The indispensible is not necessarily the desirable.

 

The indispensible is not necessarily the desirable.
--
Chapter 6 (p. 48)

 

Aldous Huxley

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Things to be done offer themselves, I suppose, because they are in themselves desirable; not because it is desirable to have something to do.

 

Anthony Trollope

 

The indispensible judicial requisite is intellectual humility.

 

Felix Frankfurter

 

It ain't necessarily so,
It ain't necessarily so.
De t'ings dat yo' li'ble
To read in de Bible,
It ain't necessarily so.

 

Ira Gershwin

 

Possibly all art flowers more readily in silence. Certainly the state of simplicity and humility is the only desirable one for artist or for man. While to reach it may be impossible, to attempt to do so is imperative. Stripped of almost everything that I had considered desirable and necessary, I began to try. Writing, which had meant the practice of an art by a polished mind in civilised surroundings, became a struggle to create completely fresh forms out of the rocks and sticks of words. I began to see things for the first time. Even the boredom and frustration presented avenues for endless exploration; even the ugliness, the bags and iron of Australian life, acquired a meaning. As for the cat's cradle of human intercourse, this was necessarily simplified, often bungled, sometimes touching. Its very tentativeness can be reward. There is always the possibility that the book lent, the record played, may lead to communication between human beings. There is the possibility that one may be helping to people a barely inhabited country with a race possessed of understanding.
These, then, are some of the reasons why an expatriate has stayed, in the face of those disappointments which follow inevitably upon his return.

 

Patrick (Australian novelist) White

 

These changes in identity and location can easily become nested inside each other, many layers deep, even if you aren't doing anything nefarious. Once you have forgotten who and where you are, the whoami command is indispensible.

 

Neal Stephenson