Topic

Worthlessness

Worthlessness in this collection is a condition created by context rather than inherent to things or people. Shaw on the richest man buying only ugliness and unhappiness in an ugly and unhappy world is the environmental argument: worth is not separable from the conditions in which it is exercised. Xenophon on anything-forced-not-being-beautiful gives worthlessness a processual account: the method of acquisition determines the value of what is acquired. Lincoln on life-in-your-years-not-years-in-your-life is the temporal correction: duration without quality is a form of worthlessness. Wilde on good-advice-being-useless-to-oneself is the aphoristic version of the same insight: some things have value only when they move. Nietzsche on music and life speaks to what makes existence worth having. Jefferson on the room without books is the minimalist definition: a life without meaning is one stripped of the things that give it content. What the collection argues is that worthlessness is not an absolute condition but a relational one — things are worthless in proportion to how completely they fail to connect with what the person holding them actually needs.

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Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.

Source: The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

A room without books is like a life without meaning

Fashion for the most part is nothing but the ostentation of riches.

Don't rely too much on labels, for too often they are fables

In an ugly and unhappy world the richest man can purchase nothing but ugliness and unhappiness

The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself

Without music, life would be a mistake

What good would it be to possess the whole universe if one were its only survivor?

Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice

All that glitters is not gold

We combat obstacles in order to get repose, and, when got, the repose is insupportable

And when he is out of sight, quickly also is he out of mind.

Some people have a knack of putting upon you gifts of no real value, to engage you to substantial gratitude. We thank them for nothing

It's the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and have her nonsense respected

Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much

A vigorous temper is not altogether an evil. Men who are easy as an old shoe are generally of little worth.

Our misery is that we thirst so little for these sublime things, and so much for the mocking trifles of time and space

Anything forced is not beautiful

And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.

When you see a man with a great deal of religion displayed in his shop window, you may depend upon it, he keeps a very small stock of it within