Barren Quotes

• Wise sayings often fall on barren ground, but a kind word is never thrown away.

  Arthur Helps

  Inspirational, Wise, Gratitude

  Sir Arthur Helps (1883). “Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd”

  87 Copy quote

  Show source

• As one looks across the barren stretches of the pack, it is sometimes difficult to realise what teeming life exists immediately beneath its surface.

  Robert Falcon Scott

  Looks, Sometimes, Surface

  Robert Falcon Scott, Max Jones (2008). “Journals: Captain Scott's Last Expedition”, p.53, Oxford University Press

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground.

  William Shakespeare

  Memorable, Sea, Giving

  'The Tempest' (1611) act 1, sc. 1, l. [70]

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• In Israel, a land lacking in natural resources, we learned to appreciate our greatest national advantage: our minds. Through creativity and innovation, we transformed barren deserts into flourishing fields and pioneered new frontiers in science and technology.

  Shimon Peres

  Creativity, Technology, Land

  249 Copy quote

• Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue; and independence I will ever secure by contracting my wants, though I were to live on a barren heath.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Life, Single, Blessing

  Mary Wollstonecraft (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Mary Wollstonecraft (Illustrated)”, p.608, Delphi Classics

  53 Copy quote

  Show source

• Our Lord never condemned the fig tree because it brought forth so much fruit that some fell to the ground and spoiled. He only cursed it when it was barren.

  Edwin Louis Cole

  Tree, Literature, Fruit

  15 Copy quote

• The mind is but a barren soil; a soil which is soon exhausted, and will produce no crop, or only one, unless it be continually fertilized and enriched with foreign matter.

  Joshua Reynolds

  Learning, Political, Mind

  'Discourses on Art' (ed. R. Wark, 1975) no. 6 (10 December 1774)

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Love is a sickness full of woes, all remedies refusing.

  Samuel Daniel

  Love Is, Woe, Sickness

  Samuel Daniel (1718). “The Poetical Works of Mr. Samuel Daniel, Author of the English History: To which is Prefix'd, Memoirs of His Life and Writings”, p.105

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• The sailor is frankness, the landsman is finesse. Life is not a game with the sailor, demanding the long head--no intricate game of chess where few moves are made in straight-forwardness and ends are attained by indirection, an oblique, tedious, barren game hardly worth that poor candle burnt out in playing it.

  Herman Melville

  Moving, Games, Long

  Herman Melville (2009). “Billy Budd, Sailor and Selected Tales”, p.282, OUP Oxford

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• All I ask is to be held above the barren wastes of want.

  Wilfred Owen

  Want, Waste, Asks

  26 Copy quote

• Power without principle is barren, but principle without power is futile. This is a party of government, and I will lead it as a party of government.

  Tony Blair

  Party, Government, Principles

  Tony Blair (1997). “New Britain: My Vision of a Young Country”, Basic Books (AZ)

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• The prairies were dust. Day after day, summer after summer, the scorching winds blew the dust and the sun was brassy in a yellow sky. Crop after crop failed. Again and again the barren land must be mortgaged for taxes and food and next year's seed. The agony of hope ended when there was not harvest and no more credit, no money to pay interest and taxes; the banker took the land. Then the bank failed.

  Rose Wilder Lane

  Summer, Dust, Years

  8 Copy quote

• It is a barren kind of criticism which tells you what a thing is not.

  Alfred Whitney Griswold

  Criticism, Kind, Critics

  12 Copy quote

• Happiness calls out responsive gladness in others. There is enough sadness in the world without yours ... never doubt the excellence and permanence of what is yet to be. Join the great company of those who make the barren places of life fruitful with kindness.

  Helen Keller

  Happiness, Kindness, Sadness

  Helen Keller (1920). “Out of the Dark: Essays, Lectures, and Addresses on Physical and Social Vision”

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Revenge is barren of itself: it is the dreadful food it feeds on; its delight is murder, and its end is despair.

  Friedrich Schiller

  Revenge, Despair, Delight

  13 Copy quote

• You know, my friends, with what a brave carouse I made a Second Marriage in my house; favored old barren reason from my bed, and took the daughter of the vine to spouse.

  Omar Khayyam

  Daughter, Mother, House

  Omar Khayyam, “The Rubaiyat Of Omar Khayyam”

  30 Copy quote

  Show source

• Perseverance gives power to weakness, and opens to poverty the world's wealth. It spreads fertility over the barren landscape, and buds the choicest flowers and fruits spring up and flourish in the desert abode of thorns and briars.

  Samuel Griswold Goodrich

  Perseverance, Spring, Flower

  7 Copy quote

• As you may know, some of the stereotyped behaviors exhibited by autistic children are also found in zoo animals who are raised in a barren environment.

  Temple Grandin

  Zoos, Children, Animal

  Interview with Stephen Edelson, www.autism.com. February 1, 1996.

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• The island Mayo is generally barren, being dry, as I said; and the best of it is but a very indifferent soil.

  William Dampier

  Islands, Dry, Soil

  William Dampier (1703). “A New Voyage Round the World”, p.21

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• The battle for the mind of Ronald Reagan was like the trench warfare of World War I: never have so many fought so hard for such barren terrain.

  Peggy Noonan

  War, Mind, Battle

  What I Saw at the Revolution ch. 14 (1990)

  52 Copy quote

  Show source

• But I owe it to the subject to say, that it has long afforded me what philosophy is so often thought, and made, barren of - the fun of discovery, the pleasures of co-operation, and the satisfaction of reaching agreement.

  J. L. Austin

  Fun, Philosophy, Discovery

  8 Copy quote

• My icons do not raise up the blessed savior in elaborate cathedrals. They are constructed concentrations celebrating barren rooms. They bring a limited light.

  Dan Flavin

  Blessed, Icons, Light

  Corinna Thierolf, Dan Flavin, Johannes Vogt (2009). “Dan Flavin: Icons”, Schirmer/Mosel Verlag Gmbh

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• And nothing can we call our own but death
  And that small model of the barren earth
  Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
  For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
  And tell sad stories of the death of kings.

  William Shakespeare

  Death, Kings, Stories

  1595 Richard. Richard II, act 3, sc.2, l.148-50.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Clever, Intelligent, Valleys

  "Culture and Value" by Ludwig Wittgenstein, translated by Peter Winch, (p. 76e), 1980.

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

• All travellers who had preceded me into the Barren Grounds had relied on the abundant game, and in consequence suffered dreadful hardships; in some cases even starved to death.

  Ernest Thompson Seton

  Games, Hardship, Cases

  Ernest Thompson Seton (2010). “The Arctic Prairies: A Canoe Journey”, p.3, BoD – Books on Demand

  7 Copy quote

  Show source