"Stale" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... very trial and experience sufficiently teach, and all men's eyes, whosoever and wheresoever they be, do well enough see and witness for us), it was a foul part of them to charge us with these things; yea, seeing they could find no new and late faults, therefore to seek to procure us envy only with stale and out ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel
... who have few or no amusements provided for them; thirdly, that the passing of the old families and the advent of the week-end "merchant princes" do not make a change for the better. All which may be stale news, but after reading this book I think that you will admit that Mr. HOLDENBY has contrived to make an old tale very impressive. In some instances it is true that I could bring evidence directly in opposition to his, but on the whole ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 14, 1914 • Various
... graceful shoulders. "I have been told that America never takes up anything new in science until it has become stale in Europe. But women as well as men have been flocking to Vienna. Russian princesses have pledged ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... the children had very little food, for Mrs. Warren seemed all of a sudden to have changed her tactics. Whether it was the fact that she was really angry at Mrs. Cricket's having fed the boy on chicken and mutton-chops, no one could tell; but all he did have on that eventful Sunday was weak tea, stale bread and butter, ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... that the broad upper boulevards are filled with tourists and smart English visitors; and in the narrow streets pert factory-hands come noisily from work. Still he climbs on toward the Cathedral, through tortuous streets and little alley-ways. And in the gloomiest of them all there is no odour of a stale antiquity, but the perfume of a garden-full of roses, of a thousand orange-blossoms, and of locusts, honey-sweet, and he begins to think himself enchanted. He feels the dark, old houses are unreal, as if, instead of cobble-stones beneath ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... that they were Radicals at all. It denounced the attempt of any man to interfere by violence with slaves or Slavery where protected by the supreme law of the land. It repudiated as stale and ridiculous the charge of Abolitionism against them. And declared that such an accusation is without a shadow ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... that his scent lay best near the ground, and was strongest when he was warm. So if he could get off the ground, and be left in peace for half an hour to cool off, and for the trail to stale, he knew he would be safe. When, therefore, he tired of the chase, he made for the Creekside brier-patch, where he 'wound'—that is, zig-zagged—till he left a course so crooked that the dog was sure to be greatly delayed in working it out. He then went straight to D in the woods, passing ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... eternity, and within its folds lie the grandeur and sublimity of the great unknown future. It never gets out-of-date. Other books have their run of popularity and are forgotten, but the Bible never grows old; no matter how familiar we become with it, it is ever new. To the Christian it never grows stale, but is always fresh and always satisfying. It ever reveals new depths that we fail to fathom, new heights that we can not scale, and new beauties ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... medium size, and in colour a dark purple. The rind is very thin, and when broken the pulp dissolves in the mouth immediately. Although Dr. M. has just commenced his vineyard, he has made several casks of wine this year, which is now in a stale of fermentation. I tasted here, for the first time, aguardiente, or brandy distilled from the Californian grape. Its flavour is not unpleasant, and age, I do not doubt, would render it equal to the brandies of France. Large quantities of wine and aguardiente are made from the extensive ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... fellows closing in behind, followed quickly. Poor Noorunglely floundered into the net, up rushed a black fellow and, seizing her, wrung her neck. Having secured her, they would next secure her eggs; that they might be a trifle stale was a ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... wooden trough of three hundred feet long, 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 ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... he sat at supper the swineherd again sounded his horn, and Don Quixote was still firm in the belief that he was in some famous castle, where he was served with music, and that the stale haddock was fresh trout, the bread of the finest flour, the two women high-born damsels, and the innkeeper the constable of the castle. Thus he thought his career of knight-errant was well begun, but he was still greatly troubled by the thought ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... few weeks before this black shadow of war had loomed up with its deadly menace a great party of German editors had returned our visit and once again I had listened to speeches about the blood- brotherhood of the two nations, a little bored by the stale phrases, but glad to sit between these friendly Germans whom I had met in their own country. We clinked glasses again, sang "God Save the King" and the "Wacht am Rhein," compared the character of German and English literature, of German and English women, clasped hands, and said, "Auf wiedersehen!" ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... hands upon a large scale. The enemy's relinquishment of 30 miles of front line trench and his withdrawal to a depth, in places, of 40 kilometres, restored the principle of manoeuvre to armies which had fronted one another for two years in positions hitherto justifying the description of stale-mate. Strong moral and political effects accompanied. And this manoeuvre, though carried out upon a part only of the entire battle front, infused a sense of change and movement into the most static portions of the allied line. From theory open warfare had passed into ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... 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 ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... as the black cup, sullen and dark with fire, burns till beside it, noon's bright heat is withered, filled with dust— and into that noon-heat grown drab and stale, suddenly wind and thunder and swift rain, till the scarlet flower is wrecked in the ...
— Hymen • Hilda Doolittle
... you! But to return to your wife—as I understand she shares the fate I endure. We poor women have nothing to expect from our husbands, but the stale leavings that remain after business has absorbed the rest! But your story—go ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... half-humorous, but unsuccessful attempt to entangle him in his talk. The meeting agreed with all that had been said regarding the antiquity of the earth and of its life. They had, indeed, known it all long ago, and they rallied the lecturer for coming amongst them with so stale a story. It was quite plain that this large body of clergymen, who were, I should say, to be ranked amongst the finest samples of their class, had entirely given up the ancient landmarks, and transported ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... Christmas tree for a whole month. But it's a going tree. Its going is very sad. Just one little wee day of perfect splendor it has. And then it begins to die. Every day it dies more. It tarnishes. Its presents are all gathered. Its pop-corn gets stale. The cranberries smell. It looks scragglier and scragglier. It gets brittle. Its needles begin to fall. Pretty soon it's nothing but a clutter. It must be dreadful to start as a Christmas tree and end by being nothing ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... Such, too, was his maniacal, sordid avarice that he no longer spent a farthing on himself apart from the money which he paid for his bread—bread of the commonest kind, which he purchased every four days and ate when it was stale, in order that he might make it last the longer. This greatly puzzled the people who were acquainted with him, and never a week went by without the house-porter propounding the question: "When a gentleman of such quiet habits earns ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... rear-ranks were bidden to close up, and the subalterns dashed into the stew—alone. For the rear-rank had heard the clamour in front, the yells and the howls of pain, and had seen the dark stale blood that makes afraid. They were not going to stay. It was the rushing of the camps over again. Let their officers go to Hell, if they chose; they would ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... robust-looking girl, aged about ten or eleven years. From their dress and appearance I took them to be the children of a respectable artisan or small tradesman; but what chiefly attracted my attention was the very great pleasure the elder girl appeared to take in the birds. She had come well provided with stale bread to feed them, and after giving moderately of her store to the wood-pigeons and sparrows, she went on to the others, native and exotic, that were disporting themselves in the water, or sunning themselves on the green ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... woods, they were always stopped by armed men. This was also the case when they approached particular parts of the town, but they were not molested as long as their rambles were confined to the beach. At the Datu's we were treated to chocolate and negus in gilt-edged tumblers, with small stale cakes, which had been brought ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... I live when she lived, to marry her?" muttered Helwyse in a dream. "A woman whose infinite variety age could not alter nor custom stale! A true wife would have kept me from error. What man can comprehend the world, if he puts half the world away? Now it is too late; she might have helped me rise to greatness, but not to bear disgrace. Ah, Balder Helwyse, poor fool! you ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... 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 ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... must undoubtedly be an opening somewhere, because the air in the vault was comparatively pure and fresh; at least it had not the dead, stale, stuffy smell of air confined in a hermetically-sealed chamber. But Frobisher pointed out that the door by which they had entered, although an excellent fit, did not butt up against the jambs so closely as to exclude the air altogether; yet he acknowledged that the air in ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... reappears whenever a man has reconciled himself 'to roll with pleasure in a sensual sty.' But life is not always, nor for most persons at any time, a thing of ease and soft enchantments, and the Cyrenaic philosophy must remain for the general work-a-day world a stale exotic. 'Every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost,' is a maxim which comes as a rule {128} only to the lips of the worldly successful, while they think themselves strong enough to stand alone. But this solitude of selfishness neither works nor lasts; every man ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... saying a great deal, he reflected, one seldom enough, in our staid, our stale society, meets a person of whom one can say so ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... It reeked of stale cigar-smoke, which would hang in the curtains for a week. It was very untidy. There were many indications that old Robinson had quitted in haste. On the table were ash-trays, old cigar-stumps, matches, ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... 