"Stagnate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it. We need the tonic of wildness—to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... heart, like a steam-engine, throbs away, and faithfully pumps its crimson currents unceasingly to every part of the animal frame. Action is one of the first elements of health and happiness. The mind will stagnate and engender moral miasma, as much as the pool never stirred by a tide or ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... friends! is't thus your new-fledged zeal, And plumed valour moulds in roosted sloth? Why dimly glimmers that heroic flame, Whose reddening blaze, by patriot spirit fed, Should be the beacon of a kindling realm? Can the quick current of a patriot heart Thus stagnate in a cold and weedy converse, Or freeze in tideless inactivity? No! rather let the fountain of your valour Spring through each stream of enterprise, Each petty channel of conducive daring, Till the full torrent of your foaming wrath O'erwhelm the ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... normal, even though it be in the forward direction and carrying with it certain privileges, yet entails its disadvantages. The man who breaks out is generally made to pay pretty dearly for his temerity: but, if there were none to advance and thus break out, civilisation itself would stagnate and there could be no progress. The artist, the dreamer, the visionary, the poet, the genius, these all are the advance guard of humanity. As such they frequently receive the pioneers' scanty reward, but their eyes are scarcely fixed upon mundane munificence, ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... they fertilize in the summer: the few may be saved by embankments from drowning, but the flock must perish for hunger. Tempests occasionally shake our dwellings and dissipate our commerce; but they scourge before them the lazy elements, which without them would stagnate into pestilence. In like manner, Liberty herself, the last and best gift of God to his creatures, must be taken Just as she is: you might pare her down into bashful regularity, and shape her into a perfect model of severe, scrupulous law, but she would then be Liberty no ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... race. We, having been called by the providence of God to stand at the head of the march of progress, may well ask ourselves concerning our imperial powers. The line of progress for a nation is to allow no spiritual ideal to stagnate or to retrograde. The spiritual aspiration of a nation always dominates what is called the Social Mind. We grow toward what we worship. It is ours to plant the dominion of civilization in foreign lands, and to supplant a waning culture by a richer, ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... opposite,' alluding to another member, who fortunately was well able to return the compliment in kind. Both, however, are amongst the most useful men in the House. Such amenities are mere matters of everyday occurrence, ripples without which the debates would stagnate. The pity of them is that they discourage men of education and position from descending into the political arena, and even corrupt the manners of those who do. Still, one must bear in mind that, however much a low tone is in itself ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... uneasy bullocks; there was a strain on the long trek-tow, and the great lumbering waggons moved off into the early dawn, the ponies being led, for the heads of the expedition all agreed that it would be pleasanter to walk till after sunrise through the crisp, cool air and not let their blood stagnate by riding behind the slow, sluggish pacing ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... of other watering-places. There is nothing to do except to bathe mornings and watch the people win or lose two francs at petits chevaux in the evenings. Not wildly exciting, that. Consequently, you soon begin to stagnate ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... character of the plague, that the cultivation of a country, the draining of the lands, and other agricultural improvements, tend to eradicate or diminish it; but, at the same time, we have seen countries depopulated where there was no morass, or stagnate water for many days' journey, nor even a tree to impede the current of air, or a town, nor any thing but encampments of Arabs, who procured water from wells of a great depth, and 180 inhabited plains so extensive and uniform, that they resemble the sea, and are so similar ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... battlements sitting, To view the bright landscape below, My heart becomes sad when remembering That silent in death is the foe, And the friends who bravely did combat, And raised your grey towers so steep, Declaring their life-blood should stagnate, Ere ever in ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... inevitable that a Government in which there was never any change or movement should stagnate and become corrupt. Porfirio Diaz was not a President, but, in all save the name, an absolute monarch, and inevitably there formed about his throne a cordon of men as unpatriotic and self-interested as he may have been patriotic and disinterested—as to a great extent he undeniably was. These ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... reason that the Stupidity of their Heads is quickened by the Alacrity of their Hearts. This Constitution in a dull Fellow, gives Vigour to Nonsense, and makes the Puddle boil, which would otherwise stagnate. The British Prince, that Celebrated Poem, which was written in the Reign of King Charles the Second, and deservedly called by the Wits of that Age Incomparable, [7] was the Effect of such an happy Genius as we are speaking of. From among many ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... We stagnate in the provinces. A case of this sort gives a man a chance, and I hope that I shall take it. What do you make ...
— The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge • Arthur Conan Doyle
... thought. From this stock we reason and think and plan. These are the letters and words and thoughts of ordinary life. We have millions of cells left, and the brain is a tireless, ceaseless worker. If we keep on feeding it more letters, more words, more thoughts, it is satisfied, but if we stop, if we stagnate, it keeps on working, but it can only use the words and thoughts we have given it. Ceaselessly it rearranges these words in its effort to live. We are feeding it nothing, its circulation becomes poor, its vitality weak. Some day it arranges its limited number of words into a new ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... why. At Eltham we yawn and stagnate together. The weavers prick and pinch me in a thousand places. They make ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... there is always a party in power to defend the policy of their Minister, for if one Minister is successfully attacked a whole party goes out of power. We, in Ireland, should desire above all things efficiency in our public servants. They will stagnate in their offices unless they are continually stimulated by intimate connection with the class they work for and who have a power of control. This system would also, I believe, lead to less jobbery. Men in an assembly, ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... ignore them, but after frost I like to make a fresh raid, and get rid of another wheelbarrow load or so. And I always notice that for one barrow load of stones that go out, it takes at least two barrow loads of earth to fill in. Thus an excellent circulation is maintained, and the garden does not stagnate. Moreover, I take great pleasure in showing my friends—especially friends from the more earthy sections of New York and farther west—the piles of rock and the parts of certain stone walls about the place that have been literally made out of the cullings of my ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... Soracte stands white with deep snow, nor can the laboring woods any longer support the weight, and the rivers stagnate with the sharpness of the frost. Dissolve the cold, liberally piling up billets on the hearth; and bring out, O Thaliarchus, the more generous wine, four years old, from the Sabine jar. Leave the ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... you. It is difficult to tell you how pleased and relieved I was at your cordial letter. I have no one to whom I can talk upon such matters. I am all driven inwards, and thought turns sour when one lets it stagnate like that. It is a grand thing to be able to tell it all to a sympathetic listener—and the more so perhaps when he looks at it all from another standpoint. It ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... started on foot for Ferrara, which lay on the plain some five miles in advance. The road thither was a magnificent one; but I learned afterwards that I had Napoleon to thank for it; but alas, what a picture the country presented! The water was allowed to stagnate along the path, and a thick, green scurf had gathered upon it. The rich black soil was covered with weeds, and the few houses I saw were mere hovels. The sun shone brilliantly, however, and strove to gild this scene of neglect and wretchedness. The day was the 28th of October, and the heat ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... beneath it. Never in her life had she beheld so torpid, so black, so muddy-looking a stream: its waters reflected no images of anything that was on the banks, and it moved as sluggishly as if it had quite forgotten which way it ought to flow, and had rather stagnate than flow either one ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... faces were not made for wrinkles, their Pure blood to stagnate, their great hearts to fail! The blank gray was not made to blast their hair, But like the climes that know nor snow nor hail, They were all summer; lightning might assail And shiver them to ashes, but to trail A long and snake-like life of ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... are from the world, (for these forts are far removed from towns or cities,) they contrived to form a society within themselves, having most of them recourse to matrimony, which always gives a man something to do, and acts as a fillip upon his faculties, which might stagnate from such quiet monotony. The society, therefore, at these outposts is small, but very pleasant. All the officers being now educated at West Point, they are mostly very intelligent and well informed, and soldiers' wives are always agreeable women all over the world. The ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... it—three months—twelve weeks— eighty-four separate days to lounge away with the same question on your lips! I'd rather be sentenced to hard labour at once. Life is not worth living without work. I'd rather be a clerk on sixty pounds a year than stagnate as ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... rattlesnake as the poor wretches who are accustomed to see one swinging by his tail from the branch of a tree any day in the course of their travels. I have only a vague idea that a cobra de capello is an unpleasant customer; but depend upon it, those foreign fellows feel their blood stagnate and turn to ice at sight of the cold slimy-looking monster. Poverty and I travelled the same road once, and I know what the gentleman is. I don't want to meet him again." Mr. Sheldon lapsed into silence after this. His last words had been spoken to himself rather ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... a vile mask the Gorgon would disown A cheek of parchment and an eye of stone, Mark how the channels of her yellow blood Ooze at her skin, and stagnate there to mud, Cased like the centipede in saffron mail, A darker greenness of the scorpion's scale, Look on her features! and behold her mind As in ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... sullen waves. In Pisa, at such an hour, the Arno is the emblem of Despair. Swollen with melted snow from the mountains, it has gnawed its miserable clay banks and now creeps along, leaden and inert, half solid, like a torrent of liquid mud—irresolute whether to be earth or water; whether to stagnate here for ever at my feet, or crawl onward yet another sluggish league into the sea. So may Lethe look, or Styx: the nightmare of a ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... paper signed, to air a grievance, or to ask advice. The vicar and the minister are my good friends, and, I am glad to say, each other's. The farmers understand my ways (it is as much as I can expect of them), and the labourers like them. All this keeps the pores of the mind open; you cannot stagnate if you are useful to other people. Nor—unless you are a fool—can you be strict with your categories. The more you know of men and systems the more overlapping you see. I could not now, for my life, pigeonhole my acquaintance in this village of five ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... may be undermined or shaken by perseverance in an improper deportment, more than by lapses into error and folly. For the latter, repentance may atone, while the former check the flow of the heart's warm fountains, until they stagnate ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... itself would make a relatively small Department and as such it might tend to become inbred and to stagnate. ...
— Report of the Juvenile Delinquency Committee • Ronald Macmillan Algie
... the species going. By constantly fighting with others for some goal, it sharpens our faculties and makes us more fitted to hold our own; if it weren't for this struggle, we should stagnate and very soon ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... pounding into some and propounding unto others their pet scheme of regeneration,—why, I am a wolf in the sheep-fold, the Antichrist of prophecy, and I know not what other accursed thing. And here is truly the alternative,—to stagnate in a lifeless church, or to join these ravers in their breakneck leap at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... said. "You're not an invalid any longer. I should leave this place if I were you. Go abroad! Go round the world! Don't stagnate any longer! ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell |
