Famous quotes containing the word useless:
“The habits of our whole species fall into three great classes—useful labour, useless labour, and idleness. Of these the first only is meritorious; and to it all the products of labor rightfully belong; but the two latter, while they exist, are heavy pensioners upon the first, robbing it of a large portion of its just rights. The only remedy for this is to, as far as possible, drive useless labour and idleness out of existence.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“I feel that you will not only be the making of my happiness, but also of my fortunes or success in life. The truth is I never did half try to be anything, or do anything. There was no motive ... and so I have lived, not an idle, but a useless sort of life. Hereafter I hope all that will be quite changed.... I shall have purpose and steadiness to keep ever doing, looking to your happiness and approval as my best reward.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“My first few weeks in America are always miserable, because the tastes I am cursed with are all of a kind that cannot be gratified here, & I am not enough in sympathy with our “gros public” to make up for the lack on the aesthetic side. One’s friends are delightful; but we are none of us Americans, we don’t think or feel as the Americans do, we are the wretched exotics produced in a European glass-house, the most déplacé & useless class on earth!”
—Edith Wharton (1862–1937)