"Barren" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not refuted or contradicted by the innumerable experiments of medical scientists. The labors of Ferrier, Fritsch, Hitzig and Charcot, become a part of the new system, as they lend corroboration; and the annals of pathology furnish numerous corroborative facts. These are not barren, abstract sciences, but bear upon all departments of human life—upon education, medical practice, hygiene, the study of character, the selection of public officers, of partners, friends, and conjugal companions,—upon ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... two of the earliest questions which Henry asked himself, and as time brought the answers to them, and kindred questions, there were unexpected elements of comfort for the heart of the boy, longing so desperately in that barren place for any hint of the human touch. One day Mr. Smith startled him by mentioning Dickens, and even Charles Lamb. It was a kindly recognition of Mesurier's rumoured interest in literature. Henry looked at him in amazement. "Oh, you read then!" he exclaimed. Of anything ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... productive of but slender consequences, Philip disbanded his army, and retired to Brussels. He reached that city on the 12th October. The English returned to their own country. The campaign of 1557 was closed without a material result, and the victory of Saint Quentin remained for a season barren. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... again disappointed; there were not more than three score and ten palm tress, and there were of stunted growth owing to a lack of water, for in spite of the presence of twelve wells of water, the soil was so barren and sandy that the wells were not sufficient to water it. [85] Here again the marvelous intercession of God in favor of the fate of Israel is shown, for the scant supply of water at Elim, which had hardly sufficed for seventy palm trees, satisfied sixty myriads of the wandering people ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... attention was attracted to a woman planting in a steep and barren-looking field, swinging her arms with the fine free grace of a ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... OEdipus, and drew the scenery of the whole play: whenever I have owned a farther proportion, let my accusers speak: this was meant mischievously, to set us two at variance. Who is the old serpent and Satan now? When my friends help my barren fancy, I am thankful for it: I do not use to receive assistance, and afterwards ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... agriculture or manufactures or commerce, having indeed the one desire to enjoy life without doing anything, and so unintelligent that it cannot see it is killing its country by its loathing for labour, its contempt for the poor, its one ambition to live in a petty way with the barren glory of belonging to some official administration. And, as you say, the aristocracy is dying, discrowned, ruined, sunk into the degeneracy which overtakes races towards their close, most of its members reduced to beggary, the others, the few who have clung to their money, crushed ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... 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 to ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... rounded Stewart's Island, the southern-most of the New Zealand group. It is little more than a barren rock, and was not then inhabited, whatever it may be now. Although it was the winter season, and the latitude corresponded to that of the North of England, we remarked how mild and dry was the atmosphere in comparison. Indeed the weather was glorious and seemed ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... tells his tale Under the Hawthorn in the dale. Streit mine eye hath caught new pleasures Whilst the Lantskip round it measures, Russet Lawns, and Fallows Gray, Where the nibling flocks do stray, Mountains on whose barren brest The labouring clouds do often rest: Meadows trim with Daisies pide, Shallow Brooks, and Rivers wide. Towers, and Battlements it sees Boosom'd high in tufted Trees, Wher perhaps som beauty lies, The Cynosure of neighbouring eyes. ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... received the disgraceful overtures which I know have been made to them. The seeds of sedition have been unscrupulously scattered throughout India, even amongst the hills of the frontier tribes. We are grateful that they have fallen on much barren ground, but we can ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... it illumined the Creations, which seemed to them barren when they saw the source from which all worlds—Terrestrial, Spiritual, ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... evidence that the Session of the Parliament up to this point, notwithstanding the great business of the Petition and Advice and the Kingship question, had by no means been barren in legislation, the House had gathered up all the Bills already passed, but not yet assented to, for presentation to his Highness in a body. On the 9th of June thirty-eight such Bills, "some of the public, and the others of a more private, concernment," were presented to his Highness ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... to was barren—no water, and no nuts; we must have perished had we been cast on it. Then we reached another with some inhabitants on it. We understood, in part, their language. Their ancestors had, they believed, been cast on it wandering as we were ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... an army of thoughts that would leap upon him if he gave them an opportunity. But soon that would be all over—no more battle, no more struggle. He turned the corner and saw Scaw House standing amongst its dark trees, with its black palings in front of its garden and the deserted barren patch of field in front of that again. The sun was getting low and the sky above the house was flaming but the trees were sombre ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... the immense Dutch plain that intercept the view—rebellious children of the sea, whose progress they oppose, being at the same time the prisoners and the guardsmen of Holland. There are three tiers of these dunes, forming a triple bulwark against the ocean: the outer is the most barren, the centre the highest, and the inner the most cultivated. The medium height of these mountains of sand is not greater than fifteen metres, and all together they do not extend into the land for more than a French league. But ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... his favorite consorts, and now he was alone, headed with unerring instinct for wild, untrammeled ranges. He had been used to the pure, cold water and the succulent grass of the cold desert uplands. Assuredly he would not tarry in such barren ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... to attempt pursuing the same ground which they have tracked; whence, though they may have cleared the weeds, they have also culled the flowers; and, though they have rendered the path plain, they have left it barren. ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... of Nevada a playa lake spreads over an area fifty miles long and twenty miles wide. In summer it disappears; the Quinn River, which feeds it, shrinks back one hundred miles toward its source, leaving an absolutely barren floor of clay, ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... Mr. Watson exhibited a rather remarkable command of a barren technique. He had neither thoughts that breathe, nor words that burn. He had one or two unusual words—his only indication of immaturity in style—like "wox" and "himseemed." (Why is it that when "herseemed" as used by ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... sayer. The one is as essential to any true saying as the other. A. may have spoken, but if B. has not heard, there has been nothing said, and he must speak again. True, the belief on A.'s part that he had a bona fide sayee in B., saves his speech qua him, but it has been barren and left no fertile issue. It has failed to fulfil the conditions of true speech, which involve not only that A. should speak, but also that B. should hear. True, again, we often speak of loose, incoherent, ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... responsibility of creation, had, at the touch of his son's little hand, felt the tremor of a moral conception, so now Eleanor, barren so long! felt the pangs of a birth of spiritual responsibility: "I didn't make him happy, so—Oh, my poor Maurice, it was my fault!"... But of course this divine self-forgetfulness in self-reproach, was as feeble as any new-born thing. When it stirred, and uttered ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... less your chastity, however unusual, has proved a barren virtue. For what have you made of a year of youth? Why, each thing that every man of forty-odd by ordinary regrets having done, you have done again, only more swiftly, compressing the follies of a quarter of a century into the space of one year. You have sought bodily pleasures. You ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... haste. Gordon was shut up in Khartoum waiting his rescuers, and no one must rest. On they went, day after day, past dreary stretches of sand, broken only by an occasional and equally dreary dom palm; past barren ledges of rock, deserted mud villages and ruined temples; battling madly with a rapid, only to find when it was overcome that another lay ahead; toiling strenuously to catch up with the enemy, only to see at nightfall their spearheads disappearing over the last brown ridge of sand ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... Madeleine by telling her that she would never again make another "odd" speech to her. She renounced all common life except the childlike, harmless, animal-like one of mutual material wants, and this renunciation brought her already a peace which, though barren, was infinitely calming after her former struggling uncertainties. "How did those waists come out that you sent to the cleaner's, Madeleine?" she asked, in a bright, natural tone of interest. "I hope the blue ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... tills a barren soil, And reaps no harvest where he sowed the seed, He has but exile for long years of toil; Nor voice in council, though ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... co-operation with the Dublin government may be considered his participation in the Parliament convoked by Sir John Perrott in 1585, and prorogued till the following year. It is remarkable of this Parliament, the third and last of Elizabeth's long reign, that it was utterly barren of ecclesiastical legislation, if we except "an act against sorcery and witchcraft" from that category. The attainder of the late Earl of Desmond, and the living Viscount of Baltinglass, in arms with the O'Byrnes in Glenmalure, are the only measures ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... so far back as the tenth century, only, however, to be ridiculed as an impossibility; the circulation of the blood is hinted at; added to which is the marvellous anticipation of anaesthetics as applied to surgery, to be mentioned later on, an idea which also remained barren of results for something like sixteen centuries, until Western science stepped in and secured the prize. Here it may be fairly argued that, considering the national repugnance to mutilation of the body in any form, it could hardly be expected ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... 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 ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... The Biglow Papers promptly discovered such a word. But even if the anecdote be not well-invented, the invitation must have been more jest than earnest. For none knew better than Thackeray that these barren triumphs of wording belong to ingenuity rather than genius, being exercises altogether in the taste of the Persian poet who left out all the A's (as well as the poetry) in his verses, or of that other French funambulist whose sonnet in honour of Anne de Montaut was an acrostic, a mesostic, a St. ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... mean. But do not let them hinder you from sending me those flowers. Your friendship is so soothing and so full of loving kindness that it has for the last few months almost reconciled me to myself. Yes, it makes me happy to have you cast a glance upon my soul, at once so barren and so full of bloom; and I am thankful for every gentle word you say to one who rides the phantom steed of dreams, and ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... barren the soil, seldom fail of some growth, and subsequent to the presidential election of 1860, the great American rebellion became transparent to both friend and foe. To enumerate and examine in detail the different phases of the programme of artificial ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... much trouble to the Commentators. Colman has the following just remarks upon it: "Madame Dacier, as well as all the rest of the Commentators, has stuck at these words. Most of them imagine she means to say, that the discovery of Antiphila is a plain proof that she is not barren. Madame Dacier supposes that she intimates such a proof to be easy, because Clitipho and Antiphila were extremely alike; which sense she thinks immediately confirmed by the answer of Chremes. I can not agree with any of them, and think that the whole ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... called her persistently, was suddenly silent. Its hand, that had been laid upon her, was removed. She looked at it in the moonlight and it was no longer the desert, sand with a soul in it, blue distances full of a music of summons, spaces, peopled with spirits from the sun. It was only a barren waste of dried-up matter, arid, featureless, desolate, ghastly with the bones of things that ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... land is of an undulating character, consisting of gentle slopes and terraces, and reminded me of some of the best tea districts in China. Indeed, the hills themselves, in this part of the Himalayas, are very much like those of China, being barren near their summit and fertile ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... Yer teeth be lik a flock of ship just shared, dat come up from de ship-wash; every one of em bears tweens, an nare a one among em is barren. ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... or novelist. It is, I fear, often banished with too much haste from the fields of intellectual research by those who take upon themselves to give laws to philosophy. We need imagination to form an hypothesis; and without hypotheses science would soon become a lifeless and barren study, a horse-in-the-mill affair ever strolling round and round, unconscious of the grinding corn. In my previous investigations my imagination pictured the symmetry of curves and States; the hypothesis followed that the laws ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson
... understanding between husband and wife did not last long, the acte went on. Lacoste ardently desired a son and heir, and his wife appeared to be barren. He confided his grief to an old friend, one Lespere. Lespere pointed out that Euphemie was not only Lacoste's wife, but his kinswoman as well. To this Lacoste replied that the fact did not content him. "I tell you on the quiet,'' he said to his friend, ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... Perhaps, however, this difference may arise more from the want of Liberty than the power of climate. Oh Liberty! sweet Liberty! without thee life cannot be enjoyed! Thou parent of comfort, whose children bless thee, though they dwell among the barren rocks, or the most surly regions of the earth! Thou blessest, in spite of nature; and in spite of nature, ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... the wagge, possest with doubtful feare Least I would beate him for a fault he did, Amongst those trees I do suspect hees hid. But how now, Raunger? you mistake, I trowe; This is a Lady and no barren Dowe. ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... kinds of trees were all about us. The earth wore a verdant coat of grass, ferns, and vines, so profuse and bright that by contrast a remembrance of the barren parts of America crossed my mind, with the fulsome praise of them by the pious thieves of that region who sell them. It would be impossible and cruel, I reflected, to convey to those extravagants in adjectives the richness of herbage and the ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... counsel lessen bridal carrot colonel marshal indite assent sleigh our stair capitol alter pearl might kiln rhyme shone rung hue pier strait wreck sear Hugh lyre whorl surge purl altar cannon ascent principle mantle weather barren current miner cellar mettle pendent advice illusion assay felicity genius profit statute poplar precede lightning patience devise disease insight dissent decease extant dessert ingenuous liniment stature sculpture fissure facility essay allusion ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... afterward of a malignant fever; he returned to his troubles at Mossgiel. They were not all of his own making. It was not his fault that the farm was an unproductive one; he could not impart fertility to barren acres nor compel the sun to ripen scanty crops. In the hope of bettering his fortunes he resolved to expatriate himself, and entered into negotiations with a man who had an estate in the West Indies, and who agreed to employ him as his factor. He had no money and no means of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... wintry winds of life On barren hearts to blow— The anguish and the gnawing care, The silent, shuddering wo! Across the balmy sea of dreams My spirit-barque ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... away, and this woman was leaning over the rail fence which surrounded a barren field, and listening, while she leaned, to the story of Ezra Cramer, just home from the war. She listened well, even eagerly, to what he had to tell, and seemed moved by the account in ways various ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... her bow being repaired, there was nothing more to keep the Southern Cross and her escort in the dreary river, and with no regrets at leaving such a barren, inhospitable country behind them, the pole-seekers weighed anchor early ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... Alexander and all the Ptolemies, and the decrees of the senate and of the greatest Roman emperors. And if Germanicus was not able to make a distribution of corn to all the inhabitants of Alexandria, that only shows what a barren time it was, and how great a want there was then of corn, but tends nothing to the accusation of the Jews; for what all the emperors have thought of the Alexandrian Jews is well known, for this distribution of wheat ...
— Against Apion • Flavius Josephus
... world without us and the world within—the correspondence between the seen and the unseen—is expressed in its most general terms. But it is evident that such a conviction as this, if it contain any truth, cannot be barren of consequences on any level of thought. The communion with Nature which is capable of being at times sublimed to an incommunicable ecstasy must be capable also of explaining Nature to us so far as she can be explained; there must be axiomata media of natural ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... always strange women," she thought, "those Splurges,—not a sound heart nor a healthy mind among them. Could their false, barren life have maddened this proud Madeline? Else what did she mean by her 'hot head' and her 'fierce heart'? And what had that Philip Withers to do with her trouble and her distraction? She recollected now that Simon had once said, in his odd, significant way, that Mr. Withers was a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... of philosophy. Clear as thy light is the purpose for which thou wast hung on high; steady as thy Maker's will is thy bright obedience. Thou fulfillest thy destiny—but man, man—I and such as I—alas! we but resemble these useless waves which foam out their little moment and vanish on the barren sand. Alas! shall it never be that we shall find a solution of the mystery of our being? How aimless, how useless, appears our existence. Confined to this narrow stage, how vain are our mighty energies, our inexhaustible wishes, our infinite hopes. Where ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... island about 25 or 30 miles in circuit, which is perhaps the most arid and barren island in the world, as it produces nothing but salt, all its water, wood, provisions, and every other necessary, coming from Persia, which is about 12 miles distant; but all the other islands thereabout are very fertile, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... on a barren sandy level, through which ran a narrow stream of ice-cold water, about three-score of wild-looking human beings were dismounted, almost in a circle, each holding the end of a long "lariat" of strong hide, at the other end ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard
... officers' street, their tents along one side of it, each with its little sign bearing the occupant's name. From the other side, toward the drill ground and the lake, lead away the company streets with double rows of khaki tents facing each other. All were on a thin and barren soil, where between the tents some few weeds straggled, while everywhere else men's feet had killed all growth. No! For in front of one of the tents, under the protection of its ropes, grew a half-dozen thrifty pansy plants, all in bright bloom. But elsewhere all was brown sand that ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... Euston to Scotland was tearing along on its daily journey. It was that barren hour in the afternoon when luncheon is over and forgotten, and tea is yet far distant, and most of the passengers were either asleep or listlessly trying to read ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... be much happier were you there. But I have heard from various people who have been staying in Greece that they very soon got to like the Turks much better than the Greeks, who are very untrue, and are quite banditti-like; then, again, the country, though undoubtedly fine in parts, is a rocky and barren country, and also you are constantly exposed to the effects of the Plague, that most dreadful of all evils; and then, lastly, how very, very far you would be, how cut off from all those who are dear to you, and how exposed to dangers of ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... parallel and all open into the canyon of the Mancos River, which forms the southern boundary of the Mesa Verde. If the observer turns to the north he sees the arid Montezuma Valley 2000 feet below. A few green streaks and patches in the brown and barren low country denote streams and irrigated areas. To the northeast beyond the low country the towering peaks of the San Miguel and La Plata mountains rise more than 4000 feet above the vantage point on the North Rim at 8000 feet. To the northwest, in the hazy distance 90 miles away in Utah, ...
