"Stale" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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. At these prices, they ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... 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
... been able to get one alive and fresh as he ought to be," said Sam. "These limp ones are two I killed today at work; but as they don't die till the sun goes down they can't be very stale meat." ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... a Sunday evening in London, gloomy, close, and stale. Maddening church bells of all degrees of dissonance, sharp and flat, cracked and clear, fast and slow, made the brick-and-mortar echoes hideous. Melancholy streets, in a penitential garb of soot, steeped the souls of the people who were condemned to look at them out of windows, ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... to his camp and filled his hat with cake-crumbs, for the Parsee never ate anything but cake, and never swept out his camp. He took that skin, and he shook that skin, and he scrubbed that skin, and he rubbed that skin just as full of old, dry, stale, tickly cake-crumbs and some burned currants as ever it could possibly hold. Then he climbed to the top of his palm-tree and waited for the Rhinoceros to come out of the ...
— Just So Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... needed no stoking up, and, when any orator tried the process on us, soon made him understand that he was wasting his time and ours. I, for one, should be very sorry to lower the intellectual standard of the Fabian by making the atmosphere of its public discussions the least bit more congenial to stale declamation than it is at present. If our debates are to be kept wholesome, they cannot be too irreverent or too critical. And the irreverence, which has become traditional with us, comes down from those early days when we often talked such nonsense that we could not ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... thick, and is as big as a cart-wheel. We eat it every day for luncheon and dinner. I like it so much better, fresh and straight from the farm (if anything four years old can be called fresh), than when stale and grated. ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... had a ghostly and unkempt appearance. The atmosphere of the sitting-room was stuffy and redolent of stale tobacco smoke. Wrayson's first action was to throw ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... ale And beer that is stale Rosa-solis and damnable hum, But we will rack In the praise of sack 'Gainst ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... them in my pocket." And Bab produced from that chaotic cupboard two rather stale and crumbly ones, saved from lunch for the fete. These were cut up and arranged in plates, forming a graceful circle around the cake, ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... ate the strips of bacon with the soft stale bread he had brought, and drank the tea, and the shadows of the trees lengthened across the glade, and the chestnut-hued setter came back to camp and was gravely reprimanded by his master, and it soon became night, and time passed, and the fire flashed against the greenery strangely, and the man ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... placed their order for May-day blossoms. The confectionery they decided to leave until the day before the basket hanging, so that it would be perfectly fresh. "Don't insult your friends by handing 'em stale candy," ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... stale ale in taste, and milk and water in colour, after drinking a small glassful I passed it to the delighted soldiers and pagazis. At my request the Sultan brought a fine fat bullock, for which he accepted four and a half doti of Merikani. The bullock was immediately slaughtered and served ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... down into that darkness, and then looked up, and saw that all the stars in his own sky were dead. They were deities no longer but only a brilliant dust, scattered down the vain void of Lucretius. The stars were as stale as they were strong; they would never die for they had never lived; they were cursed with an incurable immortality that was but the extension of mortality; they were chained in the chains of causation and unchangeable as the dead. There are not many men in the modern world who ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... "he's 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
... frosted bulbs. A great deal of the strong breath of a popular perfume and a great deal of artificial heat lay sweet upon that room, as if many flowers had lived and died in the same air, leaving insidious but slightly stale memories. ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... weather straight in the face, there in the glacial air, in the gloom under the pale sheen of the arc-lights fastened to the mast. He shuddered at the thought of a night in the oppressive confines of his cabin, with the closed port-hole and the hot, stale air. But that alone was not the reason which kept him chained to the deck. It was the urge, in case of danger, to be near Ingigerd Hahlstroem. And when he seated himself near the smoke-stack, with his back ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... blows at night all you have is your little hall bedroom in a rooming house that smells of stale smoke and cabbage. There's no place to go except the streets—but you've just got to go somewhere, to break loose and have a little fun,—even though you're so tired you want to throw yourself on the bed ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... stale," he complained; "Reddy won't let us go to a theater, of course, because that would keep us up too late. But I guess he'd have no objection to our taking a walk like that, provided ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... was going to offer his services to the king, Louis XVIII. I had much interesting public news from M. d'Argy : but I pass by all now except personal detail, as I write but for my nearest friends; and all that was then known of public occurrence has long been stale. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... played high at piquet or hombre; or rode out, if it was absolutely necessary. All was now over for the day. He supped copiously with his familiars: was a great eater, of wonderful gluttony; a connoisseur in no dish, liked fish much, but the stale and stinking better than the good. The meal prolonged itself in theses and disputes, and above ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... two showy cups and placed them on the table. Then she went to the kitchen and brought in the coffee, already poured into two chipped bowls, and a plate with a few stale cakes. ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... as idle children feel when destroying for their own cruel sport the velvety wonder of a moth's wing, or the radiant rose and emerald pinions of a dragon-fly. I was a fool—so I was told with many a languid sneer and stale jest—to talk of hidden mysteries in the whisper of the wind and the dash of the waves—such sounds were but common cause and effect. The stars were merely conglomerated masses of heated vapor condensed by the work of ages into meteorites and from meteorites into worlds—and ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... account for all these expensive miseries of matrimony. I can't understand a woman in full possession of her faculties deliberately exasperating the man she has to live with—I suppose all men submit to it under protest—for these stale and stereotyped antics. She ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... I don't like the way ye look at this job. It ain't no job o' workin' out. We're all workin' fer ourselves. It's my fight an' it's yer fight. I won't let no king put a halter on my head an', with the stale in one hand an' a whip in t' other, lead me up to the tax collector to pay fer his fun. I'd ruther fight him. Some o' you has fam'lies. Don't worry 'bout 'em. They'll be took care of. I got some confidence in the Lord myself. Couldn't 'a' lived without it. Look a' me. I'm ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... however great, are stale compared with those of hope; for hope is the parent of all effort and endeavour; and "every gift of noble origin is breathed upon by Hope's perpetual breath." It may be said to be the moral engine that moves ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... on with this kind of thing? You might become a sort of interpreter of the two nations to each other. An original idea. The everyday thing is to exasperate Briton against Russ, and Russ against Briton, with every sort of cheap joke and stale falsehood. All the same Mr. Otway, I'm bound to confess to you that I ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... had breakfasted five hours earlier on stale bread and a few sardines, lunched, with small appetite, on biscuits and a slab of chocolate, and moistened his parched throat with tepid whisky-and-water. Quenching his thirst was an achievement past hoping for till ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... 'I'll just stale over to the door-cheek, and peep in to get one sight of my poor mother; then I'll throw her in a handful of these guineas, and ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... honourable and noble lords, under fictitious names; but the people did not even obtain this doubtful information till after the discussion was over, and the matter in debate settled. The public, however, were now becoming more enlightened, and withal more curious, and these garbled and stale speeches did not satisfy them;—they longed for a full reporting newspaper, and the printers were encouraged by the general feeling to venture upon giving the proceedings in parliament from week to week, or from day to day, as they occurred. They were the more induced to take ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... me, side by side, their faces solemn and black, and I walked at their heels. My mouth stank of the drink, and my head was sick with the stale fumes of it, and I would have cut off my right hand for a drink of water, one drink, a mouthful even. And, had I had it, I know it would have sizzled in my belly like water spilled on heated stones for the roasting. It is terrible, the next day after the drinking. All the ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... to conueie to chast eares, som fond or filthie taulke: And if som Smithfeild Ruffian take vp, som strange going: som new mowing with the mouth: som wrinchyng with the shoulder, som braue prouerbe: som fresh new othe, that is not stale, but will rin round in the mouth: som new disguised garment, or desperate hat, fond in facion, or gaurish in colour, what soeuer it cost, how small soeuer his liuing be, by what shift soeuer it be gotten, gotten must it be, and vsed with ...
— The Schoolmaster • Roger Ascham
... too commonly found at our hotels and boarding-houses, are that it is made in every way the reverse of what it should be. The water is hot, perhaps, but not boiling; the tea has a general flat, stale, smoky taste, devoid of life or spirit; and it is served, usually, with thin milk instead of cream. Cream is as essential to the richness of tea as of coffee. We could wish that the English fashion might generally prevail, of giving the traveler his own kettle of boiling water and his ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... and schoolgirls of the last century, and Masters of Hounds, are scarcely of so much permanent value as the favourite types and characters which Lionardo and Carpaccio repeat again and again. We no more think Claude monotonous than we think "the quiet coloured end of evening" flat and stale. But we may, and must, tire of certain modern combinations too often rehearsed, after the trick has become a habit, and the ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... showed himself a burly individual, with traces of coal-dust in all comers not to be reached by hurried and not too fastidious ablutions. Clouds of tobacco-smoke preceded and followed him, and much stale incense from the fragrant weed exhaled itself from his well-worn corduroys. "I ha' not nivver seed him afore," he remarked after a gruff by no means-ill-natured greeting, signifying the stranger by a duck of the ...
— "Seth" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... 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 ...
— First Book in Physiology and Hygiene • J.H. Kellogg
... Between his own and others' intellect; But Wordsworth's poem, and his followers, like Joanna Southcote's Shiloh[215] and her sect, Are things which in this century don't strike The public mind,—so few are the elect; And the new births of both their stale Virginities Have proved ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... it gave him an entirely innocent but delightful pleasure merely to see a flapper. The reaction from the battle-field produced a condition of hyperaesthesia in which all the theatrical values were altered. Trivial things gained intensity and stale things novelty. The actor, instead of having to coax his audiences out of the boredom which had driven them to the theatre in an ill humor to seek some sort of distraction, had only to exploit the bliss of smiling men who were no ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... Things grow old and stale, not because they are old, but because we cease to see them. Whole vibrant significant worlds around us disappear within the sombre mists of familiarity. Whichever way we look the roads are dull and barren. There is a tree at our gate we have not seen in years: a flower blooms ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... is not to take advantage of his situation to utter stale jests or vulgar puns. A careful perusal of "The Jest Book" will be his best security against a violation of ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... children, how the Snarks Rejoiced her frugal mind; They ate the Buns, they ate the Bag, And even stale cheese rind. ...
— The Adventures of Samuel and Selina • Jean C. Archer
... small one came so near that she almost caught it with her hands, but it dived away into its burrow in a moment. She brought out her sandwiches and biscuits, and began to eat them. She was hungry already, and thought wistfully of breakfast. The bread had gone rather dry and the biscuits a little stale, but she enjoyed them, sitting on the hillside, especially when she remembered all she had escaped from at St. Chad's. She felt that, once back in dear old Ireland, her difficulties would be nearly at an end, and ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... would only laugh at us and wink their saucy eyes, And answer, "Last year's secrets are all past and told. New years bring new happenings and fresh mysteries, You are very welcome to the stale ones of the old!" ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... dissipation, which early in the evening had been the 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 ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... on all their faces. The room, the one unclean room of the ship, was full of breathless heat, and stale with the lees of drink. Kettle, in his spruce-white drill clothes, stood out against the squalor and the disorder, as a mirror might upon ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... I live to do so (and I sometimes amass a wonderful fortune in a very short time, and come back fabulously rich, and do all sorts of things), I think I shall try the overland route. Almost every evening four of us have a very pleasant rubber, which never gets stale. So you will have gathered that, though very anxious to get to our journey's end, which, with luck, we hope to do in about three weeks' time, still the voyage has not proved at all the unbearable thing that some of us imagined it would have been. One great amusement I have forgotten ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... members of the Batavian entourage of William of Orange, the restorer of the palace; with good store too of the lily-bosomed models of Lely and Kneller. The whole tone of this processional interior is singularly stale and sad. The tints of all things have both faded and darkened—you taste the chill of the place as you walk from room to room. It was still early in the day and in the season, and I flattered myself that I was the only visitor. ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... was the autumn sunrise! After her long hardening to the stale noisomeness of London streets, the taint of London air, Marcella hung out of her window at Mellor in a thirsty delight, drinking in the scent of dew and earth and trees, watching the ways of the birds, pouring forth a soul of yearning ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... this unsounded depth, it may well afford to repeat the same forms forever, nor incurs thereby any danger of exhausting its significance and becoming stale. Vital repetition, accordingly, goes on in Nature in a way not doubtful and diffident, but frank, open, sure, as if the game were one that could not be played out. It is now a very long while that buds have burst and grass grown; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... 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, ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck
... to that admission he felt it was on her lips to make. So he strode through the narrow streets, telling himself a fairy story of how it all might be, with a little house of their own and she waiting for him on the wharf when his ship made fast; a story that never grew stale in the repetition, but which, please God, would come true in the end, with Florence his wife, and all his doubtings and ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... door; he did not believe in trusting too much to luck and accident. The key turned stiffly in the lock, but it turned. The door opened, and Nicholas was in an unknown land, compared with which the gooseberry garden was a stale delight, a mere ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... room's—why, it's as stale as a Pullman sleeper. Let me have the chambermaid in to freshen it ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... matters she reserved, no doubt, for the accounts. Herself accustomed to pilfer, she knew to the least detail every trick of the servants, and not a centimo escaped her; she always thought she was being robbed. Such was her spirit of economy that at home they ate stale bread, thus confirming the popular saying, "in the house of ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... you, Mister Archie. Well, sir, that's our game, just as I say. We'll lay up a good stock of rations—I mean save the fresh and keep on eating the stale, and be all ready for the right morning, and when it comes, nip outside, mount the helephant, and away we will go—I mean, that is, if you think that you can creep up same as I do, and lower yourself ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... two totally distinct ideas to the English mind in its ordinary mechanical action. "Intelligence" is not necessarily "new", nor indeed is "News:" in the oldest dictionary I possess, Baret's Alvearie, 1573, I find "Olde newes or stale newes." A.E.B. is very positive that "news" is plural, and he cites the "Cardinal of York" to prove it. All that I can say is, that I think the Cardinal of York was wrong: and A.E.B. thought so too, when his object was not to confound me, as ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 36. Saturday, July 6, 1850 • Various
... a paid play-actor come here to conjure. I'm not here to do stale tricks; I'm here to see through 'em. I say it's an ...
— Magic - A Fantastic Comedy • G.K. Chesterton
... night," her Majesty's revenues being seldom collected in that happy valley, its rents being pronounced dubious, and its water communication described as "frequently cut off," we found in respect to the whole picture thus lightly-sketched in, that age did not wither nor custom stale ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... order to secure provisions. Memories of the famine of the siege of '70 tormented the imagination. Since war had broken out with the same enemy, it seemed but logical to everybody to expect a repetition of the same happenings. The storehouses were besieged by women who were securing stale food at exorbitant prices in order to store it in their homes. Future hunger was producing ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... at night, or when weary of sitting in the high-backed, creaking armchair. Uncleanness met the eye on every side—in the one greasy plate, on which lay a lump of repulsive-looking food; in the broken-mouthed jug, which reeked with the smell of stale beer; in the window, whose bemired and cobwebbed panes kept out more light than they admitted; in the ceiling, between whose smoke-grimed rafters large rents allowed many an abomination to drop down from the crowded room above; in the three-legged ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... shall retreat; When judgment, tutor'd by experience sage, Shall shoot abroad, and gather strength from age; When Heaven, in mercy, shall the stage release From the dull slumbers of a still-life piece; 770 When some stale flower[62], disgraceful to the walk, Which long hath hung, though wither'd, on the stalk, Shall kindly drop, then Bride shall make her way, And merit find a passage to the day; Brought into action, she at once shall raise Her own renown, and justify our praise. ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... sad party that trailed down that sad, dead valley. The trees were hung with a dreary drapery of grey, and the ashen moss muffled our footfalls. I think it was the deadest place I ever saw. The very air seemed dead and stale, as if it were eternally still, unstirred by any wind. Spiders and strange creeping things possessed the trees, and at every step, like white gauze, a mist of mosquitoes was thrown up. And ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... not with me, Therefore I part with him, and part with him To one that I would haue him helpe to waste His borrowed purse. Well Iessica goe in, Perhaps I will returne immediately; Doe as I bid you, shut dores after you, fast binde, fast finde, A prouerbe neuer stale in thriftie ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... stage, the writer pointed out how dramatic writing has of late years come to be practised entirely by men who have failed in all other branches of literature. Then he drew attention to the fact that signs of weariness and dissatisfaction with the old stale stories, the familiar tricks in bringing about 'striking situations,' were noticeable, not only in the newspaper criticisms of new plays, but also among the better portion of the audience. He admitted, however, ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... a pair of fur-topped boots. All his garments were new and well fitting, and contrasted greatly with the greasy and long used coats of the Cossacks on the boat. Sheepskin garments can look more repulsive than cloth ones with equal wearing. Age can wither and custom stale their ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... the sandy road which could be well seen from the hilltop. No sign of life upon it, she turned and went through the hall to the back porch and down the steps to the orchard, in one hand writing-materials, in the other pieces of stale bread for the birds; and as she walked she hummed a gay little tune to whose rhythm she unconsciously ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... merry, but saw no sights, my wife having a mind to see the play "Bartholomew-Fayre," with puppets. Which we did, and it is an excellent play; the more I see it, the more I love the wit of it; only the business of abusing the Puritans begins to grow stale, and of no use, they being the people that, at last, will be found the wisest. And here Knepp come to us, and sat with us, and thence took coach in two coaches, and losing one another, my wife, and Knepp, and I to Hercules Pillars, and there supped, and I did take from her ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... therwith. [Footnote: The same custom still exists amongst the inhabitants of the Lena Delta] As touching mariages, your Highnes is to vnderstand, that no man can haue a wife among them till he hath bought her whereupon somtimes their maids are very stale before they be maried, for their parents alwaies keepe them till they can sel them. They keepe the first and second degrees of consanguinitie inuiolable, as we do but they haue no regard of the degrees of affinity: for they ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... young negro, clothed in rags unspeakably vile, which scarcely concealed his nakedness, was standing in the midst of a group of white men, toward whom he threw now and then a shallow and shifty glance. The air was heavy with the odour of stale tobacco, and the floor dotted with discarded portions of the weed. A white man stood beside a desk and was addressing ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... sea to the Forth, and thence home. The actual end was delayed but very little longer, and it has been told by Lockhart in one of those capital passages of English literature on which it is folly to attempt to improve or even to comment, and which, a hundred times quoted, can never be stale. Sir Walter Scott died at Abbotsford on September 21, 1832, and was buried four days later at Dryburgh, a post-mortem examination having disclosed ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... 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 ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... notes of Italy (Od. III, xxx, 13). He spent seven years in composing the first three Books of the Odes, which appeared in a single volume about B.C. 23. More than any of his poems they contain the essence of his indefinable magic art. They deal apparently with dull truisms and stale moralities, avowals of simple joys and simple sorrows. They tell us that life is brief and death is sure, that light loves and ancient wines are good, that riches are burdensome, and enough is better than a feast, that country life is delightful, that old age comes ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... they passed before him, for time has not dimmed the vivid picture of that procession. I remember their stories, and think still of their cuts and wounds. Outside the court the day was dull, and inside the light was bad and the air heavy with the fumes of stale debauch and chloride of lime. And yesterday had been Christmas Day in the ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... he is one of the greatest masters in our language. They are so close to life as all men know it, that the careless reader, as we have already seen, is apt to take them for platitudes; but there is all the difference between the stale superficiality which coldly repeats what only its ears have heard, and these sayings of Johnson heated to new energy in the fires of conscience, thought and experience. "I have already enjoyed too ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... will surely fail to rise at all if you have scalded the yeast; the water must never be too hot. In winter, if it gets chilled, it will only rise slowly, or not at all, and in using baker's or German yeast take care that it is not stale, which will cause ...
