"Barren" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... managed to get his dinner-table close to theirs and to tell them at dinner something of his future prospects. He was going to travel and see the world. He had, according to his own account, completely run through London life and found that it was all barren. ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... undoubtedly, who have known God falsely with the intellect, yet felt Him truly with the heart,—and there be many, principally among the unlettered little ones of Christ's flock, who positively know that much that is dogmatically propounded to them of their Redeemer is cold, barren, unsatisfying, and utterly false, who yet can give no account of their certainties better than that of the inspired fisherman, "We know Him, and have seen Him." It was in such hours as these that Mary's deadly fears for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... against the wall. You will soon learn how to move it forward, reverse it, and adorn the back. The chilling whiteness of the walls is relieved only by one square, uncompromising mirror. An "Addersonian" tenderness has placed a yellow-flowered rug beside each bed. Otherwise, the place is barren. ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... specially instructed to intercept him. Leslie had first set up in business as a land agent, a calling which affords a promising field for talents of his particular description, and having taken the new arrival's money, had, by a little manipulation of the survey lines, transferred to him mostly barren rock and giant trees instead of land for hop culture. It was a game which had been often played before, but the particular rancher was a determined man and had announced his firm intention of obtaining his money back or wreaking summary ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... even the princes of the empire, were accustomed under his reign to obey. As soon as he lost sight of Philadelphia and Laodicea, the last cities of the Greek frontier, he plunged into the salt and barren desert, a land (says the historian) of horror and tribulation. [23] During twenty days, every step of his fainting and sickly march was besieged by the innumerable hordes of Turkmans, [24] whose numbers and fury seemed after each defeat to multiply and inflame. The emperor continued to ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... warmly by the hand, and stared in my face, and stammered, and put an arm about my waist as if I were a girl, and turned me about and led me to a little tree that lifted its barren branches above the moor. He was in such a confusion and hurry that I knew something troubled him, so I left him to choose his own time for explanation. When we got to the tree, he showed me his black knife—a very ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... Collegio, or guard-room, before a picture of his so poetically conceived and admirably wrought, indeed so pleasing in all respects, that you wonder still more at the dull, uninteresting character of so many of the others. Yes, here Il Furioso Tintoretto, leaving ostentatious, barren displays of technical power, has once again had the gentleness and patience to make himself thoroughly agreeable. Ariadne, a beautiful and noble figure, is seated undraped on a rock, and Bacchus, profusely crowned ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... has been bearing consistently since two years old. Even this year, after two severe dry seasons, and a late frost that nipped the early shoots, it has a fine crop even though other trees, grafted and seedlings, are mostly barren. The nuts are medium to rather large and readily crack out in halves comparable to the Stabler when properly prepared for cracking. There are so many new walnuts I know nothing about that I ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... precious stone for sale. There also were to be seen sellers of cloths, and these were without number as that is a thing so many want, they being of cotton. There were also to be seen grass and straw in infinite abundance. I do not know who could describe it so as to be believed, so barren a country is this Rachol and so sandy. It is a mystery how there should be an abundance of everything therein. Any one can imagine what grass and straw would be required each day for the consumption of thirty-two thousand four hundred horses and five hundred and fifty-one elephants,[548] ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... told him of his life: "I have a mother,—Heartsrue is she called. And on the barren moorland is our home. My bow and arrows have I made myself To scare the eagles in the ...
— Parsifal - A Drama by Wagner • Retold by Oliver Huckel
... coming on, they took shelter in Siphano, of which Jenkin writes: 'These isles of Greece are sad, interesting places. They are not really barren all over, but they are quite destitute of verdure; and tufts of thyme, wild mastic, or mint, though they sound well, are not nearly so pretty as grass. Many little churches, glittering white, dot the islands; most of them, I believe, abandoned during the whole year ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... conservation is an illuminating commentary on Chinese education. Mr. William Hanna, a missionary of Ta-li Fu, told us that one day he was riding over this same road with a Chinese gentleman, a deep scholar, who was considered one of the best educated men of the province. Pointing to the barren hills washed clean of soil and deeply worn by countless floods, Mr. Hanna remarked that all this could have been prevented, and that instead of a rocky waste there might have been a fertile hillside, had the trees been ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... of Glory shall come in." Nothing that we read is useful unless it calls up living things in the soul. To read a mystic book truly is to invoke the powers. If they do not rise up plumed and radiant, the apparitions of spiritual things, then is our labor barren. We only encumber the mind with useless symbols. They knew better ways long ago. "Master of the Green-waving Planisphere,... Lord of the Azure Expanse,... it is thus we invoke," cried the magicians ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... turned to go to the other points of view to see if I was not mistaken in not feeling any surpassing emotion at this sight. But from the foot of Biddle's stairs, and the middle of the river, and from below the table rock, it was still "barren, barren all." And, provoked with my stupidity in feeling most moved in the wrong place, I turned away to the hotel, determined to set off for Buffalo that afternoon. But the stage did not go, and, after nightfall, as there was a splendid moon, I went down to ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... G.'s private life had been investigated, with disappointingly barren results; he was, seemingly, an anomalistic being in our Nietzschean age, an unaggressive man; he had never sold any drugs to the city; he was not a church member; nor could it be learned that he ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... no common difficulty: the country they had to traverse was untrodden even by the feet of former missionaries, inhabited by wild, roving tribes, beggared by Chinese extortions, rendered barren by long misgovernment, and lastly, infested in many parts by bands of armed robbers. These latter are, it is true, far different, in manner at least, from what their name would lead most of our readers to expect, and exercise their uncourteous ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... though the gains eventually were meagre, was the Irish grant of 1586. At last the Earl of Desmond's insurrection had been quelled, at the cost of the utter devastation of a province. The curse of God was, it was lamented, so great, and the land so barren, that whosoever did travel from one end to the other of all Munster, even from Waterford to Limerick, about six score miles, he should not meet man, woman, nor child, save in cities or towns, nor yet ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... here except occasionally look at a few flowers, and there are very few here, for the country is wonderfully barren. ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... recommendable alike to sagacity and to timidity, do the Commons Deputies adopt; and, not without adroitness, and with ever more tenacity, they persist in it, day after day, week after week. For six weeks their history is of the kind named barren; which indeed, as Philosophy knows, is often the fruitfulest of all. These were their still creation-days; wherein they sat incubating! In fact, what they did was to do nothing, in a judicious manner. Daily the inorganic body ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... of most consequence was the grip with which they held their convictions and their willingness to sacrifice the interests on which they could lay their hands, in loyalty to some nobler faith. He taught that beliefs by hearsay are not only barren but obstructive; that it ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... might have said,—a sleepy shop in Sleepy Hollow. To me it seemed not so. Peaceful, remote, sequestered,—these and all similar epithets suited well with Longnook; but for myself, in all my loitering there I was never otherwise than wide awake. The close-lying, barren, mountainous-looking hills did not oppress the mind, but rather lifted and dilated it, and although I could not hear the surf, I felt all the while the neighborhood of the sea; not the harbor, but the ocean, with nothing between me and Spain except that stretch of ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... the Smith residence was the farm of Alonzo Sanders, now owned by William T. Sampson, commander in the United States Navy. This farm is four miles south of Palmyra, on the road toward Canandaigua. It includes a barren hill which rises abruptly to the height of one hundred and fifty feet. The ridge runs almost due north and south, and from the summit there are beautiful views of the hills surrounding Canandaigua and Seneca Lakes. It ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... sails furled on the yards. After having devoted a few days to visiting and studying the amazing ruins of Thebes, gigantic remains of a mighty world, they had crossed the river on a sandal, a light native boat, and were proceeding towards the barren region which contains within its depths, far down mysterious hypogea, the former inhabitants of the palaces on the other bank. A few men of the crew accompanied Lord Evandale and Dr. Rumphius at a distance, while the others, stretched out on the deck in the shadow of the cabin, ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... the night-office seemed so wearisomely barren. The glamour that had lighted those dark walls and the double row of cowls and down-bent faces, the mystical beauty of the single flames here and there that threw patches of light on the carving of the stalls and the sombre ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... of winter and the coming of spring, after a night of light freezing with a white frost, the morning sun shining all the brighter that he had been hazed so long by winter's shadows. The earth, the trees, appeared even more brown and barren by contrast with the splendors of the sky. Here and there a patch of snow, left sheltered by tree or fence, seemingly endeavoring to hide from the sunbeams that came out of the south, to pour its flood of warmth on it until ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... who can travel from Dan to Beersheba, and say, 'Tis all barren': and so it is: and so is all the world to him who will not cultivate the fruits it offers."—STERNE: ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... previous Sir Tatton to the memory of his father, Sir Christopher Sykes; the inscription telling how much the Wolds were transformed through his energy 'in building, planting, and enclosing,' from a bleak and barren track of country into what is now considered one of the most productive and best-cultivated districts of Yorkshire. The late Sir Tatton Sykes was the sort of man that Yorkshire folk come near to worshipping. ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... too poor to house In frosty nights their starving cows, While not a blade of grass or hay Appears from Michaelmas to May, Must let their cattle range in vain For food along the barren plain: Meagre and lank with fasting grown, And nothing left but skin and bone; Exposed to want, and wind, and weather, They just keep life and soul together, Till summer showers and evening's dew Again the verdant glebe renew; And, as the vegetables rise, The famish'd cow her want ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... naked boys who issued suddenly from the open door. They spread green herbs in a path from the door to the very feet of Anne, who blinked at them in amazement, and they paid no heed to Mother Ceres, who asked indignantly how any green thing could grow upon the earth that she had bidden lie barren till her daughter ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... medical examination, but not assisted at it. All attempts to galvanize back life failed, as the experts engaged immediately perceived they must upon viewing the corpse; and during the subsequent autopsy, when the dead man's body had been examined by chemist and microscopist, the result was barren of any pathological detail. No indication to explain his death rewarded the search. Not a clue or suspicion existed. He was healthy in every particular, and his destruction remained, so far, inexplicable to science. Hardcastle ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... of our birds over the country in summer is like that of the people, quite uniform. Every wood and field has its quota, and no place so barren but it has some bird to visit it. One knows where to look for sparrows and thrushes and bobolinks and warblers and flycatchers. But the occupation of the country by our winter residents is like the Indian occupation of the land. They are found in little bands, ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... share; for Alfred had made the bravest Northman feel that his fleet and army were more than a match for theirs. Ireland was exhausted by the former depredations of the pirates, and, from a fertile and flourishing country, had become a scene of desolation; Scotland and its isles were too barren to afford prey to the spoiler; and worse than all, the King of Norway, Harald Harfagre, desirous of being included among the civilized sovereigns of Europe, strictly forbade his subjects to exercise ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... trees and undergrowth covered the mountain, then came a stretch of utter barren-ness and isolation. Miles above yet seemingly close enough to touch rose tongues of flame and crimson smoke. Above was the majestic serenity of the summer night, below the peaceful valley, with the twinkling lights of far away villages. It was a queer sensation to be ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... discoveries like Newton, Faraday, Edison, and Thompson, or paint immortal pictures like an Angelo or a Raphael. But we can all of us make our lives sublime, by seizing common occasions and making them great. What chance had the young girl, Grace Darling, to distinguish herself, living on those barren lighthouse rocks alone with her aged parents? But while her brothers and sisters, who moved to the cities to win wealth and fame, are not known to the world, she became more famous than a princess. This poor girl did not need to go to London to see the nobility; ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... administrative boundary with Kenya does not coincide with international boundary; Egypt asserts its claim to the "Hala'ib Triangle," a barren area of 20,580 sq km under partial Sudanese administration that is defined by an administrative boundary which supersedes ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... friend, leaning forward with an irresistible desire to win back the old-time love and confidence, too precious to be exchanged for a little brief excitement or the barren honor of "bagging a bird," to use Trix's elegant expression. Fanny understood it then, and threw herself into Polly's arms, crying, with a shower of grateful tears; "Oh, my dear! my dear! did you do ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... Spirit, foresaw the destruction of the work of his own hands, of the spot on earth which was most precious to him. The ruin would be awful, the suffering horrible. The daughters of Jerusalem were to weep, not for him, but for themselves. Blessed would be the barren, and those that never nursed a child. They would call on the mountains to cover them, and on the hills to hide them, and call in vain. Such tribulation would fall on them as never had been since the ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... conditions of the poetic life: and strives to live it, not in experience or in sympathy, but by a pure act of imagination, or as he calls it, of Will; and he wears himself out body and soul by a mental strain which proves as barren as it is continuous. The true joy of living comes home to him at last, and with it the first challenge to self-sacrifice. Duty prevails; but he dies in the conflict, or rather ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... employments: the sea-monsters, etc., most poetical, in Scott's master style: the manner in which, by scarcely perceptible touches, he wakens the reader's interest for his hero, admirable, unequalled by all but Shakespear. Wonderful genius; who can raise an interest even on the barren rocks of Zetland. Aladdin could only raise palaces at will, but the mighty master Scott can transport us to the most remote desert corner of the earth, ay, and keep us there, and make us wish to stay among beings of his own creation. ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... gods' bright nectar, Disencrowned of its foam; Duller, deader far the empty, Barren hearthstone ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... their intent is to restore the Creation to its former condition. That as God had promised to make the barren land fruitful, so now what they did was to restore the ancient community of enjoying the fruits of the Earth, and to distribute the benefits thereof to the poor and needy, and to feed the hungry and to ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... storm clouds, her heart leaped within her; then grew sick for fear that he had gone by. When they stood, ankle-deep in the dust, she looked first toward the north, and then to the south. Nothing moved; all was barren, ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... until they went, How much their laughter really meant I never knew how much the place Depended on each little face; How barren home could be and drear Without ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... accounted one of those whose sane mind demands an outlet; but he lands in trouble, and gets hungry, and comes back penitent, as we have heard a thousand million times. The Far Country is always barren, the husks of swine are the only food to be had, and ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... fell, straggling forest, intersected with sullen streams as black as ink, with here and there a small tarn, or moss-pool, with waters of the same hue—these constituted the chief features of the scene. The whole district was barren and thinly-populated. Of towns, only Clithero, Colne, and Burnley—the latter little more than a village—were in view. In the valleys there were a few hamlets and scattered cottages, and on the uplands an occasional "booth," ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... brilliant enough fashion, by the light of a petty personal chivalry. He was not without some tincture of patriotism; but it was resolvable into two parts: a preference for life among his fellow-countrymen, and a barren point of honour. In England, he could comfort himself by the reflection that "he had been taken while loyally doing his devoir," without any misgiving as to his conduct in the previous years, when he had prepared ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Pains; you are in the Bud of your Beauty, which when full blown, will be like the Sun in the midst of the Horizon, Illuminating the whole World, but its penetrating Rays not to be gaz'd upon. You are the Lilly and I am the Thorn; you beautify the rich fertile Vale, whilst I retire to the barren Mountains. I will pass the Alps 'till I approach the most aspiring Mount, and there, in view of Ferara, I will lay me down and bid the World Adieu. When I am gone, remember that you had once a Lover who could sacrifice every thing for our Service, and without you he could enjoy nothing. ...
— Tractus de Hermaphrodites • Giles Jacob
... desire to take the child to myself, to warm it at my own hearth, to have the pleasure of seeing it eat and be satisfied. And yet I was not like that when I was young; that I remember clearly! It is you that have created an empty, barren desert ...
— John Gabriel Borkman • Henrik Ibsen
... probably for casual comers, for the two clean serviettes were unadorned with rings. Lucien's opposite neighbor was a thin, pallid youth, to all appearance as poor as himself; his handsome face was somewhat worn, already it told of hopes that had vanished, leaving lines upon his forehead and barren furrows in his soul, where seeds had been sown that had come to nothing. Lucien felt drawn to the stranger by these tokens; his sympathies went out to ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... therefore, that one day Philip made his way down into the city to seek an interview with Mr. Mavick. He found him, after some inquiry, in a barren little office, occupying one of the rented desks with three or four habitues of the Street, one of them an old man like himself, the others mere lads who did not intend to remain long in such ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... little more out to sea. Soon she came to more open water, and in the course of four hours was close to the land, which proved to be a low, barren island, not more than ...
— Fast in the Ice - Adventures in the Polar Regions • R.M. Ballantyne
... time had urged him to put her away by divorce, and marry a Protestant who might bear him children. Even my Lord Bishop of Salisbury, Dr. Burnet, had, thirteen or fourteen years ago given as his opinion that a barren wife might be divorced, and even that polygamy was not contrary to the New Testament! This, however, Charles had flatly refused to countenance; and, when he thought of it, now and again, shewed ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... temporarily shattered, Arthur Ferris saw all his cardboard fortifications suddenly strewn around him by adverse gales. His barren title of vice-president of the company now availed him nothing. The president, manager, and directors all practically shunned him, waiting for the word as to who would manage the controlling interest ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... low wail of harps across the snow, Falling and rising with the whistling wind; A shifting glare of lights that come and go, As if men searched for what they could not find. And then the music thrilled out loud and well Over the waste and barren dunes of sand— Solemn and stately as a passing bell Heard dimly ...
— Eyes of Youth - A Book of Verse by Padraic Colum, Shane Leslie, A.O. • Various
... Latins, who also used gravidus,—a word we now apply only to animals, especially dogs and ants,—and enceinte, borrowed from French, and referring to the ancient custom of girding a woman who was with child. Similarly barren of direct reference to the child are accouchement, which we have borrowed from ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... as all originality of sentiment and genius; and I am bold enough to tell you Count, that even in your country, this literary orthodoxy, if I may so express myself, which is opposed to every innovation, will in time render your literature extremely barren. Genius is essentially creative; it bears the character of the individual that possesses it. Nature, who has not formed two leaves alike, has infused a still greater variety into the human soul; ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... scents of the hardier field-flowers, the huge wain is driven from the stubble field into the shadows of the impending woods, and around it the workers sing and make merry in token of joy for the abundant yield of sweet grass that shall fatten the kine in the drear barren months of snow. The young men rest on their scythes, that glisten like Turkish sabres, and, from under their broad-brimmed hats of straw, the town girls smile, as they tress garlands of garish flowers to bind the last and the ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... weariness of copying, I was condemned to add the vexation of expunging. Some passages I have yet spared, which may relieve the labour of verbal searches, and intersperse with verdure and flowers the dusty desarts of barren philology. ...
— Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language • Samuel Johnson
... it illumined the Creations, which seemed to them barren when they saw the source from which all worlds—Terrestrial, Spiritual, and Divine-derived ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... the Sheepscot their attention was attracted by several pleasant streams and fine expanses of meadow; but the soil observed on this expedition generally, and especially on the Sagadahock, [41] or lower Kennebec, was rough and barren, and offered, in the judgment of De Monts and Champlain, no eligible ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... came upon the edge of the sea. The sea! Peste! That he should never have thought of that! There was the castle, truly, beetling against the breakers, very cold, very arrogant upon its barren promontory. He was not twenty paces from its walls, and yet it might as well have been a league away, for he was cut off from it by a natural moat of sea-water that swept about it in yeasty little waves. It rode like a ship, oddly independent of aspect, self-contained, inviolable, eternally ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... her nurse and handmaids, slowly wended its way back to the tents of the patriarch, pursuing the natural highways of the country,—now by the stream, then across the plain, then through the desert, sandy, barren, trackless; then winding through the mountain pass, encamping during the heat of the day by the fountain and under the shade, and pursuing their journey in the cool of the evening ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... this to go on any longer," she said to herself. "I shall leave St. Benet's at the end of the present term. What is the winning of a tripos to me? What do I want with honors and distinctions? Everything is barren to me. My life has no flavor in it. I loved Annabel, and she is gone. Without meaning it, I broke Annabel's heart. Without meaning it, I caused my darling's death, and now my own heart is broken, for I love Geoffrey— I love him, ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... who was awake before his young charges had opened their eyes, was already preparing a simple breakfast. It had been difficult for him to obtain wood with which to kindle the fire but after a diligent search in the barren region where they had halted he at last obtained a sufficient number of dead and dried branches that had fallen from the few trees on ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... Cipango" (Japan) and the lands from which Oriental caravans brought their goods to Alexandria. [Footnote: Letter of Soncino, 1497, in Hart, Contemporaries, I., 70.] It is true that he landed on the barren shore of Labrador, and that what he descried from his vessel as he sailed southward was only the wooded coast of North America; but it was reported, and for a while believed, that the king of England had in ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... thou existence doth depend on time?[128] It doth; but actions are our epochs: mine Have made my days and nights imperishable, Endless, and all alike, as sands on the shore, Innumerable atoms; and one desert, Barren and cold, on which the wild waves break, But nothing rests, save carcasses and wrecks, Rocks, and the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... sister, by the Duke of Argyle. "We have nothing like it in Scotland," said the Duke of Argyle. Is that the secret? Is it because it is all that is typical of south country greenness and the peace of broad water and deep woodlands that it made its appeal to the Scot used to grey crags and barren moorland? Or is its chief appeal not to the Scot but to the Londoner, and does the Londoner praise Sir Walter's taste because Sir Walter has praised his? That is part of the story of the beauty of the Richmond view, perhaps. It is so easily ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... or bruised in the binding, they will in time decay, and the sap will issue from the place. Vines should not be cut too close to please the eye, as by that means they have sometimes been rendered barren of fruit. Two knots should generally be left on new shoots, which will produce two bunches of grapes, and which are to be cut off at the next pruning. New branches are to be left every year, and some of the old ones ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... says. Says she, 'When the earl has grand estates in England, what for does he come to a barren place like the Spittal to be married! It's gey like,' she says, 'as if he wanted the marriage to be got by quietly; a thing,' says she, 'that no woman can stand. Furthermore,' Elspeth says, 'how has ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... admission of the State of Nevada has been completed in conformity with law, and thus our excellent system is firmly established in the mountains, which once seemed a barren and uninhabitable waste between the Atlantic States and those which have grown up on the coast of the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... a barren product, it is contrary to nature to make it reproduce itself. Usury, therefore, is unnatural, and, being unnatural, ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... the hard-won victory were 8,000 prisoners, 50 pieces of artillery, near 20,000 muskets—plus a loss of life barren of results. For, instead of crushing the enemy and completely relieving the state and the Georgia frontier, the failure to press Rosecrans at the moment left him free communication with his rear and full time to recuperate. Instead ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... remained a lieutenant—no captain of the Eighty-eighth having been killed, and General Mackinnon not being alive to fulfil his promise. And whilst all the other officers who had been forward in the attack, had their names recorded in Picton's division-order, poor Mackie was denied even the word of barren praise so gratifying to a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... She had no Discontent, but because she was not bless'd with a Child; but she submits to the pleasure of Heaven, and endeavour'd, by her good Works, and her Charity, to make the Poor her Children, and was ever doing Acts of Virtue, to make the Proverb good, That more are the Children of the Barren, than the Fruitful Woman. She liv'd in this Tranquility, belov'd by all, for the space of five Years, and Time (and perpetual Obligations from Villenoys, who was the most indulgent and indearing Man in the World) had ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... very silent habitation,—situated as it was on so lofty and barren a crag, it was far beyond the singing- reach of the smaller sweet-throated birds—now and then an eagle clove the mist with a whirr of wings and a discordant scream on his way toward some distant mountain eyrie—but no other sound of awakening life broke the hush of ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... passionateness of a first affection; but he could not live by it; he honoured it too highly to wish to live by it. His prudence told him that he must yield to stern necessity, must 'forsake the balmy climate of Pindus for the Greenland of a barren and dreary science of terms;' and he did not hesitate to obey. His professional studies were followed with a rigid though reluctant fidelity; it was only in leisure gained by superior diligence that he could yield himself to more favourite pursuits. Genius was to serve as the ornament ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... high wall, but two high walls between the classes and the masses, so-called, and that erected in self-defence by the exploited is the higher and more difficult to climb. On the one side is a disciplined, fortified Gibraltar, held by the gentry; then comes a singularly barren and unstable neutral zone; and on the other side is the vast chaotic mass. In Under Town, I notice, a gentleman is always gen'leman, a workman or tramp is man, but the fringers, the inhabitants of the neutral zone, are called persons. For example: "That man what used to work for the ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... road wound through the valley, across the low hills that encircled it, sometimes spanning or running parallel to the bright stream that had been the delight of Eric's innocent childhood. There was something enjoyable at first to the poor boy's eyes, so long accustomed to the barren sea, in resting once more on the soft undulating green of the summer fields, which were intertissued with white and yellow flowers, like a broidery of pearls and gold. The whole scene was bathed ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... the choice That took thee from thy native hills; 20 And it is given thee to rejoice: Though public care full often tills (Heaven only witness of the toil) A barren and ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... and hungry ones, ma'am, on an island more barren than Ithaca; no shady coverts, no young ash shoots to nibble, no turnip fields to break into and spoil . . . Jove's is the better ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... against another the space of eight daies (as before is said) vittels began to faile, so that they were inforced to dislodge. The French and Welshmen withdrew into Wales, and though the Englishmen followed, yet impeached with the desart grounds and barren countrie, thorough which they must passe, as our felles and craggie mounteins, from hill to dale, from marish to wood, from naught to woorsse (as Hall saith) without vittels or succour, the king was of force constrained to retire with his armie, and returne againe to Worcester, in which ...
— Chronicles (3 of 6): Historie of England (1 of 9) - Henrie IV • Raphael Holinshed
... Antonio de Noronha. But the captains of the other ships which had accompanied him from Portugal—Francisco de Tavora, Antonio do Campo, Affonso Lopes da Costa, and Manoel Telles—were inclined to resent his authority, and objected to cruising on the barren coast of {53} Arabia instead of fetching lucrative cargoes from India. Their opposition was fomented by a famous captain, Joao da Nova, the discoverer of the island of St. Helena, who had come to the East with Dom Francisco de Almeida, and who showed himself throughout ...
— Rulers of India: Albuquerque • Henry Morse Stephens
... vigorous clapping. This, however, may be artistically in keeping with the habits of the rustic population of those localities. The precise connection between agricultural pursuits and statesmanship I have not been able, after diligent inquiry, to discover. But, that my investigations may not be barren of all fruit, I will mention one curious statistical fact, which I consider thoroughly established, namely, that no real farmer ever attains practically beyond a seat in the General Court, however theoretically qualified ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... through the streets of the little village thoughts surged madly through his brain. It was in this barren spot he was born and passed his youth. Youth! A period of poverty and struggle: of empty dreams and futile hopes. It passed before him now as a panorama. There was the doctor's house where his father hurried the night he was born. How often had his mother told him of that night of storm ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... appreciation in more than one popular volume, [FN335] is a notable specimen of special pleading, of the ad captandum in its modern and least honest form. The writer begins by assuming the arid and barren Wahhabi-ism, which he had personally studied, as a fair expression of the Saving Faith. What should we say to a Moslem traveller who would make the Calvinism of the sourest Covenanter, model, genuine and ancient Christianity? What would sensible Moslems say ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... in Christian grace and character, this disposition of lowly self-abasement and recognised unworthiness and infirmity is absolutely indispensable. The mountain-tops that lift themselves to the stars are barren, and few springs find their rise there. It is in the lowly valleys that the flowers grow and the rivers run. And it is they who are humble and lowly in heart to whom God gives strength to serve Him, and the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... boy. In his general state Ilbrahim would derive enjoyment from the most trifling events and from every object about him; he seemed to discover rich treasures of happiness by a faculty analogous to that of the witch-hazel, which points to hidden gold where all is barren to the eye. His airy gayety, coming to him from a thousand sources, communicated itself to the family, and Ilbrahim was like a domesticated sunbeam, brightening moody countenances and chasing away the gloom from the ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of the moral standards. Men ask, why should we obey this or that law of God, man or our moral nature, if it bars the way to our enjoyment? "Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die"; and eating and drinking they go out into a wild and barren land of sorrow. Again men seek happiness through the abundance of things; as if a human soul, born in the image of God, could be ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell
... clean out of the pine-wood, and before them lay the black wilderness of the bare mountains, and beyond them, looking quite near now, the great ice- peaks, the wall of the world. It was but an hour short of noon by this time, and the high sun shone down on a barren boggy moss which lay betwixt them and the rocky waste. Sure-foot made no stay, but threaded the ways that went betwixt the quagmires, and in another hour led Face-of-god into a winding valley blinded by great rocks, and everywhere stony and rough, with a trickle of water running ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... subscription had been started, but the greater part of this third subscription the Jesuits had spent upon their schools, so the fate of St. Joseph's seemed to be to remain, as someone had said, an unfinished ruin. Their resources were exhausted, and they surveyed the barren aisles, dreaming of the painting and mosaics they would put up when the promises of Father Gordon were realised. For it was understood that their fortunes should be retrieved by his musical abilities, and ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... the Arabian tongue is called Macca, that is to say, an habitation. This citie is inuironed about with exceeding high and barren mountaines, and in the plaine betweene the sayde mountaines and the citie are many pleasant gardens, where groweth great abundaunce of figges, grapes, apples, and melons. There is also great abundance of good water and fleshe, but not of bread. This citie hath no walles about ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt
... violating him by force or villainous persuasion? One sex entered one bed, and men had the shamelessness to look at one another without a blush for what they did or for what they submitted to, and, sowing seed, as it were, upon barren rocks, they enjoyed a short-lived pleasure at the ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... the Customhouse and passed under the Loop Line bridge where a brazier of coke burning in front of a sentrybox or something like one attracted their rather lagging footsteps. Stephen of his own accord stopped for no special reason to look at the heap of barren cobblestones and by the light emanating from the brazier he could just make out the darker figure of the corporation watchman inside the gloom of the sentrybox. He began to remember that this had happened or ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... stretched their huge limbs under the shade of plane trees, artificially disposed to exclude the scorching rays and to admit the genial warmth of the sun. These delights were enhanced by the memory of past hardships; the comparison of their native soil, the bleak and barren hills of Scythia, and the frozen banks of the Elbe and Danube added new charms to the felicity of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... with the walnut. The very last thing which the tree does in the autumn is to complete its buds for female flowers. That is the very last job the tree has on hand and if the tree cannot complete the buds for female flowers perfectly, then a very little wood killing will make that a barren tree, although it appears to be a good strong tree. That covers the kinds of winter injury I have seen in the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... therefore, when a fact hurteth, not onely in the present, but also, (by example) in the future, it is a greater Crime, than if it hurt onely in the present: for the former, is a fertile Crime, and multiplyes to the hurt of many; the later is barren. To maintain doctrines contrary to the Religion established in the Common-wealth, is a greater fault, in an authorised Preacher, than in a private person: So also is it, to live prophanely, incontinently, ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... of many a barren isle, On his front stoop at eventide, awhile, Sat solemn. His mother, on a stuel, At the crannied hearth ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... and the Knights of Labor—to all those masses of men moved by the spirit of co-operation—"See, brothers, what we have to show you. Some of you are aiming at chaos and perdition; others putting wages as their god and sovereign; others content with a vague philanthropy almost barren of results. This is all the help we want of you—to pledge yourselves to associate with us, to accept our modest programme of actual needs, to give help to those who are in want or trouble, to promise ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... the Colonel again. "Well, sir, in spite of the very favourable returns made by the mine, our expenses in commencing, for machinery, and the months of barren preparation, we are only—" ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... contended that birds can be observed narrowly in this easy way; but even for the most conscientious field naturalist the wheel has its advantages. It carries him quickly over much barren ground and gives him a better view of the country he traverses; finally, it enables him to see more birds. He will sometimes see thousands in a day where, walking, he would hardly have seen hundreds, and there is joy ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... them out of Italy, they were all so much taken with the liquor, and transported with the hitherto unknown delight, that, snatching up their arms and taking their families along with them, they marched directly to the Alps, to find out the country which yielded such fruit, pronouncing all others barren and useless. He that first brought wine among them and was the chief instigator of their coming into Italy is said to have been one Aruns, A Tuscan, ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... Agricultural land, which was generally rated high, continued to pay at that level long after depreciation set in. On the other hand, large tracts in the manufacturing districts, rapidly increasing in value, paid far less than their due share. In some cases where a barren moor has become a hive of industry, the parish now raises its quota by a rate of .001 in the pound. In a few cases, where the fall in value has been severe, the rate is very heavy, in spite of remedial legislation. Pitt ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... hacienda of San Antonio, six miles from the city, strengthened by field-works and defended by heavy guns, commanded the highway. To the east was a morass, and beyond the morass were the blue waters of Lake Chalco; while to the west the Pedregal, a barren tract of volcanic scoriae, over whose sharp rocks and deep fissures neither horse nor vehicle could move, flanked the American line of march. ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... and a famous hunter of the district named Muhammad, also two mules, which carried all things necessary for our camping out, and were in charge of my friend's cook, Amin by name. We rode into the mountains, making for the central range of barren heights, which had the hue and something of the contour of a lion's back. At length we reached a village at the foot of this commanding range, and asked for tigers. We were told that they were farther on. A man came ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... invariably sterile both inter se and with either pure parent. The experiment was tried by M. Corbie "avec une espece d'obstination;" and likewise by M. Mauduyt, and by M. Vieillot. Temminck also found the hybrids from these two species quite barren. Therefore, when Bechstein ('Naturgesch. Deutschlands Vogel' b. 4 s. 101) asserts that the hybrids from these two turtle-doves propagate inter se equally well with pure species, and when a writer in the 'Field' newspaper (in a letter dated November 10th, 1858) makes a similar ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... suddenly within the chapel. The ministering priests threw themselves before the altar, and were slain even on its steps. If, as antique traditions tell us, no grass will grow where the blood of martyrs has been shed, there should be a barren spot, to this very day, on the site of ...
— A Bell's Biography - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... February 20th its headquarters reached Shikarpore. Ten days later, Cotton, leading the advance, was in Dadur, at the foot of the Bolan Pass, having suffered heavily in transport animals almost from the start. Supplies were scarce in a region so barren, but with a month's partial food on his beasts of burden he quitted Dadur March 10th, got safely, if toilsomely, through the Bolan, and on 26th reached Quetta, where he was to halt for orders. Shah Soojah and Keane followed, their troops suffering not a little from scarcity of supplies ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... though young and universally admired. We conceive his aspect to be thoughtful but fervid, dauntless but mild: he is the very poetry of war, the essence of a youthful hero. We should have loved him anywhere; but here, amid barren scenes of strife and danger, he is doubly ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... barren that bearest not; Break forth and cry, thou that travailest not; Because many are the children of the desolate, rather than of her ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various
... an eminent engineer, born at Birmingham; entered into partnership with James Watt, and established with him a manufactory of steam-engines at Soho, on a barren heath near his native place; contributed to the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... point in her journey across the island. There was no failure of the wind as the night spent itself; it blew true and fair until the rosy dawn came softly out of the east. The boy awoke from a long doze to find the punt overhauling the first barren islands of the long estuary at the head of which the Burnt Bay ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... lies, a duty of which the difficulty is to be gauged by the difference of the present from the past, of the bygone hope from the present effort. 'In the fulness of productiveness,' he confesses, 'at the hour when life is flowering, a young creature is snatched away, and cast upon a barren soil where all he has cherished fails him. Well, after the first wrench he finds that life has not forsaken him, and sets to work upon the new ungrateful ground. The effort calls for such a concentration of energy ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... jeopardy, with a quietness and composure on his part that I could not recollect without horror. I knew not what were his plans respecting me. I knew not whether he troubled himself so much as to form a barren wish for the preservation of one whose future prospects he had so iniquitously tarnished. I had hitherto been silent as to my principal topic of recrimination. But I was by no means certain, that I should consent to go out of the ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... bank. He knew that a scant hundred yards lay between the river and the open road beyond and yet a vast dread possessed him. He shrank from that black opening in the wall of trees where dead leaves rustled and the wind whispered secrets to the barren branches. ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... forenoon's mail was barren of result, and when Abe went out to lunch that day he had little appetite for his food. Accordingly he sought an enameled-brick dairy restaurant, and he was midway in the consumption of a bowl of milk toast when Leon Sammet, senior partner ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... but clear, an ideal one for a ride, and mile after mile was passed, between the now almost barren fields, and through long groves of leafless trees. The horses from Riverlawn had always been boasted of as being the best in that section of the country, and now they were ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... understand and appreciate. The white and gray Laurentian boulders lay along the roadside. The soil seemed as if made up of decayed and pulverized rock, and doubtless contained very little vegetable matter. It is so barren that it will ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... wounded soldiers were brought in on every train, Madame Balli was turned over to friends, and in a day or two, being bored and lonely, she concluded to go with these friends to the hospitals and take cigarettes and smiles into the barren wards. From that day until I left Paris on the seventeenth of August, 1916, Madame Balli had labored unceasingly; she is known to the Government as one of its most valuable and resourceful aids; and she works until two in the morning, during the ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... in France was dreadful. A winter of unprecedented severity had even frozen the impetuous waters of the Rhone. Provisions commanded famine prices. The fields were barren, the store-houses exhausted, the merchant ships were captured by the enemy, and the army, humiliated by frequent defeats, was perishing with hunger. The people became desperate. The king was ignominiously lampooned ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... in writers like Martial, Juvenal and Petronius who introduce them mainly for satirical ends. But the Christians could not thus escape from the obsession of sex; it was ever with them. We catch interesting glimpses of their struggles, for the most part barren struggles, in the Epistles of St. Jerome, who had himself been an athlete in ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... with the Talavera; in the first and second generations the produce was intermediate in character, but in the fourth generation "it was found to consist of many varieties; nine-tenths of the florets proved barren, and many of the seeds seemed shrivelled abortions, void of vitality, and the whole race was evidently verging to extinction."[224] Now, considering how little these {105} varieties of wheat differ in any important character, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... would ride one horse to the place as to a hunting meet, and reserve a better and fresher for the retreat, which, in the earlier stages of Methuen's advance, was probably intended from the first. So far do they push the endeavour to leave a barren result to the victor that they carry away upon their horses, as far as may be and at some risk, not only their wounded but their dead; and of the {p.146} latter those that cannot be removed are ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... that he be given a plentiful supply of furs to keep him warm, food, ammunition and loading outfit, traps and guns, but, I believe, he would have gladly returned with us, for it was a wistful farewell he made, and an Esquimo's farewell is usually very barren ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson
... buoyant, lovable type of the self-reliant American. Her philosophy is one of love and kindness towards all things; her hope is never dimmed. And by the sheer beauty of her soul, and the purity of her vision, she wins from barren and unpromising surroundings those ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... felt justified in thinning out a few tables and odd pieces that our desirable bungalow is too small to hold. The results weren't as pronounced as before, but they quite repaid me. I sold my best table to a general, which gave me a lot of confidence, but my greatest triumph was a hat-rack. It was a barren, gaunt-looking affair, like a leafless tree in winter, but it was mahogany, and it was old. Two ladies who were excitedly buying tables spied it, and exclaimed in rapture. I rose ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... beauty new and exquisite? She fled into that valley they pass o'er Who go to Corinth from Cenchreas' shore; And rested at the foot of those wild hills, The rugged founts of the Peraean rills, And of that other ridge whose barren back Stretches, with all its mist and cloudy rack, South-westward to Cleone. There she stood About a young bird's flutter from a wood, 180 Fair, on a sloping green of mossy tread, By a clear pool, wherein she passioned To see herself escap'd from so sore ills, ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... Bison, herd together in bands, and generally frequent barren grounds during the summer months, keeping near the rivers; but retire to the woods in winter. They seem to be less watchful than most other wild animals; and when feeding are not difficult of approach, provided the hunters go against the wind. ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... compositions already noticed, the Peruvians, it is said, showed some talent for theatrical exhibitions; not those barren pantomimes which, addressed simply to the eye, have formed the amusement of more than one rude nation. The Peruvian pieces aspired to the rank of dramatic compositions, sustained by character and dialogue, founded sometimes on themes of tragic interest, and at others ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... serious, then light, as the present subject required, or as at the time I was affected. And if thou vouchsafe to read this Treatise, it shall seem to thee no otherwise than the way to an ordinary traveller, sometimes fair, sometimes foul; here champion, there enclosed; barren in one place, better soil in another. By woods, groves, hills, dales, plains, and lead thee per ardua montium et lubrica vallium et roscida cespitum et glebosa camporum, through variety of objects, to that which thou shalt like or ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... the burning sands of Arabia. Weary and thirsty were they, for they had not for days had herbage to crop, or water to drink, as they trod, mile after mile, the barren waste, where the sands glowed red like a fiery sea. And weary were the riders, exhausted with toil and heat, for they dared not stop to rest. The water which they carried with them was almost spent; some of the skins which had held it flapped empty against ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... middle of November, in the year 18—, Dominick M'Evoy and his son Jemmy were digging potatoes on the side of a hard, barren hill, called Esker Dhu. The day was bitter and wintry, the men were thinly clad, and as the keen blast swept across the hill with considerable violence, the sleet-like rain which it bore along pelted into their garments with pitiless severity. The father had advanced into ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... end of a time Cormac, king of Ulaid, "the man of the three gifts," forsakes Eochaid's daughter, because she was barren save for one daughter that she had borne to Cormac after the making of the pottage which her mother—the woman from the elfmounds—gave her. Then she said to her mother: "Bad is what thou hast given me: it will be a ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... return for Thetford, he was appointed Lord Advocate for Scotland; and although some of his detractors have argued that he was only selected to fill that post because the Conservatives could not find another man, it is hardly credible that the Court of Session is so barren of Tory talent and leanings. Besides, the malicious insinuation has been completely disproved by Mr. Gordon's zealous and efficient discharge of the duties of his office, in which his conduct completely vindicated the choice of his ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... specially so. He could be a very gallant squire when he liked. He was master of all the little attentions women love, and in his manner towards Gladys managed to infuse a certain deference, not untouched by tenderness, which she found quite gratifying. She had so long lived a meagre, barren existence that she seemed almost greedy of the lovely and pleasant things of life. She enjoyed wearing her beautiful gowns, living in luxurious rooms, eating dainty food at a well-appointed table. In all that there was nothing unnatural, it was but the inevitable reaction after ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... dreamed of him, had dream so sweet, Her smile to him disastrous proved: For, in that northern wild, no spot So fit for ambush was as this Unbeaten, shrub-grown path of rock To which the Chippeways' impulse Led them; and none so ill-secure From ambuscading foe as this Same barren bowlder, upon whose O'erhanging ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... is the best nurse of talent has long been a most humiliating truism; and the fountain of the Muses, bursting from a barren rock, is but too apt an emblem of the hard source from which much of the genius of this world has issued. How strongly the young translators of Aristaenetus were under the influence of this sort of inspiration appears from every paragraph of Halhed's letters, and might easily, indeed, be concluded ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... neighbourhoods. "Who's that?" one would ask, and the other would cry, "That! why, Dromedary Dodd!" or, with withering scorn, "Not know Mr. Dodd of the picnics? Well!" and, indeed, I think it marked a rather barren destiny; for our picnics, if a trifle vulgar, were as gay and innocent as the age of gold. I am sure no people divert themselves so easily and so well, and even with the cares of my stewardship I was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... concerned. It was insignificance or remoteness alone that protected the libeler. The leading newspapers of the state, however much they might abuse his writings, learned to be very cautious of what they said of him personally. But it was a barren victory he had won. He had lost far more than he had gained. That such would be the result, he knew, while (p. 198) he was engaged in the controversy. It affected, at the time, his literary reputation, and, as a result, the sale ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... of the second day corrugations began to appear in the level. Little ridges and valleys broke the monotony of travel; rocks began to dot the earth; the gray grass disappeared, the barren stretches grew larger and more frequent, and the yucca and the lancelike octilla began to appear here and there. The trend of the trail had been upward all afternoon—gradual at first, hardly noticeable. But as the day drew to a close the cattle mounted ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... railway was to be built in the spring caused a great stir in the village. The strangers who went about buying land from the peasants were the sole topic of conversation at the spinning-wheels on winter evenings. One poor peasant had sold his barren gravel hill, and had been able to purchase ten acres of the best land ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... full true. This child that of thee shall be born Is the Second Person in Trinity. He shall save that was forlorn, And the fiend's power destroy shall he. These words, lady, full true they be, And further, lady, in thy own lineage, Behold Elizabeth, thy cousin clean, The which was barren and past all age. And now with child she hath been Six months and more as shall be seen; Wherefore, discomfort thee not, Mary, For to God ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... It tore the barren atmosphere of the office to rags; it made the place august and awful. Rufin bent to her and took her clasped hands in one of his to ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... composed of lava and ashes, or rocky heights and precipitous cliffs. Still, many of the portions which can be cultivated are of extraordinary fertility; and the contrast is very great between the richly-cultivated plains and valleys, and the leafy forests, with the barren, scorched, and burnt sides of the peak and its surrounding heights. I ought to have said that the houses of Santa Cruz are of several stories, with the verandahs one above another, looking into the interior courts, in which grow not ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... eyes, and marked how the vines by the lake's side contrasted with the burning whiteness of the desert beyond. The glaring sand shimmered in the heat of the flaming Egyptian sun. A thin, vapory mist seemed to move above the heated, barren surface of the grim sea of sand. Heraklas stretched out his hands in agony toward the desert, and cried aloud, "O my brother, my brother Timokles! How shall ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... ——nd Street, they passed quietly out of the child's actual life and entered the fitfully lighted chambers of her childish memory wherein, at times, they paced with noiseless footsteps as once in the barren ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... foot, or on the oxen. Far as the eye could reach, nothing but brown earth and leafless shrubs and trees could be seen; the ravaging hordes of locusts had cleared off every particle of verdure from the ground. North and south, east and west, the country had become a barren wilderness. The prospect for our poor oxen was a melancholy one. We could only push on therefore as fast as they could travel, in the hope of speedily getting beyond the ravaged country. Our friend Donald looked very grave. All day long we travelled on. The cattle began ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... surcharged with emotion; "Righteous Heaven" is picturesque and full of splendid vigour; "Impartial Heaven" contains some of the most gorgeous writing that even Handel achieved. But the last two choruses, and "The Cause is decided" and "Oh, Joachim," are common, colourless, barren; and were evidently written without delight, to maintain the pretext that the work was an oratorio. But it stands to this day, unmistakably an opera; and it is the songs that will certainly make it popular some day; for some of them are on Handel's highest level, and Handel's highest level ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... by the French to settle the country; but, by some unaccountable fatality, instead of seating themselves on the fertile borders of the Mississippi, they continually landed about the barren sands of Biloxi, and the bay of Mobile. It was not until the year 1722, that the miserable remnant of those who had been carried thither at various times, was transplanted to New Orleans; nor until the year 1731, that ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... denied to her these joyous, endless wanderings. "I love it" he told her presently. "I can't help it. It appeals to something in me, just like drink appeals to a drunkard. I'm never so happy as when gophering around in a barren prospect hole or coyoting on some rocky hillside. But it's only another form of the gambling fever, and I realize that whether my present plans mature or not I've got to give it up. It was all right a few years ago, but now the idea of wandering all my life over the mountains ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... pass through sorrow's thirsty vale, That dry and barren ground, As through a fruitful, wat'ry dale, Where springs and ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... subscribe to the disgraceful capitulation whereby Field-marshal Jellachich had promised to hand over to the French, the flags and the arms of the Austrian troops, and had fled into the Tyrol; where he too would have led the brigade were it not for the fact that he feared that in that barren mountain country, there would not be enough fodder for so many horses. But now they had open country in front of them and having, by a ruse of which he was proud, gained a lead of six leagues over the French troops, he invited ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... over their numerous encircling offspring, who have borne them with a mother's throes, watched over them with a mother's anxious mind, and reared them with a mother's ardent love, are considered to be wholly incompetent, in the opinion of these dessicated and barren branches ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat |
