Use

“ Use is strength; use makes growth. We have what we employ. And even in regard to our bodily frame the organs that we do not use we carry about with us rather as a weight attached to us than as a possession. ”

“ To use concrete illustrations, there is a greater moral value in the study of magnets than in the distinction between shall and will, in the study of birds or rocks than in that of diacritical marks or postage-stamps, in the development of a frog than in the longer or the shorter catechism, in the study of things than in the study of abstractions. ”

“ Good Use.—It appears, therefore, that words and phrases, in order to be proper expressions for use in English prose, (1) must be in common use at the present time; (2) they must be used, and used in the same sense, in every part of the country, and in every class and profession; (3) they must be expressions used by writers and speakers of established reputation. In other words, our expressions must be in present, national, and reputable use. Expressions which fulfil these three conditions are said to be in good use. ”

“ Reputable use is fixed, not by the practice of those whom A or B deems the best speakers or writers, but by the practice of those whom the world deems the best,—those who are in the best repute, not indeed as to thought, but as to expression, the manner of communicating thought. ”

“ So vast is the number of individual persons interested in these classes of matters, so well habituated are they, and consequently so deeply attached, to the recognized forms, usages, or even gestures, customarily in use—many of which are of a public nature and are daily witnessed by all men—that any vital reconstruction seems little short of sacrilege, and the most conclusive reasons in favor of it are scarcely comprehensible. ”

“ You should use what you have, and whatever you may chance to be doing, do it with all your might. ”

“ The effects of use and disuse—rightly directed by education in its widest sense—must of course be called in to secure the highly essential but nevertheless superficial, limited, and partly deceptive improvement of individuals and of social manners and methods ”

“ I reverence the individual who understands distinctly what it is he wishes; who unweariedly advances, who knows the means conducive to his object, and can seize and use them. ”

“ Thought makes every thing fit for use. ”

“ These propositions have a much more extensive and universal sense when applied to human life, than when confined to technical use. ”

“ Yet in hundreds of fœtid and pestilential dens a thousand and one articles of every-day use for the personal comfort or gratification of every section of the community and for every period of life are made. ”

“ I hold my peace on the topic of grammarians, rhetoricians, philosophers, geometers, logicians, musicians, astronomers, astrologers, physicians, whose science is sufficient, or very profitable, to mortal men, and is divided in 3 parts as in doctrine, and in reason, and use. ”

“ The words we use are an unmistakable indication of our thought habits, tastes, ideals, and interests in life. In like manner, the habitual language of a people is a barometer of their intellectual, civil, moral, and spiritual ideals. ”

“ By uses, in the heavens and earths, are understood ministries, functions, studies of life, employments, various family exercises and labors, consequently all things which are opposite to idleness and indolence. The same may also appear from the essence of uses: the essence of uses is the public good; the public good, in the most general sense, with the angels, is the good of the whole heaven ”

“ These are the materials for reflection which history affords to those who choose to make use of them. ”

“ A term thus frequently used of necessity will express at various times and in different connections different shades of thought. To discover the substance that lies behind this varying usage and is common to it all is no small task. ”

“ When shall we learn that he who multiplieth possessions multiplieth troubles, and that the one single use of things which we call our own is that they may be his who hath need of them? ”

“ First, then, there are certain respects in which I fully agree with recent pragmatism. I agree that every opinion expresses an attitude of the will, a preparedness for action, a determination to guide a plan of action in accordance with an idea. Whoever asserts anything about the way out of the woods, or about the cause and possible cure of a toothache, defines a course of action in accordance with some purpose, and amongst other things predicts the {146} possible outcome of that course of action. ”

“ Useful are such actions as serve a proper purpose: being either necessary or useful for the purpose which is to be attained. This division [of man's actions] is, as I believe, not open to any objection. ”

“ I LEFT thee last, a child at heart,
A woman scarce in years:
I come to thee, a solemn corpse
Which neither feels nor fears.
I have no breath to use in sighs;
They laid the dead-weights on mine eyes
To seal them safe from tears.
Look on me with thine own calm look:
I meet it calm as thou. ”

“ its use, noble as it is, has its circumspections and limits. ”

“ In the highest, on the contrary, a great number of parts combine to perform each function, each part doing its allotted share of the work with great accuracy and efficiency, but being useless for any other purpose. ”

“ Clip, clip, go the long, scythe-like shears, and with every clip down comes a branch with its thousand songs unsung, or a shoot with its half-blown promise of spring. Cut away earnestly, patiently. You have your faith to help you; and though your eyes are of the strongest and keenest, you have never been taught to use them. ”

“ Wherefore, let us first consider what sort of quality invention ought to be, which is the most important of all the divisions, and which applies to every description of cause in which an orator can be engaged. ”

“ By useful knowledge, I mean, not only an acquaintance with valuable arts and sciences, but also an understanding of our various moral and religious duties, in relation to our Creator, to our neighbour, and to ourselves. ”

“ Rituals, adornment, war, religion, means of accumulation, and means of persuasion are examples of differentiations. All these uses pertained to settled patterns of human interaction and led to products that were more than mere physical entities to be consumed. ”

“ The primary use of knowledge is for such guidance of conduct under all circumstances as shall make living complete. All other uses of knowledge are secondary. ”

“ Reading or thought, will principally bestow the former of these—the benevolent exercise of the powers of the mind in communicating useful knowledge, will bestow an habit, of the latter, both united, will contribute so far as lays in your individual power to that great reform, which will be perfect and finished, the moment every one is virtuous and wise. ”

“ We get forwards in the world, not so much by doing services, as receiving them; you take a withering twig, and put it in the ground; and then you water it, because you have planted it. ”

“ Definite habits, social, moral, religious, intellectual, professional, etc., will be necessary for efficiency. We should know what these various habits are, and should then set about the work of establishing them with system and determination, just as we would the building of a house. ”

“ In any work there is possible, first, more or less of the workman's interest—an interest not merely in a conventional standard of excellence in the finished result but also in betterment of the standard and in a corresponding heightened excellence of technique and spirit in the execution.49 These interests, without reference to the useful result and "for their own sake" (i.e., for the workman's sake, in ways not specifiable in advance) , may command a share of one's available time, strength, and resources. ”

“ The nicely manufactured terminology and sentences, so charged with meaning when used by the manufacturer, are treasures for the feebler minds who can study that philosophy only which consists in the ability to make a noise with uncommon and imposing words. ”

“ Such epithets are often regarded with favour and freely used, as seeming to obviate the necessity for that kind of labour to which most people are most averse,—the labour of sustained and accurate thinking. ”

“ He will watch, with care and interest, the operation of the moral and intellectual causes which he sets in operation; and find, as he accomplishes his various objects with increasing facility and power, that he will derive a greater and greater pleasure from his work. ”

“ Now we begin to feel the great need of larger means with which to carry on our work—to purchase books, MSS., &c., which we cannot otherwise secure, to print more of our MSS., and to carry out various plans for the enlarged usefulness of the Society. ”

“ When they enter into practical life, they possess indeed an immense stock of philosophical and learned material; but in the narrow circle of their calling this cannot be practically applied, and will therefore be forgotten as useless. ”

“ And it will be derived from the divisions of honour and usefulness, concerning which we will give rules when we lay down a system of deliberations. And if we compare the definition given by our adversaries with our own definition, and prove our own to be true, and honourable, and useful, and theirs to be entirely different. But we shall seek out things like them in an affair of either greater, or less, or equal importance, from which our description will be proved. ”

“ Hence it is that we have the principles of utility, of combination, of progress, of philanthropy, or, in material sciences, comparative anatomy, phrenology, electricity, exalted into leading ideas, and keys, if not of all knowledge, at least of many things more than belong to them,—principles, all of them true to a certain point, yet all degenerating into error and quackery, because they are carried to excess, viz. ”

“ For each of the aims which we set ourselves, just as for each one of the means which we apply to its attainment, the causes are already given, and are, under certain circumstances, recognisable as those which brought about the setting up of these aims and determined the way in which that was to be achieved. ”

“ In the employment of the vast variety and extent of excellent materials, great care shall be taken to insert every useful and curious information, reduced, where necessary, to modern language; and nothing shall be omitted which is conducive to valuable information and rational amusement. ”

“ Necessity may be defined two ways, conformably to the two definitions of cause, of which it makes an essential part. It consists either in the constant conjunction of like objects, or in the inference of the understanding from one object to another. ”

“ I answer, everything is useful which contributes to fix in the principles and practices of virtue. ”

“ With its usefulness not yet fully appreciated, its wide field of application not thoroughly understood, we may well be thankful for what it has already accomplished, and be proud of it as an exponent of the civilization and of the times in which we live. ”

“ In this Discourse I gave expression to many thoughts and opinions which had been accumulating in me through life, respecting the various studies which belong to a liberal education, their uses and influences, and the mode in which they should be pursued to render their influences most beneficial. ”

“ Things added to things, as statistics, civil history, are inventories. Things used as language are inexhaustibly attractive. ”

“ These papers of the day, the Ephemerae of learning, have uses more adequate to the purposes of common life than more pompous and durable volumes. ”