Stagnant Quotes - Page 4

• It is not strange that that early love of the heart should come back, as it so often does when the dim eye is brightening with its last light. It is not strange that the freshest fountains the heart has ever known in its wastes should bubble up anew when the lifeblood is growing stagnant. It is not strange that a bright memory should come to a dying old man, as the sunshine breaks across the hills at the close of a stormy day; nor that in the light of that ray, the very clouds that made the day dark should grow gloriously beautiful.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Beautiful, Death, Memories

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• I go to bed, and I wait for sleep as a man might wait for the executioner. I wait for its coming with dread, and my heart beats and my legs tremble, while my whole body shivers beneath the warmth of the bedclothes, until the moment when I suddenly fall asleep, as a man throws himself into a pool of stagnant water in order to drown. I do not feel this perfidious sleep coming over me as I used to, but a sleep which is close to me and watching me, which is going to seize me by the head, to close my eyes and annihilate me.

  Guy de Maupassant

  Fall, Sleep, Eye

  Edgar Allan Poe, Frank Richard Stockton, H.O. Lovecraft, Guy de Maupassant, Franz Kafka (2017). “13 Short Scary Stories: Masterpieces of the greatest writers”, p.176, LeBooks Editora

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• Youth should be radical. Youth should demand change in the world. Youth should not accept the old order if the world is to move on. But the old orders should not be moved easily - certainly not at the mere whim or behest of youth. There must be clash and if youth hasn't enough force or fervor to produce the clash the world grows stale and stagnant and sour in decay.

  William Allen White

  Moving, Order, Decay

  "Student Riots", editorial in "The Emporia (Kansas) Gazette" (April 8, 1932); reported in "Forty Years on Main Street" compiled by Russell H. Fitzgibbon, (p. 331), 1937.

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• There is something about a home aquarium which sets my teeth on edge the moment I see it. Why anyone would want to live with a small container of stagnant water populated by a half-dead guppy is beyond me.

  S. J. Perelman

  Home, Aquariums, Water

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• There are houses in certain provincial towns whose aspect inspires melancholy, akin to that called forth by sombre cloisters, dreary moorlands, or the desolation of ruins. Within these houses there is, perhaps, the silence of the cloister, the barrenness of moors, the skeleton of ruins; life and movement are so stagnant there that a stranger might think them uninhabited, were it not that he encounters suddenly the pale, cold glance of a motionless person, whose half-monastic face peers beyond the window-casing at the sound of an unaccustomed step.

  Honore de Balzac

  Book, Thinking, Skeletons

  Honore de Balzac (2009). “Eugenie Grandet”, p.5, The Floating Press

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• Suppose a number of equal waves of water to move upon the surface of a stagnant lake, with a certain constant velocity, and to enter a narrow channel leading out of the lake. Suppose then another similar cause to have excited another equal series of waves, which arrive at the same time, with the first. Neither series of waves will destroy the other, but their effects will be combined.

  Thomas Young

  Moving, Science, Lakes

  Thomas Young, George Peacock, John Leitch (1855). “Miscellaneous Works: Scientific memoirs”, p.202

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• If one sentence were to sum up the mechanism driving the Great Stagnation, it is this: Recent and current innovation is more geared to private goods than to public goods. That simple observation ties together the three major macroeconomic events of our time: growing income inequality, stagnant median income, and the financial crisis.

  Tyler Cowen

  Simple, Ties, Innovation

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• Most of the pollution in the water already is dead animal and plant matter and building debris, ... good stagnant nursery for mosquitoes.

  James Wright

  Animal, Water, Matter

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• Get out of debt. In a world of stagnant incomes and rising core expenses like mortgage and health care costs, that's a lot easier said than done. The middle class is under enormous pressure. But families can stop the bleeding by reducing their reliance on debt wherever they can. They can also start fighting back by taking a hard look at whom they do business with and rethinking whether they want tricks-and-traps banks to hold their money. They can also demand that public officials take the side of families over the side of banks.

  Elizabeth Warren

  Fighting, Class, Care

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• I write out of enthusiasm. Momentum that comes from a new idea. Eagerness to explore. I also write out of fear - fear of losing an idea - fear of feeling stagnant.

  Nick Antosca

  Writing, Ideas, Feelings

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• The past few decades of widening inequality can be summed up as significant income and wealth gains for those at the very top and stagnant living standards for the majority.

  Janet Yellen

  Past, Gains, Majority

  "RPT-UPDATE 2-Citing U.S. values, Yellen says greatly concerned by rise in economic inequality". www.reuters.com. October 17, 2014.

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• Were I to solve problems for others they would remain stagnant; they would never grow. It would be a great injustice to them. My approach is to help with cause rather than effect. When I help others, it is by instilling within them the inspiration to work out problems by themselves. If you feed a man a meal, you only feed him for a day-but if you teach a man to grow food, you feed him for a lifetime.

  Peace Pilgrim

  Inspiration, Helping Others, Men

  Peace Pilgrim (1992). “Peace Pilgrim: Her Life and Work in Her Own Words”, p.60, Friends of Peace PIlgrim

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• I think it's better to have ideas. You can change an idea. Changing a belief is trickier. Life should malleable and progressive; working from idea to idea permits that. Beliefs anchor you to certain points and limit growth; new ideas can't generate. Life becomes stagnant.

  Kevin Smith

  Thinking, Anchors, Ideas

  "Fictional character: Rufus". "Dogma", www.independent.co.uk. 1999.

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• Large, centralized organizations foster alienation like stagnant ponds breed algae.

  Ricardo Semler

  Organization, Ponds, Algae

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• Sometimes we push ourselves. We take a workout and we use it as a way to crack open our shell, let the pain rush in and push out the stagnant wounds of the heart. Sometimes a workout sets you free.

  Lauren Fleshman

  Workout, Pain, Heart

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• As with mosquitoes, horseflies, and most bloodsucking parasites, Kenneth Starr was spawned in stagnant water.

  James Carville

  Water, Mosquitoes, Parasites

  James Carville (1999). “And The Horse He Rode In On: The People v. Kenneth Starr”, p.21, Simon and Schuster

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• So long as Muslims continue looking towards Western civilization as the only force that could regenerate their own stagnant society, they destroy their self-confidence and, indirectly, support the Western assertion that Islam is a "spent force".

  Muhammad Asad

  Self Confidence, Civilization, Long

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• Postwar Europe was morally stagnant, and there was a lot of neo-conservatism.

  Romola Garai

  Europe, Conservatism

  "Romola Garai interview: On a roll". Interview with Alice Fisher, www.theguardian.com. March 12, 2011.

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• Religion itself becomes offensively monotonous. On every point of vantage are pagodas -- stupid stalagmites of stagnant piety.

  Aleister Crowley

  Stupid, Asia, Piety

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• As the sun's rays will irradiate even the murky pool, and make its stagnant waters to shine like silver, so doth God's goodness and tender mercy, towards the greatest sinner, and the blackest heart, make his own image visible there!

  Hosea Ballou

  Heart, Water, Shining

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• The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
  The moon, their mistress, had expir'd before;
  The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,
  And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need
  Of aid from them-She was the Universe.

  Lord Byron

  Moon, Clouds, Air

  George Gordon Byron, “Darkness”

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• The individual who cultivates grievances, and who is perpetually exacting explanations of his assumed wrongs, can only be ignored, and left to the education of time and of development.... One does not argue or contend with the foul miasma that settles over stagnant water; one leaves it and climbs to a higher region, where the air is pure and the sunshine fair.

  Lilian Whiting

  Education, Time, Sunshine

  Lilian Whiting (1896). “The World Beautiful”

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• Lives with no more sense of spiritual meaning than that provided by shopping malls, ordinary television, and stagnant workplaces are barren lives indeed. Spirituality enriches culture.

  Marianne Williamson

  Spiritual, Shopping, Ordinary

  Marianne Williamson (2013). “Illuminata: Thoughts, Prayers, Rites of Passage”, p.75, Random House

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• Probably in all history there is no instance of a society in which ecclesiastical power was dominant which was not at once stagnant, corrupt and brutal.

  George Agnew Reid

  Religion, Atheism, Brutal

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• The inlet of a man's mind is what he learns; the outlet is what he accomplishes. If his mind is not fed by a continued supply of new ideas which he puts to work with purpose, and if there is no outlet in action, his mind becomes stagnant. Such a mind is a danger to the individual who owns it and is useless to the community.

  Jeremiah Jenks

  Work, Men, Ideas

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