"Unfruitful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... light in the Lord: walk as children of light; (for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, and righteousness, and truth;) proving what is acceptable unto the Lord. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them: for it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret. But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth make manifest is light. Wherefore ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... is simply describing. So also, however, the 'faculties' are empirical phenomena—attention, memory, and all the rest. The question is, do Prof. Thorndike and others like minded analyze the phenomena in a way that reveals their mechanism, or in the unfruitful manner of the faculty psychology? Is, for instance, the mind an aggregate of the following "functions that have been, or might be, studied:—Ability to spell cat, ability to spell, knowledge that Rt 289 equals 17, ability to read English, knowledge of telegraphy,. . . . ability to give the ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... call thee thrice-longed-for Adonis; All Egypt calls thee Osiris; The Wisdom of Hellas names thee Men's Heavenly Horn; The Samothracians call thee august Adama; The Haemonians, Korybas; The Phrygians name thee Papa sometimes; At times again Dead, or God, or Unfruitful, or Aipolos; Or Green Reaped Wheat-ear; Or the Fruitful that Amygdalas brought ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... of the fisheries of different parts of Norway into Germany, England, Scotland, and Prussia, where they are exchanged against the produce of these countries, particularly for every necessary article of food, drink and clothing, as their own country is so extremely barren and unfruitful, that they cannot raise ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... explanation. Nature's impulses, therefore, in the spring of the year are for the good of the race, and may then be more frequently indulged without prejudice to the individual. Summer is the season which agrees the least with the exercise of the generative functions. The autumn months are the most unfruitful. Then, also, derangements of the economy are ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... and miraculous power is claimed. It manifestly contains a large impregnation of iron, and is no doubt a good tonic, beyond which its virtues are of course mythical. It is held by the surrounding populace to be an infallible remedy in the instance of unfruitful women, and is the constant resort of that class from far and near. These chapels at Guadalupe are decorated in the crudest and most inartistic manner, entirely unworthy of such belief as is professed ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... Croton is a feast both to the eye and to the palate. Unfortunately the vine is difficult to grow, being adapted to but few soils and proving unfruitful, weak in growth, precariously tender and subject to mildew and rot in unfavorable situations. The grapes have a delicate, sweet Vinifera flavor with melting flesh which readily separates from the few seeds. The crop hangs on the vines until ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... ladies, who have passed the age of folly, or little girls, who have n't reached it. But women in the prime of their womanhood are always thinking of fashion-plates and curling-irons and love and shopping. Name me, if you can, four vainer, tiresomer, or more unfruitful topics. Have you never waked in your bed at midnight to wonder how it has come to pass that I, at my time of life, with my attractions, am still a bachelor? To wonder what untold disappointment, what unwritten history of sorrow, has left me the ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... people brought Jean presents, and thus laden with riches he again set out. On arriving at the town where grew the unfruitful pear-tree, he was warmly welcomed by the prince, who at once asked if he had forgotten to question the stars ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko
... are male and female kinds, and, as is usual with the genus, the fruitful ones are interspersed with unfruitful, being shorter in the stalks and nearly covered over by the latter, which are much larger; in fact, they are not the true flowers from a botanist's point of view, but with the florist it is exactly the ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... in fasting, pains, and prayer; Some charity the friar made him share, And now and then remission would direct; The widow too he never would neglect, But, all the consolation in his pow'r, Bestowed upon her ev'ry leisure hour, His tender cares unfruitful were not long; Beyond his hopes the soil proved good and strong; In short our Pater Abbas justly feared, To make him father many ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... wait like a ghost that is speechless, Till some questioning voice dissolves the spell of its silence. Hence is the inner life of so many suffering women Sunless and silent and deep, like subterranean rivers Running through caverns of darkness, unheard, unseen, and unfruitful, 660 Chafing their channels of stone, with endless and profitless murmurs." Thereupon answered John Alden, the young man, the lover of women: "Heaven forbid it, Priscilla; and truly they seem to me always More like the beautiful rivers that watered the garden of Eden,[43] More like the river ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... in the head Christ, from whom the whole body maketh increase "according to the effectual working [of the Spirit] in it," Eph. v. 1, 16. Now, if the union between the Father and Christ our head cannot be dissolved, and cannot be barren and unfruitful, then certainly the Spirit of the Father which is given to Christ beyond measure, must effectually work in every member, till it bring them to "the unity of the faith," and, "to the measure of the perfect ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... works of little value except as names in a catalogue. The long-expected opera "La Dame Blanche" saw the light in 1825, and it is to-day a stock opera in Europe, one Parisian theatre alone having given it nearly 2,000 times. Boieldieu's latter years were uneventful and unfruitful. He died in 1834 of pulmonary disease, the germs of which were planted by St. Petersburg winters. "Jean de Paris" and "La Dame Blanche" are the two works, out of nearly thirty operas, which ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... Golgotha, come, come! Come and look at it! I shall lead you straight to its foot. It was on a Friday, as you know, that they thrust Him out of one of their gates and laid the heavier end of a cross upon His shoulders. They made Him bear it to a barren and unfruitful hill without the city, and in crowds they followed Him, whirling up the dust with their many feet so that it seemed a red cloud was over the place. And they tore the garments from Him and bared His body, as the lords of the law have a malefactor exposed before the eyes ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... be it remembered, discoursed to a large and not inattentive audience, and surely the soil was not all unfruitful on which his seed was scattered when he proclaimed that God dwells not in temples of wood and stone, nor wants the ministrations of human hands;[Footnote: Sen., Ep. 95, and in Lactantius, Inst. vi.] that He has no delight in the blood of victims:[Footnote: ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... surface of the earth. The different races of mankind are forms of one sole species, by the union of two of whose members descendants are propagated. They are not different species of a genus, since in that case their hybrid descendants would remain unfruitful. But whether the human races have descended from several primitive races of men, or from one alone, is a question that can ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... God," Col. i. 10; "and strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power, unto all patience and long-suffering, with joyfulness," ver. 11; and when the abounding of the graces of the Spirit maketh them "that they shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ," 2 Pet. i. 8; "and to be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, and meet for the Master's use, and prepared unto every work," 2 Tim. ii. 21. What glory and peace is here, to be found obedient unto the many commands given ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... are not difficult to find; for the Remarks is both intrinsically and historically an important piece of criticism. It is still worth reading for more than one passage of discerning analysis and apt comment on scene, speech, or character, and for certain not unfruitful excursions into the field of general aesthetics; while historically it is a sort of landmark in Shakespearian literature. Standing chronologically almost midway between Dryden and Johnson, Kames, and Richardson, the Remarks shows decisively the direction in which criticism, under ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous
... down to us from a remote antiquity, which are even now taught in our modern schools as Euclid demonstrated them, since they cannot be improved—is a purely deductive science. The scholastic philosophy, even if it was barren and unfruitful in leading to new truths, yet confirmed what was valuable in the old systems, and by the severity of its logic and its dialectical subtleties trained the European mind for the reception of the message of Luther and Bacon; and this was ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... I have discover'd to thee, yet behooves Thou rest a little longer at the board, Ere the crude aliment, which thou hast taken, Digested fitly to nutrition turn. Open thy mind to what I now unfold, And give it inward keeping. Knowledge comes Of learning well retain'd, unfruitful else. ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... remained proudly itself, owning for sole comrade the Wind—that most mysterious of all created things, unseen, untamed, mateless, incalculable. The wind gave it voice, gave it even a measure of mobility, as it swept through the labyrinth of dry unfruitful branches and awoke a husky music telling of far-distant times and places, making a shuddering and stirring as of the resurgence of ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... unfruitful soil God can make His plants to grow and flourish. Where I am, and as I am, and with exactly the same surroundings as I now possess, God can bless me, and give me grace to serve and to glorify Him. If I do not become a flourishing plant, it is ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton
... the answer that societies modify, and have always modified, their laws according to modifications of their views of general expediency. It is difficult to say that this proposition is false, but it certainly appears to be unfruitful. For that which seems expedient to a society, or rather to the governing part of it, when it alters a rule of law is surely the same thing as the object, whatever it may be, which it has in view when it makes the change. Expediency and the greatest ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... to Queen Christina of Sweden. This great woman was wise enough not to regard the crown of Sweden as a rare and precious gem; she chose a simple life of obscurity and poverty in beautiful Italy, rather than a throne in cold and unfruitful Sweden. This act alone establishes her superiority. Yes, sister, you are right. Christina was the greater woman, even because she scorned to be ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... in the hope of giving the king a great pleasure and putting his mind completely at rest, he began: "Rejoice, O King! the youth, who dared to desire the disparagement of thy glory, is no more. This hand slew him and buried his body at Baal-Zephon. The sand of the desert and the unfruitful waves of the Red Sea were the only witnesses of the deed; and no creature knows thereof beside thyself, O King, thy servant Prexaspes, and the gulls and cormorants, that ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... grew at each step wilder and more desolate. Hanging rocks and hoar precipices overlooked the tideless ocean; black caverns yawned; and for ever, among the sea-worn recesses, murmured and dashed the unfruitful waters. Now my way was almost barred by an abrupt promontory, now rendered nearly impracticable by fragments fallen from the cliff. Evening was at hand, when, seaward, arose, as if on the waving of a wizard's wand, a murky web ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... Baillif's mission was unfruitful, for he brought word of the amalgamation of the two companies, whose chiefs were Guillaume de Caen, Ezechiel de Caen, and their nephew, Emery de Caen. The order-in-council establishing this large company granted to them the liberty of trading in New France, and ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne
... twenty-five letters more, due to my friends in Ireland. No turnspit dog gets up into his wheel with more reluctance than I sit down to write; yet no dog ever loved the roast meat he turns better than I do him I now address. Yet what shall I say now I'm entered? Shall I tire you with a description of this unfruitful country; where I must lead you over their hills all brown with heath, or their valleys scarce able to feed a rabbit? Man alone seems to be the only creature who has arrived to the natural size in this poor soil. Every part of the country presents the same dismal landscape. No grove, nor brook, ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... Demands effect before producing cause. How vain the hope! We cannot harvest joy Until we sow the seed, and God alone Knows when that seed has ripened. Oft we stand And watch the ground with anxious brooding eyes Complaining of the slow unfruitful yield, Not knowing that the shadow of ourselves Keeps off the sunlight and delays result. Sometimes our fierce impatience of desire Doth like a sultry May force tender shoots Of half-formed pleasures and unshaped events To ripen prematurely, and we reap But ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... indeed, in any shape, that could be termed political news. In these matters, its conductor had to say, with Canning's knife-grinder: 'Story! God bless you, I have none to tell, sir.' Not that the political world was unfruitful in affairs of moment; it was a time of no small change, interest, and excitement. In the period referred to, the Grenville ministry had endeavoured to burden the American colonies, by means of the stamp-duties, with some ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... fully armed from the actor's brain in the process of learning his art by practice. For the way to learn to do a thing is to do it; and in learning to act by acting, though there is plenty of incidental hard drill and hard work, there is nothing commonplace or unfruitful. ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... abstract term, or generalization of effects, for the idea, or superior form of causative agency. At best, it describes the vis vita by one only of its many influences. It is however, as we have said before, preferable to the former, because it is not, as they are, altogether unfruitful, inasmuch as it attests, less equivocally than any other sign, the presence or absence of that degree of the vis vita which is the necessary condition of organic or self-renewing power. It throws no light, however, on the law or principle of action; it does ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... that I have had more liberty in prayer, and more converse with God, than for some time before; but have, notwithstanding, been a very unfruitful creature, and so remain. For near a month we have been within two hundred miles of Bengal, but the violence of the currents set us back when we have been at the very door. I hope I have learned the necessity of bearing up in the things of God ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... thy day, there has appeared but one, Who has the fame of Italy redeemed: Too good for his vile age, he stands alone; One of the fierce Allobroges, Whose manly virtue was derived Direct from heavenly powers, Not from this dry, unfruitful earth of ours; Whence he alone, unarmed,— O matchless courage!—from the stage, Did war upon the ruthless tyrants wage; The only war, the only weapon left, Against the crimes and follies of the age. First, and alone, he took the field: None followed ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... young and pliant. Herbart came later, and is dry and one-sided. The romantics and the metaphysical idealists had unified the theory of the beautiful and of art. Herbart restored the old duality and mechanism, and gave us an absurd, unfruitful form of mysticism, void of all ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... slipped by; no Shelby. His cob fretted at the autumn flies and whinnied to be gone. A half-hour elapsed, unfruitful; an hour. Then did Queen Ruth, on whose imperious nod a little world had hung from babyhood, perceive the recreant come calmly down from his law office in company with some creature of relatively common clay, shake hands, chat further, shake hands again, take up his reins amid an interchange of ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... waters. Dead are those dear nights, dead is the moon that lit them; the waters which rocked us on their breast are lost in the wide salt sea, and where we kissed and clung there lips unborn shall kiss and cling! How beautiful was their promise, doomed, like an unfruitful blossom, to wither, fall, and rot! and their fulfilment, ah, how drear! For all things end in darkness and in ashes, and those who sow in folly shall reap in sorrow. Ah! those ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... the isle of St Kilda), inquired into the views of Mr Simson's own Presbytery—that of Glasgow. This Presbytery cross-examined Mr Simson's pupils, and Mr Simson observed that the proceedings were "an unfruitful work of darkness." Moreover, Mr Simson was of the party of the Squadrone, while his assailants were Argathelians. A large majority of the Assembly gave the verdict that Mr Simson was a heretic. Finally, though in 1728 ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... some unknown power without any aid from man. These addresses have never wearied in impressing upon you that absolutely nothing can help you but yourselves, and they find it necessary to repeat this to the last moment. Rain and dew, fruitful or unfruitful years, may indeed be made by a power which is unknown to us and is not under our control; but only men themselves—and absolutely no power outside them—give to each epoch its particular stamp. Only when they are all equally blind and ignorant do they ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... seventeenth century were preparing to rise above the intellectual horizon. But between the moment when such advances dawn and that when they burst forth there is nearly always a period of uncertain and unfruitful transition: and such was the first half of the sixteenth century, that is to say, the actual reign of Francis I.; it is often called the reign of the Renaissance, which certainly originated in his reign, but it did not grow and make any display until after ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... families; but that, as luxury enervates society, it diminishes the population, by enfeebling parents, nature preferring none rather than those too weakly to live and be happy, and thereby rendering that union unfruitful which is too feeble to produce offspring sufficiently strong to enjoy life. Debility and disease often cause barrenness. Nature seems to ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... would become of your towns if the remote country districts, with their simpler and purer women, did not make up for the barrenness of your fine ladies? There are plenty of country places where women with only four or five children are reckoned unfruitful. In conclusion, although here and there a woman may have few children, what difference does it make? [Footnote: Without this the race would necessarily diminish; all things considered, for its preservation each woman ought to have about four children, for about half the children born die ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... Spinoza, and Bayle, of whom Hobbes was the most effective. In the eighteenth all prominent thinkers participated in developing this negative movement, and Rousseau gave it the practical stimulus which saved it from degenerating into an unfruitful agitation. Of particular importance was the great fallacy, which Helvetius propagated, that human intellects are equal. This error was required for the full development of the critical doctrine. For it supported the dogmas of popular sovranty and social ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... disposition; and whatever has so benign an influence, and forwards so desirable an end, is beheld with complacency and pleasure. The social virtues are never regarded without their beneficial tendencies, nor viewed as barren and unfruitful. The happiness of mankind, the order of society, the harmony of families, the mutual support of friends, are always considered as the result of their gentle dominion over the ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... to abide in; But on the apex most high of the Tree of Life in the Garden, Budding, unfolding, and falling, decaying and flowering ever, Flowering is set and decaying the transient blossom of Knowledge,— Flowering alone, and decaying, the needless unfruitful blossom. Or as the cypress-spires by the fair-flowing stream Hellespontine, Which from the mythical tomb of the godlike Protesilaus Rose sympathetic in grief to his love-lorn Laodamia, Evermore growing, and when in their ...
— Amours de Voyage • Arthur Hugh Clough
... was evident both to Dyke and his brother—their scheme of ostrich-farming had completely broken down, and unless a bold attempt were made to start afresh, they would gradually become poorer and poorer, for alone, all Dyke's efforts to collect valuable skins were disposed to be rather unfruitful, ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth the word; and the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... shadows. "Without shadows!" said the astonished artist. "I fear your Majesty is not acquainted with the laws of light and beauty. There can be no good portrait without shading." No more can there be a good Salvationist without trial and sorrow and storm. There might, perhaps, remain a stunted and unfruitful infant life—but a man in Christ Jesus, a Soldier of the Cross, a leader of God's people, without tribulation there can never be. Patience, experience, faith, hope, love, if they do not actually ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... her junior, she having previously been the mistress of his father. It was a mariage de convenance, and, as is sometimes the case with such marriages, it turned out very inconveniently for both parties to it. It was not unfruitful, but all the fruit it produced was bad, and to the husband and father that fruit became the bitterest of bitter ashes. No romancer would have dared to bring about such a scries of unions as led to the creation of Plantagenet royalty, and to so much misery as well as greatness. There ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... companion, "All this place is cursed, and I will not go near." And he applauded me, for he knew as well as I that if we had gone a few steps towards that orchard and that garden close, they would have turned into the bracken of the hillside, bare granite and unfruitful scree. ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... that the soul of the grandfather is actually reborn in his grandchild. For example, in Nukahiva, one of the Marquesas Islands, every one "is persuaded that the soul of a grandfather is transmitted by nature into the body of his grandchildren; and that, if an unfruitful wife were to place herself under the corpse of her deceased grandfather, she would be sure to become pregnant."[675] Again, the Kayans of Borneo "believe in the reincarnation of the soul, although this belief is not clearly harmonised with the ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... But I find nothing in the manly sentiment and true tenderness of Irving to warrant the sentimental gush of his followers, who missed his corrective humor as completely as they failed to catch his literary art. Whatever note of localism there was in the Knickerbocker School, however dilettante and unfruitful it was, it was not the legitimate heir of the broad and eclectic genius of Irving. The nature of that genius we shall see in ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... states in his diary, January 18, 1825: "During the afternoon walk, the political relations of the Prince to the Imperial family and to the rest of the world were discussed." Count Neipperg advised him to study the French language, and his reply was: "This advice has not fallen on an unfruitful or an ungrateful soil. Every imaginable motive inspires me with the desire to perfect myself in, and to overcome the difficulties of, a language which at the present moment forms the most essential part of my studies. It is ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... in 1753:—'Shall I tire you with a description of this unfruitful country, where I must lead you over their hills all brown with heath, or their vallies scarce able to feed a rabbit? Man alone seems to be the only creature who has arrived to the natural size in this poor soil. Every part of the country presents the same dismal landscape.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... your natural language: however uncultivated it may be, it is not so to Him. A father loves best the speech which is put in disorder by love and respect, because he sees that it comes from the heart: it is more to him than a dry harangue, vain and unfruitful though well studied. Oh, how certain glances of love charm and ravish Him! They express infinitely more than all language and reason. By wishing to teach how to love Love Himself with method, much of this love has been lost. Oh! it is ...
— A Short Method Of Prayer And Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... had unnaturally constructed of the Netherlands, Milan, and the two Sicilies, and their distant possessions in the East and West Indies, was under Philip III. and Philip IV. fast verging to decay. Swollen to a sudden greatness by unfruitful gold, this power was now sinking under a visible decline, neglecting, as it did, agriculture, the natural support of states. The conquests in the West Indies had reduced Spain itself to poverty, while they enriched the markets of Europe; the bankers of Antwerp, Venice, and Genoa, were ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... sheep, imported by the Spaniards previous to this century, still flourishes and is easily propagated. Those occasionally brought from Shanghai and Australia are considered to be deficient in endurance, unfruitful, and generally short-lived. Mutton is procurable every day in Manila; in the interior, however, at least in the eastern provinces, very rarely; although the rearing of sheep might there be carried on without difficulty, and in many places most profitably; the ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... desire to resuscitate the past is the most unfruitful and dangerous of Utopian dreams, and the art of good living does not consist in retiring from life. But we are trying to throw light upon one of the errors that drag most heavily upon human progress, in order to find a remedy for it—namely, the belief ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... Portuguese had before this landed on the coast, and reduced the natives to a miserable stage of bondage, compelling them by their cruelty to fly from the fertile parts of the country into the more unfruitful districts. ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... read that the 'Tiber is destitute of Strength,' what else can we conclude, but that its Stream is a weak one? But we are oblig'd to hear, also, that it 'derives its Source from an unthrifty Urn': Well, now, may we go on? No; its 'Urn' is not only 'unthrifty,' but its 'Source' is unfruitful. By this time, one can scarce help, enquiring, what new Meaning is convey'd to the Apprehension, by the Multiplication of the Phrases? And not finding any, we have no Reflection to satisfy ourselves with, but, that the strongest ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... of discussion is unfruitful, Vincy," said Mr. Bulstrode, who, finishing his sandwich, had thrown himself back in his chair, and shaded his eyes as if weary. "You had some ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... already conceded that either the one method or the other ought to be adopted. The utmost evil that can follow in any such case from the use of the subsoil-plough, is that the expense will be thrown away—the land cannot be rendered more unfruitful by it. Subsoiling, therefore, is the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... the prophetic intention of the Speaker is obscured in consequence. I allude to St. Luke xiii. 9, where under the figure of a barren fig-tree, our Lord hints at what is to befall the Jewish people, because in the fourth year of His Ministry it remained unfruitful. 'Lo, these three years,' (saith He to the dresser of His Vineyard), 'come I seeking fruit on this fig-tree, and find none; cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?' 'Spare it for this year also' (is the rejoinder), 'and ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... none of the sweet cool sea-breeze in which kindly fairies seem carrying on their graceful sport, forming blooming gardens and pillared palaces—there is only a suffocating vapor, rebelliously given back to the glowing sun from the unfruitful sands. ...
— The Two Captains • Friedrich de La Motte-Fouque
... have spoken nor have thought such words as those of the satyr; but so far as our English climate and his unfruitful territory might permit, he put much of the poetry into action. Sluggish of intellect, and uncouth of demeanour, as the poor lad seemed, it was quite wonderful how quickly he discovered the several ways in which he might best please ...
— Jesse Cliffe • Mary Russell Mitford
... a day if the need were, on the turn of a single sentence? In general this means the sacrifice of earthly reward; it means that a man must work for love and let the ravens feed him. That scriptural source has been distinctly unfruitful in these latter days, and few authors are willing to take a prophet's chances. But Stevenson ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... the north of Europe. From a financial standpoint we find that money was brought into use and became from this time on a necessity. Money-lending became a business, and those who had treasure instead of keeping it lying idle and unfruitful were now able to develop wealth, not only for the borrower but also for the lender. This tended to increase the rapid movement of wealth and to stimulate productive industry ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... only children, the feeble product of a run-out stock, and statistics have shown that one-fifth of them bear no children, and fully one-third never bear more than one child. Sir J.Y. Simpson ascertained that out of 495 marriages in the British Peerage, 81 were unfruitful, or nearly one in every six; while out of 675 marriages among an agricultural and seafaring population, only 65 were sterile or barren, or a little less ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... election. They did not, however, continue in this harmony after entering on their office, but they differed on almost every subject, and quarrelled about everything, and by their disputes rendered their consulship unfruitful in all political measures, and ineffectual: however, Crassus made a great festival in honour of Hercules, and feasted the people at ten thousand tables, and gave them an allowance of corn for three months. It was at the close of their ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... power, wielding it with firmness and encountering no gainsayer. Thus the peace between Italy and Austria was put off from month to month because he—and only he—among the members of the Supreme Council rejected the various projects of an arrangement. Into the merits of this dispute it would be unfruitful to enter. That there was much to be said for Mr. Wilson's contention, from the point of view of the League of Nations, and also from that of the Jugoslavs, will not be denied. That some of the main arguments to which ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... had given his child, First of mankind for multitude of flocks. The Sun himself gave increase day by day To his child's herds: whatever diseases spoil The farmer, came not there; his kine increased In multitude and value year by year: None cast her young, or bare unfruitful males. Three hundred bulls, white-pasterned, crumple-horned, Ranged amid these, and eke two hundred roans, Sires of a race to be: and twelve besides Herded amongst them, sacred to the Sun. Their skin was white as swansdown, and they moved ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... to 'read' were still unfruitful. For one thing, the stress and excitement of the Whitelaw examinations had wearied him; it was characteristic of the educational system in which he had become involved that studious effort should be called for immediately after that frenzy of college competition. He ought now to have ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... punished, like the curiosity of Psyche, by the flight of the thing desired. Force should remain a mystery to itself; as soon as it tries to penetrate its own secret it vanishes away. The hen with the golden eggs becomes unfruitful as soon as she tries to find out why her eggs are golden. The consciousness of consciousness is the term and end of analysis. True, but analysis pushed to extremity devours itself, like the Egyptian serpent. We must give it some external matter to crush ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... limit myself to returning you earnest thanks for asking from me an authorization of which you did not stand in need, either by law or by treaty, for wishing to make known to your countrymen the least insipid of the products of my unfruitful genius, and for your generous purpose of ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... wakes, he blushes for his deed. All power is from the earth of Ymer's body formed; Wild waves and flowing waters are the veins therein, From various metals are its tough strong sinews forged, And yet 'tis empty, desolate, unfruitful, till The sun its light and warmth, heaven's piety, sends down. Then spring the grass and flowers a web of many hues; The tree lifts up its crown and knits its golden fruit,— And man and beast are nourished at the mother's breast. 'Tis thus with every child of Ask. Opposing ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... already part of the second version of 1797-98. But upon this matter the records are mute. A careful examination of the correspondence published by Lord Brabourne in 1884 only reveals two definite references to Sense and Sensibility and these are absolutely unfruitful in suggestion. In April 1811 she speaks of having corrected two sheets of 'S and S,' which she has scarcely a hope of getting out in the following June; and in September, an extract from the diary ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... relations of Astyages seem to have been unhappy. His "marriage de convenance" with the Lydian princess Aryenis, if not wholly unfruitful, at any rate brought him no son; and, as he grew to old age, the absence of such support to the throne must have been felt very sensibly, and have caused great uneasiness. The want of an heir perhaps led him to contract those other marriages ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... history teach? What does it teach every succeeding generation? That in all centuries wisdom and mildness, as well as rashness and violence, are the same. The former are a blessing to the nations, full of light and warmth; the latter only lead to unfruitful reactions. Whatever the Reformers did and said for the liberty of the Gospel has remained and borne rich fruits. All attempts on the other hand, to help this liberty to a triumph, in the way of violence, have only wrought injury. So, too, in our times, no good is to be hoped for from ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... days, days of stubborn toil with the enthusiasm taken out, slipped away unfruitful. Of the entire Utah force Adams alone held himself up to the mark, and being only second in command, he was unable to keep the bad example of the chief from working like a leaven of inertness among the men. Branagan voiced the situation ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... not into their secret; unto their assembly, mine honor, be not thou united," but stand aloof from all such alliances of light with darkness, of truth with falsehood; "have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness," "For behold the day cometh that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble; and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... move thus, unless assisted, but Philo Gubb was too far away to see the hand he knew must have reached out for the bundle. He ran rapidly, keeping in the sawdust that formed the unfruitful soil of the lumber-yard, until he dared come no nearer, and then he climbed to the top of the tallest lumber-pile and lay flat. He commanded every side of the hillside lumber-yard, and he did not have long to wait. From the lower side of the yard he saw a black figure emerge, cross the street and ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... counsels had not been altogether unfruitful. If they had not at once entirely extinguished his sister's taste for the practices which he condemned, they had evidently weakened it; even though, as the first impression wore off, and her fear of being overwhelmed with ennui[1] resumed its empire, she relapsed ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... was in the habit of dwelling on the importance of a free movement of fresh ideas through society; the men who are in touch with such movements are certain to be productive, while those whose minds are not fed by this stimulus are likely to remain unfruitful. One of the most suggestive and beautiful facts in the spiritual history of men is the exhilaration which a great new thought brings with it; the thrilling moments in history are the moments of contact between such ideas and the minds which are open to their approach. It is true ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... merely the connection between branch and stem common to all trees; not merely the exhilarating and seemingly inspiring properties of the grape, which made the very heathen look upon it as the sacred and miraculous fruit, the special gift of God; not merely the pruning out of the unfruitful branches, to be burned as firewood—not merely these, but the seeming death of the Vine, shorn of all its beauty, its fruitfulness, of every branch and twig which it had borne the year before, and left unsightly ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... piled. The cavern was sacred to a god; there must, then, have been some temple or place of sacrifice near at hand, it seemed, and I longed to begin investigating; but only to seat myself upon a mossy block, dreading the search lest it should prove unfruitful, and so dash my golden visionary thoughts. But at length I was about to commence, when a throb of joy sent the blood coursing through my veins, for Tom said, in his ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... a ghost that is speechless, Till some questioning voice dissolves the spell of its silence. Hence is the inner life of so many suffering women Sunless and silent and deep, like subterranean rivers Running through caverns of darkness, unheard, unseen, and unfruitful, Chafing their channels of stone, with endless and profitless murmurs." Thereupon answered John Alden, the young man, the lover of women: "Heaven forbid it, Priscilla; and truly they seem to me always More like the beautiful rivers that watered the garden of Eden, More like ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... premised, that the session 1851 was considered by politicians a peculiarly barren and unfruitful one, as the Great Exhibition, in conjunction with ministerial difficulties, and the monster debates on the Ecclesiastical Titles' Bill, tended greatly to impede the ordinary business of the Houses, and gave an air of tedium and languor to the whole proceedings. Nevertheless, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... the inevitable tendency of all animal life to increase beyond the means of subsistence, and expounded the checks which begin to act when population increases too rapidly. But his book had lain unfruitful to naturalists since 1798, until Darwin read it, and with his special knowledge evolved from it the brilliant idea of the preservation of better-equipped races in the struggle for life, or, as Herbert Spencer put it, the survival of the fittest. At one bound the gloomy revelations ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... leaf does not wither. Take plenty of time to gain heaven. Take time to be spiritual. A home in heaven is worth laboring for. Work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Spiritual dryness is the result of spiritual indolence. Be active, and you will not be unfruitful. ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr
... him—it was her country—for a good stretch, further than Milly's little feet could carry her. They stood a moment up there and looked around them. April was coming on, but the ploughed land at their feet was still bare; the earth waited. On that side of the valley she was delicately unfruitful, spent with rearing the fine, thin beauty of the woods. But, down below, the valley ran over with young grass and poured it to the river in wave after wave, till the last surge of green rounded over the water's edge. Rain had fallen in the ...
— The Flaw in the Crystal • May Sinclair
... shown that the organization of the work as a whole must be such that the chief methods of presentation of literature could be fully developed. It was seen that, far less with a group of children than with the individual child, could we afford to give a false experience or an unfruitful interest, and that material for group presentation, methods of group presentation and the social elements which are evinced in groups of children should receive an amount of attention and study which would lead to the surest and soundest results. This could ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... pistillate flowers of certain nut species, such as the almond, chestnuts, and filberts, must be cross-pollinated with pollen from another variety if satisfactorily crops of well filled nuts are to be produced. These species are self-sterile or self-unfruitful. On the other hand all walnut, pecan, and hickory species are self-fertile and cross-fertile, but may be self-unfruitful because of dichogamy, because they may shed their pollen either before or after the stigmas of the pistillate flowers are receptive to it. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... English reliance on our religious organisations and on their ideas of human perfection just as they stand, is like our reliance on freedom, on muscular Christianity, on population, on coal, on wealth—mere belief in machinery, and unfruitful; and that it is wholesomely counteracted by culture, bent on seeing things as they are, and on drawing the human race onwards to a ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... madman; and Cato, who measured the godliness of man by what they gained, would have held him accursed;—the madness that starves and is silent for an idea is an insanity, scouted by the world and the gods. For it is an insanity unfruitful; except to the future. And for the future who cares,—save these ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... of land, A boundless wealth of virgin soil As yet unfruitful and untilled! Our willing workmen, strong and skilled Within our cities idle stand, And cry aloud for ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?" (I Jno. 3:17). "And the cares of this age, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lust of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful" (Mark 4:19). "But this I say, brethren, the time is short: it remaineth, that both they that have wives be as though they had none; and they that weep, as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not; and those that buy, as ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer
... sat thus, watching the growth of the earth, she perceived unusual appearances upon its surface. Grass and herbs began to appear; trees, both fruitful and unfruitful, sprang up; and, in a short time, all things proceeded, and grew as they now are. Soon was a robe of grass and flowers spread over the naked sod; and soon, though not so soon, was it shadowed by a thick and almost impervious forest. The pine, and the oak, and the ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... it works effects suitable to itself. The Spirit is a spirit of purity, a spirit of zeal, and where it is it maketh pure and zealous. When a man will say he hath faith, and in the mean time can be content to be idle and unfruitful in the work of the Lord, can be content to be a dead Christian, let him know that his case is marvelously fearful: for if faith were in him indeed it would appear; ye can not keep your good hearts to yourselves; wherever ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... generation—becoming rebellious and masterful, like an animal disobedient to reason, and maddened with the sting of lust—seeks to gain absolute sway; and the same is the case with the so-called womb, or uterus, of women; the animal within them is desirous of procreating children, and, when remaining unfruitful long beyond its proper time, gets discontented and angry, and, wandering in every direction through the body, closes up the passages of the breath, and, by obstructing respiration,[253] drives them to extremity, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... is not rooted in Him and directed towards Him has so far missed its aim as to have brought forth no good fruit, and therefore to have incurred the sentence that it is cut down and cast into the fire. There is a very remarkable expression in Scripture, 'The unfruitful works of darkness,' which admits the busy occupation and energy of the doers and denies that all that struggling and striving comes to anything. Done in the dark, they seemed to have some significance, when the light comes ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... and worries that will fret the stream of the most prosperous course? Sacred words, learned in her childhood, recurred to her mind: "And the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things, entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful." Had not that been her own experience? Where were the fruits that might have been expected from "the word" in her?—the Christian influence and training which might have made her household what a Christian ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... years replenished the public coffers until they have again begun to feel the vicissitude of a decline. To produce these alternations of fullness and exhaustion the relative operation of abundant or unfruitful seasons, the regulations of foreign governments, political revolutions, the prosperous or decaying condition of manufactures, commercial speculations, and many other causes, not always to be traced, variously combine. We have found the alternate ...
