"Stagnation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... its ports to British commerce to the depressing injury of British finance. A young Canadian, then in England, in close contact with London business life, wrote to his home at this period: "There is a general stagnation of commerce, all entrance to Europe being completely shut up. There was never a time known to compare with the present, nearly all foreign traders becoming bankrupt, or reduced to one tenth of their former trade. Merchants, who once kept ten or fifteen ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... suspect you are each feeling that this is very "tall talk" for such a commonplace home as yours. "All lives have an ideal meaning as well as their prose translation;" but you feel perhaps that you are sure to be swamped in little bothers and duties, and pleasures, and dulness and stagnation, so that you will find it hard to see any ideal meaning at all. This is not true, and to look on an ideal life as "tall talk" is a snare of the Devil; and in these days of common sense and higher education we need ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... in Leverett's face as the warmer tide stirred from its stagnation. He lifted his head and tried ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... lazy sleep, sound in their ears the tocsin and the clarion, and force them to come forth that they may do battle for their creed. Of all evils, torpor is the most deadly. Give us paradox, give us error, give us what you will, so that you save us from stagnation. It is the cold spirit of routine which is the nightshade of our nature. It sits upon men like a blight, blunting their faculties, withering their powers, and making them both unable and unwilling to struggle for the truth, or to figure to themselves what ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... 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 for power and superiority. To manage this passion is the heaviest ...
— The Growth of Thought - As Affecting the Progress of Society • William Withington
... 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. With Clara this was the result of ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... his great master—a reform which, as we have seen, could have been carried a century earlier without any difficulty whatever. But the century that had been wasted involved many concurrent miseries and misfortunes: social and economic stagnation, an intensification of religious and racial bitterness, conspiracy, and invasion; savage outbreaks savagely repressed. When the time comes to measure up the rights and wrongs of those dark days, the judgment on England ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... humane Dr. Alison, who speaks what he knows, whose noble Healing Art in his charitable hands becomes once more a truly sacred one, report these things for us: these things are not of this year, or of last year, have no reference to our present state of commercial stagnation, but only to the common state. Not in sharp fever-fits, but in chronic gangrene of this kind is Scotland suffering. A Poor-law, any and every Poor-law, it may be observed, is but a temporary measure; ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... These opinions are, however, closely bound up with his religious beliefs, and in great measure explained by them. He is convinced that uncertainty is essential to the spiritual life; and his works are saturated by the idea that where uncertainty ceases, stagnation must begin; that our light must be wavering, and our progress tentative, as well as our hopes chequered, and our happiness even devoid of any sense of finality, if the creative intention is not to frustrate itself; we may not see the path of progress and salvation ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... general connection with each other correctly ascertained. These form his starting points; and then, taking each in its turn, he sets himself to discover the principles, or laws, which regulate its working in a healthy state;—what it is that promotes the circulation or stagnation of the blood, the bracing or relaxing of the nerves, the several processes in digestion, and the various functions of the skin and viscera. These are all first ascertained by observation and experience, and then, ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... it is quite impossible to draw such sharp lines. The thirteenth century belonged most decidedly to the Middle Ages. All historians agree upon that. But was it a time of darkness and stagnation merely? By no means. People were tremendously alive. Great states were being founded. Large centres of commerce were being developed. High above the turretted towers of the castle and the peaked roof of the town-hall, rose the slender spire of the newly built Gothic cathedral. Everywhere the ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... 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, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... say, 'What nonsense! Inactivity! look at the fierce energy of life in our Western lands.' Well, grant it all, there may be plenty of material activity attendant upon inward stagnation and torpor. But, again, I would like to ask how much of the most godless, commercial, artistic, intellectual activity of so-called civilised and Christian countries is owing to the stimulus and ferment that Jesus Christ brought. If you want to see ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Their boredom, the intolerable monotony of that routine life, would be broken by more sensational drama, and some of them were glad of that, and said: "Let's get on with it. Anything rather than that deadly stagnation." And others, who guessed they were chosen for the coming battle, and had a clear vision of what kind of things would happen (they knew something about the losses at Neuve Chapelle and Festubert), became more thoughtful than usual, deeply introspective, wondering how ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... gentle flow—which it were more descriptive perhaps to call stagnation—of life in that model village. From week-end to week-end scarcely a boat puts forth from the shelter of its weed-coated pier; for though Kirris-vean wears the aspect of a place of fishery, it is in fact nothing ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... both of them halted on its bank, held by its virgin beauty. Lost in the solitudes as it was, perhaps never before gazed upon by the eyes of men, still it gave no impression of bleakness and stagnation. Rather it was a scene of scintillating life, vivid past all expression. Far out of range on the opposite shore a huge bull moose stood like a statue in black marble, gazing out over the shimmering expanse. Trout leaped, flashing silver, anywhere they might look; and a flock of loon shrieked demented ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... see by the papers that you have once more stirred that pool of intellectual stagnation, the educational convention. What an infernal set of fools those schoolmarms must be! Well, if in order to please men they wish to live on air, let them. The sooner the present generation of women dies out, the better. We have idiots enough in the ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... 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 ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... himself as a box with nothing inside it, and he thought—It is not through love or fear or distress that men commit suicide: it is because they have become empty: both the gods and the devils have deserted them and they can no longer support that solemn stagnation. He marvelled to see with what activity men and women played the most savourless of games! With what zest of pursuit they tracked what petty interests. He saw them as ants scurrying with scraps of straw, or apes that pick up and ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... however, on a very incongruous foundation. Feudalism, mediaevalism, autocracy, had built up a structure of caste distinction and class privilege to which custom, age, stagnation and ignorance, lent an air of preordained and indispensable stability. The Church, most privileged of all corporations, turned her miracles and her terrors, both present and future, into the most powerful buttress of the fabric. The noblesse, supreme as a caste, almost divided ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... stagnation, both of industry and of benevolence, which would follow the universal and equable distribution of property, one class of men, by superior advantages of birth, or intellect, or patronage, come into possession ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... the spiritual and temporal authorities; the military or territorial and the 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 even more certainly; for when the government is in the hands of ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... bit his lip impatiently. He did not recognize his own motives of desiring a last hand-to-hand struggle. They were those of an old man who sees Cheltenham and stagnation looming in the distance and prays for death. But his common sense conquered ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... by English noblemen—that freemasonry which seems to have been the true parent of all the secret societies of Europe. Of this curious question, more hereafter. But enough has been said to show that England, instead of falling, at any period, into the stagnation of the Ancien Regime, was, from the middle of the seventeenth century, in a state of intellectual growth and ferment which communicated itself finally to the continental nations. This is the special honour of England; universally confessed at the time. It was to England that the slowly-awakening ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... attempt at a rally before the crash. The treatment of the tariff question, always a governing factor in Canadian politics even when apparently not in play, is an illustration of the government's progress towards stagnation. The 1897 tariff revision "could not," says Professor Skelton, "have been bettered as a first preliminary step toward free trade." "Unfortunately," he adds, "it proved to be the last step save for the 1911 attempt to secure ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... and accumulates: no man has Faith to withstand it, to amend it, to begin by amending himself; it must even go on accumulating. While hollow langour and vacuity is the lot of the Upper, and want and stagnation of the Lower, and universal misery is very certain, what other thing is certain? That a Lie cannot be believed! Philosophism knows only this: her other belief is mainly that, in spiritual supersensual matters no Belief is possible. Unhappy! Nay, as yet the Contradiction ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... Emerson was of course as much alive as other people. 'There is in every constitution a certain solstice when the stars stand still in our inward firmament, and when there is required some foreign force, some diversion or alteration, to prevent stagnation. And as a medical remedy, travel seems one of the best.' He found it so in 1833. But this and his two other voyages to Europe make no Odyssey. When Voltaire was pressed to visit Rome, he declared that he would be better pleased with some new ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... the struggle against the feudal system, and in the development of political liberty in modern times, or (2) from traditional systems of scientific teaching, as the Ptolemaic theory of astronomy, or the Cartesian of vortices. The absence too of such attempts in the stagnation of Eastern life is an instructive negative instance ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... examining the state of the finances and of Law's Bank and India Company. It was, in fact, high time to do something to diminish the overgrown disorder and confusion everywhere reigning. For some time there had been complete stagnation in all financial matters; the credit of the King had step by step diminished, private fortune had become more and more uncertain. The bag was at last empty, the cards were cast aside, the last trick was played: The administration of ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... was necessary that the amount of producible wealth should not merely exceed the consumption of the few wealthy persons, but should be sufficient to satisfy the higher human needs of all. Economic equity, if it is not to bring about a stagnation in civilisation, assumes that the man who has to depend upon the earnings of his own labour is in a position to enjoy a considerable amount of wealth at the cost of moderate effort. This has become possible only during the last few generations; ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... his ingenious 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. He returned to Paisley, after the absence of one year; and having married in 1808, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... bully—I am only, God help me, a weak civil arm of the service,"—and whining a little—"still very far from well. Now I'll state my case to you, for your satisfaction, and to prevent any little mistakes. I was lately afflicted with a sort of nondescript atrophy, a stagnation of the fluids, a congestion of the small blood-vessels, and a spasmodic contraction of the finitesimal nerves, that threatened very serious consequences. At the survey, two of the surgeons, ignorant quacks that they are, broached a most ridiculous opinion—a heterodox ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... 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 ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... 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, and all ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... of the royal navy, who found it a hard thing, with an increasing family, to make both ends meet in the mother country on his half-pay. At last, sick of waiting for active employment afloat during the long stagnation in the service occasioned by the interregnum of peace that lasted almost from Waterloo up to the time of the Crimean war, he determined, like Cincinnatus, to "beat his sword into a ploughshare." In other words, he abandoned the fickle element on which he had passed the early ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... starving, and who reduce their fellow-craftsmen and themselves to equal misery. Employment is more fixed and stationary for the employed and the employers. There is no foreign trade or home consumption to occasion great and sudden activity and expansion in manufactures, and equally great and sudden stagnation and collapse."—P. 394. ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... rule and not the exception; and it is mainly this inter-migration, stirring up the masses, to which is due our increased prosperity and our progress in all branches of knowledge. Inter-migration keeps us from stagnation; it removes shyness and fear at the sight of a stranger, accustoms us to an intercourse with different people, removes prejudices and superstitions, and facilitates the exchange of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... poor old soul, whose very presence would prove an annoyance. No matter; a disappointment or an annoyance was better than utter stagnation. She wished the new man would come, she wished there was something for her to work at till he ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... eighty years could not long have escaped the observation of two such earnest students of humanity as we believed ourselves to be. But the characteristic in her which at once caught my eye was her expression— a look of such keen alertness, such intense vitality, that even in the mental stagnation that accompanies night travel I wondered what, in her surroundings, could ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... remains without a rival, still prospering in the midst of depression around, and whilst secure against intrusion in his own special monopoly of home supply, commanding also a superiority in foreign markets for his surplus wares, in the event of stagnation in home consumption, over the less finished and reputed products of his less-skilled brethren ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... second half of 2004. Long-term problems include inadequate investment in economic infrastructure, rapidly rising medical and pension costs of an aging population, sizable trade and budget deficits, and stagnation of family income in ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... Mardians, Elymasans, and Cossaeans—tribes who had formerly been the backbone of the nation—had relapsed into a semi-barbarous condition, or rather, while the rest of the world had progressed in civilization and refinement, they had remained in a state of stagnation, adhering obstinately to the customs of their palmy days: just as they had harried the Chaldaeans or Assyrians in the olden times, so now they harried the Persians; then, taking refuge in their rocky fastnesses, they lived on the proceeds of their ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... all natural laws, stagnation breeds disease and death, and what could stir up this most venerable and respectable institution more than an application of the strong-minded, with short hair and shorter skirts, invading its dignified realm and elucidating all the excellences of female suffrage. Moreover, if these ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... the French is apt to sparkle up and be frothy, the gravity of the English to settle down and grow muddy. When the two characters can be fixed in a medium, the French kept from effervescence and the English from stagnation, both will be ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... 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 ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... its terrible shadow sharpens desire and makes the prizes more alluring and the struggle more desperate. And so man goes on, ceaselessly active and striving, for without activity and striving there is no perfecting of the instrument. You can't have upward progress in conditions of stagnation. All that strange incredible side of life, called the Devil, is the inner plot of life that makes the wheels go round and evolution possible. It is vitally necessary to keep the vast machinery running at the present level of ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... pins 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 ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... veiled his eyes, and now stagnation builds up her muddy pillars in his heart. There ...
— The Masque of the Elements • Herman Scheffauer
... was wholly unable to strike in return. We are happy to say that the wound has been followed by the clock being at last wound, and we now offer to take it by the hands in a spirit of friendship. We have been told that the long stagnation has been caused by the absurd scruples of the pendulum, which refused to go from side to side, lest it should be accused of inconsistency.' Under the different months, 'PUNCH'S Almanack' gives many important directions, one of which is for the proprietors ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... situated, and had been pleased at getting a glimpse of it. In answer to my questions as to what he thought of the progress of the firm he said very little, except that all business was in an unsettled state, owing to the speculative spirit that had followed the long period of stagnation. As yet, my protege seemed to have been generally prudent, but it needed the experience of a tried business man to resist the temptations to make money by short cuts presented at the present time. He judged from the ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... the midst of this stagnation that Master Zacharius invented the escapement, which enabled him to obtain a mathematical regularity by submitting the movement of the pendulum to a sustained force. This invention had turned the old man's head. Pride, swelling in his heart, like mercury in the thermometer, had attained the ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... prosperity, and they fell but 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 and corruption. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... fortunate, but not less aspiring nations would never agree to such a policy of national stagnation, to such a stifling of their legitimate longings for a "greater place in the sun." They would point to the pages of history and show how small nations have become great and how empires have fallen. What was the mighty United States ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... wind is the combined action of heat and cold. If the world were heated with perfect equality all round, there would be, as far at least as heat is concerned, a perfect and permanent stagnation of the atmosphere; and this would speedily result in the destruction of every living thing. But by the varied and beautiful arrangements which the Almighty has made in nature He has secured a regular flow of atmospheric currents, which ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... them, placing a child to suck at improper times, 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 ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... very nearly provided for myself an escape on that plea;—but when I came to sift it, I thought that it would be false. But let me tell you that the delight of political life is altogether in opposition. Why, it is freedom against slavery, fire against clay, movement against stagnation! The very inaccuracy which is permitted to opposition is in itself a charm worth more than all the patronage and all the prestige of ministerial power. You'll try them both, and then say if you do not agree with ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... 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 ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... feet, and divesting himself of his cloak hung it on the peg, going through all the motions mechanically. An incredible dullness, a ditch-water stagnation was sensible to his perceptions as though life had withdrawn itself from all things and even from his own thoughts. There was not a sound in ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... curiously says, "The place of the stagnation of blood:" yet he had translated the word aright in the Introduction (i. 41). I have noticed that the Nat'a is made like the "Sufrah," of well-tanned leather, with rings in the periphery, so that a thong passed through turns it into a bag. The Sufrah used for provisions is usually ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... that there was a moment in the early Middle Ages when, in the mixture of all contrary things, in the very excess of spiritual movement, there seemed a possibility of dead level, of stagnation, of the peoples of Europe becoming perhaps bastard Saracens, as in Merovingian times they had become bastard Romans; a chance of Byzantinism in the West. Be this as it may, it seems certain that, towards the end of the twelfth century, men's souls were shaken, crumbling, and what was worse, excessively ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... and awakens him to all nobleness, as soon as work fitly begins. By it man learns Patience, Courage, Perseverance, Openness to light, readiness to own himself mistaken, resolution to do better and improve. Only by labor will man continually learn the virtues. There is no Religion in stagnation and inaction; but only in activity and exertion. There was the deepest truth in that saying of the old monks, "laborare est orare." "He prayeth best who loveth best all things both great and small;" ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... 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 wisdom and ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... hands made a vain effort to continue their course; the wheels remained motionless with surprise; the weights hung speechless; and 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 ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... this hard surface, and general sterility. By the simplest of simple contrivances, I make this evil its own remedy. An equable impulse given to the air produces an adequate uniform flow, preventing stagnation in one place, and excessive vehemence in another. And the beauty of it is that by my new invention I make the air itself correct ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... may come to the rescue by advances upon good security through local banks. It can establish banks or buy controlling interests in existing banks, many of which pay their stockholders 15 per cent. or more. It can relieve the stagnation and make profitable investment by an active campaign for public and private contracts and for sound and fair concessions, not visionary or ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... power of self- adaptation inherent in our institutions. On the one side he sees the model Republic of Hayti—a coloured community, which has enjoyed nearly half a century of entire independence and self-rule. And with what issues? As respects moral and intellectual culture, stagnation: in all that concerns material development, a fatal retrogression. He beholds there, at this day, a miserable parody of European and American institutions, without the spirit that animates either: the tinsel of French sentiment on ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... doubt, but still not sufficiently so to render it bad or even remarkably unpleasant. The only explanation that I can suggest is that the water of the lake had sufficient air in it to keep the atmosphere of the tunnel from absolute stagnation, this air being given out as it proceeded on its headlong way. Of course I only give the solution of the mystery for what it is worth, ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... greater variety of interest, purposes and ideals which seem to be arising. A measure of local concentration seems necessary to produce healthy, intellectual and moral life. The spread of social forces over too vast an area makes for monotony and stagnation. ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... entire room foot by foot. Opening the door in one corner, he entered the bathroom, in which, as in the outer apartment, an electric light was burning. No window was discoverable, and not even an opening for ventilation purposes. The latter fact he might have deduced from the stagnation of the atmosphere. ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... the world, is dissipated, their native thirst for knowledge will urge them forward with rapidity. The habit of visiting foreign lands which is springing up among them, will also do its part, in breaking up the monotony and stagnation into which they have grown. In addition to this book by Seu-ke-ju, a number of other geographical works, drawn from English, German, and French sources, have appeared in Chinese, at the instance mainly of high ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... 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 object is not primarily ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner
... that enlivened this period of stagnation was the capture of Maurie. No; the authorities didn't get him, but Clarette did. Ajo and Patsy had gone into the city one afternoon and on their return to the docks, where their launch was moored, they found a street urchin awaiting them with a soiled scrap of paper clenched ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... twenty years, in the large weaving-factory of Gordon, Barron, & Co. In 1827, he removed to Dundee; and shortly after to the village of Newtyle, in Strathmore, at both of these places working as a hand-loom weaver. Thrown out of employment, in consequence of a stagnation in the manufacturing world, he was subjected, in his person and family, to much penury and suffering. At length, disposing of his articles of household furniture, he purchased a few wares, and taking his wife and children along with him, commenced the precarious life of a pedlar. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... 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 rumor ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... kills so vastly more efficiently than weariness of the body. You could see that weariness in the tired frown of the black brows, the narrowing of the dark eyes, the downward tug of the lips. Wrinkles of stagnation had began to creep into forehead and cheeks—wrinkles that no amount of gymnasium, of club life, of careful shaving, ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... that Loos show last year. After months and months of stagnation in the trenches, we were suddenly called to Headquarters and told that we were to make an attack ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... the harbor, because the through passage to the northwest will be stopped. Passages closed by sluice gates will be formed through this wall at about low water level, so that at any time the harbor may be flushed out and stagnation prevented. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... as secular education was concerned, therefore, the English conquest found the colony in almost utter stagnation. Not one in five hundred among the habitants, it was said, could read or write. Outside the immediate circle of clergy, officials, and notaries, ignorance of even the rudiments of education was almost universal. There were no newspapers in the colony and very few books save those used in the services ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... return to my native land, Finding no striking change there. The same dead, senseless stagnation; crumbling houses, crumbling walls, And the same filth, dirt, poverty, and misery. Unchanged the servile glance, now insolent, now dejected. Free have our people become, and the free arm Hangs as before like a whip unused. All, all as before. ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... amid the western pagans could not fail to encourage the growth of new religious tendencies. An epoch of great spiritual activity had been succeeded by one of complete stagnation. A glance at the literary progress of Rome since Tiberius will show this emancipation from national and political considerations, the influence of cosmopolitanism gave to the best specimens of Latin prose of the silver ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... the system, which may impair if not destroy its 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 as much capital as it can profitably use; ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... this summons from the doctor at the same time frightened her and braced her heart. It might mean that Julian was ill, in danger—she knew not what. But at least it broke through the appalling inaction, the dreary stagnation, of her days. The lady of the feathers had fought indeed, of late, that worst enemy, mental despair, bred of grim patience at last grown weary. That was not the battle she had been inspired to expect, to prepare for. The doctor's telegram ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... gift—sanctification. In this I am called to occupy, watch, strive, fight. Life is given; means of support and growth provided; weapons of warfare—all things necessary to life and godliness: these are promised to the diligent use of means; and poverty, stagnation, discomfort threatened to the indolent. O how sovereign and gracious has my God been in his dealings with me in this respect also. For a sluggard have I been in the days of youth and the prime of life; yet to me hath he given the comforts promised ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... himself with wonderment how he had been content in it so long. The work was hard and thankless. Was this life? Was there nothing beyond this? Was there not not a great world outside the forest? What was this? Was it not stagnation? The woods—yes, the woods were beautiful, but why was it they made him sad? Why was it that when the sun set against the background of the purple line of trees, he felt a lump in his throat? Why, when he walked along the ...
— The Hunted Outlaw - Donald Morrison, The Canadian Rob Roy • Anonymous
... overthrew an Oriental dynasty, but established European rulers in its stead. It broke the monotony, of the Eastern world by the impression of Western energy and superior civilization; even as England's present mission is to break up the mental and moral stagnation of India and Cathay, by pouring upon and through them the impulsive current of ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... 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 ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... agency which no one could explain brought this financial pestilence to Pesth, where it raged until the Krach—the Crash, as the Germans very properly call it—came. After the extraordinary activity which had prevailed there came gloom and stagnation; but at last, as in America, business in Pesth and in Hungary generally is gradually assuming solidity and contains itself within proper bounds. The exciting period had one beneficial feature: it made Pesth a handsome city. There are no quays in Europe more substantial and elegant than those along ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... not easy to find surface waters that are surely protected, 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 again is not necessarily safe. If the well is in good sandy soil ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... been gone 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
... deposits and an equal decrease of loans on exchange notes, the standstill of production; not until the middle of October did a steady improvement of business set in. The French bourgeoisie accounted for this stagnation of business with purely political reasons; it imputed the dull times to the strife between the Parliament and the Executive power, to the uncertainty of a provisional form of government, to the alarming prospects of May ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... out that the movement varies from 24 to 32 feet at different stakes—this is 7 1/2 months. This is an extremely important observation, the first made on the movement of the coastal glaciers; it is more than I expected to find, but small enough to show that the idea of comparative stagnation was correct. Bowers and I exposed a number of plates and films in the glacier which have turned out very well, auguring well for the management of the camera on ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... were not for the ladies—God bless them!—we would have nothing but fighting in the field and stagnation at home; but, whenever they get to running things their way, it—it is just the reverse." (Shame! No! Wretch!) He vainly strives to rally under the fire of imprecation, but it is too late. The groomsmen are denouncing him, as he deserves to be, as a slanderer and ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... Saturday half-holiday and Henderson and I were driving the stagnation of a week's confinement out of our lungs by a long walk into the country. We were just starting back in the approaching dusk when a round stone that I happened to step on turned under my foot. I tried to grin, ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... More pernicious nonsense was never devised by man than treaties of commerce. However, their precious most favoured nation clause will break down the whole concern yet. But you wish to see the works; I will show them to you myself. There is not much going on now, and the stagnation increases daily. And then, if you are willing, we will go home and have a bit of lunch—I live hard by. My best works are my wife and children: I have made that joke before, as ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... alternate ebb and flow of the spirits! It is a disease, and, what is most distressing, it is no real change; it is more sickeningly monotonous than absolute stagnation itself. And from that dreary seesaw I could never escape, except through the gates of dreamless sleep, the death in life; for even in our dreams we are still ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... mind the great fact that the preaching of the Buddha in India was not followed by stagnation of life—as would surely have happened if humanity was without any positive goal and his teaching was without any permanent value in itself. On the contrary, we find the arts and sciences springing ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... than stagnation. Pain is better than stagnation. I have only just begun to live. Hitherto I have been a machine upon the earth's surface. I was a one-ideaed man, and a one-ideaed man is only one remove from a dead man. That is what I have only just begun to realise. For ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... new-fangled ones; he doesn't wish to have any supplementary articles added to the contract, to fit it to the present time. He shows the whites of his eyes on the Sabbath, and the blacks all the rest of the week. The evil is not merely a stagnation of blood, but a stagnation of spirit. Many, no doubt, are well disposed, but sluggish by constitution and by habit, and they cannot conceive of a man who is actuated by higher motives than they ...
— A Plea for Captain John Brown • Henry David Thoreau |
