Wealth is like manure. It stinks when it piles up, and it’s only useful when it’s scattered.
—Leo Tolstoy
In truth, laws are always useful to those with possessions and harmful to those who have nothing; from which it follows that the social state is advantageous to men only when all possess something and none has too much.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
People respect idle, rich people, and not those who do work inarguably useful to everyone: farmers, laborers.
—Leo Tolstoy
The true science of martial arts means practicing them in such a way that they will be useful at any time, and to teach them in such a way that they will be useful in all things
—Miyamoto Musashi
Always think of what is useful and not what is beautiful. Beauty will come of its own accord.
—Nikolai Gogol
If you understand that your central task in life is love, then when you interact with someone you won’t think about how he might be useful to you, but rather how you might be useful to him. Just do this and you’ll succeed in everything far more than if you worry about yourself.
—Leo Tolstoy
Laws are always useful to those who possess and vexatious to those who have nothing.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection.
—Charles Darwin
When people study for themselves, what they learn is always useful; if they study to achieve praise, it has less value; if they study for the sake of money, what they learn is always harmful.
—Leo Tolstoy
The important thing in strategy is to suppress the enemy’s useful actions but allow his useless actions.
—Miyamoto Musashi
Do not collect weapons or practice with weapons beyond what is useful.
—Miyamoto Musashi
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
—Seneca
If I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the most useful to the people of our century, I would simply say: in the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, and look around you.
—Leo Tolstoy
O that I might feel more, and act more, and be more useful. O God bless me through Christ.
—William Wilberforce
The spiritual man would rather be useful than famous & would rather serve than be served. And all this must be by the operation of the Holy Spirit within him. No man can become spiritual by himself. Only the free Spirit can make a man spiritual.
—AW Tozer
Whoever wants to be useful, even with bound hands can do a lot of good.
—Fyodor Dostoevsky
“I am not seeking to be great, but to be really useful.”
In truth, laws are always useful to those with possessions and harmful to those who have nothing; from which it follows that the social state is advantageous to men only when all possess something and none has too much.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I think I may say, that of all the men we meet with, nine parts of ten are what they are, good or evil, useful or not, by their education.
—John Locke