"Stale" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... give them gentle meetings and gentle dismissions, that we debate not and examine the matter thoroughly with liberal and frequent audience; if not for their sakes, yet for our own? seeing no man who hath tasted learning, but will confess the many ways of profiting by those who, not contented with stale receipts, are able to manage and set forth new positions to the world. And were they but as the dust and cinders of our feet, so long as in that notion they may yet serve to polish and brighten the armoury of Truth, even for that respect they were not utterly to be cast away. But if ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... was due to this short period of intensive training, "under men who were intelligent enough to know just what was needed and just how to go about to secure it"—men not hampered by any pedagogical nonsense or grown stale over a long attempt to discriminate between the "infinity of nothingness and the nothingness of infinity" (as one might summarize a rather common criticism), rather than to the former years of patient toil, and discipline, and accomplishment ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... to the closet and opened the door. On a shelf he saw half a loaf of bread, dry and stale. He took it in his ...
— Mark Mason's Victory • Horatio Alger
... Richards when the two met, in a display of aggressive tennis so remarkable that the boy was helpless before it. Richards was stale and below form, but even if he had been at his best, he could not have withstood Johnston's attack. Little Bill followed this up by sweeping Williams off the court by another marvellous streak of ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... of Europe come to us so late, and so suspiciously, that observations on them would certainly be stale, and possibly wide of their actual state. From their general aspect, however, I collect that your Majesty's interposition in them has been disinterested and generous, and having in view only the general good of the great European family. When you shall proceed to the pacification ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... the odd Englishman; but he was chiefly won by the dolce far niente of the natives, and the Oriental license of polygamy. In a word, Joseph had the same taste for a full-blooded cuffee, that an epicure has for the haut gout of a stale partridge, and was in ecstasies at my extrication. He neglected his siestas and his accounts; he wandered from house to house with the rapture of an impatient bridegroom; and, till every thing was ready for the nuptial rites, no one at the ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... went into the dormitory from the fresh, pure, night air he thought at first that he would choke in the atmosphere laden with stale tobacco-smoke and foul odours; but in the end he slept splendidly, despite ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... uneasily and glanced round the dirty room. The place looked as though it hadn't been cleaned for a month. There was a hideous accumulation of unwashed utensils scattered everywhere. The floor was unswept, let alone unwashed. And the smell of stale food and general mustiness helped to add to the keenness of the visitor's nervous edge as he waited for the ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... have been sixteen, gave Jane a stolid, incurious look and shuffled down the hall, closing the door on a portion of the stale smell. ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... said I, shrugging my shoulders. "I do not like it at all; it is common, low, vulgar. There is no romance about it; it only reminds one of stale tobacco ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... to preach. He was a duly ordained priest in good standing—technically, at least—in the Catholic Church. He had all the confidence of a sophomore—age did not wither him, nor could custom stale his infinite variety. He questioned and contradicted everybody, young or old, regardless of position. But so cleanly was the man's mode of life, so intellectual, so personally unselfish and sincere was he, that although heretics were ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... sent March stumbling up the four or five dark flights of stairs that led to his tenement. It was quite at the top of the house, and when March obeyed the German-English "Komm!" that followed his knock, he found himself in a kitchen where a meagre breakfast was scattered in stale fragments on the table before the stove. The place was bare and cold; a half-empty beer bottle scarcely gave it a convivial air. On the left from this kitchen was a room with a bed in it, which seemed also to be ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Zilah thought, however. He wondered if this happy hallucination which had lasted so many years, these eternal love-scenes with Vivian, love-scenes which never grew stale, despite the years and the wrinkles, were not the ideal form of happiness for a being condemned to this earth. This poetical monomaniac lived with his dreams realized, finding, in an asylum of Vaugirard, all the fascinations and chimeras of the Breton land of golden ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... a soldier disguised in drink, a young Jew, and myself completed the company, which was allowed to make itself free of a flagged and whitewashed hall, absolutely devoid of furniture, and smelling at once sour and stale. I am sorry and ashamed to remember that the Jew was the only person of my four fellows in misfortune who kept up any semblance of manners or proper reserve. He differed, indeed, markedly from the others, not only in his behaviour, which was at least conformable, ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... revived afresh to throw dishonor on his cause. Even while the free peoples of the earth are making these grateful acknowledgments of the priceless boon that has come to them through his life and labors, press and platform hiss with stale vituperations from the old enemy. And a puling Churchism outside of Rome takes an ill pleasure in following after her to gather and retail this vomit ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... inasmuch as his teeth were not chattering from fear — oh, dear no! oh, certainly not! he marvelled how the 'messieurs' could think of such a thing — but from the chill air of the morning. As for the rag, if monsieur could have but tasted its evil flavour, being compounded indeed of a mixture of stale paraffin oil, grease, and gunpowder, monsieur himself would have spat it out. But he did nothing of the sort; he determined to keep it there till, alas! his stomach 'revolted', and the rag was ejected in an access ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... extinguish it; he may drown its fragrance in voluptuous scents, but, when these have satiated and become hateful, it will re-arise, pure and sweet as ever. Time or separation cannot destroy it—for it is immortal; use cannot stale it, pain can only sanctify it. It will be to him as a beacon-light to the sea-worn mariner that tells of home and peace upon the shore, as a rainbow-promise set upon the sky. It alone of all things ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... above the spring and was also silent. I was disposed to put off the lighting of our fire upon the roof as long as it appeared safe to do so, in order to husband our fuel. The animals, disappointed of the forage usually furnished them at this hour, stamped impatiently and nosed disdainfully the stale straw and pine plumes which we had emptied from the bunks and which were now scattered ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... having passed for plain—the reasons for Lady Beldonald's fond calculation, which they quite justified—were written large in her face, so large that it was easy to understand them as the only ones she herself had ever read. What was it then that actually made the old stale sentence mean something so different?—into what new combinations, what extraordinary language, unknown but understood at a glance, had time and life translated it? The only thing to be said was that ...
