Barren Quotes

• Wise sayings often fall on barren ground, but a kind word is never thrown away.

  Arthur Helps

  Inspirational, Wise, Gratitude

  Sir Arthur Helps (1883). “Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd”

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• As one looks across the barren stretches of the pack, it is sometimes difficult to realise what teeming life exists immediately beneath its surface.

  Robert Falcon Scott

  Looks, Sometimes, Surface

  Robert Falcon Scott, Max Jones (2008). “Journals: Captain Scott's Last Expedition”, p.53, Oxford University Press

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• Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground.

  William Shakespeare

  Memorable, Sea, Giving

  'The Tempest' (1611) act 1, sc. 1, l. [70]

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• In Israel, a land lacking in natural resources, we learned to appreciate our greatest national advantage: our minds. Through creativity and innovation, we transformed barren deserts into flourishing fields and pioneered new frontiers in science and technology.

  Shimon Peres

  Creativity, Technology, Land

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• Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue; and independence I will ever secure by contracting my wants, though I were to live on a barren heath.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Life, Single, Blessing

  Mary Wollstonecraft (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Mary Wollstonecraft (Illustrated)”, p.608, Delphi Classics

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• Our Lord never condemned the fig tree because it brought forth so much fruit that some fell to the ground and spoiled. He only cursed it when it was barren.

  Edwin Louis Cole

  Tree, Literature, Fruit

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• The mind is but a barren soil; a soil which is soon exhausted, and will produce no crop, or only one, unless it be continually fertilized and enriched with foreign matter.

  Joshua Reynolds

  Learning, Political, Mind

  'Discourses on Art' (ed. R. Wark, 1975) no. 6 (10 December 1774)

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• Love is a sickness full of woes, all remedies refusing.

  Samuel Daniel

  Love Is, Woe, Sickness

  Samuel Daniel (1718). “The Poetical Works of Mr. Samuel Daniel, Author of the English History: To which is Prefix'd, Memoirs of His Life and Writings”, p.105

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• Power without principle is barren, but principle without power is futile. This is a party of government, and I will lead it as a party of government.

  Tony Blair

  Party, Government, Principles

  Tony Blair (1997). “New Britain: My Vision of a Young Country”, Basic Books (AZ)

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• It is a barren kind of criticism which tells you what a thing is not.

  Alfred Whitney Griswold

  Criticism, Kind, Critics

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• Happiness calls out responsive gladness in others. There is enough sadness in the world without yours ... never doubt the excellence and permanence of what is yet to be. Join the great company of those who make the barren places of life fruitful with kindness.

  Helen Keller

  Happiness, Kindness, Sadness

  Helen Keller (1920). “Out of the Dark: Essays, Lectures, and Addresses on Physical and Social Vision”

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• Speech is often barren; but silence also does not necessarily brood over a full nest.

  George Eliot

  Silence, Speech, Nests

  'Felix Holt' (1866) ch. 15

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• Revenge is barren of itself: it is the dreadful food it feeds on; its delight is murder, and its end is despair.

  Friedrich Schiller

  Revenge, Despair, Delight

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• And this, really, is the story-within-the-story, because if you do not believe that hearts can bloom suddenly bigger, and that love can open like a flower out of even the hardest places, then I am afraid that for you the world will be long and brown and barren, and you will have trouble finding the light. But if you do believe, then you already know all about magic.

  Lauren Oliver

  Flower, Believe, Heart

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• The winter solstice has always been special to me as a barren darkness that gives birth to a verdant future beyond imagination, a time of pain and withdrawal that produces something joyfully inconceivable, like a monarch butterfly masterfully extracting itself from the confines of its cocoon, bursting forth into unexpected glory.

  Gary Zukav

  Pain, Butterfly, Winter

  "Solstice Joy" by Gary Zukav, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 27, 2011.

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• Men have looked upon the desert as barren land, the free holding of whoever chose; but in fact each hill and valley in it had a man who was its acknowledged owner and would quickly assert the right of his family or clan to it, against aggression.

  T. E. Lawrence

  Men, Land, Desert

  T. E. Lawrence (2015). “Lawrence of Arabia: The Man Behind the Myth (Complete Autobiographical Works, Memoirs & Letters): Seven Pillars of Wisdom (Memoirs of the Arab Revolt) + The Evolution of a Revolt + The Mint (Memoirs of the secret service in Royal Air Force) + Collected Letters (1915-1935)”, p.59, e-artnow

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• Love is a sickness full of woes, All remedies refusing; A plant that with most cutting grows, Most barren with best using.

  Samuel Daniel

  Love, Cutting, Woe

  Samuel Daniel (1718). “The Poetical Works of Mr. Samuel Daniel, Author of the English History: To which is Prefix'd, Memoirs of His Life and Writings”, p.105

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• Consequently the student who is devoid of talent will derive no more profit from this work than barren soil from a treatise on agriculture.

  Quintilian

  Agriculture, Soil, Students

  Quintilian (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Quintilian (Illustrated)”, p.17, Delphi Classics

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• A few men own from ten thousand to two hundred thousand acres each. The poor Laborer can find no resting place, save on the barren mountain, or in the trackless desert.

  Denis Kearney

  Men, Two, Hiking

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• I love music passionately. And because I love it I try to free it from barren traditions that stifle it.

  Claude Debussy

  Trying, Music Love, Tradition

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• All I ask is to be held above the barren wastes of want.

  Wilfred Owen

  Want, Waste, Asks

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• Thus sometimes hath the brightest day a cloud;
  And after summer evermore succeeds
  Barren winter, with his wrathful nipping cold:
  So cares and joys abound, as seasons fleet.

  William Shakespeare

  Summer, Winter, Clouds

  William Shakespeare, John Glover (of Cambridge?.) (1864). “The Works of William Shakespeare: The first, second, and third parts of King Henry VI. The first part of the contention, &c. The true tragedie of Richard Duke of Yorke, and the good King Henry the Sixt. King Richard III”, p.147

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• There is nothing more pitiable than a soulless, sapless, shriveled church, seeking to thrive in a worldly atmosphere, rooted in barren professions, bearing no fruit, and maintaining only the semblance of existence; such a church cannot long survive.

  George C. Lorimer

  Long, Atmosphere, Church

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, (p. 147), 1895.

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• Our people do not want barren theories from their democracy. Maury Maverick has expressed very quaintly, but clearly, what they really want when he says: 'We Americans want to talk, pray, think as we please and eat regular'.

  Robert H. Jackson

  Thinking, People, Democracy

  Speech to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco in 1939. "America's Advocate: Robert H. Jackson" by Eugene C. Gerhart, 1958.

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• As for critics, one mediocre writer is more valuable than ten good critics. They are like haughty, barren spinsters lodged in a maternity ward.

  Peter Greenaway

  Maternity, Spinsters, Mediocre

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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