Serpentine Barren

Famous quotes containing the words serpentine and/or barren:

“I lay awake awhile, watching the ascent of the sparks through the firs, and sometimes their descent in half-extinguished cinders on my blanket. They were as interesting as fireworks, going up in endless, successive crowds, each after an explosion, in an eager, serpentine course, some to five or six rods above the tree-tops before they went out.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

“The prayers I make will then be sweet indeed,
If thou the spirit give by which I pray;
My unassisted heart is barren clay,
Which of its native self can nothing feed;”
—Michelangelo Buonarroti (1474–1564)