— The Beldonald Holbein • Henry James
... an explicit contract that some of the experiences and events of a settler's life should be duly described and recorded? How to fulfil that obligation and at the same time avoid what is ordinarily regarded as the dull and prosaic, the stale, the flat, the unprofitable, is the trouble. I would gladly shirk even this small responsibility, even as greater ones have been outmanoeuvred, but a written promise unfulfilled may be troublesome to a conscience, which, when ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... and knew that they were written in Latin. He was well acquainted with the title-page of Blackstone's Commentaries, and argal (as the gravedigger in Hamlet says) he was not a person to be laughed at.' He attended the Parliament House in the character of a critic, and could give you stale sneers at all the celebrated speakers. He was the terror of essayists at the Speculative or the Forensic. In social qualities he seems to have stood unrivalled. Even in the police-office we find him shining with undiminished lustre. 'If a CHARLIE ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that came from you hot are now patched and shivery. Their finer meaning has run out between the lines as though these spaces were sluices for the proper drainage of the page. You had best put on your hat. You will get no comfort from these stale papers. ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... into the streets and resumed acquaintance with all my old haunts, the illusion had gone. I strolled into Saint Sauveur's, wandered a while through its dim, dusky aisles, and then sat down near the high altar, where the air was heaviest with stale incense, and indulged in retrospect. I was there for more than an hour. I doubt whether it was quite wise. At my time of life one had best keep out of cathedrals; they are vault-like places, pregnant with rheumatism—at ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... gipsy, with a lot of gaudy finery about her, and a withered, devilment leering in her face; and a hackney-coach drove up to the door, which had conveyed the party from town; and the driver railing in loud tones, after the manner of his kind in old times, at all things, reeking of whiskey and stale tobacco, and cursing freely, pitched in several trunks, one after the other; and, in fact, it became perfectly clear that M. M. was taking possession. And Betty and Moggy, at their wits' end between terror and bewilderment, were altogether powerless to resist, and ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... but for the worst? She tried to be sad, so as not to be angry; but it made her angry that she couldn't be sad. And yet where was misery, misery too beaten for blame and chalk-marked by fate like a "lot" at a common auction, if not in these merciless signs of mere mean, stale feelings? ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... answered in the affirmative, and a slipshod girl ushered him into a long back room, filled with boxes for the accommodation of parties, in one of which he took his seat. In a more miserably forlorn place he could not have found himself: the room smelt of fish, and sawdust, and stale tobacco smoke, with a slight taint of escaped gas; everything was rough and dirty, and disreputable; the cloth which they put before him was abominable; the knives and forks were bruised, and hacked, and filthy; and ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... for days, and even the trees that grew in among the houses of Paradise Street were fresh and green, though one of the hot, burning breaks of blue sky and glaring sunlight had baked the road into Indian-red dust once more, and the interior of Mhtoon Pah's curio shop was heavy with stale scents and dark shadows that crept out as the gloom of evening settled in upon it. Mhtoon Pah moved about looking at his goods, and touching them with careful hands. He hovered over an ivory lady carrying an umbrella, and looked ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... lose their interest. The mere words, "There was once a battle fought here" make the traveller stop and think, even if he does not know by what men of what race it was fought. But the parliamentary struggles of one generation seem passing stale and unprofitable to the next. Yet the history of nations depends as much on their civil as on their warlike contests. In Piedmont the strife always turned on the same point: whether the State or the Church should predominate. Free institutions do not settle the question; it ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... oil of the machines and the new leather—a combination which, added to the stale odours of the building, was not pleasant even in cold weather. The floor, though regularly swept every evening, presented a littered surface. Not the slightest provision had been made for the comfort of the employees, the idea being that something was gained by giving them as little ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... 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 ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... much of it flies here and there, if a mon lets all of it roost, 'twill stale his pace of mind like the thaving crows stale ...
— That Old-Time Child, Roberta • Sophie Fox Sea
... that nonsense, whilst all with loud houting and laughter confound the Fidlers noise, who may well be call'd a noise indeed, for no Musick can be heard for them; so whilst he utters nothing but old stories, long since laught thridbare, or some stale jest broken twenty times before: His mirth compared with theirs, new and at first hand, is just like Brokers ware in comparison with Mercers, or Long-lane compar'd unto Cheap-side: his wit being rather the Hogs-heads ...
