Barren Quotes - Page 4

• I stand in Minas Anor, the Tower of the Sun; and behold! the Shadow has departed! I will be a Shieldmaiden no longer, nor vie with the great Riders, nor take joy only in the songs of slaying. I will be a healer, and love all things that grow and are not barren.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Song, Joy, Departed

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). “The Return of the King: Being the Third Part of the Lord of the Rings”, p.153, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• When she fell asleep, she dreamed of death-- not just for her, not just for her species, but for every living thing she had ever known. The earth was flat and brown, a field of dirt as barren as the moon, a single road stretching in the distance. the last to fall were the buildings, distant and solemn, the gravestones for an entire world. Then they disappeared, and there was nothing left but nothing.

  Dan Wells

  Distance, Fall, Moon

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• The Thames is a wretched river after the Mersey and the ships are not like Liverpool ships and the docks are barren of beauty ... it is a beastly hole after Liverpool; for Liverpool is the town of my heart and I would rather sail a mudflat there than command a clipper out of London

  John Masefield

  Heart, Rivers, London

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• Perhaps the best function of parenthood is to teach the young creature to love with safety, so that it may be able to venture unafraid when later emotion comes; the thwarting of the instinct to love is the root of all sorrow and not sex only but divinity itself is insulted when it is repressed. To disapprove, to condemn the human soul shrivels under barren righteousness.

  Freya Stark

  Inspirational, Sex, Children

  Freya Stark (1964). “The Journey's Echo: Selections”

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• A public domain work is an orphan. No one is responsible for its life. But everyone exploits its use, until that time certain when it becomes soiled and haggard, barren of its previous virtues. How does the consumer benefit from the steady decline of a film's quality?

  Jack Valenti

  Quality, Doe, Use

  "A Plea For Keeping Alive the U.S. Film Industry's Competitive Energy". Jack Valenti's speech as MPAA Chairman and CEO before The Senate Judiciary Committee, September 20, 1995.

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• The power of growth, of improvement, the power to overcome all stagnation and break through every obstacle and transform a barren wasteland into a verdant field - that unstoppable power of hope resides right within your own heart. It wells up from the rich earth of your innermost being when you face the future without doubt or fear: "I can do more. I can grow. I can become a bigger and better human being."

  Daisaku Ikeda

  Heart, Break Through, Hopeful

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• The Magistrate suffered from the disability of a free-thinking turn of mind and from a life that was barren and dreary to match.

  J. G. Farrell

  Thinking, Mind, Disability

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• Let us see that our knowledge of Christ be not a powerless, barren, unpractical knowledge: O that, in its passage from our understanding to our lips, it might powerfully melt, sweeten, and ravish our hearts! Remember, brethren, a holy calling never saved any man, without a holy heart; if our tongues only be sanctified, our whole man must be damned. We must be judged by the same gospel, and stand at the same bar, and be sentenced to the same terms, and dealt with as severely as any other men.

  John Flavel

  Heart, Men, Understanding

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• All men who live only according to their five senses, and seek nothing beyond the gratification of their natural appetites for pleasure and reputation and power, cut themselves off from that charity which is the principle of all spiritual vitality and happiness because it alone saves us from the barren wilderness of our own abominable selfishness.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Cutting, Men

  Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.172, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Daughter of heaven and earth, coy Spring,
  With sudden passion languishing,
  Teaching barren moors to smile,
  Painting pictures mile on mile,
  Holds a cup of cowslip wreaths
  Whence a smokeless incense breathes.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Daughter, Spring, Teaching

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1854). “Poems”, p.163

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• The word barren tells you everything you need to know...The word spinster tells you everything you need to know about our attitude of women who choose not to marry... Imagine if you saw George Clooney on the cover of a magazine every week with, is George broody? Is George going to adopt a baby? When is George going to have another kid? It would just seem weird. We'd seem demented, yet it's totally valid for women.

  Caitlin Moran

  Baby, Attitude, Kids

  "Not A Feminist? Caitlin Moran Asks, Why Not?". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. July 29, 2016.

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• Long live the weeds that overwhelm
  My narrow vegetable realm!
  The bitter rock, the barren soil
  That force the son of man to toil;
  All things unholy, marred by curse,
  The ugly of the universe.

  Theodore Roethke

  Weed, Son, Men

  Theodore Roethke (2011). “The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke”, p.39, Anchor

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• To a person who expects every desert to be barren sand dunes, the Sonoran must come as a surprise. Not only are there no dunes, there's no sand. At least not the sort of sand you find at the beach. The ground does have a sandy color to it, or gray, but your feet won't sink in. It's hard, as if it's been tamped. And pebbly. And glinting with -- what else -- mica.

  Jerry Spinelli

  Beach, Color, Feet

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• A man seeks his own destiny and no other, said the judge. Wil or nill. Any man who could discover his own fate and elect therefore some opposite course could only come at last to that selfsame reckoning at the same appointed time, for each man's destiny is as large as the world he inhabits and contains within it all opposites as well. The desert upon which so many have been broken is vast and calls for largeness of heart but it is also ultimately empty. It is hard, it is barren. Its very nature is stone.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Heart, Fate, Destiny

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• We need to ensure that children are not forced to waste their time on barren rubbish.

  Philip Pullman

  Children, Needs, Waste

  "All around you is silence" by Philip Pullman, www.theguardian.com. June 5, 2003.

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• Just when normal life felt almost possible - when the world held some kind of order, meaning, even loveliness (the prismatic spray of light through an icicle; the stillness of a sunrise), some small thing would go awry and veil of optimism was torn away, the barren world revealed. They learned, somehow, to wait those times out. There was no cure, no answer, no reparation. (161)

  David Wroblewski

  Light, Order, Optimism

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• On the other hand, winning awards is cool. Aside from the warm fuzzy, it creates publicity, and that helps spread the word about the book. Plus, this award was a plaque of some sort. I could have used that for all sorts of things. Obviously it would be useful for decorating the barren walls of my house and intimidating my enemies, but that's just for starters.

  Patrick Rothfuss

  Wall, Book, Winning

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• I trust you have seen the ocean. If you have, then you have witnessed the divine. How barren the ground is in comparison! If I could count the hours I have spent staring out at it! And yet those hours never feel lost. I cannot imagine how else I could refill them were I given a second chance.

  David Ebershoff

  Ocean, Second Chance, Imagine

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• Stercus Accidit. [barren happens]

  Karen Chance

  Happens

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• I tell of hearts and souls and dances... Butterflies and second chances; Desperate ones and dreamers bound, Seeking life from barren ground, Who suffer on in earthly fate The bitter pain of agony hate, Might but they stop and here forgive Would break the bonds to breathe and live And find that God in goodness brings A chance for change, the hope of wings To rest in Him, and self to die And so become a butterfly.

  Karen Kingsbury

  Pain, Hate, Heart

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• All this long human story, most passionate and tragic in the living, was but an unimportant, a seemingly barren and negligible effort, lasting only for a few moments in the life of the galaxy. When it was over, the host of the planetary systems still lived on, with here and there a casualty, and here and there among the stars a new planetary birth, and here and there a fresh disaster.

  Olaf Stapledon

  Stars, Long, Effort

  Olaf Stapledon (1931). “Last and First Men, & Star Maker: Two Science-fiction Novels”, p.379, Courier Corporation

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• Barren, barren and trivial are these words. But not barren the experience.

  Olaf Stapledon

  Olaf

  Olaf Stapledon (2015). “Star Maker”, p.196, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• O world, world when I was younger I thought there was some order governing you and your deeds. But now you seem to be a labyrinth of errors, a frightful desert, a den of wild beasts, a game in which men move in circles…a stony field, a meadow full of serpents, a flowering but barren orchard, a spring of cares, a river of tears, a sea of suffering, a vain hope.

  Fernando de Rojas

  Spring, Moving, Men

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• The first cup moistens my lips and throat; The second cup breaks my loneliness; The third cup searches my barren entrail but to find therein some thousand volumes of odd ideographs; The fourth cup raises a slight perspiration-all the wrongs of life pass out through my pores; At the fifth cup I am purified; The sixth cup calls me to the realms of the immortals. The seventh cup-ah, but I could take no more! I only feel the breath of the cool wind that raises in my sleeves. Where is Elysium? Let me ride on this sweet breeze and waft away thither.

  Lu Tong

  Sweet, Loneliness, Wind

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• There is also purpose in life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man's attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Life, Attitude, Men

  Viktor E. Frankl (2006). “Man's Search for Meaning”, p.73, Beacon Press

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