Petrify

a river that petrifies any sort of wood or leaves

Like Niobe we marble grow, / And petrify with grief.

Hopes, feelings, and passion, petrify one after another; the crust of experience soon hardens over the hidden past; and who, looking on the levelled and subdued exterior, could dream of the wreck and ravage that lies below?

petrify a genius to a dunce

A hideous fatalism, which ought, logically, to petrify your volition.