Nonutilitarian Quotes & Sayings

I have seen women walk right past a TV set with a football game on and - this always amazes me - not stop to watch, even if the TV is showing replays of what we call a "good hit," which is a tackle that causes at least one major internal organ to actually fly out of a player's body. — Dave Barry

In the past an artist produced things that were necessary socially; they were instruments, albeit of a special kind, that helped the dead reach eternity, spells to be cast, prayers to be liturgically fleshed ... The aesthetic component of those instruments enhanced their function but was never central, never an independent, nonutilitarian thing. — Stanislaw Lem

Crikey means gee whiz, wow! Crikey, mate. You're far safer dealing with crocodiles and western diamondback rattlesnakes than the executives and the producers and all those sharks in the big MGM building. — Steve Irwin

[T]he strongest defense of the humanities lies not in the appeal to their utility - that literature majors may find good jobs, that theaters may economically revitalize neighborhoods - but rather in the appeal to their defiantly nonutilitarian character, so that individuals can know more than how things work, and develop their powers of discernment and judgment, their competence in matters of truth and goodness and beauty, to equip themselves adequately for the choices and the crucibles of private and public life. — Leon Wieseltier

It is untrue that fiction is nonutilitarian. The uses of fiction are synonymous with the uses of literature. They include refreshment, clarification of life, self-awareness, expansion of our range of experiences, and enlargement of our sense of understanding and discovery, perception, intensification, expression, beauty , and understanding. Like literature generally, fiction is a form of discovery, perception, intensification, expression, beauty, and understanding. If it is all these things, the question of whether it is a legitimate use of time should not even arise. — Leland Ryken

Freedom may come not from being in control of life but rather from a willingness to move with the events of life, to hold on to our memories but let go of the past, to choose, when necessary, the inevitable. We can become free at any time. — Rachel Naomi Remen

A nervous, undernourished girl who continually looked down the front of her gown as though there was some sort of construction project going on under her clothes. — Philip Roth

They'd used sex instead of communication in the past, and it had turned out disastrously. — Miranda Liasson

I've been acting for a while, but theater is pretty different. I've never been in a play. — Miranda Cosgrove

And the way he does look at me makes me feel absolutely beautiful. — Huntley Fitzpatrick

When I read the statements of Christ, there seems to be this urgency and intensity. I guess that's what I get out of it when I read the tone of the Scriptures, which is very different from the tone of our culture. — Francis Chan

See, the thing about that word, Sharkey, the F-word, is that sometimes I make that word do too much work. I mean, I say that word as if it clearly articulates what I'm really feeling. And it doesn't. It's a shortcut. — Benjamin Alire Saenz