— Essays on Wit No. 2 • Richard Flecknoe and Joseph Warton
... dropped from Ascham's lips his host looked slowly about the library, and every object in it stared back at him with a stale unescapable familiarity. How sick he was of looking at that room! It was as dull as the face of a wife one has wearied of. He cleared his throat slowly; then he turned his head to the lawyer and said: "I could ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... streets in the bleak darkness of winter mornings, when the trains from the north came into Caxton covered with ice, and the trainmen stood on the deserted little platform whipping their arms and calling to Jerry Donlin to hurry with his work that they might get back into the warm stale air of the ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... chosen to go. The former made far more fuss about it, and she was at the same time preparing a new mantle wherein to attend the tournament, of which Amphillis was summoned to do all the plain and uninteresting parts. The result of this preoccupation would have been very stale pastry on the counter, if her father had not seen to that item for himself. Ricarda was less excited and egotistical, yet ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... fact that he had been through the first half of the year before, Haynes actually did go somewhat stale in some of ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock
... 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 ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... old—except in my feelings—and my stories, even the "Black Brig," had not been failures, by any means. But I am sure that every man or woman who writes, or paints, or does creative work of any kind, will understand and sympathize with me. I had "gone stale," that is the technical name for my disease, and to "go stale" is no joke. If you doubt it ask the writer or painter of your acquaintance. Ask him if he ever has felt that he could write or paint no more, and ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... sure of his reception. His combination of soft manners and responsive kindliness, with a certain unseizable reserve and a familiar yet foreign chiselling of feature, reveal the Jew: in this instance the handsome gentlemanly Jew, gone a little pigeon-breasted and stale after thirty, as handsome young Jews often do, ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... something to the natives," he said; "it may be an indication to them that their place is becoming important—a metropolis in which things happen—but it is nothing to me. This hanging case is stale and commonplace; it is perfectly clear; a young fellow named Boyd is to be hanged for killing his partner, another miner; no doubt about his guilt, plenty of witnesses against him, his own denial weak and halting—in fact, ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... writes:—"I have just finished reading a most amusing incident, and, as it occurs in a book not likely to fall into the hands of many of the members, I am tempted to relate it, although it might prove to be 'stale.' Well, to begin: It tells of a maiden lady, who, having arrived at the mature age of 51 without ever having seen a railway train, decides to visit New York. The all-important day having arrived, she seats herself calmly on the platform of the country station, and gazes with amazement ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... Tower Bridge, the Houses of Parliament and Nelson's Monument, had lunched at one of Messrs. Lockhart's establishments, had taken a ride in the Tube and performed a hasty tour of the Zoo, where they had consumed, variously, cups of tea, ginger beer, stale buns and ices. Hyde Park they had viewed from the top of a motor bus and descending from this chariot at London Bridge had caught the train home. In the train Flamby had fallen asleep, utterly exhausted with such a saturnalia, and her parents had eaten sandwiches and partaken ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... And how should thought know thought until the whole Of body's beauty is by body learnt? Until the trial of that most dear seclusion Is past, and all the dangers of mere lust Disproved, when in possession is no stale Regret and disillusion, how should be known That the still hours of thought with thought are stable Against the wearing of dissolving time? Dear, we must love by all the tokens of love, Before the presence of love beyond dispute Is ...
— Preludes 1921-1922 • John Drinkwater
... Smith!—It was a union to distance every wonder of the kind.—The attachment of Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax became commonplace, threadbare, stale in the comparison, exciting no surprize, presenting no disparity, affording nothing to be said or thought.—Mr. Knightley and Harriet Smith!—Such an elevation on her side! Such a debasement on his! It was horrible to Emma to think how it must sink him in the ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... lines. A Greek poet could not have conceived them: unless we imagine to ourselves what AEschylus or Pindar, oppressed by long illness, and forgetful of the gods, might possibly have felt. In its sense of spiritual vacancy, when the world and all its uses have become flat, stale, unprofitable, and the sentient soul oscillates like a pendulum between weariful extremes, seeking repose in restless movement, and hurling the ruins of a life into the gulf of its exhausted cravings, we perceive already ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... doesn't need me below for the present, Jack, so I came up to relieve you at the wheel. I don't want to see your steering wrist going stale when the race starts, so you'd better let me have the wheel, while you keep yourself fresh for the ...
