"Stale" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... O God! How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world! Hamlet, ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... two suns cannot shine together in the same sphere with equal splendour, so I affirm, and will prove with my body, that your mistress, in comparison with mine, is as a glow-worm to the meridian sun, a rushlight to the full moon, or a stale mackerel's eye to a pearl of orient." "Harkee, brother, you might give good words, however. An we once fall a-jawing, d'ye see, I can heave out as much bilgewater as another; and since you besmear my sweetheart, Besselia, I can as well bedaub ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... Then, if ever, the heart sickens and the will flags, and life becomes a pageant that hath ceased to entertain. As I moved through the mist and the silence, and felt the tug of the thong that bound me to the wrist of the savage who stalked before me, I cared not how soon they made an end, seeing how stale and unprofitable were all ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... Sherrard. So far there had been no decided slump in the playing of either team, and, since a slump is always looked for at some time during the season, both Mr. Robey and Danny Moore were getting anxious. Danny almost begged the fellows to go stale a little. "It ain't natural," he declared. "It's got to come, so let it and have it over with." Neither had there been any injuries of moment. On this score Danny had no regrets, however. He was a good trainer and prided himself on ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... act of reflection takes place in the mind, when we look at ourselves in the light of thought, we discover that our life is embosomed in beauty. Behind us, as we go, all things assume pleasing forms, as clouds do far off. Not only things familiar and stale, but even the tragic and terrible are comely as they take their place in the pictures of memory. The river-bank, the weed at the water-side, the old house, the foolish person, however neglected in the passing, ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... which have led to the so-called realistic and romantic movements. No fear of repetition in the study of the respective novelists has kept me from illustrating from many points of view and taking advantage of the opportunity offered by each author, the distinction thus set up. For back of all stale jugglery of terms, lies a very real and permanent difference. The words denote different types of mind as well as of art: and express also a changed interpretation of the world of men, resulting from the social ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... - 'Call not blessed.' - Yes, if I could die just now, or say in half a year, I should have had a splendid time of it on the whole. But it gets a little stale, and my work will begin to senesce; and parties to shy bricks at me; and now it begins to look as if I should survive to see myself impotent and forgotten. It's a pity suicide is not thought the ticket in the ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... becoming impregnated with the volatile salts of the excrements, it may be rendered brisker, stronger, and more f[oe]tid." It is said to be a fact, that in manufacturing tobacco, it is frequently sprinkled with stale urine. ...
— A Disquisition on the Evils of Using Tobacco - and the Necessity of Immediate and Entire Reformation • Orin Fowler
... lines. A Greek poet could not have conceived them: unless we imagine to ourselves what AEschylus or Pindar, oppressed by long illness, and forgetful of the gods, might possibly have felt. In its sense of spiritual vacancy, when the world and all its uses have become flat, stale, unprofitable, and the sentient soul oscillates like a pendulum between weariful extremes, seeking repose in restless movement, and hurling the ruins of a life into the gulf of its exhausted cravings, we perceive already ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... stated) from Sadleir. "He saith, whatever pretence they make, the principal mark they shoot at is to make an alteration of the State and authority." This at least is explicit enough. The Reformers were actually renewing the civil war on charges so stale and so false. The Duke had possibly promised to desert her if she broke the truce, and now he seized on the flimsy pretence, because the Congregation, as the leaders said, had "tempted him" sufficiently. They had ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... as he did so the clock struck three, and he opened the door and passed out into the hall. It was paved with black and white marble; the walls were washed in a dull yellowish tint, and the prevalent odour of antiseptics was mingled with a stale smell of cooking. At the back rose a straight staircase carpeted with brass-bound India-rubber, like a ship's companion-way; and down that staircase she would come in a moment—he fancied he heard her ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... work Shakespeare has more faults than any other poet of England. He is in turn careless, extravagant, profuse, tedious, sensational; his wit grows stale or coarse; his patriotism turns to bombast; he mars even such pathetic scenes as the burial of Ophelia by buffoonery and brawling; and all to please a public that was ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... bowl of nice-looking eggs in the pantry and a piece of home-cured bacon neatly sewed into a white muslin bag and partly sliced. This, with slices of golden brown toast—the bread box held only half a loaf of decidedly stale bread—solved her breakfast menu. There were two pans of milk standing on the table, thick with yellow cream, and Betty was just wondering if Bob had milked and when, for the cream could not have risen under two or three hours' time, when ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... red, the eyes full, and the whole fish firm and stiff, they are fresh and good; if, on the contrary, the gills are pale, the eyes sunken, the flesh flabby, they are stale. ...
— Recipes Tried and True • the Ladies' Aid Society
... alternately side-splitting and terrifying. On occasions he would use the birch—and very thoroughly, too, as I have reason to remember —but he ruled us by fear of authority. For though he dressed like a clergyman, he always smelled strongly of stale cigar smoke, and his language at times was more forcible than is generally expected of ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... by the thought that he was late. He took three long steps, collided with a sodden old gentleman who was just arising from a bench—and then was standing very still, looking about him as in a daze, unconscious of the mutter of apology which, together with an odor of stale beer, was fermenting beneath his nose. The old gentleman, pursuing a ray of sun, slipped on to a farther bench. But Charles-Norton still stood there, gazing about him in a sort of mild astonishment, as if, while he was not looking, the scene about him had been transformed ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven! Oh! times In which the meagre, stale forbidding ways Of custom, law and statute, took at once The attraction of ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... on account of a mythical "German plot," which Lord Wimbourne never heard of, which Sir Bryan Mahon, Commander-in-Chief, told Lord French he flatly disbelieved in, and which, when, after more than two years, the documents are produced, proves to be a stale rehash of negotiations before the Easter Week Rising, with some sham "German Irish Society" in Berlin. On this pretext the Sinn Fein leaders, Messrs de Valera and Griffith (whom there is not a shadow of proof to connect with the ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... find 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 ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... so beautiful to look at. You are made to be queen of a ball-room; not a London ball-room, where everything, I take it, is flash and faded, painted and stale, and worn out; but down here in the country, where there is some life among us, and where a girl may be supposed to be excited over her dancing. It is in such rooms as this that hearts are won and lost; a bid made for diamonds is all that ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... pillared house the tall young son wandered aimlessly about after his father's abrupt departure. In the house there was little to interest him; the books were old and stale, the local newspaper flat, and the women had retired with headaches and sewing. He tried a nap, but it was too warm. So he sauntered out into the fields, complaining disconsolately, "Good Lord! how long will this imprisonment last!" He ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... had not been changed since Easter, and were full of dust and grease from the cooking and the table. Even the fresher sprigs of mint among them smelled stale and old. When they were all in the barrow, Nick sighed with relief and wiped his hands upon the ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... narrow income put the longed-for life in Paris quite out of the question, she looked about her at the people with whom her life must be spent, and shuddered at her loneliness. There was not a single man who could inspire the madness to which women are prone when they despair of a life become stale and unprofitable in the present, and with no outlook for the future. She had nothing to look for, nothing to expect from chance, for there are lives in which chance plays no part. But when the Empire was in the full noonday of glory, ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... is a message for Bert and Nan too, but I must keep that for lunch time. Nobody likes stale news," the ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Country • Laura Lee Hope
... "Stale," said Aladdin. "Might as well have 'Grandfather's Clock.' What's that thing you were humming ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... clear to him. Like an electric bolt it shot him, thrilling, stirring his heart and soul. She would go with him; more than that, she should. It was her right, won by years of actual want and struggle and service. More, it was her escape from a flat, stale, meaningless boarding-house existence. Suddenly he felt that she was really his mother, knit to him by ties unbreakable, a terrible thing ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... this which has blighted the countries of the East as much as cruel laws or despotic executives. Thus the legislature has seen fit in certain cases to assign a limit to the period within which actions shall be brought; in order to urge men to vigilance, and to prevent stale claims from being suddenly revived against men whose vouchers are destroyed or whose witnesses are dead. It is true, in foro conscientiae, a defendant, who knows that he honestly owes the debt sued for and that the delay has been caused by indulgence or confidence on the part of his creditor, ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... it is for you, my dear; I have finished it. Mrs. B. I humbly thank you for giving it to me when you have done with it. I hate stale news. Is there anything in the paper? for I can not be at the trouble of ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... other hand, the Democratic minority of the committee, after examining Hoffman and Tweed, who disclaimed any knowledge of the transactions and affected to disbelieve the truth of the charges, pronounced the facts cited "stale slanders," and most of the witnesses "notorious swindlers, liars, and thieves," declaring that the fraudulent vote did not exceed 2,000, divided equally between the two parties. Moreover, it pronounced the investigation a shameful effort to convict the Democracy of crimes that were ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... 'The same is our intent and all our people: God help the right!' So the cardinal returned to Poitiers. In his company there were certain knights and squires, men of arms, who were more favourable to the French king than to the prince; and when they saw that the parties should fight, they stale from their masters and went to the French host; and they made their captain the chatelain of Amposte,[3] who was as then there with the cardinal, who knew nothing thereof till he was ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... the troops were satisfying their hunger with a frugal repast. The Persians expressed their desire of being introduced to the presence of the Roman emperor. They were at length conducted to a soldier, who was seated on the grass. A piece of stale bacon and a few hard peas composed his supper. A coarse woollen garment of purple was the only circumstance that announced his dignity. The conference was conducted with the same disregard of courtly elegance. Carus, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... games for three days, and the players were getting a bit "stale" with nothing to do. Then the sun came out, the grounds dried up and the series was resumed. But the Cardinals were ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... is Wagner's most perfect work, is the finest opera in the world. Unluckily there are in the world far too many persons who are not content to have a work of supreme art, but must needs read into it old, stale platitudes: when they have proved it to be an exposition of these platitudes they conceive that they have deserved the gratitude of the people for interpreting the artist and of the artist for having interpreted him, having made his meaning clear. As I have written elsewhere ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... a long room with a raised dais. There were long tables ranged down it, covered with stained cardboard mounts for beer-glasses. Cigar ashes were in saucers, cigar ends on the floor. The smell of stale beer permeated the atmosphere. It was ...
— An Account of Our Arresting Experiences • Conway Evans
... proposals of mine in my own committee. However, he got himself sold at all points...The Polypterus paper and the Aye-Aye paper fell flat. The latter was meant to raise a discussion on your views, but it was all a stale hash, and I only made some half sarcastic remarks which stopped any ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... shreds of his sentences he can shape an oration, from all the world hee carries it awaie, although in truth it be no more than a fooles coat of many coulours. No inuention or matter haue they of theyr owne, but tacke vp a stile of his stale galimafries. The leaden headed Germanes first began this, and we Englishmen haue surfetted of their absurd imitation. I pittie Nizolius that had nothing to doe, but picke thrids ends out of an olde ouerworne garment. This is but by the waie, we must ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... water, as it were, all round them like a moat. This they did a hundred times—in fact, every day. 'But,' said Mr. Hay, 'you can't watch nothing now a minute without some great lout coming along with a stale baccy pipe in his mouth, making the air stink; they spoils everything, these here half-towny fellows; everybody got a neasty stale pipe in their mouths, and they gets over the hedges anywhere, and disturbs everything.' It is common on the banks of a stream or a pond to see half a dozen of ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... yourself on that stuff; that is the stale argument of some of the smart young men who write for posterity. Rent is probably as high to-day as it was when wages were twice as high. The prices of flour, pork, and beef are regulated by the crop, not by the buyers' wages. If I were hammering at an anvil I would take my increased wages and ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... makes common things common; that is, it makes the familiar thing and round seem and feel common. It's the unhallowed and unhallowing touch of the selfish, of sin, that makes things seem common, in the sense of not being holy and sweet and pure and refreshing. Sin makes things grow stale to you. Selfishness affects your eye, the way things look to you. God's presence recognized keeps things fresh. His touch upon us, ever afresh, makes us fresh. Everything we touch and see is touched by a God-freshened hand, and seen through a ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... of course that one shouldn't be rationally 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
... governess—petite—she would repeat, blonde, plump, or better still "potelee" (the governess had later suggested, when she came to tea and hoped to be asked to stay) potelee, blue-eyed and pink-cheeked. Dresden china and all the stale similes applied to a type of little woman of whom the modern ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... religious, I felt nothing but a great weariness of spirit. Nevertheless, I must have gone on looking at pictures for ten years before I would honestly admit to myself that they merely bored me. Since then I have given up all attempts to take a holiday. I go on cultivating my old stale daily self in the resigned spirit with which a bank clerk performs from ten till six his daily task. A holiday, indeed! I'm sorry for you, Gombauld, if you still look forward to having ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... forward and I was all but stifled with the stale odour of the patchouli with which ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... the liquor from a can of peaches; dip each piece of cake into the liquor and lay them in a glass dish; lay the peaches between and pour a cold custard over; spread over the top the whites of 3 or 4 eggs beaten to a stiff froth, sprinkle over a little sugar and serve. Any kind of stale cake may be used ...
