Barren Quotes - Page 9

• You ask if there is no doctrine of sorrow in my philosophy. Of acute sorrow I suppose that I know comparatively little. My saddestand most genuine sorrows are apt to be but transient regrets. The place of sorrow is supplied, perchance, by a certain hard and proportionately barren indifference. I am of kin to the sod, and partake of its dull patience,--in winter expecting the sun of spring.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Patience, Regret, Philosophy

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.359, Penguin

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• The man who seeks one thing in life and but one, May hope to achieve it before life is done; But he who seeks all things, wherever he goes, Only reaps from the hopes which around him he sows, A harvest of barren regrets.

  Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton

  Regret, Ambition, Men

  "Lucile". Book by Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton, 1860.

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• To most humans, a universe consisting of particles banging about and doing what they have to do seems cold, barren, and without meaning. Meaning, however, is not something that floats in space, permeating the universe like a nebulous, mystical cloud. ... Meaning arises out of the working of the human mind, and therefore exists only in the human mind. The meaning of existence is whatever you want to make of it.

  Milton A. Rothman

  Space, Clouds, Mind

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• Unchecked, the dominating influences of money and of barren intellectualism would reduce the life of emotions to freezing point. And, unable to grasp the holier benefits of religion, the mysticism of the heart reacts in the art-intoxication. .... In this cold, irreligious and practical age the warmth of this devotion to art has kept alive many higher aspirations of our soul, which otherwise might readily have died, as they did in the middle of the last century.

  Abraham Kuyper

  Art, Soul, Age

  Abraham Kuyper (2007). “Lectures on Calvinism”, p.143, Cosimo, Inc.

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• There is in every human heart Some not completely barren part, Where seeds of truth and love might grow, And flowers of generous virtue flow; To plant, to watch, to water there, This be our duty, be our care.

  John Bowring

  Flower, Heart, Water

  John Bowring, “Blessings Of Instruction”

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• When thou cam'st first, Thou strok'st me and made much of me; wouldst give me Water with berries in't; and teach me how To name the bigger light, and how the less, That burn by day and night; and then I loved thee And showed thee all the qualities o' th' isle, The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile.

  William Shakespeare

  Spring, Night, Light

  William Shakespeare (1998). “Four Late Plays”, p.357, Wordsworth Editions

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• Marriage has for women many equivalents of joining a mass movement. It offers them a new purpose in life, a new future and a new identity (a new name). The boredom of spinsters and of women who can no longer find joy and fulfillment in marriage stems from an awareness of a barren, spoiled life. By embracing a holy cause and dedicating their energies and substance to its advancement, they find a new life full of purpose and meaning.

  Eric Hoffer

  Marriage, Names, Boredom

  Eric Hoffer (1980). “The True Believer”

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• Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Life, Two, Looks

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1952). “Life and Letters”

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• The avaricious man is like the barren sandy ground of the desert which sucks in all the rain and dew with greediness, but yields no fruitful herbs or plants for the benefit of others.

  Zeno of Elea

  Rain, Men, Yield

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• Principles are like a seed in the ground; they must continually be visited with heavenly influences or else your life will be a barren field.

  Thomas Traherne

  Principles, Fields, Influence

  Thomas Traherne (2010). “Centuries of Meditations”, p.298, Cosimo, Inc.

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• One time I was on the road with clients with an investment bank, and they thought it would be fun to go to a strip club. It was the most barren thing I've ever seen - this poor woman had nothing on and they were throwing quarters at her.

  Melanne Verveer

  Fun, Would Be, Clubs

  Source: www.elle.com

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• The high mountains are barren, but the low valleys are covered over with corn; and accordingly the showers of God's grace fall into lowly hearts and humble souls.

  Sam Worthington

  Fall, Heart, Humble

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• Is there conscience in the Kremlin? Do they ever ask themselves what is the purpose of life? What is it all for?... No. Their creed is barren of conscience, immune to the promptings of good and evil.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Evil, Purpose, Communism

  Margaret Thatcher (1987). “In defence of freedom: speeches on Britain's relations with the world 1976-1986”

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• God knows just the place where you'll be placed. He has a barren living room in desperate need of warmth and joy. A corner of the world needs some color. He selected you with that place in mind.

  Max Lucado

  Color, Joy, Mind

  Source: www.biblegateway.com

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• He that will do no good offices after a disappointment must stand still, and do just nothing at all. The plough goes on after a barren year; and while the ashes are yet warm, we raise a new house upon the ruins of a former.

  Seneca the Younger

  Disappointment, Years, Office

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• The poison was brewed in these West lands but it has spat itself everywhere by now. However far you went you would find the machines, the crowded cities, the empty thrones, the false writings, the barren beds: men maddened with false promises and soured with true miseries, worshipping the iron works of their own hands, cut off from Earth their Mother and from the Father in Heaven. You might go East so far the East became West and you returned to Britain across the great Ocean, but even so you would not have come out anywhere into the light. The shadow of one dark wing is over all Tellus.

  C. S. Lewis

  Mother, Father, Ocean

  C.S. Lewis (1996). “That Hideous Strength”, p.290, Simon and Schuster

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• ... continual hard labor deadens the energies of the soul, and benumbs the faculties of the mind; the ideas become confined, the mind barren, and, like the scorching sands of Arabia, produces nothing; or, like the uncultivated soil, brings forth thorns and thistles. Again, continual hard labor irritates our tempers and sours our dispositions; the whole system become worn out with toil and fatigue; nature herself becomes almost exhausted, and we care but little whether we live or die.

  Maria W. Stewart

  Ideas, Soul, Mind

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• If, in any individual, university training produces a taste for refined idleness, a distaste for sustained effort, a barren intellectual arrogance, or a sense of superfluous aloofness from the world of real men who do the world's real work, then it has harmed that individual.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Real, Men, Intellectual Arrogance

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• Theories without facts may be barren, but facts without theories are meaningless.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  May, Facts, Theory

  Kenneth E. Boulding (1941). “Economic Analysis”

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• the New Englander landed on a stony, barren tract, and a large share of his strength during two centuries has gone to force a living out of it. Hence he has come to regard economy - a necessary unpleasant quality at best - as the chief of virtues. He has cultivated habits which verge on closeness in dealing with food, and with the expression of feeling, and even - his enemies think - with feeling itself.

  Rebecca Harding Davis

  Thinking, Expression, Two

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• I'm a diehard animal lover - I've always loved animals - but it was just one of those trips that I felt like I was going back to the beginning of where earth started. At the time, where a lot of stuff was brewing anyway, to be in such a beautiful and barren land, and just looking at how life began with all these creatures, I just started to really think about animals and time and just all of it.

  Jillian Hervey

  Beautiful, Animal, Thinking

  Source: www.marieclaire.com

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• In excited conversation we have glimpses of the universe, hints of power native to the soul, far-darting lights and shadows of an Andes landscape, such as we can hardly attain in lone meditation. Here are oracles sometimes profusely given, to which the memory goes back in barren hours.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Memories, Light, Meditation

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Barbara L. Packer, Joseph Slater, Douglas Emory Wilson (2003). “The Conduct of Life”, p.144, Harvard University Press

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• Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud-and the only answer is the echo of our wailing cry. From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead there comes no word. But in the night of Death Hope sees a star and listening Love can hear the rustling of a wing.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Stars, Night, Echoes

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1911). “The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll”

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• The importance of a lost romantic vision should not be underestimated. In such a vision is power as well as joy. In it is meaning.Life is flat, barren, zestless, if one can find one's lost vision nowhere.

  Sarah-Patton Boyle

  Romantic, Loss, Power

  Sarah-Patton Boyle, Jennifer Lynn Ritterhouse (1962). “The Desegregated Heart: A Virginian's Stand in Time of Transition”, p.169, University of Virginia Press

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• When you talk about "infertility" you're already using a land-based metaphor - a woman's body compared to property, to be considered fruitful or barren. And "estate" encompasses both legacy and landscape. Think of Emerson, referring to his son's death as "the loss of a beautiful estate."

  Monica Youn

  Beautiful, Son, Loss

  Source: therumpus.net

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