— The Submarine Boys' Lightning Cruise - The Young Kings of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... of the hollows"—men who were never seen beyond the precincts of their own little "clearings," except upon the Fourth of July and election day, from one end of the year to the other. With these he drank bad whiskey, made stale jokes, and affected a flattering condescension. With others, more important or less easily imposed upon, he "whittled" sociably in the fence-corners, talked solemnly in conspicuous places, and always ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... been budding, and his brother-in-law has been spending his money and leave, Mr. Honeyman's hopes have been withering, his sermons growing stale, his once blooming popularity drooping and running to seed. Many causes have contributed to bring him to his present melancholy strait. When you go to Lady Whittlesea's Chapel now, it is by no means crowded. Gaps are in the pews: there is not the ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Elsewhere you trimmed and taught these lamps to burn; You bring them stale and dim to serve my turn. You lit those candles in another shrine, Guttered and cold you offer them on mine. Take back ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... custom stale Her infinite variety; other women Cloy th' appetites they feed; but she makes hungry Where most she satisfies. 55 SHAKS.: Ant. and Cleo., Act ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... men's hearts, but to change their opinions. They take up the New Testament and read Christ's sermon on the Mount; but they find nothing in it to answer their purpose. It is but an ordinary production in their estimation. They pass on through Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. How stale, how dull, how uninteresting these gospels, they are led to exclaim. They see but little beauty in the God-like teaching; or the inimitable example of Christ. His last agonies, his death on the cross is insufficient to move their callous hearts. But ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... made his way to the bedroom occupied by Paul Drayton. He opened the door without knocking. It was dark within. Thin streaks of dusty sunlight shot from between a pair of heavy curtains. The air was noisome with dead tobacco smoke and the fumes of stale beer. Hugh's gorge rose, but he conquered ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... Stale smoky air hung in the study with the smell of drab abraded leather of its chairs. As on the first day he bargained with me here. As it was in the beginning, is now. On the sideboard the tray of Stuart coins, base treasure ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... no longer is any question about my going," Gray announced, firmly. "I am bored; I am stale; a thrill, of whatever sort, would stir my blood. Animated by purely selfish motives, I now insist upon a serious consideration of my offer. First, you say I 'wouldn't, couldn't'; I assure you that I would, could—and shall, provided I can ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... swiftly dug trenches of a year ago have given way to the peaked mounds in which turnips wait transplanting. Where there were vast stretches of mud, scarred with intrenchments, with the wheel tracks of guns and ammunition carts, with stale, ill-smelling straw, the carcasses of oxen and horses, and the bodies of men, is now a smiling landscape, with miles of growing grain, green ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... 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 ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer
... hundred and ten degrees. Sydney lived through the experience but had always after that a delicate interior and was petted more than ever in consequence. And there was a tennis court occasionally wetted down with the beer that always went stale while they were saving it for state occasions. It was all a happy, glorious time—because they had discovered and were making one of the great mines ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... a "strong place" well behind a fringe of alder-roots, whence Bob, notwithstanding his most strenuous efforts, failed to "bolt" her. I then drew off the hounds, led them towards the throat of the pool, and for a half hour assisted them to work the "stale drag," till I reached a bend of the river where Lutra's footprints were still visible on the fine, wet sand at the brink of ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... counsellor! If I could find a word that might make known The crime of my destroyer; and that done, 155 My tongue should like a knife tear out the secret Which cankers my heart's core; ay, lay all bare, So that my unpolluted fame should be With vilest gossips a stale mouthed story; A mock, a byword, an astonishment:— 160 If this were done, which never shall be done, Think of the offender's gold, his dreaded hate, And the strange horror of the accuser's tale, Baffling belief, and overpowering speech; Scarce whispered, unimaginable, wrapped ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Lord Darcy, sent by King Henry the 8. with a lusty crew of soldiers, for that Ferdinands iust assistance, against the Infidels: but vsed by him as a stale, for the vniust conquest of ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... go 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 ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... a golden glory, Delighted me a season with its tale. It pleased the longest, but at last the story So oft repeated, to my heart grew stale. ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... bad as that!" returned Clytie. "It was only dull and stale and stupid; the same old sort of knockabouts and serio-comics you can see everywhere down town, only not a quarter so good—just cheap imitations. And all those poor fellows sat moping over their beer-mugs waiting, waiting, waiting for something new and entertaining to happen. I never ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... 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 his feet, there ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... the Odyssey. The flaming cheeks, dim eyes, loss of consciousness, and paralysis are copied from Sappho; while the Hippolytus of Euripides furnished the model for the dwelling on the subjective symptoms of the "pernicious passion of love." The stale trick too, of making this love originate in a wound inflicted by Cupid's arrows is everlastingly Greek; and so is the device of representing the woman alone as being consumed by the flames of love. For Jason ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... viz. "The Mayor of Northampton opens oisters with his dagger." The meaning of which is, to keep them at a sufficient distance from his nose. For this town being eighty miles from the sea, fish may well be presumed stale therein. "Yet I have heard (says Dr. Fuller,) that oisters put up with care, and carried in the cool, were weekly brought fresh and good to Althrop, the seat of the Lord Spencer, at equal distance; and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... with his own eyes, and understood with his own mind, without legal help. So, you see, you've kept me here talking when there's no need and while my business waits. It is urgent, M'sieu' la Fillette—your business is stale. It belongs to last session of the Court." He laughed at his joke. "M'sieu' Jean Jacques and I understand each other." He laughed grimly now. "We know each other like a book, and the Clerk of the Court ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... interesting possession than a gallery of pictures or a cabinet of curiosities. Its glories are never stationary or stale. It has infinite variety. It is not the same to-day as it was yesterday. It is always changing the character of its charms and always increasing them in number. It delights all the senses. Its pleasures are not of an unsocial character; for every visitor, high or low, learned or illiterate, ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... 