Uselessness

“ Without using the means to cultivate their powers, they will remain inert, and be of no use either to the individual or to society; and men with innate qualifications, and men without them, are brought down to a level of uselessness. ”

“ By most persons this period of infirmities and uselessness is anticipated with apprehension, especially in the case of those who have lived an active, useful life, giving largely of service to others, and dependent for most resources of enjoyment on their own energies.
To lose the resources of sight or hearing, to become feeble in body, so as to depend on the ministries of others, and finally to gradually decay in mental force and intelligence, to many seems far worse than death. Multitudes have prayed to be taken, from this life when their usefulness is thus ended. ”

“ There is nothing more mournful than the outward aspect of these princely residences which, abandoned and empty for three-quarters of the year, stand in stately loneliness, as if ashamed of their isolation and utter uselessness. Their blinds drawn, affording no hint of life within, enveloped the greater part of the time in the stillness and silence of the tomb, they appear to be under the spell of some baneful curse. ”

“ We know how easily the uselessness of almost every branch of knowledge may be proved to the complete satisfaction of those who do not possess it. ”

“ I sit sewing those little pieces together—a foolish thing to do, but one must be doing something, and as I think how useless it is there comes the thought of whether it is any more useless than all the other things in life. Is it any more useless than surgery? For can a great surgeon save his best friend? Is it any more useless than science—for can science do anything for her own? Is it any more useless than ambition and purpose and hope—for does not fate make sport of them all? Is it any more useless than books—for can books reach the hearts which need them most? ”

“ How leniently, then, should we deal with those who labor for our pleasure in these capacities! How indulgent should we show ourselves even to their caprices,—justly remembering the arduous nature of a struggle in which so many requirements are summoned, and that genius itself is insufficient, if there be not the vigor of health, the high promptings of ambition, and the consciousness of power that springs from unimpaired faculties. ”

“ One step well and firmly taken is better than two with a slip backwards. Poor human nature seems as though it must go to extremes–either all or none, too much or too little, idleness or being killed with work! ”

“ But the struggle within me, instead of growing less, has become greater, and sometimes the thought comes to me: What kind of a life is this, led in unprofitable idleness, in which one is of use to no man, and which consumes itself? ”

“ I see not what more can be done directly, and I see not why these things should not be done. Still some will suffer: the idle, the lazy, the proud who will not work, the careless who will voluntarily waste their time, their strength, or their goods—they must suffer, they ought to suffer. ”

“ Being forced to work, and forced to do your best, will breed in you temperance and self-control, diligence and strength of will, cheerfulness and content, and a hundred virtues which the idle will never know. ”

“ Much better to live for it, and do useful work for it! Surely you agree? Suppose you—or I—or any one—dies for it—you or I or that ‘any one’ must become absolutely useless,—a mere lump of dead matter, burnt or buried and forgotten in a week! ”

“ Beware of that weakness, the offspring of a miserable vanity, which, claiming too much for itself, can bestow nothing upon others. Strive only to meet the exigency, and you will do more—you will pass beyond it. Ask not what your fame requires—the poor fame of a solitary man struggling like an atom in the bosom of the great struggling world—ask only what is due to the task which you have assumed, and labor to do that. ”

“ What contribution have you or I given to human comfort or progress? Our days have been spent in vanity, emptiness, self-indulgence, and waste of good time. Each one of these poor girls in a single day has rendered up a nobler tale of work than you or I in ten years. ”

“ Omit a duty for once, and it will be more difficult to execute when necessity compels its performance. From what knowledge I have of my own character and propensities, I find that I am inclined to delay, to procrastinate, and to neglect favourable opportunities, either from not duly appreciating them, or from a vain hope that they will return again. ”

“ When conscious of our own weakness, and tempted to think of our task as heavy, or when complacent in our own power, and tempted to regard our task as easy, let us think of His ever-present work in and for His people, till it braces us for all duty, and rebukes our easy-going idleness. ”

“ And it is unquestionably out of deep sorrow, out of the travail of heart and nature, that the finest and noblest of all human thoughts have come.
As for the ordinary task-work of life, it must, beyond all question, be generally done by screws,—that is, by folk whose mental organization is unsound on some point. Vain people, obstinate people, silly people, evil-foreboding people, touchy people, twaddling people, carry on the work-day world. ”

“ Trammelled by a liberal share of human weakness, an unfortunate combination of high ambition and a tendency to frivolity, I can only hope to come to realize gradually all that that life represents. When one considers the wide-spread influence which even a comparatively obscure personality yields in this world, the awful responsibility which is attached to every act of volition, to every word and deed, is forced upon one. ”

“ Our Master saith to his followers: “Bring forth things new and old.” In this struggle remember that sensitiveness is sometimes selfishness, and that mental idleness or apathy is always egotism and animality. Usefulness is doing rightly by yourself and others. ”

“ There comes to every one at times the inquiring thought, of what use is life? What will be the result of all this seemingly useless toil, these states of unrest, these earnest efforts of the soul unappreciated, these best endeavors misunderstood? Such questions flood the reason at times, and we are ready to lay down our life weapons, scarce caring how the busy scene goes on. ”

“ I have already pointed out, I think, that in the eyes of the present age, which is so intolerant of anything that is not useful, such purposeless enjoyment of the moment, such a lulling of one's self in the cradle of the present, must seem almost incredible and at all events blameworthy. How useless we were! And how proud we were of being useless! We used even to quarrel with each other as to which of us should have the glory of being the more useless. We wished to attach no importance to anything, to have strong views about nothing, to aim at nothing ”

“ Could we add up the trouble, the cost, the jealousies, vexations, misunderstandings, the loss of time and the loss of pleasure, which these conventions entail—could we clearly realise the extent to which we are all daily hampered by them, daily enslaved by them ”

“ Gigantic works which are useless, or undertaken for the glorification of a single man, do not belong to our time. But when some generally useful work arises, do we recoil before the magnitude of the task? ”

“ If in hours of weariness and infirmity they wonder why they are kept in a useless and helpless state to burden others around, they should be assured that they are not useless; and this is not only by word, but, better still, by the manifestation of those virtues which such opportunities alone can secure. ”

“ ENNUI AND PLAY.—Necessity compels us to work, with the product of which the necessity is appeased ; the ever new awakening of necessity, however, accustoms us to work. But in the intervals in which necessity is appeased and asleep, as it were, we are attacked by ennui. ”

“ Think what your own life would be if day day after day brought you nothing but toil; if you had nothing to look back upon, nothing to look forward to, but the labour that makes a machine of you, deadening the power to care, and holding mind and body in the galling bondage and weariness of everlasting routine. ”

“ It insists upon everybody’s adding somewhat—a mite, perhaps, but earned by incessant effort—to an accumulated pile of usefulness, of which the only use will be, to burden our posterity with even heavier thoughts and more inordinate labor than our own. ”

“ I fear, however, that you will find your task a difficult one. Everywhere are the idle and undeserving, and these are more apt to force themselves forward as objects of benevolence than the truly needy and meritorious. ”

“ He cut us out of the “blessing of idleness,” and won for us the “curse of labor.” ”

“ It is a useless life which is not consecrated to a great idea. ”

“ The weak must bear in weakness, as well as the strong in strength; and the light burden rests as painfully on the back that bends in feebleness, as does the heavy one on Atlas-shoulders. We are too apt to regard those who serve us as mere working machines. Rarely do we consider them as possessing like wants and weaknesses, like sympathies and yearnings with ourselves. ”

“ This man who had stirred up thoughts of failure by his talk, who in his person stood for waste—the result of neither competition nor intellectual incapacity, but of his own ineffectually—had set him thinking of the purposelessness of his life, its want of aim, of every high and right intention that once had actuated him, and which he had flung aside and trampled on in weak resentment against the tide of circumstances he had himself set loose and made no attempt to stem. ”

“ Sorely as I have struggled, I have yet to encounter that common myth of weak men, an insurmountable barrier. The imperfection of our lives— what is it but the imperfection of our planning and doing? Shattered ideals—what hand shatters them but one's own? ”

“ Have you not brought it upon yourself by your own wickedness and disobedience? You had a good home and kind friends; and if you had to work every day, it was no more than all have to do in one form or another. Blame yourself, then, for your own idle, reckless disposition, that would not be satisfied with your lot. ”

“ And if certain popular theories of the just aims of life, duties of an earnest-minded man, and meritorious nature of practical deeds and material services only, are absolutely correct—in that case the work of this man's life is certainly a sample of deplorable waste and failure. ”

“ I have seen many a character faltering under the constant petty care of how to live, which stood firm like a rock under the storm of a quaking world, therefore I should not be surprised to find yet some few joining in those attacks, as I have neither means nor time to care for the wants of individuals, not even of my own children. ”

“ There are unquestionably duties that should attach us to life.—But he who is a burden to every one, and of no use to himself, why should he not have a right to quit a place where his complaints are importunate and his sufferings useless? ”

“ Aside from the true or false character of inutility, the psychological mechanism remains the same here as in the preceding cases; we shall only say that in place of a vital need it is a need of luxury acting, but it acts only because it is in man. ”

“ The uncertainty and vanity of human pursuits have for ever been a subject of remark.
And, if we examine the motives of human conduct and see the fallacious objects of human hope, we always perceive the constant attendance of pain, misery, and woe. ”

“ You exhaust your bodies with labour, that he may revel in luxury, or wallow in base and vile pleasures; you weaken yourselves, that he may become more strong, and better able to hold you in check. And yet from so many indignities, that the beasts themselves, could they be conscious of them, would not endure, you may deliver yourselves, if you but make an effort, not to deliver yourselves, but to show the will to do it. ”

“ But what is opportunity to the man who can’t use it? ”

“ The person who should spend his days in teaching them mere human science, (though he might undermine their false tenets,) by neglecting to set before them brighter hopes and purer principles, would, I imagine, live to very little purpose. For myself, sure I am, I should at last suffer the overwhelming conviction of having labored in vain. ”

“ I scarcely know what I mean, but to make Non Quakers reconciled to your doctrines, by shewing something like them in mere human operations—but I hardly understand myself, so let it pass for nothing. I pity you for over-work, but I assure you no-work is worse. The mind preys on itself, the most unwholesome food. ”

“ What a pity that in life we only get our lessons when they are of no use to us. ”

“ Call upon men to make useless things, or things which you mean wantonly to destroy the day after to-morrow, or to which by the conditions you tolerate you make a fair length of life impossible—call upon labour to do those things, and you are either filling its spirit with misery and depression, or you are making it, in self-defence, callous and hard. ”

“ I am awfully tired of being a perfectly useless person, with no definite end and aim. You don't suppose it's because I see every day the girls coming down to work, on the Massachusetts Avenue cars, do you? ”

“ How can I be required to make a painful exertion, or sacrifice a present convenience to serve another, if I am to be nothing the better for it? I waste my powers out of myself without sharing in the effects which they produce. ”