— A Compilation of Messages and Letters of the Presidents - 2nd section (of 3) of Volume 2: John Quincy Adams • Editor: James D. Richardson
... of the Church. Yet his doctrines on God, vague and pantheistic as they are, slow to ascribe to God any traditional qualities and trying in vain to invent new ones—his doctrines on God are less comprehensible than the dogma of the Trinity—less comprehensible, less applicable, and unfruitful. ...
— The Religious Spirit of the Slavs (1916) - Sermons On Subjects Suggested By The War, Third Series • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... who were converted to Mahometanism after the conquest of Northern Africa by the Arabs. They are governed by a sultan in their own country, who strictly prohibits the entrance of white men; thus Darfur remains impenetrable to civilization. That country is extremely arid and unfruitful; thus, as the pilgrims journeyed towards Mecca from their own inhospitable soil, they passed through a land flowing with milk and honey, with excellent pasturage and fertile soil, in the district ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... the young Prince who embodied this hope, went down with 140 young nobles in the "White Ship," while returning from Normandy. It is said that his father never smiled again, and upon his death, his nephew Stephen was king during twenty unfruitful years. ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... that I have hope and faith in the future. I believe that we shall see, and at no very distant time, sound economic principles spreading much more widely amongst the people; a sense of justice growing up in a soil which hitherto has been deemed unfruitful; and—which will be better than all—the churches of the United Kingdom, the churches of Britain, awaking as it were from their slumbers, and girding up their loins to more glorious work, when they shall not only accept and believe in the prophecy, ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... nothing distinctly southern about his peculiar genius, and in his wandering life he was associated as much with Philadelphia and New York as with Baltimore and Richmond. The conditions which had made the southern colonies unfruitful in literary and educational works before the Revolution continued to act down to the time of the civil war. Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin in the closing years of the last century gave extension to slavery, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... was agreeable to all, and I hope, by the grace of the Lord, that my service will not be unfruitful. The people, for the most part, are rather rough and unrestrained, but I find in almost all of them both love and respect towards me; two things with which hitherto the Lord has everywhere graciously blessed my labors, and which in our calling, as your Reverence well knows ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... an attraction in two such moving bodies out at sea, which may help accident to bring them into collision? Thoughts, too, arise (the voice never silent all the while, but marvellously suggestive) of the gulf below; of the strange, unfruitful mountain ranges and deep valleys over which we are passing; of monstrous fish midway; of the ship's suddenly altering her course on her own account, and with a wild plunge settling down, and making THAT voyage with a crew of dead discoverers. Now, too, one recalls an almost universal ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... danger of distrust, of rivalry, and of international conflicts; that the same sentiment that repudiated internal struggles should rise within as against the struggles of people against people, and that these should also be considered as the unfruitful shedding of the blood of brethren; that the calamitous armed peace may never appear in our land, and that the enormous sums used to sustain it on the European and Asiatic continents shall be employed amongst us in the development of industries, ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... to be excited by novelty. It recommended itself by gifts of flowing words or high-pitched rhetoric to those who expected some demands to be made on them, so that these demands were not too strict. Yet Evangelical religion had not been unfruitful, especially in public results. It had led Howard and Elizabeth Fry to assail the brutalities of the prisons. It had led Clarkson and Wilberforce to overthrow the slave trade, and ultimately slavery itself. It had created great Missionary Societies. It had given motive and impetus to countless ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... to his partners "let us unite on this question." They are already partners, but unless there is a unity of thought and ideals, their partnership is an unsatisfactory and unfruitful one. We have labor unions which are intended to suggest a solidarity of effort; a merging of interests; a welding together into one thought-force, of those who enter the organization. The fullness of meaning of this ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... assumed, to be sure the station agent had received orders for attaching the private car to the Chicago express. Taylor proved to be a supercilious person,—I believe they call him Chilly Billy at the Metropolitan Club,—and our efforts to converse were pathetically unfruitful. He asked me the value of land in my county, and as my ignorance on this subject was vast and illimitable, I could see that he was forming a low opinion of my character and intelligence. The two ladies stood by, making no concealment of their ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... Further, they affirm that digressions in a book are like foreign troops in a state, which argue the nation to want a heart and hands of its own, and often either subdue the natives, or drive them into the most unfruitful corners. ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... and decaying, the needless, unfruitful blossom. Or as the cypress-spires by the fair-flowing stream Hellespontine, Which from the mythical tomb of the godlike Protesilaus Rose, sympathetic in grief, to his lovelorn Laodamia, Evermore growing, and, when in their growth to the prospect attaining, Over the low sea-banks, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... bench, and, penetrating the long halls of Cambridge and Oxford, streamed yet distinct and powerful to our shores. Astonished by the richness and fullness of a literature so comprehensive, which seemed to inclose in its brilliant mazes all that their meagre and unfruitful dogmas denied of comfort to the heart and systematic development to the mind, the men who, with girded loins and scrips in their hands, had long wandered disconsolately on the shores of a seething ocean, now saw its waters parted, and crossed upon dry ground. Before them stretched the vast ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... called, on the whole, happy: a day in which they have had glimpses of reality; a day in which they feel satisfaction. (That was, he felt, a generous allowance. ) Very well, then, that leaves 3,650,000 people whose day has been unfruitful: spent in uncongenial work, or in sorrow, suffering, and talking nonsense. This city, then, in one day, has wasted 10,000 years, or 100 centuries. One hundred centuries squandered in a day! It made him feel quite ill, and ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... patience, and to patience godliness, and to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness charity. 2 Pet. 1:5-7. In the following verses he tells us if these things abound in us we shall be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord, and if we do these things we shall never fall. Does not this obviously imply that if we do not do them that we shall fall? Dear reader, if you are now a Christian and feel the glowing of God's pure love in your heart, if you neglect to employ the means ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... sorceress of Marienfliess, but also induce him to look graciously upon his Grace's dear spouse, whom this evil dragon had bewitched, as all the world saw plainly, so that she remained childless, as well as all the other dukes and duchesses of dear Pomerania land, who were rendered barren and unfruitful ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... existence.' Would not the distinction which Plato by the mouth of Parmenides makes between 'One is one' and 'One has being' have saved us from this and many similar confusions? We see again that a long period in the history of philosophy was a barren tract, not uncultivated, but unfruitful, because there was no inquiry into the relation of language and thought, and the metaphysical imagination was incapable of supplying the missing link between words and things. The famous dispute between Nominalists ...
— Parmenides • Plato
... philosophy, sentiment and politics at one sitting. Coming out of the fair and foul refuge of the fleshly saints, I thought of the wisdom of the French poet who once said to me, "Oui, monsieur: life is an oasis in which there is many a desert." In the unfruitful shoots of those thorn-bearing vines and withered fig trees I learned the burden of the desert: Though it blossom as the rose, if it yield not honey it shall be laid waste; though it deck itself with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... made much more beneficial and much more effective, was then the heaviest of the burdens. An army, not much less than forty thousand men, was drawn from the general effort, to keep that kingdom in a poor, unfruitful, and resourceless subjection. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... method. Even his nearest forerunners, in seamanship or in map-making[33] were strikingly different from himself. They were too much in the spirit of Ptolemy and of ancient science; they neglected fact for hypothesis, for clever guessing, and so their work was spasmodic and unfruitful, ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... another hour. No one was inclined to speak, and Fink's occasional jests fell on unfruitful ground. Anton went down to keep the people in order, but something soon impelled him to return to the battlements, and watch the forest with the rest. At last, after a longer silence than usual, Fink, throwing away his cigar, observed, "It is getting late, ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... into these minute and particular details; 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 ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Cyprus, which looks uglier the nearer we approach. Both the foreground and the mountain-peaks have an uncomfortable barren air. At ten o'clock we entered the harbour of Larnaka. The situation of this town is any thing but fine; the country looks like an Arabian desert, and a few unfruitful date- palms rise beside ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... repentance may be given. "He is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." Christ came and sought to change men's hearts, and make their lives fruitful for God. The warning has been given, and when the Lord of the vineyard comes again to seek good fruit the unfruitful ...
— Mother Stories from the New Testament • Anonymous
... unless I much mistake the meaning of his eye, he is about to say that we are fashioned like this wild country in which chance has brought us together, with our spots of generous fertility mingled with much unfruitful rock, and that he who does a good act to-day may forget himself by doing ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... had been no example of three successive generations on the throne; only three instances of sons who succeeded their fathers. The marriages of the Caesars (notwithstanding the permission, and the frequent practice of divorces) were generally unfruitful.] ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... a queer, lonesome country, the lee coast,—never so solitary as now, perhaps; older than the rest of the world, she fancied,—so many of Nature's voices, both of bird and vegetable, had been entirely lost out of it: no wonder it had grown unfruitful, and older and dumber and sad, listening for ages to the unremorseful, cruel cries of the sea; these dead bodies, too, washed up every year on its beaches, must haunt it, though it was not guilty. She began to say something of this to Doctor ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... every one of their innocent heads, and found no more than so much coiled fishing-line below their skulls. I do not care for your stalwart fellows in india-rubber stockings breasting up mountain torrents with a salmon rod; but I do dearly love the class of man who plies his unfruitful art, for ever and a day, by still and ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... our first parents lived for some time in peaceful innocence; that, without tillage, the garden of Eden furnished them with fruit and food in abundance; and that the animals were submissive to their commands: that after the fall the ground became unfruitful, and yielded nothing without labor; and that nature no longer spontaneously acknowledged man for its master. The more happy days of our first parents they seem to have styled the Golden Age, each writer being desirous to make his own country the scene of those times of innocence. The ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... an allusion to the dangers awaiting you, but it is not yet too late for you to prove that you are no kid," counselled Chang Tao. "Take this piece of silver so that the enterprise of the day may not have been unfruitful and depart with all speed on a homeward path. He who speaks is going westward, and at the lattice of Shen Yi he will not fail to leave a sufficient excuse for ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... was always assuming new forms, although a human conception was the basis of its religious ideas. The Chinese and Semitic races were the first to rise to the conception of an absolute first principle, but in both cases the conception was more or less unfruitful. ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... not far distant from each other, stand high upon the hills; and still higher up is Rocca di Papa on its lofty site; while between us and them, in the dancing air, lies that malarious Campagna, which, though unfruitful in corn, wine, or olives, yields notwithstanding a rich harvest of its own. From it, every year are gathered bushels of imperial and consular coins; engraved stones, and other works of ancient art; and from the same "marble wilderness" ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... age in which great questions were handled by great men could not be either an unfruitful or an uninteresting one. It might be unfruitful, in the sense of reaping no great harvest of results; and it might be uninteresting, in respect of not having much to show upon the surface, and exhibiting no great variety of active life. But much good fruit for the ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... and (although the press were not admitted) virtually public, each party speaking before the world, each watched and acclaimed by its supporters over the country. The eyes of South Africa were fixed on Bloemfontein, so that when the Conference came to its unfruitful end, the two parties were practically further off than before, and their failure to agree accentuated the bitterness both of the Transvaal Boers and of the English party in the Colonies. To the more extreme men among the latter this result was welcome. There was ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... man does the work, and the other looks on, but, again, this was not the way in which Stevenson and Mr. Osbourne worked. They first talked over the book together, and ideas were struck out in the encounter of minds. This practice may, very probably, prove unfruitful, or even injurious, to many writers; they are confused rather than assisted. After or during the course of the conversations (when he had an ally), after reflection, when he had not, Stevenson used to write out a series of chapter headings. One, I remember, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to represent our dearest interests abroad. The willing devotion of the people must aid it in its bold determination and help to pave the way to military and political success, without carrying still further the disastrous consequences of the Morocco policy by unfruitful and frequently unjustified criticism and by thus widening the gulf between Government and people. We may expect from the Government that it will prosecute the military and political preparation for war with the energy which the situation ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... finality to progress clearly indicated. The hypothesis points to a time when there will be no more progressive change but a mere sequence of unfruitful events, such as the eternal uniform motion of a mass of matter no longer gaining or losing heat in an ether possessed of a uniform distribution of energy in all its parts. Or, again, if the ether absorb the energy of material motion, this vast and dark aggregation eternally poised ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... wand he took, Wherewith he softly seals the eyes of men, And opens them at will from sleep. With this In hand, the mighty Argos-queller flew, And lighting on Pieria, from the sky Plunged downward to the deep, and skimmed its face Like hovering sea-mew, that on the broad gulfs Of the unfruitful ocean seeks her prey, And often dips her pinions in the brine. So Hermes flew along the waste of waves. But when he reached that island, far away, Forth from the dark-blue ocean-swell he stepped Upon the sea-beach, walking till he came To the vast cave in which the bright-haired nymph Made ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... my fix'd resolves attend, Which nor Atrides nor his Greeks can bend; Long toils, long perils in their cause I bore, But now the unfruitful glories charm no more. Fight or not fight, a like reward we claim, The wretch and hero find their prize the same. Alike regretted in the dust he lies, Who yields ignobly, or who bravely dies. Of all my dangers, all my glorious ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... when the consent of the church cannot be had to the execution of this discipline, faithful pastors and professors must, every one for his own part, take heed that he have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but even reprove them; yea, they ought, in. sensu negativo, excommunicate those who should be (but are not) excommunicate positively, which negative excommunication is not an ecclesiastical censure, but either a bare punishment, or a cautel ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... maternity is absorbing. Naturally so, for the average woman is incapable of poetical passion, and only too glad to find something that occupies her thoughts from morning to night, a relief from the weariness of her unfruitful mind. It was not to be expected that Cecily, because she had given birth to a child, should of a sudden convert herself into a combination of wet and dry nurse, after the common model. The mother's love was strong in her, but it could not destroy, nor even keep in long abeyance, those ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... order of Providence, than with the best, of its own choice; wanting only to see or to speak to any as Providence directs, knowing well that all beside, far from helping, only hurt it, or at least prove very unfruitful to it. ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... Industry is never wholly unfruitful. If it bring not joy with the incoming profit, it will yet banish mischief from thy busied gates. There is a kind of good angel waiting upon Diligence that ever carries a laurel in his hand to crown her. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal under Queen Elizabeth and one of her most trusted earlier advisers. The boy's precocity led the queen to call him her 'little Lord Keeper.' At the age of twelve he, like Wyatt, was sent to Cambridge, where his chief impression was of disgust at the unfruitful scholastic application of Aristotle's ideas, still supreme in spite of a century of Renaissance enlightenment. A very much more satisfactory three years' residence in France in the household of the English ambassador was terminated in 1579 (the year of Spenser's 'Shepherd's ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... principle or in form. . . . The whole mass of the architecture, founded on Greek and Roman models, which we have been in the habit of building for the last three centuries, is utterly devoid of all life, virtue, honourableness, or power of doing good. It is base, unnatural, unfruitful, unenjoyable, and impious. Pagan in its origin, proud and unholy in its revival, paralysed in its ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... are more sincerely acknowledged in Vienna than in Paris. But it is the intolerable insolence of the national character, that makes its bravery, its gaiety, and even its genius detested. Trust me; this feeling will not be unfruitful. Out of the hut of the peasant will come the avengers, whom the cabinet has never been able to find in the camp. Out of the swamp and the thicket will rise the tree that will at once overshadow the fallen fortunes of Germany, and bring down the lightning on her aggressors. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... "a man true to his word, merciful to those under him, and hating nothing so much as idleness," had come to the Netherlands to talk over his project with the States-General, and with the Dutch merchants and sea-captains. His visit was not unfruitful. As a body the assembly did nothing; but they recommended that in every maritime city of Holland and Zeeland one or two ships should be got ready, to participate in all the future enterprises of Sir ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and stem. All the social revolutions of humanity will be grafted on this phrase. But, tainted by a coarse materialism, and aspiring to the impossible, that is to say, to found universal happiness upon political and economical measures, the "socialist" attempts of our time will remain unfruitful until they take as their rule the true spirit of Jesus, I mean absolute idealism—the principle that, in order to possess the world, we ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... punishment; which is learned in the Book of Enmity but not in the Book of Friendship; which calls hatred Nature, and Love a conspiracy; whose law is an iron chain and whose mercy is debility and chagrin; the blind fiend who would impose his own blindness; that unfruitful loin which curses fertility; that stony heart which would petrify the generations of man; before whom life withers away appalled and death would shudder again to its tomb. Repentance! they wiped the inadequate ooze from their eyes and danced ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... the forenoon of the day after our long and unfruitful vigil in the art-gallery that Dr. Lith himself appeared at our apartment in a great state ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... his kinsman, the Kaiser, are cordial, but whose devotion to his subjects is paramount. More than once since the opening of the campaign Roumania was believed to be on the point of exchanging neutrality for belligerency, but, on grounds which it would be unfruitful to discuss, she abandoned the intention, if she ever harboured it. As matters now are, the Allies are congratulating themselves on the circumstance that she ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... truth I have discover'd to thee, yet behooves Thou rest a little longer at the board, Ere the crude aliment, which thou hast taken, Digested fitly to nutrition turn. Open thy mind to what I now unfold, And give it inward keeping. Knowledge comes Of learning well retain'd, unfruitful else. "This sacrifice in essence of two things Consisteth; one is that, whereof 't is made, The covenant the other. For the last, It ne'er is cancell'd if not kept: and hence I spake erewhile so strictly of its force. For this it was enjoin'd the Israelites, Though ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... substantial gains for all after times. The epochs in which unbelief, in whatever form it may be, prevails, even when for the moment they put on the semblance of glory and success, inevitably sink into insignificance in the eyes of posterity, which will not waste its thoughts on things barren and unfruitful.' ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... must look upon himself as making a garden, wherein our Lord may take His delight, but in a soil unfruitful, and abounding in weeds. His Majesty roots up the weeds, and has to plant good herbs. Let us, then, take for granted that this is already done when a soul is determined to give itself to prayer, and has begun the practice of it. We have, then, as good gardeners, ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... applying to me, even in your most transient thought, such an epithet as "determined exaggeration." Exaggeration, if you will; but not determined. No; I would have all open to the light, and would let my boughs be pruned, when they grow rank and unfruitful, even if I felt the knife to the quick of my being. Very fain would I have a rational modesty, without self-distrust; and may the knowledge of my failures leaven my soul, and check its intemperance. If you saw me wholly, you would not, I think, feel as you do; for you ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... he wearied his body under the labour which kills thought. He sought to fly from the seductive image. He did not go out, for fear of seeing her. He rushed upon every hard and unfruitful labour that he could find. He rooted up his trees in order to re-plant them elsewhere; dug useless banks in his garden; changed his library from its place, and carried one after another his enormous folios to the upper story. He would have ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... communication, yet a thread so tenuous that the question of personal direction behind it need hardly be considered at all. For let me confess at once that, the habit of the "thrill" once established, I was not long in asking myself point blank this definite question: Dared I trace its origin to my own unfruitful experience of some years before?—and, discovering no shred of evidence, I found this positive answer: ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... straggling sheep, The stone-chat, or the glancing sand-piper; And on these barren rocks, with fern and heath And juniper and thistle sprinkled o'er, Fixing his downcast eye, he many an hour A morbid pleasure nourished, tracing here An emblem of his own unfruitful life: And, lifting up his head, he then would gaze On the more distant scene,—how lovely 'tis Thou seest,—and he would gaze till it became Far lovelier, and his heart could not sustain The beauty, still more beauteous! Nor, that time, When Nature had subdued him to herself, Would he forget those ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... Altar,' and swear in sight of France: ah no; he, waning and setting ever since that hour, hangs now, disastrous, on the edge of the horizon; commanding one of those Three moulting Crane-flights of Armies, in a most suspected, unfruitful, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... about something. The root of the matter, she believed, was contained in the mysterious letter. As Captain Eri was of precisely the same opinion, speculation between the two as to what that letter might have contained was as lively as it was unfruitful. ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln |
