"Stagnation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... distress caused by the depredations of the Dutch, the planters suffered even more during these wars by the stagnation of trade. The great risk incurred in crossing the ocean necessarily brought an increase both in freight rates and in the cost of manufactured goods. In 1667 the Governor and Council declared that the planters were "inforced to pay 12 pounds ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... the general break up of the vast Roman Empire, influences had been at work to decentralise Art, and cause the migration of trained and skilful artisans to countries where their work would build up fresh industries, and give an impetus to progress, where hitherto there had been stagnation. One of these influences was the decree issued in A.D. 726 by Leo III., Emperor of the Eastern Empire, prohibiting all image worship. The consequences to Art of such a decree were doubtless similar to the fanatical proceedings of the English Puritans of the ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... two such learned gentlemen as the above mentioned, one in direct opposition to the other, stagnates young beginners, but I hope the stagnation will not be of long duration, for this I observe that Leadbetter counts the time on the path of Vertex 1, 2, 3 &c. from the right to the left hand or from the consequent to the antecedent,—But Ferguson on the path of Vertex counts the time 1, 2, 3 &c. ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... beat strongly," wrote Roubaud in a description of the physical state during coitus which may almost be termed classic; "the venous blood, arrested by muscular contraction, increases the general heat, and this stagnation, more pronounced in the brain by the contraction of the muscles of the neck and the throwing of the head backward, causes a momentary cerebral congestion, during which intelligence is lost and the faculties abolished. The eyes, violently injected, become haggard, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... decidedly unsafe from Yankee vengeance. The probability is that it will burn, as they have been daily expecting ever since the Yankees occupied Baton Rouge. The risk seems equal, either way. Go or stay, the danger seems the same. Shall we go, then, for variety, or die here of stagnation while waiting for the Yankees to make up their minds? I would rather be at neither place, just now; in fact I could hardly name the place I should like to be in now, unless it were Europe or the Sandwich Islands; but I love Linwood ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... had been retarded; for Greifenstein was a man of habit in everything, incapable of weariness in the performance of what he considered to be his duty, and Clara's really strong health might have carried her through half a lifetime of exasperating stagnation. Indeed, if things altered at all after the conversation about her state, the change was for the better. A fictitious calm descended upon the old house, and a certain gentleness found its way into the relations of the couple which was agreeable to both. With Clara this was the result of exhaustion ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... Strutt. At the third tune the old fellow's fingers began to work impatiently. Mr. Eden broke off directly, put fiddle and bow into Strutt's hand, and ran off to the prison again to arrest melancholy, despair, lunacy, stagnation, mortification, putrefaction, by every art that philosophy and mother-wit could suggest ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... so situated that we could see for many miles around us in one direction; but were excluded from any prospect at the other points. A bog, filled with animalculae of all forms sporting about in the water, which was black from long stagnation, surrounded three parts of the rock, leaving but one approach to it, which was the side least raised above the level of the earth. The bog, therefore, acted as a moat; and it was with that, or some similar feeling of security, ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... 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, and hobbled along for a moment; then I sat ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... are troubled. There may, indeed, be happiness in those occasional 'sabbaths of the soul,' when calmness, like a canopy, overshadows it, and the mind, for a brief season, eddies quietly round and round, instead of sweeping onward; but none can exist in the long and weary stagnation of feeling, the silent, the monotonous, neverending calm, broken by ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... 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 ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... garbaro. Stadium stadio. Staff (pole) stango. Staff, of officers stabo. Staff (managers) estraro. Staff, flag flagstango. Stag cervo. Stag-beetle cerva skarabo. Stage estrado. Stage (theatre) scenejo. Stagger sxanceligxi. Stagnant senmova. Stagnation senmoveco. Staid deca, kvieta. Stain makuli. Stain makulo. Stair sxtupo. Staircase (stairs) sxtuparo. Stake paliso, fosto. Stake (wager) veto. Stalactite stalaktito. Stalagmite stalagmito. Stale malfresxa. Stalk (plant) trunketo. Stall (at market, ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... of the lyrics of the ubiquitous F.E. Weatherby and John Oxenford, the song-status of England can blame a deal of its stagnation. It is not often that these word-wringers have enticed American composers. One of the few victims is John Hyatt Brewer, who was born in Brooklyn, in 1856, and has lived there ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... the same traits that outcrop in one-half the students at Harvard—traits ill-becoming to grown-up men, but not at all alarming in youth. Nero was self-willed and occasionally had tantrums—but a tantrum is only a little whirl-wind of misdirected energy. A tantrum is life plus—it is better far than stagnation, and usually works up into useful life, and sometimes into great art. We have some verses written by Nero in his seventeenth year that show a good Class B sophomoric touch. He danced, played in the theatricals, raced horses, fought dogs, twanged the harp, and exploited ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... enormous debts. The Democratic party under the leadership of former Confederates began its regime of strict economy, race fairness, and inelastic Jeffersonianism. There was a political rest which almost amounted to stagnation and which the leaders were unwilling to disturb by progressive measures lest a developing democracy make trouble with ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... 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 may be sure they are ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... lightning-like rapidity over Europe and displacing the use of bronze everywhere. Yet, as a matter of fact, the work of man does develop in exactly this haphazard way, by fits and starts and sudden leaps of progress after millennia of stagnation. Throwsback to barbarism are just as frequent. The analogy of natural evolution is completely ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... rally around him and he would stand above it. That we have not such a man is owing to our deplorable system of education, and to the wrong direction which our mode of thinking has taken. Every thing with us has fallen asleep, and we are in a condition of almost hopeless stagnation. The old poetry of fatherland, honor, and heroism, seems to be almost extinct among us; we are asleep, and do not even dream. In order to recover our senses, a conceited tyrant, who will mock us while plundering our pockets, is an indispensable ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... course? All we behold is miracle: but, seen So duly, all is miracle in vain. Where now the vital energy that moved, While summer was, the pure and subtle lymph Through the imperceptible meandering veins Of leaf and flower? It sleeps: and the icy touch Of unprolific winter has impressed A cold stagnation on the intestine tide. But let the months go round, a few short months, And all shall be restored. These naked shoots, Barren as lances, among which the wind Makes wintry music, sighing as it goes, Shall ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... ordinary type, where the grade is small or where the quantity of water is insufficient; and if we adopt the system of "everything to the sewer," can we not find in the employment of this apparatus an element for the realization of the famous formula, "Always in circulation, and never in stagnation?"—Le Genie Civil. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... some temperamental difference, or something in her situation, that altered the values of the affair. It was clearly a different sort of man for one thing. She didn't feel a bit gay, and her profound and deepening indignation with the alternative to this stagnation was tainted by a sense of weakness ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... the only fear was that health conditions would be seriously affected because of the clogging of the sewage system and the stagnation of back water. The water works and gas plants continued in operation, but the electric light plants had been ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... my imperative duty to call attention to the recommendation of the Secretary in regard to the personnel of the line of the Navy. The stagnation of promotion in this the vital branch of the service is so great as to ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... lurk, as yet unnoticed, in 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 ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... 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 with a hollow nutmeg several weeks previous to her delivery. But ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... resources. Of the results of the two systems of government, in relation to the general prosperity, there is no room for doubt and uncertainty. The exclusive policy of the Dutch, the obstacles opposed to commerce, when not carried on under the national flag, have produced a lethargy and stagnation, with which the marvellous growth of free and untrammelled trade at Singapore offers a striking contrast. The Dutch have but a slender hold over the Celebes. The physical configuration of the island is singularly straggling. To this circumstance it is probably due that the population is divided, ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... it had motion—of a kind; of a kind worse than actual stagnation. Mounted on a very long steam-lorry that groaned and panted, it very slowly passed me. I noted that two of its compartments were marked FIRST, the rest THIRD. And in some of them, I noted, you might smoke. But of this opportunity you were not availing yourself. All the compartments, ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... another; to leave one city and seek settlement in another, is now the 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 thoughts ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... will also effectually prevent the deposition of sand in 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
... themselves to-day will in a few years seem absurd; measures which are thought to be of vital importance will grow to be inapplicable. To talk and write about such things is well,—may help to prevent stagnation and corruption in public life; but they exercise altogether a higher office, who live in the presence of what is permanently true and good and beautiful, who believe in ideal aims and ends and prevent the masses from losing sight of what constitutes man's ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... maintained its hold; his pulse beat thickly, and his brain throbbed with unnatural heat. Lying in his narrow space—in the semi-darkness—he tossed his limbs about, and closed his eyes in vain—he could not sleep. His utmost efforts induced only an oppressive stagnation of thought, through which he heard the voices of his fellow-convicts; while before his eyes was still the burning Hydaspes—that vessel whose destruction had destroyed for ever all trace of the unhappy ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... 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 ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... allied 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 Tirpitz had opposed the ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... asked. Is there not something in the constitution of things which determines epochs of stagnation and vigour, some force against which man's understanding and will are impotent? Is it not true that in the revolutions of ages there are floods and ebbs of the sciences, which flourish now and then decline, and that when they have reached a certain ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... of the voice is largely confined to males, because the growth changes, etc., as already said, are most marked in boys. At this time, also, there is frequently an excess of blood supplied to the larynx, with possibly some degree of stagnation or congestion, which results in a thickening of the vocal bands, unequal action of muscles, etc., which must involve imperfections in the voice. In all such cases common sense and physiology alike plainly indicate that rest is desirable. All shouting, singing, etc., should be refrained from, and ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... country, and its inhabitants the most wonderful people of 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 officers ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... politically, were a temporary evil financially. There was a general want of confidence in business circles; capital had shown its proverbial timidity by retiring out of sight as far as possible; throughout the land was stagnation. ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White
... the most perfect independence of opinion; he was a benevolent and affectionate man; neat and methodical in his habits, and knew well how to temper liberality with economy. Greatly to his honour, he often kept his workmen employed, solely for their sake, when stagnation of trade prevented him disposing of the products of their labour. As a manufacturer he was distinguished for his promptitude and probity, and he was celebrated for the exquisite finish which he gave to all his productions. In this excellence of workmanship, which he was the first to introduce, ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... 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 of ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... heard that much, but Max had the particulars, and an exciting talk followed. At night H. said to me, "G., New Orleans will be the next to go, you'll see, and I want to get there first; this stagnation here will kill me." ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... frankly admit to you, Hera, that during the period of my infatuation for Psyche, there were complaints from every province of the universe. It was said that unless my attention could be in a measure diverted from that admirable girl, there would be something like a stagnation of general vitality. Phoebus remarked one day, that if the ploughman became the plough the cessation of harvests ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... 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 ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... 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 ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... barbarism and stagnation, and while Europe was developing and progressing the people who had been foremost in all civilisation were now left far behind. The kings, inspired by Spanish pride and the hereditary pretensions of the German Caesars, conceived ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... 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 world ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... 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 ...
— History of Farming in Ontario • C. C. James
... where feasible, to thus connect the moat with running water, to avoid complete stagnation, and so to keep the water ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... people failed to obtain a Christian government. Where the influence of the ideas which prevailed in those times has not been felt, the consequence has been the utmost development of extreme principles, such as have doomed Asia for so many ages to perpetual stagnation, and America to endless heedless change. It is a plain fact, that that kind of liberty which the Church everywhere and at all times requires has been attained hitherto only in States of Teutonic origin. We need hardly glance at the importance ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... discovered and subdued the Orcades, [40] islands till then unknown. Thule [41] was also distinctly seen, which winter and eternal snow had hitherto concealed. The sea is reported to be sluggish and laborious to the rower; and even to be scarcely agitated by winds. The cause of this stagnation I imagine to be the deficiency of land and mountains where tempests are generated; and the difficulty with which such a mighty mass of waters, in an uninterrupted main, is put in motion. [42] It is not the business of this work to investigate the nature of the ocean and the tides; a subject ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... learn what had so long been apparent to her. She always declared an enthusiasm for personality; to her it seemed the force behind everything and the mainspring of all movement. Lack of personality meant stagnation; but granted personality, then advance ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... the end of the year. 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 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... years there has been no excitement in that committee, and it needs to-day, in Western phrase, some "stirring-up." By 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 ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... contempt proceedings and imprisonment of a summary character. The immediate result of the present situation will necessarily be activity by all the companies under different managers, and then competition must follow, or there will be activity by one company and stagnation by another. Only a short time will inevitably lead to a change in ownership of the stock, as all opportunity for continued cooperation must disappear. Those critics who speak of this disintegration in the trust as a mere change of garments have not given consideration to the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William H. Taft • William H. Taft
... are not meant to attain our full mental stature on the earth-plane, or what would be left to achieve in the countless ages of immortality? Man believes in immortality and yet seems to contemplate it as a state of stagnation and quiescence. Why he believes in it he cannot fully explain. It is, as you said before, a consciousness given to the races of humanity, but no more capable of commonplace analysis than time, or ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... 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; an anodyne, not a remedy: Rich and ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... end every teacher should use every means possible to keep her imagination alive and luxuriant, and never, on any account, permit the exigencies of her task to repress it. The success of her pupils depends upon her, and she should strive against stagnation as she would against death. The passing out, the evaporation of imagination is an insidious process, and when it is gone she is but a barren fig-tree. If her imagination is strong and healthy she cannot ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... easily; 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
... will individually feel in whatever concerns the government. Those who represent the dignity of their country in the eyes of other nations, will be particularly sensible to every prospect of public danger, or of dishonorable stagnation in public affairs. To those causes we are to ascribe the continual triumph of the British House of Commons over the other branches of the government, whenever the engine of a money bill has been employed. An absolute inflexibility on the side of the ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... activity; gesture, signal, gesticulation; port, gait; impulse. Antonyms: inertia, rest, stagnation, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... eighteenth century, went forth—promulgated 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 ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... Instead of sameness, he found variety; instead of uniformity of distance, limitless and utterly limitless fields and boundless distances; instead of rest and quiescence, motion and activity; instead of stagnation, life. ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... intended to benefit a class that was not adapted to rural occupations, either by association or training. By this enterprise Caius Gracchus showed that he saw with perfect clearness the true reason, and the final evidence, of the stagnation of the middle class. A nation which has abandoned agriculture and allows itself to be fed by foreign hands, even by those of its own subjects, is exposed to military dangers which are obvious, and to political perils somewhat more obscure but bearing their evil fruit from time to time; but ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... used. But the Civil War and the subsequent politicaldisturbances intervened to prevent the continuance of this progress, and the agriculture of the end of the century seems to have relapsed into stagnation. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... a man's life: brain, blood, and breath. Press the brain a little, its light goes out, followed by both the others. Stop the heart a minute and out go all three of the wicks. Choke the air out of the lungs, and presently the fluid ceases to supply the other centres of flame, and all is soon stagnation, cold, and darkness. The "tripod of life" a French physiologist called these three organs. It is all clear enough which leg of the tripod is going to break down here. I could tell you exactly what the difficulty 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)
... does not furnish it, he who furnishes it does not build it. To each his share, because of lack of time. Division of labour, the mother of the arts, makes the workman excel in his department; one man for the whole work would mean stagnation, the worker never getting beyond his first crude attempts. Animal industry is a little like our own: it does not attain its perfection save with the aid of obscure toilers, who, without knowing it, prepare the final masterpiece. I see no other reason for this need of a gratuitous lodging ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... to the prevailing local topic—the badness of the harvest, the low prices of everything, the consequent depression among the farmers, and stagnation in the villages. ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... lake among the far-off mountains. The second threw on his canvas a thundering waterfall, with a fragile birch-tree bending over the foam; at the fork of a branch, almost wet with the cataract's spray, a robin sat on its nest. The first was only STAGNATION; the last was REST. For in Rest there are always two elements—tranquility and energy; silence and turbulence; creation and destruction; fearlessness and fearfulness. This it was ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... Charles V. population stood stationary, or declined, and wealth decreased. Philip II. enforced orthodoxy, excluded all non-Catholic literature, and summoned home all Spanish students in foreign universities, thus dooming Spain to intellectual stagnation. She exhausted her resources in unwise or hopeless foreign struggles, like the war of conquest of Italy and the effort to reconquer the Netherlands; she wasted her peculiar opportunities by driving from her ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... Fleda!" said Constance in her usual manner,—"you have lived up there among the solitudes till you have got morbid ideas of life—which it makes me melancholy to observe. I am very much afraid they verge towards stagnation." ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... he has hauled, by the scruff of the neck as often as not, out of a slough of middle-class mediocrity, and sent careering off into some welter or current of ideas and conjecture. Carl didn't know where they would end, and no more do any of the rest of us. He knew he loathed stagnation. And he stirred things and stirred people. And the end of the stirring is far from ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... like that which comes from the steady, persistent, honest, conscientious pursuit of a noble aim. There are a multitude of evidences in man's very structure that his marvelous mechanism was intended for action, for constant exercise, and that idleness and stagnation always mean deterioration and death of power. No man can remain idle without shrinking, shrivelling, constantly becoming a less efficient man; for he can keep up only those faculties and powers which he constantly employs, and there is no other possible way. Nature puts her ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... French names; there were high wooden crosses by the water-side; the houses were many- gabled and many-windowed, with tiers of balconies; and the setting sun flashed upon Romish churches with spires of glittering tin. Everything was marked by stagnation and retrogression: the people are habitans, the ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... 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 the Shampuashuh station; for I shall go that way to ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... "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
... taste is best, the suspicion continually arises that a foreign model has been imitated. Moreover, from first to last the art makes little progress. There seems to have been an arrest of development.[863] The early steps are taken, but at a certain point stagnation sets in; there is no further attempt to improve or advance; the artists are content to repeat themselves, and reproduce the patterns of the past. Perhaps there was no demand for ceramic art of a higher order. At any rate, progress ceases, and while Greece was rising to her grandest efforts, ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... gain. The same culture that has extinguished in our brains the fire of fanatical zeal has also smothered the glow of inspiration in our hearts, clipped the wings of our sentiment, and destroyed our doughty energy of character.... Granted that the period of the crusades was a long and sad stagnation of culture, and even a return, of Europe to its former barbarism; still, humanity had clearly never before been so near to its highest dignity as it was then,—if indeed it is a settled doctrine that the essence of man's ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... It had followed the main stream of travel far northward, and now, as we ventured upon its track, it seemed like traversing the valley of the shadow of death. Terror had committed greater ravages than the pestilence; the villages and cities on our route were half deserted; stagnation was visible in all commercial places; and when we reached New Orleans this strange state of things was doubly intensified: it looked more like a city of the dead, or a city depopulated, than the ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... satisfaction. It gave a voyage that had been full of interest for him just the spice that it required to achieve perfection as an experience. His lordship was one of your gallants to whom existence that is not graced by womankind is more or less of a stagnation. Miss Arabella Bishop—this straight up and down slip of a girl with her rather boyish voice and her almost boyish ease of movement—was not perhaps a lady who in England would have commanded much notice in my lord's discerning ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... free and independent, kept in close touch with the real national awakening and reflected in its membership the changes in social development. But the House of Lords, unlike any other institution in the country, remained unchanged and quite unaffected by outside circumstances. Its stagnation and immobility naturally made it increasingly hostile to democratic advance. The number of Liberal Peers or Peers who could remain Liberal under social pressure gradually diminished. Friction caused by diversity of aim and interest became consequently more and more frequent. There ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... pottery and shreds of tin lying about? no dead carcass, or dirty cottage, with miserable wife and greedy children? When I was a child, I knew a lovely place that I could not half enjoy, because, although hidden from my view, an ugly stagnation, half mud, half water, lay in a certain spot below me. When I had to pass it, I used to creep by with a kind of dull terror, mingled with hopeless disgust, and I have never ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... of trade resembled that of agriculture prosperous development at the beginning of the era, followed by stagnation and decline. Under Kwummu (782-805) and his immediate successors, canals and roads were opened, irrigation works were undertaken, and coins were frequently cast. But coins were slow in finding their way into circulation, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... the 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 old continent ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... of December, notwithstanding, there were no external symptoms to create uneasiness; military movements lay under the usual stagnation of winter, and except a few detachments on the frontiers of the Pale, who gave trouble by marauding excursions, the French appeared to be resting in profound repose. On the 1st of December, the governor of Guisnes reported an expedition for the destruction of one of their outlying ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... child, that should come and settle in the back woods. The face of the country in those interior parts is variable and beautiful, and being composed of hills and vallies, rocks and rivers, there is not that stagnation in the air, which is so exceedingly hurtful to the human constitution in the flat marshy parts of the province. The hills occasion an agitation in the atmosphere, and by collecting the air in streams, these run along the earth in pleasant ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... now come to a close. Many changes had occurred in Spring Street Station. In consequence of the cholera, and the consequent stagnation of business, large numbers of the people went into the country. But notwithstanding this depletion, such had been the number of accessions, one hundred and seven in all, that I was able to report one hundred and fifty-seven members ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... of lower animals is apt to fall into a fixed circle of life acts, to become so closely adapted to some situation or condition that any change of habits would be likely to prove detrimental. This is a state of affairs tending to produce stagnation and vigorously to check advance. Many instances of this could be cited from human history, while it is the common condition with the ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... destruction, is surely of happy omen. The novel straining to become the play, the play the novel, both trying to paint; music striving to become story; poetry gasping to be music; painting panting to be philosophy; forms, canons, rules, all melting in the pot; stagnation broken up! In all this havoc there is much to shock and jar even the most eager and adventurous. We cannot stand these new-fangled fellows! They have no form! They rush in where angels fear to tread. They have lost all the good of the old, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... now—courage to bear hourly increasing privation, and to suppress every murmur of suffering that would discredit their patriotism, and invoke "peace at any price." It was on this class that the calamities of the siege now pressed the most heavily. The stagnation of trade, and the stoppage of the rents, in which they had invested their savings, reduced many of them to actual want. Those only of their number who obtained the pay of one-and-a-half franc a day as National Guards, could be sure to escape from starvation. But this pay had already begun to demoralise ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... night, and eager to exchange the stagnation of the shore for the tumult of the ocean, we departed next morning for Baddeck by the most direct route. This we found, by diligent study of fascinating prospectuses of travel, to be by the boats of the International Steamship Company; ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... beautiful expression, "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus." Uniformity of thoughts or opinions is a very different thing. A man would be considered worse than a knave who would throw chains around the human intellect, so as to put an end to progress in thought; it would be the stagnation of all in which we are most interested. Christians are not to be charged with any such wickedness, for they are using all their powers to produce thought; money and talent are freely bestowed in many ways to get men to think, and then decide, not in reference to opinions but ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 12, December, 1880 • Various
... will be great and wonderful. But where it will end—who knows! Will it be like the Tower of Babel, great in conception, great in execution, but overreaching in its greatness? Will our destiny be like the snowball, accumulating as it rolls till it becomes immovable in its immensity? Then—stagnation! And yet the start of that snowball was but 50 ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... have many fine traits; that there is among them a circle of high-bred men and women which would reflect honor on the social life of any country; and that there has been an intellectual and literary development within this small circle which partially atones for the stagnation and illiteracy of the mass of the people; and I also know that even the illiterate mass possesses many sterling qualities. But unfortunately in international matters every nation must be judged by the action of ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... annihilated. But meanwhile Metellus had come up, had overthrown the corps of Perpenna ranged against him, and taken his camp: it was not possible to resume the battle against the two armies united. The successes of Metellus, the junction of the hostile forces, the sudden stagnation after the victory, diffused terror among the Sertorians; and, as not unfrequently happened with Spanish armies, in consequence of this turn of things the greater portion of the Sertorian soldiers dispersed. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... interest enough to put him in motion toward that place for which he had longed, and of which he had dreamed, for years. There is probably so much of excitement in prolonged expectation, that the quiet realizing of it produces a momentary stagnation of feeling as well as of effort. It was a good deal so with me. The activity of preparation, the rapid progress of the ship, the first making land, the coming up the harbor, and old scenes breaking ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... disposition—, Trunnion's subjection was like that of a bear, chequered with fits of surliness and rage; whereas Pickle bore the yoke like an ox, without repining. No wonder, then, that this indolence, this sluggishness, this stagnation of temper rendered Gamaliel incapable of withstanding the arguments and importunity of his friends, to which he at length surrendered. He acquiesced in the justice of their observations: and, taking his son by the ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... 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 influence ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... 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
... the South will not be an attractive section for capital. It will, therefore, be considered the duty of business men to secure protection to the Negroes lest their ill-treatment force them to migrate to the extent of bringing about a stagnation ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... which has convulsed the continent is at an end, and can not be renewed. Many changes have taken place in Europe; many governments have been destroyed. The cause is to be found in the uneasiness and the sufferings occasioned by the stagnation of maritime commerce. Greater changes still may take place, and all will be unfavorable to the politics of England. Peace, therefore, is at the same time the common cause of the nations of the continent and of Great Britain. We unite in requesting your majesty to lend an ear to the voice ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... accompanied by the commandant of Toluca, and retraced our road to Mexico; for though Toluca is a fine city, with clean, airy houses, wide, well-paved streets, and picturesque in its situation, there is something sad and deserted in its appearance, an air of stagnation that weighs upon the spirits; and the specimens we have seen of its lower orders are not inviting. We had rather an agreeable journey, as the day was cool, and we had the diligence to ourselves. We breakfasted again at Cuajimalpa, took leave of the interesting ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... Annabel; "those cherry orchards and green meadows, and the river winding along the valley, and the church tower peeping out among the elms, they all make a most effective picture. There's something dreadfully sleepy and languorous about it, though; stagnation seems to be the dominant note. Nothing ever happens here; seedtime and harvest, an occasional outbreak of measles or a mildly destructive thunderstorm, and a little election excitement about once in five years, that is all that we have to modify the monotony of our existence. ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... of drainage that ever I heard of that will apply up in those regions!" said the doctor, after again a second's delay to speak. "And you are doing my will too much honour now—I tell you it is in a state of stagnation, and I don't at present see any precipice to tumble down. When I do, I'll promise to think of you—if that thought isn't carried away too.—Come, Linden!" he said with more expression of kindliness than Mr. Linden had seen certainly during all the voyage before,—"I believe in you, and I will!—though ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... Parnells, the witcheries of Mistress Betty, and the despotism of old madam, during the next month. Indeed, Mistress Betty was so reverent, so charitable, so kind, so gentle as well as blithe under depressing influences, and so witty under stagnation, that it would have been hard to have lived in the same house with her and have been her enemy: she was so easily gratified, so easily interested; she could suit herself to so many phases of this marvellous human nature. ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... examine the 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
... ascendency of Lord Palmerston. The five or six years during which Lord John Russell was at the head of affairs were marked by a succession of panics which heightened immeasurably the difficulties of his position. One was purely commercial, but it threw gloom over the country, brought stagnation to trade, and political discontent followed in its train, which in turn reacted on the prospects of the Government. The Irish famine and the rebellion which followed in its wake taxed the resources of the Cabinet to the utmost, and the efforts which ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... water in the gauge-glass appears motionless while the boiler is working, what does it portend, and how would you proceed to rectify the stagnation of the water? ...
— The Stoker's Catechism • W. J. Connor
... impressive thing about China, as indeed about nearly all of the heathen world, is the spirit of stagnation. There is a deadness, or sort of stupor, over everything. It is as if a blight had spread over the land, checking all progress. Habits, customs, and institutions remain apparently as they were a thousand years ago. This stands out in ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... in silence, rendered more depressing by the deepening gloom outside. With the evening it grew no cooler. What little wind there was followed the train, so that we traveled in stagnation. Utter darkness brought no respite, but the fascination of flitting shadows and the ever-new mystery of African night. The train drew up at last in a station in the shadow of great overleaning ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... 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 in ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... extended at his ease, and sheltered in his place of observation behind the window, D'Artagnan seemed as if he had ceased to be a soldier, as if he were no longer an officer belonging to the palace, but was, on the contrary, a quiet, easy-going citizen in a state of stagnation between his dinner and supper, or between his supper and his bed; one of those strong, ossified brains, which have no more room for a single idea, so fiercely does animal matter keep watch at the doors ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... April of the same year he wrote:—"I believe I am going on very well, but I am rather weary of my present inactive life, and the water-cure has the most extraordinary effect in producing indolence and stagnation of mind: till experiencing it, I could not have believed it possible. I now increase in weight, have escaped sickness for thirty days." He returned in June, after sixteen weeks' absence, much improved in health, and, as already described, ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... lower ebb than during the summer which intervened between the disaster of Camden and the discovery of Arnold's treason. Washington's army lay at New Windsor in enforced inactivity; enlistments were few, and the currency was almost worthless. Such was the stagnation in trade, that the young strangers found it extremely difficult to dispose of their little venture in tea. Two months were passed at the cafe, in waiting for an opportunity to go to Philadelphia, where Congress was in session, and where they expected to find the influential ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... providence of God, the garter which had held me till the bitterness of temporal death was past broke just before eternal death had taken place upon me. The stagnation of the blood under one eye in a broad crimson spot, and a red circle round my neck, showed plainly that I had been on the brink of eternity. The latter, indeed, might have been occasioned by the pressure of the garter, but the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... stagnation, without light Or power of movement, seem'd my soul, 'Mid onward-sloping [42] motions infinite Making for one ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... of her lover or friend, denotes she will be flirted with because of her unkindness to others. To see sour ice cream, denotes some unexpected trouble will interfere with your pleasures. If it is melted, your anticipated pleasure will reach stagnation before ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... the years before 1886 Schenectady had been suffering from a long period of stagnation. In that year an official of the Edison Machine Works of N.Y.C. happened to pass through Schenectady and noticed two empty factories, the former Jones Car Works. The Edison Company had been established ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... become the great historic sea of the future—the vast amphitheater around which shall sit in majesty and power the two Americas, Asia, Africa, and the chief colonies of Europe. God forbid that the waters of our national life should ever settle to the dead level of a waveless calm. It would be the stagnation of death, the ocean grave ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... water which first putrefies by stagnation, and then sends up noxious vapours and fills the atmosphere with death. Fly, therefore, from idleness, as the certain parent both of guilt and of ruin. And under idleness I include, not mere inaction only, ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... curtain, vanished in the movement of a hand. I heard Gibberne's voice in infinite alarm. "Sit down," he said, and flop, down upon the turf at the edge of the Leas I sat—scorching as I sat. There is a patch of burnt grass there still where I sat down. The whole stagnation seemed to wake up as I did so, the disarticulated vibration of the band rushed together into a blast of music, the promenaders put their feet down and walked their ways, the papers and flags began flapping, ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... dust. Business was very dull, both in the ports and inland towns of California, and the trading communities among the mines. The immense shipments of goods which had arrived from the Atlantic States had produced a complete stagnation in the market, bringing many kinds of merchandise below cost prices. After the first showers of the rainy season, early in December, the miners withdrew to the dry diggings, when the rains ceased, and three or four weeks of clear and delightful weather left them without employment. The richest ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... 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 women; Anthony Trollope ...
— Six Letters From the Colonies • Robert Seaton
... produced by Revelation. Nevertheless a demand for more physical evidence; but the physical cannot be allowed to overshadow the spiritual. Dangers to believers from leaning this way: superstition; blindness; stagnation. The guarantee for spiritual perceptiveness: to take Jesus as the Lord of the conscience, the ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... hosts forward against Russia, and closing 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 clerks, have now but two or three; ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... brought on All Fools' Day.) The interesting point is that each represents a great—or, if you prefer, a little—truth. But if each recognised the other's truth he would be paralysed in proclaiming his own truth. There would be general stagnation. The world is carried on by ensuring that those who carry it on shall be blinded in one or the other eye. We may call it ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... strength of the current is not lost, there is no fear; the obstructions and the dead accumulations of his activity are dissipated and carried away; the impetus corrects its own mistakes. Only when the soul sleeps in stagnation do its enemies gain overmastering strength, and these obstructions become too clogging to be fought through. Hence have we been warned by our teachers that to work we must live, to live we must work; that life and activity are ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... a dozen average men are banded together and condemned to make the best of each other's society for a prolonged period, there is apt to be a stagnation of ideas as well as of aspirations, which tends more or less to develop the physical, and to stunt the spiritual, part of ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... get another cigar. The night was getting on to what I may call its deepest hour, the hour most favourable to evil purposes of men's hate, despair or greed—to whatever can whisper into their ears the unlawful counsels of protest against things that are; the hour of ill-omened silence and chill and stagnation, the hour when the criminal plies his trade and the victim of sleeplessness reaches the lowest depth of dreadful discouragement; the hour before the first sight of dawn. I know it, because while Marlow ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... by man might be put an end to, it 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
... 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
... every one of the tendencies I have described, but they are convinced that every one of these tendencies will be arrested. They believe that the country will not conquer the town but the reverse. So far from expecting the unproductive stagnation described in the last paragraph, they think of Russia as of the natural food supply of Europe, which the Communists among them believe will, in course of time, be made up for "Working Men's Republics" ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... more causes than one deprive our merchants of their customers. Between us and our rivals more of the same sort is produced than the existing markets can take: this is again Overproduction. Hence stagnation in our manufacturing districts. Meanwhile, in near thirty years of manufacturing prosperity after 1847, the increased riches of these towns enriched the farmers and enabled the landlords to raise rents in England, and in consequence, by dint of landlord power, rent rose in the whole United ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... earth, more tranquil governments than ours, nor a happier and more contented people. Their commerce has not as yet found the channels, which their new relations with the world will offer to best advantage, and the old ones remain as yet unopened by new conventions. This occasions a stagnation in the sale of their produce, the only truth among all the circumstances published about them. Their hatred against Great Britain, having lately received from that nation new cause and new aliment, has taken a new spring. Among the individuals of your acquaintance, nothing ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... and winter without let or hindrance, and to promote their circulation I would, if possible, place the pipe beside a warm chimney. Yet if the air it contains should sometimes move downward it will do no special harm; anything is better than stagnation. Into this open pipe, which should be not only water-tight but air-tight through its entire length, all waste-pipes from the house should empty as turbid mountain torrents pour into the larger stream that flows through the valley. (Fig. 1.) Now, unless the upward draught through this ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... occurred in the twenty-five years following the great inrush of 1882. The boundless prairie reaches of Manitoba were now comparatively well settled, and the tide of immigration, which, after a dozen years' stagnation, had set in again in greater flood than ever, was now sweeping over the newer lands still farther west. Railways had supplanted ox-cart and bob-sleigh as the freighters of the plains; the farmer read his daily paper on the porch after supper, while his sons and daughters ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... accused himself of stagnation, and walked up and down to shake himself out of a torpor which might have been attributed to the hot fire. Well, well, was it because he had had to wait so long that his desires had left him, or at least quit bothering him—no, they had not, why, he was yearning now for the moment when he ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... reached the period when he fails to be on the outlook for details of this kind and is convinced that in no possible way could his performances be improved, has reached a very dangerous stage of artistic stagnation which will result in the ruin of his career. There is always room for improvement, that is the development of new details, and it is this which gives zest and intellectual interest to the work of ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... wreathed with fanciful fruits and foliage, and Cupids, and creatures of a now extinct species. The rainbow had been the painter's palette; genius his brush; fancy-gone-mad his attendant; the total temporary stagnation of redskin faculties his object, and ecstasy his general state of mind, when he executed this magnificent chef d'oeuvre in the centre of the ceiling of the reception hall ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... that, when the most celebrated, and even the most intellectual persons are brought together expressly for the purpose of conversation, then it does not flow, but sinks to silence, and ends at last in the stagnation of utter stupidity. Each seems oppressed with the weight of his own reputation, and, in the pride of high celebrity, and the shyness, real or affected, of high rank, each fears to commit himself by a single word. People of opposite parties, ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... restless. The village was beginning to look small, and he asked 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 Hunted Outlaw - Donald Morrison, The Canadian Rob Roy • Anonymous
... west, but have reached only a little way up into the caves and valleys of this great island plateau, which towers a thousand feet above the surrounding country. The inevitable effects of isolation, of intermarriage, of stagnation and neglect in mental and spiritual matters, has brought about a condition of things which calls for the aid and sympathy of all good Samaritans. They have not suffered in the same way as the colored race, from the former oppression and contagious ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 4, April, 1889 • Various
... flitting about from one place of residence to another—this insatiate restlessness of body and appalling stagnation of soul—merely with the view to arriving at results. The event which (under Providence) proved to be the means of bringing Rachel Verinder and myself together again, was no other than the hiring ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... The valley through which passes the river Chiana, bounded by Arezzo, Cortona, Montepulciano, and Chiusi. In the heat of autumn it was formerly rendered unwholesome by the stagnation of the water, but has since been drained by the Emperor Leopold II. The Chiana is mentioned as a remarkably sluggish stream, in the ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... his prophetic Will, thus expresses himself: "For my name and memory, I leave it to men's charitable speeches, and to foreign nations, and the next ages." Before the times of Galileo and Harvey the world believed in the stagnation of the blood, and the diurnal immovability of the earth; and for denying these the one was persecuted and the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the hounds there were still other attempts at gaiety. The village began somehow to look brisk; the ancient stagnation passed away, and grey cottagers spoke fondly of the ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... distinguished, like the neighborhood of Alexandria, as uncommonly pure and salubrious; and this singular advantage was ascribed to the regular tides of the Adriatic, which swept the canals, interrupted the unwholesome stagnation of the waters, and floated, every day, the vessels of the adjacent country into the heart of Ravenna. The gradual retreat of the sea has left the modern city at the distance of four miles from the Adriatic; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... should herald their approach will be those of recovery from the mental and spiritual stagnation into which the village has been plunged, and as we may regard that stagnation as the starting-point from which any further advance will proceed, it is worth while to fix it in our minds by a similitude. What has most obviously happened to the village population resembles an eviction, when ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... The stagnation of life in Alaska is all but inconceivable. The summer tourist can hardly realize it, because he brings to the settlement the only variety it knows; and this comes so seldom—once or twice a month—that the population arises as a man and rejoices so long as the ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... derived from the branches of the internal iliac, S. The rectum receives its arteries from the inferior mesenteric and pudic. The veins which course upwards from the rectum are large and numerous, and devoid of valves. When these veins become varicose, owing to a stagnation of their circulation, produced from whatever cause, the bowel is liable to be affected with haemorrhoids or to ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... industrious, accustomed for centuries to a state of comparative civil freedom, and to a lively foreign trade, by which their minds were saved from the stagnation of bigotry. It was natural that they should begin to generalize, and to pass from the concrete images presented them in the Flemish monasteries to the abstract character of Rome itself. The Flemish, above all their other qualities, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... 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; ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson |
