"Stale" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "That's all stale news!" cried Miss Prunty, jumping up. "And Gon'ril (since I'll have to call her so) must be tired of waiting in ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... kind of cake, made of rye and corn together, something like Scotch oatcake, with a hole in the middle, so that it may be strung up in rows like onions on a stick in the kitchen. When thin and fresh it is excellent, but when thick and stale a dog biscuit would ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... little uneasily and glanced round the dirty room. The place looked as though it hadn't been cleaned for a month. There was a hideous accumulation of unwashed utensils scattered everywhere. The floor was unswept, let alone unwashed. And the smell of stale food and general mustiness helped to add to the keenness of the visitor's nervous edge as he waited for the ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... difficulties. Follow the example, and you'll soon conquer those young limbs. Now, good morning to you, Price, good morning!' and Philip was hastily bowed out of the stuffy little sanctum, with its piles of MSS. and its odours of stale tobacco. ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... and that the theatre has no right to have me impersonated on the Stage; they term it "Thought Transference," "The Brain-Wave," or something outlandish; and to think that HACKING, who reviews HORNBLOWER's effusions, once spoke of me as stale! They had better not try my patience too ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 11, 1891 • Various
... business to discharge, except to run away from myself, and therefore every little peculiarity, every minute feature of men, women, or things, that suggested themselves to my aimless scrutiny were carefully reviewed and criticized. I went placidly on now casting a passing glance on exhibitions of stale confectionery, now on a display of attractive millinery, again it was a "ten cent" establishment, offering such bargains as might puzzle the most economical house-wife, and finally my attention was caught by a succession of dazzling windows, with their bewildering panorama of Japanese figures ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... then, a rich man; no more crusades, no more stale bread and cheap tobacco, no more turning my cuffs and collars and clipping the frayed edges of my trousers. I am fortunate. There is a joke, too. Picard and his friends advanced me five thousand francs ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... wise administration, because they have a permanent interest in the welfare of the nation. The delusions of which I speak seldom last long; an enlightened people perceives the cheat; but it is lamentable that the tricks of these political puritans should never grow stale by practice, and that as often as a pseudo-reformer starts up with pretensions to great honesty and great wisdom, England should forget how often she has been deceived, and allow him to excite a tumult which wiser heads ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... when the man had gone. "It's scant favour I shall get from him. Heigho! my troubles seem never-ending, but there—upon my word, I am getting used to them now. Bread, eh?" he went on, picking up the hunk of stale, black, husky-looking stuff before him. "I could make better bread ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... which is unparalleled in the previous history of literature in this or perhaps any other country. When we see two post octavos of travels newly done up by the binder, we are prepared for a series of useless remarks, weak attempts at jokes, disquisitions on dishes, complaints of inns, stale anecdotes and vain flourishes, which almost make us blush for our country, and the cause of intelligence over the world. The Russian Emperor, who unquestionably has the power of licensing or prohibiting ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... with you and our children, to enjoy the actual society of such a son-in-law! For the present our one remaining hope is in the new tribunes, and that, too, in the first days of their office; if the matter is allowed to get stale, it is all over with us. It is for that reason that I have sent Aristocritus back to you at once, in order that you may be able to write to me on the spot as to the first official steps taken, and the progress of the whole business; although I have also given Dexippus orders to hurry back here ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... gray light of a winter dawn mingled with the dull flare of the hanging-lamp increasing the ghastliness of his appearance, sat Michael Gregoriev, in the stale bitterness of a night-old rage and mortification. On the floor, in an unceremonious heap, lay his heavily embroidered coat, with its medals still upon it. In its stead the Prince had wrapped himself in a worn robe of old brocade, fur-lined. Heavy felt slippers shod his feet. His hair was tumbled ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... birdcatchers simply stand by the ditch with their hands in their pockets sucking a stale pipe. They would rather lounge there in the bitterest north-east wind that ever blew than do a single hour's honest work. Blackguard is written in their faces. The poacher needs some courage, at least; he knows a penalty awaits detection. These fellows have no idea of sport, ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... let the world see that an author is like other people? Would he not create a deeper personal interest if he showed that even in person alone he was unlike the herd? He ought to be seen seldom—not to stale his presence—and to resort to the arts that belong to the royalty of intellect as well as the ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... how much it had been cut. He issued them slips, which they added as part of the contributions. "Good work—you, too, Gordon. Best week in the territory for a couple of months. I guess the citizens like you, the way they treat you." He laughed at his stale joke, and Gordon was willing to laugh with him. The credit on the dope had paid for most of the contributions. For once, he had money to show for ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... Finding the atmosphere heavy, stale, and oppressive, Maitland moved over to the windows and threw them open. A gush of warm air, humid and redolent of the streets, invaded the room, together with the roar of traffic from its near-by arteries. Maitland ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... the breath, clothes, hair, and indeed the whole body, are most offensive. What is more overpowering than the stale smell remaining in a room where several persons have been smoking? When the practice is carried to excess, it causes the gums to become lax and flabby, and to recede from the discoloured teeth, which appear long, unsightly, and at length drop out. Dr. Rush, in his "Account of the life ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... bad as that!" returned Clytie. "It was only dull and stale and stupid; the same old sort of knockabouts and serio-comics you can see everywhere down town, only not a quarter so good—just cheap imitations. And all those poor fellows sat moping over their beer-mugs waiting, waiting, waiting for something ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... campaign during the Mexican War had made serious inroads upon his health, from which he never entirely recovered. It was hoped that his life in the East would be beneficial, but it proved otherwise. Meanwhile, the Civil War was raging in the United States, but the news concerning it was very stale long before it reached us. We did not receive the particulars of the battle of Bull Run, for example, until three months after its occurrence. In view of the turbulent state of affairs at home, the government thought it important that Mr. Gouverneur ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... I followed him down the glittering vestibule, and into a palatial dining-hall. The hour was something between one and two o'clock, and a minute before I had been thoughtfully weighing the relative merits of an immediate allowance of sausages and mashed potatoes for fivepence, or a couple of stale buns for one penny, to be followed at nightfall by a real banquet—seven-pennyworth of honest beef and vegetables. Now, with a trifle over four shillings in my pocket, I was, to outward seeming, carelessly scanning ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... Bullock of Beef rather too much boiled & the beer rather stale. Mem: to talk to the Cook about the first fault & to mend the second myself by tapping ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... persuaded. But that's a different thing. 'Influence' makes me think of canting clergymen, and stout pompous women, who don't know what they're talking about, and can't argue—who think they've settled everything by a stale quotation—or an appeal to 'your better self'—or St. Paul. If Mr. Winnington tries it on with ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... but his practice varied somewhat from that of his master. Like him he gave his patients blue pill at night but omitted the black draught in the morning. He thought an emetic better, and secured it by tartarized antimony. Between the puke and the purge his patients were fed on stale bread, skim milk, and water-gruel. And this heroic practice he pursued day after day, for weeks and months together, in spinal caries, hip caries, tuberculosis, urethral stricture ...
— Pioneer Surgery in Kentucky - A Sketch • David W. Yandell
... Exercise. At the same time, the system must be kept well supplied through the stomach with the raw material both for doing this work and for building up this new muscle. When anyone, in training for an event, gets "stale," or overtrained, and loses his appetite and his sleep, he had better stop at once, for that is a sign that he is using more energy than his food is able to give him through his stomach; and the stomach has consequently "gone ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... quite insensible of her presence. For the first time she was conscious of a distressful faintness, which, as she had come suddenly out of the stinging frost into the little overheated room, which reeked with tobacco smoke and a stale smell of cooking, was not astonishing. She mastered it, however, and presently, seeing that Hawtrey did not move; glanced about her with some curiosity, for this was the first time she had entered ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... spirit he yearned once more to see their plumes and gleaming equipment come dancing down the sunny wind, and to hear the grand thunder of their charge, which but the other day he had been half-inclined to call stale and unprofitable. In this solitary hour, when the night-lamps flickered on the massive walls and the sense of loneliness grew upon him till he sickened at the unceasing cry of the pitiless wind, he realised that the Guard was the sole bulwark now ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... their own habitations. Some, however, were taken and imprisoned; a few arms were secured; and in the house of Mr. Standish, at Standish-hall, they found the draft of a declaration to be published by king James at his landing. As this prosecution seemed calculated to revive the honour of a stale conspiracy, and the evidences were persons of abandoned characters, the friends of those who were persecuted found no great difficulty in rendering the scheme odious to the nation. They even employed the pen of Ferguson, who had been concerned in every plot that was hatched since ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... solemnly, "burned incense upon any and all occasions—red letter days, labor days, celebrating Columbus Day and the morning after, I presume. But we moderns burn gasoline. And, phew! I believe I should prefer the stale smoke of incense in the unventilated pyramids of Egypt to this odor of gas. O-o-o-o, Tommy, do let us ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... he exclaimed. "It may be stale news, and it may be something for the future, but it's worth trying. I wonder I ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... to himself, as he walked, "wouldn't get any fun at all out of a case like this, but I do. That's the way to keep young. It's why I don't grow stale in this town. It is a small puddle for a toad of my size, but I hop around and keep things ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... appetite dictated—now, sensibly enough, on a la mode beef or a saveloy; then, less sensibly, on pudding; and anon not dining at all, the wherewithal having been expended on some morning treat of cheap stale pastry. But are not all these things, the lad's shifts and expedients, his sorrows and despair, his visits to the public-house, where the kindly publican's wife stoops down to kiss the pathetic little face—are they not all written in "David ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... way here that it had clouded up," remarked Jack. "Let's hope we don't get a storm that will compel us to postpone that game. Our boys are in the pink of condition, with so much practice, and might go stale by ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton
... this view even though it reached him in a fragmentary and subliminal way. Day after day he told himself that he would have all his faculties at the ready before the train swung into the curve. But morning after morning he was still emerging from the stale fumes of the preceding night's beer, or he allowed himself to be hypnotized by the sound of the wheels or fascinated by the jiggling of another passenger's earlobe at that critical moment. The train had always entered ...
— In the Control Tower • Will Mohler
... vastly agreeable. But, alas! I was doomed to discover that this could not last for ever. Though I was still curious, there were no longer curiosities; for the world is limited, and new countries, and new people, like every thing else, wax stale on acquaintance; even ghosts and hurricanes become at last familiar; and books grow old, ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... and at last they solved the problem. At first Tom backed up to the jug and held it, though clumsily, for Sam to drink, and then the youngest Rover did the same for his brother. The water was warm and somewhat stale, yet both could remember nothing which had ever tasted sweeter to them. They drank about half of what the jug contained, then set the rest ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... the usual, worshiped the strange. Adventure and travel I know were your theme: Well, how did the real compare with the dream? You have compassed the earth since we parted at Yale, Has life grown the richer, or only grown stale? ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... such a reputation since so many of the best people from town have taken villas here; is his Majesty to make the journey in one of these third-class carriages, with the chance of travelling in company with tradesman stinking of stale cheese?—with folk who, moreover—well, perhaps in common decency I ought not to go on, as ladies are present. (Laughter.) "Economy," I hear some one suggest. That word is in great favour nowadays. But I should like to know what economy there is getting your clothes soiled? (Laughter.) Does a first-class ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... insistently new, had acquired a respectable mellowness, with ivy, Virginia creepers, lichens, damp patches, and even constitutional infirmities of its own like its elder fellows. Its architecture, once so very improved and modern, had already become stale in style, without having reached the dignity of being old-fashioned. Trees about the harbour-road had increased in circumference or disappeared under the saw; while the church had had such a tremendous practical joke played upon it by some facetious restorer or ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... and the marketplace was filled with an excited population. There were ruffling men-at-arms, stolid rustics, frightened women and children, overturned stalls, shouts and screams; unsavoury missiles, such as rotten eggs and stale vegetables, were flying about; and in the midst of the open space the figure of a Jew, who had excited the indignation of the multitude, was the object of violent aggression which seemed likely to endanger ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... wealth. But, alas for the sad reality! the cool breath of those glittering water-meadows too often floats laden with poisonous miasma. Those picturesque villages are generally the perennial hotbeds of fever and ague, of squalid penury, sottish profligacy, dull discontent too stale for words. There is luxury in the park, wealth in the huge farm-steadings, knowledge in the parsonage: but the poor? those by whose dull labour all that luxury and wealth, ay, even that knowledge, is made possible—what are they? We shall ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... great, in order to secure provisions. Memories of the famine of the siege of '70 tormented the imagination. Since war had broken out with the same enemy, it seemed but logical to everybody to expect a repetition of the same happenings. The storehouses were besieged by women who were securing stale food at exorbitant prices in order to store it in their homes. Future hunger was producing more terror ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... with Grant, by appointment, to see the queen. As usual, she kept us waiting some time, then appeared sitting by an open gate, and invited us, together with many Wakungu and Wasumbua to approach. Very lavish with stale sour pombe, she gave us all some, saving the Wasumbua, whom she addressed very angrily, asking what they wanted, as they have been months in the country. These poor creatures, in a desponding mood, defended themselves by saying, ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... required; or perhaps it took three nights, like the making of Heracles. What has come over him, that he babbles such puerilities? memorable things indeed, a child in bed, and a very ancient, worn-out dream! what stale frigid stuff! does he take us for interpreters of dreams?' Sir, I do not. When Xenophon related that vision of his which you all know, of his father's house on fire and the rest, was it just by way of a riddle? was it in deliberate ineptitude that he reproduced it? a likely thing ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... solemn bathos; knows how to meet important committees on microscopic reforms as well as self-appointed theological inquisitors and all the insistent cranks that waylay a busy pastor. Life cannot grow stale; and by letting the boys lead him forth by the streams of living water and into the whispering woods he catches again the wild charm of that all-possible past: the smell of the campfire, the joyous freedom and good health of God's great out-of-doors. Genius and success ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... oppressed, without exactly knowing why. She looked at the black clay walls, the rafters that were blackened with smoke, from which spiders' webs were hanging, amid pickled herrings and strings of onions, and then she sat down, rather overcome by the stale emanations which the floor, onto which so many things had been continually spilt, gave out. With this, there was mingled the pungent smell of the pans of milk, which were set out to raise the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... my pleasures, every one, I find are stale, and dull, and slow; And yesterday, when work was done, I felt myself so sad and low, I could have seized a sentry's gun My wearied brains out out to blow. What is it makes my blood to run? What makes my heart to ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... somewhat slackned, and the Soldiers that are to watch them grow remiss in their Duty; so that now the Ambassadours walk about the Streets, and any body goes to their houses and talks with them: that is, after they have been so long in the Countrey, that all their news is stale and grown out of date. But this liberty is only winked at, not allowed. When they have been there a great while, the King usually gives them Slaves, both men and women, the more to alienate their minds from their own Country, ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... Malayan Caviare. It needs all the violence of the fresh, strong, monsoon winds to even partially purge these villages of the rank odours which cling to them at the end of the fishing season; and when all has been done, the saltness of the sea air, the brackish water of the wells, and the faint stale smells emitted by the nets and fishing tackle still tell unmistakable tales of the one trade in which every member of these communities ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... enterprise can one endure their fellowship. Comrades in arms are not fastidious. If one confines one's self, on the other hand, to a cultivation of one's rarity, or to a company of choice spirits, not only do these values themselves grow stale and vanish away, but the remainder of mankind becomes a crowd, and civilization a tumult. The collective life of {169} mankind ceases to be jarring and repugnant only at the moment when one enters into it and becomes infused ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... world should do everything once and once only," he averred, with his frank and disarming smile. "If we stuck to that rule life would never go stale on us." ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... the man desires his wife to moisten some stale bread she has set before him for supper, and she refuses. After an altercation it is agreed that the one who speaks first shall get up and moisten the bread. A neighbour comes in, and, to his surprise, finds the couple dumb; he kisses the wife, but the man says ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... bird as much space as you can spare. Spread the ground with sharp sandy gravel; take care that they are not disturbed. In addition to their regular diet of good corn, make them a cake of ground oats or beans, brown sugar, milk, and mutton suet. Let the cake lie till it is stale, then crumble it, and give each bird a gill-measureful morning and evening. No entire grain should be given to fowls during the time they are fattening; indeed, the secret of success lies in supplying ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... which is in close proximity to its unusually little window. A little library with a scanty supply of books hangs near the stove-pipe, as if the owners thereof thought the contents had become somewhat stale, and required warming up to make them more palatable. A locker runs along two sides of the apartment, on the coverings of which stand several lanterns, an oil-can, and a stone jar, besides sundry articles with an extremely seafaring aspect, among which are ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... no complaint at the bit of bacon and stale bread with which each plate had been served. There were excitement and hilarious good-humor, as though the flood had come for their especial benefit to give them an experience new and unusual. A bit of bacon and stale bread! One could get along very well for a few hours on that. ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... had only the candy factory as a basis of comparison, as far as working experience went. But I have been through factories and factories of all sorts and descriptions, and nothing had I ever seen like the brassworks. First was the smell—the stale smell of gas and metal. (Perhaps there is no such smell as stale metal, but you go down to the brassworks and describe it better!) Second, the darkness—a single green-shaded electric light directly over where any girl was working, but there were areas where there ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... say—for I live in a very honest neighborhood. The only two thieves that were in it—Charley Folliott and George Austin—were hanged not long ago, and I don't know anybody else in the country side that would stale it." ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... dwelling and soon exhausted every hole and corner of it in a vain hunt for some token of the clerk. The kennels at the back were empty and forlorn; and some bread which they found in the hermit's tiny larder was mouldy and very stale. ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... the mountaine Ida groues, Where Paris kept his Heard, Before the other Ladies all He would haue thee prefer'd. Pallas, for all her painting, than Her face would seeme but pale, Then Iuno would haue blush't for shame And Venus looked stale. Eurymine, thy selfe alone Shouldst beare the golden ball; So far would thy most heauenly forme Excell the others all; O happie Phoebus! happie then, Most happie should I bee If faire Eurymine would please To ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... you and me was up to de president's plantation, his cook was makin' plum pudden, he was. Now how in natur does you rimagine he did it? why, Missus, he actilly made it wid flour, de stupid tick-headed fool, instead ob de crumbs ob a six cent stale loaf, he did; and he nebber 'pared de gredients de day afore, as he had aughten to do. It was nuffin' but stick jaw—jist fit to feed turkeys and little niggeroons wid. Did you ebber hear de likes ob dat in all your bawn days, Missus; but ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... had expected an affirmative reply to this question, she was doomed to disappointment. Disgusted with such paltry meanness, Clemence, who had pushed her plate away, unable to partake of the stale food, replied quietly, "I should ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... sadness and knowing wisdom, I inspected the scenes of past foolishness. Would that it might please God to fill with His clear and strong wine this vessel, in which at that time the champagne of twenty-two-year-old youth sparkled uselessly away, leaving stale dregs behind. Where and how may Isabella Loraine and Miss Russel be living now? How many of those with whom I then flirted, tippled, and played dice are now dead and buried! How many transformations has my view of the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... at last. Even the old princess, though she was ready for anything, as she expressed it, and no noise wearied her, felt tired at last, and longed for peace and quiet. At twelve o'clock at night, supper was served, consisting of a piece of stale dry cheese, and some cold turnovers of minced ham, which seemed to me more delicious than any pastry I had ever tasted; there was only one bottle of wine, and that was a strange one; a dark-coloured bottle with a wide neck, and the wine ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... just what I say, Mr. Grinder," went on Dick, when he could be heard. "You are master here, and we are bound to obey you, in certain things. But you shan't keep my brother in an icy room all night, and on a supper of stale bread and cold water. Such treatment would ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield
... having heard that his physician and friend was imprisoned by the Inquisition, under the stale pretext of Judaism, addressed a letter to one of them to request his freedom, assuring the inquisitor that his friend was as orthodox a Christian as himself. The physician, notwithstanding this high recommendation, was put to the torture; and, as was usually ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... congratulate you on your health and your good sense alike. You were left almost alone in your charming country, and I have no doubt that on mornings when the rest of us, half asleep, were sitting out stale farces, you were reading ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... serenely beautiful, how eloquent of peace and benediction, the scene that met him as he crossed the threshold of the great quadrangle! Some thousands of times his eyes had rested on it, yet how could it ever stale? ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... table smelt strongly of stale tobacco, and Burkin could not sleep for a long while, and kept wondering where the oppressive ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... rubies in the world's deep heart Could fetch no price beside it. Yet apart She brooded on the man who held her chained, Minister to his pleasure, and disdained Him more the more herself she must disparage, Reflecting on him all her hateful carriage, So old, incredible, so flat, so stale, No more to be recalled than old wife's tale; And scorned him, saw him neither high nor low, Not villain and not hero, who would go Midway 'twixt baseness and nobility, And not be fierce, if fierceness hurt a flea Before his eyes. The man loved one thing more Than all the world, and ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... and Grace were sitting on the stoop of the boarding-house. On the upper steps, in their shirt-sleeves, were the other boarders; so the bride and bridegroom spoke in whispers. The air of the cross street was stale and stagnant; from it rose exhalations of rotting fruit, the gases of an open subway, the smoke of passing taxicabs. But between the street and the hall bedroom, with its odors of a gas-stove and a kitchen, the choice ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... great deal of work to do together. In the end, how well we do that work will depend on the spirit in which we approach it. We must seek fresh answers, unhindered by the stale prescriptions ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... was not fond of him. She was; and grateful to him, as well. For, pretty as she was, no man had ever before asked Terry to be his wife. They had made love to her. They had paid court to her. They had sent her large boxes of stale drugstore chocolates, and called her endearing names as they made cautious ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... material was to be seen. The older boys were playing craps in Dennahan's lot and the smaller boys were watching them. One lonely sentinel was perched on the fence scanning the horizon for cops. For this he received the regular union pay of a stale apple-core. ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... Hollister had made arrangement, brought up daily from his place fresh meat, milk, and vegetables, and twice a week pot cheese and buttermilk; so the "Ohio Camp Fires" were in clover. Nothing they ate was stale and ...
— How Ethel Hollister Became a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... spitting dust and profanity through long, hot hours. There was a lure, of course; a picturesque, intangible attraction that calls to the wild blood of youth. But not as calls this other life which he had tasted. There was no gainsaying the fact—ranch life had grown too tame, too stale for Johnny Jewel. And there was no gainsaying that other fact—that Mary V would have to reconcile herself to being an aviator's wife, if she ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... happened," said Mellish. "I won't say that Cashel Byron is getting stale; but I will say that his luck is too good to last; and I know for a fact that he's gone ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... Emir, not so fast, I pray you! Better a double mouthful of stale porpoise fat, with a fin bone in it, than so ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... field. You think him a good dog, looking at him here: but I wisht you seen him on the side ov Sleeve-an-Eirin! Be my soul, you'd say the hill was running away from undher him. O, I wisht you had been wid me," says he, never letting on to see the dog stale, "one day, last Lent, that I was coming from mass. Spring was near a quarther ov a mile behind me, for the childher was delaying him wid bread and butther at the chapel door; when a lump ov a hare jumped ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... money. It was a baker's shop near where they lived, and it was rather a grand shop—only they kept this little girl to go messages, not to the grand people that came there, you know, but to the people that bought the bread when it wasn't so new—and currant cakes that were rather stale—like that, you know. And on Sunday mornings she had the most to do, because they used to send a great lot of bread very early to a room where a kind lady had breakfast for a great many poor people—for a treat ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... of The Crags, the light of dawn stole in through the windows and turned the brilliant light of the lamps into a pale glow. The odor of stale flowers was all about. Mrs. Wellington, with a headache, stood in the doorway. Her husband sat in an armchair with legs outstretched, smoking about his fortieth cigar. Sara Van Valkenberg stood in the middle ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... the miserable Fitzroy was in her power; and she resumed a sway over his house, to shake off which had been the object of his life, and the result of many battles. And for a mere freak—(for, on going into Fubsby's a week afterwards he found the Peris drinking tea out of blue cups, and eating stale bread and butter, when his absurd passion instantly vanished)—I say, for a mere freak, the most intolerable burden of his life was put ...
— A Little Dinner at Timmins's • William Makepeace Thackeray
... their beloved companion, Hector and Louis no longer took interest in what was going on; they hardly troubled themselves to weed the Indian corn, in which they had taken such great delight; all now seemed to them flat, stale, and unprofitable; they wandered listlessly to and fro, silent and sad; the sunshine had departed from their little dwelling; they ate little, and talked less, each seeming absorbed in ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... giving up the writing of tales in verse was that Byron beat him. But there must have been something besides this: it is plain that the pattern of rhyming romance was growing stale. The Lay needs no apology; Marmion includes the great tragedy of Scotland ...
— Sir Walter Scott - A Lecture at the Sorbonne • William Paton Ker
... Newcastle, if I did not tell the King, that it was you who had carried the Hanover troops." That, too, disproves the accusation of Sir Robert's being no friend to the Queen of Hungary. That is now too stale and old. However, I will speak to my lord and Mr. Pelham-would I had no more cause to tremble for you, than from little cabals! But, my dear child, when we hear every day of the 'Toulon fleet sailing, can I be easy for ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... world is old, lad, And all the trees are brown; And all the sport is stale, lad, And all the wheels run down; Creep home, and take your place there, The spent and maimed among; God grant you find one face there, You loved when ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... perpetually by the tender and passionate, can never become stale and vulgar; they will always recur in certain situations to persons of delicate sensibility, for they at once express all that can be said, and justify all that can be felt. My amiable Gabrielle, adieu. Pardon me if to-day I have no soul even ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... composer of "Don Giovanni" and "Le Nozze di Figaro." A story is told to the effect that Meyerbeer was once dining with some friends, when a discussion arose respecting Mozart's position in the musical hierarchy. Suddenly one of the guests suggested that "certain beauties of Mozart's music had become stale with age. I defy you," he continued, "to listen to 'Don Giovanni' after the fourth act of the 'Huguenots.'" "So much the worse, then, for the fourth act of the 'Huguenots,'" said Meyerbeer, furious at ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... uncle Pyotr Demyanitch, a lean, bilious collegiate councillor, exceedingly like a stale smoked fish with a stick through it, was getting ready to go to the high school, where he taught Latin, he noticed that the corner of his ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... is old, lad, And all the trees are brown, And all the sports are stale, lad, And ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... people—hard-working, much-suffering, poor, patient, and almost absolutely indifferent to changes in governments and the humors and struggles of parties. "These wrangling jars of Whig and Tory," says Dean Swift, "are stale and old as Troy-town story." But if the principles were old, the titles of the parties were new. Steele, in 1710, published in the Tatler a letter from Pasquin of Rome to Isaac Bickerstaff, asking for "an account of those two religious orders which have lately sprung up amongst you, ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... He is there to explain himself, voluble, with a glossary for his own artless slang. But his colonialism is only provincialism very articulate. The new air does but make old decadences seem more stale; the young soil does but set into fresh conditions the ready-made, the uncostly, the refuse feeling of a race decivilising. American fancy played long this pattering part of youth. The New-Englander hastened to assure you with so self-denying a face he did not wear war-paint ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... beside me sent up its dank breath of stale powder fumes, and the acrid odor was as the fragrance of a fertile field ripe for the sickle. In this reeking pit at my elbow, gold, the subtle, the potent, the arbiter of all destinies, stood ready to fight for me. The liberty ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... folks are witty and well dress'd, And blooming beauty is caress'd In ev'ry form art can devise— } With soothing flattery solemn lies, } And all that nymphs deluded prize } Here fashions reign, and modes prevail, And in twelve moons again grow stale, Thus ever vary, ever change, Yet ever please—a thing most strange! And here each thing is told that's new } What Loundoun or what Richlieu do, } Each secret expedition too— } And then great FREDERICK'S noble feats, When he th' imperial forces beats. Such themes ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... seems stale and old, Often she sits and sighs; Life to me is a tale untold, Each day is a glad surprise. Dell will marry, of course, some day, After her belleship is run; She will cavil the matter in worldly way And wed Dame Fortune's son But, ah, well! sweet to tell, I shall not dally and choose like ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... objections to woman's enfranchisement usually made by our legislators. We found on comparing notes that the arguments usually made were the same in the House of Commons as in the halls of Congress. If the honorable gentlemen could only have heard their stale platitudes with good imitations in voice and manner, I doubt whether they would ever again air their absurdities. I regretted that our Caroline Gilkey Rogers had not been there to have given her admirable impersonation of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... perpetually falling fragments, and worn away by listless standing of idle feet. There is always mason's work doing, always some fresh patching and whitening; a dull smell of mortar, mixed with that of stale foulness of every kind, rises with the dust, and defiles every current of air; the corners are filled with accumulations of stones, partly broken, with crusts of cement sticking to them, and blotches of nitre oozing out of their pores. The lichenous ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... the modern stage, the writer pointed out how dramatic writing has of late years come to be practised entirely by men who have failed in all other branches of literature. Then he drew attention to the fact that signs of weariness and dissatisfaction with the old stale stories, the familiar tricks in bringing about 'striking situations,' were noticeable, not only in the newspaper criticisms of new plays, but also among the better portion of the audience. He admitted, ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... them still searching for some pocket of stale rain-water; but once only did they discover the slightest trace of moisture—a crust of slime in a rocky basin, and from it a blind lizard was slowly creeping—a heavy, lustreless, crippled thing that toiled aimlessly and painfully up the rock, only to slide back into ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... fast in their respective schools. Agneta [Footnote: Agneta, afterwards Lady Agneta Bevan.] by this time must be a very fine little girl; does she ever talk of me? I really have no news to tell you worth mention, but the service is very stale for want of war, every day the same ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... Richard assigned tents for him and his to lodge in, and appointed certeine knights and other men of warre to haue the custodie of him. But the same day after dinner vpon repentance of that which he had doone, he deceiued his keepers and stale awaie, sending knowledge backe to the king that he would not stand to the couenants, which were concluded ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (6 of 12) - Richard the First • Raphael Holinshed
... absent myself from the town for a while, without feeling at a loss the moment I am left by myself. Instead of a friend in a postchaise or in a Tilbury, to exchange good things with, and vary the same stale topics over again, for once let me have a truce with impertinence. Give me the clear blue sky over my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours' march to dinner—and then to thinking! ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... believe me, journalism is the dragon that demands the annual sacrifice of youth. It will have only youth. Why am I here? Why are you here? Because we are young, have a fresh, a new point of view. As soon as we get a little older, we shall be stale and, though still young in years, we must step aside for young fellows with new ideas and a new ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... they must have had in common many pleasant memories of people and places dear to both, so that his ideal of matrimony described in Virginibus Puerisque was realised, and he and his wife had 'many an old joke between them which time cannot wither nor custom stale.' ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... to suppress disorders, to maintain, as far as now practicable, the public peace, and to give security and protection to the persons and property of loyal citizens, I do hereby extend and declare established martial law throughout the Stale of Missouri. The lines of the army of occupation in this State are, for the present, declared to extend from Leavenworth, by way of the posts of Jefferson City, Rolla, and Ironton, to Cape Girardeau, on ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... memory, however great, are stale compared with those of hope; for hope is the parent of all effort and endeavor; and "every gift of noble origin is breathed upon by Hope's perpetual breath." It may be said to be the moral engine that ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... founder with all hands. And she saw glimpses, beautiful and compensatory, of the romantic quality of common life. She was in a little office of a perfectly ordinary boarding-house—(she could even detect the stale odours of cooking)—with a realistic man of business, and they were about to discuss a perfectly ordinary piece of scandal; and surely they might be called two common-sense people! And withal, the ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... Cut stale bread into slices one quarter of an inch thick; put on the toaster or fork, move gently over the heat until dry, then brown by placing near the heat, turning constantly. Bread may be dried in the oven before toasting. Hot milk may be ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Science in Rural Schools • Ministry of Education Ontario
... proclamation, your honour. Didn't he say, himself, that his soldiers were not to stale anything, and that they would be severely punished if they did? And didn't he guarantee that we should be paid for everything? He could not blame us for what we have done, and he ought to hang the rest of those thieving villains, when ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... feet The first of all, and, drawing near thy lady, Remove her chair and offer her thy hand, And lead her to the other room, nor suffer longer That the stale reek of viands shall offend Her delicate sense. Thee with the rest invites The grateful odor of the coffee, where It smokes upon a smaller table hid And graced with Indian webs. The redolent gums That meanwhile ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... to-night? His youth was fast going—nay, had it not indeed gone from him for ever? had not youth left him all at once when he began his commercial career?—and the pleasures that had been fresh enough within the last few years were rapidly growing stale. He knew the German spas, the pine-groves where the hand played, the gambling-saloons and their company, by heart, though he had never stayed more than a fortnight at any one of them. He had exhausted Brittany and the South of France in these rapid scampers; skimmed the cream of their novelty, ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... French artists appear to me to have been very much injured by a wrong use of classic antiquity. Nothing could be more glorious and beautiful than the Grecian development; nothing more unlike it that the stale, wearisome, repetitious imitations of it in modern times. The Greek productions themselves have a living power to this day; but all imitations of them are cold and tiresome. These old Greeks made such ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... moment he came with his saddle to where the men stood talking by his pony, slung it on, and tightened the cinches; but the chain was now in the saddle-bag of Specimen Jones, mixed up with some tobacco, stale bread, a box of matches, and a hunk of fat bacon. The men at Twenty Mile said good-day to the tenderfoot, with monosyllables and indifference, and watched him depart into the heated desert. Wishing for ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... had been within five miles of the open Atlantic, though he had not seen it. Along the endless flat potato-fields, broken by pine-groves under whose sultry shadow negro cabins sweltered, the heat clung persistently. The show-tent was always filled with a stale scent ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... things new. Through eternity, new joys, new knowledge, new progress, new likeness, new service will be ours— and not one leaf shall ever wither in the amaranthine crown, nor 'the cup of blessing' ever become empty or flat and stale. Eternity will be but a continual renewal and a progressive increase of ever fresh and ever familiar treasures. The new and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... most easily made from stale bread, which should be cut in one-third to one-half inch slices. A single slice of toast may be made by holding it over the fire on a fork. In camp a forked stick answers every purpose. The easiest way to make several slices is to put them ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... merry, What wine from the chill of his cellar emerges— 'Tis a drop at the best—has the flavour of verjuice; While from a huge cruet his own sparing hand On his coleworts drops oil which no mortal can stand, So utterly loathsome and rancid in smell, it Defies his stale ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw and resolve itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God! How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... wax flowers, and indescribable mantel-piece atrocities, that there is not a simple or restful corner anywhere. Yet I find myself touched by its very hideousness, when I think that it probably looked even so, smelt even so stale and sweet, in the days of my dear father's boyhood. There is a picture in the large drawing-room that gives me infinite pleasure. It is a portrait of my own grandmother with papa in a white frock on her knees, and my poor Aunt Fanny beside her, a ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... that is filled with negative, discordant or inharmonious thoughts, I am separating myself from the full expression of the Divine within me. I am the bucket of water going stale on a human island; but, when I make my spirit at one with the Father by harmonious thinking, by love, kindness, good will, fellowship and co-operation, I am not only maintaining all of my original properties, but I am in correspondence ...
— The Silence • David V. Bush
... throw bread away, and if they find a piece on the floor they pick it up and put it in a hole in the wall and keep it. It may be eaten, but may never be otherwise destroyed. I thought of Ruskin telling his readers in The Elements of Drawing that stale crumb of bread is better than india-rubber to rub out their mistakes, but "it crumbles about the room and makes a mess; and besides, you waste the good bread, which is wrong; and your drawing will not for a long while be worth the crumbs. ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... eagerly up to the railing that divided the spectators from the dancers, and drew a deep breath of satisfaction. Here, at last, was something different from the everlasting hospital barracks: glowing lights, holiday decorations, the scent of flowers instead of the stale fumes of ether and disinfectants; soul-stirring music in place of the wheezy old phonograph grinding out the same old tunes; and, above all, girls, hundreds of them, circling in a bewildering rainbow of loveliness ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... the fair reader too long, enter into a wholesome dissertation here on the manner of friendship established in those institutions, and the noble feeling of selfishness which they are likely to encourage in the male race? I put out of the question the stale topics of complaint, such as leaving home, encouraging gormandising and luxurious habits, etc.; but look also at the dealings of club-men with one another. Look at the rush for the evening paper! See how Shiverton orders ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... for you!" had been the formulated threat of Wessex mothers for many generations. He was successfully supplanted for a while, at the beginning of the present century, by Buonaparte; but as process of time rendered the latter personage stale and ineffective the older phrase resumed its early prominence. And now the reddleman has in his turn followed Buonaparte to the land of worn-out bogeys, and his place is filled ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... Ascham's lips his host looked slowly about the library, and every object in it stared back at him with a stale unescapable familiarity. How sick he was of looking at that room! It was as dull as the face of a wife one has wearied of. He cleared his throat slowly; then he turned his head to the lawyer and said: "I could explain the ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... the entire novel is just that close and enervating. Every page is like the next morning taste of a champagne supper, and is heavy with the smell of stale cigarettes. There is no fresh air in the book and no sunlight, only the "blinding light shed by the electric globes." If the life of New York newspaper men is as unwholesome and sordid as this, Mr. Crane, who has experienced it, ought to be sadly ashamed to tell it. Next morning when ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... every pillar is a bush to hide them. It is the other expense of the day, after plays and taverns; and men have still some oaths to swear here. The visitants are all men without exceptions; but the principal inhabitants are stale knights and captains out of service, men of long rapiers and short purses, who after all turn merchants here, and traffic for news. Some make it a preface to their dinner, and travel for an appetite; ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... condescend to turn and look. Meanwhile, I had not the courage to go near my club, and the Temple was a place where I was accosted in every court, effusively congratulated on the marvellous preservation of my stale spoilt life, and invited right and left to spin my yarn over a quiet pipe! Well, perhaps such invitations were not so common as they have grown in my memory; nor must you confuse my then feelings on all ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... it would be better for such a child to put her down to hard work, and to keep her constantly under the eye of her guardians. This threat was more efficient than all the other means which had been used to keep the child within the bounds of common decency; but even this had grown stale upon her. ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... out. And immediately he was aware of a pleasant feeling of relief, as one who, after battling against a delicious and shameful habit, yields and is glad. The beauty of the notes was eternal; no use could stale it. Their intoxicating effect on him was just as powerful now as before supper. And now, as then, the mere sight of them filled him with a passionate conviction that without them he would be ruined. His tricks to destroy the suspicions of Horrocleave could not possibly be successful. Within twenty-four ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... that frigate. Then he immediately commenced passing from vessel to vessel, in order to ascertain the actual condition of his command. The Achilles detained him some time, and he was near her, or to leeward, when the wind shifted; which was bringing him to windward in the present stale of things. Of this advantage he availed himself, by urging the different ships off as fast as possible; and long before the sun was in the meridian, all the English vessels were making the best of their way towards the land, ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... boys were sitting on the cross-beams of the roof. The heat in the place was stifling beyond all description, for besides being densely crowded below and above, the wooden shutters were shut, on account of the wind and rain, the people's wet clothes were steaming, and there was a strong smell of stale fish. At first we felt as if it would be impossible to bear it, but after a little time we became used to the disagreeables, and had other ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... our wood-cutters, who go into the mountains far from any habitations to fell wood.— Their provisions for a week, (the time they commonly remain in the mountains,) consist of a large loaf of rye bread (which, as it does not so soon grow dry and stale as wheaten bread, is always preferred to it); a linen bag containing a small quantity of roasted meal;—another small bag of salt;—and a small wooden box containing some pounded black pepper;—with a small frying-pan ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... met by chance at a coffee-stand one beautiful summer dawn in one of the markets,—the Treine, most likely,—where, perched on high stools at a zinc-covered counter, with the smell of fresh blood on the right and of stale fish on the left, they had finished half their cup of cafe au lait before they awoke to the exhilarating knowledge of ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... underlings; not freely but as a schoolmaster with his scholars, ever to teach, never to learn.... You should know many of these tales you tell to be but ordinary, & many other things, which you repeat, & serve in for novelties to be but stale.... Your too much love of the world is too much seen, when having the living" [income] "of L10,000, you relieve few or none: the hand that hath taken so much, can it give so little? Herein you show no bowels of compassion.... We desire you to amend this & let your poor Tenants in Norfolk find ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... wist how to deal with traitors. But now, with so slack an hand did the King rule, that not only Sir Roger gat free of the Tower by bribing one of his keepers and drugging the rest, but twenty good days at the least were lost while he stale down to the coast and so won away. There was indeed a hue and cry, but it wrought nothing, and even that was not for a week. There was more diligence used to seize his lands than to seize him. And at the end of all, just afore the Queen's journey, if my Lady Mortimer his wife, that had gone down ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... display it Through all our cloudy parts, it doth convey it Forth at the eye, as the most pregnant place, And that reflects it round about the face. 250 And this event, uncourtly Hero thought, Her inward guilt would in her looks have wrought; For yet the world's stale cunning she resisted, To bear foul thoughts, yet forge what looks she listed, And held it for a very silly sleight, To make a perfect metal counterfeit, Glad to disclaim herself, proud of an art That makes the face a ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... up instantly. "A hundred dollars couldn't buy that piece of stale mud off his back," he asserted, looking off into ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... not expect it; but those great thick walls were no way taken by surprise: they had not been confidants of this kind of thing off and on for four or five hundred years to be taken by surprise now. Whether after such long familiarity with the old story they felt it any way stale, you will readily believe ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... thin slices from a stale cake, cut them in shapes, dip them in milk, then fry them in butter; spread jam or marmalade on the top of each, ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various
... humor, he included all the Jewish institutions on the list, and they wrote to the paper and rather objected to being represented as decorating Christmas trees, or in any way celebrating that particular day. But of all stale, flat, and unprofitable stories, this releasing of prisoners from Moyamensing was the worst. It seemed to Bronson that they were always releasing prisoners; he wondered how they possibly left themselves enough to make a county prison worth ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... solid night. They yawned and damned the darkness, which smelt like stale india-rubber, so Quell said. They cursed life and the bitter taste in their mouths. Quell spoke of his thirst in words that startled the easy-going Arved, who confessed that if he could rid himself of the wool in his throat, he would be comparatively happy. Then they stumbled ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... here commence, But you might think it stale; So we'll suppose that we have reached The tail ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... for he's a good boy, is Dodger. Did I tell you how he served the rapscallion that tried to stale my apples the ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger
... but he is not little, he is of medium growth. A hair is very thin. The night is so dark that we can see nothing even before our nose. This stale bread is hard as stone. Naughty children love to torment animals. He felt (himself) so miserable that he cursed the day on which he was born. We greatly despise this base man. The window was long unclosed; I closed it, but my brother immediately ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... most excellent gift of charity." Then, in one generous burst, she prayed for love divine, and there was many a sigh and many a tear, and at the close an "Amen!" such as, alas! we shall never, I fear, hear burst from a hundred bosoms where men repeat beautiful but stale words and ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... she thinks till he return again, And yet the duteous vassal scarce is gone. The weary time she cannot entertain, For now 'tis stale to sigh, to weep, to groan: So woe hath wearied woe, moan tired moan, That she her plaints a little while doth stay, Pausing for means to ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... one of the shadowy sidling presences in the background of that awful house in Chelsea, one of the dumb appendages of the shrieking unescapable Mrs. Murrett, into whose talons he had fallen in the course of his head-long pursuit of Lady Ulrica Crispin. Oh, the taste of stale follies! How insipid it was, yet ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... stewed, steamed or plain bread pudding. 20. Bread soup with apples, rice pudding with dried fruit. 21. Bran or bread soup, apple salad with grated cheese, lettuce. 22. Milk or huckleberry soup, unleavened apple pancakes. 23. Clabber milk with cream and grapenuts or stale bread, nuts. 24. Corn bread with apple salad and lettuce, nuts. 25. Plain milk rice with currants, nuts or cheese. 26. Bread dumplings with stewed prunes or pears, celery, nuts. 27. Buttermilk soup with dried fruit, ...
— Food for the Traveler - What to Eat and Why • Dora Cathrine Cristine Liebel Roper
... who of my contemporaries—that is, men between thirty and forty-five—have given the world one single drop of alcohol?... Science and technical knowledge are passing through a great period now, but for our sort it is a flabby, stale, dull time.... The causes of this are not to be found in our stupidity, our lack of talent, or our insolence, but in a disease which for the artist is worse than syphilis or sexual exhaustion. We lack "something," that is true, and that means that, lift the robe of our muse, and you will find within ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... so horribly stale in London without Barty that I became a quite exemplary young man when I woke up from that long nap on the floor of my laboratory in Barge Yard, Bucklersbury; a reformed character: from sheer grief, I ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... stale. Talk of the hatchet, and the faces pale, Wampum and calumets and forests dreary, Once so attractive, now begins to weary. Uncas and Magawisca please us still, Unreal, yet idealized with skill; But every poetaster, scribbling witling, From the majestic oak his stylus whittling, ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... was not in town, as the cattleman learned at Monte Joe's dance-hall, piled high with tables and chairs and reeking with the stench, left over from the previous night, of whiskey fumes and stale tobacco smoke. Monte Joe professed not to know where the puncher had gone, but as Trowbridge pressed him for information the voice of a woman, as shrill as the squawk of a parrot, floated down from the ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... gentle dismissions, that we debate not and examine the matter thoroughly with liberal and frequent audience; if not for their sakes, yet for our own? seeing no man who hath tasted learning, but will confess the many ways of profiting by those who, not contented with stale receipts, are able to manage and set forth new positions to the world. And were they but as the dust and cinders of our feet, so long as in that notion they may yet serve to polish and brighten the armoury ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... stale a subject in 1833 as in 1883. For what particular sins of her own England has been cursed with a neighbour so bloodthirsty, so unreasonable, and so troublesome as Ireland, it would be difficult to say. Although we had no Irish Americans—no cowardly "dynamitards"—in those days, Ireland ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... good sayings, were quoted; his excellent companionship on really poetical walks, and perfect sympathy, praised to his face. Challenged by her initiative to a kind of language that threw Redworth out, he declaimed: 'We pace with some who make young morning stale.' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in among the houses of Paradise Street were fresh and green, though one of the hot, burning breaks of blue sky and glaring sunlight had baked the road into Indian-red dust once more, and the interior of Mhtoon Pah's curio shop was heavy with stale scents and dark shadows that crept out as the gloom of evening settled in upon it. Mhtoon Pah moved about looking at his goods, and touching them with careful hands. He hovered over an ivory lady carrying an umbrella, and looked long at a white marble Buddha, ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... Gentleman of Figure in a County would make his Family a Pattern of Sobriety, good Sense, and Breeding, and would kindly endeavour to influence the Education and growing Prospects of the younger Gentry about him, I am apt to believe it would save him a great deal of stale Beer on a publick Occasion, and render him the Leader of his Country from their Gratitude to him, instead of being a Slave to their Riots and Tumults in order to be made their Representative. The same thing might be recommended to all who have made any Progress in any Parts of Knowledge, or arrived ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele |