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 ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... nervousness, had completed her last clean copy. She had worked hard each afternoon, and conscientiously, only to be filled at the last with despair and despondence. She had read, re-read, written and re-written it, until she knew every word by heart, and all seemed stale, dull, and trivial. ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... never-failing object, on these occasions, was to instruct the house in law. And here the devil, who is himself a kind of lawyer, for he devours his best friends, the devil I say chose these opportunities to vent his choicest malice. He did not set a lawyer to confound a lawyer: that were but a stale device. He humbled him out of the mouths of men who had occasionally read law-books, it is true: but who had read them without a lawyers' obliquity; and had enquired what was the simple unadulterated intention of their authors. Now ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... it shot him, thrilling, stirring his heart and soul. She would go with him; more than that, she should. It was her right, won by years of actual want and struggle and service. More, it was her escape from a flat, stale, meaningless boarding-house existence. Suddenly he felt that she was really his mother, knit to him by ties unbreakable, a terrible thing ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven! Oh! times In which the meagre, stale forbidding ways Of custom, law and statute, took at once The attraction ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... forced open the door of the after compartment, which had once housed the great Stede Bonnet. Instead of its old immaculate and almost scholarly appearance, the place now had an air of desolation. It reeked of filth, stale tobacco-smoke, and the spilled lees of liquor. In the clutter on the cabin table lay two bulging sacks ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... still, as you know I might find the detention inconvenient, I shall therefore sail early in the speronara. Your letters may be addressed to me as before, but bear in mind that your information is generally too stale. Now I will get a little rest, if you will show me where I am ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... Barcelona looks across the brilliantly-lighted square from the south side. On the pavement in front of it and of its neighbour, the Cafe Continental, the vendors of lottery tickets were bawling the lucky numbers they had for sale. Even in this wide space the air was close and stale. Within, a few people left over in the town had strayed in to dine at tables placed against the walls under flamboyant decorations in the style of Fragonard. At a table Hillyard was sitting alone over his coffee. Across the room one of the panels represented a gleaming marble ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... clubable than a set of men like this? You might as well set before me the stale bon-bons and sugar-plums of a dessert for a dinner, as ask me to take such people for associates and companions. The tone of everlasting trifling disgraces even idleness; and these men contrive in their ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... with a smile. "But I'll try. Get me a subject. It all lies in the subject. If a subject's given me, it's easy to spin something round it. I often think that the celebrated talkers of the last century would have found it difficult to talk cleverly now. Everything clever is so stale..." ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... my self-hood, Many for you. Allons, camerados, we will drink together, O hand-in-hand! That tea-spoon, please, when you've done with it. What butter-colored hair you've got. I don't want to be personal. All right, then, you needn't. You're a stale-cadaver. Eighteen-pence if the bottles are returned. Allons, from ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... of apricot jam, and a tin of ratifia biscuits a most extraordinary mixture, I admit, but there was nothing else. There were six people to be fed every day, and nothing to feed them with. Thursday's breakfast was a discovered crust of dry bread, very stale, and our dinner that day was rice and salt—the last rice in the store-room. The snow still never ceased falling, and only one window in the house afforded us any light; every box was broken up and used for fuel. The gentlemen used to go all together and cut, or rather dig, ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... In her free hours she sat in their little shelter, her thin, freckly hands busy with the worsted masterpiece that she was working. Pee-wee, at least, had his appetite to console him, but she had no relish for the stale lemonade and melting, oozy taffy which stood pathetically ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... of gesture which belonged to antiquity: it struck the Anglo-Saxon flirt at her feet with amazement. Not having good enough under his skin to sympathize with that pious impulse, he first stagnated a little while; and then, not to be silent altogether, made his little, stale, commonplace comment on what she had told him. "Why, it is like ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... view. The character of the shops became more and more difficult to define. Here a window displayed a heap of sailor's thimbles and pack-thread; there another set forth an array of trumpery glass vases or a basket of stale fruit, pretexts, perhaps, for the disguise of a "leaving shop," or unlicensed pawnbroker's establishment, out of which I expected to see Miss Pleasant Riderhood come forth, twisting up her back hair as she came. At a place where the houses ceased, and an open space left free a prospect of the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... not been changed since Easter, and were full of dust and grease from the cooking and the table. Even the fresher sprigs of mint among them smelled stale and old. When they were all in the barrow, Nick sighed with relief and wiped his hands ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... time, therefore, the two officers sat opposite to each other inhaling the stale odour of tobacco and spirits peculiar to this room, with little or no ventilation. It was enough to sicken anyone, but both men, accustomed to such places in the pursuit of their calling, apparently thought ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... hears of it. You know Tommy of the 81st? He gave me good advice: 'Always sew a fifty-pound note into the lining of each waistcoat you've got. Then you can't go short.' Tried it once, and, be George! if me demned man-servant didn't stale that very waistcoat and sell it for six and sixpence. You're ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... aware that some Buddhist authors whom Arnold has followed in his "Light of Asia" make Buddha but little better than a stale prisoner, and would have us believe that the glimpses he got of the ills that flesh is heir to were gained in spite of all precautions, as he was occasionally taken out of his rose embowered, damsel filled prison-house, and not as any prince ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... 