Free translatorFree translator
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Unfruitful   Listen
adjective
Unfruitful  adj.  Not producing fruit or offspring; unproductive; infertile; barren; sterile; as, an unfruitful tree or animal; unfruitful soil; an unfruitful life or effort.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Unfruitful" Quotes from Famous Books



... madman; and Cato, who measured the godliness of man by what they gained, would have held him accursed;—the madness that starves and is silent for an idea is an insanity, scouted by the world and the gods. For it is an insanity unfruitful; except to the future. And for the future who cares,—save ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... them the utter incompleteness of their unstable political and economical institutions, even when an indolent agriculture seems to tie them to the soil. Thus it often comes about that, in spite of abundantly provided and well-tended means of culture, their life is desultory, wasteful of power, unfruitful. This life has no inward consistency, no secure growth; it is not the life in which the germs of civilization first grew up to the grandeur in which we frequently find them at the beginnings of what we call history. It is full rather of fallings-away from civilization and dim memories ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... enviable mortals. Think of N—-'s existence. No other man could do what he is doing, and he does it with ease. Two, or at most three, hours' work a day—and that by no means every day—suffices to him. Like all who write, he has his unfruitful times, his mental worries, his disappointments, but these bear no proportion to the hours of happy and effective labour. Every time I see him he looks in better health, for of late years he has taken much more exercise, ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing

... meet the cares and worries that will fret the stream of the most prosperous course? Sacred words, learned in her childhood, recurred to her mind: "And the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things, entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful." Had not that been her own experience? Where were the fruits that might have been expected from "the word" in her?—the Christian influence and training which might have made her household what a ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar

... abide in; But on the apex most high of the Tree of Life in the Garden, Budding, unfolding, and falling, decaying and flowering ever, Flowering is set and decaying the transient blossom of Knowledge,— Flowering alone, and decaying, the needless unfruitful blossom. Or as the cypress-spires by the fair-flowing stream Hellespontine, Which from the mythical tomb of the godlike Protesilaus Rose sympathetic in grief to his love-lorn Laodamia, Evermore growing, and when in their growth to the prospect attaining, Over the low ...
— Amours de Voyage • Arthur Hugh Clough

... arranged. The Conference was formal and (although the press were not admitted) virtually public, each party speaking before the world, each watched and acclaimed by its supporters over the country. The eyes of South Africa were fixed on Bloemfontein, so that when the Conference came to its unfruitful end, the two parties were practically further off than before, and their failure to agree accentuated the bitterness both of the Transvaal Boers and of the English party in the Colonies. To the more extreme men among the latter this result was welcome. There was already a war party in the Colony, ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce

... an evil blight Ate up the stalks, and thistle reared his spines An idler in the fields; the crops die down; Upsprings instead a shaggy growth of burrs And caltrops; and amid the corn-fields trim Unfruitful darnel and wild oats have sway. Wherefore, unless thou shalt with ceaseless rake The weeds pursue, with shouting scare the birds, Prune with thy hook the dark field's matted shade, Pray down the showers, all vainly ...
— The Georgics • Virgil

... of Spain and Portugal was most unfruitful in its results to South America. A jealous eye guarded that great region, of which it can be so well ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton

... unlikely and unfruitful soil God can make His plants to grow and flourish. Where I am, and as I am, and with exactly the same surroundings as I now possess, God can bless me, and give me grace to serve and to glorify Him. If I do not become a flourishing plant, it is not my position ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton

... aside. The Physical, it is said, is too remote from the Spiritual. The Moral World may afford a basis for religious truth, but even this is often the baldest concession; while the appeal to the Physical universe is everywhere dismissed as, on the face of it, irrelevant and unfruitful. From the scientific side, again, nothing has been done to court a closer fellowship. Science has taken theology at its own estimate. It is a thing apart. The Spiritual World is not only a different world, but a different kind of world, a world arranged on a totally different ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond

... nor have thought such words as those of the satyr; but so far as our English climate and his unfruitful territory might permit, he put much of the poetry into action. Sluggish of intellect, and uncouth of demeanour, as the poor lad seemed, it was quite wonderful how quickly he discovered the several ways in which he might best please ...
— Jesse Cliffe • Mary Russell Mitford

... his noon was, 'press his sword firmly on the Fatherland's Altar,' and swear in sight of France: ah no; he, waning and setting ever since that hour, hangs now, disastrous, on the edge of the horizon; commanding one of those Three moulting Crane-flights of Armies, in a most suspected, unfruitful, uncomfortable manner! ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... seems to contradict the truth I have discover'd to thee, yet behooves Thou rest a little longer at the board, Ere the crude aliment, which thou hast taken, Digested fitly to nutrition turn. Open thy mind to what I now unfold, And give it inward keeping. Knowledge comes Of learning well retain'd, unfruitful else. "This sacrifice in essence of two things Consisteth; one is that, whereof 't is made, The covenant the other. For the last, It ne'er is cancell'd if not kept: and hence I spake erewhile so strictly of its force. ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... Jennoia." Sir Harris Nicolas first supplied the true reading. The mistake led persons well acquainted with Monmouthshire (among others, the Author of these Memoirs,) to make different inquiries as to the lordship of Jennoia: they will now no longer wonder at the unfruitful issue of their search.] ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler

... But, tainted by a coarse materialism, and aspiring to the impossible, that is to say, to found universal happiness upon political and economical measures, the "socialist" attempts of our time will remain unfruitful until they take as their rule the true spirit of Jesus, I mean absolute idealism—the principle that, in order to possess the ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan

... had no leaders, no parliamentary reports, and very little indeed, in any shape, that could be termed political news. In these matters, its conductor had to say, with Canning's knife-grinder: 'Story! God bless you, I have none to tell, sir.' Not that the political world was unfruitful in affairs of moment; it was a time of no small change, interest, and excitement. In the period referred to, the Grenville ministry had endeavoured to burden the American colonies, by means of the stamp-duties, with ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various

... human, with the truth itself, which is divine. In its identification of statement and truth it demands credence instead of faith. Men have confounded doctrine and dogma; they have been taught so to do. They have felt the history of Christian doctrine to be an unfruitful and uninteresting theme. But the history of Christian thought would seek to set forth the series of interpretations put, by successive generations, upon the greatest of all human experiences, the experience of the communion ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore

... great questions were handled by great men could not be either an unfruitful or an uninteresting one. It might be unfruitful, in the sense of reaping no great harvest of results; and it might be uninteresting, in respect of not having much to show upon the surface, and exhibiting no great variety of active life. But much good fruit for the ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... attraction in two such moving bodies out at sea, which may help accident to bring them into collision? Thoughts, too, arise (the voice never silent all the while, but marvellously suggestive) of the gulf below; of the strange, unfruitful mountain ranges and deep valleys over which we are passing; of monstrous fish midway; of the ship's suddenly altering her course on her own account, and with a wild plunge settling down, and making THAT voyage with a crew of dead discoverers. Now, too, one recalls an ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... brought Jean presents, and thus laden with riches he again set out. On arriving at the town where grew the unfruitful pear-tree, he was warmly welcomed by the prince, who at once asked if he had forgotten to question the ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko

... acquaintance with Job Thornberry was not an unfruitful incident in the life of Endymion. Thornberry was a man of original mind and singular energy; and, although of extreme views on commercial subjects, all his conclusions were founded on extensive and various information, combined with no inconsiderable ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli

... radiance for others, the light will be my own defence. Light always scares away the vermin. Lift up a stone in the meadow, let in the light, and see how a hundred secret things will scurry away. And light in the soul scares away "the unfruitful works of darkness"; they cannot dwell with the light. Light repels the evil one; it acts upon him like burning flame. Yes, we are well protected when we are clothed ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett

... little holding would do very well as a garden, and the stock which he could keep on the common would add greatly to his comfort. As things now are, he must look chiefly to the land both for his subsistence and his rent, and, with an unfruitful soil and an unfriendly climate, he is often on ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various

... and dust the troops struggled on, and at last, as we came in full view of the city, the air was rent with such cheers as only the brave men, who had fought so long and so nobly for that city could give. Since that time our history has been blessedly unfruitful in stirring events. We remained in Richmond for a few days, and were then ordered to Petersburg; from here we went to Point Lookout, Md., where we remained until the 25th Corps was ordered to Texas. We embarked for Texas on the 10th day of June 1865, arriving at Brazos ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... Relations, and even their Parents, to inherit their Dominions or Possessions, which after all, for the most part, were only a small beggarly, wild, and uncultivated District; ragged Rocks and Precipices; barren Mountains; or boggy, unfruitful, and ...
— An Enquiry into the Truth of the Tradition, Concerning the - Discovery of America, by Prince Madog ab Owen Gwynedd, about the Year, 1170 • John Williams

... darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light; (for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, and righteousness, and truth;) proving what is acceptable unto the Lord. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them: for it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret. But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth make manifest is light. Wherefore he saith, ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England

... been unfruitful, however. Naturally predisposed, as I have said, my mind ran continually on my subject. I imagined various formations for developing to the best effect the powers of steamships, and sudden changes to be instituted as the moment of collision approached, ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... mischievous powers of darkness are to prevail more in our days, than they did in those that are past and gone! 'Tis because that men by sinning over again the sins of the former days, have a Fellowship with all those unfruitful works of darkness. As 'twas said in Matth. 23.36. All these things shall come upon this generation; so, the men of the last Generation, will find themselves involved in the gulf of all that went before them. Of Sinners 'tis said, They heap up wrath; and the ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather

... past the coast of Erinn, eastwards, until he stopped in Inbher-Domnand. He found no fish there, and cursed it. He went to Inis-Patrick: and he sent to Inbher-Nainge, where nothing was found for him. He cursed this also, and both are unfruitful. Then it was that Benen came into his company. Soon after, Patrick slept awhile, and all the odoriferous flowers that the youth could find, he would put them into the cleric's bosom. Patrick's ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various

... thy day, there has appeared but one, Who has the fame of Italy redeemed: Too good for his vile age, he stands alone; One of the fierce Allobroges, Whose manly virtue was derived Direct from heavenly powers, Not from this dry, unfruitful earth of ours; Whence he alone, unarmed,— O matchless courage!—from the stage, Did war upon the ruthless tyrants wage; The only war, the only weapon left, Against the crimes and follies of the age. First, and alone, he took the field: None followed him; all else were cowards tame, Lost to all ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi

... shore, which grew at each step wilder and more desolate. Hanging rocks and hoar precipices overlooked the tideless ocean; black caverns yawned; and for ever, among the sea-worn recesses, murmured and dashed the unfruitful waters. Now my way was almost barred by an abrupt promontory, now rendered nearly impracticable by fragments fallen from the cliff. Evening was at hand, when, seaward, arose, as if on the waving of a wizard's wand, a murky web of clouds, blotting the late azure sky, and darkening and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... doubt, to Queen Christina of Sweden. This great woman was wise enough not to regard the crown of Sweden as a rare and precious gem; she chose a simple life of obscurity and poverty in beautiful Italy, rather than a throne in cold and unfruitful Sweden. This act alone establishes her superiority. Yes, sister, you are right. Christina was the greater woman, even because she scorned to be ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach

... were already part of the second version of 1797-98. But upon this matter the records are mute. A careful examination of the correspondence published by Lord Brabourne in 1884 only reveals two definite references to Sense and Sensibility and these are absolutely unfruitful in suggestion. In April 1811 she speaks of having corrected two sheets of 'S and S,' which she has scarcely a hope of getting out in the following June; and in September, an extract from the diary of ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... is claimed. It manifestly contains a large impregnation of iron, and is no doubt a good tonic, beyond which its virtues are of course mythical. It is held by the surrounding populace to be an infallible remedy in the instance of unfruitful women, and is the constant resort of that class from far and near. These chapels at Guadalupe are decorated in the crudest and most inartistic manner, entirely unworthy of such belief as is professed in the sacredness of the place, or of the virtues ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou

... would be bold, by virtue of his intellect, was able to live in some noble and distinguished way—he passed his time with banalities that were half sordid and half humorous. These things had their place. Youth might find them not unfruitful of experience. They degraded ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann

... tire you with a description of this unfruitful country, where I must lead you over their hills all brown with heath, or their valleys scarce able to feed a rabbit..., Every part of the country presents the same dismal landscape. No grove or brook lend their music to cheer the stranger,"—Goldsmith to ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... twelve or fifteen hundred feet, and at its base huge baboons could be seen sporting, quite heedless of an onlooking army. Straight across what looked like an almost level plain, which, nevertheless, was seamed by many a deep defile and scarred by the unfruitful toil of many a gold-seeker, lay another great range of hills, with range rising beyond range, but with the town of Barberton, which I visited twenty months later, lying like a tiny white patch at the foot of the nearest range, some twenty miles away. To the right this plateau looked ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry

... to 'read' were still unfruitful. For one thing, the stress and excitement of the Whitelaw examinations had wearied him; it was characteristic of the educational system in which he had become involved that studious effort should be called for immediately after that frenzy of college competition. He ought now to have ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... the duchess to her daughter, "a mother must of course see life more coolly than you can see it. Love is not the end, but the means, of the Family. Do not imitate that poor Baronne de Macumer. Excessive passion is unfruitful and deadly. And remember, God sends us afflictions with knowledge of our needs. Now that Athenais' marriage is arranged, I can give all my thoughts to you. In fact, I have already talked of this delicate crisis in your life with your father and the Duc de Chaulieu, and also with d'Ajuda; we shall ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac

... have opportunity; you must wash the saints' feet. You will be blest with grace to your soul if you do these things as unto the Lord. You must give of your means to God's cause freely and cheerfully; you must diligently follow every good work; and you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge and ...
— Food for the Lambs; or, Helps for Young Christians • Charles Ebert Orr

... sow their lives to yield A glorious crop in lives to be: Who turn to England's harvest-field The unfruitful furrows of ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... acquainted with the laws of light and beauty. There can be no good portrait without shading." No more can there be a good Salvationist without trial and sorrow and storm. There might, perhaps, remain a stunted and unfruitful infant life—but a man in Christ Jesus, a Soldier of the Cross, a leader of God's people, without tribulation there can never be. Patience, experience, faith, hope, love, if they do not actually grow from tribulations, are helped ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth

... tutor, states in his diary, January 18, 1825: "During the afternoon walk, the political relations of the Prince to the Imperial family and to the rest of the world were discussed." Count Neipperg advised him to study the French language, and his reply was: "This advice has not fallen on an unfruitful or an ungrateful soil. Every imaginable motive inspires me with the desire to perfect myself in, and to overcome the difficulties of, a language which at the present moment forms the most essential part of my studies. It is the language in which my father ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman

... word is ignored, then the Angelic Spirits are gathered together by the four winds, and God sends forth an Exterminating Angel to change the face of the refractory earth, which in the immensity of this universe is to Him what an unfruitful seed is to Nature. Approaching the globe, this Exterminating Angel, borne by a comet, causes the planet to turn upon its axis, and the lands lately covered by the seas reappear, adorned in freshness and obedient to the laws proclaimed in Genesis; ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac

... not by birth, at least by race and breeding, there was nothing distinctly southern about his peculiar genius, and in his wandering life he was associated as much with Philadelphia and New York as with Baltimore and Richmond. The conditions which had made the southern colonies unfruitful in literary and educational works before the Revolution continued to act down to the time of the civil war. Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin in the closing years of the last century gave extension to ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... that could be called, on the whole, happy: a day in which they have had glimpses of reality; a day in which they feel satisfaction. (That was, he felt, a generous allowance. ) Very well, then, that leaves 3,650,000 people whose day has been unfruitful: spent in uncongenial work, or in sorrow, suffering, and talking nonsense. This city, then, in one day, has wasted 10,000 years, or 100 centuries. One hundred centuries squandered in a day! It made him ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley

... 2: Even before the earth was accursed, thorns and thistles had been produced, either virtually or actually. But they were not produced in punishment of man; as though the earth, which he tilled to gain his food, produced unfruitful and noxious plants. Hence it is said: "Shall it bring forth ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... party spent another hour. No one was inclined to speak, and Fink's occasional jests fell on unfruitful ground. Anton went down to keep the people in order, but something soon impelled him to return to the battlements, and watch the forest with the rest. At last, after a longer silence than usual, Fink, throwing away his cigar, observed, "It is getting late, and we pay our guests ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... future we find finality to progress clearly indicated. The hypothesis points to a time when there will be no more progressive change but a mere sequence of unfruitful events, such as the eternal uniform motion of a mass of matter no longer gaining or losing heat in an ether possessed of a uniform distribution of energy in all its parts. Or, again, if the ether absorb the energy of material motion, this vast and ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly

... sentence is very obscure in the Assyrian text, and has been translated in a variety of different ways. It seems to contain a comparison between Apsu and Mummu-Tiamat on the one hand, and the reeds and clumps of rushes so common in Chaldaea on the other; the two divinities remain inert and unfruitful, like water-plants which have not ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... was her country—for a good stretch, further than Milly's little feet could carry her. They stood a moment up there and looked around them. April was coming on, but the ploughed land at their feet was still bare; the earth waited. On that side of the valley she was delicately unfruitful, spent with rearing the fine, thin beauty of the woods. But, down below, the valley ran over with young grass and poured it to the river in wave after wave, till the last surge of green rounded over the water's edge. Rain had fallen in the night, and the river had risen; it rested ...
— The Flaw in the Crystal • May Sinclair

... came to the town wherein stood the unfruitful tree, and there too the watchman wanted an answer. So he told him what he had heard from the devil: "Kill the mouse which is gnawing at its root, and it will again bear golden apples." Then the watchman thanked him, and gave him ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers

... has been so unfruitful that many thousands have died of hunger; and yet if at the end of that year a survey was made of the granaries of all the rich men that have hoarded up the corn, it would be found that there was enough ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... morning of the 3rd, they thought they heard the report of two guns in the SE which they answered; but they were not returned. They were now in that part of the country which Wilson was acquainted with; but it was an unfruitful spot, and badly calculated for travellers in their situation, producing nothing but a few roots and grub worms. They must even here have perished, had it not been for the great exertions made by Wilson, who kept up their spirits by assurances of being near Prospect Hill; which place, after much ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins

... a national one could make no definition, while the particular synods and clerical personages are so filled with prejudices and so bound by mutual engagements of long date as to make one fear an unfruitful issue. We are occupied upon this point in our assembly of Holland to devise some compromise and to discover by what means these difficulties may be brought into a state ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... favour gain: Of things unchangeable the song divine; Yet loves the just. When men have left their homes To seek another, it hath turned their steps Aright, as with the Tyrians; (10) and raised The hearts of nations to confront their foe, As prove the waves of Salamis: (11) when earth Hath been unfruitful, or polluted air Has plagued mankind, this utterance benign Hath raised their hopes and pointed to the end. No gift from heaven's high gods so great as this Our centuries have lost, since Delphi's ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan

... generous madnesses belong to men of more poetic temper. But still, in spite of the deadening influences of officialism and relations with a court, De Maistre had far too vigorous and active a character to subside without resistance into the unfruitful ways of obstruction and social complacency. It is one of the most certain marks, we may be sure, of a superior spirit, that the impulses earliest awakened by its first fresh contact with the facts of the outer world are those which ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley

... while: for when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, by and by he is offended. He also that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth the word; and the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful. But he that received seed into the good ground is he that heareth the word, and understandeth it; which also beareth fruit, and bringeth forth, some an hundredfold, some sixty, some ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... about saving society rather than the individual, and now he is reputed to be a hotel-keeper, ministering to the material comforts of his fellow-men. Oh, what a fall was there! But only an example of multitudes who have become near-sighted and unfruitful through a so-called new evangelism that is not new. While giving good works their proper and important place, let us never forget that to save the individual soul for eternity through the gospel is the chief work of the church, ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz

... good people, in whose opinion there was not much difference between him and all other vicious people in Judaea. They would recount further that he had long ago deserted his wife, who was living in poverty and misery, striving to eke out a living from the unfruitful patch of land which constituted his estate. He had wandered for many years aimlessly among the people, and had even gone from one sea to the other,—no mean distance,—and everywhere he lied and grimaced, and would make some discovery with his thievish eye, and then suddenly disappear, ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev

... The Apostle forbids us to have anything in common with the "unfruitful works" of the Gentiles, but not with their useful works. Now the adoration of images must be numbered among the unfruitful works in two respects. First, because some of the Gentiles used to adore the images ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... some doubt as to the nature of the office he was to fill and his capacity for filling it—but he accepted, and by wire. He immediately set out from the little country town where he maintained (and was scarcely maintained by) a somnolent and unfruitful office of surveying and map-drawing. Before departing, he had looked up under the I's, S's and H's in the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" what information and preparation toward his official duties that those weighty ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry

... should grow up in the head Christ, from whom the whole body maketh increase "according to the effectual working [of the Spirit] in it," Eph. v. 1, 16. Now, if the union between the Father and Christ our head cannot be dissolved, and cannot be barren and unfruitful, then certainly the Spirit of the Father which is given to Christ beyond measure, must effectually work in every member, till it bring them to "the unity of the faith," and, "to the measure of the perfect man, which is the fulness of Christ." So then every believing soul is one with the Father ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... love, misapplied, is a curse. It is surely sometimes a severe form of insanity. If so, those two were insane, just waiting for the pressure to be removed from the brain. And, theirs was a pitiful and unfruitful case ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)

... 'verb of existence.' Would not the distinction which Plato by the mouth of Parmenides makes between 'One is one' and 'One has being' have saved us from this and many similar confusions? We see again that a long period in the history of philosophy was a barren tract, not uncultivated, but unfruitful, because there was no inquiry into the relation of language and thought, and the metaphysical imagination was incapable of supplying the missing link between words and things. The famous dispute between Nominalists and ...
— Parmenides • Plato

... misty ideas. You deserve to be happy, since, through it all, you still think of me, no less than I think of you, in my monotonous life, which, though it lacks color, is yet not empty, and, if uneventful, is not unfruitful. God bless ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac

... arrested before they are fully matured remain as in the male or female prior to puberty, and are barren. Bulls with both testicles retained within the abdomen may go through the form of serving a cow, but the service is unfruitful; the spermatozoa are not fully elaborated. So I have examined a heifer with a properly formed but very small womb and an extremely narrow vagina and vulva, the walls of which were very muscular, that could never be made to conceive. A post-mortem examination would ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... years replenished the public coffers until they have again begun to feel the vicissitude of a decline. To produce these alternations of fullness and exhaustion the relative operation of abundant or unfruitful seasons, the regulations of foreign governments, political revolutions, the prosperous or decaying condition of manufactures, commercial speculations, and many other causes, not always to be traced, variously combine. We have found the alternate ...
— A Compilation of Messages and Letters of the Presidents - 2nd section (of 3) of Volume 2: John Quincy Adams • Editor: James D. Richardson

... pollen that will make them fruitful. This is more or less true of all our fruits. Therefore it is not best generally to plant one variety of fruit by itself. Not knowing this some orchardists have planted large blocks of a single variety of fruit which has been unfruitful till some other varieties have been planted ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich

... I perceive that we are unfruitful ground, for we are letting the Word of God be smothered by the inordinate affections and desires of the world, and are walking in the way of its luxuries and pleasures, studying to please our fellow-beings rather than our Creator. And there is a more wretched thing yet, for our own evil-doing ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa

... assuming new forms, although a human conception was the basis of its religious ideas. The Chinese and Semitic races were the first to rise to the conception of an absolute first principle, but in both cases the conception was more or less unfruitful. ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli

... life, I again set myself to consider the means of obtaining a basis for the supply of the necessities of that life. Once again I took up the threads of my negotiations with Hartel about the Nibelungen, but I was obliged to put them down as unfruitful, and little calculated to end in any success for this work. I complained of this to Liszt, and openly told him how glad I should be if he would bring this to the ears of the Grand Duke of Weimar (who, from what my friend told me, wished himself still to be regarded ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner

... authors, together with the Holy Scriptures and the writings of the Church Fathers, produce the broadest intelligence. All of these have the same purpose, and all are necessary to human enlightenment. Petrarch broke down the unfruitful methods of the scholastics, and laid the foundations upon which modern education is based; namely, intellectual freedom, ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley

... appear that the plantation was abandoned and that its survivors may have been relocated at Hog Island where the adventurers had an interest. This was an unfruitful end after the expenditure of some 6,000 pounds sterling. The net result in 1625 was some cattle, "land belonging to Southampton Hundred containeing 100000 acres" and a tract with some tenants on ...
— The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624 • Charles E. Hatch

... his son had unnaturally constructed of the Netherlands, Milan, and the two Sicilies, and their distant possessions in the East and West Indies, was under Philip III. and Philip IV. fast verging to decay. Swollen to a sudden greatness by unfruitful gold, this power was now sinking under a visible decline, neglecting, as it did, agriculture, the natural support of states. The conquests in the West Indies had reduced Spain itself to poverty, while they enriched the markets of Europe; the bankers of Antwerp, Venice, ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.

... cultivation of literature. Mencius tells us how the princes had made away with many of the records of antiquity, from which their own usurpations and innovations might have been condemned [3]. Still the times were not unfruitful, either in scholars or statesmen, to whom the ways and monuments of antiquity were dear, and the space from the rise of the Ch'in dynasty to the death of Confucius was not very great. It only amounted to 258 years. Between these two periods Mencius stands as ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge

... Sun had given his child, First of mankind for multitude of flocks. The Sun himself gave increase day by day To his child's herds: whatever diseases spoil The farmer, came not there; his kine increased In multitude and value year by year: None cast her young, or bare unfruitful males. Three hundred bulls, white-pasterned, crumple-horned, Ranged amid these, and eke two hundred roans, Sires of a race to be: and twelve besides Herded amongst them, sacred to the Sun. Their skin was white as swansdown, and they moved Like kings amid ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus

... The doctor's marriages, I remembered to have heard, had been unfruitful; and this added perplexity to my distress. But I was alone, as he had said, alone in that dark land; the thought of escape, of any equal marriage, was already enough to revive in me some dawn of hope; and, in what words I know not, I accepted ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... offerkniv (-en, -ar), sacrificial knife. offerlund (-en, -ar), sacrificial grove. offerfrest (-en, -er), sacrificial priest. offersten (-en, -ar), sacrificial stone. offerng|a (-an, -or), sacrificial incense. offr|a (-ade, -at), to sacrifice. ofruktbar, sterile, unfruitful. ofta, often. ofrd (-en), misfortune, disaster. ofrsonlig, unrelenting, unforgiving. ofrsont, unpropitiated. ohmnad, unavenged. ohrd, unheard, unheeded. oknd, unknown. om, about, if, concerning, for, during, in, at. ombord, ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner

... grateful for the return of Crassus as his colleague than for his own election. They did not, however, continue in this harmony after entering on their office, but they differed on almost every subject, and quarrelled about everything, and by their disputes rendered their consulship unfruitful in all political measures, and ineffectual: however, Crassus made a great festival in honour of Hercules, and feasted the people at ten thousand tables, and gave them an allowance of corn for three months. It was at the close of their consulship, when ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... Paris, and while he was appearing at the theatres and in all public places, people had the impudence to spread the report that M. le Duc d'Orleans had had him killed! M. le Duc d'Orleans and his enemies have been equally indefatigable; the latter in the blackest villainies, the Prince in the most unfruitful clemency, to call it by no ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... complete. And I say that the English reliance on our religious organizations and on their ideas of human perfection just as they stand, is like our reliance on freedom, on muscular Christianity, on population, on coal, on wealth,—mere belief in machinery, and unfruitful; and that it is wholesomely counteracted by culture, bent on seeing things as they are, and on drawing the human race onwards to a ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... premised, that the session 1851 was considered by politicians a peculiarly barren and unfruitful one, as the Great Exhibition, in conjunction with ministerial difficulties, and the monster debates on the Ecclesiastical Titles' Bill, tended greatly to impede the ordinary business of the Houses, and gave an air of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various

... There had been no example of three successive generations on the throne; only three instances of sons who succeeded their fathers. The marriages of the Caesars (notwithstanding the permission, and the frequent practice of divorces) were generally unfruitful.] ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... all the R. Strigosus species, it tends to sucker immoderately. If this disposition is rigorously checked by hoe and cultivator, it is productive; otherwise, the bearing canes are choked and rendered comparatively unfruitful. This variety is waning before the Cuthbert—a larger and much ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe

... Now, Satan has a work on earth. It is this spirit which "worketh in the children of disobedience." Will we, then, work with him in his desire to destroy our own souls? Will we have "fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness," and take part with that wicked one in his dread work of opposing the kingdom of light, and advancing the kingdom of darkness in the world? Will we assist him in tempting others to evil,—in entangling souls more ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod

... he feels he cannot help it; it never occurs to him to give a reason for or to justify his pursuits. Another subsequently utilizes his results, and applies them to the benefit of the race. Meanwhile, however, it may happen that the yet unapplied and unfruitful results evoke a sneer, and the question: "Cui bono?" the only answer to which question seems to be: "No one is wise enough to tell beforehand what gigantic developments may not spring ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various

... us stretches wealth of land, A boundless wealth of virgin soil As yet unfruitful and untilled! Our willing workmen, strong and skilled Within our cities idle stand, And cry ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson

... beginner must look upon himself as making a garden, wherein our Lord may take His delight, but in a soil unfruitful, and abounding in weeds. His Majesty roots up the weeds, and has to plant good herbs. Let us, then, take for granted that this is already done when a soul is determined to give itself to prayer, and has begun the practice of it. We have, then, as good gardeners, by the help of God, to see that ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila

... in his arms and sheathe her in sleep? Ha! He needed putting to sleep himself—poor Gerald. That was all he needed. What did he do, he made the burden for her greater, the burden of her sleep was the more intolerable, when he was there. He was an added weariness upon her unripening nights, her unfruitful slumbers. Perhaps he got some repose from her. Perhaps he did. Perhaps this was what he was always dogging her for, like a child that is famished, crying for the breast. Perhaps this was the secret of his passion, his forever unquenched desire for her—that he ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... pains, and prayer; Some charity the friar made him share, And now and then remission would direct; The widow too he never would neglect, But, all the consolation in his pow'r, Bestowed upon her ev'ry leisure hour, His tender cares unfruitful were not long; Beyond his hopes the soil proved good and strong; In short our Pater Abbas justly feared, To make him father many ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine

... poet and singer, worthy of the old religious heroic times, had been given him: and he fell in an age, not of heroism and religion, but of scepticism, selfishness and triviality, when true nobleness was little understood, and its place supplied by a hollow, dissocial, altogether barren and unfruitful principle of pride. The influences of that age, his open, kind, susceptible nature, to say nothing of his highly untoward situation, made it more than usually difficult for him to repel or resist: the better spirit that was within ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various

... ploughing began, and when mankind enjoyed all kinds of plenty without having to earn their bread "by the sweat of their brow." This delightful period, however, could not last for ever, and the earth became barren, and continued unfruitful till Ceres came and taught the art of sowing, with several other useful inventions. The first whom she taught to till the ground was Triptolemus, who communicated his instructions to his countrymen the Athenians. Thence the art was carried into Achaia, and thence ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... house, Inland with pines beside it; Some peach trees, with unfruitful boughs, A well, with weeds to hide it: No flowers, or only such as rise ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... thy bald head become For the gathering birds. Disobedient Akahakaloa; Thou appearest as a warrior Offshoot of Kiipueaua. Defeat has come upon you in the Day of battle, O Aikanaka! You require transplanting— Yes, a nursery of warriors— You do, indeed. Unfruitful of warriors ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff

... be filled with persons that flocked from all parts into Attica for security of living, and that most of the country was barren and unfruitful, and that traders at sea import nothing to those that could give them nothing in exchange, he turned his citizens to trade, and made a law that no son should be obliged to relieve a father who had not bred him up to any calling. It is true, Lycurgus, having a city ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... struggles upon the very threshold of the church. By strong alliances they kept at bay their feudal lords, and fettered the ecclesiastical power with the yoke of a justice, meagre, indeed, and sadly unfruitful, but still ominous of a better day. Within the alabaster vase of despotism, frail, yet old as ambition, the lamp of freedom had long burned dimly: now its flames were licking, with serpent-like tongues, the enclosure so long ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various

... epochs of history are made by the agency of some unknown power without any aid from man. These addresses have never wearied in impressing upon you that absolutely nothing can help you but yourselves, and they find it necessary to repeat this to the last moment. Rain and dew, fruitful or unfruitful years, may indeed be made by a power which is unknown to us and is not under our control; but only men themselves—and absolutely no power outside them—give to each epoch its particular stamp. Only when they are all equally blind and ignorant do they fall the victims of this hidden power, though ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... years become very widely recognised. Folk-lore has recently received a large amount of attention, and the thought and labour bestowed upon the subject have been rewarded by results which prove that its investigators have entered upon no unfruitful, however long ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous

... kirkyard and went out to George Square to call upon the minister of Greyfriars auld kirk. The errand was unfruitful, and he was back in ten minutes, to spend the evening alone, without even the consolation of Bobby's company, for the little dog was unhappy outside the kirkyard after sunset. And he took an unsettling thought to bed ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson

... settler the locality was anything but attractive. In antiquity itself an opinion was expressed that the first body of immigrant cultivators could scarce have spontaneously resorted in search of a suitable settlement to that unhealthy and unfruitful spot in a region otherwise so highly favoured, and that it must have been necessity, or rather some special motive, which led to the establishment of a city there. Even the legend betrays its sense of the strangeness of the fact: the story of the foundation of Rome ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... had come upon him to walk beside the sea; to listen to the roll and boom of long, grey breakers; to gaze on an unfruitful, desolate wilderness of waters; and to forget in those sights all that he could forget, and if he could not forget then to remember all that he ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens

... Naville has returned to Europe. His excavations at Jmei el-Amdd, the supposed site of Mendes, have been unfruitful, and he has fared no better at Tel el-Baghliyeh.—Athenaeum ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various

... island, or the greatest but one, among the Hebrides. Of the soil, I have already given some account: it is generally barren, but some spots are not wholly unfruitful. The gardens have apples and pears, cherries, strawberries, raspberries, currants, and gooseberries, but all the fruit, that I have seen, is small. They attempt to sow nothing but oats and barley. Oats constitute the bread-corn of the place. ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... stronger power. And now, what does this history teach? What does it teach every succeeding generation? That in all centuries wisdom and mildness, as well as rashness and violence, are the same. The former are a blessing to the nations, full of light and warmth; the latter only lead to unfruitful reactions. Whatever the Reformers did and said for the liberty of the Gospel has remained and borne rich fruits. All attempts on the other hand, to help this liberty to a triumph, in the way of violence, have only wrought injury. ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger

... Osiris; The Wisdom of Hellas names thee Men's Heavenly Horn; The Samothracians call thee august Adama; The Haemonians, Korybas; The Phrygians name thee Papa sometimes; At times again Dead, or God, or Unfruitful, or Aipolos; Or Green Reaped Wheat-ear; Or the Fruitful that ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston

... is, beyond my expectations and wishes, a sudden appointment to what is at this moment the most important post in our diplomatic service; I have not sought it; I must assume that the Lord wished it, and I cannot withdraw, although I foresee that it will be an unfruitful and a thorny office, in which, with the best intentions, I shall forfeit the good opinion of many people. But it would be cowardly to decline. I cannot give you today further particulars as to our plans, how we shall meet, what will ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... remote antiquity, which are even now taught in our modern schools as Euclid demonstrated them, since they cannot be improved—is a purely deductive science. The scholastic philosophy, even if it was barren and unfruitful in leading to new truths, yet confirmed what was valuable in the old systems, and by the severity of its logic and its dialectical subtleties trained the European mind for the reception of the message of Luther and Bacon; and this was based on deductions, never wrong ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord

... restraint you are free, and no danger you see, Till the sound of the trumpet comes in, Crying 'Woe to your lust—it must go to the dust, With the unfruitful pleasures of sin.' ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff

... he was struggling amid such cruel and unfruitful reflections as these that the devil of anxiety whispered in ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet

... which Rajah Nehal Singh exercised his partial authority was a tract of unfruitful land extending over about two hundred square miles and sparely inhabited by a branch of the Aryan race which through countless generations had kept itself curiously aloof from its neighbors. The ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie



Words linked to "Unfruitful" :   infertile, sterile, stillborn, abortive, unsuccessful, childless, fruitful, unfertile



Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org