— Desserts and Salads • Gesine Lemcke
... honestly too; He shall be counted Ancient Without so much ado. What you do grant, I'm very free To use now at my pleasure: Another Month, or Year, d' ye see I'll bate, as I have leasure; So Hair by Hair, from the Mare's Tail I'll pull, as well I may. So what is good, is quickly stale, Though ...
— Magazine, or Animadversions on the English Spelling (1703) • G. W.
... two officers sat opposite to each other inhaling the stale odour of tobacco and spirits peculiar to this room, with little or no ventilation. It was enough to sicken anyone, but both men, accustomed to such places in the pursuit of their calling, apparently thought nothing ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... stale acquittance. Who, when he spreads foul calumny abroad, and dreads just vengeance on him, cries out, what mean you, I ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore
... comprehend in a single question, and now you will manifestly be in the old difficulty, and will not be able to show that you know the expedient, either because you learned or because you discovered it yourself. But, as I perceive that you are dainty, and dislike the taste of a stale argument, I will enquire no further into your knowledge of what is expedient or what is not expedient for the Athenian people, and simply request you to say why you do not explain whether justice and ...
— Alcibiades I • (may be spurious) Plato
... the mature age of "NOTES AND QUERIES," commonplace compliments as to its usefulness and high general value, begin to be very stale; but I cannot close without a hearty "God speed" to you in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 70, March 1, 1851 • Various
... A most sumptuous dressing; it compares favorably with our popular stale bread pap usually called ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... is still much that I might say about the transactions of that time, but I think that even what I have said is more than enough. The blame rests with Aeschines, who has drenched me with the stale dregs[n] of his own villainy and crime, from which I was compelled to clear myself in the eyes of those who are too young to remember the events; though perhaps you who knew, even before I said a single word, of Aeschines' service as ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... rapidly. What may be news for one edition is no longer news when another edition goes to press an hour later. A feature that may be worth playing up in a morning paper would not have the same news value in an evening paper of the same day. The news grows stale so quickly because new things are continually happening and new developments are continually changing the aspect of previous stories. If a story has been run through two or three editions and new developments have changed it, the story ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... days. A little indulgence may, perhaps, be shown toward persons who are a week or a fortnight from us by the post, since otherwise we could never converse together. But even they should reply to only the weightier matters suggested, since what they say will probably be stale before it reaches the eyes for which it was written. For the like reasons, I hold a Californian or European correspondence to be an impossibility. As for him whose want of politeness fixes a gulf, a week broad, between himself and his correspondent, there is no excuse. As one reads a letter, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... up because a little girl he had seen for five minutes failed to appear! Where was his common sense, his "gumption," as old Robert Williamson would have said? Naturally a man liked to look at a pretty face. But was that any reason why he should feel as if life were flat, stale, and unprofitable simply because he could not look at it? He called himself a fool and went home in a petulant mood. Arriving there, he plunged fiercely into solving algebraical equations and working out geometry exercises, determined to put out of his head ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... to 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 ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... 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 ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... by a huge studio-window, over which various tattered blinds were drawn; a floor of bare boards, with a few rags of carpet here and there; in the middle, a table covered with painter's apparatus of different kinds; palettes, paints, rags, tin-pots, and, thrown down amongst them, some stale crusts of bread; a large easel, with a number of old and dirty canvases piled upon it; two chairs, one of them without the usual complement of legs; a few etchings and oil-sketches and fragments of coloured ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ne'er advance a Judgment of their own, But catch the spreading notion of the Town; They reason and conclude by precedent, 410 And own stale nonsense which they ne'er invent. Some judge of author's names, not works, and then Nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men. Of all this servile herd the worst is he That in proud dulness joins with Quality, 415 ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... arises from the human herd. It comes from the sheepskin, which is worked in, slept in, and, what is more, often inherited from a parent who had also worn it as his winter hide. Added to the smell of the sheepskin is that of an unwashed human, and the reek of stale food, for the poorest of the Russian peasants have no chimneys to their houses. They cannot afford to let ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... to food it seems impossible to lay down any general rule. De Quincey advises beefsteak, not too much cooked, and stale bread as the chief diet, and doubtless this was the best diet for him. Yet it is not the less true that "what is one man's meat is another man's poison," and food that is absolutely harmless to one may disorder the entire digestion of another. Roast pork, mince pies, ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... groped her way upstairs. The house smelt repulsively of stale food, and gas mingled, and the wailing wind from outside seemed to pursue the visitor with its voice as she mounted. On the second floor landing, she knocked at the ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... my marching orders. Mr Gibbs finds Leichardt's Land a bit stale. I take train to Sydney next week and tour the Riverina, the Blue Mountains and the country along the railway line to Melbourne. Are you coming ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... What happiness is that to leave the home Of the Waywode, my father, for the house Of some count palatine, a grateful bride? What do I gain of new from such a change? And can I joy in looking to the morrow When it brings naught but what was stale to-day? Oh, tasteless round of petty, worn pursuits! Oh, wearisome monotony of life! Are they a guerdon for high hopes, high aims? Or love or greatness I must have: all else Are unto me alike indifferent. ...
— Demetrius - A Play • Frederich Schiller
... better known than he; So are the camels and the western hog, And so is Lepidus his printed dog[569]: Why doth not Ponticus their fames envy? Besides, this Muse of mine and the black feather Grew both together fresh in estimation; 10 And both, grown stale, were cast away together: What fame is this that scarce lasts out a fashion? Only this last in credit doth remain, That from henceforth each bastard cast-forth rhyme, Which doth but savour of a libel vein, Shall call me father, and be thought my crime; So dull, and with so little sense ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... Caliban and his associates? Is it likely that these drunken fellows could frame any plot that would be but as gossamer before his art? Is it natural that so low a creature as Caliban should show more intelligence than Stephano and Trinculo in disregarding Ariel's 'stale' set to catch them? How do you explain his superior caution? Describe the device employed by Prospero and Ariel to rout these plotters. Would it be ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... than a few words, Sir Andrew was leading her right across the town, to the other side from that where they had landed, and the way towards Cap Gris Nez. The streets were narrow, tortuous, and mostly evil-smelling, with a mixture of stale fish and damp cellar odours. There had been heavy rain here during the storm last night, and sometimes Marguerite sank ankle-deep in the mud, for the roads were not lighted save by the occasional glimmer from a ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... got to a sticking-point with his work! It's all very well," I thought, "for you to sniff at my miniatures, my friend, but we all get stale on our work sometimes, and the fresh eye, ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... rankled in the soul of Miss Snow, and caused Miss March to assume the airs of a studious young peacock. But, alas, alas! Pride goes before a fall, and the revengeful Snow turned the tables with disastrous success. No sooner had the guest paid the usual stale compliments and bowed himself out, than Jenny, under pretense of asking an important question, informed Mr. Davis, the teacher, that Amy March had pickled limes in ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... that he had ordered that these people be well fed; that he had supplied the money to buy them good and nourishing food. Now, if his poor pensioners received nothing but dry bread, and very stale, hard bread at that, while he paid for good food for them, somebody must be making money out of him, to whom he had no idea of being ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... the highest order, with a big diamond stuck in the centre of a broad expanse of white shirt front. At the other end is the so-called stage, while scattered about indiscriminately are the tables and chairs. The air is filled—yea, reeking—with the fumes of bad whiskey, stale beer, and the odor of foul smelling cheap tobacco smoke, and through all this haze the would-be "show," goes on, and the applause is manifested by whistles, cat calls, the pounding of feet on the floor and glasses on the tables. Occasionally some artist (?) will appear who ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... have bethought me of paying a visit this summer to the land of the Czar; that I want companions; that I like young ones, who will follow my ways better than old ones, who won't; that I enjoy fresh ideas freshly expressed, and am tired of stale platitudes; in short, if you will entrust your youngsters to me, I will take charge of them, and point out what is mostly worth seeing and remembering ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... has a distinctive smell, as of an arid dried-out swamp, with a faint taint of fish. But in the Flats the odor changes. Here is the smell of factories, warehouses, and trading marts; the smell of stale cooking drifting from the homes of the laborers and lower class techmen ...
— Monkey On His Back • Charles V. De Vet
... Travennes had been entertained in the manner narrated, Mr. Connors had passed the time by relating stale jokes to the uproarious laughter of his extremely bored audience, who had heard the aged efforts many times since they had first seen the light of day, and most of whom earnestly longed for a drink. The landlord, hearing ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... when heaven opens? I beg you to believe," he went on with great dignity, "that just so soon as I made certain you had nothing to learn from me I left you to your rose-gathering. Observe I have not said one word about the thorns. That is the stale gibe of the cynic whose heart of youth has dried before its time. And what if there are thorns? A single rose with the dew of love upon it is worth more than a pair of scratched hands. Gape? Could you believe it of me—of me, Francois ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... half of their journey was accomplished, they made a halt, under the lee of a sheltering mountain, for rest and refreshment. And, sitting down on a fallen tree, from whose barkless trunk they brushed off the snow, they took out and commenced chewing their stale and frozen bread, with a few small pieces of duck-meat, remaining from their breakfast, and comprising the last of their provisions. The animal heat, produced by their great and continued exertions in travelling, had thus ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... was howling, and holding one hand under his arm, while he danced a hornpipe and protested, that, if I'd save him this time, he'd "niver stale another cint's worth as long as ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... She tried to be sad, so as not to be angry; but it made her angry that she couldn't be sad. And yet where was misery, misery too beaten for blame and chalk-marked by fate like a "lot" at a common auction, if not in these merciless signs of mere mean, stale feelings? ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... life: but how changed did all at first appear! It seemed as if scales had fallen off their eyes, showing coarseness and deformity, where previously none had appeared. They had tasted the rapture of a more beautiful life; and now the ordinary toils of humanity appeared "stale, flat, and unprofitable," and common men and women tedious, rude, and mean. But the brave knight struggled against this feeling. "Shall we be so ungrateful, because a glimpse of the earthly paradise has been vouchsafed ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... sketch of one or two of those people whom you see every day, and call "dregs," sometimes,—a dull, plain bit of prose, such as you might pick for yourself out of any of these warehouses or back-streets. I expect you to call it stale and plebeian, for I know the glimpses of life it pleases you best to find; idyls delicately tinted; passion-veined hearts, cut bare for curious eyes; prophetic utterances, concrete and clear; or some word ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... not got tired of quoting "Heureux en jeu; malheureux en amour." It seems one of the least true of all stale, stupid proverbs. Luck will run itself out in more ways than one; and sometimes you will never hold a trump, however often the suit changes. The ancients knew better than we when they called the double-sixes "Venus's cast." The monotony of Guy's reckless dissipations ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... to an old man's ditty; Tho yo live ith' country village,— Tho yo live ith' busy city. Aw've a little tale to tell yo,— One 'at ne'er grows stale wi' tellin,— It's abaat One who to save yo, Here amang men made His dwellin. Riches moor nor yo can fancy,— Moor nor all this world has in it,— He gave up becoss He loved yo, An He's lovin yo this minnit. All His power, pomp and glory, Which to think ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... herrin'-gutted bush-ranger over yonder? He'd stale the milk out of your tea, he would, be the same token. Well, last night he got vicious and took a crack at my lines. I had rayson to suspect he'd be afther tryin' somethin' on, so I laid for him. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... let me draw the picture, dear Chevalier. Here was a discredited, dissolute fellow whose life was worth a pin to nobody. Tired of the husks and the swine, and all his follies grown stale by over-use, he takes the advice of a good gentleman, and joins the standard of work and sacrifice. What greater luxury shall man ask? If this be not running the full scale of life's enjoyment, pray you what is? The world loves contrasts. The deep-dyed ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... have been able to make a handsome affair out of it at all, after you had let it hang so long in the wind, if I had not taken on myself to make it agreeable to the gentleman, and cooked as neat a mess out of it as I have seen a Frenchman do out of a stale sprat?" ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... of the room, the cheap tobacco, and the effects of his heavy meal, he dropped off to sleep. Late in the afternoon his canary bird, in its gilt cage just over his head, began to sing. He woke slowly, finished the rest of his beer—very flat and stale by this time—and taking down his concertina from the bookcase, where in week days it kept the company of seven volumes of "Allen's Practical Dentist," played upon it some half-dozen ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... his flaming head, And sees the harm the envious night has done While he, the solar orb, has been abed— Sees here a yawl wrecked on the slushy sea, Or there a chestnut from its roost blown down, Or last year's birds' nests scattered on the lea, Or some stale scandal rampant in the town— Sees everywhere the petty work of night, Of sneaking winds and cunning, coward rats, Of hooting owls, of bugaboo and sprite, Of roaches, wolves, and ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... I nould believe your tales and fables stale and trite, Irksome as twice-sung tune that tires the dulled ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... bullet had passed under my crooked elbow and armpit, merely searing the forearm in a caressing sort of way. The blood was negligible. Altogether, it was a "cushy blighty," as the Tommy puts it. We reloaded our revolvers to wait for nightfall. There was a bit of stale bread in the bottom of my gas mask, forgotten until now. I split it into three parts, about two mouthfuls for each, and dug out some ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... fifty broad, and eight deep; which, being well pitched, to prevent leaking, was placed on the floor along the wall in an outer room of the palace. It had a cock near the bottom to let out the water, when it began to grow stale; and two servants could easily fill it in half-an-hour. Here I often used to row for my own diversion, as well as that of the queen and her ladies, who thought themselves well entertained with my skill and agility. Sometimes I would put up my sail, and then ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... with Frode, nor abated his old intimacy with him. For he decided that any opportunity of an interview with the king must be paid for, and gave out that no one should have any conversation with him who brought no presents. Access, he announced, to so great a general must be gained by no stale or usual method, but by making interest most zealously. He wished to lighten the scandal of his cruelty by the pretence of affection to his king. The people, thus tormented, vented their complaint of their trouble ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... waste, no worms, no musty smell, no decay! Frost cannot hurt them, heat preserves them! For long voyages, army and navy use, mining, lumbering, and hunting outfits, they are simply invaluable! For all classes of consumers, they are cheaper, cleaner and more wholesome than the ordinary stale and wilted vegetables, for sale in the city markets! We have named these cubes, 'Solaris Vegetable Concentrates,' a title which we have copyrighted. The packages readily wholesale at 75 cents, to be retailed at one dollar. ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... his mother. It was so dark on this stair that, in dull weather, ill-trimmed lamps burnt all day long on the different landings. To its convolutions, in its unaired corners, clung what seemed to be the stale, accumulated smells of years; and these were continually reinforced; since every day at dinnertime, the various kitchen-windows, all of which gave on the stair, were opened to let the piercing odours of cooking escape. The house, like the majority of its kind in this relatively new street, was divided ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... from The Red Lion and had a peculiar smell of stale straw. They drove with both windows closed so that the Vicar should not catch cold. The sexton was waiting at the porch to take the communion plate, and while the Vicar went to the vestry Mrs. Carey and Philip settled themselves in the vicarage pew. Mrs. Carey placed in front of her ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... quite aloof, Herr Schurz, I'm certain, but not on your side exactly either. I like to look on and hold the balance evenly, not to throw my own weight too lightly into either stale. The objective attitude of the mere spectator is after all the right one for an impartial philosopher ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... visitor, Ellerey could not determine, but the door was opened wide, and they were admitted into a small, ill-lighted lobby. The entrance was a private one, not a usual cafe entrance, but the smell of stale liquor and smoke and the reek of highly spiced dishes proved that the cafe was under the same roof, and proclaimed it as a resort of that lower stratum of society which loves its food pungent and highly flavored. That there was such silence ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... I might easily prove who I am, still, as you know I might find the detention inconvenient, I shall therefore sail early in the speronara. Your letters may be addressed to me as before, but bear in mind that your information is generally too stale. Now I will get a little rest, if you will show me where I am ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... read aright! The bitter dregs of days and nights of doleful meditation were in Latisan—the memory of aimless venturings into this or that corner where he could hide away, the latest memory of the stale little room in a cheap New York hotel persisting most vividly in his shamed thoughts because he had penned himself there day after day, trying to make up his mind to do this or that—and, especially at the nadir of what he felt was his utter ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... broke, and went away; the Trade and the Tradesmen were hiss'd off the Stage together; so that the Devil, who, it must be confess'd, got infinitely by the Cheat, became bankrupt, and was oblig'd to set other Engines at work, as other Cheats and Deceivers do, who when one Trick grows stale, and will serve no longer, are ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... Impressionism, some twenty years after its patent manifestation, they academized it. They set their faces against any sort of development and drove into revolt or artistic suicide every student with an ounce of vitality in him. Before the inspiration of Cezanne had time to grow stale, it was caught up by such men as Matisse and Picasso; by them it was moulded into forms that suited their different temperaments, and already it shows signs of taking fresh shape to express the sensibility of a ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... 745 Not all that pride that makes thee swell As big as thou dost blown-up veal; Nor all thy tricks and sleights to cheat, And sell thy carrion for good meat; Not all thy magic to repair 750 Decay'd old age in tough lean ware; Make nat'ral appear thy work, And stop the gangrene in stale pork; Not all that force that makes thee proud, Because by bullock ne'er withstood; 755 Though arm'd with all thy cleavers, knives, And axes made to hew down lives, Shall save or help thee to evade The hand of Justice, or this blade, Which I, her sword-bearer, do carry, 760 For civil deed ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... sailors, eager to make up so many heads for the voyage, pack them aboard like sheep, and cross the Atlantic, either to New York or to Quebec, just as they have been able to entice a cargo to either port. Then come the horrors of a long voyage and short provisions, and high prices for stale salt junk and biscuit; and, at the end, if illness has been on board, the quarantine, that most dreadful visitation of all—for hope ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... [200] Stale crumb of bread is better, if you are making a delicate drawing, than India-rubber, for it disturbs the surface of the paper less: 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 ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... the office windows as they passed. "One might think it was a reformatory or the county workhouse or something," he thought. He turned dully to the stack of reports and began to count them. He felt stale—flat. ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... at a table in the Buffet. I was sorry, for my soul's sake, to be sitting there. Britannia owns nothing more crudely and inalienably Britannic than her Buffets. The barmaids are but incarnations of her own self, thinly disguised. The stale buns and the stale sponge-cakes must have been baked, one fancies, by her own heavy hand. Of her everything is redolent. She it is that has cut the thick stale sandwiches, bottled the bitter beer, brewed ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... peu de frais," M. De Banville says himself. He admits that his lighter works, the poems called (in England) vers de societe, are a sort of intellectual cigarette. M. Emile de Girardin said, in the later days of the Empire, that there were too many cigarettes in the air. Their stale perfume clings to the literature of that time, as the odour of pastilles yet hangs about the verse of Dorat, the designs of Eisen, the work of the Pompadour period. There is more than smoke in M. De Banville's ruling inspiration, his lifelong devotion ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... ground by four stones. Ropes stretched across these, and covered by a blanket, constituted the bed. A board, of which one end rested on the bedstead and the other was thrust between the logs that composed the wall, sustained the stale fragments of a rye-loaf, and a cedar bucket kept entire by withes instead of hoops. In the bucket was a little water, full of droppings from the roof, drowned insects, and sand. A basket or two neatly made, and a hoe, with a stake thrust ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... the young man blessed me, and wept on my neck, and went after his uncle. He placed him in full view, in the second row of benches, that night, and I began on him. I tried him with mild jokes, then with severe ones; I dosed him with bad jokes and riddled him with good ones; I fired old stale jokes into him, and peppered him fore and aft with red-hot new ones; I warmed up to my work, and assaulted him on the right and left, in front and behind; I fumed and sweated and charged and ranted till I was hoarse and sick and frantic and furious; but I never moved ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... telegraph, to show his good feeling, presented me with a stale tin of condensed milk. His second clerk and operator was the most covetous man I met in China. He begged in turn for nearly every article I possessed, beginning with my waterproof, which I did not give him, and ending with the empty milk tin, which I did, for "Give to him that ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... and other countries the peasantry use a Lichen, called Lecanora tartarea to furnish a red or crimson dye. It is found abundantly on almost all rocks, and also grows on dry moors. It is collected in May and June, and steeped in stale urine for about three weeks, being kept at a moderate heat all the time. The substance having then a thick and strong texture, like bread, and being of a blueish black colour, is taken out and made into small cakes ...
— Vegetable Dyes - Being a Book of Recipes and Other Information Useful to the Dyer • Ethel M. Mairet
... versatile of writers. He discoursed with equal knowledge and effect on Biblical and philological topics, and his prose work will always be respectfully regarded by the students alike of divinity and of language. But though, on these subjects, his pronouncements may in time grow stale or require correction, he will ever hold an honourable place in English literature as one of the most thoughtful and vigorous of those parson poets of whom this country has always had so large and valuable ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams |
