With respect to the word "sterile" as used for male or polleniferous flowers, it has always offended my ears dreadfully; on the same principle that it would to hear a potent stallion, ram or bull called sterile, because they did not bear, as well as beget, young.英文原著 · 《More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume I》
I suppose that I am a very slow thinker, for you would be surprised at the number of years it took me to see clearly what some of the problems were which had to be solved, such as the necessity of the principle of divergence of character, the extinction of intermediate varieties, on a continuous area, with graduated conditions; the double problem of sterile first crosses and sterile hybrids, etc., etc.英文原著 · 《The Life and Letters-1》
...You ask (I see) why we do not have monstrosities in higher animals; but when they live they are almost always sterile (even giants and dwarfs are GENERALLY sterile), and we do not know that Harvey's monster would have bred. There is I believe only one case on record of a peloric flower being fertile, and I cannot remember whether this reproduced itself.英文原著 · 《The Life and Letters-2》
Tell these things to the next man you hear talking about George III or the Alabama. You may meet him in front of a bulletin board, or in a drawing-room. He is amongst us everywhere, in the street and in the house. He may be a paid propagandist or merely a silly ignorant puppet. But whatever he is, he will not find much to say in response, unless it be vain, sterile chatter. True come-back will fail him as it failed that man by the bulletin board who asked, "What is England doing, anyhow?" and his neighbor answered, "Her fleet's keeping the Kaiser out of your front yard."英文原著 · 《A Straight Deal》
Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere. In freedom it gives itself unreservedly, abundantly, completely. All the laws on the statutes, all the courts in the universe, cannot tear it from the soil, once love has taken root. If, however, the soil is sterile, how can marriage make it bear fruit? It is like the last desperate struggle of fleeting life against death.英文原著 · 《Anarchism and Other Essays》
Good luck with your composing. I'm sure a sterile old fuck like yourself is still capable of something completely unmemorable.电影 · 《Cloud Atlas (2012)》