"Stagnation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ruling and managing themselves (the ultimate aim of political and all other development)—to gradually reduce the fact of governing to its minimum, and to subject all its staffs and their doings to the telescopes and microscopes of committees and parties—and greatest of all, to afford (not stagnation and obedient content, which went well enough with the feudalism and ecclesiasticism of the antique and medieval world, but) a vast and sane and recurrent ebb and tide action for those floods of the great deep that have henceforth palpably burst forever their old bounds—seem never to have enter'd ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... one year to-day since I came back to America, though it seems much longer. It will soon be time to prepare for my trip to the South Sea Islands. The stagnation ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... "anxious inquirers" got little satisfaction from him—he seemed taciturn by nature, if not sullen—and they came back to where the rest of us stood on the hurricane deck, muttering discontentedly, "Gold at 46. No news." It seemed very odd—such a complete stagnation of affairs, military and civil—but we went to dinner in spite of our disappointment. Before we rose from table the truth began to ooze out. One or two New York papers, that had slipped on board with the pilot, were more communicative than he would ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... has visited us during the last month. We do not mean to call this an eruption, which would scarcely be appropriate,—inasmuch as the characteristic of it was not a preternatural activity, but rather a preternatural stagnation and paralysis; but there is certainly a striking similarity in the contrasts presented by the two pictures just painted, and the contrasts presented in the condition of the commercial world as it is now, and as it was only a few weeks since. Then all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... suddenly risen out of complete obscurity into a position in which they overshadowed all other things, and left home politics in stagnation." [Footnote: Speech at Notting Hill, August, 1876.] These complications were destined to bring Mr. Gladstone back into an activity not merely unimpaired, but redoubled, and to shake the power of Mr. Disraeli to ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... it was an evil, resulted from the political stagnation in a country where one dominant permanent issue overshadowed all others. There being no Unionist candidature possible in the majority of constituencies, any contest was deprecated—and from some points of view rightly—as leading to possible faction between Nationalists. ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... usefulness. One consequence which was predicted by its opponents, however, has not been found to follow upon the introduction of the system. It was said that capital would be withdrawn from the country, and that poverty and stagnation would result. No such result has followed up to this time. New Zealand, with its less than a million inhabitants, is to-day looked on as one of the soundest dependencies of the British empire; it continues to draw to it from the mother country ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... In a large degree the first condition is subordinated to the second. "Everything to the sewer" is recognized by the most competent hygienists as the best system, but only on the condition that water shall be abundant and that no stagnation of the material shall be allowed. These problems, which were for a long time studied by M. Durand-Claye, and to which he devoted himself until his premature death unfortunately took him from us, have received the attention ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... whereas any subject might have become a freeman in earlier times for an old noble, or about 6s. 8d.; [Footnote: 12 Henry VII. ch. vi.] and the scandal was so great that the fine was fixed at 10 marks, or L6 l3s. 4d., by statute. During the stagnation of the Middle Ages few traces of such commercial enterprises are to be found, but with the sixteenth century Europe awoke to a new life and thrilled with a new energy. Trade shared in the impulse. In 1554 Philip and ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... Hallams. After a thousand years of stagnation one ought to welcome a ripple of life. A Methodist isn't asleep. I have often felt inclined to drop into their chapel as I passed it. I wonder how it would feel to be awake soul and body ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... lamp of a man's life: brain, blood, and breath. Press the brain a little, its light goes out, followed by both the others. Stop the heart a minute and out go all three of the wicks. Choke the air out of the lungs, and presently the fluid ceases to supply the other centres of flame, and all is soon stagnation, cold, and darkness. The "tripod of life" a French physiologist called these three organs. It is all clear enough which leg of the tripod is going to break down here. I could tell you exactly what the difficulty ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... sole vindication of these charges. From this arrangement Lord Stanley departed, and in peremptory terms prohibited a spade to be moved but on payment from the colonial treasury. Thus at a season of commercial stagnation the benefit of convict labor was withdrawn, while the charges for police and gaols rose to one-third of the entire revenue of the colony, and in two years and a-half a ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... should use every means possible to keep her imagination alive and luxuriant, and never, on any account, permit the exigencies of her task to repress it. The success of her pupils depends upon her, and she should strive against stagnation as she would against death. The passing out, the evaporation of imagination is an insidious process, and when it is gone she is but a barren fig-tree. If her imagination is strong and healthy she cannot have ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... inflamed tissue are first those of congestion, distention of the blood vessels, and exudation of the fluid of the blood into the surrounding fibers, with, however, a more nearly complete stagnation of the blood; fibrin, or lymph, a plastic substance, is thrown out as well, and the cells, which we have seen to be living organisms in themselves, no longer carried in the current of the blood, migrate from the vessels and, finding proper nutriment, proliferate or multiply with ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... come to a close. Many changes had occurred in Spring Street Station. In consequence of the cholera, and the consequent stagnation of business, large numbers of the people went into the country. But notwithstanding this depletion, such had been the number of accessions, one hundred and seven in all, that I was able to report one hundred and fifty-seven members and sixty-three probationers, ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... Fleda," said Constance, in her usual manner, "you have lived up there among the solitudes till you have got morbid ideas of life, which it makes me melancholy to observe. I am very much afraid they verge towards stagnation." ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... indifferent. The basis of the monarchy is destroyed, for the magistrate is no longer a paternal ruler residing amongst and mildly swaying his children, but a marauder, who arrives no man knows whence, and who departs no one knows whither. The consequence is universal stagnation; no great undertakings are accomplished; and the works and labors of former dynasties are allowed to fall into decay. The mandarins say to themselves: 'Why should we undertake what we can never accomplish? Why should we sow that others may reap?'... ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... me to say, that if you could put four millions of laboring people in the Free States, for a winter or during commercial distresses and the stagnation of every kind of business, in a position where, while they were still active and useful, a single thought or care about their sustenance would not visit them, you would be deemed a philanthropist ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... Betty, and the despotism of old madam, during the next month. Indeed, Mistress Betty was so reverent, so charitable, so kind, so gentle as well as blithe under depressing influences, and so witty under stagnation, that it would have been hard to have lived in the same house with her and have been her enemy: she was so easily gratified, so easily interested; she could suit herself to so many phases of this marvellous human nature. She listened to ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... over all competitors. But now comes the farther question: If fixity is an invariable ingredient in early civilisations, how then did any civilisation become unfixed? No doubt most civilisations stuck where they first were; no doubt we see now why stagnation is the rule of the world, and why progress is the very rare exception; but we do not learn what it is which has caused progress in these few cases, or the absence of what it is which has denied ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... industrious classes; the king and the people; the orthodox and religious reformers. When the victory on either side was so complete as to put an end to the strife, and no other conflict took its place, first stagnation followed, and then decay. The ascendancy of the numerical majority is less unjust, and, on the whole, less mischievous than many others, but it is attended with the very same kind of dangers, and ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... otherwise, the passion for power might find as ready an entrance to as many hearts as are taken by the love of gain, or the dislike to labor. We may find in this thought a partial explanation of the fact, that the thrift of the non-slaveholding States contrasted with the stagnation at the South, is so powerless an argument addressed to the slaveholders there; for you have not only to satisfy avarice of the superior profitableness of free labor; you have still to contend with the lust of dominion—the passion ...