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 ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... the drawing-room, but it was stale and dreary. The dining-room, which she tried next, made her hungry. The arrival of a servant with a broom suggested to her that she had better get out of the way of the household work. She felt half sorry for getting up, and went out on the lawn ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... went with him into an early public-house, haunted by unsavoury smells of musty hay and stale straw, where returning carts, farmers' men, gaunt dogs, fowls of a beery breed, and certain human nightbirds fluttering home to roost, were solacing themselves after their several manners; and where not one of the nightbirds hovering about the sloppy bar failed to ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... of stale good beer, not porter. Three quarters of a pound fresh blue Aleppo galls, beaten. Four ounces of copperas. Four ounces of gum Arabic in powder. Two ounces of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... divvle's in the luck, there's not a fresh egg to be had—no, nor a fresh chicken," continued I, "nor a stale one either; nor a tayspoonful of souchong, nor a thimbleful of bohay; nor the laste taste in life of butther, salt or fresh; nor ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... there were some jobs that it only paid to do once in a long time, and among these was the cleaning out of the waste barrels. Every spring they did it; and in the barrels would be dirt and rust and old nails and stale water—and cartload after cartload of it would be taken up and dumped into the hoppers with fresh meat, and sent out to the public's breakfast. Some of it they would make into "smoked" sausage—but as the ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... was his work, and this he loved with an increasing ardour. How devotedly he laboured he never knew until long afterwards, when what had once been a passion of delight and a necessity of nature degenerated into a stale drudgery practised for the sake of mere money. But, oh! the sweetness of brain-toil whilst the heart was fresh and whilst it still seemed worth while to preach some kind of gospel to mankind! To pace the streets and read ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... little sublimity, and a little humor, and a little antiquarianism,—all very neatly associated in a very charming picture, but not working together for a definite end. Or if the aim be higher, as was the case with Barrett and Varley, we are generally put off with stale repetitions of eternal composition; a great tree, and some goats, and a bridge and a lake, and the Temple at Tivoli, etc. Now we should like to see our artists working out, with all exertion of their concentrated powers, such marked pieces of landscape ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... it up, and went back to his stale question: Could Sybil suggest any other resource? and Sybil sadly confessed that she could not. So far as she could see, they must trust to luck, and she thought it was cruel tor Mr. Carrington to go away and leave her alone without help. He had ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... flowers tenderly in the cup of her hands, and began to gaze at them with bent head. After a few moments' silence she raised her head again, and said to me: "You never look at these flowers; therefore they become stale to you. If you would only look into them, then your reading and writing ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... death-side now as I saw the life-side then; and one has as little meaning as the other. As it has been, so it will be, now, henceforth, and for ever, in and out, in and out, without pause or stint, futile, trivial, silly, stale, tedious, monotonous, and vain!' The long pre-occupation of men with religion, philosophy, and art, seemed to me now as incomprehensible as it was ridiculous. There was nothing after all to be interested about! There was ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... 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. So ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... had pleased Providence to call them, they rode the Great North Road for some days in a northern express. Vine said that the Victoria Falls were all right, but that their surroundings were, many of them, perversely wrong. It was so very stale, the hotel business, with the moonlight river excursions and the Livingstone trips, far too much sleeked and smoothed by foresight, and tamed by taking of thought. If one had only traveled up with pack donkeys, provisioned with leathery meat and leathery ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... 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 Writ ...
— Magazine, or Animadversions on the English Spelling (1703) • G. W.
... 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 call ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... I. I have got over all nonsense by this time. He's absolutely nothing to me now." He took up the tradesman's book and played with it idly. On its crimson cover was stamped a grotesque sheep. How stale and ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... of that strenuous day; and when at length I succeeded in doing so, and could get him to talk about himself, it appeared that, stirring though the events seemed to be which were nightly happening before Port Arthur, they were all flat, stale, and unprofitable, compared with such an event as the storming of the Nanshan Heights. And so, as a matter of fact, they were, as I soon discovered for myself; for the duty of our destroyer flotilla consisted simply ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... senior, that your creditors have gone, and that there's no need for you to skulk away. But I've had some tender pheasant prepared; so please come, and have your evening meal; for if you delay any longer, it will get quite stale." ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... as his blase indifference to all emotions, pleasant or unpleasant, could allow. He lingered—he hesitated—he repeated many times how glad he should be to see Beechwood again; how all the world was to him "flat, stale, ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... Stale as it all was, unprofitable and a weariness to the flesh as it had all become, the strangeness of it still struck him at times. He wondered lazily what the people he knew at home would think if they were following him at that ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... pictures, his garden, he had the hills and valley, the birds, the flowers, the clouds, the sun, he had the Rampio, he had Annunziata, he even had Annunziata's uncle; and with all this he had a sense of having stepped out of a world that he knew by heart, that he knew to satiety, a world that was stale and stuffy and threadbare, with its gilt rubbed off and its colours tarnished, into a world where everything was fresh and undiscovered and full of savour, a great cool blue and green world that from minute to minute opened up new ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... to braid his hair down his back, I should have to let it go on unless I broke it up sarahuptishly by cuttin' it off when he wuz asleep, but thank fortin' he hain't got enough so that the braid would be bigger than a pipe stale anyway if he should let it grow out, and he is so dressy he wouldn't like that. But I've tried to break up his wearin' such gay neckties for years and years, and if he should go out and buy one to-day it would most likely be red ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... all that great and terrible Land grow stale upon the soul of any, from birth until death; and by this you shall know the constant wonder of it, and that sense of enemies in the night about us, which ever filled the heart and spirit of all Beholders; so that never were the ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... him soon; For he japed my wife, and made me cuckold, And yet the traitor was so bold, That he stale forty pound of ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... and I laughed at the story at first, but when we came across it about every other week, it began to get rather stale. It was one of those canards that stick, and I shall be spoken of always as the man who forgot his wife within an hour after ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... the same way, when rumours reached him prejudicial to Lizzie in respect of the diamonds, he perceived that such prejudice might work weal for him. A gentleman once, on ordering a mackerel for dinner, was told that a fresh mackerel would come to a shilling. He could have a stale mackerel for sixpence. "Then bring me a stale mackerel," said the gentleman. Mr. Emilius coveted fish, but was aware that his position did not justify him in expecting the best fish on the market. The Lord Fawns and the Frank Greystocks ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... came to supper; a writer and two painters, with their wives. A grim evening—never more so than when the conversation turned on that perennial theme—the freedom, spiritual, mental, physical, requisite for those who practise Art. All the stale arguments were brought forth, and had to be joined in with unmoved faces. And for all their talk of freedom, Lennan could see the volte-face his friends would be making, if they only knew. It was not 'the thing' to seduce young girls—as if, forsooth, there ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of trapping even among the great rocky mountains grew stale, so I decided that I would go back to upper Michigan locate Long Knife, and Shopnegon and trap on the Stergeon River. So Clark and I set out from North Platte in September and arrived in Gladstone after four days traveling. It so occurred that Chief Long Knife was in town and that ...
— Black Beaver - The Trapper • James Campbell Lewis
... reached into a large bowl and absently picked up a piece of stale popcorn. She daintily placed it in her mouth and chewed ...
— Texas Week • Albert Hernhuter
... Duomo is of black and white marble, of mixed architecture, and highly ornamented—all stinking to a degree that was perfectly intolerable, and the same thing whether empty or full; it is the smell of stale incense mixed with garlic and human odour, horrible combination of poisonous exhalations. I must say, as everybody has before remarked, that there is something highly edifying in the appearance of devotion which belongs to the Catholic religion; the churches ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... detesting severe study, she abjured all paths that would lead her to teach the higher branches of learning, and bent her rather spare and somewhat stale energies to fitting herself for primary work. This, too, in the face of the fact that she naturally despised children, except sweet little girls in their best clothes, with long curls, freshly made up, and hanging like a golden flood over neck and shoulders; or ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... the dinner-table stood; and portable curtains of insufficient number and enormous size ornamented a few favoured windows, waved in the erratic draughts, and tripped up incautious attendants, diffusing all the while the stale odour of tobacco smoke through the other varied smells. At one end of the room was a round table with a faded red cloth, strewn with newspapers, the corners of which had generally been abstracted ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... gas-lighted, garish scenes of riot and senseless laughter, and later the fighting ground of all the vile vermin of the night with their uncanny noises—as when, the doors and windows having been at last opened, the light struggles in through stale tobacco-smoke, revealing dimly a discolored, reeking place, whose sights and odors are more in harmony with the sewer than the sweet April sunshine and the violets opening on southern slopes—so when reason ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... of it was in certain events, political and even personal. They roughly resolve themselves into two: the marriages of Henry VIII. and the affair of the monasteries. The marriages of Henry VIII. have long been a popular and even a stale joke; and there is a truth of tradition in the joke, as there is in almost any joke if it is sufficiently popular, and indeed if it is sufficiently stale. A jocular thing never lives to be stale unless it is also serious. Henry was popular in his first days, and ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... this trite assumption when there are iron facts like these to fall upon it? Again, it is objected that the freshness disappears in elaborate preparation, and an oft-repeated sermon becomes stale to its author. Shiel, we are told, "always prepared the language as well as the substance of his speeches. Two very high excellences he possessed to a most wonderful degree—the power of combining extreme preparation with ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... are as a rule cooked and cold before they are sauteed. Some prefer them to the French. To many minds they never get quite rid of the stale taste that clings to the cold potato. The same may be said of stewed cold, cooked potatoes. The least objectionable way of serving them as left-overs is to ...
— Armour's Monthly Cook Book, Volume 2, No. 12, October 1913 - A Monthly Magazine of Household Interest • Various
... Guard and of the Main Body will depend on information received, and not only must information be gained by every available means, but it must also be communicated without delay to all concerned while it is fresh and before it becomes stale. It must also be remembered that negative information (e.g. that such and such a village has been thoroughly searched and no trace of the enemy found) is at least of equal value to positive information. The repetition or confirmation ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... asked her not to smoke till he came again, because the child was sickly and his friend put it down to the tobacco. "It ought to be a criminal offence for a woman to smoke at all," said Borrow; "fancy kissing a woman's mouth that smelt of stale tobacco—pheugh!" {315} Whether this proves Borrow's susceptibility to female charm I cannot say, but it seems to me rather to prove a sort of connoisseurship, which is ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... inform them of the power and effects of the English thunder-making arms, and a four-pounder loaded with grape was fired wide of them. The result was satisfactory, and the natives went peaceably away. The following day another fleet of canoes came alongside, and though they had only stale fish to sell, Captain Cook accepted it for the sake of encouraging traffic. The natives, however, showed every disposition to take advantage of the strangers, and one of them having agreed to exchange a black cloak for a piece of red cloth, on receiving the cloth, packed it in a basket ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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 forthwith all ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... observed that dramatic representations which depend for their value on their interest lose by repetition, because they are no longer able to arouse curiosity as to their course, since it is already known. To see them often, makes them stale and tedious. On the other hand, works of which the value lies in their beauty gain by repetition, as they are then ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... not woorth the saluting of such a royal companie, in which there was no maner of wealth in the world left, more then bare houses of stone, and standing walles, and might well haue serued rather as a stale, perchance, to haue entrapped, then as a meanes to haue enriched. And it had bin more then a suspicion of follie, for such an army as this, to haue sought to fight with the aire, and to haue laboured with great paine and charges, yea, and with some euident ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... 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 in it was of a pink hue; no ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... needs of his privates, and he acted from habit. They crowded into the shop; one man shut the door, Fevrier lighted a match and disclosed by its light staved-in barrels, empty cannisters, broken boxes, fragments of lemonade bottles, but of food not so much as a stale biscuit. ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... 6. Stale or Decayed Foods.—Food which has been allowed to stand until it is spoiled, or has become stale, musty, or mouldy, such as mouldy bread or fruit, or tainted meat, is unfit to be eaten, and is often a cause of very severe sickness. Canned fish or other meats spoil very quickly after ...
— First Book in Physiology and Hygiene • J.H. Kellogg
... education does not always make an editor. Many of our editors grow discouraged over their failure to arouse a support to their journals, blaming the race for non-appreciation, when the fault lies with themselves. Do they give their readers news? If a local sheet, they deal in stale generalities. If a general sheet, they confine themselves to locals of no ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... attach to one side or end; or they may be built as mere sheds, with no storage room over the cattle. The chief objection to stabling cattle in the body of the barn is, the continual decay of the most important timbers, such as sills, sleepers, &c., &c., by the leakage of the stale, and manure of the cattle on to them, and the loss of so much valuable storage as they would occupy, for hay and grain. By the plan described, the stables have no attachment to the sills, and other durable barn timbers below; and if the stable sills ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... down the dusty road they came to the hotel, a dismal, unclean looking place that smelled of stale beer. Uncle John ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... perhaps too much studied at our universities. This seems a science to which the meanest intellects are equal. I forget who it is that says, "All men might understand mathematics if they would."' Goldsmith's Present Stale of Polite ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... conceivable that cables of telephone wires could be laid underground, or suspended overhead, connecting by branch wires with private dwellings, shops, etc., and uniting them through the main cable with a central office." This remarkable prophecy has now become stale reading, as stale as Darwin's "Origin of Species," or Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations." But at the time that it was written it was a ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... ass. His jokes strike you as funny at first; but there's nothing in him, he's a mere hawker of stale puns; there's nothing but selfishness under his jesting exterior. I have no belief in him. Yet he is an old school friend; the only one of my twenty-eight classmates whose acquaintance I have kept up. Four are dead, twenty-three others are scattered about in obscure country places; ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... you ever eat a piece of custard pie made out of stale eggs? Well, that is just about the same as the Carlsbad water, only the water is not baked with a raw crust on the bottom. But the doctor dad consulted was the peach. Dad asked him how much of the water he ought to drink, and the doctor held a counsel with himself, and said dad might drink all ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck
... realized that the boy's life was to bring again and again a repetition of that sublime moment of realization—a moment of fulfillment unspoiled by surfeit or sophistication or a blunted capacity to marvel, which Caleb had seen grow old and stale even in the children he knew, he wondered and wished that he might have known it himself, once at least. Years of waiting, starved years of anticipation, he felt after all must have been a very little price to pay for that great, ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... came in, but I wasn't sure," said the restaurant keeper. "The man who runs the hotel, Mr. Brown, had a lot of trouble with him because he wouldn't pay his bill—said it was too high. Then he came here once and said the meat wasn't fresh and the bread was stale and sour. I came close to pitching him out. Don't let him walk over you—if he does take ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer
... as when the human animal eschews all cleanliness to wallow in filth. And matters were made worse by the smell from a small, improvised market—the emanations of the rotting fruit, cooked and sour vegetables, and stale fried fish which a few poor women had set out on the ground amidst a throng of famished, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... great secret of being interesting lies in being interested. The really enthralling preacher is he who is himself enthralled by his subject and who realises, also, a deep interest in the people before Him. Should it ever come to pass that the subject grow stale, worn and hackneyed to the man in the pulpit, it will not be a hopeful quest to look for much interest in the pew. Again should it ever come to pass that the preacher lose interest in those before whom he stands, and this has been known to occur, there will remain small reason to listen to him for ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... the fragrant blood of the red, red rose. For the ruffianish pages of Jack London, the pungent, hospitable smell of a first-class bar-room—that indescribable mingling of Maryland rye, cigar smoke, stale malt liquor, radishes, potato salad and blutwurst. For the Dartmoor sagas of the interminable Phillpotts, the warm ammoniacal bouquet of cows, poultry and yokels. For the "Dodo" school, violets and Russian cigarettes. For the venerable Howells, lavender ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... small wooden compartment with seats sharp and narrow and a smell of cabbage, bad tobacco, and dirty clothes. The floor was littered with sunflower seeds and the paper wrappings of cheap sweets. The air came in hot stale gusts down the corridor, met the yet closer air of our carriage, battled with it and retired defeated. We flung open the windows and a cloud of dust rose gaily to meet us. The whole of the Russian army seemed to be surging upon ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... what it is to start a piece of work, either intellectual or muscular, feeling stale—or oold, as an Adirondack guide once put it to me. And everybody knows what it is to "warm up" to his job. The process of warming up gets particularly striking in the phenomenon known as "second wind." On usual occasions we make a practice of stopping an occupation as soon as we ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... brought home with his body full of eels, said when she was asked what was to be done with him, "Take the eels out and set him again," so Harris and Douglas have shown a disposition to take the eels out of that stale fraud by which they gained Harris's election, and set the fraud again more than once. On the 9th of July, 1856, Douglas attempted a repetition of it upon Trumbull on the floor of the Senate of the United States, as will appear from the appendix of the Congressional ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... least two hours for proper and thorough cooking. Prepare your fowl and rub dry with a clean towel; then mix a little pepper and salt and rub both inside and outside of the turkey before putting in the dressing. Grate stale bread, about three cups; then add a small teaspoon of pepper and the same amount of powdered sage or sweet marjoram, salt and a little salt fat pork chopped very fine or a piece of butter the size of an egg; use warm water to mix the whole to the consistency of ...
— Favorite Dishes • Carrie V. Shuman
... the days!—the old, old theme, Never stale, but never new, Floating like a pleasant dream, Back to me and ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... all them 'a b, abs,' jest like the old days. Dear! Dear! But the teacher in those days was ez old and grizzled ez I be—and some o' the scholars—no offense to you, Mr. Brooks—was older and bigger nor you. But times is changed: yet look, Almiry, if thar ain't a hunk o' stale gingerbread in that desk jest as it uster be! Lord! how it all comes back! Ez I was sayin' only t'other day, we can't be too grateful to our parents for givin' us an eddication in our youth;" and Mr. Hoover, with the air of recalling an alma ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... hurt bad? Can I bind it up or wash it for you? I've got plenty of hot water here, and it's bad letting a wound get stale." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... But les delicats will look back on Stevenson as they now look back on Fielding, who, to my simple thinking, remains unsurpassed as a novelist; and as they turn to Lamb and Hazlitt as essayists. The poet is, of course, at his best immortal—time cannot stale Beowulf, or the nameless lyrists of the fourteenth century, or Chaucer, or Spenser, and so with the rest, la mort n'y mord. But it is as a writer of prose that Stevenson must be remembered. If he is not the master British essayist ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... detraction and abuse, are capable of misleading those who are already far misled, and of further fanning passion already kindling into flame. Doubtless it served in its day, and in greater or less degree, the end designed by it. Having done that, it has sunk into the general mass of stale and loathed calumnies. It is the very cast-off slough of a polluted and shameless press. Incapable of further mischief, it lies in the sewer, lifeless and despised. It is not now, sir, in the power ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... stranger! This thing happened to me at Bristol, some time ago, in the way I am about to relate. I slept at a Commercial Hotel, and early next morning was joined in the big empty coffee-room, smelling of stale tobacco, by an intensely respectable- looking old gentleman, whose hair was of silvery whiteness, and who wore gold-rimmed spectacles and a heavy gold watch-chain with many seals attached thereto; whose linen was of the finest, and whose outer garments, ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... how Danes had come and burnt Harwich town. But the people told him to sing less stale news than that, for Harwich was close at hand. Now it was Halfden's ship which had done that, and the fires we saw before the fog came had been the beacons lit because of ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... the Wrangle House, was awkward and not entirely agreeable. To be sure the landlord gave us the parlor, and most of the men came in, now and then, to speak to us; but they managed the principal matters all by themselves, in the bar-room, which was such a mess of smoke and stale liquor smells, that it turned my stomach when I ventured in for ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... fifteen minutes to play. The hard pace was beginning to tell upon the big men, and the inevitable reaction following their unwise "celebrating" began to show itself in their stale and spiritless play. On the other hand, the Twentieth were as fresh as ever, and pressed the game with greater ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... odours from the warm roots of girl's hair; and Sunday. Sunday; stale odours of churches. You wrote out the sermon you had not listened to and had not heard. Somebody told you the text, and you amused yourself by seeing how near you could get to what you would have heard if you had listened. ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... spittoon were allowed to each honourable member,—the latter article being deemed as necessary as the former. Whether smoking was suffered during the hours of business or not I cannot tell, but the room smelt horribly of stale tobacco. Between fifty and sixty members were present, and never certainly, either in the Old World or in the New, did I see an assemblage of worse-looking men. They seemed fitted for any deeds of robbery, blood, and death. Several distinguished duellists were pointed ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies |
