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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• The creator gives no heed to the critic unless he becomes a barren inventor.

  Khalil Gibran

  Giving, Critics, Inventor

  "Spiritual Sayings of Kahlil Gibran". Book by Kahlil Gibran, translated by Anthony R. Ferris, 1962.

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• Exploring and colonizing Mars can bring us new scientific understanding of climate change, of how planet-wide processes can make a warm and wet world into a barren landscape. By exploring and understanding Mars, we may gain key insights into the past and future of our own world.

  Buzz Aldrin

  Past, Keys, Understanding

  "Commentary: Let's aim for Mars". www.cnn.com. June 23, 2009.

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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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• 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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• Chaste to her husband, frank to all beside, A teeming mistress, but a barren bride.

  Alexander Pope

  Husband, Mistress, Brides

  Epistles to Several Persons "To a Lady" l. 71 (1735)

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

  Wilfred Owen

  Want, Waste, Asks

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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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• 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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• Perseverance gives power to weakness, and opens to poverty the world's wealth. It spreads fertility over the barren landscape, and buds the choicest flowers and fruits spring up and flourish in the desert abode of thorns and briars.

  Samuel Griswold Goodrich

  Perseverance, Spring, Flower

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• The cycle of the machine is now coming to an end. Man has learned much in the hard discipline and the shrewd, unflinching grasp of practical possibilities that the machine has provided in the last three centuries: but we can no more continue to live in the world of the machine than we could live successfully on the barren surface of the moon.

  Lewis Mumford

  Moon, Men, Discipline

  Lewis Mumford (2016). “The Culture of Cities”, p.372, Open Road Media

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