Usefulness

"I like shade," replied M. de Renal, with a touch of the hauteur appropriate to speaking to a surgeon who was a member of the Legion of Honour; "I like shade, I have caused my trees to be pruned to give shade, and I cannot imagine that a tree is made for anything else, when, unlike the useful walnut, it doesn't bring in any money."
               ---Stendhal, The Red and the Black, Bk. 1, Ch. 2.