Barren Quotes - Page 8

• 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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• A man who has no love in him is as barren as a cloud with no moisture, a tree with no fruits or a cow yielding no milk; he is ever far from God and can never earn His Grace.

  Sathya Sai Baba

  Men, Clouds, Tree

  FaceBook post by Sri Sathya Sai Baba from Jan 24, 2017

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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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• Our age is bent on trying to make the barren tree of skepticism fruitful by tying the fruits of truth on its branches.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Tree, Age, Trying

  Albert Schweitzer (1953). “Out of My Life and Thought: An Autobiography: Postscript 1932-1949 by Everett Skillings”

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• The moon, also, is merciless: she would drag me
  Cruelly, being barren.
  Her radiance scathes me. Or perhaps I have caught her.

  Sylvia Plath

  Moon, Light, Radiance

  Sylvia Plath (2010). “Ariel”, p.18, Faber & Faber

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• ...by bringing myself over the edge and back, I discovered a passion to live my days fully, a conviction that will sustain me like sweet water on the periodically barren plain of our short lives.

  Jonathan Waterman

  Sweet, Inspirational Life, Short Life

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• It has a supernatural grandeur which expands the soul and unites it with God. I say an Our Father or a Hail Mary when I feel so spiritually barren that I cannot summon up a single worth while thought. These two prayers fill me with rapture and feed and satisfy my soul.

  Therese of Lisieux

  Prayer, Father, Two

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• I'm sorry for the anguished hearts that break with passion's strain, But I'm sorrier for the poor starved souls that never knew love's pain, Who hunger on through barren years not tasting joys they crave, For sadder far is such a lot than weeping o'er a grave.

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox

  Sad, Pain, Sorry

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox (2016). “Complete Poetical Works of Ella Wheeler Wilcox (Delphi Classics)”, p.1002, Delphi Classics

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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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• The mind of man can never be wholly barren. Through our whole lives we are subject to successive impressions; for, either new ideas are continually flowing in, or traces of the old ones are marked deeper. If, therefore, you be not acquiring good principles be assured that you are acquiring bad ones; if you be not forming virtuous habits you are, how insensibly soever to yourselves, forming vicious ones.

  Joseph Priestley

  Men, Ideas, Mind

  Joseph Priestley, Henry Ware (1834). “Views of Christian truth, piety, and morality: selected from the writings of Dr. Priestley : with a memoir of his life”, p.171

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• What shall a man say when a friend has vanished behind the doors of Death? A mere tangle of barren words, only words.

  Robert E. Howard

  Men, Doors, Behinds

  Letter to Tevis Clyde Smith, c. May 1928.

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• Nothing divine dies. All good is eternally reproductive. The beauty of Nature re-forms itself in the mind, and not for barren contemplation, but for new creation.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Mind, Creation, Nature Beauty

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2006). “Ralph Waldo Emerson: Selected Essays, Lectures and Poems”, p.25, Bantam Classics

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• He that condemns himself to compose on a stated day will often bring to his task attention dissipated, a memory embarrassed, an imagination overwhelmed, a mind distracted with anxieties, a body languishing with disease: he will labour on a barren topic till it is too late to change it; or, in the ardour of invention, diffuse his thoughts into wild exuberance, which the pressing hour of publication cannot suffer judgment to examine or reduce.

  Samuel Johnson

  Memories, Writing, Imagination

  Samuel Johnson (1823). “The Works of Samuel Johnson: An essay on the life and genius of Dr. Johnson [by A. Murphy] Poems.- v. 2-4. The rambler.- v. 5. The idler. History of Rasselas, prince of Abissinia.- v. 6-8. The lives of the English poets.- v. 9. Lives of eminent persons. Letters, selected from the collection of Mrs. Piozzi and others. Prayers and meditations.- v. 10. Philological tracts, &c.- v. 11. Miscellaneous tracts, &c. Dedications. Reviews and criticisms. Tales of imagination. The adventurers.-”, p.59

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• 'Tis Liberty that crowns Britannia's isle, and makes her barren rocks and her bleak mountains smile... 'Tis Britain's care to watch o'er Europe's fate, and hold in balance each contending state, To threaten bold presumptuous kings with war, and answer her afflicted neighbours' prayer... Soon as her fleets appear their terrors cease.

  Joseph Addison

  Kings, Prayer, War

  Joseph Addison, “A Letter From Italy”

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• Consider, I pray, whether you are not renouncing all shame and sincerity to advance such principles. Because a comet appears in a group of stars which the ancients thought fit to call the Virgin, therefore, shall our women be barren, or have frequent miscarriages, or die old maids. I know of nothing which hangs so ill together! To offer such things in seriousness, shows the greatest contempt of mankind, and the most scandalous lying impunity.

  Pierre Bayle

  Stars, Lying, Miscarriage

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• Hatred is a prolific vice; envy, a barren vice.

  Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

  Hate, Envy, Hatred

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• Virtue is as little to be acquired by learning as genius; nay, the idea is barren, and is only to be employed as an instrument, in the same way as genius in respect to art. It would be as foolish to expect that our moral and ethical systems would turn out virtuous, noble, and holy beings, as that our aesthetic systems would produce poets, painters, and musicians.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Art, Ideas, Musician

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• Scepticism is a barren coast, without a harbor or lighthouse.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Lighthouse, Coast, Harbors

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• Observation made in the cloister or in the desert will generally be as obscure as the one and as barren as the other; but he that would paint with his pencil must study originals, and not be over-fearful of a little dust.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Dust, Desert, Littles

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.6

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• I have sat through an Italian opera, til, for sheer pain, and inexplicable anguish, I have rushed out into the noisiest places of the crowded street, to solace myself with sounds which I was not obliged to follow and get rid of the distracting torment of endless, fruitless, barren attention!

  Charles Lamb

  Music, Pain, Italian

  Charles Lamb (2008). “The Life, Letters, and Writings of Charles Lamb”, p.193, Cosimo, Inc.

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