— Mammals of Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado • Sydney Anderson
... never beautiful, and barren in its immediate surroundings, was entirely deserted. The Hive was my home; and when the warm sun, looking through the barren grape vine into the dining room window, melted the light snow of early spring, and awoke the tender grass into new growth ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... so heroically fought and so victoriously ended shall pass into history a miserable failure, barren of permanent results,—a scandalous and shocking waste of blood and treasure,—a strife for empire, as Earl Russell characterized it, of no value to liberty or civilization,—an attempt to re-establish a Union by force, which must be the merest mockery of a Union,—an effort to bring ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... of yore made choice of such Trees as they wished to be under their protection. The Oak pleased Jupiter, the Myrtle Venus, the Laurel Phoebus, the Pine Cybele, the lofty Poplar Hercules. Minerva, wondering why they had chosen the barren ones, enquired the reason. Jupiter answered: "That we may not seem to sell the honor for the fruit." "Now, so heaven help me,"[38] said she, "let any one say what he likes, but the Olive is more pleasing to me on account of its fruit." Then said the Father of the Gods and the Creator of men: "O ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... history of our past, we might get a glimpse of our future," "The past is a mere sealed book." Conclusion, "The future is a mere sealed book." The man is lost in the unbeliever's "narrow vale lying between two cold, bleak, barren eternities," viz: life. Lost (?) in the narrow vale. Yes! He knows nothing about his origin. He knows nothing about his destiny. So he says, and we have no right to contradict him. He is lost! But here he is again, listen! Speaking of ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume 1, January, 1880 • Various
... tell?" she answered. "It is forty years since I passed this road, and here, where the land is barren, none dwell except the herdsmen. Perhaps there is a house at hand, or perhaps there is none for many ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... westward of Two-headed Point, is not so mountainous as it is to the N.E. of it, nor does so much snow lie upon it. There are, however, a good many hills considerably elevated, but they are disjoined by large tracts of flat land that appeared to be perfectly destitute of wood, and very barren. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... rush cannot grow, the water being taken from the root; for it is not the moystnesse upon the surface of the land, for then every shower should increase the rush, but it is that which lieth at the root, which, drayned away at the bottom, leaves it naked and barren of relief.' ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... Don't you think it's rather soon For the making of your music, And the striking of a tune?" "I have heard the lone trees calling And the meadows barren long, For the laughter of the lovers And the raptures of ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... "Barren? What can you be thinking of? A prettier place I never saw, and never expect to see again. A clear winding river, running into a little blue lake. A broad hill-side, all laid out in flower-gardens, and shaded by splendid ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... and barren sand-bank, after all, offered but a feeble chance for life. Even if he did reach it, which was doubtful, what could he do? Starvation instead of drowning would be his fate. More than once it occurred to him that it would be better then and there to give up all efforts and let himself go. But ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... gazing past his head, saw the blowing sands beyond and the armed men in the boats upon the sea, and "O, Rudel, my sweet lord!" she cried, "never till this moment did I know how barren and lonely was the coast. Come back, and that soon—for of a truth I dread to ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... from his mother to his own room, where he sat down at his desk and wrote a brief letter to his wife. It was not so difficult to compose as the other one had been, but it was equally succinct, equally barren of emotion. Yet he was not barren of emotion ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... for myself houses, and lands, and gold, and slave-girls, and fame, and power, even to a tyranny itself? For in this way I might have made my tongue a profitable member of my body; but now, being hurried up and down in barren places, like one mad of love, from my longing after fair youths, I waste my speech on them; receiving, as is the wont of true lovers, only curses and ingratitude from their arrogance. But tell me, thou proud Adonis-This ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... July, 1748, news came that the chief contending powers in Europe had come to terms of agreement, and in the next October the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle was signed. Both nations were tired of the weary and barren conflict, with its enormous cost and its vast entail of debt. It was agreed that conquests should be mutually restored. The chief conquest of England was Louisbourg, with the island of Cape Breton,—won for her by the farmers and fishermen of New England. When the preliminaries of ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... whose heart lies the poet's solitude now rose before us at the foot of the lofty Mount Ventoux, whose summit of snows extended beyond. We left the river and walked over a barren plain across which the wind blew most drearily. The sky was rainy and dark, and completed the desolateness of the scene, which in nowise heightened our anticipations of the renowned glen. At length we rejoined the Sorgues and entered a little green valley running up into the mountain. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... differences, of residues, and of concomitant variations. The course which he marked out so laboriously and so ingeniously for Induction to follow was one which was found to be impracticable, and as barren of results as those deductive philosophies on which he lavished his scorn. He has left precepts and examples of what he meant by his cross-examining and sifting processes. As admonitions to cross-examine and to sift facts and phenomena they are valuable. Many of the observations and ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... for all you've done, youngster," said the lieutenant; "it has been a barren search, but I shall give up for to-day. Maybe I shall look you up again. Meantime I hope you'll keep your ears open, and if you can pick up anything worth having hoist a white tablecloth or sheet on your boat's mast ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... told them stories of a lonely desert island off the coast of Lower California, where he was about to open a copper-mine for the company for which he was general manager. The more he talked of this lonesome isle and of how barren and desolate it was the more Mrs. Stevenson was fascinated with it, and when he finally invited them, in true Western fashion, to accompany him thither, she joyfully accepted. In the early part of January she took passage with her little party, consisting ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... After this season of rain is over, the sky becomes so clear, that scarcely is a single cloud to be seen for the other nine months. The goodness of the soil is evident from this circumstance, that though the ground, after the nine months of dry weather, looks altogether like barren sands, it puts on an universal coat of green within seven days after the rains begin to fall. Farther to confirm this, among the many hundreds of acres I have seen in corn in India, I never saw any that did not grow up as thick as it could well stand. Their ground ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... writers of his acquaintance, of studios and greenrooms, customs in European countries, famous friendships between royalty and artists; and she had her first glimpse of a world that made her own seem as barren and desolate as ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... all long errors of the way In which our wandering predecessors went, And like th' old Hebrews many years did stray In desarts but of small extent, Bacon like Moses led us forth at last, The barren Wilderness he past, Did on the very Border stand Of the blest promised land, And from the Mountain Top of his Exalted Wit Saw it himself and shew'd us it. But Life did never to one Man allow Time to discover Worlds and conquer too; Nor can so short a line sufficient ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... looked at him uncertainly. Sergeant Madden rumbled and swung the telescope below. The surface of the planet appeared—deep water, practically black beneath a surface reflection of daytime sky. The image shifted—a patch of barren rocks. The sergeant glanced at the survey picture, shifted the telescope, and found the northern-most island. He swelled the picture. He could see the white of monstrous surf breaking on the windward shore—waves that had gathered height going all around the planet. He traced the shoreline. ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... till, as we say, the life-tree everywhere is made a upas-tree, deadly Unwisdom overshadowing all things; and there is done what lies in human skill to stifle all Wisdom everywhere in the birth, to smite our poor world barren of Wisdom,—and make your utmost Collective Wisdom, were it collected and elected by Rhadamanthus, AEacus and Minos, not to speak of drunken Tenpound Franchisers with their ballot-boxes, an inadequate Collective! The Wisdom is not now there: how will you 'collect' it? As well wash ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... pretty rapid, though it lay through an uninteresting country, in many parts uncultivated and barren-looking. Massillon is a very flourishing town, with some good stores and two or three hotels. As the captain was obliged to make a short stay here, I went into the town and, stepping into an hotel to procure a cigar, I found a company engaged in earnest conversation, interrupted ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... have found how cursed is any whatever European influence. The main land and the Isles must be purified therefrom. Will any European government, power, or statesman permit the United States to acquire even the most barren rock on the European continent? The American continent is equal, if not more to Europe, and the degrading stigma of European colonies and possessions must be blotted ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... himself, he thought bitterly. And yet how dreary the prospect seemed. He had given up the first young love of his life, and now the barren splendors of Belgrave House seemed to oppress him—the walls closed round him like the walls of ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the telescope. He discovered the satellites of Jupiter, the phases of Venus, the mountains of the moon, the spots and the rotation of the sun. Science, which had consisted for centuries only of scholastic subtleties and barren dialectics, he established on an experimental basis. In his works he unites delicacy and ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... miles from the entrance of the south-west arm of Broken-Bay. The banks of the river, on the lowest part, had many mangrove trees along it; higher up, reeds grew along its margin, and behind these reedy banks were immense perpendicular hills of barren, rocky lands, with trees growing from between the rocky cliffs; the depth of the river, when we were highest up, was six and ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... feelings alternating between elation and dejection, as the scenery was beautiful or barren, till, suddenly, some sixty miles from Los Angeles, our train drew up before a city, containing asphalt pavements, buildings made of brick, and streets embowered in palms. This city which, in 1872, was a sheep-ranch, yet whose assessed ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... and then of gold and silver, because of the glow of mind which the upraised hands of admiration brought him, mistaking it for the real thing; but his life had been barren because it had not emptied itself for others, at any ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... locality as quiet and restful, and not too far from the whirl of the city. The place had a charm of its own, the charm, namely, of a wide sky, illimitable, flashing, changing sea, rolling in from the far tropical South with its message of romance to the barren Northern shore, and the pure sand dunes, the product of the whippings of tempests and wild weather. The cottage was in fact an old farmhouse, not an impertinent, gay, painted piece of architecture set on the sand like a tent for a month, but a solid, ugly, fascinating habitation, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... artist's temperament in youth when he is not possessed of the greater qualities of genius—his imaginative visions, his aspirations, his pride in apartness from men, his self-contentment, his sloth, the presence in him of barren imagination, the absence from it of the spiritual, nothing in him which as yet desires, through the sorrow and strife of life, God's infinitude, or man's love; a natural life indeed, forgiveable, gay, sportive, dowered with happy self-love, good to pass ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... termed ivy creeping on the ground. The same plant, when more advanced, quits the ground, and climbs on walls and trees, its rootlets becoming holdfasts only; its leaves are generally three or five lobed, and it is still barren; this is the greater barren ivy. In its next, or more mature state, it disdains all props, and rising by its own strength above the walls on which it grew, occasionally puts on the appearance of a tree; in this the flower of its age, the branches are smooth, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 386, August 22, 1829 • Various
... and scrub and do the cooking. True enough, things had been different with them once, but it was only Merle now who ever had moments of dreaming that the old days might come back. Otherwise, for both him and her it was as if they had been washed ashore on a barren coast, and must try to live through the grey ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... uncle Conrad. Forty campaigns in Germany and Italy had taught Barbarossa to command; and his soldiers, 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 ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... to laugh at this bit of philosophy, but as they went to bed they could not help thinking of the toll of lives the great barren stretches of the Colorado desert has exacted from gold-seekers. In Jack's dreams he seemed to be traversing vast solitudes of sand and desolation dotted with bleaching bones, and he woke with a start to find ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... statements which I think none will blame me for not repeating, though all may see them here who desire so to do; she then constitutes Mr. Clement Hicks, her nephew, sole residuary legatee. There is no condition, no codicil; but I have regretfully to add that Mr. Hicks wins little but this barren expression of good-will from the testatrix; for the sufficient reason that she had nothing to leave. She laboured under various delusions, among others that her financial position was very different from what is the case. ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... marital intimacy between Conscience and Eben Tollman, seemed an unthinkable desecration at which his flesh crawled. He vainly argued with himself that this was no sudden loss which had struck his life barren, but one to which he had already shaped his resignation. All that self-schooling had been swept away as fiercely as fragments of drift in the freshet of news that came with her letter. She had not exiled him but had asked him to return. She had spoken of a bitterness born ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... Until King Arthur's Table, man by man, Had fall'n in Lyonnesse about their lord, King Arthur. Then, because his wound was deep, The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him, And bore him to a chapel nigh the field, A broken chancel by a broken cross, That stood in a dark strait of barren land: On one side lay the Ocean, and on one Lay a great water, and the moon ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... a dull day for news. The evening papers were barren of suggestions and the assignments had run out before Bassett's name was reached. That meant another afternoon of dismal lingering in the office, without even a ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... the world? They are like comedians in the greenroom. Who, more than they, is skilled in that research at the bottom of things, in that groping, profound and impious? See how they speak of everything; always in terms the most barren, the most crude and abject; such words appear true to them; all the rest is only parade, convention, prejudice. Let them tell a story, let them recount some experience, they will always use the same dirty and material expression, always the letter, always death! They do not say "That ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... so barren and uninteresting yesterday, that even a professional traveller could not have made a single page of it. It was, in every thing, a perfect contrast to the rich plains of Artois— unfertile, neglected vallies and hills, miserable farms, still more miserable ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... human notion;—to introduce infinite variety of action, but so combined that all these acts lead by a multitude of different courses to the accomplishment of one great design, is a conception of the Deity. The human idea of unity is almost always barren; the divine idea pregnant with abundant results. Men think they manifest their greatness by simplifying the means they use; but it is the purpose of God which is simple—his ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... Thee who sent this great adventure my way! I am grateful to have come out of the barren land of spinsterhood, seeing the glory of a love greater than myself. I thank Thee for teaching me that mixing, and kneading, and baking are not all that life holds for me. Even if he doesn't love me, God, I shall ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... is the God-sent form of trust in the magic force and inspiration belonging to the life of this earth. We are inclined to forget that the way of excellence is in the intellectual, as distinguished from emotional, humility. What one feels so hopelessly barren in declared pessimism is just its arrogance. It seems as if the discovery made by many men at various times that there is much evil in the world were a source of proud and unholy joy unto some of the modern writers. ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... our little community threw off the yoke of the old Torah, yet refused to accept the yoke of the new Torah. Nevertheless our lives were far from being barren. Our longing for the things we were forbidden to practise prompted us to invent a good many new usages. For instance, long before we had the freedom of Anna's house, we managed to meet every Saturday to exchange ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg
... produced eleven pearls, and all about the size and quality of the first. In a few minutes I had seventy-three just such pearls, besides a quantity of seed pearl. Then followed a succession of barren shells; a dozen not giving a pearl. The three that succeeded them gave thirty-one more; and another yielded four pearls, each of which was as large as a small cherry. After that, I got one that was almost as large as a common hickory-nut, ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... leave the door of the church unlocked, and she entered the barren room, guiding herself with her electric torch to the stair that led down to the vault. Fear of any sort had long since been crowded out of her, but it was a lonely pilgrimage she hardly would have undertaken ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... new wardrobe trunk that had been predestined from the world's beginning to set him talkative about his little flower with bones and a voice; this same new wardrobe trunk that was the pride of his barren life and his one real worry because he might sometime lose the ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... because generalities, which in all other cases are apt to heighten and raise the subject, have here a tendency to sink it. When we speak of the commerce with our Colonies, fiction lags after truth, invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren. ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke
... choice of positions: if the field of battle be properly chosen, success will be decisive, and the loss of the battle not disastrous; whereas, if selected without reference to the principles of the science, the victory, if gained, might be barren, and defeat, if suffered, totally fatal: thus demonstrating the truth of Napoleon's maxim, that success is oftener due to the genius of the general, and to the nature of the theatre of war, than to the number and bravery of the ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... bookish, and not as they wil doe amongst themselves because they know their proverbs never came over the Alpes) no lesse than with the conceipted apothegmes, or Impreses, which never fall within the reach of a barren or vulgar head. What decorum I have observed in selecting them, I leave to the learned to consider. Thus craving the continuall sun-shine of your worships favour towards me, and that they may never decline to any west, and desiring your friendly censure of my travailes, ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... of learning say she must Soon pass and be as if she had not been. To gratify the barren lust Of Death, the roses in her cheeks are seen To blush so brightly, blooming ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... the large bed, and the sands which they washed from one place they piled up in another. The winds blew the seeds of grasses about, and willows and aspens crept up the mountain-sides. Then came the squirrels, scattering the nuts of the pine. Other seeds came too, in other ways, till at last the barren hillside was no ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... the land near the town devoted to private demesnes, laid out for glory and beauty, and the lands wasted of inhabitants, you can travel miles and miles on more than one side of Castlebar and see scarcely a tenant; a herd's cabin, a police station, being the only houses. As soon as we come to barren land over-run with stones, tenant ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... white-striped convolvulus also throws its flowers under your feet; corn fields glow with whole armies of scarlet poppies, cockle, and the rich azure plumes of viper's-bugloss; even thistles, the curse of Cain, diffuse a glow of beauty over wastes and barren places. Some species, particularly the musk thistles, are really noble plants, wearing their formidable arms, their silken vest, and their gorgeous crimson tufts of fragrant flowers issuing from a coronal of interwoven down and spines, with a grace which casts far into the shade many a favourite ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... to the hunting grounds they suffered the usual hardships of plains travel. The weather, as in most Texas winters, alternated between the extremes of heat and cold. There had been little rain; in consequence water was scarce. Twice they were forced to cross wild, barren wastes, where the pools had dried up, and they suffered terribly from thirst. On the first occasion the horses were in good condition, and they travelled steadily, with only occasional short halts, for over thirty-six hours, by which time they were across the waterless country. The journal ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... against the Court-party at first, where it would be much more to his credit if he were at present, and showing her brother's consistency of opinion, instead of supporting the lying policy of the King (as she called it) for the sake of a barren principle of loyalty, which was but an empty expression when a King was not at one with his people. The dissension grew bitter between them, reaching to little less than a hot quarrel, both being ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... enlighten your Majesty," said Lord Cloverton, He could not believe that his cleverness would not be sufficient, sooner or later, to make the Countess betray herself, although the past was utterly barren of result. ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... horse was brought to the door, and looking about for a companion, I asked Miss H——, who hesitated and declined; but I found one in Lieut. T——, who was that morning going over to Picolata. The distance is eighteen miles, through an unbroken pine-barren, (one opening only, at Fort Searle, twelve miles out,) and an under-growth of palmettos of just sufficient height for Indians to hide in. For a long time the travel over all that portion of the territory ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... table-land, sheer from a prairie as level as a billiard-table. A succession of rocky flat-topped parallelograms, featureless save for the one sealed pattern of nature's architecture of the veldt. To the nomadic traveller and man of peace, landmarks as barren and bare as the great ironstone belts of Northern Africa, which constrain the power of the unwilling Nile until she surges in angry cataract through such niggard opening as they will allow her. To the man of war, a veritable Gibraltar; a maze of possibilities in defence; ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... confess their pain, and perhaps themselves hardly like to acknowledge it, whose hearts are aching for the religion that they can no longer believe in. Their lonely hours, between the intervals of gaiety, are passed with barren and sombre thoughts; and a cry rises to their ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... "long-drawn aisle and fretted vault" of Gothic cathedral there is but the rude log meeting-house and schoolhouse. Instead of Christmas merriment there is only the noise of axe and hammer or the dreary droning of psalms. It seems a history bleak and barren of poetic inspiration, at once plebeian ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... must be used as history with the utmost caution, and only for events that are very recent. Time relations are often hopelessly confused and the narratives are greatly incumbered with mythologic details. But while so barren in definite information, these traditions are of the greatest value, often through their merely incidental allusions, in presenting to our minds a picture of the conditions under which the repeated migrations of the pueblo builders ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... Nature's abortions, the bat, are not indifferent or insignificant: their very existence is a state of direct enmity and warfare against his. In good truth one might smile at the unbelievers whose imagination is too barren for ghosts and fearful goblins, and such births of night as we see in sickness, to grow up in it, or who stare and marvel at Dante's descriptions; when the commonest everyday life is perpetually paralysing our eyesight with some of these portentous distorted masterpieces among the works ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... is related of his political campaign in the North, upon the barren banks of the Neva, which, in causing much entertainment to the inhabitants of the fertile banks of the Seine, has not a little ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... observed, that the country through which we passed to-day, was as fertile and much more picturesque than the Said. The reason for the latter part of this assertion is, that in the Said the view is limited by the ridges of barren and calcined mountains that bound it on both sides, whereas here the view ranges over plains bounded only by the horizon, and interspersed here and there with isolated mountains of most singular forms. Some of them might be mistaken for pyramids, ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Dongola and Sennaar • George Bethune English
... but no word had reached our employer since, and it was believed that they had turned eastward and would come up the Chisholm Trail. Bob reported the country between Abilene and Doan's Crossing as cut into dust and barren of sustenance, many weak cattle having died in crossing the dry belt. But the most startling news, seriously disturbing us both, was that Archie Tolleston was stationed at Doan's Crossing on Red River as a trail-cutter. He had come up from the south to Wichita Falls by train with ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... birth of the Republic, was as great a mystery to the average dweller on the Atlantic seaboard as the elephant was to the blind men of Hindustan. The reports of those who had penetrated this wilderness—of those who had seen the barren ranges of the Alleghanies, the fertile uplands of the Unakas, the luxuriant blue-grass regions, the rich bottom lands of the Ohio and Mississippi, the wide shores of the inland seas, or the stretches of prairie increasing in ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... the cattle; for straw was scarce and dear in those parts; even for thatching, heather (or rather ling) was used. Then there was meat to salt while it could be had; for, in default of turnips and mangold-wurzel, there was a great slaughtering of barren cows as soon as the summer herbage failed; and good housewives stored up their Christmas piece of beef in pickle before Martinmas was over. Corn was to be ground while yet it could be carried to the distant mill; the great racks for oat-cake, that swung at the top of the kitchen, had ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... well known to every one who has had opportunities of making observations, that in those parts of the United States where the operations of farming have been confided mostly to slaves, the lands are exhausted of their fertility and have become barren and unproductive. Some lands are now in this condition, which were originally the finest in the United States. Eastern Virginia is a good sample of the effects of slave labor on the fertility of lands. This all results from the ignorance, carelessness and inattention of those to whom the operations ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... closing in as we left the town, but a resplendent tropic moon soon made the night almost as brilliant as the day. The trail we followed led over rough and rocky country. Sometimes for a distance of a mile or more we passed over barren wastes of volcanic slag poured out in anger by some peak whose convulsions have long since ceased. Again we would descend into a tropical jungle from the dense foliage of which the ladrones could have leaped at any moment, had they known of our coming, and annihilated ...