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 ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... Temperance Room with the second-hand papers in it; but a man of any profession cannot read for eight hours a day in a temperature of 96 degrees or 98 degrees in the shade, running up sometimes to 103 degrees at midnight. Very few men, even though they get a pannikin of flat, stale, muddy beer and hide it under their cots, can continue drinking for six hours a day. One man tried, but he died, and nearly the whole regiment went to his funeral because it gave them something to do. It was too early for the excitement of fever ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... room lined on two sides with deal compartments bulging with dusty papers. There were two or three shelves of uninteresting-looking books, and a desk which extended into a counter. The upper panes of the window were ragged with cobwebs, and the air of the place was redolent of stale publications. A thick-set little man in spectacles sat at the desk. ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... brushed, and the white trousers of last Sunday plentifully besmeared with dust and ink. It evidently requires a considerable mental struggle to avoid investing part of the day's dinner-money in the purchase of the stale tarts so temptingly exposed in dusty tins at the pastry-cooks' doors; but a consciousness of their own importance and the receipt of seven shillings a-week, with the prospect of an early rise to eight, comes to their ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Langley and the Smithsonian, and wishing I hadn't lied so extravagantly in some of my specifications at Washington. Then I quit thinking for quite a while, and when I resumed my train of thought I was nude, Sir, in a very stale stretcher, and my mouth was full of fine dirt all ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... throng'd with faces, the broadcloth and laces, The booths, and the tents, and the cars, The bookmakers' jargon, for odds making bargain, The nasty stale smell of cigars. ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... the time when the troops were satisfying their hunger with a frugal repast. The Persians expressed their desire of being introduced to the presence of the Roman emperor. They were at length conducted to a soldier, who was seated on the grass. A piece of stale bacon and a few hard peas composed his supper. A coarse woollen garment of purple was the only circumstance that announced his dignity. The conference was conducted with the same disregard of courtly elegance. Carus, taking off a cap which he wore to conceal ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... air in a cave constantly occupied would grow stale and close; while smoke from the fires would in time become annoying. But Indians used for fuel only dry wood and bark, the smoke from which would be a negligible factor. The varying pressure of the atmosphere outside creates a current of air in or out which is usually imperceptible ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... or offend his sensitive spirit, she, in some way which he could not exactly define, made him feel that he must defer the thing to him so important, and talk on other subjects. There was one theme on which she was always eager to talk and to get him to talk, and to her it never grew stale or threadbare. It was about what he and she had learned or could remember of the book of heaven, and ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... serious inroads upon his health, from which he never entirely recovered. It was hoped that his life in the East would be beneficial, but it proved otherwise. Meanwhile, the Civil War was raging in the United States, but the news concerning it was very stale long before it reached us. We did not receive the particulars of the battle of Bull Run, for example, until three months after its occurrence. In view of the turbulent state of affairs at home, the government thought it important that Mr. ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... zest, but of late she had begun to find them wearisome. They no longer satisfied her. If this were the result of a few years' experience, what would she feel when she had grown jaded with time and everything was stale? Then her glimpse of the simple, healthful western life had come as a revelation. It was real, a bracing struggle, in which no effort was wasted but produced tangible results: broad stretches of splendid wheat, ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... 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 ...
— First Book in Physiology and Hygiene • J.H. Kellogg
... importance of the events. She had made no allowance for the absence of the country people, specially wont to visit the town when the quarterly court was in session, but now all dutifully in place voting in their own remote districts. The dust, the suffocating heat, the stale, vapid air, the indescribable sense of a lower level—all these affected her like a veritable burden, accustomed as she was to the light and rare mountain breeze, to the tempered sun, the mist, and the cloud. The new and untried conditions of town life trammeled and constrained ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... after all, is it well worth, the while? Those are uncertain questions—I dismiss them. There is no immediate danger. My humor changes; I am no longer despondent. Away with Doubtful Uncertainty and all of his stale retinue, tricked out in danger-signals—each a false one. Sleep on, sweet Conscience, sleep on! To-night the wedding-reception—given to a woman married for her money! Another glorious ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.
... me back in due time by monthly instalments of singing. I shall have mine own again with usury. But were a man never so usurious, would he not lend a winter seed for a summer song? Would he refuse to invest his stale crumbs in an orchestra of divine instruments and a choir of heavenly voices? And to-day, also, I ordered from a nursery-man more trees of holly, juniper, and fir, since the storm-beaten cedars will have to come down. For in ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... began the night before with a restless, wakeful vigil of grumbling toothache. When Anne arose in the dull, bitter winter morning she felt that life was flat, stale, ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... me of paying a visit this summer to the land of the Czar; that I want companions; that I like young ones, who will follow my ways better than old ones, who won't; that I enjoy fresh ideas freshly expressed, and am tired of stale platitudes; in short, if you will entrust your youngsters to me, I will take charge of them, and point out what is mostly worth seeing and remembering at the ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... 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 ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Their water was getting stale, and running somewhat low; and they needed fresh foodstuffs. Joel planned to touch at the first land that offered. Tubuai, that would be. He marked their ...
— All the Brothers Were Valiant • Ben Ames Williams
... he 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
... play-hours the children, overcome by hunger, would slip around to the large window that opened into the bakery and there stand gazing wistfully down upon the loaves of fresh bread as they were taken from the large oven. Sometimes some crusts or stale biscuits were given them, and with these they would scamper away to the pump to moisten the bread before dividing it. It sometimes happened that there was not sufficient bread for each child to have ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... proportion," he said. "You've worked so hard you're getting stale. You ought to get out of it for ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... taking the field again. "He may be slow on his pins, but he fights with his head, and he hits like the kick of a horse. When he finished Black Baruk the man flew across the outer ring as well as the inner, and fell among the spectators. If he isn't absolutely stale, Tregellis, he ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sucked up into the bulb, which, when full, is emptied out at the other end. It sometimes happens that the egg is "hard set." The embryo must, in that case, be cut out with small curved scissors specially made. If hard set, putrid, or stale, an egg often bursts when touched. To obviate this, drill and ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... imagination. This is rather the product of fancy and wit. Wit, indeed, in the old sense of quickness in the perception of analogies is the staple of his mind. His resources in the way of figure, illustration, allusion and anecdote are wonderful. Age cannot wither him nor custom stale his infinite variety, and there is as much powder in his latest pyrotechnics as in the rockets which he sent up half a century ago. Yet, though the humorist in him rather outweighs the poet, he has written a few things, like the Chambered Nautilus ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... Grant in the new command I was about to undertake, adding that thus far the cavalry of the Army of the Potomac had not done all it might have done, and wound up our short conversation by quoting that stale interrogation so prevalent during the early years of the war, "Who ever saw a dead cavalryman?" His manner did not impress me, however, that in asking the question he had meant anything beyond a jest, and I parted ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... neighbourhood—the spectacle of an ascension. As one of the gentry concerned, I may be permitted to remark that I am unmoved. I care not a Tinker's Damn for his ascension. No more—I breathe in your ear—does anybody else. The business is stale, sir, stale. Lunardi did it, and overdid it. A whimsical, fiddling, vain fellow, by all accounts—for I was at that time rocking in my cradle. But once was enough. If Lunardi went up and came down, there was the matter settled. We prefer to grant the point. We do not want ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... are more interesting than preservers? They vibrate with life and creative energy, they defy impossibilities, they carry enthusiasm aloft on their banners of assault on the existing order of things. Our preservers seem tame and stale indeed. They hobble about the borders of the well-cultivated garden of custom and propriety, they find admirable shelter against the fierce winds of revolt in the offices of bureaucracy. Officialdom is their divinity and respectability ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... Denny driving. There was no luggage. Esther hoped a great deal from that. But it proved there was too much to come by cab, and Denny brought it afterward, shabby trunks of a sophisticated look, spattered with labels. Madame Beattie alighted from the cab, a large woman in worn black velvet, with a stale perfume about her. Esther was at the door to meet her, and even in this outer air she could hardly help putting up her nose a little at the exotic smell. Madame Beattie was swarthy and strong-featured with a soft wrinkled ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... friendship for very long,' she replied, plucking a glittering firefly from her fan and laying it on his sleeve with her sweet light laugh. 'Like a firefly I shall dance out my short night, and die quickly before life grows stale!' ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... his versions are not to be compared with Mr. Young's for adherence either to the bard's own meaning or music. In pouring out the Frenchman's champagne, the latter somehow suffers the sparkle and bead to escape, while the former cheats us by making his stale liquor foam with London soda. We shall be impatient for Mr. Young's book, which will be published by Putnam, in a style of ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... of stale bread broken in crumbs, one quart of milk, two eggs, half a teaspoonful of salt, half a teaspoonful of ground cinnamon, three tablespoonfuls of sugar and two ounces of Walter Baker & Co.'s Chocolate, grated. Put the bread, milk, cinnamon, and chocolate in a bowl, and soak for two or three hours. ...
— Chocolate and Cocoa Recipes and Home Made Candy Recipes • Miss Parloa
... coal-black wool, and 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 infinite variety. ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... makes little difference. His abstention from bowling (to the playing of which Brassfield had been devoted), and his absolute failure at billiards, were discussed in sporting circles, and accounted for on the theory that he had "gone stale" since this love-affair had become the absorbing business of his life. No one understood, however, his sudden interest in photography, and his marvelous skill in it. He seemed to ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... he was a done man, but he went on. When he was going through a wood further on, two men came out to him, one from each side of the road, and they took hold of the bridle of the horse and led it on between them. They were old stale men with frieze clothes on them, and the old fashions. When they came out of the wood he found people as if there was a fair on the road, with the people buying and selling and they not living people at all. The ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... where we may, through city or through town, Village or hamlet, of this merry land, * * * * every twentieth pace Conducts the unguarded nose to such a whiff Of stale debauch, forth issuing from the sties That law has licensed, ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... green something, which might be either cabbage leaves or turnip-tops, and a glass of water. The whole mess is lukewarm, including the water—it would all be better cold. Tea: A thin slice of the aforesaid alleged roast or mutton, and the pick of about six thin slices of stale bread—evidently cut the day before yesterday. This is the way Mrs Jones "does" for us for eighteen shillings a week. The bread gave out at tea-time this evening, and a mild financial boarder tapped his plate with his knife, and sent ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... of our enterprizing hero's character always to think the last scheme for making a fortune the best. As soon as he reached home he was in haste to abandon some of his old projects, which now appeared to him flat, stale, and unprofitable. About a score of his flock, though tainted with the rot, were not yet dead; he was eager to sell them, but no one would buy sheep of such a wretched appearance. At last Wright took them off his hands. "I ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... team of six horses, brave with brass harness and bells, a timber-carriage, and a couple of spring-carts, were drawn up on the half-moon of gravel before the porch; while, from out the open door, came a sound of voices and odour of many pipes and much stale beer. ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... all right and a arf, mate, I am, and ain't going' to rough up, no fear! Becos two or three second-hand 'ARRIES is tipping the public stale beer. The old tap'll turn on now and then, not too often, and as for the rest, The B.P. has a taste for sound tipple, and knows when it's served with ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... 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
... victorious over some undeserved misfortune and of taking possession of a home to which he had some ancient right, was the tone given to Harry's settlement at Yoden, and for a long time he felt compelled to honor it, even after it had become stale and tedious. For it pleased his mother, and she did many unconsidered things to encourage it. For instance, she gave a formal dinner at Hatton Hall to which she invited all the county families and wealthy manufacturers within her knowledge. A dinner at Hatton Hall was a rare social ceremony and ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... stupid and unnecessary opposition to proposals of mine in my own committee. However, he got himself sold at all points...The Polypterus paper and the Aye-Aye paper fell flat. The latter was meant to raise a discussion on your views, but it was all a stale hash, and I only made some half sarcastic remarks which stopped ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... they see others doing so, the more sanguine they are that no one could ever catch them with chaff. I have met many of the latter class, and always tried to down them. They, of course, would not bit at the monte bait, for it was too stale for them; so I would study sometimes for hours how to take ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... indeed the public has been surfeited with sea-stories of late, from many sufficiently dull ones up to the genial wisdom of 'Peter Simple,' and the gorgeous word- painting of 'Tom Cringle's Log.' And now the subject is stale—the old war and the wonders thereof have died away into the past, like the men who fought in it; and Trafalgar and the Bellerophon are replaced by Manchester and 'Mary Barton.' We have solved the old ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... strikingly in keeping with his face and expression. The human face never wore an expression of more withering, relentless scorn than when the orator replied to Hayne's allusion to the "Murdered Coalition"—a piece of stale political trumpery well ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... he drops his pretty head And seems to be dispirited, And then his little mistress says: "Poor Dickie misses his chickweed, Or else I've fed him musty seed As stale as last year's oranges!" But all the time I wonder If we half comprehend In sweet song-words The thought of birds, Or why so oft their raptures ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... historian, in fact—and he persisted heroically in his task, rereading stale paragraphs and checking dreary dates, going over battles and conquests and invasions and interregnums. Despite his mood and despite the heat, the manuscript probably would have arrived at his publishers chronologically complete. So complete, ...
— Collector's Item • Robert F. Young
... me his own MSS. and lent them to me to copy, with the condition, however, that I should not smoke while working at them. He himself did not smoke, and could not bear the smell of smoke, and he showed me several of his MSS. which had become quite useless to him, because they smelt of stale tobacco smoke. I did all I could to guard these sacred treasures against ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... air were kept in motion by the heat of the sun, causing breezes and winds, it would become stale and wouldn't do at all for our lung-bellows to use. The air we breathe must be kept moving and fresh if it is to make us feel bright and strong and happy. Mother Nature has given us miles upon miles and oceans upon oceans of this clear, fresh air to ...
— The Child's Day • Woods Hutchinson
... the explanation of the magic of Lycidas. From the standpoint of the formal understanding it was an affected lament over some wholly uninteresting and unimportant Mr. King; it was full of nonsense about "shepherds" and "flocks" and "muses" and such stale stock of poetry; the introduction of St Peter on a stage thronged with nymphs and river gods was blasphemous, absurd, and, in the worst taste; there were touches of greasy Puritanism, the twang of the conventicle was only too apparent. And Lycidas ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... that seems to enrap babys, and lunatiks, and soft little wimmen, when their heads get kinder turned by a man, and to Abram's honest face when she should compare it with Bial Flamburg's, and to Abram's pure, sweet breath with that mixture of stale cigars, tobacco, ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... you couldn't come onto his place with a shotgun. He couldn't stop the townspeople from taking a shot at the small flocks as they passed over, from the farm feeding ground to the Lake, but the geese didn't seem to expect that of Jack. He says they would miss it, if the shooting stopped, and get stale; and then it does a similar lot for the town in the ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... themselves to pieces with more than madness through grief and remorse. Below this was a charnel vault where some of the apothecaries had been ground down and stuffed into earthenware pots with Album graecum, dung, and many a stale ointment. ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... aither in the parlor or the field. You think him a good dog, looking at him here: but I wisht you seen him on the side ov Sleeve-an-Eirin! Be my soul, you'd say the hill was running away from undher him. O, I wisht you had been wid me," says he, never letting on to see the dog stale, "one day, last Lent, that I was coming from mass. Spring was near a quarther ov a mile behind me, for the childher was delaying him wid bread and butther at the chapel door; when a lump ov a hare jumped out ov the plantations ov Grouse Lodge and ran acrass the road; so I gev the whilloo, and ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... on the hearth burned sullenly, and gave no light. The poor oil-lamp, casting weird shadows from wall to wall, served only to discover the darkness. The room, with its low roof and earthen floor, and foul clothes flung here and there, reeked of stale meals and garlic and vile cooking. I thought of the parlour at Cocheforet, and the dainty table, and the stillness, and the scented pot-herbs; and though I was too old a soldier to eat the worse because my spoon lacked ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... Scott! by vain conceit perchance, On public taste to foist thy stale romance. Though Murray with his Miller may combine To yield thy muse just half-a-crown per line? No! when the sons of song descend to trade, Their bays are sear, their ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... before he was eligible for promotion to a lieutenancy. Unless an officer had family interest he often stuck there, and as often had to serve under one more favoured, who was not born when he himself was getting stale. ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... be gathered that neither writer held this book of jests in very high estimation; and, as no vestiges are traceable of an edition of the work subsequent to 1582, it is possible that about that time the title had grown too stale to please the less educated reader, and the work had fallen into disrepute in higher quarters. The stories themselves, in some shape or other, however, have been reproduced in every jest-book from the reign of Elizabeth ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... 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 ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor |
