"Stagnation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Pericles said, to take the young away from a city is like taking the spring out of the year, and now many of the young men go to Australia or elsewhere to seek their fortunes, a fact which may be considered as much an effect of the present stagnation as a cause of it. Throughout the island generally the usual proportion of the sexes is maintained, but in Hobart the female sex appears to have a decided preponderance. Tasmania, and especially Hobart, has had a reputation for the beauty of the ...
— Six Letters From the Colonies • Robert Seaton
... seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him'? In this blissful state, those that feared God and obeyed their consciences will live on forever; but their rest can never become stagnation, for evolution is one of the most constant laws, and never ceases, and they must always go onward and upward, unspeakably blessed by the consciences they made their rule in life, till in purity and power they shall equal or exceed the angels of their ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... Nothing but stagnation seemed to be prevailing on the Peninsula. The incessant roll of guns could no longer be heard at Mudros. The old-time shifts of wounded ceased to pour into our hospitals. In their stead came daily crowds of dysentery, jaundice and ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... of rotted cabbages came towards him from the kitchen gardens on the rising ground above the river. He smiled to think that it was this disorder, the misrule and confusion of his father's house and the stagnation of vegetable life, which was to win the day in his soul. Then a short laugh broke from his lips as he thought of that solitary farmhand in the kitchen gardens behind their house whom they had nicknamed the man with the hat. A second laugh, taking rise from the first after a pause, broke from him ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... 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 ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... literary work is so deeply intertwined with his artistic life and mission that it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to separate the two. He had achieved a great work—he had planted in the German mind the thought that there was such a thing as progress and growth; that stagnation was death; and that genius was for ever shaping for itself new forms and developments. He had taught that no art is an end to itself, and that, unless it embodies the deep-seated longings and aspirations of men ever striving ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... sufficiently well founded to have been accepted as perfectly genuine. It was pitchy dark, the sky being obscured by a thin veil of cloud which was yet sufficiently dense to completely obscure the light of the stars; the air was still to the extent of stagnation; and the temperature was so unusually high that Dickinson found the mere act of walking, even at the idle sauntering pace which he had adopted, a laborious exertion. In the great and oppressive stillness which prevailed, the ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... exactly, and happy endings are quite good things, yet it is rather too much to turn upside down the historic catastrophe of the Good Lord James's fashion of warfare. Otherwise the book is more noticeable for a deficiency of spirit, life, and light—for the evidence of shadow and stagnation falling over the once restless and brilliant ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... partially deadened the shock. "It is no use butting against this pack with steam-power," wrote Stenhouse. "We would use all our meagre supply of coal in reaching the limit of the ice in sight, and then we would be in a hole, with neither ballast nor fuel.... But if this stagnation lasts another week we will have to raise steam and consume our coal in an endeavour to get into navigable waters. I am afraid our chances of getting south are very ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... for a dress, or a new receipt for cake. Or they walked 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 ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... hard when it was down; and it certainly must be admitted that it 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 ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... I'd start a boarding house I'd have all the boarders I could accommodate; but I knew it was no use to think of that, because I wasn't strong enough, and help was so hard to get. No, there was nothing for it but Northfield and stagnation again, with not a stray boy anywhere to mother. I looked the dismal prospect square in the face and made up ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... difficulty in believing, that the colour of the skin, which is more frequently brown than yellow, as well as the petechiae, &c. are the effects of the stagnation of blood, altered by the capillaries of the surface, in the same manner as that exuding from the mucous surfaces. I believe that this opinion, suggested by some European writers, is supported by the fact, that this fluid exudes from the orifices made by the bites ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... the 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 awhile 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 ...
— Mrs. General Talboys • Anthony Trollope
... waters that are surely protected and streams particularly are dangerous sources of water supply. We have not got rid of the idea that running water purifies itself. It is standing water which purifies itself, if anything does, 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 ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... to render her a perfect helpmate for so tranquil a husband. She abounded in whatsoever he was defective; that is to say, in almost everything. She was indeed as vinegar to oil, or a brisk wind to a standing-pool, and preserved all from stagnation and corruption. ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... good, if you go behind the scenes and think of such fussy things as security of life and property, taxation and its proportion to benefits received, justice and administration, education, freedom of the subject, and so on. (b) It spells stagnation and the abandonment of the hope of training the mass of the people to responsibility; but I think that is an academic rather than practical point ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... 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 ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... which the winds 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 ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... specialization of industry vs. industrial { sameness; { Incentives to invention 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 { and ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of reform are involved in the new education, and to that China is irrevocably committed. Reenforced by railroad, telegraph, and newspaper, the schoolmaster will dispel the stagnation of remote districts, giving to the whole people a horizon wider than their hamlet, and thoughts higher than their hearthstone. Animated by sound science and true religion, it will not be many generations before ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... but a patriarchal tribe—no emulation, no glory; peace and stagnation. What Englishman, what Frenchman, would wish to be a Swiss? A commercial republic is but an admirable machine for making money. Is man created for nothing nobler than freighting ships and speculating on silk and sugar? In fact, there is no ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... been seized by the foraging parties of the opposing forces, while their horse and wagon had been impressed into the service of the British, at the time of the evacuation of the city, to cart away the stores and provisions. A means of occupation had been denied Jim during the period of stagnation and what mere existence could now be eked out depended solely in the tillage of the land upon which he dwelled. Nevertheless the Cadwaladers maintained their outward cheer and apparent optimism throughout it all but still they yearned inwardly for ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... 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 ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of promotion seemed absolutely hopeless; I was a supernumerary Second Lieutenant, and nearly every officer in the list of the Bengal Artillery had served over fifteen years as a subaltern. This stagnation extended to every branch of ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... 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 ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... the Sixty fifth Year of my Age, and having been the greater Part of my Days a Man of Pleasure, the Decay of my Faculties is a Stagnation of my Life. But how is it, Sir, that my Appetites are increased upon me with the Loss of Power to gratify them? I write this, like a Criminal, to warn People to enter upon what Reformation they may please to make in themselves in their Youth, and not expect they shall be capable of it from a fond ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... that there was a general stagnation in trade, and especially with this class of goods; and to undertake to push more jewelry on those who then had more than they needed and more than they could pay for, would be foolish and unbusiness-like. I also found that my agent ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... attract and appeal to all those who oppose encroachment on public and individual life. It will appeal to those who strive for something higher, weary of the commonplace; to those who feel that stagnation is a deadweight on the firm and elastic step of progress; to those who breathe freely only in limitless space; to those who long for the tender shade of a new dawn for a humanity free from the dread of want, the dread of starvation ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... till this political broil is over. They say Lincoln is elected. If so, the South is not going to submit to it. Nobody can tell what the consequences are to be. Suppose we should have war? I don't think we shall, but suppose we should? There would be a general upheaval, commercial stagnation, industrial collapse, shrinkage everywhere! Wait till it's over. It may not be two weeks hence; it can hardly be more than ninety days at the outside. If it should the North would be ruined, and you ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... of our finding New York quite a desert would have been literally fulfilled had we reached it a fortnight sooner; but the dreadful malady, the cholera, had taken its departure, and though private bereavements and general stagnation of business rendered the season a very unfavorable one for our experiment, yet, upon the whole, we have every reason to be well satisfied with the result of it, and think we did well not to postpone the beginning of our campaign.... The first serious experiences of our youth seem to me ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... lately been discovered or the lengthening of a vowel in the Sa{m}hitap{t}ha of the Rig-Veda. It is quite right that this should be so, at least, for a time; but all rivers, all brooks, all rills, are meant to flow into the ocean, and all special knowledge, to keep it from stagnation, must have an outlet into the general knowledge of the world. Knowledge for its own sake, as it is sometimes called, is the most dangerous idol that a student can worship. We despise the miser who amasses money for the sake of money, but still more contemptible is the intellectual miser who ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... casual traveller in Italy to-day cannot fail to be struck by the prosperity which the war has brought to the great manufacturing cities of the north as contrasted with the commercial stagnation which prevails in the southern provinces of the kingdom. In the munition plants, most of which are in the north, are employed upward of half a million workers, of whom 75,000 are women. Genoa, Milan, and Turin are a-boom with industry. The great automobile ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... black storm. It soothed her troubled mind by its sheer force, passing through her like the will of a stronger being. Adelle was growing, at last, after all these years of imperceptible change, of spiritual stagnation. She had begun to grow with the coming of her child, and these last weeks she had been growing fast. She even realized that she was changing, was becoming another, unfamiliar person. She felt it to-night more than at any time in all her life—the ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... opposition of growing effectiveness. And then in the fourth term there was an 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 reciprocity." After 1897 Laurier's policy was to ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... could suggest no other course, the days wore on under a domestic thunder-cloud which rendered the least sensitive among us uncomfortable and unhappy, and deprived three at least of the party of appetite, of ease, and almost of sleep, till two alarming incidents broke the painful stagnation. ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... inspired by a centuries-old national spirit, but suffered, as it still in a measure suffers, from the particularism of the various kingdoms and States composing it: in other words, from too local a patriotism and stagnation of the imperial idea. Thirdly, the Empire had no navy, while an Empire to-day without a navy is at a tremendous and dangerous disadvantage in world-politics, and the mere conception that a navy was indispensable had to be created in a country ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... occasions only? Why call in the aid of paralysis to piety? Is sin to be taken from men, as Eve was from Adam, by casting them into a deep slumber? Or from what possible perversion of common sense are we all to look like field preachers in Zembla, holy lumps of ice, numbed into quiescence and stagnation and mumbling? ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... oscillation an motion are requisite to keep fresh and clear the lake of matrimony, the waters of which otherwise soon stagnate and become foul, and without some contrary currents of opinion between a married couple such a stagnation must take place. ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... conscious that he had three fortunes at his back in case of trouble, but Contini grew more nervous as time went on and the sums on paper increased in magnitude, while the chances of disposing of the buildings seemed reduced to nothing in the stagnation which had ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... stars and the sea, the mountains and savannas, the tropical vegetation, and the dreamy, half-oriental life; but at best it is a kind of stagnation, and after a residence of a few months in the island of my birth I generally spread my wings for the wider world of the ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... was altogether free from the stain of religious persecution: hopelessly fettered in the chains of metropolitan power, she was also undisturbed by political agitation. But this calm was more the stillness of stagnation than the tranquillity of content. Without a press, without any semblance of popular representation, there hardly remained other alternatives than tame submission or open mutiny. By hereditary habit and superstition the Canadians were trained to the first, and by weakness ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... grew more and more absorbed in itself. Its seclusion from the rest of the world became progressively more complete. Instinct dictated this course as an escape from the danger of extinction, or, at least, of stagnation. It was conscious of possessing enough vitality and energy to live for itself and work out its own salvation. It had its spiritual interests, its peculiar ideals, and a firm belief in the future. It constituted an ancient order, whose patent of nobility had been conferred upon it in the ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... expectancy on the curtain. The figures and emblems on the hanging were invisible in the gloom—but now-now there was a stir, as of life, in the ponderous folds,—they moved—they began to ripple like streams, brooks, water-falls, recovering motion after long stagnation—the curtain slowly sank, and at length it fell so suddenly that the eye could scarcely note the instant. From every lip, as but one voice, rose a cry of admiration, amazement, and delight, for Serapis stood ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... blossoming long before its time. It spread its dainty flowers on the soft straw bed of an old gray roof. A playful wind caught up the petals, sending the white blossoms flying across the heads of the unjust into the unclean ditches where they covered stagnation with a frail loveliness. ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... charming appearance to the villages; and to him is chiefly due the general neatness and good order that everywhere prevail. I consulted him about a fresh locality, as I found Rurukan too much in the clouds, dreadfully damp and gloomy, and with a general stagnation of bird and insect life. He recommended me a village some distance beyond the lake, near which was a large forest, where he thought I should find plenty of birds. As he was going himself in a few days, I ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... water-serpent in the lake of Lerna, and if I mean, and you understand, nothing more than that fact, the story, whether true or false, is not a myth. But if by telling you this, I mean that Hercules purified the stagnation of many streams from deadly miasmata, my story, however simple, is a true myth; only, as, if I leftit in that simplicity, you would probably look for nothing beyond, it will be wise in me to surprise your ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... that there is, rather, a 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 ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... their future importance was foreseen by very few men. The early roads were a heavy burden on the capital of the country. A number of small roads were built that proved unprofitable and had to be abandoned. After the financial panic of 1837 there was, except in New England, a very perceptible stagnation in railroad enterprise, which lasted until the discovery of gold in California, in 1848. The average number of miles of road constructed per annum during the ten years preceding 1848 was 380, while it was nearly 1,800 per annum during the seven ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... years (1849-1859) this endured—Clericalism rampant, financial ruin, stagnation everywhere. Then Nationality burst its bonds once more. The war with Napoleon III. ended in Austria's loss of Lombardy and the creation of the Italian kingdom. Faced by the bankruptcy of the whole political and financial system, ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... was customary, where feasible, to thus connect the moat with running water, to avoid complete stagnation, and so to keep the ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... my wife was a woman without feelings: she had not energy for great virtue, and she had no vice, because she had no passion: life with her was a state of stagnation. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... herself supplies us with an ascending scale or Alphabet of angles for half a degree up to 60 degrees, Specimens of which are placed in every Elementary School throughout the land. Owing to occasional retrogressions, to still more frequent moral and intellectual stagnation, and to the extraordinary fecundity of the Criminal and Vagabond Classes, there is always a vast superfluity of individuals of the half degree and single degree class, and a fair abundance of Specimens up to 10 degrees. These are absolutely destitute of civic rights; and a great number ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... that, the moment he makes his appearance, he draws off all custom from us; and thus an important branch of French industry, with all its innumerable ramifications, is suddenly reduced to a state of complete stagnation. This rival, who is no other than the sun, carries on so bitter a war against us, that we have every reason to believe that he has been excited to this course by our perfidious neighbor England. (Good diplomacy this, for the present time!) ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... 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 is;—which would be as intelligible and amusing as a watchmaker's description ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... 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 ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... 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 last report sent him, ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... Lincolnshire," he says, "I had been lifted up to a higher plane of the daily round of my beloved work than I had experienced before. Oh, the stagnation into which I had settled down, the contentment of my mind with the love offered me at every turn by the people! I still aimed at the Salvation of the unconverted and the spiritual advance of my people, and still fought for these results. Indeed, I never ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... sciences has been in no small degree stimulated by the demands of business enterprise for new methods of creating capital and we may believe that should the time arrive when this motive should fail, when men should grow to be indifferent in their attitude towards profits, the ensuing stagnation would affect every department of human endeavor. Of this we may be assured even when we remember that money-making, and what goes with it, is not the ...
— Creating Capital - Money-making as an aim in business • Frederick L. Lipman
... Owing to 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, and at ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... then relied much on the United States for food. This was the chief object of the embargo. The second effect was inevitable. The sudden check upon all foreign commerce plunged business in all parts of the United States into stagnation. Sailors out of work thronged the streets of the seaport towns. Farmers trudged weary miles beside their ox-teams, only to find, when they had hauled their produce to town, that there was no market for it. Along the docks the ships lay idly tugging at their cables, or stranded on the flats as ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... helplessness that is overpowering. What if this should last? what a fate! The Rime of the Ancient Mariner comes to our mind. Come storm and tempest, come hurricanes and blizzards, anything but an endless stagnation. For some hours we watched earnestly the horizon to the westward, looking for the first dark break on the smooth sea. Not a cloud was in the heavens. The brig appeared to be leaving us either by towing ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... strength; who had felt that, surely, we who had wrought such wonders could not now fail:—even we numbly came to regard receiverships and assignments as quite the thing to be expected. The fact that, all over the country, panic, ruin, and business stagnation were spreading like a pestilence, from just such centers of contagion as Lattimore, made it easier for us. Surely, we felt, nobody could justly blame us for being in the path of a tempest which, like a ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... until the coming of Commodore Perry's squadron from the United States in 1853, Japan enjoyed complete peace and almost complete stagnation—the only period of either in Japanese history, It then became necessary to learn fresh lessons in the use of fire-arms from Western nations, and to abandon the exclusive policy until they were learnt. When they have been learnt, ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... is to be seen of them but masses of hair in wild profusion, and right hands extended on the table, still mechanically grasping steel-pens, whilst every face lies flattened upon a paper-case, and sleep and silence, broken only by sighs and snores, reign throughout the building. Universal stagnation prevails among government people; and merchants and store-keepers appear to be much in the same condition. The only person in office who is kept in a constant state of fever, is the unhappy Post-Master-General, who is hourly called upon to state when he is going to make up ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... to overthrow the usurped powers of the world. Make men wise, and by that very operation you make them free. It is unfortunate that men are so eager to strike and have so little constancy to reason. We should desire neither violent change nor the stagnation that inflames and produces revolutions. Our prayer to governments should be, "Do not give us too soon; do not give us too much; but act under the incessant influence of a ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... associations of human society whatsoever, to create artificial families on all hands and bring them into blood relationship, as if the whole of public life resolved itself into a matter of cousinship,—an inclination indicative of the times of political stagnation then prevalent. We hear of the families of the scribes at Jabesh, of the potters and gardeners and byssus-workers, of the sons of the goldsmiths, apothecaries, and fullers, these corporations being placed on the same plane with actual families. The division ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... fleet swept German ships from the high seas and isolated a nation which had considered its international commerce one of its greatest assets, considerable animosity developed between the Army and Navy. The Army accused the Navy of stagnation. Von Tirpitz, who had based his whole naval policy upon a great navy, especially upon battleship and cruiser units, was confronted by his military friends with the charge that he was not prepared. As early as 1908 von ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... 