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Stagnation   /stægnˈeɪʃən/   Listen
Stagnation

noun
1.
A state of inactivity (in business or art etc).  Synonyms: doldrums, stagnancy.
2.
Inactivity of liquids; being stagnant; standing still; without current or circulation.  Synonym: stagnancy.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Stagnation" Quotes from Famous Books



... domestic virtues. Well, only idiots retain the same opinions longer than twenty-four hours. Fixity is imbecility; the inconstant alone progress; dissatisfaction is only a synonym for intelligence; contentment translated means stagnation..... I have changed my opinion concerning the ...
— Between Friends • Robert W. Chambers

... tissue are first those of congestion, distention of the blood vessels, and exudation of the fluid of the blood into the surrounding fibers, with, however, a more nearly complete stagnation of the blood; fibrin, or lymph, a plastic substance, is thrown out as well, and the cells, which we have seen to be living organisms in themselves, no longer carried in the current of the blood, migrate from the vessels and, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... many uninsured millions had vanished, had also wrecked men past the rebounding age, and Dryden Ruyler was one of them. He might have borne the destruction of the old business building down on Front Street, or even the temporary stagnation of trade, but when the Pacific Union Club disappeared in the raging furnace, and, like many of his old cronies who had no home either in the country or out in the Western Addition, he was driven over to Oakland for lodgings, this ghastly climax of horrors—he escaped in a milk wagon after sleeping ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... frightened at themselves. They had a coherent programme, and represented a formidable "domination" in English life. And that English life itself, in all that concerned the advance and transformation of labour, was in a singularly tossed and troubled state. After a long period of stagnation and comparative industrial peace, storms at home, answering to storms on the Continent, had been let loose, and forces both of reaction and of revolution were making themselves felt in new forms and under the command of ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... 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 ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... wind is the combined action of heat and cold. If the world were heated with perfect equality all round, there would be, as far at least as heat is concerned, a perfect and permanent stagnation of the atmosphere; and this would speedily result in the destruction of every living thing. But by the varied and beautiful arrangements which the Almighty has made in nature He has secured a regular flow of atmospheric currents, ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne

... interested in the Mohammedan natives; their open practice of prayer, the instinctive readiness with which the idea of God and of eternity was welcomed to their thoughts, and, withal, their utter religious stagnation, which he traced to their ignorance of the Trinity, filled his mind with questions. How to convert these sluggish contemplatives, what type of Catholicity would be likely to flourish in the East, and how it could be reconciled ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott

... to consume in stagnation: You are equal in right to obey: You are brothers in bonds, and the nation Is your mother—whose sons are her prey. Those others your brothers, Who toil not, weave, nor till, Refuse you and use you As waiters on ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... education was concerned, therefore, the English conquest found the colony in almost utter stagnation. Not one in five hundred among the habitants, it was said, could read or write. Outside the immediate circle of clergy, officials, and notaries, ignorance of even the rudiments of education was almost ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro

... movements of the seventeenth and the eighteenth century had found Jews well to the fore. But the "German" Jews—and this term included the great bulk of the Jews of Europe—were suffering from the effects of intellectual stagnation. The Talmud still exercised the mind and imagination of these Jews, but culture and religion were separated. Mendelssohn in a hundred places contends that such separation is dangerous and unnatural. It was his service to Judaism that he made the ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams

... 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

... that I am deprecating a change. On the contrary, I am advocating a change. It will never do to let the fowls drown, and to take no steps to prevent a recurrence of any such disaster. I hold no brief for stagnation. I am merely insisting that the change must commend itself to heart and conscience and reason. It must be a forward move. Look at this, for example. It is from Stanley's Life of Arnold: 'We are all in the midst of confusion,' Arnold writes from Laleham, 'the books all packed ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham

... and he became more and more a battle-ground of fermenting foods and warring juices, he came to hate the very sight, as people say, of every one of these neighbours. There they were, every day and all the days, just the same, echoing his own stagnation. They pained him all round the top and back of his head; they made his legs and arms weary and spiritless. The air was tasteless by reason of them. He lost his ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... changes in our tariff-system, and coincident with the views expressed by Mr Baring in his address to the electors, when he deprecated "a constant change, unsettling men's minds, baffling all combinations, destroying all calculations, paralysing trade, and continuing the stagnation from which we are recovering;" and declared his belief "that the minister who applies the principles of free-trade with the most caution, deliberation, and judgment, is the statesman who merits ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... causes may in like manner be understood, of which one comes of necessity, the other of stagnation. The first is the management of the family and conduct of civil affairs, which fitly draws to itself the greater number of men, so that they cannot live in the quietness of speculation. The other is the fault of the place where a person ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri

... Europe. The external characteristics of the phenomena before us are everywhere pretty much the same, namely,—a prosperous trade gradually slackening, an increasing demand for money, depreciation and sacrifice of securities, numerous failures, disappearance of gold, panic, and the complete stagnation of every branch of labor; and it should seem that the cause or causes to be assigned for them ought also to be everywhere pretty much the same. At any rate, no local cause is in itself to be regarded as sufficient, unless it can be shown that such local cause has a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various

... sure, before this equalitarian ideal could be embodied in a social program it had to await the coming of the modern age with its open doors, its freer movements of thought and life, its belief in progress, its machinery of change. But even in the stagnation of the intervening centuries the old Stoic-Christian ideal never was utterly forgotten. Lactantius, a Christian writer of the fourth century, said that God, who creates and inspires men, "willed that all should be equal." [3] Gregory the Great, at the end of the sixth ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick

... government, the departure of young Lafayette 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

... that gave it birth, much when suddenly come upon now on the walls of the provincial gallery looks disconcertingly old-fashioned. But nevertheless, the movement, the energy, the life of the Nineties was a healthy enemy to that stagnation which is ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... really depressed, only impatient. I could never again get back to the beastly stagnation of that Constantinople week. The guns kept me cheerful. There was the devil of a bombardment all day, and the thought that our Allies were thundering there half a dozen miles off gave me a perfectly groundless hope. If they burst through the ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan

... it came, now plunging to their arm-pits in foul sluices of gangrened water, now hopelessly submerged in slime, now attacked by Regions of wood ticks, now tempting some unfaithful log or greenishly solid morass, and plunging to the tip of the skull in poison stagnation; the tree boughs rent their uniforms; they came out upon dry land, many of them without a rag of garment scratched, and gashed, and spent, repugnant to themselves, and disgusting to those who saw them; but not one trace of Booth or Harold was any where found. Wherever ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend

... 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 ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton

... Mr. Vyner, with the air of one uttering a new but indisputable fact—"change is good for us all. So long as you retain your present position there is, of course, a little stagnation in the office; the juniors see ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs

... development of political liberty in modern times, or (2) from traditional systems of scientific teaching, as the Ptolemaic theory of astronomy, or the Cartesian of vortices. The absence too of such attempts in the stagnation of Eastern life is an ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar

... little 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

... free from every trace of hypocritical conformity and mendacious compliance. Condorcet seems to make the only remark that is worth making, when he says that the true shame and disgrace of these dissemblings lay not with the writers, whose only other alternative was to leave the stagnation of opinion undisturbed, but with the ecclesiastics and ministers whose tyranny made dissimulation necessary. And the veil imposed by authority did not really serve any purpose of concealment. Every reader was let into the secret of the writer's true opinion of the old mysteries, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... fell under French rule, the exactions of Charles and the cynicism with which he broke faith, together with the stagnation in the wine trade, caused the people to wish very heartily that the English would return and try their luck again with the sword. A revolt was secretly planned, in which many of the powerful barons of Aquitaine ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... obliged to withdraw privately. No reliance could be placed on the Pasha; and the Prince of the mountains had sent word, that no Frank refugees would be received in his dominions, in case of war. In the utter stagnation of trade, the missionaries could obtain no money for their bills, and no European or American vessels of war visited the port. Messrs. Goodell, Bird and Smith, in view of all these facts, thought it their duty to avail themselves of the opportunity afforded by an Austrian vessel ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson

... our young men in the ministry want large audiences, let them quit philosophizing, and hair-splitting, and botanizing, and without gloves take hold of men's sins and troubles, and there will be no lack of hearers. Stagnation is worse than sensationalism. ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage

... 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

... year had 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 ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller

... 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

... boundless possibilities held out by the adventure in which he was involved; that other ghastly horror, which had haunted him for so long, now put far away. Risk, excitement, peril, daring, to be rewarded by wealth, after long years of unnatural stagnation. The prospect opened out a vista ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford

... 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 may be sure they are not ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable

... mind the fact that the same word may mean widely different things to two persons. For this reason the specific word that appeals to him most may be of no value in addressing others. "Free silver" means to one set of men the withdrawal of money from investment, consequent stagnation in business, followed by the closing of factories and penury among laborers. To others it means three dollars a day for unskilled labor, fire, clothes, and something to eat. Again, if one wished to present the horrors of devastating disease, in the South ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... remainder of the work is very easy. Bouginage can be carried out from below the same as from above and may be of advantage in some cases. Strictural lumina are much more apt to be concentric as approached from below because there has been no distortion by pressure dilatation due to stagnation of the food operating through a long period of time. At retrograde esophagoscopy there seems to be no abdominal esophagus and no cardia. The esophagoscope encounters only the diaphragmatic pinchcock which seems to be at the top of the stomach like the puckering string ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson

... is wrong. There can be no just or sane system which does not first consider the producer and then widely and equitably regulates the distribution of the things produced."[802] They recognise that Free Trade has caused ill-balanced production, and that, through the stagnation and decay of industries, men who ought to be engaged in production have been forced into more or less unprofitable and more or less useless employments. "What this country is rotting for is the want of more and better producers of necessaries—more ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... 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. ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... and fifth centuries, whatever extravagances of doctrinal zeal attended it, dealt with themes of grave importance; and controversy was often waged by men of high ability and moral worth. After that time, there succeeded to the tempest an intellectual stagnation, under the blighting breath of despotism, coupled with the effect of a lassitude, the natural sequel of the long-continued disputation. But, in the eighth and ninth centuries, a new controversy took place, which convulsed the Eastern Empire, and extended to ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... star, or rather a union and commingling of suns and stars in violent contrast, wreathed with fanciful fruits and foliage, and Cupids, and creatures of a now extinct species. The rainbow had been the painter's palette; genius his brush; fancy-gone-mad his attendant; the total temporary stagnation of redskin faculties his object, and ecstasy his general state of mind, when he executed this magnificent chef d'oeuvre in the centre of the ceiling of the reception hall at the ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne

... the states but left them with 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 ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming

... advice! But, after all, how fortunate it is for the world that the maternal advice has not been followed! How lucky it is for us all that it is somewhat unnatural for a human being to obey! Universal obedience is universal stagnation; disobedience is one of the conditions of progress. Select any age of the world and tell me what would have been the effect of implicit obedience. Suppose the church had had absolute control of the human mind at any time, would not the word liberty and progress have been blotted from the human ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll

... a heaven for. According to Browning's theory, perfection gained and rested in means stagnation. Aspiration toward the unattainable is the condition of growth. The artist who can satisfy himself with such themes as can be completely expressed by his art, is on a low ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... terribly home-sick, and convinced that I could never be happy in India. Worst of all, the prospects 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

... circulate; let the natural secretions take place, and the physical effluvia be thrown off by a free exercise of voice and limbs: but do not keep him dumb and motionless as a statue—his blood and his intellect both in a state of stagnation, and his spirit below zero. Do not send him in quest of knowledge alone, but let him have cheerful companionship on his way; for, depend upon it, that the man who expects too much either in discipline or morals from a boy, is not in my opinion, acquainted with human nature. ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton

... inevitable death. If there is writing for students of evolution to read, then it should be taken as a warning indication which direction to avoid and which to take. Unrest is a sign, not of decay, but of life. Stagnation alone ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn

... coaxed me hard to stay. They said if 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 my mind ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... that he should now so swiftly 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 was ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... legend of her life. But this summons from the doctor at the same time frightened her and braced her heart. It might mean that Julian was ill, in danger—she knew not what. But at least it broke through the appalling inaction, the dreary stagnation, of her days. The lady of the feathers had fought indeed, of late, that worst enemy, mental despair, bred of grim patience at last grown weary. That was not the battle she had been inspired to expect, to prepare for. The doctor's telegram at least swept the unforeseen foe from ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... present outlook. Total commercial stagnation and famine increased the sentiment of unmitigated hopelessness which spread through the land. The poet Monti, who, alas! sang for bread the festival songs of the Austrians as he had sung those of ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... been gone three minutes when they heard him coming down the companionway in great haste. Somehow, everyone of the others seemed to understand that the terrible stagnation was about to ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson

... one stage to another; the spirit of man is shown transcending its bounds everywhere. In Phaeacia, however, there is no striving apparently, it is contented with itself and stays with itself, seeking no neighbors; it is the land of rest, of cessation from conflict, possibly of stagnation, unless it is stirred by ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider

... 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 of the house ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins

... to possess Free-will; they must work in opposite directions, but this competition for influence over our actions provides the basis for the exercise of man's Free-will—the choice between progression and stagnation. The Spiritual influence must conquer in the long run, as every step under that influence is a step towards the Real and can never be lost; the apparent steps in the other direction are only negative or retarding, and can have no real existence, ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein

... am to hear from her or him, it is a pause, which I shall fill up with as few thoughts of my own as I can borrow from other people. Any thing is better than stagnation; and now, in the interregnum of my autumn and a strange summer adventure, which I don't like to think of, (I don't mean * *'s, however, which is laughable only,) the antithetical state of my lucubrations makes me alive, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... 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, smiles passed into words, the winker finished his wink and went ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells

... 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, ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard

... By 1829 the first steam locomotive was operating in America and the coming of the steam engine was followed by the collapse of the canal project. Thousands of local dollars were thus lost. When the deflation was complete, financial stagnation followed, from which Alexandria never entirely recovered. During these trying 1830s and 1840s many of her younger men departed for the west ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore

... and the German losses were immense. Again and again the attempt was made to cross the Dvina River, but without success; the German invasion was definitely stopped. By the end of October there was complete stagnation in the northern sector of the battle line, and though in November there were a number of battles, nothing happened of ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... the edge of British land. A hundred yards away, a similar line stretched right and left, where other pessimistic miners ministered to other monstrous bellows, and Piccadilly was known as Unter den Linden. The strange stagnation of it all! ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile

... luring the disaffected or disappointed artisan and enabling him to achieve economic independence. Hither streamed ceaselessly hordes of immigrants from Europe, constantly shifting the social equilibrium. Here the demand for labor was constant, except during the rare intervals of financial stagnation, and here the door of opportunity swung wide to the energetic and able artisan. The records of American industry are replete with names of prominent leaders who began at ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth

... tunes to him! A spark came into the fishy eye of 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 ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... To remove the stagnation of centuries front European life, to vivify suddenly what had hitherto been an inert mass, to impart to it individualism, was to bring it into conflict with the influences that had been oppressing it. All through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries uneasy strugglings gave ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... 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 now without such women ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... fate. In the mountains, the Uxians, Mardians, Elymasans, and Cossaeans—tribes who had formerly been the backbone of the nation—had relapsed into a semi-barbarous condition, or rather, while the rest of the world had progressed in civilization and refinement, they had remained in a state of stagnation, adhering obstinately to the customs of their palmy days: just as they had harried the Chaldaeans or Assyrians in the olden times, so now they harried the Persians; then, taking refuge in their rocky fastnesses, they lived on the proceeds of their forays, successfully resisting all attempts ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... appropriately rewarded. It is a profession of liberty, with a secret intention to return to a government of force, availing itself of such means as offer, of which the most obvious, at present, are the stagnation of trade and the pressing necessities of all who depend on industry, in a country that is taxed nearly beyond endurance. Neither M. Perier, nor any other man, is the prime mover of such a system; for it depends on the Father ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper

... helplessness was gone. Something to call forth the young man's flagging energies had been needed, and it had come. He had lain down as one who had given up all hope, who had lost all that bound him to life; but that was but the dream of weakness, the stagnation of his nature, brought on by ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn

... partially complete, but it must be kept in mind that science as we conceive the term is less than 2500 years old, and out of this infantile period, at least 1000 years must be deducted for the intellectual stagnation of the ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... "breaking" 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 ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills

... the ground floor. Thus extended at his ease, and sheltered in his place of observation behind the window, D'Artagnan seemed as if he had ceased to be a soldier, as if he were no longer an officer belonging to the palace, but was, on the contrary, a quiet, easy-going citizen in a state of stagnation between his dinner and supper, or between his supper and his bed; one of those strong, ossified brains, which have no more room for a single idea, so fiercely does animal matter keep watch at the doors of intelligence, narrowly inspecting the contraband ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... enlightened, like most successful aristocracies, but which possessed the peculiar attribute of being deep-rooted in popular traditions and popular sympathies and of drawing its life-blood from the popular will. The agitations of the reign of Anne were over; the stagnation of the reign of Walpole had not yet begun. There was a great outburst of intellectual activity and aesthetic energy. The amazing discoveries of Newton seemed to open out boundless possibilities of speculation; and in the meantime the great nobles were building palaces and reviving the magnificence ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... 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 ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... 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

... 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 to L17 per ton freight" on their tobacco, "which ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker

... inflation rates, and a drop in unemployment below 6%. Long-term problems include inadequate investment in economic infrastructure, rapidly rising medical costs of an aging population, sizable trade deficits, and stagnation of family income in the lower economic groups. The outlook for 1998 is for continued moderate growth, low inflation, and about the same level of unemployment. Two shadows for 1998 are the severe financial crises in East Asia ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... difficulties seemed to arise to prevent his doing so. First of all, the black cloth was to be purchased, and a tailor, sufficiently adept for making up the new suit, was to be caught. This was a work of some time; for though there is in the West of Ireland a very general complaint of the stagnation of trade, trade itself is never so stagnant as are the tradesmen, when work, is to be done; and it is useless for a poor wight to think of getting his coat or his boots, till such time as absolute want shall ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope

... hath not 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 ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor

... to," said Joan placidly. "I hope I haven't bored you with my autobiography, Mr. Marson. I'm not setting myself up as a shining example; but I do like action and hate stagnation." ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... those that did not share in the crimes and pillage of the Revolution, as much as the proscribed nobility. And, contradictory as it may seem, the number of persons employed in commercial speculations has more than tripled since we experienced a general stagnation of trade, the consequence of war, of want of capital, protection, encouragement, and confidence; but one of the magazines of 1789 contained more goods and merchandize than twenty modern magazines put together. The expenses of these ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith

... courteous attitude on the part of the men in positions of authority toward those beneath them is of immense importance. Sap rises from the bottom, and a business has arrived at the point of stagnation when the men at the top refuse to listen to or help those around them. It is, as a rule, however, not the veteran in commercial affairs but the fledgling who causes most trouble by his bad manners. Young men, especially young men who have been fortunate ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney

... "since I travelled in this slumbrous old country of yours I've seen considerable stagnation, but this licks the worst I've struck yet. Your town pretty well fathoms the depths. Are the ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham

... knowledge to be attainable. These opinions are, however, closely bound up with his religious beliefs, and in great measure explained by them. He is convinced that uncertainty is essential to the spiritual life; and his works are saturated by the idea that where uncertainty ceases, stagnation must begin; that our light must be wavering, and our progress tentative, as well as our hopes chequered, and our happiness even devoid of any sense of finality, if the creative intention is not to frustrate itself; we may not see the path of progress and salvation clearly marked ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... cure a man of his ambition, I think, and make him content with his lot. The intense heat, and other stagnation except you have some disagreeable incident, would tame the most enthusiastic; a thin, miserable tent under which you sit, with the perspiration pouring off you. A month of this life, and you would be dissatisfied ...
— General Gordon - Saint and Soldier • J. Wardle

... the planters, the kanaka, necessary as he is to the conditions of North Queensland, opens up avenues of skilled labour for the European, and makes population and commerce possible where otherwise there would be complete stagnation." ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... and urged and waited for the authorities to act in the matter and bring the lynchers to justice. No attempt was made to do so, and the black men left the city by thousands, bringing about great stagnation in every branch of business. Those who remained so injured the business of the street car company by staying off the cars, that the superintendent, manager and treasurer called personally on the editor of the ...
— Southern Horrors - Lynch Law in All Its Phases • Ida B. Wells-Barnett

... 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

... at the Ballplatz that any communication to the Powers would result in their intervention in the form of a new conference of ambassadors, and that stagnation would ensue. But in the year 1914 the case was very different from former days—before the ultimatum right was ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin

... 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 ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles

... and miserable. It was not until eighteen weary hours afterward that they got the meal they missed. The need will continue to be great for many months after peace is declared. Factories have been stripped of their machinery. There is a complete stagnation of industry. It will take months to rehabilitate these industries and to start ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy

... 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 or ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... requiring division of labor and consequently a constantly growing complexity of heterogeneous elements, is an open door for all vocations. Doubtless, the social spirit always retains something of that tendency toward stagnation that is the rule in lower social orders; it is more favorable to tradition than to innovation. But the inevitable necessity of a warm competition between individuals and peoples is a natural antidote for that natural inertia; it favors useful ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

... spittoon for Julia Jeffcourt!" It is not recorded that Corbin accepted this cheerful invitation, but for a few days afterwards he was more darkly observant of, and respectful to, Miss Sally. Strange indeed if he had not noticed—although always in his resigned fashion—the dull green stagnation of the life around him, or when not accepting it as part of his trouble he had not chafed at the arrested youth and senile childishness of the people. Stranger still if he had not at times been startled to hear the outgrown ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... after I had ceased to care for them, or they to care for me. They have become stout and tedious, and when I meet them they go in at once for reminiscences. That awful memory of woman! What a fearful thing it is! And what an utter intellectual stagnation it reveals! One should absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde

... sellers, but denuded of buyers. The stores were supplied with the usual amount of liquors, and tins of preserved provisions; none of the imported articles were adapted for native requirements; an utter stagnation of trade was the consequence, and prices fell below the cost of home production. The preceding year had been exceptionally sickly; many of the storekeepers were suffering from the effects of fever, which, combined with the depression of spirits caused by ruined prospects, ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... a populous suburb of the city. This suburb was largely occupied by persons engaged in navigation, or connected with boat-building, or by day-laborers, representing among them many nationalities. The winter of which I am writing was one of unusual stagnation in business and a hard one for the poor to get over. In the nervously susceptible state of my mind at this time, this ravine became a serious discomfort. When the stillness of night settled within and around the house, the rustling of leaves and the distant foot-falls in the ravine became ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... abortive intrusion of 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 ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman

... 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 ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee

... Mr. Carroll would not endure his society; but he might labor to do something for the reform even of this abominable man. Before Dolly had come back to him he had resolved that he could only redeem his life from the stagnation with which it was threatened by working for others, now that the work of his own life had come to a close. "Well, Dolly," he said, as soon as she had entered the room, "have you heard any thing ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope

... by Dissent, 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 ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... birth, all their energies sucked up by the struggle for bread and meat, these poor were mocked with bitter "equality" which did not equalize, but despoiled of all chance to extricate themselves from their poverty. And their terrible revenge was to spread their own stagnation upward. Neither could the rich extricate themselves from their riches. The sorriest thing in the picture was that they did not desire to. Behold how blindly they struggled to cut the brotherly cord that bound them to what was common and unclean, ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... evolution takes place in peoples and races which are incapable of improvement, or have a limited capacity for advanced civilization, the faculty of myth remains in the ascendant; and as past and present history shows, mythical stagnation and intellectual barrenness may follow, until intellectual development is arrested and even destroyed. If on the other hand the evolution takes place in peoples and races capable of indefinite civilization, myth gradually disappears and ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli

... new beginners in Kilmacolm in spite of all its spiritual stagnation, and the older people are full of anxiety lest those new beginners should not be rightly directed. 'Tell them for one thing,' says Rutherford in reply, 'to dig deep while they are yet among their foundations. Tell them that a ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte

... ill-fated "Mary Ann," she to report again for duty in the Army. With the going of the Costellos, quiet settled down once more; but the dwellers on the Point found themselves impatient of the very repose for which they had sought Nepaug. Rest had turned to inanimation, quiet to dulness, peace to stagnation. ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin

... born on February 12, 1746, during Poland's long stagnation under her Saxon kings. The nation was exhausted by wars forced upon her by her alien sovereigns. Her territories were the passage for Prussian, Russian, and Austrian armies, traversing them at their will. With no natural boundaries to ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner

... moment. He'd never thought about it that way. "You're right, Tallis," he said at last. "You're right. We do know. And because I loved the human race, in spite of its stagnation and its spirit of total mediocrity, I did what I had ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett

... evaporation is nearly four times less under a mass of foliage in a forest, and two and one-third times under a mass of pines, than in the open. Moreover, trees prevent the circulation of the air by lateral wind currents and produce stagnation. Hence, as Mr. E.J. Symons has truly observed, "a lovely spot embowered in trees and embraced by hills is usually characterized by a damp, misty, cold, and stagnant atmosphere," a condition of climate which is obviously unfavorable to good health and especially favorable to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various

... from him, he instantly set about composing a prayer in Latin, at once to deprecate God's mercy, to satisfy himself that his mental powers remained unimpaired, and to keep them in exercise, that they might not perish by permitted stagnation. This was after we parted; but he wrote me an account of it, and I intend to publish that ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... 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; and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... power who could brook no colleague within measurable distance, the man of coarse habits and illiterate tastes, above all the man who induced his countrymen to place money before honour, and whose administration even an admirer describes as one of unparalleled stagnation—such a man must have roused intense antagonism in Fielding's generous and ardent nature. For, from the days of his first boyish satires to the last energetic acts of his life as a London magistrate, for Fielding to see an abuse was to ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden

... between." Here we are, at Norfolk. How different is this same Norfolk from the other eastern ports I have visited!—there all is bustle, activity, and increase,—here all is dreariness, desolation, and stagnation. It is, without exception, the most uninteresting town I ever set foot in; the only thing that gives it a semblance of vitality is its proximity to the dockyard, and the consequent appearance of officers in uniform; but in spite of this impression, which a two-days' residence confirmed ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... sources of unhappiness to those whom fortune and nature seem to have placed above the reach of ordinary miseries. The one is ennui—that stagnation of life and feeling which results from the absence of all motives to exertion; and by which the justice of Providence has so fully compensated the partiality of fortune, that it may be fairly doubted whether, upon the ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady

... metropolis, Noonoon was less in touch with it than many western towns,—in most respects was a veritable great-grandmother for stagnation and bucolic rusticity, and in individuality suggested one of the little quiet eddies near the emptying of a stream, and which, being called into existence by a back-flow, contains no current. But while thus falling to the rear in the ranks ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin

... circumstances—is hastened or retarded by innumerable agencies; for example, by the heat or cold of the season, by the mineral impregnation or purity of the water, by its depth or shallowness, by its currency or stagnation, by the temperament of the body, by its infection or freedom from disease before death. Thus it is evident that we can assign no period, with any thing like accuracy, at which the corpse shall rise through decomposition. Under certain conditions ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... and the purity of the water-supply. In a large degree the first condition is subordinated to the second. "Everything to the sewer" is recognized by the most competent hygienists as the best system, but only on the condition that water shall be abundant and that no stagnation of the material shall be allowed. These problems, which were for a long time studied by M. Durand-Claye, and to which he devoted himself until his premature death unfortunately took him from us, have received the attention of his devoted successors, who have already ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various



Words linked to "Stagnation" :   inactivity, stagnate, commercial enterprise, artistic production, inaction, art, inactiveness, business, business enterprise, artistic creation



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