#decoration #perfection #utility #art