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. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... found his Carolina discontented in 1824, when he took up his abode at Fort Hill. Since the Revolution, South Carolina had never been satisfied, and had never had reason to be. The cotton-gin had appeased her for a while, but had not suspended the operation of the causes which produced the stagnation of the South. Profuse expenditure, unskilful agriculture, the costliest system of labor in the world, and no immigration, still kept Irelandizing the Southern States; while the North was advancing and improving to such a degree as to attract emigrants from all ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... independent action still counts its admirers. You have done nothing, of late, worthy to be recorded in the CHRONIQUE SCANDALEUSE of Nepenthe. Twelve years ago, wasn't it, that little affair of yours? Time is slipping by, and here you muddle along with your old Perrelli, in a fog of moral stagnation. It is not fair to the rest of us. We all contribute our mites to the gaiety of nations. Bethink yourself. Bestir yourself. Man! Do something to show us you ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... Tuileries, at four o'clock in the afternoon, principally for the purpose of 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: ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... 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, and hobbled ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... 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 Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... 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 how true it is that men without Him sit ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... his statue and make Birmingham the headquarters of English Unitarianism. We hear it said sometimes that this is an age of transition, as if that made matters clearer; but can any one point us to an age that was not? If he could, he would show us an age of stagnation. The question for us, as it has been for all before us, is to make the transition gradual and easy, to see that our points are right so that the train may not come to grief. For we should remember that nothing ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... produced, in Paris, in the commercial towns, in all societies, and even at court, a sensation that was very favourable to the American cause. The enthusiasm it excited was in a great measure owing to the state of political stagnation into which the country had so long been plunged, the resentment excited by the arrogance of England, her commissioner at Dunkirk, her naval pretensions, and the love inherent in all mankind of bold and extraordinary deeds, ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... and technologically powerful economy - the fifth largest in the world in PPP terms - showed considerable improvement in 2007 with 2.6% growth. After a long period of stagnation with an average growth rate of 0.7% between 2001-05 and chronically high unemployment, stronger growth led to a considerable fall in unemployment to about 8% near the end of 2007. Among the most important ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... 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; an anodyne, ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... peculiar time; something new was beginning, quite unlike the stagnation of the past, something very strange too, though it was felt everywhere, even at Skvoreshniki. Rumours of all sorts reached us. The facts were generally more or less well known, but it was evident that in addition to the facts there were certain ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... 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 fame; now, for ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... so, science must have its way without restraint; for science there is nothing fixed and definite, to which its process of chemical analysis may not be applied, nothing sacred, no noli me tangere. Without free scientific inquiry, therefore, there is no outcome but stagnation, decline and barbarism. And, while free scientific inquiry is the perennial fountain-head of all progress in human affairs, this inquiry and its gradually extending sway over men's convictions, is at the same time the only guarantee ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... man was a mask of weariness of the soul, which 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
... Angouleme was a military position coveted alike of Catholics and Calvinists, but its old-world strength is a source of weakness in modern days; Angouleme could not spread down to the Charente, and shut in between its ramparts and the steep sides of the crag, the old town is condemned to stagnation ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... attempt on our part to renew the offensive after the stagnation of a winter of trench warfare. For years we had been taught that an army that relinquishes the offensive acknowledges itself as beaten. It now began to look as though military science had undergone a complete revolution and that trench warfare and the policy of attrition ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... more frightful test than that of holding trenches in stationary warfare. 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, ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... On account of Arden she could not speak to Mrs. Lacey. She tried in vain to get work, but at that season there was nothing in Pushton which she could do. Farmers were beginning to get out a little on their wet lands, and various out-of-door activities to revive after the winter stagnation. Moreover, money was very scarce at that season of the year. She at last turned to the garden as her only resource. She realized that she had scarcely money enough to carry them through May. Could she get returns from her garden in time? Could it be made to yield ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... by far the most important is the psychical, the introduction of new ideas. So long as the old, familiar ideas hold sway over the mind of a nation, there is little or no stimulus to comparison and discussion. Stagnation is well-nigh complete. But let new ideas be so introduced as to compel attention and comprehension, and the mind spontaneously awakes to wonderful activity. The old stagnation is no longer possible. Discussion is started; and in the end something ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... shattered. Hardy, in 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
... decadent pursuits. We re-carve old furniture, worry about rank and status, and in the meantime the frontier of the distant planets remains unexplored and unconquered. We ceased long ago to expand. Stability brought the danger of stagnation, to which we succumbed. We became so highly socialized that individuality had to be diverted to the most harmless of pursuits, turned inward, kept from any meaningful expression. I think you have seen a fair amount of that ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... period of nearly 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 ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... prove that it would be profitable. They were ready to own shares in the ships which he expected to build, when it was certain that they would make lucky voyages. He declined their offers, but they all "knuckled" to the man who had been bold enough to break the life-long stagnation of Surrey, and approved his plans as they matured. His mind was filled with the hope of creating a great business which should improve Surrey. New streets had been cut through his property and that of grandfather, who, narrow as he was, could ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... sends the gentle breeze to woo the flower, And stir the pulses of the ripening corn; He, too, lets loose the whirlwind's vengeful power To quench the plagues of foul stagnation born. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... 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 ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... 1846 to 1867, was one of rapid growth in population. The free-grant land policy of the government was a great attraction for tens of thousands of people in the British Isles, who were impelled by social unrest, failure of crops, and general stagnation in the manufacturing industries to seek new homes across the sea. In the twenty years referred to the population more than doubled, and the improved lands of the province increased fourfold. The numbers of cattle and sheep about doubled, ...
— History of Farming in Ontario • C. C. James
... are no criterion of the conditions of drying the pile of lumber if the circulation in any portion is deficient. It is possible to have an extremely rapid circulation of air within the dry kiln itself and yet have stagnation within the individual piles, the air passing chiefly through open spaces and channels. Wherever stagnation exists or the movement of air is too sluggish the temperature will drop and the humidity increase, perhaps to ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner
... I imagine would be the criterion of this kind of diabetes; as the mucilaginous fluid deposited in the cells and cysts of the body, which have no communication with the external air, seems to acquire, by stagnation, this property of coagulation by heat, which the secreted mucus of the intestines and bladder do not appear to possess; as I have found by experiment: and if any one should suppose this coagulable urine was separated from the blood by the kidneys, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... future with only one fear, that of the unemployment to which his increasing deafness, and the break-up of the world as it was before the War, seemed to be condemning him. Further Memories was, we are told, undertaken as some sort of a safeguard against this menace of stagnation. It was a measure for which we may all be glad, as we can share Mr. GOSSE'S thanksgiving that the writer's death, coming when it did, saved him, as he had wished, "from all consciousness ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... 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 in Madras in 1864. ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... panic as bad as it was. After the panic, most of what was left was withdrawn by foreign lenders, so that in the middle of 1908 the market here was as bare of foreign money as it has been in years. Returning American prosperity, however, combined with complete stagnation abroad, set up another hitherward movement of foreign capital which, during the spring and summer of 1909, attained amazing proportions. By the end of the summer, indeed, more foreign capital was employed in the American ...
— Elements of Foreign Exchange - A Foreign Exchange Primer • Franklin Escher
... returns to God who gave it" (Ecclesiastes). But there would be no evolution and no fulfilment of purpose if the spirit were not to return a richer and more developed spirit by reason of its sojourn in the flesh: there would be stagnation, just a simple ineffectual turning round and round, as of a screw that ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... operators of communications dropped under the winking lights of their panels. Observers and centrals in the outlying sections of the city wondered briefly at the unwonted universal motionlessness and stagnation; then the racing taint in water and in air reached them, too, ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... remain bathed in it. Lady Sellingworth said all this to herself that night, and rebuked herself for letting her mind go towards old age. She rebelled against the longing for complete peace of mind because she now connected such a longing with stagnation. And men, especially young men, love vivacity, restlessness, the swift flying temperament. Such a temperament suggests to them youth. It is old age which sits still. Youth is for ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... want of liberty, as the want of bread, is a vital principle in the blood. It is the motive power. Without it man is but a log, and is suited to rule over frogs only; or, like the silent water, becomes a loathsome stagnation. You may suppress, but you can not appease or destroy this divine inheritance in man. On this uniform idea the laws of society depend, and union can have no other. Raise the banner of freedom to all, and you have an imperishable ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage |
