Usefulness comes by labour, wit by ease. [ George Herbert ]

Usefulness and baseness cannot exist in the same thing. [ Cicero ]

Reason is a bee, and exists only on what it makes; his usefulness takes the place of beauty. [ Joubert ]

A happy marriage is a new beginning of life, a new starting-point for happiness and usefulness. [ Dean Stanley ]

Friendship is the only thing in the world concerning the usefulness of which all mankind are agreed. [ Cicero ]

Nature and religion are the bands of friendship, excellence and usefulness are its great endearments. [ Jeremy Taylor ]

Biography, especially the biography of the great and good, who have risen by their own exertions from poverty and obscurity to eminence and usefulness, is an inspiring and ennobling study. Its direct tendency is to reproduce the excellence it records. [ Horace Mann ]

As it often happens that the best men are but little known, and consequently cannot extend the usefulness of their examples a great way, the biographer is of great utility, as, by communicating such valuable patterns to the world, he may perhaps do a more extensive service to mankind than the person whose life originally afforded the pattern. [ Fielding ]

We acquire the love of people who, being in our proximity, are presumed to know us; and we receive reputation or celebrity, from such as are not personally acquainted with us. Merit secures to us the regard of our honest neighbors, and good fortune that of the public. Esteem is the harvest of a whole life spent in usefulness; but reputation is often bestowed upon a chance action, and depends most on success. [ G. A. Sala ]