barren quotes

It seems to me a barren thing this Conservatisman unhappy cross-breed, the mule of politics that engenders nothing.

- Benjamin, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield Disraeli
  Coningsby, bk.3, ch.5.

Speech is often barren; but silence also does not necessarily brood over a full nest.Your still fowl, blinking at youwithout remark, mayall thewhilebesittingonone addled egg; and when it takes to cackling will have nothing to announce but that addled delusion.

- George pseudonym of  MaryAnn Evans Eliot
  Felix Holt, ch.15.

Chaste to her husband, frank to all beside, A teeming mistress, but a barren bride.

- Alexander Pope
  Epistles to Several Persons,'To a Lady', l.71^2.

I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba, and cry,'tis all barren.

- Laurence Sterne
  A SentimentalJourney,'In the Street. Calais'.

Be she barren, be she old, Be she slut, or be she scold, Eat my oysters, and lie near her, She'll be fruitful, never fear her.

-Jonathan Swift
  'Verses Made for theWomenWho Cry Oysters'.

For the crown of our life as it closes Is darkness, the fruit thereof dust; No thorns go as deep as a rose's, And love is more cruel than lust. Time turns the old days to derision, Our loves into corpses or wives; And marriage and death and division Make barren our lives.

- Algernon Charles Swinburne
  Poems and Ballads,'Dolores', stanza 20.