What is the use of a new-born child?

-Frank, Anne
Reply when questioned as to the use of a new invention. Quoted in J Parton Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (1864), pt.4, ch.17.

To be successful in business, you should produce something cheap, habit-forming, and consumed by use.

-Gillette, King Camp
Attributed.

The value, or worth of a man, is as of all other things, his price; that is to say, so much as would be given for the use of his power.

-Hobbes,Thomas
Leviathan, pt.1, ch.10.

A tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use.

-Irving,Washington
^20  The Sketch Book,'Rip Van Winkle'.

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

-Johnson, Samuel known as Dr Johnson
Attributed.

   We had no use for the teachings of the Gospels: if someone slaps you, just turn the other cheek.We had shown that anyone who slapped us on our cheek would get his head kicked off.

-Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeyevich
  Khrushchev Remembers. This biography, published in the West, is of dubious authenticity.

Suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be enquired how the watch happened to be in that place† The inference, we think, is inevitable; that the watch must have had a maker, that there must have existed, at some time and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed it for the purpose whichwe find it actually toanswer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use.

-Paley,William
  NaturalTheology, ch.1.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

-Pearson, Lester Bowles

'Tis use alone that sanctifies expense, And splendour borrows all her rays from sense.

-Pope, Alexander
Epistles to Several Persons,'To Lord Burlington', l.179^80.

Skullion had little use for contraceptives at the best of times.Unnatural, he called them, and placed them in the lower social category of things along with elastic-sided boots and made-up bow ties. Not the sort of attire for a gentleman.

-Sharpe,Tom (Thomas Ridley)
  Porterhouse Blue, ch.9.

It wasn't a matterof becoming interested inmusic; music isa gift and a burden I'vehad since Icanremember who I was. I was born into music. The decision was how to make the best use of it.

-Simone, Nina pseudonym of  Eunice Waymon
Quoted in ArtTaylor Notes andTones (1977),'Nina Simone'.

Monopoly power must be abused. It has no use save abuse.

-Simons, Henry C
  Economic Policy for a Free Society, p.129.

The word, it is to be observed, has two different meanings, and sometimes the utility of some particular object, and sometimes the power of purchasing other goods which the possession of that object conveys. This one may be called 'value in use'; the other,'value in exchange'. The things which have the greatest value in usehave frequently little or novalue in exchange; and on the contrary, those which have the greatest value in exchange have frequently little or no value in use. Nothing is more useful than water: but it will purchase scarce any thing; scarce any thing can be had in exchange for it. A diamond, on the contrary, has scarce any value in use; but a very great quantity of other goods may frequently be had in exchange for it.

-Smith, Adam
VALUE1776  An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of theWealth of Nations, bk.1, ch.4.