Reminds me of this delightful passage from the outer chapters of the Zhuangzi (tr. Brook Ziporyn):

Huizi said to Zhuangzi, “Your words are useless.”

Zhuangzi said, “It is only when you know uselessness that you can understand anything about the useful. The earth is certainly vast and wide, but a man at any time uses only as much of it as his two feet can cover. But if you were to dig away all the earth around his feet, down to the Yellow Springs, would that little patch he stands on be of any use to him?”

Huizi said, “It would be useless.”

Zhuangzi said, “Then the usefulness of the useless should be quite obvious.”