Usage Quotes

USAGE, n. The First Person of the literary Trinity, the Second and Third being Custom and Conventionality. Imbued with a decent reverence for this Holy Triad an industrious writer may hope to produce books that will live as long as the fashion.

When despotism has established itself for ages in a country, as in France, it is not in the person of the king only that it resides. It has the appearance of being so in show, and in nominal authority; but it is not so in practice and in fact. It has its standard everywhere. Every office and department has its despotism, founded upon custom and usage.

A trail through the mountains, if used, becomes a path in a short time, but, if unused, becomes blocked by grass in an equally short time.

The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately... you usually don't use it at all. It uses you.

The claims of no people, according to established policy and usage, are respected by any nation, until they are presented in a national capacity.

Freedom is something that dies unless it's used.

New societies, like the United States, in general, tend to emphasize fundamental law rather than custom or usage precisely because they are new societies. Since customary usage is not available to them, they have to enact laws and legitimize them by linking them to fundamental law. New states serving old societies, like post revolutionary France, reject customary usage as inconsistent with their efforts to build something new. At most they are willing to incorporate elements of the customs that cannot be ignored in the hope of neutralizing or transforming them politically.

Pray do not grieve so; but go and take a stone, and place it in the hole, and fancy that the gold is still lying there. It will do you quite the same service; for when the gold was there, you had it not, as you did not make the slightest use of it.

'Imagine a person whose memory could not retain what the word 'pain' meant-so that he constantly called different things by that name-but nevertheless used the word in a way fitting in with the usual symptoms and presuppositions of pain'-in short he uses it as we all do. Here I should like to say: a wheel that can be turned though nothing else moves with it, is not part of the mechanism.

The best thing to do with water is to use a lot of it.

Usage is like oxygen for ideas. That means every moment you're working on something without it being in the public it's actually dying, deprived of the oxygen of the real world.

Just keep on using me, until you use me up.

Brass shines with constant usage, a beautiful dress needs wearing,Leave a house empty, it rots.

Propriety is that perfection of style which comes when a work is authoritatively constructed on approved principles. It arises from prescription, from usage, or from nature.

Knowledge is not power unless it is used.

If you get deep enough, you get trapped. Stop calling yourself a user. You are being used.

A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged. It is the skin of a living thought and may vary in color and context according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used.

It's not the years honey, it's the mileage.

The usages and methods of warfare are thus determined by changing circumstances and, therefore, they themselves can in nowise be eternal.

I hear what people have said about what they want to see the Opera House used for and what they don't want to see it used for.

Usage is the best language teacher.

I?d rather be rejected than used because they both amount to the same thing in the end, but being used takes a lot longer.

I hope I use them more than they use me.

We use the word 'hope' perhaps more often than any other word in the vocabulary: 'I hope it's a nice day.' 'Hopefully, you're doing well.' 'So how are things going along? Pretty good. Going to be good tomorrow? Hope so.'