— The Growth of Thought - As Affecting the Progress of Society • William Withington
... that proved both perplexing and vexatious. It may be said here that the times were not very propitious for asking even the most just and reasonable Parliamentary grants. The usual recurring sufferings from insufficient harvests and from stagnation of trade were depressing the mind of the country. Parliament was called on to act on the occasion of the Queen's marriage, and the House was not only divided into two hostile parties, the hostility had been envenomed ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... aqueduct carried upon a high level across low ground, often injures the adjacent soil, and is prejudicial to the health of the neighboring population; and it has been observed in Switzerland and elsewhere, that fevers have been produced by the stagnation of the water in excavations from which earth had been taken to ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... floor. Thus extended at his ease, and sheltered in his place of observation behind the window, D'Artagnan seemed as if he had ceased to be a soldier, as if he were no longer an officer belonging to the palace, but was, on the contrary, a quiet, easy-going citizen in a state of stagnation between his dinner and supper, or between his supper and his bed; one of those strong, ossified brains, which have no more room for a single idea, so fiercely does animal matter keep watch at the doors of intelligence, narrowly ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... travelled in this slumbrous old country of yours I've seen considerable stagnation, but this licks the worst I've struck yet. Your town pretty well fathoms the depths. Are the folks here ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... in violent contrast, wreathed with fanciful fruits and foliage, and Cupids, and creatures of a now extinct species. The rainbow had been the painter's palette; genius his brush; fancy-gone-mad his attendant; the total temporary stagnation of redskin faculties his object, and ecstasy his general state of mind, when he executed this magnificent chef d'oeuvre in the centre of the ceiling of the reception hall ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... natural secretions take place, and the physical effluvia be thrown off by a free exercise of voice and limbs: but do not keep him dumb and motionless as a statue—his blood and his intellect both in a state of stagnation, and his spirit below zero. Do not send him in quest of knowledge alone, but let him have cheerful companionship on his way; for, depend upon it, that the man who expects too much either in discipline or morals ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... stencil-plate chivalry of the lyrics of the ubiquitous F.E. Weatherby and John Oxenford, the song-status of England can blame a deal of its stagnation. It is not often that these word-wringers have enticed American composers. One of the few victims is John Hyatt Brewer, who was born in Brooklyn, in 1856, and has ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... brought stagnation to the people by restraining every man who had ambition to move forward and improve his prospects in life. The whole village regards as conceited a young man of the outcastes who seeks to rise in life; they soon bring him low. Progress is impossible ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... the intense blue sky is seen in glimpses. The sun here and there pierces through the arching foliage, and the greens of the foliage glisten brighter still. The whole atmosphere of the spot is one of reticence and reserve. Yet quiet though it be and restful though it be, there is no sense of stagnation. The pool, though deep and still, is vividly alive. Its waters are continually being renewed. And the forest, though not a leaf moves, is, we know, straining with all the energy of life for food and light, for air and moisture. So by this jewel of a pool in its verdant setting we have a sense ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... be asked. Is there not something in the constitution of things which determines epochs of stagnation and vigour, some force against which man's understanding and will are impotent? Is it not true that in the revolutions of ages there are floods and ebbs of the sciences, which flourish now and then decline, and that when they ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... published completely analogous observations on the human breast for the mast cells. Under the influence of stagnation of the milk he saw an invasion of the gland tissue by typical ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... the stagnation of Abbazia, and the martyrdom which he endured from the gout, Burton was very glad to get back to Trieste, which was reached on March 5th. When his pain was acute he could not refrain from groaning, ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... from availing themselves of the opportunities afforded them of acquiring the sciences, arts, and civilization of nations with whom they have come in contact." Caste, "the great petrifier," we are again told, is the real cause of the stagnation that everywhere abounds. Caste, again, "upholds immutable distinctions by arbitrary and absurd laws, which are enforced by irresponsible authority, and maintains a standard of right and wrong entirely ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... question of Drawing-Rooms likewise, which are of such importance to the trades-people of London. It would be painful for the Queen to think that she should be the cause of disappointment and loss to this class of her subjects, particularly at this moment of commercial stagnation. The Queen conceives that it would be the right thing that the same principle laid down for the Levees should be followed with regard to Drawing-Rooms, the Prince holding them for her. The Queen is anxious to have ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... and improvement vs. mechanical { inactivity; { A constantly renewed soil vs. an exhausted one; { A great navy and flourishing commerce vs. general { commercial apathy; { Great industrial prosperity vs. industrial { stagnation; { Greater variety and versatility in life vs. a narrow ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Individual stagnation means public pollution. The man who arms himself with a "rake," ever reaching out after something without giving an equivalent, instead of championing the "hoe," determined to exercise his faculties in the interests ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given
... voices," which was the cause of the nullity of that body from 1820 to 1848, and will now enable Austria, should Prussia and her confederates recognise the Diet, to condemn Germany to a further life of stagnation or new revolution. ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... give them their true activity. All is stagnation now. I would make her life one thrill of ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... for, whether you know it or not, namely, something that will give you ever new powers and acquirements; something which will ensure your closer and ever closer approach to an absolute object of joy and truth; something that will ensure you against stagnation and guarantee unceasing progress. Everything else gets worn out, sooner or later; if not in this world, then in another. There is one course on which a man can enter with the certainty that there is no end to it, that it will open out, and out, and out as he advances—with ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... stagnation of the lower orders could easily be understood. Behind them were the many centuries during which idleness had been encouraged, vanity flattered, and nerveless life willingly accepted. When they were neither masons, nor carpenters, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... the splendid new outburst of activity for which he was preparing. These years seemed to be a dead time, not only in Bjoernson's life, but also in the general intellectual life of the Scandinavian countries. Dr. Brandes thus describes the feelings of a thoughtful observer during that period of stagnation. "In the North one had the feeling of being shut off from the intellectual life of the time. We were sitting with closed doors, a few brains struggling fruitlessly with the problem of how to get them opened... With whole schools of foreign literature the cultivated Dane had almost no acquaintance; ...
— Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson • William Morton Payne
... part of California had become of a sudden a Tom Tiddler's ground, where the youngest and simplest could pick up gold and silver. We had seen our county drunk with prosperity —drunk and disorderly. And we had seen also these same revellers chastened by low prices, dry seasons, and commercial stagnation. But we had yet to witness the crowning sobering effect ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... real duties. However, now that the tyrant feeling of my mind was removed, I endeavoured to shake off the apathy it had produced, and return to the various occupations and businesses of life. Whatever could divert me from my own dark memories, or give a momentary motion to the stagnation of my mind, I grasped at with the fondness and eagerness of a child. Thus, you found me surrounding myself with luxuries which palled upon my taste the instant that their novelty had passed: now striving for the vanity of literary ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... disarmed soul, were lost in the gloom above the plane of light in which his feet were planted. He suffered from a trouble with which she had nothing to do. She had no general conception of the conditions of the existence he had offered to her. Drawn into its peculiar stagnation she remained unrelated to it because of ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... its deep waters are troubled. There may, indeed, be happiness in those occasional 'sabbaths of the soul,' when calmness, like a canopy, overshadows it, and the mind, for a brief season, eddies quietly round and round, instead of sweeping onward; but none can exist in the long and weary stagnation of feeling, the silent, the monotonous, neverending calm, broken by neither hope ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... again for the cause of this progress in thought and stagnation in practice. In India, creed and practice go their own way; thinking is independent of acting. Listen to the naive standpoint assumed in the Confession or Covenant of a Theistic Association established ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... inflation rates, and a drop in unemployment to below 5%. Long-term problems include inadequate investment in economic infrastructure, rapidly rising medical costs of an aging population, sizable trade deficits, and stagnation of family income in the lower economic groups. The outlook for 2000 is clouded by the continued economic problems of Japan, Russia, Indonesia, Brazil, and many other countries. Domestically, the potentially most serious problem is the exuberant level of stock prices in relation ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... which first putrefies by stagnation, and then sends up noxious vapours and fills the atmosphere with death. Fly, therefore, from idleness, as the certain parent both of guilt and of ruin. And under idleness I include, not mere inaction only, but all that circle of trifling occupations in which too many saunter away ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... rapid effects of this degeneracy, compared with the fast-growing vigor of the people of the low lands. The fact of the Frisons having, on one occasion, near the year 47 of our era, beaten a whole army of Romans, had confirmed their character for intrepidity. But the long stagnation produced in these remote countries by the colossal weight of the empire was broken, about the year 250, by an irruption of Germans or Salian Franks, who, passing the Rhine and the Meuse, established themselves in ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... were numerous, industrious, accustomed for centuries to a state of comparative civil freedom, and to a lively foreign trade, by which their minds were saved from the stagnation of bigotry. It was natural that they should begin to generalize, and to pass from the concrete images presented them in the Flemish monasteries to the abstract character of Rome itself. The Flemish, above all their other qualities, were a commercial nation. Commerce ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... events which had been so long preparing had been retarded; for Greifenstein was a man of habit in everything, incapable of weariness in the performance of what he considered to be his duty, and Clara's really strong health might have carried her through half a lifetime of exasperating stagnation. Indeed, if things altered at all after the conversation about her state, the change was for the better. A fictitious calm descended upon the old house, and a certain gentleness found its way into the relations of the couple which was agreeable to both. ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... sense of winter quiet that makes a stranger soon feel at home in Oldport, while the prospective stir of next summer precludes all feeling of stagnation. Commonly, in quiet places, one suffers from the knowledge that everybody would prefer to be unquiet; but nobody has any such longing here. Doubtless there are aged persons who deplore the good old times when the Oldport ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... metres—hexameters, pentameters, alcaics, and the like; with, here and there, a dialogue out of an imaginary tragedy, or a translation from some Italian or German poet. This taste grew by degrees, to be a rare and subtle pleasure to me. My rhymes became my companions, and when the interval of stagnation came, I was restless and lonely till it ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... and streams particularly are dangerous sources of water supply. We have now got rid of the idea that running water purifies itself. It is standing water which purifies itself, if anything, for in stagnation there is much more chance for the disease germs to die out. Better than either a pond or stream, unless you can carry out a rather careful exploration of their surroundings, is ground water from a well or spring; though that ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... children of wisdom. To a healthy boy who can manage to keep his place in the crowd without undue straining, there is a tonic effect in the absence of leisure; and the sense of being a lively part in a great and ever-moving body is an admirable enemy to stagnation of mind. It is only the special case, the variant from the type, who suffers when he is included in masses that move by rule; and if we are inclined to admit the dangerous premise that any suffering can be good for a ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... galvanically active the moment they were punched up, and fell flat the moment the punching was remitted. I did all I could for them, but, having Daniel in tow, dared not sail too near the edge of the Doldrums, lest he should drop into sympathetic stagnation and be taken preternaturally bashful, with his sails all aback, just as I wanted to carry him gallantly into action with some clipper-built cruiser of a nice young lady. Finally, Lu bethought herself of that ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... between." Here we are, at Norfolk. How different is this same Norfolk from the other eastern ports I have visited!—there all is bustle, activity, and increase,—here all is dreariness, desolation, and stagnation. It is, without exception, the most uninteresting town I ever set foot in; the only thing that gives it a semblance of vitality is its proximity to the dockyard, and the consequent appearance of officers in uniform; but in spite of this ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... same holds good of the violin—new works conceived only from the musical point of view bring about the stagnation of technical discovery, the invention of new passages, of novel harmonic wealth of combination is not encouraged. And a violinist owes it to himself to exploit the great possibilities of his own instrument. I have tried to find new technical ways and means of expression ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... I will," answers her lover. And then there is a complete stagnation of the power of speech on both sides for the space of five minutes, during which the clock ticking steadily on at the far end of the corridor has things entirely its ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... and breathes in Russia being antique, there is no appreciable antiquity. The new school, therefore—even if amateur politics were allowable in Russia, which they are not, as a large population of exiles in Siberia can testify—has no materials to work upon. Stagnation is the political law, and "Young Russia" dies in its babyhood for want of sustenance. What goes by the name of civilization, is no advance in wealth, morals, or social happiness. It is merely a ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... no half-trampled thicket, with broken pottery and shreds of tin lying about? no dead carcass, or dirty cottage, with miserable wife and greedy children? When I was a child, I knew a lovely place that I could not half enjoy, because, although hidden from my view, an ugly stagnation, half mud, half water, lay in a certain spot below me. When I had to pass it, I used to creep by with a kind of dull terror, mingled with hopeless disgust, and I have never got ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... bathing, fresh air,—all these are vital also; whatever turns the flow and thrill of life into wholesome channels, abolishes indolence, stagnation, morbidity, and fosters abundance of bodily life,—such is the regimen ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... secured for himself the re-nomination for the Presidency. But he had great obstacles to contend with. The financial condition of the country, deranged by the absence of the controlling power of the United States Bank, grew worse and worse. There was a total stagnation of business throughout the Union, and from every section came tidings of embarrassment, bankruptcy, and ruin. There were no available funds for the purchase of Western produce and its transportation to the Atlantic markets, so it remained in the hands of the farmers, ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... some new beginners in Kilmacolm in spite of all its spiritual stagnation, and the older people are full of anxiety lest those new beginners should not be rightly directed. 'Tell them for one thing,' says Rutherford in reply, 'to dig deep while they are yet among their foundations. Tell them that a sick night for sin is not so common either among ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... announced a week ago without that fact attached], the King dreadfully ill-treated Wilhelmina in bed [not in bed at all]; whole Castle (SCHLOSS or Palace) was alarmed; Guard turned out,"— to clear away the crowd, as we perceive. Not properly a crowd, such was not permissible there: but a stagnation of the passers-by would naturally ensue on that esplanade; till the Guard turned out, and indicated with emphasis, "Move on!" Dickens hears farther that "the Queen fares no better;"—such is the state of ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... waters succeed each other, drive each other forward, and flow on without interruption; these waters, obliged to roll over an unequal bed, encounter at intervals those obstacles which prevent their stagnation; they never cease to undulate; sometimes they recoil, then again rush forward, thus continuing to run with more or less velocity, until they are restored to ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... articulation. When in such position they draw the diaphragm down heavily on vena cava at about the fourth lumbar. Then you have cause for intermittent pulse, as the heart finds no passage of blood through the prolapsed diaphragm which is also stopping the vena cava and producing universal stagnation of blood and other fluids in all organs and glands below the diaphragm. Thus you have a beginning for abnormal growths of womb, kidneys and all lymphatics of liver, kidneys, spleen, pancreas, ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... Babylonian and Assyrian rulers, in permitting each center to remain undisturbed, and in freely recognizing the religious independence of each, prevented the Babylonian and Assyrian religion from falling into the state of stagnation which would otherwise have ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... down to the shore and dug clams, some fine afternoon; or Mrs. Dashiell lent them a new book; or Mr. Dashiell preached an extraordinary sermon. It was a very slight ebb and flow of the tide of time; however, it served to keep everything from stagnation. Then suddenly, at the end of July, came Mrs. Wishart's summons to Lois to join her on her way to the Isles of Shoals. "I shall go in about a week," the letter ran; "and I want you to meet me at the Shampuashuh station; for I shall go that way to Boston. I cannot stop, but I will ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... even for a day, an hour, in this horrible, deathly stagnation, she did not know. At last, walking on blindly through the night, she came to the termination of the Thornhurst estate. Was she to go back and lull herself into the stupor of patience?—to be kissed and wept over, and preached resignation to?—left ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... and wise, Doctor. Have you any cure for a man with sufficient money and no immediate profession to prevent stagnation?" ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... a cracker to their skirts, in the shape of a tender passion, or some other whim, and so sets them bouncing in their own obese and clumsy way, to the trouble of others as well as their own discomfort. It is a hard thing, but so it is; the comfort of absolute stagnation is nowhere permitted us. And such, so multifarious and intricate our own mutual dependencies, that it is next to impossible to marry a wife, or to take a house for the summer at Brighton, or to accomplish any other entirely simple, good-humoured, and selfish act without affecting, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... sketching the character of Alec D'Uberville, explains the eclipse of his faith by saying, "Reason had had nothing to do with his conversion, and the drop of logic that Tess had let fall into the sea of his enthusiasm served to chill its effervescence to stagnation." ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... sure, before this equalitarian ideal could be embodied in a social program it had to await the coming of the modern age with its open doors, its freer movements of thought and life, its belief in progress, its machinery of change. But even in the stagnation of the intervening centuries the old Stoic-Christian ideal never was utterly forgotten. Lactantius, a Christian writer of the fourth century, said that God, who creates and inspires men, "willed that all should be equal." [3] Gregory the Great, at the end of the sixth century, said that ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... air which we breathe that fills our lungs and gives us life and light; it is that which refreshes us if pure or sinks us into stagnation if it be foul. Let me for a while inhale the breath of an invigorating literature. Sit down, Mr. Mackinnon; I have a question that I must put to you." And then she succeeded in carrying him off into a corner. As far as I could see he went willingly enough at that time, though ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... systems of government, in relation to the general prosperity, there is no room for doubt and uncertainty. The exclusive policy of the Dutch, the obstacles opposed to commerce, when not carried on under the national flag, have produced a lethargy and stagnation, with which the marvellous growth of free and untrammelled trade at Singapore offers a striking contrast. The Dutch have but a slender hold over the Celebes. The physical configuration of the island is singularly straggling. To this circumstance it is probably due that the population is divided, ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... to be the popular ones in the Lake Forest train. It was crowded with young business men, bound out of town for their holiday. Not a few were going to the country club at Lake Forest. In this time of business stagnation they were cultivating the new game of golf. There was a general air of blithe relief when the train pulled out of the yards, and the dirty, sultry, restless city was left behind. "Blamed fools to strike now," ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... the use of stimulating liquors and heated rooms, which frequently occasion milk fevers and abscesses in the breast. The nipple is sometimes so sore, that the mother is sometimes obliged to refuse the breast, and a stagnation takes place, which is accompanied with ulcerations and fever. To prevent these dangerous affections, the young mother should carefully protrude the nipple between her fingers to make it more prominent, and cover it with a hollow nutmeg several weeks previous to her delivery. ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... playing under good conditions indoors. The game of tennis is worthy of having all types of play within reach of its devotees. Why should a player drop his sport in October because the weather is cold? Indoor play during the winter means an improvement from season to season. Lack of it is practically stagnation ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... indispensable help. This influence of Rashi's contains mixed elements of good and evil. In some measure he created the fortune of Midrashic exegesis, and he is in a slight degree responsible for the relative stagnation of Biblical as compared with ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... suggested, immune from the fret and fever of secret vices and passions, lifted by winged sandals into a region where soul and body were in perfect accord, and where, because of that, there was peace; not a peace of stagnation, but a peace living and intense. But that part of his nature had led him even now instinctively back to the feet of Rosamund. And he revolted ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... mountain wilderness, the companionship of such a spirit and mind was a necessity. Unconsciously Sammy had supplied the one thing lacking, and by her demands upon his thought had kept the shepherd from mental stagnation and morbid brooding. Day after day she had grown into his life—his intellectual and spiritual child, and though she had dropped the rude speech of the native, she persisted still in calling him by his backwoods title, "Dad." But the little word had ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... the stations are the least satisfactory part of the programme. There are five of them along our north-west strip of desert; all more or less hopeless to get at. We play general post among them every two or three years, to avoid stagnation and keep the men fit. Just now my battery's quartered at Dera Ghazee Khan, a God-forsaken place, right down by Scindh. I don't know how I have the cheek to think ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... friend to higher and more ambitious efforts in poetry. Accomplished in the elegant arts of drawing and painting, Scadlock began the study of classical literature and the modern languages. A general stagnation of trade, which threw him out of employment, checked his aspirations in learning. After an interval attended with some privations, he heard of a professional opening at Perth, which he proceeded to occupy. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... three minutes when they heard him coming down the companionway in great haste. Somehow, everyone of the others seemed to understand that the terrible stagnation was ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... adopted of allowing the Company to make some of their incomplete purchases good by additional payments. But this, which might have brought about a tolerable adjustment in 1840, led to little but delays and recriminations in 1843. After three years of stagnation the Company was as exasperated and impecunious as the settlers. The positions of Colonel Wakefield in Wellington, and his brother and fellow-agent, Arthur Wakefield, in Nelson, were almost unbearable. It is hardly to be wondered at that the latter, in June, 1843, committed the very great ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... to tell her that one cannot combine music and a social career, and that one cannot really buy happiness with sin; I thought that perhaps she might be grateful for the warning that in cutting herself off from the great deepening experience of woman she was consigning herself to stagnation and wretchedness from which no money could ever purchase her ransom; I thought that possibly she did not see that this man knew nothing of her preciousness and had no high thoughts about her beauty. That was the ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... in stagnation: You are equal in right to obey: You are brothers in bonds, and the nation Is your mother—whose sons are her prey. Those others your brothers, Who toil not, weave, nor till, Refuse you and use you As ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... more recent times Mill has emphasized the possibility that democracy may govern badly and oppressively; Maine has warned us that the dominance of the commonalty may end in the triumph of the mediocre, and a more than Chinese stagnation; Carlyle has denounced democracy as powerful for destruction, but impotent for building up, as helpless in the face of great emergencies, as incapable of choosing good leaders; Lecky has demonstrated the danger of the corruption of the democracy by evil politicians; Belloc has shown ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... sun's rays while an eclipse is on. They lack energy. They will not kindle the paper after they have passed through the lens. This kind of attention means mental dawdling. It means inefficiency. For the individual it means defeat in life's battles; for the nation it means mediocrity and stagnation. ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... little short of them in the extent and productiveness of their dominions. They were the second power in the world for nearly three centuries, and formed a counterpoise to Rome which greatly checked Roman decline, and, by forcing the Empire to exert itself, prevented stagnation ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... there was that in the condition of the heath itself which resembled protracted and halting dubiousness. It was the quality of the repose appertaining to the scene. This was not the repose of actual stagnation, but the apparent repose of incredible slowness. A condition of healthy life so nearly resembling the torpor of death is a noticeable thing of its sort; to exhibit the inertness of the desert, and at the same ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... The baby of the family, a publisher by profession, he had some years before, when business was at full tide, scented out the stagnation which, indeed, had not yet come, but which ultimately, as all agreed, was bound to set in, and, selling his share in a firm engaged mainly in the production of religious books, had invested the quite conspicuous proceeds in three per cent. consols. By this act he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Rupert, with sudden fire. "We hope to be ordered to India next year. That wouldn't be absolute stagnation, anyhow. I ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... same abuse. The usual consequences ensued: the good specie was hoarded or exported; base metal was coined at home, or imported from abroad in great abundance; the common people, who received their wages in it, could not purchase commodities at the usual rates: a universal diffidence and stagnation of commerce took place; and loud complaints were heard in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... side to the theory of nature which we must not ignore. If in this theory government is the marplot and authority the source of oppression and stagnation, where are the springs of progress and civilization? Clearly, in the action of individuals. The more the individual receives free scope for the play of his faculties, the more rapidly will society ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... the physical world: and these are the purpose visible in Creation, the effects produced by Revelation. Nevertheless a demand for more physical evidence; but the physical cannot be allowed to overshadow the spiritual. Dangers to believers from leaning this way: superstition; blindness; stagnation. The guarantee for spiritual perceptiveness: to take Jesus as the Lord of the conscience, the ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... artillery, who were surprised at their stagnation, quickly availed themselves of the permission to fight which was just given them. They very soon crowned the heights. Eighty pieces of cannon were discharged at once. The Russian cavalry was first broken by that brazen line, and obliged to take ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... a poor enough little place. Any people who made it count left it long ago. But even here," she went on, "even in its stagnation, one can find some of the things we care for in our country, some of the things we ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... sport that is greatest of all, the one that used to be part of the life of every northern boy, and which is being revived in popularity after years of stagnation, is ice boating. With the aid of old skates, pieces of board and an old sheet or a small bit of canvas, any boy possessed of ordinary mechanical genius may make an ice boat. The frame of the boat should be made something in ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... I speak as a friend, and you will not take my candour amiss. New times require new manners, and if you would maintain your great position you must move with the march of events, and abandon your old-fashioned ways. Do not mistake stagnation for stability, but learn a lesson even from these hated Athenians, who have risen to their present pitch of greatness by adapting themselves to every new need as ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... the South will not be an attractive section for capital. It will, therefore, be considered the duty of business men to secure protection to the Negroes lest their ill-treatment force them to migrate to the extent of bringing about a stagnation of their business. ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... development. The race has not come so far toward its maturity without a mighty struggle. The long course of preparation for the present higher condition has had many interruptions and obstructions. There have been dark ages of stagnation and threatened defeat, and there have been ages of hope and advancement. Through all this history the light of the gospel, though often obscured, has never been extinguished, and every step of progress that has been made in our condition is to be traced directly to that light. We have not ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... wrong without a murmur, only let me see thee sometimes. Chide, reproach, scorn me, if thou wilt—I will teach myself to bear it. And is not even thy bitterest tone sweeter to me than the music of the most artful lute? In thy silence the world seems to stand still—a stagnation curdles up the veins of the earth—there is no earth, no life, without the light of thy countenance and the melody ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... to set his copy. He may bespatter you with ink, he may hit you in the eye, but he writes a magnificent hand. It was nevertheless true that at present poor Roderick gave unprecedented tokens of moral stagnation, and as for genius being held by the precarious tenure he had sketched, Rowland was at a loss to see whence he could borrow the authority to contradict him. He sighed to himself, and wished that his companion had a trifle more of little Sam Singleton's ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... great changes have taken place in the well-being of the particular households. Some have greatly prospered, while others have become impoverished. That is one of the most characteristic consequences of the Emancipation. In the old times the general economic stagnation and the uncontrolled authority of the proprietor tended to keep all the households of a village on the same level. There was little opportunity for an intelligent, enterprising serf to become rich, ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... thing about China, as indeed about nearly all of the heathen world, is the spirit of stagnation. There is a deadness, or sort of stupor, over everything. It is as if a blight had spread over the land, checking all progress. Habits, customs, and institutions remain apparently as they were a thousand years ago. This stands out in sharp contrast with the spirit ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... proceedings and imprisonment of a summary character. The immediate result of the present situation will necessarily be activity by all the companies under different managers, and then competition must follow, or there will be activity by one company and stagnation by another. Only a short time will inevitably lead to a change in ownership of the stock, as all opportunity for continued cooperation must disappear. Those critics who speak of this disintegration in the trust ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William H. Taft • William H. Taft
... fell, those for whom he died would not permit his widow and children to suffer. But the first popular enthusiasm for the war had largely died out; the city was full of widows and orphans; there was depression of spirit, stagnation in business, and a very general disposition on the part of those who had means, to take care of themselves, and provide for darker days that might be in the immediate future. Sensitive, retiring Mrs. Marlow was not the one to push ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... when a lame carriage-horse threw everything into {114} sad uncertainty. It might be weeks, it might be only a few days, before the horse were useable, but no preparations could be ventured on, and it was all melancholy stagnation. Mrs Elton's resources were inadequate ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... their school life—the most important years of all from the point of view of their preparation for the battle of life—in marking time, in staying where they were. It is to those years of enforced stagnation that the reluctance of the ex-elementary scholar to go on with his education is largely due; for no one can keep on moving who is not already on the move, and the desire to continue education is scarcely to be looked for in one who has been given to understand that his education ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... little more life in us than in any other place. In Liverpool they are literally almost ruined by this American war; but they love it as they suffer from it. In short, from whatever I see, and from whatever quarter I hear, I am convinced that everything that is not absolute stagnation is evidently a party-spirit very adverse to our politics, and to the principles from whence they arise. There are manifest marks of the resurrection of the Tory party. They no longer criticize, as all disengaged people in the world will, on the acts of government; but they are silent ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... degrees the dream faded. He attributed it in the first place to the stagnation, the almost extinction, of the iron trade, the blowing out of furnaces, and the consequent cessation of the demand for the best class of food on the part of thousands of operatives and mechanics, who had hitherto been the ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... our novel reaches, the classes of the more polished nobility and citizens, instead of fusing into one band of gentry, and thus forming the basis of a landed aristocracy, had assumed an unfriendly attitude, in consequence of a stagnation in the growth of a national lower nobility as the head of the wealthy and cultivated bourgeoisie, resulting from an unhappy reaction which then took place in Prussia. The feudal proprietor was meanwhile becoming continually poorer, because he lived beyond his income. Falling into embarrassments ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... suggested that the movements of the dwarf leaflets in Desmodium serve to shake the large terminal leaflets, and thus increase transpiration. According to Stahl's view their movement would be more useful at night than by day, because stagnation of the transpiration-current is more likely to occur ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... and he must have fallen backwards and been dashed to pieces; but to Arthur the danger was his safety. Where he was going, indeed he knew not. He could see no further than the summit of the crag, which appeared like a line against the sky; but any bewilderment were preferable to the strange stagnation towards outward objects, which had enwrapped ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... thing more degrading and helpless cannot well be imagined. He exhibits just the contrary view of human life to that which Gay has done in his Beggar's Opera. In a word, Crabbe is the only poet who has attempted and succeeded in the still life of tragedy: who gives the stagnation of hope and fear— the deformity of vice without the temptation—the pain of sympathy without the interest—and who seems to rely, for the delight he is to convey to his reader, on the truth and accuracy with which he describes only what ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... Stagnation was the state of medicine when the Nineteenth Century opened. It was only three years before that Jenner had announced and demonstrated the protective efficacy of vaccination against small-pox. His teaching, in spite of the vehement cavillings of the "antis" ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... film has veiled his eyes, and now stagnation builds up her muddy pillars in his heart. There ...
— The Masque of the Elements • Herman Scheffauer
... early yesterday morning, accompanied by the commandant of Toluca, and retraced our road to Mexico; for though Toluca is a fine city, with clean, airy houses, wide, well-paved streets, and picturesque in its situation, there is something sad and deserted in its appearance, an air of stagnation that weighs upon the spirits; and the specimens we have seen of its lower orders are not inviting. We had rather an agreeable journey, as the day was cool, and we had the diligence to ourselves. We breakfasted again at Cuajimalpa, took leave of the interesting itzcuin tepotzotli, still ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... with this difference of disposition—, Trunnion's subjection was like that of a bear, chequered with fits of surliness and rage; whereas Pickle bore the yoke like an ox, without repining. No wonder, then, that this indolence, this sluggishness, this stagnation of temper rendered Gamaliel incapable of withstanding the arguments and importunity of his friends, to which he at length surrendered. He acquiesced in the justice of their observations: and, taking his son by the hand, promised to favour him ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... their creation, but contrasts them in their absurd indifference to time, with the turbulent and meaningless whirlpool where the modern revolutionists revolve. For just as tranquillity may not signify stagnation, so revolution is not necessarily progression. This old-fashioned pair have learned nothing from nineteenth century thought, least of all its unrest. They have, however, in their own lives attained the positive end of all ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... in animals, it is well known, is to fix the type, the tendency of crossing, to variation. Inbreeding then, tends to become simple repetition with no natural variations in any direction, a stagnation which in itself would indicate a comparatively low vitality. Variation and consequent selection is necessary to progress. "Sex," according to Ward[96] "is a device for keeping up a difference of potential," and its ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner
... his shirt sleeves. The assistants in relays went for their holidays. In the evening Philip generally went into Hyde Park and listened to the band. Growing more accustomed to his work it tired him less, and his mind, recovering from its long stagnation, sought for fresh activity. His whole desire now was set on his uncle's death. He kept on dreaming the same dream: a telegram was handed to him one morning, early, which announced the Vicar's sudden ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... [41] was also distinctly seen, which winter and eternal snow had hitherto concealed. The sea is reported to be sluggish and laborious to the rower; and even to be scarcely agitated by winds. The cause of this stagnation I imagine to be the deficiency of land and mountains where tempests are generated; and the difficulty with which such a mighty mass of waters, in an uninterrupted main, is put in motion. [42] It is not the business of this work to investigate the nature of the ocean and the tides; ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... hypothesis that he is good for the value, let alone the price, of a meal. And so, there was the three of us, representing, if we had a mind to draw syllogisms and parabolas, labor and trade and capital. Now, when trade has no capital there isn't a dicker to be made. And when capital has no money there's a stagnation in steak and onions. That put it up to the man ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... not a lively loon, one of your giggling, gamesome oafs, whose mouth is a grin? Are not such, well-ordered dispensations of Providence? filling up vacuums, in intervals of social stagnation relieving the tedium of existing? besides keeping up, here and there, in very many quarters indeed, sundry people's good opinion of themselves? What, if at times their speech is insipid as water after ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... mistake to believe that we are the only civilising agents of the world, and that the work of other powers in that direction only tends to the stagnation of Eastern peoples. One might affirm with more truth that our intercourse with the civilisation of the East tends to our own stagnation. We do impart to the natives, it is true, some smattering of the semi-barbaric, obsolete ways ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... and affectionate man; neat and methodical in his habits, and knew well how to temper liberality with economy. Greatly to his honour, he often kept his workmen employed, solely for their sake, when stagnation of trade prevented him disposing of the products of their labour. As a manufacturer he was distinguished for his promptitude and probity, and he was celebrated for the exquisite finish which he gave to all his productions. In this ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... are freely blowing. Words of passion and imagination are, as one so grandly called them of old, 'winds of the soul' ([Greek: psyches anemoi]), to keep it in healthful motion and agitation, to lift it upward and to drive it onward, to preserve it from that unwholesome stagnation which constitutes the fatal preparedness for so many other and ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... more, destructive of the progress of the Nation than government extravagance. It means an increase in the burden of taxation, dissipation of the returns from enterprise, a decrease in the real value of wages, with ultimate stagnation and decay. The whole theory of our institutions is based on the liberty and independence of the individual. He is dependent on himself for support and therefore entitled to the rewards of his own industry. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Calvin Coolidge • Calvin Coolidge
... wheels remained motionless with surprise; the weights hung speechless; each member felt disposed to lay the blame on the others. At length the dial instituted a formal inquiry as to the cause of the stagnation; when hands, wheels, weights, with one voice, protested their innocence. But now a faint tick was heard below, from the pendulum, who ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... of its agents cannot be ascribed to cupidity. Also it must be admitted that the kingdom of Serbia, with its capital Belgrade, thanks to the internal chaos and dynastic scandals of the previous forty years, resulting in superficial dilapidation, intellectual stagnation, and general poverty, lacked the material as well as the moral glamour which a successful Piedmont should possess. Nobody could deny, for instance, that, with all its natural advantages, Belgrade was at first sight not nearly such an attractive centre as Agram or Sarajevo, or that the ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... created "the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome." And when we consider the period of the Renaissance we cannot say that civilised man of to-day is superior to those people who after centuries of stagnation and general illiteracy were yet able to seize and develop the long-forgotten ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... scholar or exhausted poetaster, with a proviso that he never inflicts his own pieces on me," said Mr. Belamour, in a tone more as if he wished to console her than as it were a pleasing prospect. "Never fear, gentle monitress, I will not sink into the stagnation from which your voice awoke me. Neither Godfrey nor my nephew would allow it. Come, let us put it from our minds. It has always been my experience, that whatever I expected from my much admired sister-in-law, that was the exact reverse of what she actually did. Therefore let us attend ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... perception of his own genius, Lord Bacon, in his prophetic Will, thus expresses himself: "For my name and memory, I leave it to men's charitable speeches, and to foreign nations, and the next ages." Before the times of Galileo and Harvey the world believed in the stagnation of the blood, and the diurnal immovability of the earth; and for denying these the one was ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... civilization. The character of the religious belief of man is, to a certain extent, the true test of his progressive {13} nature. His faith may prove a source of inspiration to reason and progressive life; it may prove the opposite, and lead to stagnation and retrogression. Upon the whole, it must be insisted that religious belief has subserved a large purpose in the economy of human progress. It has been universal to all tribes, for even the lowest have some form of religious belief—at least, a belief in spiritual beings. ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... attention by their force and boldness—Dr. Whately and Dr. Arnold—had developed their theories about the nature, constitution, and functions of the Church. They were dissatisfied with the general stagnation of religious opinion, on this as on other subjects. They agreed in resenting the unintelligent shortsightedness which relegated such a matter to a third or fourth rank in the scale of religious teaching. They agreed also in seizing the spiritual aspect of ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... hair, though he had not much of it, was of a fine, sunny blonde, and his moods were not entirely to be explained as ebbing energy. We mortals have a strange spiritual chemistry going on within us, so that a lazy stagnation or even a cottony milkiness may be preparing one knows not what biting or explosive material. The navvy waking from sleep and without malice heaving a stone to crush the life out of his still sleeping comrade, is understood to lack the trained motive which makes a character fairly ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... calm. Compared with the struggle and anxiety of the summer term, the one which followed seemed stagnation itself. The arrival of the report had been an excitement, it is true; but when that was over the days passed by in uneventful fashion, until autumn waned and winter came back, with the attendant discomforts of dark mornings, draughty corridors, and coatings of ice ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey |
