"Barren" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it be said that one was distinctly recognized as the silhouette of a prehistoric giant, and that the other was his drinking-cup; need it be added that neither lent the slightest human suggestion to the solitude? A toy-like pier extending into the loch, midway from the barren shore, only heightened the desolation. And when the little steamboat that occasionally entered the loch took away a solitary passenger from the pier-head, the simplest parting was invested ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... North State, and that a bright and prosperous future awaits her may easily be seen by all who can read the signs of the times. Though nature on the one hand has placed many obstacles in the way of her progress by barring her coast to incoming vessels, and by surrounding her with barren shores and impenetrable marshes, on the other hand she has been abundantly generous to the ancient district. Where her marshes are drained, as in the region around Moyock, the richest corn land in the world is found. Her vast forests supply the great lumber mills of the Albemarle ...
— In Ancient Albemarle • Catherine Albertson
... at the birth of the Republic, was as great a mystery to the average dweller on the Atlantic seaboard as the elephant was to the blind men of Hindustan. The reports of those who had penetrated this wilderness—of those who had seen the barren ranges of the Alleghanies, the fertile uplands of the Unakas, the luxuriant blue-grass regions, the rich bottom lands of the Ohio and Mississippi, the wide shores of the inland seas, or the stretches of prairie ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... a long time in the dark—for two hours, thinking and not thinking, in that barren state which is not sleep, nor yet full wakefulness, and which is a painful strain. At length he went to sleep again, and did not wake till past eight o'clock. He did not ring ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... elevation is to bring up the surrounding newly-deposited strata within the destroying action of the coast-waves: the strata, deposited at greater distances, and therefore in the depths of the ocean, will be almost barren of organic remains. These remarks may be generalised:—periods of subsidence will always be most favourable to an accumulation of great thicknesses of strata, and consequently to their long preservation; for without one formation be protected ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... Muller's Archiv. 1843") speaks of a eunuch'd woman who after ovariotomy had no breasts, no pubes, no rotundities, and no desires. The Australians practice exsection of the ovaries systematically to make women barren. Miklucho Maclay learned from the traveller Retsch that about Lake Parapitshurie men's urethras were split, and the girls were spayed: the latter showing two scars in the groin. They have flat bosoms, but feminine forms, and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... dispelled the little glamour which the latter had derived from his apparently public-spirited conduct last term, and the attitude of the Philosophers had effectually deprived him of any opportunity of exercising his authority, and left him to the enjoyment of an altogether barren honour. ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... and now they were clothed in rags, without horses and without guns. But this was the year of their salvation; that very summer the Mounted Police were struggling against the difficulties of a long journey across the barren plains in order to bring them help. This noble corps reached their destination that same fall, and with magic effect put an entire stop to the abominable traffic of whiskey with the Indians. Since that time the Blackfeet Indians are becoming more and more prosperous. They are ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris
... expressed gentle sympathy. His calling had taught him many of the hidden secrets of human nature and of Life: he guessed that the time—if not already here—was nigh at hand, when this unfortunate woman would realize the emptiness of her life, and would begin to reap the bitter harvest of the barren seeds ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... mountain is that which we have just passed on our right?" asked Ardan. "It is quite remarkable, standing as it does in almost solitary grandeur in the barren plain." ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... pursued me, and hast searched everything? What hast thou now founden of all the substance of thy house? Lay it forth tofore my brethren and thy brethren, that they judge between me and thee. I have served thee twenty years and have been with thee, thy sheep and thy goats were never barren. I have eaten no wethers of thy flock, nor beast hath destroyed none. I shall make all good what was stolen. I prayed therefore day and night, I labored both in heat and in cold, sleep fled from mine ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... the knowledge that the publication of the companion volume is—through force of circumstances—for the present postponed, without at least a passing reference to what in the authoritative biography of Mr. Gladstone is called the "barren controversy" which arose in 1892, as to whether the present Duke of Devonshire, in 1880, tried to form a Government. That controversy was assuredly "barren" to my brother in everything but the testimony of a good conscience. He was assailed by almost the ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... ascent, and after that, rounded ridge and ravine, one after the other, like huge swells of a monstrous sea. Indian paint brush vied in its scarlet hue with the deep magenta of cactus. There was no sage. Soap weed and meager grass and a bunch of cactus here and there lent the green to that barren, and it was ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... to no one except to the great wild cock, and that upon an oath that he return it to him again." Whereupon Solomon asked, "And what does the wild cock do with the Shameer?" To which the demon replied, "He takes it to a barren rocky mountain, and by means of it he cleaves the mountain asunder, into the cleft of which, formed into a valley, he drops the seeds of various plants and trees, and thus the place becomes clothed with verdure and fit for habitation." ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... aspects of nature, sometimes the love of the Virgin. Besides this they wrote also many didactic, religious, and patriotic songs. The rhythmical and metrical structure of their verse was very complicated and generally very skillful, sometimes, however, running into eccentricities and barren technicalities. The Minnesinger generally composed the music of his song at the same time ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... From Naples the family moved to Sorrento, where S'or Riccardo and S'or Edwardo, as the Italians called them, surrendered themselves to the natural and legendary influences of the neighbourhood and to reading. The promontory on which Sorrento stands is barren enough, but southward rise pleasant cliffs viridescent with samphire, and beyond them purple hills dotted with white spots of houses. At no great distance, though hidden from view, stood the classic ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... cattle is more cherished in England than standeth well with the commodity of the commons or prosperity of divers towns, whereof some are wholly converted to their feeding; yet such a profitable sweetness is their fleece, such necessity in their flesh, and so great a benefit in the manuring of barren soil with their dung and piss, that their superfluous members are the better born withal. And there is never a husbandman (for now I speak not of our great sheepmasters, of whom some one man hath 20,000) but hath more or less of this cattle feeding on his fallows ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... Little Missouri. Custer expected to find good grazing ground in this valley, suitable for a camp which he intended to pitch there for several days, and reconnoitre. The country, however, was comparatively barren, and the march was therefore continued to the Belle Fourche Valley, where excellent grazing, water, and ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... broad. The houses are built of mud and stone, and flat roofed with the trunk of the date tree. Around it is a wall, beyond which nothing is to be seen but a vast sandy plain, extending more than sixty miles. Within the walls, it is equally sterile, it literally yields nothing; here, "all is barren," and the water is far from sweet, yet 4,000 souls live, though the sheikh keeps up no standing army. Mr. S. sails thence into the Shut-ul-Arab, [River of the Arabs,] the banks of which are more delightful than those of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 560, August 4, 1832 • Various
... by Great Britain? and their independence does not at all prevent England from deriving all the advantage from them ever to be derived from colonies. The only good which England can derive from her extensive colonization is not to be gained by swaying a barren sceptre over distant colonies, but by spreading abroad her race, her language, her civilization, and thus enlarging the sphere of her commerce. Under a free system of intercourse England would not derive less benefit, at present, ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... cavalry division was within easy support of this wing. Thus the whole army was in good position and in good condition. We had largely subsisted on the country; our wagons were full of forage and provisions; but, as we approached the sea-coast, the country became more sandy and barren, and food became more scarce; still, with little or no loss, we had traveled two-thirds of our distance, and I concluded to push on for Savannah. At Millen I learned that General Bragg was in Augusta, and that General Wade Hampton had been ordered there from Richmond, ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... research has not been entirely barren," he observed, staring up at the ceiling with dreamy, lack-lustre eyes. "Subject to your correction, I should judge that the watch belonged to your elder brother, who inherited it from ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the boat's head round slowly into the mouth of the fjord, pausing now and again to rest, for their strength was spent. For two hours they rowed down a gulf, as it were, and on either side of them were barren hills. At length the water-way opened out into a great basin, and there, on the further side of the basin, they saw green slopes running down to the water's edge, strewn with white stock-fish set to dry in the wind and sun, and above the slopes a large hall, and about it booths. Moreover, they saw ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... afterward in a leather wallet which he took from his pocket. Then, quite casually, he loaded his pipe and lighted it. He went to the door, opened it, and for a few moments stood listening to the screech of the wind over the Barren. Pierre, still seated at the table, watched him attentively. Philip's mind was made up when he closed the door and faced the ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... from old Birmingham, now part of the modern town, lies Soho, in the suburb of Handsworth, which, in 1762, was a bleak and barren heath. ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... the exertions he had made for this new expedition, all that ought to have availed him, began to be looked upon unfavourably. The emperor had written to him "that as the war was about to be carried into a barren territory, where the enemy would destroy every thing, it was requisite to prepare for such a state of things, by providing every thing within ourselves:" Davoust had replied to this by an enumeration of his preparations—"He had 70,000 men, who were completely organized; ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... all the little attentions women love, and in his manner towards Gladys managed to infuse a certain deference, not untouched by tenderness, which she found quite gratifying. She had so long lived a meagre, barren existence that she seemed almost greedy of the lovely and pleasant things of life. She enjoyed wearing her beautiful gowns, living in luxurious rooms, eating dainty food at a well-appointed table. In all that there was nothing unnatural, it was but the inevitable reaction ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... who took up the trial in 1902; Fleisham in 1904, and Gresham in 1907. Since the time of Gresham's disappearance we have lost sight of DeBar, and only recently, as you know, have we got trace of him again. He is somewhere up on the edge of the Barren Lands. I have private information which leads me to believe that the factor at Fond du Lac can take ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... barren. The sides of the hills were covered with tall weeds, yellow from the blazing sun. Sometimes they met a mountaineer, either on foot or mounted on a little horse, or astride a donkey about as big as a dog. They all carried a loaded rifle slung across their backs, old rusty ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... a way to remove some of the blocks of marble which have fallen in the banquet hall, I think I could find means for us to escape from this barren island." ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... of fact," he said, "I may say that I have travelled from Dan to Beersheba, and, until I struck this present vein of good fortune, had found all barren. Some day, if I can summon up sufficient courage, I shall fit out an expedition and return to the place whence the stones came, and get some more, but not just at present. Events have been a little too exciting there of late to let us consider it a healthy country. By the ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... all gone to their reward, with the exceptions of Brethren Yohe and the Bausermans. Without being formally chosen Pardee Butler was the recognized leader of these sanctified few, and no home where they entered was too humble, or field where they toiled too barren, for the light of his countenance to cheer, or the strength of his arm to be felt. In the polity and development of the church, as in other fields of moral and social struggle, he was far in advance of the time; and up to the day of his death, this was one of the great ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... as Reuben Fields, one of our men, was the first of the party who reached it. At a short distance above this we encamped for the night, having made twenty miles. The country, generally, consists of low, rich, timbered ground on the north, and high barren lands on the south: on both sides great numbers of buffaloe are feeding. In the evening three boys of the Sioux nation swam across the river, and informed us that two parties of Sioux were encamped on the next river, one consisting ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... should show less inclination than their happier neighbors to receive from Rome an abundant recompense for their services. But the greater their difficulty to find subsistence in their native land, the stronger seemed their attachment; like that of the Switzer to his barren rocks, or of the mariner to the frail and hazardous home that bears him afloat on the ocean. This race of patriots was divided into two separate peoples. Those to the north of the Rhine were the Frisons; those to the west of the Meuse, the ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... have gone far enough there are no more trees to be seen. In that northern country the winter is so long and cold, and summer is so short, that only scrubby bushes can grow there. Next beyond these we should find merely the rough, curling grass of the Barren Grounds, which would tell us we were approaching the arctic circle, and already near the place where wise men think it is best to turn homeward; for it is close to the Land of the Polar Bear and the Northern Lights—the region of perpetual snow. But dreary as this would seem to us, nest ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... barren country and not very pleasant to travel in. Moreover, there was little for them to eat, and as the officers became hungry they became fretful. Many would have deserted had they been able to find their ...
— Tik-Tok of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... more hopeful. He picked up strong radiation in a rather barren area of Montana; however when he landed, he found that it was arising from the earth itself. From a short conversation with the local authorities, he learned that the phenomenon was well known: an atomic fission plant had been destroyed ...
— The Stutterer • R.R. Merliss
... chasing his butterflies that he just carries what he calls a snack in his pocket. Such a queer little man he is too, with his brown glasses on, and always running this way and that with his little net in which he captures the butterflies that come to the thistles on our old barren fields. Perhaps he'll turn up while you're here. I'd like you to meet Professor Whitesides, who is from a big college, he tells us, and spending his vacation in the way he likes. Sometimes I think he's a little off up here," ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... possess, namely, a genuine German culture, the prospect is a horrible one. To such a man, the ground seems strewn with ashes, and all stars are obscured; while every withered tree and field laid waste seems to cry to him: Barren! Forsaken! Springtime is no longer possible here! He must feel as young Goethe felt when he first peered into the melancholy atheistic twilight of the Systme de la Nature; to him this book seemed so grey, so Cimmerian ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... see. The trees have grown again, and the view is hidden. On this knoll, if there was anything tall, it would spoil the Fairacres' view. So Jacob built this 'Spite House.' He made it as ugly as he could, and he did everything outrageous to make great-grandfather disgusted. He named this rocky barren 'Bareacre,' and that little gully yonder he called 'Glenpolly,' because his enemy had named the beautiful ravine we know as 'Glenellen.' Polly and Ellen were the wives' names, and I've heard they grieved greatly ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... Loves and Muses melt in tears; But not a word of some hexameters. "You grow so squeamish and so dev'lish dry, You'll call Lucretius vapid next." Not I. 140 Some find him tedious, others think him lame: But if he lags his subject is to blame. Rough weary roads thro' barren wilds he tried, Yet still he marches with true Roman pride: Sometimes a meteor, gorgeous, rapid, bright, 145 He streams athwart the philosophic night. Find you in Horace no insipid Odes?— He dar'd to tell us Homer sometimes ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen
... three-quarters of her sparse inhabitants in towns, would take the work that lies before her nose and subdue the land and replenish it; and instead of shutting the gates deliberately on rival labour, would draw the stranger to her coasts and pour population on vast tracts of land which now lie barren and unproductive, but only wait for the hand of man to break into beauty and ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... quite lately that any motion made in the House, even the most formal and technical, might be opposed, and, if opposed, might be debated for any length of time, without the Speaker having the power to intervene and cut short the most barren ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... symptoms, and it is not deniable. How should it? Leafy May, hot June, by degrees comes October, sere, yellow; and at last, a quite leafless condition,—not Favonius, but gray Northeast, with its hail-storms (jealousies, barren cankered gusts), your main wind blowing. "EMILIE FAIT DE L'ALGEBRE," sneers he once, in an inadvertent moment, to some Lady-friend: "Emilie doing? Emilie is doing Algebra; that is Emilie's employment,—which will be of great use to her in the affairs ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... I stood alone, Like some strange monument of stone Upon a barren wild; Or like, (so solid and profound The darkness seem'd that wall'd me round) A man that's buried under ground, Where pyramids ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... anniversary of American independence to assess the dimensions of a kind deed. Nearly four score years ago the master of a whaling vessel sailing from this port rescued from a barren rock in the China Sea some Japanese fishermen. Among them was a young boy whom he brought home with him to Fairhaven, where he was given the advantages of New England life and sent to school with the boys and girls of the neighborhood, where ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... girlish stratagem frequently of surprising advantage to the practitioner; but the two men had begun to speak of the weather. Suffering a momentary disappointment, she went on, stepping silently, and passed through a door at the end of the hall into a large and barren looking dining-room, stiffly and skimpily furnished, but well-lighted, owing to the fact that one end of it had been transformed into a narrow "conservatory," a glass alcove now tenanted by two dried palms and a number of vacant jars ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... the onward and upward progress of the race. By stimulus, suggestion, and inspiration he has powerfully influenced his time, though manifestly not a little of the seed he abundantly and hopefully scattered has fallen upon barren ground. Nevertheless, where the seed has fallen and germinated, the yield has been large: "his spirit has passed far wider than he ever knew or conceived; and his words, flung to the winds, have borne fruit a ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... the Sages hath said, 'Solitude and not ill associate.' Also quoth they to Al-Bahlul,[FN285] 'Why this tarrying of thine amid the homes of the dead and why this sojourning in a barren stead and wherefore this farness from kinsmen and mate and lack of neighbourly love for brother and intimate?' But quoth he, 'Woe to you! my folk did I dwell amongst them would some day unlove me and the while I ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... parted by a narrow range of enclosures, yet no two soils can be more different: for the Holt consists of a strong loam, of a miry nature, carrying a good turf, and abounding with oaks that grow to be large timber; while Wolmer is nothing but a hungry, sandy, barren waste. ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... Review, sir. I've read through and through, sir, With little admiring or blaming; The Papers are barren Of home-news or foreign, No murders or rapes ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... copper, have not played so long on the surrounding atmosphere without doing their work. Everywhere within their influence, the perennial vegetation is meagre and stinted. The hills, particularly to the southeast of the copper-works, are barren in the extreme. Not one spark of green, not one solitary lichen, can withstand the ravages of the poison. Time was, we were told by an old inhabitant, when these hills produced the earliest and finest corn in the principality; but now they only ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... banks. Here the river spread in a circular pool several miles across. It seemed almost as if the waters ran clear to the line of yellow cliffs and to the hazy mountain range. Then the shores closed in again just before the current divided quite evenly on either side of a section of the barren plain named Montague Island. We took the channel ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... ruin, not to enslave, and ensnare, and doom new ages, and better races, with its futilities, but to be hung up with its immortal beacon-light, to shew the track of a new learning, to shew to the contrivers of the chart of new ages, the breakers of that old ignorance, that old arrogant wordy barren speculation. For these men were men who would not fish up the chart of a drowned world for the purpose of seeing how nearly they could conduct another under different conditions of time and races to the same ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... cherished, cared for in time of need (citizens as well as servants, holding a ballot as well as a broom, I tell her), and bringing back to us the lowly, underfoot virtues of contentment and humility, which we do so need to carpet the barren and hungry thoroughfare of ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... strangers came from far and near to see Grace and that lonely light-house. Nay more, they showered gifts upon her, and a public subscription was raised with a view of rewarding her bravery, to the amount of seven hundred pounds. She continued to live with her parents on their barren isles, finding happiness in her simple duties and in administering to their comfort, until her death, which took place little more than three years after the wreck ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... been in full health, he would have had no inclination to spare Mary the conversation with Mr. Ward, who took his hot nine miles' ride from Lima in the early morning, before the shadow of the mountains had been drawn up from the arid barren slope leading to Chorillos. ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Barren now I see that labour of any requital, 5 Gellius; here all prayers fall to the ground, nor avail. No; but a robe I carry, the barbs, thy folly, to muffle; Mine strike sure; thy deep injury they ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... that the momentous results in our progress as a nation marked by the recent amendments to the Constitution were in imminent jeopardy; that the good understanding which prompted their adoption, in the interest of a loyal devotion to the general welfare, might prove a barren truce, and that the two sections of the country, once engaged in civil strife, might be again almost as widely severed and disunited as they were when arrayed in arms ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Rutherford B. Hayes • Rutherford B. Hayes
... always expecting them to become evergreens of glory. In dealing with them he had a patience a little like the patience of God, never reproaching them or threatening them with the time limits of salvation in this world; no man ever had a sublimer skill in dealing with the barren fig-tree elements ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... not merely for the purpose of raising barren taxes, but taxes that are fertile taxes, taxes that will bring forth fruit—the security of the country which is paramount in the minds of all, provision for the aged and deserving poor. It was time it ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... patience, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, charity. For if these things be in you and abound,' and be continually supplied with a supply from the throne of grace, 'they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins. Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if you do these things, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... fair hykes over there all along o' as crool a rain as ever killed crops. We finds the place after awhile, a lodgin'-house all lorn and loony, set down all by itself in the middle o' some real estate extension like a tepee in a 'barren'—a crazy 'modern' house all gimcrack and woodwork and frostin', with never another place in so far as you could ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... of sorrow, loss, and pain, Our course be onward still; We sow on Burmah's barren plain, We ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... dinginess by a shade, nor penetrated one of the earthy layers that had thickened there; a thunder-shower must have glanced off, as water will do from tough, hardened clay. Rough patches of hair, scanty and straggling, like the vegetation of waste, barren lands, grew all over his cheeks and chin (a negro with an ample, honest beard is an anomaly), and a huge bush of wool—unkempt, I dare swear, from earliest infancy—seemed to repel the ruins of a nondescript hat. Whether ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... agreeable to the queen, and to conceal as much as possible the desolate appearance of the surroundings; for all this suburb lying between the arsenal and the zoological garden was at that time a desolate and barren waste. The entire region, extending from the new gate to the far-distant Behren Street, was an immense mass of sand, whose drear appearance had often offended Frederick while he was still the prince royal. Nothing was to be seen, where now appear majestic palaces ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... of the latter half of St. John's life is broken but once, and that by himself. He tells us that he "was in the isle that is called Patmos." It was not far from Ephesus, within a day's sail. It is a huge rock, rugged and barren, only a few miles ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed
... thought in her secret soul it had been a busy one. Winthrop thought it had been a barren one. Rufus — was not ready to say ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... Ultonians, and there was never in Ireland a better smith than he. In his huge and smoky dun the ringing of hammers and the husky roar of the bellows seldom ceased; even at night the red glare of his furnaces painted far and wide the barren moor where he dwelt. Herdsmen and shepherds who, in quest of estrays, found themselves unawares in this neighbourhood, fled away praying to their gods, and, as they ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... about. In truth, she realized that her days of pioneering were over and the thought of ending her days among her friends and relatives was a comfort to her. That I had rescued her from a premature grave on the barren Dakota plain was certain, and the hope of being able to provide for her comfort was the strongest ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... an asoka tree in the garden. The Hindus believe that this tree, when barren, may be induced to put forth flowers by the contact of the foot of a handsome woman. The tree in question does not blossom, and being the favourite of Dharini, she has proposed to try the effect of her own foot. Unluckily however, the Vidhushaka, ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... writer was thinking of a gentler and more diffusive flow of kind feeling, which, however it may meet with barren ground and raise no fruit there, is sure, in due time, to come back, heaven-refined, to refresh and replenish ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... interestedly around me. The scene was a picturesque one. The sun, but half risen, was of a rusty brass, and all east was mottled with purple and salmon hues. The clearing, a quarter of a mile away, where the Prince and I were to settle our dispute, was hidden under a fine white snow; and the barren trees which encircled it stood out blackly. Pembroke looked at ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... 25 A.D., Strabo, an eminent historian of the time, wrote: "About these places rises Vesuvius, well cultivated and inhabited all round, except at its top, which is for the most part level, and entirely barren, ashy to the view, displaying cavernous hollows in cineritious rocks, which look as if they had been eaten by fire; so that we may suppose this spot to have been a volcano formerly, with burning craters, now ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... way to the butler's pantry that was as large as the average kitchen. And there, ranged on platters, and baking boards, and on snowy-white napkins, was that which made Tantalus's feast seem a dry and barren snack. The Weinberg's had baked. It is the custom in the household of Atonement Day fasters of the old school to begin the evening meal, after the twenty-four hours of abstainment, with coffee and freshly-baked coffee cake ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... known such grueling work and heartbreaking fatigue; and the clouds of flies pursued them venomously and with unrelenting persistence. At first they had to cut their way through acres of brush, and then the land rose and they saw before them miles of swamp and barren land dotted with dwarf trees and lichen-grown rocks. Here it was easier and they made better time; but the professor's legs ached and his rifle wore a red bruise on his shoulder. And then after five days of torment they came upon the Iron Rail. It ran in almost a direct line from northwest ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... conceive the beauty, sublimity and inspiration of that scene, especially to one who had for weary months been traversing dusty, treeless and barren plains. The contrast was overwhelming. Tears filled my eyes as I gazed upon the fairy scene. I recall the entrancing picture to-day, in all its splendid detail, so vividly was it ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... a cold, keen day, about the early part of spring, in the year 1554, there came two men across a bleak and barren tract of land called Dean Moor, near to Bolton-in-the-Moors. When at some distance from the main path, and far from the many by-roads intersecting this dreary common, they—first looking cautiously around, as though fearing intruders—fell on each other's neck and wept. The sun's ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... ignorant of my troubles, and contentedly regaling himself on cheese and beer. Havelock having got to the village ahead of me, thanks to his cross-country ride, was there too, sipping beer with Forsyth; nor was I slow to follow their example, for the ride of the day, though rather barren in other results, at any rate had given ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... feasible way to that end. The whole world is in that temper that gives significance to the words of President Wilson when a day or two ago he said: "Any man who resists the present tides that run in the world will find himself thrown upon a shore so high and barren that it will seem as if he had been separated from his human kind forever." Unless, he might have added—he has and can demonstrate a better plan. The two chief arguments against it, that it will take away from our individual rights ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... possessed it; lost to me, as it is lost every day to other men, in other critical situations, where women are concerned. I know, now, that I should have questioned myself from the first. I should have asked why any room in the house was better than home to me when she entered it, and barren as a desert when she went out again—why I always noticed and remembered the little changes in her dress that I had noticed and remembered in no other woman's before—why I saw her, heard her, and touched her (when we shook hands at night and morning) as I had never seen, heard, ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... essential, and how that knowledge had been gained: some of it from the experience of early explorers,—how to avoid the dreaded scurvy, how to build a ship that could withstand the tremendous pressure of the floes; and some from the Eskimos,—how to live in that barren region, and how to travel with dogs and sledges;—and some, too, from Peary's own early experiences,—how he had struggled for twenty years to reach the goal, and had added this experience to that until finally the prize was his. We may differ as to the value of Peary's deed, but ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... Caloosahatchee there is but little to say in modification of what has already been said. Near the Fish Eating Creek settlement there is a somewhat drier prairie land than that which I have just described. The range of barren sand hills which extends from the north along the middle of Florida to the headwaters of the Kissimmee River ends at Cat Fish Lake. Excepting these modifications, the topography of the whole Indian country of Florida is substantially ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... "The Horn," or by the more uncertain, and at the same time imperfected route, across the Isthmus. But as California was on this continent, he knew that there was a way thither, though it might lead through trackless deserts and barren wastes. These were not enough to daunt his determined spirit. He bent his way to the "Father of Waters," and worked his way as he could, till he found himself at "Independence," in health, and with no less strength, and with 150 ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... scarcely see because of the mist in her eyes; but presently her sight cleared, and she read quickly, her cheeks burning with excitement, her heart throbbing violently. The letter was the last expression of a disappointed and barren life. The slow, stammering tongue of an almost silent existence had found the fulness of speech. The fountains of the deep had been broken up, and Sybil Eglington's repressed emotions, undeveloped passions, tortured by mortal sufferings, and refined and vitalised by the atmosphere ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Big Burn to be barren land—curdled rock with rivers of frozen quartz, substances boiled up through the crust of the planet by the action of the atomic explosives. That was the way it had been on Limbo—on the other "burned-off" worlds they had discovered where ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... fruiterers into mandarins) the seeds have almost been cultivated out; in the best pine-apples, and in the small grapes known in the dried state as currants, they have quite disappeared; while in some varieties of pears they survive only in the form of shrivelled, barren, and useless pips. But the banana, more than any other plant we know of, has managed for many centuries to do without seeds altogether. The cultivated sort, especially in America, is quite seedless, and the plants are propagated entirely ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... been known to support the inhabitants for months together during a scarcity of other provisions. They put a yoke on their ploughs, and often tear up their pasture-grounds with a view to get the roots for their use; and as they abound most in barren and impoverished soils, and in seasons when other crops fail, they afford a most seasonable relief to the inhabitants in times of the greatest scarcity. A singular instance this of the bounty of Providence to ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... life. Years ago, when Chadron's importance was beginning to feel itself strong upon its legs, and when Nola was a little thing with light curls blowing about her blue eyes, the house had grown up under the wand of riches in that barren place. ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... all which had been said to the poor lad had fallen upon barren ground. Laurence was still ...
— The Trapper's Son • W.H.G. Kingston
... infected the whole mind of the people, not only throughout Rome, but Italy, Gaul, Africa, and Asia. And for this we have to thank whom? Whom but ourselves? Ever since Hadrian—otherwise a patriot king—built his imageless temples, in imitation of this barren and lifeless worship; ever since the weak Alexander and his superstitious mother filled the imperial palace with their statues of Christ, with preachers and teachers of his religion; ever since the Philips openly and without shame professed his faith; ever, I say, since these great ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... gentler character, we came to the beautiful village of Davedro, with its cottages and vineyards spread over a green slope, between the mountains and the torrent below. This lovely nook struck me the more from its contrast with the region of snows, clouds, and barren rocks to which our eyes had been for several hours accustomed. In such a spot as Davedro I fancied I should wish to live, could I in life assemble round me all that my craving heart and boundless spirit desire;—or die, when life had exhausted ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... on the original line; but it was because consolidation had been pushed to an extreme by the directors of the corporation, so much so that the entire system yielded no dividends; a fleet and useful animal had been loaded down with dead wood and rubbish till he could scarcely crawl; barren acres had been added to an originally fruitful farm until the whole estate could hardly pay taxes; a mass of rotten apples had been thrown into the measure with sound fruit, and buyers refused the whole as a mere heap of corruption. And it was generally believed that the men who ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... covering the treacherous sandy bottom, and from the other side came the more distant gleam of alkali plains; to the right arose the bluffs, here both steep and rugged, completely shutting off the view, barren of vegetation except for a few scattered patches of grass. Suddenly a man rode out of a rift in the bank, directly in front, and held up his hand. Surprised, startled, the driver instantaneously clamped on his brake, ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... fields the mouse, if pressed for food in winter, will gnaw the bark of sapling trees. Frost sharpens the teeth like a file, and hunger is keener than frost. If any one used to more fertile scenes had walked across the barren meads Mr. Roberts rented as the summer declined, he would have said that a living could only be gained from them as the mouse gains it in frost-time. By sharp-set nibbling and paring; by the keenest frost-bitten meanness of living; by scraping a little bit here, and saving another trifle yonder, ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... out such ungenerous terms Against the lords and sov'reigns of the world? Dost thou not see mankind fall down before them, And own the force of their superior virtue? Is there a nation in the wilds of Afric, Amidst our barren rocks and burning sands, That does not ...
— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison
... The king of birds never hovers over the deserted waste. A blade of grass or an insect finds no existence there. The shrivelled lichen alone, clinging to the weathered surface of the broken brick, seems to glory in its universal dominion over those barren walls. Of all the desolate pictures I have ever seen that of Warka incomparably surpasses all." Surely in this case it cannot be said that appearances are deceitful; for all that space, and much more, is a cemetery, and ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... serviettes were unadorned with rings. Lucien's opposite neighbor was a thin, pallid youth, to all appearance as poor as himself; his handsome face was somewhat worn, already it told of hopes that had vanished, leaving lines upon his forehead and barren furrows in his soul, where seeds had been sown that had come to nothing. Lucien felt drawn to the stranger by these tokens; his sympathies went out to him ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... stream in whose sands lie buried the bodies of countless French voyageurs. It is more dangerous going with rapids than against them; for the hastening current is sometimes an undertow, which sweeps the canoes into the rapids before the roar of the waterfall has given warning. And the country is barren of game. ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... was destined to a barren strand, A petty fortress and a dubious hand; He left a name at which the world grew pale, To point a moral or adorn ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... thoughts that would leap upon him if he gave them an opportunity. But soon that would be all over—no more battle, no more struggle. He turned the corner and saw Scaw House standing amongst its dark trees, with its black palings in front of its garden and the deserted barren patch of field in front of that again. The sun was getting low and the sky above the house was flaming but the trees were sombre and ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... Sicilian, and constantly kept down by the descents of the Moorish pirates, who used to land in the unprotected bays, and carry off all the wretched beings they could catch, to sell for slaves. It was a miserable exchange from fertile Rhodes, which was nearly five times larger than this barren rock; but the Knights only wanted a hospital, a fortress, and a harbour; and this last they found in the deeply indented northern shore, while they made the first two. Only a few years had passed before the dreary Citta Notabile had become in truth a notable city, full of fine castle-like ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that howsoever all other folk of earth Loved Sigmund's son rejoicing, and were bettered of their mirth, Yet ever the white-armed Gudrun, the dark-haired Niblung Maid, From the barren heart of sorrow her love upon him laid: He rejoiceth, and she droopeth; he speaks and hushed is she; He beholds the world's days coming, nought but Sigurd may she see; He is wise and her wisdom falters; he is kind, and ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... by the nickname of Skin-flint, in illusion to her keen business habits (her real name is lost in oblivion), but has of late years been the property of a German from Petersburg. The village lies on the slope of a barren hill, which is cut in half from top to bottom by a tremendous ravine. It is a yawning chasm, with shelving sides hollowed out by the action of rain and snow, and it winds along the very centre of the village street; it separates the two sides of the unlucky hamlet far more ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... possible in liturgies so to employ the principle of repetition that no wearying sense of sameness will be conveyed, and again it is possible so to mismanage it as to transform worship into something little better than a "slow mechanic exercise." Mere iteration, as such, is barren of spiritual power; witness the endless sayings over of Kyrie Eleison in the Oriental service-books, a species of vain repetition which a liturgical writer of high intelligence rightly characterizes ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... As we were going home (one of my boys and I) he, after a silence of half a mile perhaps, rode up close to the side of my horse, and said, 'Papa, where be the Grampian Hills?' 'Oh,' said I, 'they are in Scotland; poor, barren, beggarly places, covered with heath and rushes, ten times as barren as Sherril Heath.' 'But,' said he, 'how could that little boy's father feed his flocks there, then?' I was ready to tumble ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... to the whites, they point to the barren hillside, as evincing the truth of the story, affirming that one day the forest trees stood thick upon it, but was stripped of them by the great serpent as he rolled down its declivity. The round stones found there in ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... actual reality of what we have read of, and its intimate connection with ourselves.—But soon I was struck with the very erroneous idea I had had of Jerusalem. From the west it does not look at all like a city built on a hill; for, rather below you, at the farther end of a barren plain, you see nothing but the embattled walls of a feudal town, with one or two large buildings and a minaret alone visible above them. To the right the ground dips into the Valley of Hinnom,—but to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... thrice-blessed rain, How ye do warm and melt the rugged soil,— Which else were barren, nathless all my toil And summon Beauty from her grave again, To breathe live odors o'er my scant domain: How softly from their parting buds uncoil The furled sweets, no more a shriveled spoil To the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... Bible involved the truth that the sun revolves round the earth. The Church condemned the theory of the antipodes. One of the charges against Servetus (who was burned in the sixteenth century; see below, p. 79) was that he believed the statement of a Greek geographer that Judea is a wretched barren country in spite of the fact that the Bible describes it as a land flowing with milk and honey. The Greek physician Hippocrates had based the study of medicine and disease on experience and methodical research. In the Middle Ages men relapsed to the primitive ...
— A History of Freedom of Thought • John Bagnell Bury
... prouder branches with exuberance rude Point their green gems, their barren shoots protrude; Wound them, ye SYLPHS! with little knives, or bind A wiry ringlet round the swelling rind; 465 Bisect with chissel fine the root below, Or bend to earth the inhospitable bough. So shall each germ with new prolific power ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... Ahone, with a deputy, a friend of sorcerers, like Okee. This account is in Smith's General History of New England, 1606-1624. We sent out a colony in 1607; "they all returned in the yeere 1608," esteeming the country "a cold, barren, mountainous rocky desart". I am apt to believe that they did not plant the fructifying seeds of grace among the natives in 1607-1608. But the missionary efforts of French traders may, of course, have been blessed; nor can I deny that a yellow-haired ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... alone in a bare little room, which communicated by a glazed door with a surgery. Hideous coloured diagrams of the ravages of hideous diseases decorated the barren buff-coloured walls. A book-case filled with dingy medical works, and ornamented at the top with a skull, in place of the customary bust; a large deal table copiously splashed with ink; wooden chairs of the sort that are seen in kitchens ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... would happen? The face of the world would be changed. Isthmuses would be cut through. Railroads would cover the continents; the merchant navy of the globe would be increased a hundredfold. There would be nowhere barren plains nor moors nor marshes. Cities would be found where now there are only deserts. Asia would be rescued to civilization; Africa would be rescued to man; abundance would gush forth on every side, from every vein of the earth at the touch ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... Cook and Banks explored a river that entered near where they were anchored, the east side of which was very barren, but the west was much better, no signs of cultivation showing on either. Wild fowl were plentiful, and oysters, "as good as ever came from Colchester," and of about the same size, says Banks, were taken on board in ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... "looked like turnips and tasted like chestnuts." The Indians called them "patatas." In this way the potato, one of the great foods of to-day, was found by Europeans. A whole winter was passed on the cold and barren coast of Patagonia. Magellan called the natives "Patagones," the word in his language meaning big feet, from the large foot-prints which they left ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton
... And every shepherd tells his tale, Under the hawthorn in the dale. Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures, Whilst the landscape round it measures; Russet lawns, and fallows gray, Where the nibbling flocks do stray, Mountains on whose barren breast The labouring clouds do often rest, Meadows trim with daisies pied, Shallow brooks, and rivers wide, Towers and battlements it sees, Bosomed high in tufted trees, Where perhaps some Beauty lies, The Cynosure of neighbouring eyes. Hard by a cottage-chimney smokes From ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... opposite of this, containing nothing of any material value in it. The rock-formation is all lime, very pure and white like marble, which consequently makes the soil white, and, being very stony, it is almost barren. The Somali keep cattle here, but with much apparent difficulty, being, from the scarcity of springs and want of water, obliged to march about, following the last falls of rain, to obtain fresh herbage for ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... is a famous resort situated in the northwest part of Italy. It is notorious for its gambling saloon. This city of nearly four thousand inhabitants is located in Monaco, the smallest independent country in the world. Monaco is about eight miles square, and lies on a "barren, rocky ridge between the sea and lofty, almost inaccessible rocks." The soil is barren, except in small tracts which are used for fruit-gardens. For centuries the inhabitants, the Monagasques, lived by marauding expeditions, both by sea and land, ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... islands from time immemorial. The natives were decreed enemies of the state by Charles V in 1550 and thereafter were soon exterminated. When the Earl of Cumberland touched at the islands on his way to Porto Rico in 1596 he described them as a knot of little islands, uninhabited, sandy, barren ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... followed, while the horsemen galloped on in unexpected circles. Soon, for no visible reason, the dots ran together, bunching compactly. The shooting stopped, the dust rose thick again from the crowded hoofs, cloaking the group, and so passed back and was lost among the silent barren hills. ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... corn Anger our huntsman: Breather round our farms, To keep off mildews, and all weather harms: Strange ministrant of undescribed sounds, That come a swooning over hollow grounds, And wither drearily on barren moors: Dread opener of the mysterious doors Leading to universal knowledge—see, Great son of Dryope, 290 The many that are come to pay their vows With ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... detailed and exceedingly dull description of the step-by-step procedure followed by a Confederation exploratory ship making a first landing on a barren planet. There was a description of the atmosphere, the soil surface, the land masses and major water bodies. Physically, the planet was a desert, hot and dry, and barren of vegetation excepting in two or three areas of jungle along the equator. "The ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... its fellows, built when the street was still a country lane, edging the marshes, strikes a strange note of individuality amid the surrounding harmony of hideousness. It is encompassed on two sides by what was once a garden, though now but a barren patch of stones and dust where clothes—it is odd any one should have thought of washing—hang in perpetuity; while about the door continue the remnants of a porch, which the stucco falling has left exposed in all its ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... foreground it was bare and stony. A few thorny bushes pushed their straggling way through the dry soil, ineffectively as far as the grace of the landscape was concerned, for they merely served to emphasise the barren aridness of the land that stretched before the tents, sloping ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... and history of the town and port of Suakin might afford a useful instance to a cynical politician. Most of the houses stand on a small barren island which is connected with the mainland by a narrow causeway. At a distance the tall buildings of white coral, often five storeys high, present an imposing appearance, and the prominent chimneys of the condensing ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... thing—a sayee as well as a sayer. The one is as essential to any true saying as the other. A. may have spoken, but if B. has not heard there has been nothing said, and he must speak again. True, the belief on A.'s part that he had a bona fide sayee in B., saves his speech qua him, but it has been barren and left no fertile issue. It has failed to fulfil the conditions of true speech, which involve not only that A. should speak, but also that B. should hear. True, again, we often speak of loose, incoherent, ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... make that our absence would not be less than three years... together with the extraordinary uncertainty of the issue of the voyage, as we had nothing but our hands to depend upon to obtain a cargo which was only to be done through storms, dangers, and breakers, and taken from barren rocks in distant regions. But after a voyage of four years for one vessel and five for the other, we were all permitted to return safe home to our friends and not quite empty-handed. We had built both of the vessels we were in and navigated them two and three times around the globe." Each one of ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... a thing as a good sea-coal fire, with a log of beechwood on the top of the coals. It will be cheerful in the face of affliction. It sends out its gushes of warmth and brightness, its gay little arrowy flames that appear and disappear like elves dancing their midnight waltzes on a barren moor. It seems to say: "Look at me and be comforted! Look at me and hope! So from the dull blackness of sorrow rise the many ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... abounding throughout the country. We travelled, after leaving the main road, at the distance of a league, through a country scarcely appearing to be inhabited. Here and there a lone cot, a mere speck, met the eye amidst a landscape composed of nothing but barren wastes and thick forests, nearly impervious to the light. We had penetrated about half a mile through one of the latter, my attention occupied with the romantic wildness of the scene, when we were alarmed by the howling of a wolf. My guide crossed himself, and began cracking ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes
... continuation, when we shall reap the true rewards or the true punishments of our existence. The choice lies to a great extent in our own hands. Shall we have a beautiful, healthy, prolific son, or a deformed, unhealthy, barren son, incapable of loving and understanding us? The hygiene of generation is the most important part of moral hygiene. If the salvation of the individual life can only be obtained by caring for the hygienic life of the whole of humanity, it ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... not much lower than that on which we stood, rose, one beyond another, far as that pure atmosphere could carry the vision, broken into awful chasms deep with ice and snow, rising into pinnacles piercing the heavenly blue with their cold, barren grey, on, on for ever, till the most distant range upbore unsullied snow alone. There were fair lakes mirroring the dark pine woods, canyons dark and blue-black with unbroken expanses of pines, snow-slashed pinnacles, wintry heights frowning upon lovely parks, ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... in the city he had abandoned two months earlier, Hollister found himself in the grip of new desires, stirred by new plans, his mind yielding slowly to the conviction that life was less barren than it seemed. Or was that, he asked himself doubtfully, just another illusion which would uphold him for awhile and then perish? Not so many weeks since, a matter of days almost, life, so far as he was concerned, held ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the visible Church under the New Testament is as needful as ever it was under the Old Testament. What necessity of government could be pleaded then, which may not as strongly be pleaded now? Is not the visible Church of Christ a mixed body of sound and unsound members, of fruitful and barren branches, of tares and wheat, of good and bad, of sincere believers and hypocrites, of sheep and goats, &c., now as well as it was then? Is there not as great cause to separate and distinguish by church power, between ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... But by toil what is contrary to nature becomes stronger than even nature itself. And are these the only things that teach the power of diligence? Not so: ten thousand things teach the same truth. A soil naturally good becomes by neglect barren, and the better its original condition, the worse its ultimate state if uncared for. On the other hand a soil exceedingly rough and sterile by being farmed well produces excellent crops. And what trees do not by neglect ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... brightest Jewel in a Crown, } Preaching Ingratitude t'a Court and Throne; } But made his Politicks the baneful Root From whence the springing Woes of Israel shoot, When his Great Masters fatal Gordian tyed, He lai'd the barren Michal by his side; That the ador'd Absolons immortal Line Might on Judeas Throne for ever shine. Caleb, who does that hardy Pilot make, } Steering in that Hereditary Track, } Blind to the Sea-Mark of ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.
... days later still, Archer and his wife sat hand in hand in the cool veranda, taking the air. The sun was just down and the flag had just fluttered to its rest. From the open casement came the murmur of happy voices, one so very happy it thrilled their hearts. Across the barren parade the men were just breaking ranks after retreat inspection, and the officers were coming homeward, unbelting sword or sabre as they neared their doors, in the impatient fashion of the day. Strong, the adjutant, still precise and buckled, ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... Cold, cold amid the splendor Of the Italian South our brothers sleep; The blue air broods above them warm and tender, The mists glide o'er them from the barren deep. ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... burden across the wild, barren places where no green thing grows, he is fed with a few dates, beans, or cakes. Sometimes he finds a dry, thorny plant to browse upon, but when other food is gone he must depend ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... Euston to Scotland was tearing along on its daily journey. It was that barren hour in the afternoon when luncheon is over and forgotten, and tea is yet far distant, and most of the passengers were either asleep or listlessly trying ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... with honour. The barren woman was despised. All that is changing. This movement is ...
— The Master of Mrs. Chilvers • Jerome K. Jerome
... in procession, bearing its flapping flag along the sodden way beneath those barren or snowy crests, the cortege vaguely recalled the funeral marches of an All Souls' day ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... no new route, he did much to dispel the popular idea created by Long that the plains were barren, and the American Desert began to shrink. In 1843 Fremont was sent out again. Making his way westward through the South Pass, where his work ended in 1842, he turned southward to visit Great Salt Lake, ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... supreme idea, all the while, growing and striking deep, under everything, in the warm, rich earth. He had stood unknowing, he had walked and worked where it was buried, and the fact itself, the fact of his fortune, would have been a barren fact enough if the first sharp tender shoot had never struggled into day. There on one side was the ugliness his middle time had been spared; there on the other, from all the portents, was the beauty with which his age might still be crowned. He was happier, doubtless, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James |