— Culture and Cooking - Art in the Kitchen • Catherine Owen
... health. The dreary, never-changing tale Of mortal maladies is worn and stale. You cannot charm, or interest, or please, By harping on that minor chord, disease. Say you are well, or all is well with you. And God shall hear your words and ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... 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 ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... interesting, absorbing, soul harrowing, in the form of financial ruin, highway robbery, murder, arson, fire, or flood. Everything in the world at the present brief hour seemed going on well, consequently the papers were very dull, flat, stale and unprofitable, and were soon laid aside by the host and his guest, and they ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... previous history of literature in this or perhaps any other country. When we see two post octavos of travels newly done up by the binder, we are prepared for a series of useless remarks, weak attempts at jokes, disquisitions on dishes, complaints of inns, stale anecdotes and vain flourishes, which almost make us blush for our country, and the cause of intelligence over the world. The Russian Emperor, who unquestionably has the power of licensing or prohibiting any of his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... campaign during the Mexican War had made serious inroads upon his health, from which he never entirely recovered. It was hoped that his life in the East would be beneficial, but it proved otherwise. Meanwhile, the Civil War was raging in the United States, but the news concerning it was very stale long before it reached us. We did not receive the particulars of the battle of Bull Run, for example, until three months after its occurrence. In view of the turbulent state of affairs at home, the government ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... got the god of war in um. Adjetant Wallis, it's a———long time between dhrinks, as I think ye was sayin', an' with rayson. See if ye can't confiscate a canteen of whiskee somewhere in the camp. Bedad, if I can't buy it I'll stale it. We're goin' to fight tomorry, an' it may be it's the last chance we'll have for a dhrink, unless there's more lik'r now in the other ...
— The Brigade Commander • J. W. Deforest
... the natural, clear, pink color, but rather a dirty yellow, and is usually heavily coated, showing a disordered stomach and impaired digestion. Then, too, there is dryness of the mouth, an unnatural thirst that demands drink. But pure water is stale and flat to such a mouth: something more emphatic is needed. Thus comes the unnatural craving for alcoholic liquors, and thus are taken the first steps on ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... [poor I am but his stale] The word stale, in our authour, used as a substantive, means, not something offered to allure or attract, but something vitiated with use, something of which the best part ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... dancing girls, by persons wedding before their elder brothers are wedded, by professional panegyrists and bards, and by those that are gamblers, the food also which is brought with the left hand or which is stale, the food which is mixed with alcohol, the food a portion of which has been already tasted, and the food that forms the remnant of a feast, should not be taken (by a Brahmana). Cakes, sugarcanes, potherbs, and rice boiled in sugared ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... Cut in small pieces stale sponge cake or lady fingers, a few macaroons, some French cherries and apricots (glace), and mix all together. Make a custard of 1 quart milk and 6 eggs, and when cooked, reserve 1 cupful for a sauce, and add to the remainder ...
— The Cookery Blue Book • Society for Christian Work of the First Unitarian Church, San
... long and black and the air was stale and thick with the stench of rodents. Stanton stood still, trying to probe the luminescent gloom that the goggles he wore brought to his eyes. The tunnel stretched out before him—on and on. Around him was the smell of viciousness ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... occasions, with extraordinary rapidity, and with that cheery appreciation of his labor which to any author is an immense stimulant. But following upon these happy humors came seasons of wearisome depression; the stale manuscript of yesterday lost its charm; the fancy refused to be lighted; he has not the heart to hammer at the business with dull, lifeless blows, and flings down his pen in despair. There are successive months during which this mood hangs upon him ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... took care to turn Lola's attention from them in between, making her go over all sorts of sums and spelling exercises. Should I have persisted in fixing her attention I should only have defeated my true object, and made her stale for future undertakings. In fact, I only engaged in these three, by way of giving a greater sense of completeness to the idea, and also in order to fire the ambition of others embarking upon work of a ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... The butcher's boy came whistling down the lane to deliver the rump-steak or mutton-chop I had decided on for dinner; the greengrocer delivered his vegetables; the cheesemonger took solemn affidavit concerning the freshness of his stale eggs and the superior quality of a curious article which he called country butter, and declared came from a particular dairy famed for the excellence of its produce; the milkman's yahoo sounded cheerfully ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... 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, ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... "merchants often lay it in bog-houses, that, 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
... began, "to discuss what has been done in Galavia. That is long since a stale story. Our governments, acting in concert, made it possible to remove Karyl and crown Louis." He smiled quietly. "You know how short a reign Louis enjoyed before death claimed him. Perhaps you do not know that his death ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... trade on my own account, having contrived to learn a few of his tricks. My only capital was the change for half-a-guinea, which he had once let fall, and which I picked up, which was all I could ever get from him: for it was impossible to stale any money from him, he was so awake, being up to all the tricks of thaives, having followed the diving trade, as he called it, for a considerable time. My wish was to make enough by my table to enable me ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... plain-spoken varlet, and I would but ask thy master's name and condition. Answer me straight—no equivocation, no shuffling or evasion shall serve thee; 'tis a stale device now, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... moneye, chargynge them that if the Gentilman came agayne, they shold entreate him better not beyng knowen al this while that she was his wyfe, but fayued her to be her sister. Not long after her husband stale thether againe, he sawe the howse otherwyse decked, and better fare then he was wounte to haue. He asked, frome whence commeth al this goodly gere? They sayde that an honeste matrone, a kynsewoman of ...
— A Merry Dialogue Declaringe the Properties of Shrowde Shrews and Honest Wives • Desiderius Erasmus
... a hateful twinkle of the eyes. "So you're out for a spree," he continued, winking in a knowing way. "Won't you walk into the back-parlor while I get them?" And he showed them into a dingy horrid room behind the house, stale with smoke, and begrimed ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... beauteous dame Hears what the mournful Maganzese narrates; And, at first mention of Rogero's name, Her radiant face with eager joy dilates. But, full of pity, kindles into flame As Pinabel his cruel durance states. Nor finds she, though twice told, the story stale; But makes him oft repeat and piece ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... think I have only to sit down and write it off, and do it to the quick. "The idea of his life," what he was as a whole, what was his self, all his days, would,—to go on with words which not time or custom can ever wither or make stale,— ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... reason for going down into the Aquarium, where the sallow blinds, the stale smell of spirits of salt, the bamboo chairs, the tables with ash-trays, the revolving fish, the attendant knitting behind six or seven chocolate boxes (often she was quite alone with the fish for hours at a time) remained in the mind as part of the monster ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... this prisoned life. We told stories, got up games, and I induced the men to go a-fishing, as we called it; that is, to let down their ragged hats through the broken window-panes by cords torn from the edges of our blankets. Now and then the poor folks near by filled these nets with stale bread or potatoes; but one day, after long ill luck, a hat was of a sudden felt to be heavy, and was declared a mighty catch, and hauled up with care. When it was found to be full of stones, a strange misery appeared on the faces of these eager, half-starved wretches. ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... upon the village. It was a warm summer night, and the scent of the prairie was strong upon the air. As yet Barnriff was neither large enough, nor shut in enough by its own buildings to hold to itself that stale, stifling atmosphere which cities obtain. The air was the pure breath which swept over the vast green rollers of the grass world in the midst of which ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... shouts of "Shut up" and "'Old yer jaw" and "Put a sock in it" and "Let's get a bit o' sleep," but there was no chance of further sleep. The air was heavy with the rank smell of stale tobacco. Several men lit cigarettes and the ends glowed in the darkness, each one illuminating a face as the smoke was drawn in. Someone lit a candle and the bright flame dazzled us at first. Another man ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... were his boast, and drunkards had his praise; "One, in three draughts, three mugs of ale took down, As mugs were then—the champion of the Crown; For thrice three days another lived on ale, And knew no change but that of mild and stale; Two thirsty soakers watch'd a vessel's side, When he the tap, with dext'rous hand, applied; Nor from their seats departed, till they found That butt was out and heard the mournful sound." He praised a poacher, precious child of fun! Who shot the keeper with ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... "difficult to work," says Dickens, with obvious truth. How was he to get the quicklime into the vault, and Drood, alive, out of the vault? As to the reader, he would at first take Datchery for Drood, and then think, "No, that is impossible, and also is stale. Datchery cannot be Drood," and thus the reader would remain in a pleasant state of puzzledom, as he ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... of stale bread of sufficient quantity, scald out a bason, put the bread into it, pour upon it boiling water, cover it over, and let it stand for ten minutes; next strain the water oft, gently squeeze the saturated bread in a thin cloth, so that the poultice shall not be too moist, and then spread it upon ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... piteous abortions of delicate industry. They worked cheap, and cheaper,—smoothly, and more smoothly,—they got armies of assistants, and surrounded themselves with schools of mechanical tricksters, learning their stale tricks with blundering avidity. They had fallen—before the days of photography—into providers of frontispieces for housekeepers' pocket-books. I do not know if photography itself, their redoubted enemy, has even now ousted them ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... than a wilderness, while every pillar is a bush to hide them. It is the other expense of the day, after plays and taverns; and men have still some oaths to swear here. The visitants are all men without exceptions; but the principal inhabitants are stale knights and captains out of service, men of long rapiers and short purses, who after all turn merchants here, and traffic for news. Some make it a preface to their dinner, and travel for an appetite; but thirstier men make it their ordinary, and board here very cheap. Of all ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the days!—the old, old theme, Never stale, but never new, Floating like a pleasant dream, Back to me and back ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... yet is needful to be told, To guide your choice: this wife must not be old: 100 There goes a saying, and 'twas shrewdly said, Old fish at table, but young flesh in bed. My soul abhors the tasteless dry embrace Of a stale virgin with a winter face: In that cold season Love but treats his guest With beanstraw, and tough forage at the best. No crafty widows shall approach my bed; Those are too wise for bachelors to wed. As subtle clerks ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... no time for rest or recreation, who can confer no responsibility upon his subordinates, who cultivates no fad, and is impatient of every moment spent away from his occupation, is in danger of eventually "going stale," and having to spend a longer and less profitable vacation in a sanitarium than would have sufficed to avert the disaster. Nor will he find it easy to change his sleep-habit with the change of residence. It behooves ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... through was dying. It was going to be quicker than the way they had of dying in Davos, but it mightn't be quick enough; it might drive him out of his last fight, back to an inconceivable stale world. ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... from long personal experience as an amateur boxer and as a trainer of other amateurs. His instructions are accompanied with full diagrams showing the approved blows and guards. He also gives full directions for training for condition without danger of going stale from overtraining. It is essentially ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray
... however stale, He jumps about and wags his tail, And Human People clap their hands ...
— The Kitten's Garden of Verses • Oliver Herford
... some biscuits and stale cake, looked up at them inquiringly, as much as to say, "Aren't we going home now?" Visions of his comfortable bed rose before him, and he felt very inclined for a noon-day nap. But the children told him he was ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... 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 ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... 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 ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... the women who are amused by the reveries of the stupid novelists, who, knowing little of human nature, work up stale tales, and describe meretricious scenes, all retailed in a sentimental jargon, which equally tend to corrupt the taste, and draw the heart aside from its daily duties. I do not mention the understanding, ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... 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
... ice on it, which lasted far into the spring, and once or twice we got aboard this great raft and tracked across it, with as much awe and enthusiasm as ever Kane had felt in his arctic explorations. In all, we became intimate friends with the lake idea, new to us then, but never to grow stale; and our good fortune favored us during after-life with many lovely lakes and ponds, including such gems ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... longed to be a bride; Boiled with her sighs, in giving up the ghost, That for her late deceased husband died; Into the same then let a woman breathe, That being chid did never word reply; With one thrice married's prayers, that did bequeath A legacy to stale virginity. If this receipt have not the power to win me, Little I'll say, but think the devil's ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... seen. The older boys were playing craps in Dennahan's lot and the smaller boys were watching them. One lonely sentinel was perched on the fence scanning the horizon for cops. For this he received the regular union pay of a stale apple-core. ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... good a fortnight in warm weather; in cold weather longer. If your yeast appears to be a little changed, add a little saleratus to it before you mix it with your bread. If it does not foam well, when put in, it is too stale to use. Milk yeast makes sweeter bread than any other kind of yeast, but it will not keep good long. It is very nice to make biscuit of. Take half the quantity of milk you need for your biscuit—set it ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous
... suppers, was now soliciting a customer to take his choice of three lank cod-fish, ticketed at so much per lb. Billiard-rooms were silent, save where a solitary marker practised impossible strokes: print-shops exhibited a dull uniformity of stale engravings; and the innumerable horde of mongrel puppies of all varieties, that, particularly towards the end of term, are dragged about three or four in a string, and recommended as real Blenheims, genuine King Charles's, or "one of old Webb's black and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... found, in its physical aspects, to be typical of the breed and district. It was small, crowded, overheated, underlighted, and stuffy to suffocation with the mingled aromas of stale drink and cheap perfume. As we entered a wrangle was going on among a group of young Frenchmen picturesquely attired as art students—almost a sure sign that they were not art students. An undersized girl dressed in a shabby black-and-yellow frock was doing a Spanish dance on a cleared space ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... what you mean? How are we going to take care of the news? It is not a magazine of stories and fiction; it is a magazine of news, and the news of the period between August 15th and September 15th, for instance, will become stale if it is not used in the September 15th issue and runs over until the October 15th issue. It is the American Nut Journal. I think your idea can be carried out very fully by featuring the convention as the main thing, but not to use every ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various
... recognized it as a newspaper sanctum," said he in his thin, piping voice. "No litter, no stale pipes lying about, no cursing and quarreling, no excitement whatever. The editorial room is the index to the workshop; I'll see if the mechanical department is kept ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... mean you chaps are going to win at the next election? I devoutly hope you may—we're all as stale as ditch-water—and as for places, anybody's welcome to mine!" And so saying, Ashe lounged away, attracted by the bow and smile of a pretty Frenchwoman, with whom it was always agreeable ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... interest of that admirable mixture for salutary application which we know as art. Art deals with what we see, it must first contribute full-handed that ingredient; it plucks its material, otherwise expressed, in the garden of life—which material elsewhere grown is stale and uneatable. But it has no sooner done this than it has to take account of a PROCESS—from which only when it's the basest of the servants of man, incurring ignominious dismissal with no "character," does it, and whether under some muddled pretext of morality ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... composed of half a dozen young men, since grown into graver habits, with Foster—home again, and a link once more in the circle of his intimates—at its head. The negro airs were still the favorites; but the collection, from frequent repetition, at length began to grow stale. One night, as a revival measure for the club, and as an opportunity for himself, Foster hinted that, with their permission, he would offer for trial an effort of his own. Accordingly he set to work; and at their next meeting ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... by a diet befitting that state to which it 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 damper! ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... thousand pounds in gold (the sum is variously 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 come up to his price. Arran, ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... hundred clams. Use soft part whole and the tough part chopped fine. Put a layer on the bottom of a buttered baking dish. Season with salt, pepper, cayenne and a little mace and sprinkle over plenty of stale bread crumbs and a quantity of bits of butter. Repeat the layers until the dish is full. Put plenty of butter on top and pour in a cup of the water from the clams. Bake in a moderate oven one hour, and when half done pour in a ...
— Joe Tilden's Recipes for Epicures • Joe Tilden
... stories" were not alone his solace, but the delight of numerous audiences of admiring friends and neighbors. At Major Humphreys's request he retold them, two or three years before he died (1788) and they form the basis of his first biographical memoir. But they were doubtless very stale to those of his hearers who had listened to them again and again, as plainly intimated by ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... favour. Remembers and applauds the part she bore in the conversation at his collation. The frothy wit of libertines how despicable. Censures the folly, the weakness, the grossness, the unpermanency of sensual love. Calls some of his contrivances trite, stale, and poor. Beseeches him to remove her from the vile house. How many dreadful stories could the horrid Sinclair tell the sex! Serious reflections on the dying ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... "Stale!" Stalky shouted. "We knew that years ago, only we didn't choose to run about shoutin' 'stinker.' We've got some manners, ir they haven't. Catch a fag, Turkey, and make sure ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... up, and was busily engaged in wringing the water from his coarse clothing. There was a smooth water-worn boulder on the beach, and, seeing this, the man who had spoken went up to it and sat down thereon, while his companion, evidently of a more practical turn of mind, collected the stale biscuits which had fallen out of the bag, then, taking the barrel carefully on his shoulder, walked up to where the other was sitting, and threw both biscuits and ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... 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 ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... idle and unhappy one. She lives on this intoxicant as other women might live on tea or gossip, as a man would take his dram or his tobacco. She drinks this wine because she is thirsty, and the plain, cool, spring-water of life has grown stale to her. It is corked up in bottles like the water sold in towns where the drinking-supply is low. It has ceased to be palatable ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... air became familiar. It was a perfect mixture of flavors; oilskins, stale tobacco-smoke, brine, burned grease, tar, and, as a background, fish. His ears almost immediately detected water noises running close by, and he could feel the pull of stout oak timber that formed the inner wall ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams |
