"Barrenness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... flowers is too often followed by a dreary blank, which is almost unredeemed by a touch of colour, except that afforded by the late Tulips and a few other flowers which are relatively unimportant. The brilliance of the Crocuses, Hyacinths, and early Tulips serves to throw into relief the comparative barrenness which follows. And the contrast is rendered all the more striking by the cheerful spring days. It is at this juncture that annuals and biennials from summer or early autumn sowings light up the garden with welcome masses and bands ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... Ptolomy and the other ancient cosmographers. But that ancient Elana and modern Toro are the same, appears from this, that from thence to Suez both on the Arabian and Egyptian coasts of the Elanitic Gulf, not only is there no memorial or remains of any other ancient town, and the barrenness of the country, want of water, and rough craggy mountains, make it evident that in no other place could there be any habitation. Hence, considering that Ptolomy places Elana on the coast of Arabia Petrea, near adjoining to mount Sinai, and makes ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... be lost upon a man of his intriguing genius; though he conducted his amours with such discretion, that, during the whole season, no lady's character suffered on his account, yet he was highly fortunate in his addresses, and we may venture to affirm, that the reproach of barrenness was more than once removed by the vigour ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... which covers the eastern slopes of these mountains, and looks down over the province of Abra, he sees an exceedingly broken land (Plates I and II), the subordinate ranges succeeding one another like the waves of the sea. The first impression is one of barrenness. The forest vanishes, and in its place are long grassy slopes, broken here and there by scattered pines and lower down by dense growths of the graceful, feathery bamboo. But this lack of trees is more fancied than real, for as one proceeds down any of the ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... he said, "there is still one door of freedom open—I can cease from action. If my life be an ill thing, I can lay it down. Though I be, as you say truly, at the beck of every small temptation, I can yet, by one decisive gesture, place myself beyond the reach of all. My love of good is damned to barrenness; it may, and let it be! But I have still my hatred of evil; and from that, to your galling disappointment, you shall see that I can draw both ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... Greatness, whom it especially behoves to take thought for such matters, cause that this be put right by speediest rebuke: lest the famine, which will otherwise ensue, be deemed to be the child of negligence rather than of the barrenness of the land". ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... exclaimed Sophron, 'how useless to them are all the blessings of their climate! How much rather would I inhabit the stormy top of Lebanon, amid eternal snows and barrenness, than wallow in the vile sensuality of such a country, or breathe an ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... detail, although any observer of children ought to know that a child's mind does not want everything explained. They think that simplicity demands this lengthy discussion of every trivial matter. There is such a thing as a conceited simplicity, and there is a technical simplicity, that in its barrenness and insipidity is worthy only of a simpleton. In Jacob Abbott's "Juveniles" especially, by means of this minuteness, a very scanty stock of ideas is made to go a great way. Does simplicity require ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... between these two towns spreads in a succession of beautiful valleys, through which glide clear and sparkling streams. But on the western coast, from the steeple-rocks of Cape Grim to the scrub-encircled barrenness of Sandy Cape, and the frowning entrance to Macquarie Harbour, the nature of the country entirely changes. Along that iron-bound shore, from Pyramid Island and the forest-backed solitude of Rocky Point, to the great Ram Head, and the straggling harbour of Port Davey, ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... very striking in a lonely central figure in a scene, the outline cuts so sharply against the horizon. Nan's eyes seemed riveted on it as she listened to Phillis's voice; it seemed to her as immovable as a Sphinx, its rigidity lending a sort of barrenness and forlornness to the landscape, a black edition of human nature set under a violet and ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... leave his works entirely to the reader's imagination; so that at the end of the book you whisper to yourself ruefully that but for the author's solemn preliminary assurance you should hardly have given the gentleman credit for ordinary good sense. You cannot accuse me of this pitiable barrenness, this feeble evasion. I not only tell you that my hero wrote a revolutionists' handbook: I give you the handbook at full length for your edification if you care to read it. And in that handbook you will find the politics ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... Notwithstanding the barrenness of the country, it abounds with a variety of unknown plants, and gave sufficient employment to the botanists of the Resolution. 'Almost every plant,' says Mr. Forster, 'which we gathered on the rocks, was new to us, and some species ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... out continually with the glasses. The Maddelena had a small glass. In the lamplight of the stage the little party read and smoked and practised, exposed to the empty darkness of the big room. Queer and isolated it seemed, a tiny, pathetic magicland far away from the barrenness of Switzerland. I could believe in the old fairy-tales where, when the rock was opened, ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... "I feel in myself," quaintly writes another, "a great want of that spirituality of mind which New Zealand is so very unfavourable for; because of the continual scenes of evil that there is before our eyes, and for want of Christian society. So that you must excuse my barrenness of writing, and give me all ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... Sterility or barrenness is a condition of inability to have children. In former years the opinion prevailed generally, whenever a couple was childless, that the fault was exclusively the woman's. It wasn't even thought that the man could be to blame. We now know that in at least fifty ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... shall rise to at the judgment call. The music of thy nature folded round Its barrenness ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... not long ago, suffered a very uncommon, and unexpected calamity. The sand of the shore was raised by a tempest in such quantities, and carried to such a distance, that an estate was overwhelmed and lost. Such and so hopeless was the barrenness superinduced, that the owner, when he was required to pay the usual tax, desired rather to ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... at heart he turns away. The sunset has lost its glory, the spheres their music, life its sweetness. The beams of the moon chill his blood and Arcturus leads forth his shining sons but to mock his barrenness. The flowers that wreathe his couch stifle him with their sensuous perfume and he flies from the nightingale's passionate song as the slave flees the scourge. Through the dark paths and over the moss-grown bowlders he stumbles on, across the fields where the ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... seed, so in animals, the same process may be carried far enough to produce sterility. Instances are not wanting, and particularly among the more recent improved Short-horns, of impotency among the males and of barrenness in the females, and in some cases where they have borne calves they have failed to secrete milk for their nourishment.[3] Impotency in bulls of various breeds has not unfrequently occurred from too high feeding, and especially if connected with ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale
... accomplish'd bliss! which who can see, Though but in distant prospect, and not feel His soul refreshed with foretaste of the joy? Rivers of gladness water all the earth, And clothe all climes with beauty; the reproach Of barrenness is gone. The fruitful field Laughs with abundance; and the land, once lean, Or fertile only in its own disgrace, Exults to see its thistly curse repeal'd; The various seasons woven into one, And that one season an eternal spring. The garden fears no blight, and needs no fence, For there is ...
— Studies in Prophecy • Arno C. Gaebelein
... the Conception district of Panay saves life, and San Pascual Bailon cures barrenness. A Manila milkman who was punished for selling watered milk expressed surprise at the complaints of his customers, because no wrong had been committed, inasmuch as he had used nothing but holy water, which ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... hearth-stones and threshold-stones and grave-stones, all of the same material. It is curious and depressing. This volcanic region of the Rhine, however, has so many unexpected beauties strewn pell-mell in the midst of stony barrenness that it also bears some likeness to Naples and Ischia, where beauty of color, and even of vegetation, alternate surprisingly with tracts of parched and rocky wilderness pierced with holes whence gas and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... were measured, Newton measures heaven and earth. Thus did the body force the mind to pay attention to the phenomena around it; thus was the world made interesting and important, through being made indispensable. The inward activity of their nature, and the barrenness of their native soil, combined in teaching our forefathers to form bolder plans, and invented for them a house wherein, under conduct of the stars, they could safely move upon rivers and seas, and sail ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... now admires, would be unable to do so, if, like those farmers, he had to struggle with nature for little more than a bare living. The struggle there, what with early, long-lasting, and bitter winters, and the barrenness of the soil in many parts, ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... struck us was the increased importance of the vegetation, both in quantity and quality; the result, doubtless, of more abundant dew and rain, as well as of shade from each passing mist-cloud. The view formed a startling contrast of fertility and barrenness. At every hundred yards the growths of the plain became more luxuriant in the rich humus filling the fissures, and, contrary to the general rule, the plants, especially the sorrel (Rumex) and the dandelion ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... February 1619; but the tender age of the bridegroom, who was then but eighteen, was the cause of his taking a tour in Italy, whence he returned after two years. The marriage was a very happy one but for one circumstance—it produced no issue. The countess could not endure a barrenness which threatened the end of a great name, the extinction of a noble race. She made vows, pilgrimages; she consulted doctors and quacks; but ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... sea-headlands, and enter Pamlico Sound through an inlet, and dart my vision inland; O the cotton plant! the growing fields of rice, sugar, hemp! The cactus, guarded with thorns—the laurel-tree, with large white flowers; The range afar—the richness and barrenness—the old woods charged with mistletoe and trailing moss, The piney odour and the gloom—the awful natural stillness, Here in these dense swamps the freebooter carries his gun, and the fugitive slave has ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... too. I got them with a dreadful French crib on the same page with the text, which helps me along and drives me mad. The French do not even try to translate. They try to be much more classical than the classics, with astounding results of barrenness and tedium. Tacitus, I fear, was too solid for me. I liked the war part; but the dreary intriguing ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Josephine was anxiously wondering whether she was to be crowned. Her brothers-in-law became more venomous in their intrigues against her, and desired not only that she be excluded from any part in the coronation, but also that she should be condemned to divorce on the pretext of barrenness. Joseph Bonaparte was never tired of saying that Napoleon ought to marry some foreign Princess, or at least some daughter of an old French family, and he skilfully laid stress on his own unselfishness in urging a plan which would necessarily remove himself and ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... done! You have clothed the barrenness of the dreary plain with gardens, orchards and forests. You have been at work with God and glorified a vast empire, and now he has blessed the work of your hands. Instead of the air sodden with tears and tremulous with the wail of widows and orphans, you are welcomed with the ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... is compared to water, for that it is it which causeth fruitfulness; water causeth fruitfulness, want of water is the cause of barrenness; and this is the reason why the whole world is so empty of fruit to Godward, even because so few of the children of men have the Spirit of grace in their ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... her motions are without elegance or grace. A succession of priests, or courtiers, treads in each other's footsteps in the same path of servitude and superstition: their views are narrow, their judgment is feeble or corrupt; and we close the volume of copious barrenness, still ignorant of the causes of events, the characters of the actors, and the manners of the times which they celebrate or deplore. The observation which has been applied to a man, may be extended to a whole people, that the energy of the sword ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... impulse that had driven her out of the house. And the quick picture she drew, of how, in her native land, the brief winter passed almost without transition into the scathing summer; her suggestion of unchanging leaves, brown barrenness, and and dryness; of grass burnt to cinders, of dust, drought, and hot, sandy winds: all this helped him to understand something of what she was feeling. A remembrance of this parched heat was in her veins, making her eager not ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... road ill formed, leading for the most part across a sear and desolate country, with nothing to relieve its barrenness except long stretches of the great spear-headed reeds. At noon the heat was intense; the little cavalcade halted for half an hour under the shade of some black, towering rocks which broke the monotony of the district, and ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... find; But each man's secret standard in his mind, That casting-weight pride adds to emptiness, This, who can gratify for who can guess? The bard whom pilfer'd Pastorals renown, Who turns a Persian tale[102] for half-a-crown, 180 Just writes to make his barrenness appear, And strains from hard-bound brains eight lines a year; He who, still wanting, though he lives on theft, Steals much, spends little, yet has nothing left: And he who, now to sense, now nonsense leaning, Means not, but blunders round about a meaning: And he, whose fustian's so sublimely ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... in the morning, ascending the hill-range by a steep winding footpath up one of its ridges, which, in respect to its barrenness and soil, resembled the descent I had from Yafir. After completing eleven miles' march, the caravan crested the hill opposite Ras[21] Galweni, travelled a short way on the flat of the summit, and encamped in the evening amongst some thick jungle on ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... brave and experienced sea captain from St. Malo. In 1534, Cartier made a preliminary voyage of exploration. Touching at Newfoundland, he sailed through the straits of Belle Isle and explored the east shore of the island, a region which for the barrenness of its soil and the severity of its climate seemed the very spot whither Cain had been banished. The coast of New Brunswick held out a more inviting prospect. The fertility of the soil reminded the voyagers of their ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... events, however intricate or confused, ought now to become the objects of our attention. But, added to the difficulty of carrying on at once the history of seven independent kingdoms, there is great discouragement to a writer, arising from the uncertainty, at least barrenness, of the accounts transmitted to us. The monks, who were the only annalists during those ages, lived remote from public affairs, considered the civil transactions as entirely subordinate to the ecclesiastical, and, besides ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... as he called it, would bring no real holiness either to others or himself, but must teach a man to despair of himself and of any claims or merits of his own. And, indeed, as we know from all that had gone before, it was not simply the external barrenness of the regulations of Church and convent, or a sense of imperfect fulfilment on his part, that caused his restlessness of conscience; what gave him the deepest anxiety and harassed him the most were those very inward stirrings, which revealed to him his opposition to God's eternal ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... test of affinity and congruity, the silent forces of the universe make trial of us, rejecting or accepting, allowing us, our thoughts, our feelings to live and be fruitful, or condemning us and them to die in barrenness. ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... people. Piran, the patron saint of tinners, would hardly have called down such a curse, though he might have done so if greatly provoked. But if not metalliferous, much of the parish is exceptionally fertile and verdant, in contrast to the barrenness of the Goonhilly Downs. Without attempting to decide authoritatively as to the personality of Keverne, we may at least be amused by the curious story told about him, which brings a strong touch of human nature into the record of one who is otherwise so hazy. It is said that he was ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... square tower of Rochdale Church might be seen above the dark trees nestling under its grey walls. The town was almost hidden by a glowing canopy of smoke gleaming in the bright sunset—towards the north the bare bleak hills, undulating in sterile loneliness, and associating only with images of barrenness and desolation. Easterly, a long, level burst of light swept across meadow, wood, and pasture; green slopes dotted with bright homesteads, to the very base apparently of, though at some distance from, Blackstonedge, now of the deepest, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... surrounding sea makes up for the barrenness of the country by having some of the richest fishing banks in the world. Hence, in addition to being farmers, the Icelanders have always been fishermen who brought means of sustenance from the sea—usually in primitive open boats like those described in When I was on the Frigate ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... the streams, and upon them alone, that the soil has to depend for its fertility; all those lands to which they never reach are doomed to barrenness and death. It is fortunate for the prosperity of the country through which they flow, that the Tigris and Euphrates swell and rise annually from their beds, not indeed like the Nile, almost on a stated day, but ever in the same season, about the commencement ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... now are the pure waters which should vivify and fertilize it? Innumerable elements are floating in their midst which can but destroy life and spread barrenness everywhere. ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... admirer of mountains, he was of the opinion of Dr Johnson that "an eye accustomed to flowery pastures and waving harvests is astonished and repelled by this wide extent of hopeless sterility" and that "this uniformity of barrenness can afford very little amusement to the traveller" (Works, ed. ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... be the ground for thy sake." Behold what arguments are thrust into every corner, thereby to make man remember his sin; for all the toil of man, all the barrenness of the ground, and all the fruitlessness after all; What is it but the fruits of sin? Let not us then find fault with the weed, with the hotness, coldness, or barrenness of the soil; but by seeing these things, remember our sin, Cursed be the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... For them the fundamentally vital matters of life—the profoundly harassing questions of food, clothing, and shelter—are arranged and settled. What is there left to occupy their minds? Little but the idle emotions they manufacture and spread foglike over their true natures to hide the barrenness, the monotony. They fool with phrases about art or love or religion or charity—for none of those things can be vivid realities to those who are swathed and stupefied in a luxury they have not to take the least thought to provide ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... the barrenness of this desert land necessitated these wandering tribes to migrate to adjacent areas of greater fertility. To the north lay the fertile valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates and the coast of the Mediterranean Sea; to the west ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... human soul can any longer console, must feel tenderly toward his pallet and his earthen jug. When everything has been refused him by his fellows his obscure bed gives him sleep and his jug quenches his thirst. And even if it separates him from all the world without, the very barrenness of his walls stands between him and his executioners. The child who has been punished loves the pillow on which he cries; for when every one of an evening has hurt and scolded him, he finds consolation in the soul of the silent down. It is like a ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... Privilege by Licence from the Pope, which, if it could have been converted into a Prohibition, might have sav'd that Duke's Life: In regard their Country is wholly inland, and the River Tagus famous for its Poverty, or rather Barrenness; their Holy Father indulges the Natives with the Liberty, in lieu of that dangerous Eatable, of eating all Lent time the Inwards of Cattle. When I first heard this related, I imagin'd, that the Garbidge had been intended, but I was soon after ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... history of the soul of a feverish aspirant after the finality of intellectual power, the knowledge which should be for man the key to the universe; the tragedy of its failure, and the greater tragedy of its discovery of the barrenness of the effort, and the omission from its scheme of life of an element without which power ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... story tells itself Over and over; Eden must be lost If after it be won. He stands at fault, Not knowing at all how this should be—he feels The great bare barrenness o' the outside world. He thinks on Time and what it has to say; He thinks on God, but God has changed His hand, Sitting afar. And as the moon draws on To cover the day-king in his eclipse, And thin the last fine sickle of light, ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... meaning and quite void of reason. When he kindled a fire, he filled his house with smoke and illumined it not at all. He was a tree which seemed noble to those who gazed upon its leaves from afar, but to those who came nearer and examined it more closely was revealed its barrenness. When, therefore, I had come to this tree that I might pluck the fruit thereof, I discovered that it was indeed the fig tree which Our Lord cursed (Matthew xxi, 19; Mark xi, 13), or that ancient oak to which Lucan ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... places within their knowledge, tell you that all beyond them are sandy deserts, countries without inhabitants, or seas never navigated. Thus I might say that all prior to the commencement of these Memoirs was the barrenness of my infancy, when we can only be said to vegetate like plants, or live, like brutes, according to instinct, and not as human creatures, guided by reason. To those who had the direction of my earliest years I leave the task of relating the transactions ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... as shown in Figure 1.2; but to this whole subject I shall recur. No doubt pollen will occasionally be placed by insects or fall on the stigma of the same flower; and if cross-fertilisation fails, such self-fertilisation will be advantageous to the plant, as it will thus be saved from complete barrenness. But the advantage is not so great as might at first be thought, for the seedlings from illegitimate unions do not generally consist of both forms, but all belong to the parent form; they are, moreover, in some degree weakly in constitution, as will be shown in a future chapter. ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin
... is everything. It makes the difference between fertility and barrenness; it makes the difference between a cheerful and a melancholy landscape. As one travels north-eastward from Palapshwye to Bulawayo, and from Bulawayo to Fort Salisbury, one passes by degrees from an arid and almost rainless land to a land of showers and flowing waters. In Bechuanaland there ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... not written on her face! She could never have been a mother. Oh, you may smile, sir; but all my life I have been a reader of the human face; and there is in the aspect of some women the barrenness as of stone—no mother's throb in their bosom—no mother's kiss on ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... been unusually early, and the whole of April remarkably warm; on some occasions sultry to oppressiveness—as for instance on the morning of the tempest. They were now in the first days of the last week of that month, and every where a quick and luxuriant vegetation had succeeded to the stubborn barrenness and monotony of winter. Not a vestige of that dense mass of ice which, three months previously, had borne them over lake and river, was now to be seen. The sun danced joyously and sportively on the golden wave, and where recently towered the rugged surface of the ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... amulets formed of mistletoe were much worn; and in Sweden, a finger-ring made of its wood is an antidote against sickness. The mandrake, as a mystic plant, was extensively sold for medicinal purposes, and in Kent may be occasionally found kept to cure barrenness; [12] and it may be remembered that La Fontaine's fable, La Mandragore, turns upon its supposed power of producing children. How potent its effects were formerly held may be gathered from the very many allusions to its mystic properties in the literature of bygone years. ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... either fallen into the enemy's hands, or have been destroyed. From the time of Dr Franklin's sailing, until we arrived at this place, the ships of war at the mouth of the Delaware, and the interruption given the post, added to the barrenness of events, prevented us from writing when we had no particular commands from Congress ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... senseless strife, and two millions of lives were thrown away. At the close of the war, one half of the towns and the majestic castles of beautiful France were but heaps of smouldering ruins. All industry was paralyzed. The fields were abandoned to weeds and barrenness. The heart and the mind of the whole nation was thoroughly demoralized. Poverty, emaciation, and a semi-barbarism deformed ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... great old marble vase—leaning her hands on it, and her chin on her hands. She had some red carnations in her breast: their perfume came to me. She was surrounded by decay, dusty desolation, the barrenness of a poverty that is drearier than any of the poverty of the poor; but so might have looked Madama Lucrezia in those old days when ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... to the eyes of the traveller—such a fine country in the midst of so much barrenness; for he knew that most of the surrounding region was little better than a wild karoo. The whole of it to the north for hundreds of miles was a famous desert—the desert of Kalihari—and these cliffs ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... constructed an orrery, which exhibited the diurnal motions of the sun, moon, and five planets. Posidonius calculated the circumference of the earth to be two hundred and forty thousand stadia by a different method from Eratosthenes. The barrenness of discovery, from Hipparchus to Ptolemy, in spite of the patronage of the Ptolemies, was owing to the want of instruments for the accurate measure of time, like our clocks, to the imperfection of astronomical tables, and to the want of telescopes. Hence the great Greek ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... waters had for a season mingled with the mightier current of the divinely allotted destiny of the race, and had then gathered themselves apart and flowed off, to end as they had begun, in the stagnation and barrenness of the desert. Philosophers and men of letters, astronomers and chemists, atheists and republicans, had shown that they were only powerful to destroy, as the Goths and the Vandals had been. They had shown that they were impotent, as the Goths and the Vandals had been, in building ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... on rare occasions, a bit of a walk together when their ways chanced to coincide. Still more occasionally, a stray hour was spent at Mory's, or in Opdyke's room in Lawrence. As yet, a boyish delicacy had kept Opdyke from seeking to invade what he knew could not fail to be the barrenness of Scott ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... the Capitulaire de Baluse. By these, every sort of magic, enchantment, and witchcraft was forbidden; and the punishment of death decreed against those who in any way evoked the devil, compounded love-philters, afflicted either man or woman with barrenness, troubled the atmosphere, excited tempests, destroyed the fruits of the earth, dried up the milk of cows, or tormented their fellow-creatures with sores and diseases. All persons found guilty of exercising ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... in his Journey to the Western Islands, observes: 'Now and then we espied a little corn-field, which served to impress more strongly the general barrenness.' [W. H. S.] The remark referred to the shores of Loch Ness (p. 237 of volume viii of Johnson's ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... poets, hence the mighty fertility of each; hence the life and activity of this—the comparative torpor and barrenness of every other—species of poetry. To add to the pre-eminence of the art, the applauses of the many were sanctioned by the critical canons of the few. The drama was not only the most alluring form which the Divine Spirit could assume—but it was also deemed the loftiest and the purest; and when ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... rusty bacon, also with lime-twigs. But if cattle break in before the time, conclamatum est, especially goats, whose mouths and breath is poison to trees; they never thrive well after; and Varro affirms, if they but lick the olive-tree, they become immediately barren. And now we have mention'd barrenness, we do not reckon trees to be sterile, which do not yield a fruitful burden constantly every year (as juniper and some annotines do) no more than of pregnant women: Whilst that is to be accounted a fruitful tree which yields its product every second or third year, as the ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... is desecrated By weed and worm, left to the stormy play Of wind and beating snow, or renovated By more destructful hands: Time's worst decay Will wreathe its ruins with some loveliness, But these new Vandals can but make a rain-proof barrenness. ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... in (p. 256) 1817), composed of princes, high officials of state, ministers, judges, and other persons of influence designated by the crown. It may be consulted on legislative proposals, disputes as to the spheres of the various ministries, and other important matters. In barrenness of function, however, as in structure, it bears a close resemblance to-day ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... into the beauties of Latin letters with the aid of his eloquence and a strap. He wished to make a prodigy of him by the time he took up his classes again, and the blows grew more frequent. Besides this were the window grilles, which allowed glimpses of nothing but the opposite wall; the barrenness of the city, where not a green leaf was to be seen; the tiresome walks accompanying the priest through that port of dead waters that smelled of putrid mussels, and was entered by no other ships than a few sailing vessels that occasionally came for ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Longitude of 186 degrees 30 minutes West, by observations made of the Sun and Moon this morning. It is of a circular figure, and may be about 24 Leagues in Compass; the land is of a height sufficient to be seen 12 or 15 Leagues, and of a very broken, uneven Surface, and hath more the appearance of barrenness than fertility. Last night we saw smoke up it, and this morning some people, and therefore must be inhabited. Yesterday Lieutenant Gore, having the Morning Watch at the time we first saw this Island, thought he saw land bearing South-South-East and South-East by East; but I, who was upon Deck ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... my wife. I divorced her for barrenness, as I have a right to do according to our ancient law, and I took another woman to wife, her half-sister. This woman was jealous; she plagued me continually, and insulted her sister, so that I was forced to drive her away. After that ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... costs me more than appears on the surface. My irony when I think of myself tastes bitter on the palate. There was something barren in the clay from which God formed the Ploszowskis, since on that soil everything springs up and grows so luxuriously, yet produces no fruit. Truly, if with this barrenness, this powerlessness to act, I possessed the abilities of a genius, it would be a strange kind of genius,—a genius without portfolio, as there are ministers ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... to cruelty, and that of a Tito leading to treachery, with perfect distinctness. She could enter into the generous aspirations of a Savonarola, and the selfish desires of a Grandcourt, with equal perspicuity. Her readers do not feel less familiar with the dull barrenness of Casaubon than with the pregnant vivacity of Mrs. Poyser. In the study of the inward workings of the human mind, George Eliot is unsurpassed by any novelist. Thackeray alone can dispute her pre-eminence in this respect. However much the reader may recoil from the horror of Little Hetty's crime, ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... plumpness, however, is to be guarded against. Young women who are very fat are cold and prone to barrenness. ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... here find no regions cursed with irremediable barrenness, or blessed with spontaneous fecundity; no perpetual gloom, or unceasing sunshine; nor are the nations here described either devoid of all sense of humanity, or consummate in all private or social virtues. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... let this thought equalise all states. Let him do with us as with the waves of the sea, and whether he takes us to his bosom, or casts us upon the sand, that is, leaves us to our own barrenness, all is well. ...
— Letters of Madam Guyon • P. L. Upham
... and their special circumstances of difficulty, are here in view, as everywhere else in the Epistle. Tempted to "fall away," to give up the "hope set before them," to relapse to legalism, to bondage, to the desert, to a famine of the soul, to barrenness and death—here they are dealt with, in order to the more than prevention of the evil. And here, as ever, the remedy propounded is our Lord Jesus Christ, in His personal glory, in His majestic offices, in His unfathomable human sympathy, seen in perfect harmony ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... soothingly, "no doubt you will soon have food—this can't go on forever, this barrenness of the woods; I'm sorry for you, for once I had nothing to eat for days and days. That was ten seasons of the Calf-gathering since—I remember it well. The White Storm came in the early Cold Time, and buried the whole Range to the depth of my belly. We Buffalo did nothing but drift, ...
— The Outcasts • W. A. Fraser
... thing good Pray'd for, but often proves our woe, our bane? I prayed for children and thought barrenness In wedlock a reproach; I gain'd a son And such a son as all men hail'd me happy. Who would be now a father in my stead? Oh, wherefore did God grant me my request, And as a blessing with such pomp adorn'd ...
— How to become like Christ • Marcus Dods
... duration of time. In fact, it is from this habitual interplay of the three elements that most of the complexity of metre arises; as it is the failure to recognize this substitution which has given the older prosodies much of their false simplicity and their mechanical barrenness. ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... heavens were clouded; and occasional volleys of heavy thunder were mingled with the gusts of wind and rain which swept over the city, and which lashed the fair southern sea into a dark semblance of such angry waves as wear away northern coasts into bleak and rocky barrenness. It was disappointing weather to multitudes, for it was the feast-day of one of the numerous saints whose names fill the calendar of the Roman Church,—and a great religious procession had been organized to ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... reasons of this barrenness, see an essay on Two Studies in the South, in Professor Brander Matthews' Aspects ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... the midst of green fields of grass and wild flowers, in the softest climate of an early spring. These strong contrasts beat anything we had ever seen. Perhaps the contrast between the great snow mountain and the hot Death Valley was greater in point of temperature, but there the heat brought only barrenness, and of the two the snow seemed the more cheerful. Here the vegetation of all sorts was in full balance with the balmy air, and in comparison the snow seemed a strange neighbor. It was quite a contrast to our cold, windy March in Wisconsin, and we wonder if it is ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... conceivable sense of the word is it applicable, any more than a geometrician can be affirmed to compare a polygon to a point, because he generates the line out of the point. The writer attributes to a philosophy essentially vital the barrenness of the mechanic system, with which alone his imagination has been familiarised, and which, as hath been justly observed by a contemporary writer, is contradistinguished from the former principally in this respect; that demanding for every mode and act of existence ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... respects I am glad to remain longer, as it enables me to go over my stock of words, as well as my notes, with the chief, who is intelligent and it is a pleasure to find that his statements confirm those which have been made by the young men. The glamour which at first disguises the inherent barrenness of savage life has had time to pass away, and I see it in all its nakedness as a life not much raised above the necessities of animal existence, timid, monotonous, barren of good, dark, dull, "without hope, and without God in the world;" though at its lowest and worst considerably higher ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... had seen her. Janet suggested that she had taken a rat for a ghost, and they began to look and call in all quarters, till at last she appeared, looking rather white and scared at having lost herself, being bewildered by the voices and steps echoing here, there, and everywhere. The barrenness and uniformity did make it very easy to get lost, for even while they were talking, Joe was heard roaring to know where they were, nor would he stand still till they came up with him, but confused them and himself by running to meet them by ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... it produces more considerable Men, for all fine Sence, Wit, Wisdom, Breeding and Generosity (for the generality of the Nobility) than all other Nations can Boast; and the Fruitfulness of your Virtues sufficiently make amends for the Barrenness of your Soil: Which however cannot be incommode to your Lordship; since your Quality and the Veneration that the Commonalty naturally pay their Lords creates a flowing Plenty there . . . that makes you Happy. And to compleat your Happiness, my Lord, Heaven ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... On the one hand his expressive features and shapely figure went far towards creating a charm which his personal grace and courtesy of manner completed; on the other, his delicate tact screened the heartlessness of his sensualism, whilst his surface sympathies hid the barrenness of ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... defeated Colonel E. R. S. Canby at Valverde near Fort Craig. But his further advance was hindered by the barrenness of the country, by the complete destruction of all Union stores likely to fall into his hands, and by the fact that he was between two Federal forts when the battle ended. On the twenty-eighth of March there was a desperate fight in Apache ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... accomplished so well as to gain the special commendation of the King, and even the goodwill of the Highlanders themselves. He was five years among these northern hills, battling with ill-health, and restless under the intellectual barrenness of his surroundings. He felt his position to be in no way salutary, and wrote to his mother: "The fear of becoming a mere ruffian and of imbibing the tyrannical principles of an absolute commander, ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... feathery elegance did he find a law of conformity; each tree was a law unto itself, tall and strong and slender, youthful and buoyant, opening fond arms to the blue sky. The absence of the sap-greens of England conveyed at first an impression of barrenness, but that wore off, and the artistic side of his nature fed upon the soft harmonies of faded grass and subdued green foliage nursing misty purples in its shade. The ground was his bed and chair and table; never had he been so intimate with Mother Earth. ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... which direction he should take. "It is the shorter course, if the more dangerous. We will follow in the tracks of Jehan Alfonse. And I may want to touch at the barren lands of Labrador. Gold is ever found in regions of barrenness, and gold is needed ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... Rill and the Rearing Horse in the foreground. Le Neve stood and looked with open eyes of delight. It was the first beautiful view he had seen since he came to Cornwall; but this at least was beautiful, almost enough so to compensate for his first acute disappointment at the barrenness and gloom of ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... gardens, of exquisite cultivation; and above and below the city the villas of the rich; giving you altogether as delicious a nucleus for a broad circle of scenery as art and nature could create, and one sufficiently in contrast with the barrenness of the rocky circumference to enhance the charm, and content you with your position. Half way down the hill lies an old monastery, with a lovely garden walled in ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... of some fevers. Want of irritability after intoxication. II. 1. Natural actions catenated with daily habits of life. 2. With solar periods. Periods of sleep. Of evacuating the bowels. 3. Natural actions catenated with lunar periods. Menstruation. Venereal orgasm of animals. Barrenness. III. Periods of diseased animal actions from stated returns of nocturnal cold, from solar and lunar influence. Periods of diurnal fever, hectic fever, quotidian, tertian, quartan fever. Periods of gout, pleurisy, of fevers with arterial debility, and with arterial ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... the ovaries, their tubes, the womb, the testicles and their excretory ducts, as referred to under "Excess of venereal desire," are causes of barrenness. In this connection it may be said that the discharges consequent on calving are fatal to the vitality of semen introduced before these have ceased to flow; hence service too soon after calving, or that of a cow which has had the womb or genital passages injured so as to keep up ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... reduced to slavery and degradation. Babylonia to utter barrenness and desolation; but a different and still more incredible doom is pronounced in the Bible upon Judea and its people. The land was to be emptied of its people, and remain uncultivated, retaining ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... poor ye have always with you," he did not refer to dollars and cents only, but to that poverty of intellect, that barrenness of the moral nature which makes a human being a reproach and a terror to his kind. These we shall always have to deal with, to educate if we can, to constrain from overt acts of evil, and to protect ourselves from in all the ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... world government dined at three long tables on trestles, and down the middle of these tables Leblanc, in spite of the barrenness of his menu, had contrived to have a great multitude of beautiful roses. There was similar accommodation for the secretaries and attendants at a lower level down the mountain. The assembly dined as it had debated, in the open air, and ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... there was a patch of opening in the trees above. The grass was waving strangely in that area of moonlight. It moved, although there was no breeze to move it. And there was an almost sudden edge, beyond which the blades thinned out quickly to barrenness. ...
— Happy Ending • Fredric Brown
... have you a soul then? It is a grand place, where it has not been meddled with. I hired a man to drive me as far as any paths went, into those curving horns of land, on each side of Surrey to the south. The country is crazy with barrenness, and the sea mocks ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard |
