Barren Quotes - Page 11

• I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba, and cry, 'Tis all barren--and so it is; and so is all the world to him who will not cultivate the fruits it offers.

  Laurence Sterne

  Travel, Men, World

  Laurence Sterne, Melvyn New, Geoffrey Day (2006). “A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy: And, Continuation of the Bramine's Journal : with Related Texts”, p.39, Hackett Publishing

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• But beauty is set apart,
  beauty is cast by the sea,
  a barren rock,
  beauty is set about
  with wrecks of ships.

  Hilda Doolittle

  Beauty, Rocks, Sea

  Hilda Doolittle, Louis L. Martz (1986). “Collected Poems 1912-1944”, p.126, New Directions Publishing

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• People have responded to the pictures I make as mystical things, and they somehow carry the illusion further thinking that the place is this mystical, magical place. The desert is also a very barren place, a very lonely place, a very boring, uneventful place.

  Richard Misrach

  Photography, Lonely, Thinking

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• But there are spirits of a yet more liberal culture, to whom no simplicity is barren. There are not only stately pines, but fragile flowers, like the orchises, commonly described as too delicate for cultivation, which derive their nutriment from the crudest mass of peat. These remind us, that, not only for strength, but for beauty, the poet must, from time to time, travel the logger's path and the Indian's trail, to drink at some new and more bracing fountain of the Muses, far in the recesses of the wilderness.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Inspirational, Flower, Simplicity

  Henry David Thoreau (1873). “The Maine Woods”, p.160

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• we must be as satisfied to be powerless, idle and still before God, and dried up and barren when He permits it, as to be full of life, enjoying His presence with ease and devotion. The whole matter of our union with God consists in being content either way.

  Jane Frances de Chantal

  God, Enjoy Life, Ease

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• He that will do no good offices after a disappointment must stand still, and do just nothing at all. The plough goes on after a barren year; and while the ashes are yet warm, we raise a new house upon the ruins of a former.

  Seneca the Younger

  Disappointment, Years, Office

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• Theories without facts may be barren, but facts without theories are meaningless.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  May, Facts, Theory

  Kenneth E. Boulding (1941). “Economic Analysis”

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• ... continual hard labor deadens the energies of the soul, and benumbs the faculties of the mind; the ideas become confined, the mind barren, and, like the scorching sands of Arabia, produces nothing; or, like the uncultivated soil, brings forth thorns and thistles. Again, continual hard labor irritates our tempers and sours our dispositions; the whole system become worn out with toil and fatigue; nature herself becomes almost exhausted, and we care but little whether we live or die.

  Maria W. Stewart

  Ideas, Soul, Mind

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• The high mountains are barren, but the low valleys are covered over with corn; and accordingly the showers of God's grace fall into lowly hearts and humble souls.

  Sam Worthington

  Fall, Heart, Humble

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• The importance of a lost romantic vision should not be underestimated. In such a vision is power as well as joy. In it is meaning.Life is flat, barren, zestless, if one can find one's lost vision nowhere.

  Sarah-Patton Boyle

  Romantic, Loss, Power

  Sarah-Patton Boyle, Jennifer Lynn Ritterhouse (1962). “The Desegregated Heart: A Virginian's Stand in Time of Transition”, p.169, University of Virginia Press

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• One time I was on the road with clients with an investment bank, and they thought it would be fun to go to a strip club. It was the most barren thing I've ever seen - this poor woman had nothing on and they were throwing quarters at her.

  Melanne Verveer

  Fun, Would Be, Clubs

  Source: www.elle.com

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• The canyon country does not always inspire love. To many it appears barren, hostile, repellent - a fearsome mostly waterless land of rock and heat, sand dunes and quicksand, cactus, thornbrush, scorpion, rattlesnake, and agaraphobic distances. To those who see our land in that manner, the best reply is, yes, you are right, it is a dangerous and terrible place. Enter at your own risk. Carry water. Avoid the noonday sun. Try to ignore the vultures. Pray frequently.

  Edward Abbey

  Country, Distance, Land

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• If, in any individual, university training produces a taste for refined idleness, a distaste for sustained effort, a barren intellectual arrogance, or a sense of superfluous aloofness from the world of real men who do the world's real work, then it has harmed that individual.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Real, Men, Intellectual Arrogance

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• The poison was brewed in these West lands but it has spat itself everywhere by now. However far you went you would find the machines, the crowded cities, the empty thrones, the false writings, the barren beds: men maddened with false promises and soured with true miseries, worshipping the iron works of their own hands, cut off from Earth their Mother and from the Father in Heaven. You might go East so far the East became West and you returned to Britain across the great Ocean, but even so you would not have come out anywhere into the light. The shadow of one dark wing is over all Tellus.

  C. S. Lewis

  Mother, Father, Ocean

  C.S. Lewis (1996). “That Hideous Strength”, p.290, Simon and Schuster

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• Extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different - and perhaps barren - outcome.

  George H. W. Bush

  War, Land, Iraq

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• In excited conversation we have glimpses of the universe, hints of power native to the soul, far-darting lights and shadows of an Andes landscape, such as we can hardly attain in lone meditation. Here are oracles sometimes profusely given, to which the memory goes back in barren hours.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Memories, Light, Meditation

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Barbara L. Packer, Joseph Slater, Douglas Emory Wilson (2003). “The Conduct of Life”, p.144, Harvard University Press

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• Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud-and the only answer is the echo of our wailing cry. From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead there comes no word. But in the night of Death Hope sees a star and listening Love can hear the rustling of a wing.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Stars, Night, Echoes

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1911). “The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll”

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• The U.S. continues the search for Osama bin Laden. Reports suggest that bin Laden is most likely hiding out somewhere remote and barren, where he will not encounter others. The FBI has begun searching theaters showing the movie 'Glitter.'

  Jimmy Fallon

  Encounters, Glitter, Osama Bin Laden

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• Is there conscience in the Kremlin? Do they ever ask themselves what is the purpose of life? What is it all for?... No. Their creed is barren of conscience, immune to the promptings of good and evil.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Evil, Purpose, Communism

  Margaret Thatcher (1987). “In defence of freedom: speeches on Britain's relations with the world 1976-1986”

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• Photography does not form a separate, barren field of art. It is only a means of execution, uniform, rapid and sure, which serves the artist by reproducing with mathematical precision the form and effect of objects and even that poetry which at once arises from any harmonious combination.

  Charles Negre

  Photography, Art, Mean

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• I stayed in L.A. long enough to get on my feet, and then I moved back to New York. The reason I moved here was that I don't feel warm outside of a city; it's too barren in the suburbs, and L.A. is a suburb. Here, it felt active.

  Iggy Pop

  New York, Feet, Cities

  "New Again: Iggy Pop". Interview With Lisa Robinson, www.interviewmagazine.com. February 23, 2016.

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• I'm a diehard animal lover - I've always loved animals - but it was just one of those trips that I felt like I was going back to the beginning of where earth started. At the time, where a lot of stuff was brewing anyway, to be in such a beautiful and barren land, and just looking at how life began with all these creatures, I just started to really think about animals and time and just all of it.

  Jillian Hervey

  Beautiful, Animal, Thinking

  Source: www.marieclaire.com

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• When you talk about "infertility" you're already using a land-based metaphor - a woman's body compared to property, to be considered fruitful or barren. And "estate" encompasses both legacy and landscape. Think of Emerson, referring to his son's death as "the loss of a beautiful estate."

  Monica Youn

  Beautiful, Son, Loss

  Source: therumpus.net

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• God knows just the place where you'll be placed. He has a barren living room in desperate need of warmth and joy. A corner of the world needs some color. He selected you with that place in mind.

  Max Lucado

  Color, Joy, Mind

  Source: www.biblegateway.com

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• Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.

  Simone Weil

  Happiness, Real, Evil

  Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.70, Psychology Press

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