Barren Quotes - Page 4

My mother named me after a miracle of nature: Waris means desert flower. The desert flower blooms in a barren environment where few living things can survive.

Waris Dirie

Mother, Flower, Mean

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his eyes took in the barren slopes and the scattered boulders and the lonley gray road windingits way into the fading hills,and i could feel him thinking to himself this is no place to die

Kevin Brooks

Eye, Thinking, Boulders

Kevin Brooks (2010). “The Road of the Dead”, p.58, Scholastic Inc.

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In the unceasing ebb and flow of justice and oppression we must all dig channels as best we may, that at the propitious moment somewhat of the swelling tide may be conducted to the barren places of life.

Jane Addams

Ebb And Flow, Justice, Diversity

Jane Addams (2012). “Twenty Years at Hull-House: With Autobiographical Notes”, p.27, Courier Corporation

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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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Yes, I think especially the Pentecostal churches, you know, that there's been such a growth in Pentecostalism. And it's a rejection of the much more dour and barren kind of Calvinist worship and also, the very formal Catholic forms of worship.

Barbara Ehrenreich

Thinking, Rejection, Catholic

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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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I am barren of words. For no sounds from my mouth are worthy of your hearing

J.R. Ward

Mouths, Hearing, Sound

J.R. Ward (2011). “J.R. Ward The Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 1-4”, p.819, Penguin

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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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Alzheimer's ... it is a barren disease, as empty and lifeless as a desert. It is a thief of hearts and souls and memories.

Nicholas Sparks

Memories, Heart, Alzheimer's

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When a golden girl can win Prayer from out the lips of sin, When the barren almond bears, And a little child gives away its tears, Then shall all the house be still And peace come to Canterville.

Oscar Wilde

Girl, Prayer, Children

Oscar Wilde (2012). “The Canterville Ghost and Other Stories”, p.17, Courier Corporation

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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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I am tired of tears and laughter, And men that laugh and weep Of what may come hereafter For men that sow to reap: I am weary of days and hours, Blown buds of barren flowers, Desires and dreams and powers And everything but sleep.

Algernon Charles Swinburne

Dream, Laughter, Flower

Algernon Charles Swinburne (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated)”, p.249, Delphi Classics

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I didn't remember what month that was, or what year even. I only knew the memory lived in me, a perfectly encapsulated morsel of a good past, a brushstroke of color on the gray, barren canvas that our lives had become.

Khaled Hosseini

Memories, Past, Color

Khaled Hosseini (2011). “The Kite Runner: Rejacketed”, p.107, A&C Black

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An artist without ideas is a mendicant; barren, he goes begging among the hours.

Irving Stone

Artist, Ideas, Hours

Irving Stone (1981). “Irving Stone, three complete novels”, Random House Value Publishing

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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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Perhaps I am too tame, too domestic a magician. But how does one work up a little madness? I meet with mad people every day in the street, but I never thought before to wonder how they got mad. Perhaps I should go wandering on lonely moors and barren shores. That is always a popular place for lunatics - in novels and plays at any rate. Perhaps wild England will make me mad.

Susanna Clarke

Lonely, Play, People

Susanna Clarke (2009). “Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell”, p.707, Bloomsbury Publishing

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She passed these years in a distant corner of her mind. A dry, barren field, out beyond wish and lament, beyond dream and disillusionment. There, the future did not matter. And the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and it accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion.

Khaled Hosseini

Life, Dream, Mistake

Khaled Hosseini (2009). “A Thousand Splendid Suns”, p.161, Bloomsbury Publishing

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Indeed our words will remain lifeless, barren, devoid of any passion, until we die as a result of these words, whereupon our words will suddenly spring to life and live amongst the hearts that are dead, bringing them to life as well.

Sayyid Qutb

Spring, Passion, Heart

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