Barren Quotes - Page 6

• By the deficiency or absence of one necessary constituent, all the others being present, the soil is rendered barren for all those crops to the life of which that one constituent is indispensable.

  Justus von Liebig

  Life, Earth, Soil

  Justus von Liebig (1855). “Principles of agricultural chemistry with special reference to the late researches made in England: By Justus von Liebig. (Ed. by William Gregory)”, p.31

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• The good want power, but to weep barren tears. The powerful goodness want: worse need for them. The wise want love; and those who love want wisdom.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Wise, Wisdom, Powerful

  'Prometheus Unbound' (1820) act 1, l. 625

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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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• Without art, we're handicapped, and living a stifled, barren existence.

  Ken Danby

  Life, Art, Existence

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• Where human life needs most sympathy, where usually it is the most barren, there it is that Christ is more likely to be found than anywhere else.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Jesus, Needs, Christ

  Henry Ward Beecher, William Drysdale (1887). “Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit”

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• Because its myriad glimmering plumes Like a great army's stir and wave; Because its golden billows blooms, The poor man's barren walks to lave: Because its sun-shaped blossoms show How souls receive the light of God, And unto earth give back that glow I thank him for the Goldenrod.

  Lucy Larcom

  Army, Men, Light

  Lucy Larcom (1881). “Wild Roses of Cape Ann: And Other Poems”

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• It is a mystery that is hidden from me by reason that the emergency requiring the fathoming of it hath not in my life-days occurred, and so, not having no need to know this thing, I abide barren of the knowledge.

  Mark Twain

  Needs, Emergencies, Mystery

  Mark Twain (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated)”, p.1297, Delphi Classics

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• Isaiah calls the Church barren because her children are born without effort by the Word of faith through the Spirit of God. It is a matter of birth, not of exertion.

  Martin Luther

  Children, Effort, Church

  Martin Luther (2007). “Commentary on Galatians”, p.101, Lulu.com

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• To most humans, a universe consisting of particles banging about and doing what they have to do seems cold, barren, and without meaning. Meaning, however, is not something that floats in space, permeating the universe like a nebulous, mystical cloud. ... Meaning arises out of the working of the human mind, and therefore exists only in the human mind. The meaning of existence is whatever you want to make of it.

  Milton A. Rothman

  Space, Clouds, Mind

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• Speech may be barren; but it is ridiculous to suppose that silence is always brooding on a nestful of eggs.

  George Eliot

  Eggs, Silence, May

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• Our fruitless labours mourn, And only rich in barren fame return.

  Homer

  Return, Rich, Fame

  Homer (1822). “The Odyssey of Homer”, p.209

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• You may boldly say, you did not plough Or trust the barren and ungrateful sands With the fruitful grain of your religious counsels.

  Philip Massinger

  Religious, Failure, Ungrateful

  Philip Massinger, William Gifford, John Ferriar (1813). “The bandman. The renegado. The parliament of love. The Roman actor. The great Duke of Florence”, p.204

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• The avaricious man is like the barren sandy ground of the desert which sucks in all the rain and dew with greediness, but yields no fruitful herbs or plants for the benefit of others.

  Zeno of Elea

  Rain, Men, Yield

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• Principles are like a seed in the ground; they must continually be visited with heavenly influences or else your life will be a barren field.

  Thomas Traherne

  Principles, Fields, Influence

  Thomas Traherne (2010). “Centuries of Meditations”, p.298, Cosimo, Inc.

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• There is in every human heart Some not completely barren part, Where seeds of truth and love might grow, And flowers of generous virtue flow; To plant, to watch, to water there, This be our duty, be our care.

  John Bowring

  Flower, Heart, Water

  John Bowring, “Blessings Of Instruction”

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• The man who seeks one thing in life and but one, May hope to achieve it before life is done; But he who seeks all things, wherever he goes, Only reaps from the hopes which around him he sows, A harvest of barren regrets.

  Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton

  Regret, Ambition, Men

  "Lucile". Book by Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton, 1860.

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• Let none of you have a soul which is barren and without fruit. Let nobody be unloving or unreceptive to the spiritual seed. May each of you eagerly accept the celestial seed, the word of salvation (cf. Lk. 8:11), and by your own efforts bring it to perfection as a heavenly work and fruit pleasing to God. Let no one make a beginning of a good work which brings no fruit to perfection (cf. Lk. 8:14), nor declare his faith in Christ only with His tongue.

  Gregory Palamas

  Christian, Spiritual, Cfs

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• Practice can be stated very simply. It is moving from a life of hurting myself and others to a life of not hurting myself and others. That seems so simple-except when we substitute for real practice some idea that we should be different or better than we are, or that our lives should be different from the way they are. When we substitute our ideas about what should be (such notions as "I should not be angry or confused or unwilling") for our life as it truly is, then we're off base and our practice is barren.

  Joko Beck

  Hurt, Confused, Real

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• Our science, so called, is always more barren and mixed with error than our sympathies.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Science, Errors, Accounts

  Henry David Thoreau (1999). “Material Faith: Thoreau on Science”, p.95, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Wilderness has been characterized as barren and unproductive; little can be grown in its sand and rock. But the crops of wilderness have always been its spiritual values - silence and solitude, a sense of awe and gratitude - able to be harvested by any traveler who visits.

  David Douglas

  Spiritual, Gratitude, Journey

  David Douglas (1989). “Wilderness Sojourn: Notes in the Desert Silence”, HarperCollins

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• All discussion of the ultimate nature of things must necessarily be barren unless we have some extraneous standards against which to compare them.

  James Jeans

  Science, Standards, Compare

  James Hopwood Jeans (1944). “The Mysterious Universe”, p.114, CUP Archive

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• That's what depression had wrought inside me: one, vast, barren rock garden-without the garden

  Peter McWilliams

  Depression, Garden, Rocks

  Peter McWilliams (1997). “Love 101: To Love Oneself Is the Beginning of a Lifelong Romance”, Mary Book / Prelude Press

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• When we skim along the surface of history we see little but the rough barren rocks that rise out of it.

  Augustus William Hare

  Rocks, History, Littles

  Augustus William Hare (1827). “Guesses at Truth”

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• The virtuosos look to the students of the world to do their share in the education of the great musical public. Do not waste your time with music that is trite or ignoble. Life is too short to spend it wandering in the barren Saharas of musical trash.

  Sergei Rachmaninoff

  Life Is Too Short, Musical, World

  "Great Pianists on Piano Playing". Book by James Francis Cooke, p. 217, 1999.

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• I cannot but regard it as a kindness in those who have the steering of me that, by the want of pecuniary wealth, I have been nailed dawn to this my native region so long and steadily, and made to study and love this spot of earth more and more. What would signify in comparison a thin and diffused love and knowledge of the whole earth instead, got by wandering? The traveler's is but a barren and comfortless condition. Wealth will not buy a man a home in nature-house nor farm there. The man of business does not by his business earn a residence in nature, but is denaturalized rather.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Travel, Kindness, Home

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