— An Epoch in History • P. H. Eley
... but a bare sustenance, the bare means of a livelihood, would be a hindrance to human progress, a hindrance not to be removed by all of the maxims of the philosopher or the theories of the doctrinaire. Promise without fulfillment is barren, but when you can place before the mechanic the assured fact that the performance of his duty means success in life, and that his non-performance means failure; when you can show him that this law is immutable, you have made of him ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... state of things, which his system of opinions obliged him to represent in its worst form, has observed of the earth, "that its greater part is covered by the uninhabitable ocean; that of the rest some is encumbered with naked mountains, and some lost under barren sands; some scorched with unintermitted heat, and some petrified with perpetual frost; so that only a few regions remain for the production of fruits, the pasture of cattle, and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... the sooner we get away from this barren spot the better," observed Harry. "If the fine weather continues, as I hope it may, we can expect to reach the Auckland Islands in three ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... if in land of stony dearth Like barren rock thou sit, Round which the phantom-waters flit Of heart- and brain-mirage That can no thirst assuage, Yet be thou still, and wait, wait long; A right sea comes to drown the wrong; God's glory comes ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... 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 ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... opposite of this, containing nothing of any material value in it. The rock-formation is all lime, very pure and white like marble, which consequently makes the soil white, and, being very stony, it is almost barren. The Somali keep cattle here, but with much apparent difficulty, being, from the scarcity of springs and want of water, obliged to march about, following the last falls of rain, to obtain fresh herbage for ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... knuckle at my door; I rose, and opened, and upon the porch, His face like strange death's, and his dark eyes wide With some vague horror, stood the fisherman. "Come, hasten with me," were his only words. We ran our best along the barren shore, And gained his silent cottage. Entering, He led me to his daughter's vacant couch. The room had but one window, and the sash Was raised. I looked out to the ground beneath. A vine crept up, and with long fingers made Abode secure upon the cottage side, And o'er the window threw a leafy scarf. ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... March, 1850, Daniel Webster said in the United States Senate: "California is Asiatic in formation and scenery; composed of vast mountains of enormous height, with broken ridges and deep valleys. The sides of these mountains are barren—entirely barren—their tops ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... cruelty, and compel them to live with you in a state of war; and yet you complain that they are not honest or faithful! You stupify them with stripes, and think it necessary to keep them in a state of ignorance; and yet you assert that they are incapable of learning; that their minds are such a barren soil or moor, that culture would be lost on them; and that they come from a climate, where nature, though prodigal of her bounties in a degree unknown to yourselves, has left man alone scant and unfinished, and incapable of enjoying the treasures she has ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... pass forever from the race of the Darrells. I saw that the day my father was driven from the old house would be his last on earth. What means to save him?—how raise the pitiful sum—but a few thousands—by which to release from the spoiler's gripe those barren acres which all the lands of the Seymour or the Gower could never replace in my poor father's eyes? My sole income was a college fellowship, adequate to all my wants, but useless for sale or loan. I spent the night in vain consultation ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... It was once barren land. The angular hills were covered with scrub cedar and a few large live oaks. Little would grow in that harsh caliche soil of my country. And each spring the Pedernales River would flood ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Lyndon B. Johnson • Lyndon B. Johnson
... each day from White House to the front; and at one time during the operations from fifty to sixty days' rations for the entire army, amounting probably to 25,000 tons, were accumulated at the depot. 5 tons daily per 1000 men is a fair estimate for an army operating in a barren country.) It is evident, then, that the possibility of the enemy shifting his line of operations to the James, abandoning the York River Railroad, might easily have escaped the penetration of either Lee or Jackson. They were not behind the scenes of the Federal administrative system. They were not ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... prevent England from deriving all the advantage from them ever to be derived from colonies. The only good which England can derive from her extensive colonization is not to be gained by swaying a barren sceptre over distant colonies, but by spreading abroad her race, her language, her civilization, and thus enlarging the sphere of her commerce. Under a free system of intercourse England would not derive less benefit, at present, from the United States than if they had remained ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... elegy the dwelling of his mistress. We are shown an old ivy-clad house, half hidden in trees, and adorned with weather-stained frescoes of the saints, and near it a chapel, much damaged by the violence of the river Po, which flowed hard by; not far off, the priest ploughs his few barren roods with borrowed cattle. This is no reminiscence of the Roman elegists, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... barren English so it would not offend, Vital finally told her how glad he was that she was going to be his brother's wife. He dwelt upon Zotique's manliness, and how he was quite sure she would never be sorry that ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... feuars, and which, feathering naturally up the beds of empty torrents, or occupying the concave recesses of the bank, gave at once beauty and variety to the landscape. Above these scattered woods rose the hill, in barren, but purple majesty; the dark rich hue, particularly in autumn, contrasting beautifully with the thickets of oak and birch, the mountain ashes and thorns, the alders and quivering aspens, which checquered and varied the descent, and not less with the ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... imagined than that from the barren desert to the fertile plains below; oleanders and geraniums greet us with their welcome smiles; grapes, pears, peaches, all in profusion; we are indeed in the Italy of America at last, and Sacramento is reached by half-past ten. ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... itself. He shoots all his meditations at one but; and beats upon his text, not the cushion; making his hearers, not the pulpit groan. In citing of popish errors, he cuts them with arguments, not cudgels them with barren invectives; and labours more to shew the truth of his cause than the spleen. His sermon is limited by the method, not the hour-glass; and his devotion goes along with him out of the pulpit. He comes not up thrice a week, because he would not be idle; nor talks three hours ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... brings into action a whole armoury of sarcasm and insult whetted and polished from its earlier prosaic exercise. Even the grotesque element in his humour is not wholly excluded from the Paradise Lost; it has full scope, for once, in the episodical description of the Paradise of Fools—that barren continent, beaten on by the storms of chaos, dark save for some faint glimmerings from the wall of heaven, the inhabitants a disordered and depraved multitude of philosophers, crusaders, monks, and friars, blown like leaves into the air by the ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... means of knowing where his seventy-mile tour led him now, but it is clear that he still had not reached a decision on his return. Indeed, we gather that he is inclined to keep up the battle among the barren Esmeralda hills. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... even affection. I sometimes feared it was too good to last. Mrs. Branard in particular, I shall ever remember with grateful and affectionate regard. She was more like a mother to me, than a mistress, and I shall ever look back to the time I spent with her, as a bright spot in the otherwise barren desert of my life. Better, far better would it have been for me had I never left her. But I became alarmed, and thought the convent people were after me. It was no idle whim, no imaginary terror. I had good cause to fear, for I had ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... treat of them in a new and unbeaten method. His verses on the Shower in Town,[44] and the Description of the Morning,[45] are instances of the happiness of that genius, which could raise such pleasing ideas upon occasions so barren to an ordinary invention. ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... the heavy wrath of God Upon their uncle fell; Yea, fearful fiends did haunt his house, His conscience felt an hell: His barns were fir'd, his goods consum'd, His lands were barren made; His cattle died within the field, And ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various |
