"Stale" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... calculated to keep the spirits up, under depressing circumstances? I need one very much, and have nothing more suggestive than the old Methodist hymn, "Better days are coming, we'll all go right," which I shout so constantly, as our prospects darken, that it begins to sound stale. ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... treasure once more in the depths of the rick; he himself knows not how much there might be. Then he attacks anew the hard, stale bread, the rancid bacon, and devours it to the last morsel. Perhaps some ready-prepared banquet awaited him on the morrow. Or perhaps he is accustomed to feasting only every third day. At last he stretches himself out on the grass, ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... imperial colour, and of some flexible shoots of some thorny plant, and out of these they fashion a burlesque of royal trappings. Then they shout, as they would have done to Caesar, 'Hail, King of the Jews!' repeating again with clumsy iteration the stale jest which seems to them so exquisite. Then their mood changes, and naked ferocity takes the place of ironical reverence. Plucking the mock sceptre, the reed, from His passive hand, they strike the thorn-crowned Head with ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... level of those fitted to satisfy a rational being—so far that she almost looked down on them with contempt. The truth was, that having tasted a little of the purer joy of religion, all other substitutes were stale and flat, and this although she scarcely knew enough of the matter to be able correctly to analyze her ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Gymnosophists go into a wood, with all nature seething around them, with romance on every side; it would be much more to the purpose if they took up their abode in a dull country town, where they should see just so much of humanity as to keep them from desiring more, and only the stale externals of man's life. These externals are as dead to us as so many formalities, and speak a dead language in our eyes and ears. They have no more meaning than an oath or a salutation. We are so much accustomed ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to use his own language, when he wanted to "do up" his rooms; he had gone with his purse open and his eyes shut to Grindot, who by this time was quite forgotten. It is impossible to guess how long an extinct reputation may survive, supported by such stale admiration. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... continent—probably within a few hours of the moment wherein he made his unceremonious exit from Mr. Halfpenny's office. Even Markledew was not so keen about the Herapath affair as he had been. His policy was—a new day, a new affair. The Herapath mystery was becoming a little stale—it would get staler unless a fresh and startling development took place. As it was, nothing was likely to arise which would titillate the public until Barthorpe Herapath, now safely lodged in the remand prison, was brought to trial, or unless Burchill was arrested. Consequently, ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... the happy wayfarer journeyed by vettura through the innumerable little states of the Peninsula,—halted every other mile to show his passport, and robbed by customs officers in every color of shabby uniform and every variety of cocked hat,—the present railroad period is one of but stale and insipid flavor. Much of local life and color remains, of course; but the hurried traveller sees little of it, and, passed from one grand hotel to another, without material change in the cooking or the methods of extortion, he ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... laugh at their laboured jokes or not. Of course, it is pretty manners to do so, be the wit never so stale; but on the other hand it encourages them in their evil habits, and seems to me as doubtful a form of hospitality as offering a brandy-and-soda to a ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... contented now to give his single "Imprimatur," but brings his chair into the title-leaf; there sits and judges up or judges down what book he pleases. If this be suffered, what worthless author, or what cunning printer, will not be ambitious of such a stale to put off the heaviest gear?—which may in time bring in round fees to the Licenser, and wretched mis-leading to the people. But to the matter. He approves 'the publishing of this Book, to preserve the strength and honour of Marriage against those sad breaches and dangerous abuses ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... with your window open. What could be more stupefying than to shut yourself up in a closet and swallow your own gas? But is it any less stupefying to shut yourself up within the last few thousand years of the history of your own corner of the world, and suck in the stale atmosphere of its own self-generated prejudices? Or, to vary the metaphor, anthropology is like travel. Every one starts by thinking that there is nothing so perfect as his own parish. But let a man go aboard ship to visit foreign parts, and, when he ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... despair. 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 on the counter ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the stake of all the game of one! Then would the world have seen again what power A people can put forth in Freedom's hour; Then would the fire of France once more have blazed;— For every single sword, reluctant raised In the stale cause of an oppressive throne, Millions would then have leaped forth in her own; And never, never had the unholy stain Of Bourbon feet disgraced her ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... this too, too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fixed His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! O God! How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... a fawning voice. "If your majesty designed to be angry, it was not necessary to light the pipes and fill the beer-mugs; for while you are neither smoking nor drinking, the pipe goes out, and the beer becomes stale." ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... scholarship. The introduction to a literary career was supposed to be obtained only by a profound study of the classics, with a view to avoiding everything classical, both in language and ideas, except Cicero, the apostle of the ancient Roman Philistines; and the tendency to clothe stale truisms and feeble sentiments in high-sounding language is still found in Italian prose and is indirectly traceable to the same source. As for the literature of the country since the Latins, it consisted, and still consists, in the works of the four poets, Dante, Tasso, Ariosto, ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... get stale," declared the clown, with a faint smile. "Give us a hand, partner—one at a time, and we'll get my togs ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... and then kept on going until we reached a big city where there was a brewery, but they had set fire to the whole city before they left. We got some beer and wine just the same. It was a little stale, but it was fine. The Huns' warehouses were all fixed for the winter and the boys got cigars and cigarettes, but I was a little too late to ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... struggle against it. She allowed the evil thoughts to take their course—wherever they would, over all the faults she had detected among the Brethren or suspected in her own mother; over Skipper Worse, with his oaths and his flavour of stale tobacco-smoke, until he seemed quite unbearable—away, far away into forbidden regions, where there was sunshine and joy, where she was alone ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... stale. Talk of the hatchet, and the faces pale, Wampum and calumets and forests dreary, Once so attractive, now begins to weary. Uncas and Magawisca please us still, Unreal, yet idealized with skill; But every poetaster, scribbling witling, From the majestic oak his stylus whittling, ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... value of vegetables Exclusive diet of vegetables not desirable To select vegetables Poison in potato sprouts Stale vegetables a cause of illness Keeping vegetables To freshen withered vegetables Storing winter vegetables Preparation and cooking To clean vegetables for cooking Methods of cooking Time required for cooking various vegetables Irish potato, description of The chemistry of cooking Digestibility ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... in the little inn-parlour that smelt of honeysuckle and stale tobacco, and looked across the village street. It looked even narrower than in the old days, and the pond on the green had shrunk to a mere dark puddle. The old grey church on the hill looked like a child's toy, and the quiet that brooded everywhere was the quiet of stagnation. An ancient dog ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... 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 nothing of it, the Sheriff seemingly absorbed in contemplating the long ash at the end ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... Street, filled at this time of the year principally by Americans, and he dined alone there—dined well, and smoked a long cigar. Then he went for a walk. London at the beginning of August was not empty, but stale, crowded, untidy, hot—unlike itself. He tried not to think of the garden of the Green Gate. Suddenly, with a stab, he imagined Harry and Valentia; probably now he was telling her that the engagement was ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... Rawheads? And if Lady Ogreham happens to die—I won't say to go the way of all flesh, that is too revolting—I say if Ogreham is a widower, do you aver, on your conscience and honor, that mothers will not be found to offer their young girls to supply the lamented lady's place? How stale this misanthropy is! Something must have disagreed with this cynic. Yes, my good woman. I dare say you would like to call another subject. Yes, my fine fellow; ogre at home, supple as a dancing-master abroad, and shaking in thy pumps, and wearing a horrible grin of ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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 ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... thee there; to see thee pass thy punto, thy stock, thy reverse, thy distance, thy montant. Is he dead, my Ethiopian? is he dead, my Francisco? 25 ha, bully! What says my AEsculapius? my Galen? my heart of elder? ha! is he dead, bully-stale? is he dead? ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... Then came the sound as of harder ground and a stop— undertones, gruff and manly, could be heard, the peculiar noise of horses' drinking; and her captor came up this time on foot, saying, "Plaguy little to be had in this accursed hole; 'tis but the choice between stale beer and ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... convince them that the Holy Scriptures can not be understood except through grammatical rules and an exact science of vowel-points. No exposition is so absurd but that they defend and polish it with their stale grammatical rules. ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... serenely beautiful, how eloquent of peace and benediction, the scene that met him as he crossed the threshold of the great quadrangle! Some thousands of times his eyes had rested on it, yet how could it ever stale? ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... old favourites. They have been used so often. They have been worn in our service. No matter how well we know the contents, we turn to them again and again; there is a very joy in knowing what to expect. Time does not age nor custom stale the ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... 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 ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... that is filled with negative, discordant or inharmonious thoughts, I am separating myself from the full expression of the Divine within me. I am the bucket of water going stale on a human island; but, when I make my spirit at one with the Father by harmonious thinking, by love, kindness, good will, fellowship and co-operation, I am not only maintaining all of my original properties, ...
— The Silence • David V. Bush
... 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, sweeps of ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... oats. There was a large amount of matted mycelium, and this when given to other horses for experiment, killed them within thirty-six hours." The writer has himself seen seven hogs die within a few days while being fed on mouldy corn. Flour which has become stale may produce similar injurious effects, although most of the germs are destroyed in the process of baking. It is quite probable, however, that a poisonous substance is generated by the mould fungus, which cannot be ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various
... room of the cabin was littered up with a variety of things, the wings of birds, feathers of chickens, shells of eggs, bones, bits of tree branches, an old iron chain, a tiny square looking-glass, badly cracked, some stale bread and cake, cores of apples and pears, and a ...
— Out with Gun and Camera • Ralph Bonehill
... the packers enforced, there were some jobs that it only paid to do once in a long time, and among these was the cleaning out of the waste barrels. Every spring they did it; and in the barrels would be dirt and rust and old nails and stale water—and cartload after cartload of it would be taken up and dumped into the hoppers with fresh meat, and sent out to the public's breakfast. Some of it they would make into "smoked" sausage—but as the smoking took time, and was therefore expensive, they would call upon ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... and stale, but Phineas was not in the mood to be particular. He ate like one famished, and drained the ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - or, Jacob Marlowe's Secret • Horatio Alger
... Fanny, King, Ratke—doubtful, he may go—Emma, Mary, Belle; weapons: eight revolvers and a shot gun, and swords galore; but we're pretty far gone when we come to the swords. It has been rather a lark arranging; but I find it a bore to write, and I doubt it will be cruel stale to read about, when all's over and done, as it will be ere this goes, I fancy: far more ere ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... stale, flat and unprofitable when she alighted at Riverton station in the dusk of the next evening. She was not expected until a later train and there was no one to meet her. She walked drearily through the streets to her boarding ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... hazer mejor vida, zimulando por venture algunos mas la virtud, que exercitando la." (Cosas Memorables, fol. 182.) "L'hypocrisie est l'hommage que le vice rend a la vertu." The maxim is now somewhat stale, like most others of its ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... think'st thou, 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, ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... gildings, wax flowers, and indescribable mantel-piece atrocities, that there is not a simple or restful corner anywhere. Yet I find myself touched by its very hideousness, when I think that it probably looked even so, smelt even so stale and sweet, in the days of my dear father's boyhood. There is a picture in the large drawing-room that gives me infinite pleasure. It is a portrait of my own grandmother with papa in a white frock on her knees, and my poor ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... the bit of bacon and stale bread with which each plate had been served. There were excitement and hilarious good-humor, as though the flood had come for their especial benefit to give them an experience new and unusual. A bit of bacon and stale bread! One could get along very well for a few hours on that. ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... was old and stale, it was to be taken away, and new and warm put in its place, to show that God has but little delight in the service of his own people when their duties grow stale and mouldy. Therefore he removed ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... thing, no doubt, for the man to go out to his work and to his play, while the wife attends to her social and domestic duties. The evening brings reunion with new impressions and new interests to discuss. Such a life with its brief restorative separations prevents love growing stale, and soothes the irritation of nerves which, by the strain of petty repetitions, are exasperated sometimes into blasphemy of the heart's true creed. But the Barrington menage was an unusual one. By adopting a life of travel, they had ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... in some degree have felt it a charm there that we were not, under his rule, inordinately prepared for "business," but were on the contrary to remember that the taste of Cornelius Nepos in the air, even rather stale though it may have been, had lacked the black bitterness marking our next ordeal and that I conceive to have proceeded from some rank predominance of the theory and practice of book-keeping. It had consorted with this that we found ourselves, by I know not what inconsequence, ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... taste than a bottle of beer and hard-boiled eggs at The Nimble Rabbit. Heaven knows I trust you will be happy, but I cannot persuade myself that this Pomponnet shares your ambitions; with his slum and his stale ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... castell, which they besieged till the Danes within it gaue hostages, and couenanted to depart out of the kings land. The king caused the coasts about Seuerne to be watched, that they should not breake into his countrie: but yet they stale twise into the borders: neuerthelesse they were chased and slaine as manie as could not swim, and so get to [Sidenote: The Ile of Stepen. Deomedun.] their ships. Then they remained in the Ile of Stepen, in great ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (6 of 8) - The Sixt Booke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... but a 'spirit of youth in everything,' an irrational, casuistical, 'matter-of-lie' persistence in the face of all logic, experience, and sober judgment; an upsetting of truth grown tedious and custom gone stale. And for a truth of the letter it substituted a new, valiant truth of the spirit; for dead things, living ideas; and gave birth to the most religious sentiment of which ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... limits of the little Canton. As to matters of faith the struggle was yet going on in his own bosom. Here, on the one hand, stood the Church, to whose priesthood he had been consecrated, with her stiff, unbending dogmas, and her stale, lifeless forms, yet esteemed holy, to touch which was regarded as an unpardonable crime in the individual; and there, on the other, eternal truth, superior to the narrow restrictions of human power, raised above decretals ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... live in were now vying with one another to live furthest from a station, to have no chimneys visible on the most distant horizon, to depend on tradesmen who only called once a week from cities so distant that fresh-baked loaves grew stale before delivery. "Rival ruralists would quarrel about which had the most completely inconvenient postal service; and there were many jealous heartburnings if one friend found out any uncomfortable situation which the other ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... that is, it makes the familiar thing and round seem and feel common. It's the unhallowed and unhallowing touch of the selfish, of sin, that makes things seem common, in the sense of not being holy and sweet and pure and refreshing. Sin makes things grow stale to you. Selfishness affects your eye, the way things look to you. God's presence recognized keeps things fresh. His touch upon us, ever afresh, makes us fresh. Everything we touch and see is touched by a God-freshened hand, and seen through a ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... 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
... I false? thy conscience witness, Iachimo, Thou didst accuse him of incontinency, Thou then look'dst like a villain: now methinks, Thy favour's good enough. Some Jay of Italy, Whose mother was her painting, hath betray'd him: Poor I am stale, a garment out of fashion, And for I am richer than to hang by th' walls, I must be ript; to pieces with me. Oh, Men's vows are women's traitors. All good seeming By thy revolt, oh husband, shall be thought Put on for villainy: not born ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... matters, that the pupils are made to memorize, take up most of their time and engage their most precious brain-power; whereupon, at the University, the identical process is carried on further. They are there taught a mass of antiquated, stale, superfluous lore, along with comparatively little that is valuable. The lectures, once written, are reeled off by most of the professors year after year, course after course, the interlarded witticisms included. The high ministry of education becomes with many, ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... before 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, ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... been told how great ye be. I'm a-goin' fer to tell ye the truth. 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 Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... waiter was obliged to leave Ferdinand, but he proved his confidence in that gentleman's fortunes by his continual civility, and in the course of the day brought him a stale newspaper. It seemed to Ferdinand that the day would never close. The waiter pestered him about dinner, eulogising the cook, and assuring him that his master was famous for champagne. Although he had no appetite, Ferdinand ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... 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. ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... that, by this time, we had done with that stale, second-hand, one-sided, and misunderstood saying of Raffaelle's; or that at least, in these days of purer Christian light, men might have begun to get some insight into the meaning of it: Raffaelle was a painter of humanity, and assuredly there is something the matter ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... of stale beer from empty kegs piled against the walls mingled with that damp smell peculiar to underground places. Cobwebs tickled their faces as they walked through the seldom used path between the kegs and packing boxes. The small arc of light from the electric torch danced ahead ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... other 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 ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... the historical facts are alluded to in English, unless by Dr. Moore in his View of Italy[368]. His account is false and flippant, full of stale jests about old men and young wives, and wondering at so great an effect from so slight a cause. How so acute and severe an observer of mankind as the author of Zeluco could wonder at this is inconceivable. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... withdrawal to a depth, in places, of 40 kilometres, restored the principle of manoeuvre to armies which had fronted one another for two years in positions hitherto justifying the description of stale-mate. Strong moral and political effects accompanied. And this manoeuvre, though carried out upon a part only of the entire battle front, infused a sense of change and movement into the most static portions ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... the mercantile world, and for many days I had heard nothing spoken of but the vast losses which houses and individuals of high character and standing had incurred, and the bankruptcy with which the community had become suddenly threatened. The subject had grown stale and wearisome to me. It had little interest, in fact, for one whose humble salary of one hundred and fifty pounds per annum depended so little upon the great fluctuations of commerce, and I accordingly disposed myself for sleep as soon as the words bills, money, and bankruptcy, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... ramblings Rogron picked up various bits of information about Provins, its inhabitants, their marriages, together with stale political news; all of which he narrated to his sister. Scores of times in his walks he would stop and say,—often to the same person on the same day,—"Well, what's the news?" When he reached home he would fling himself on the sofa like a man exhausted with labor, whereas he was only worn ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... make its appearance than a number of critical labels were fixed on it: the revolt against the village, the espousal of sexual freedom, the deepening of American realism. Such tags may once have had their point, but by now they seem dated and stale. The revolt against the village (about which Anderson was always ambivalent) has faded into history. The espousal of sexual freedom would soon be exceeded in boldness by other writers. And as for the effort to place Winesburg, Ohio ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... going to weary you by indulging in the stale old diatribes against the publisher. For, to speak seriously the honest truth, I think they are in the main a very much abused race. Thackeray put the matter with a good deal of common-sense, in that scene in Pendennis where Pen and Warrington walk home together from ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... 'a b, abs,' jest like the old days. Dear! Dear! But the teacher in those days was ez old and grizzled ez I be—and some o' the scholars—no offense to you, Mr. Brooks—was older and bigger nor you. But times is changed: yet look, Almiry, if thar ain't a hunk o' stale gingerbread in that desk jest as it uster be! Lord! how it all comes back! Ez I was sayin' only t'other day, we can't be too grateful to our parents for givin' us an eddication in our youth;" and Mr. Hoover, with the air of recalling an alma mater of sequestered gloom and cloistered erudition, gazed ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... applied to Greene, in his "Four Letters and Certain Sonnets, 1592," the year when Nash's "Summer's Last Will and Testament" was performed: "They wrong him much with their epitaphs and solemn devices, that entitle him not at the least the second Toy of London, the stale ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... gravity of the middle classes, or into the noisy, empty mirth of the lower. The man of sense and feeling, wherever he goes, will find himself in a minority, in which few will speak his language or comprehend his ideas. He will seldom return to his home without a weary sense of the "stale, flat, and unprofitable" nothings he has been compelled to entertain in his intercourse with the world,—without the recollection of some outrage on his independence, some dogmatism that he dared not question, some impertinence that he ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... up the heat does not rise above 75 deg. or 80 deg.. In such a case if the manure is otherwise in good condition and fresh, it is well enough and a good crop may be expected. But if the manure, to begin with, had been a little stale, rotten and inert, I certainly would not hesitate to at once break up the bed, add some fresh horse droppings to it, mix thoroughly, then make it up again. Or a fair heat may be started in such a stale bed by sprinkling it over rather freely with urine from the barnyard, ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... handwriting, but in these days of the typewriter such a thing 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
... necessary as a means of providing for physical, mental, and social wants; for the pleasure that it affords. But it is also important in its relation to work, for without it body and mind become "fagged," people grow "stale" at their work, producing power and power of service ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... blamed independent, anyhow." I suspect I must have been a rather unlovely customer, take it all together. Still, every once in a while it boils up in me yet against the discretion that has come with the years, and I want to slam in after the old fashion. Seems to me we are in danger of growing stale with all our soft ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... live on yesterday's manna; we can gather it fresh to-day. Compassion becomes stale when it becomes thoughtless. It is new thought that keeps our pity strong. If our perception of need can remain vivid, as vivid as though we had never seen it before, our sympathies will never fail. The fresh eye insures the sensitive heart. And our God's compassions ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... made a halt, under the lee of a sheltering mountain, for rest and refreshment. And, sitting down on a fallen tree, from whose barkless trunk they brushed off the snow, they took out and commenced chewing their stale and frozen bread, with a few small pieces of duck-meat, remaining from their breakfast, and comprising the last of their provisions. The animal heat, produced by their great and continued exertions in travelling, had thus far prevented them, from suffering much from the cold, or perceiving ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... decidedly an ass. His jokes strike you as funny at first; but there's nothing in him, he's a mere hawker of stale puns; there's nothing but selfishness under his jesting exterior. I have no belief in him. Yet he is an old school friend; the only one of my twenty-eight classmates whose acquaintance I have kept up. Four are dead, twenty-three others are scattered about in obscure country places; lost for want ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... will he come back again? Will his proud spirit brook an uncertainty? But, 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 opportunity ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.
... labors of rural life: but how changed did all at first appear! It seemed as if scales had fallen off their eyes, showing coarseness and deformity, where previously none had appeared. They had tasted the rapture of a more beautiful life; and now the ordinary toils of humanity appeared "stale, flat, and unprofitable," and common men and women tedious, rude, and mean. But the brave knight struggled against this feeling. "Shall we be so ungrateful, because a glimpse of the earthly paradise has been vouchsafed us, as ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... spoiled. Our Kipling winter was a failure. We read a play or two, with Sperry's wife reading the heroine, and the rest of us taking other parts. She has a lovely voice, has Mrs. Sperry. But it was all stale and unprofitable, after the Wells affair. With Herbert on a lecture tour on spirit realism, and Mrs. Dane at a sanatorium for the winter, we have now given it up, and my wife and I spend ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Caviare. It needs all the violence of the fresh, strong, monsoon winds to even partially purge these villages of the rank odours which cling to them at the end of the fishing season; and when all has been done, the saltness of the sea air, the brackish water of the wells, and the faint stale smells emitted by the nets and fishing tackle still tell unmistakable tales of the one trade in which every member of these communities is more ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... look at Richard before she went, for in externals she forced herself to be loyal to Roger. When she got into the house she would linger about the rooms at factitious operations, pouring out of the flower-glasses water that was not stale, or putting on the kettle far too soon, until she heard Richard coming to look for her, lightfootedly but violently, banging doors behind him, knocking into furniture. He would halt at the door ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... eating hunches of stale bread and knocking the necks from wine bottles with their bayonets. One lumpish fellow came to the door and offered me part of a sausage which he was devouring, a kindly act that touched me, and I wondered whether the other prisoners might find ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... Teian Muse" Ruled us as tyrants absolute; Now even pedagogues refuse To stodge us with such stale old fruit. Why should the STANLEY-dowered West Make the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 5, 1891 • Various
... boy was howling, and holding one hand under his arm, while he danced a hornpipe and protested, that, if I'd save him this time, he'd "niver stale another cint's worth as long as ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... continually stirred to fresh vigour by the influence of Savonarola. In spite of the wearisome visions and allegories from which she recoiled in disgust when they came as stale repetitions from other lips than his, her strong affinity for his passionate sympathy and the splendour of his aims had lost none of its power. His burning indignation against the abuses and oppression that made the daily story of the ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... the judge. It is this which has blighted the countries of the East as much as cruel laws or despotic executives. Thus the legislature has seen fit in certain cases to assign a limit to the period within which actions shall be brought; in order to urge men to vigilance, and to prevent stale claims from being suddenly revived against men whose vouchers are destroyed or whose witnesses are dead. It is true, in foro conscientiae, a defendant, who knows that he honestly owes the debt sued ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... executed their prisoners without mercy or favour.] where they cut each other's throats for the chance of finding twelve pennies Scots on the person of the slain. Marry, my lord, to make amends, they will eat mouldy victuals, and drink stale ale, as if their bellies were puncheons.—But the dinner-bell is going to sound— hark, it is clearing its rusty throat, with a preliminary jowl. That is another clamorous relic of antiquity, that, were I master, should soon be at the bottom of the Thames. How the foul fiend can it interest the peasants ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... pig's head into halves, sprinkle them with pepper and salt, and lay them with the rind part uppermost upon a bed of sliced onions in a baking dish. Next bruise eight ounces of stale bread-crumb, and mix it with four ounces of chopped suet, twelve sage leaves chopped fine, pepper and salt to season, and sprinkle this seasoning all over the surface of the pig's head; add one ...
— A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes • Charles Elme Francatelli
... yellow wall a lizard ran for shelter, at his elbow a macaw compassing the circle of its tin prison muttered dreadful oaths. Outside, as the washerwomen beat their linen clubs upon the flat rocks of the river, the hot, stale air was spanked with sharp reports. In Camaguay theirs was the only industry, the only sign of cleanliness; and recognizing that another shirt had been thrashed into subjection and rags, Everett winced. No less visibly did his own thoughts cause him to ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... Biblical and philological topics, and his prose work will always be respectfully regarded by the students alike of divinity and of language. But though, on these subjects, his pronouncements may in time grow stale or require correction, he will ever hold an honourable place in English literature as one of the most thoughtful and vigorous of those parson poets of whom this country has always had so large and ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... roped off for dancers; a mysterious tent with a fortune-teller inside; a lottery-stall resplendent with vases and knick-knacks, which nobody was ever known to win; in short, all kinds of attractions, stale enough, no doubt, to my companions, but sufficiently ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... worth something!" he exclaimed. "It may be stale news, and it may be something for the future, but it's worth trying. I wonder I didn't think ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... Outside these windows, Drysdale had rigged up hanging gardens, which were kept full of flowers by the first nurseryman in Oxford, all the year round; so that even on this February morning, the scent of gardenia and violets pervaded the room, and strove for mastery with the smell of stale tobacco, which hung about the curtains and sofa. There was a large glass in an oak frame over the mantelpiece, which was loaded with choice pipes and cigar cases and quaint receptacles for tobacco; and by the ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... wayside inn. A florid, overdressed man was drinking in the parlor, and I could have sworn it was at the sight of him that Raffles recoiled on the threshold, and afterwards insisted on returning to the station through the rain. He assured me, however, that the odor of stale ale had almost knocked him down. And I had to make what I could of his speculative, ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... with fire! Was it always like this when people fell in love? What a ridiculous, uncomfortable, outrageous thing it was! How destructive to common sense and sanity and everything that kept life running on reasonable lines. A poor joke at best, and oh, how stale! ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... conquests north of the Rhine. Of causes as well as of men it is true that there is a tide in their affairs which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune, but which, once missed, ebbs to defeat. Every generation has a different interest; to every era the ideals of that immediately preceding become stale and old-fashioned. The writings of every age are a polemic against those of their fathers; every dogma has its day, and after every wave of enthusiam [Transcriber's note: enthusiasm?] a reaction sets in. Thus it was that the Reformation ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... then, I will assume that those who have influenced you in the matter have not been able to make any impression upon one so well grounded as yourself in our distinctive doctrine, by the stale ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... over some length of time, as is the case with the ball player, working for six months at a stretch, his system will not stand the strain of too much training. Working solely on bone and muscle day after day, his nervous system will give way. He will grow weak, or as it is technically known, "go stale." This over-training is a mistake oftenest made by the young and highly ambitious player, though doubtless many of the instances of "loss of speed" by pitchers and "off streaks" by older players are really attributable ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward
... employed by the artists and craftsmen of the past. Archaeology, no less than love, "adds a precious seeing to the eye"; and without that gain of mental sight, the treasures of our public collections are regarded by the general visitor as mere "curiosities"—flat and stale for the most part, ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... desires for social pleasures, whereas it will only dampen the zeal and eagerness of the first child. There is a hearty simple type of person who is naively eager and enthusiastic, full of desire, passion and enthusiasm, who finds joy and satisfaction in simple things, whose purposes do not grow stale or monotonous; there is a finicky type, easily displeased and dissatisfied, laying weight on trifles, easily made anhedonic, victims of any reduction in their own energy (which is on the whole low) or of any disagreeable event. True, these sensitive folk are creators of beauty and ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... pan or a toasting-fork," said Curtis, disinterestedly, "wouldn't it be as well to have the dough-nuts now, and leave the herrings till supper, eh, Pil? Pity for them to get stale." ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... for nearly an hour. An opera is far more real than real life to me. It seems as if stage illusion, and particularly this hardest to swallow and most conventional illusion of them all—an opera—would never stale upon me. I wish that life was an opera. I should like to live in one; but I don't know in what quarter of the globe I shall find a society so constituted. Besides, it would soon pall: imagine asking for three-kreuzer ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... take systematic exercise, and he finds that his strength increases. He takes more exercise and keeps on until he gets "stale"—that is, he becomes sore and lame. He has passed the Pivotal Point and is getting ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... than had ever before come whooping out of the inexhaustible store where they were kept for the public entertainment. Austria, and then Germany, made a not bad attempt on public attention by raking up some forgotten sensation over a stale excitement at a place called Sarajevo; but on the twenty-sixth, Ireland magnificently filled the bill again by the far more serious affair of Nationalist Volunteers landing three thousand rifles and marching with ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... servile State," and revolted with all the petulant anarchism of the literary profession against the ideal Interfering Female as typified in their heated imaginations by poor Mrs. Sidney Webb, who became the Aunt Sally of our young artists in stale anti-bureaucratic invective; and, above all, the mulishly silent refusal of our governing classes to see why the unemployed should not be simply left to starve, as they had always been (the Poor Law being worse than useless for so large a purpose), nothing was done; ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... you give your mind this needless care, And for yourself, and me, new pains prepare? I ne'er approved this passion in excess: If you would show your love, distrust me less. I hate to be pursued from place to place; Meet, at each turn, a stale domestic face. The approach of jealousy love cannot bear; He's wild, and soon on wing, if ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... kingship! The Lord would rather wash the feet of his weary brothers, than be the one only perfect monarch that ever ruled in the world. It was empire he rejected when he ordered Satan behind him like a dog to his heel. Government, I repeat, was to him flat, stale, unprofitable. ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... quickly does this bourgeois phrase call up before us a hodgepodge room, an atmosphere of stale tobacco smoke, a table covered with pipes, books and magazines, littered with tobacco, walls burdened with hideous prints, a mantel adorned with objects dear to their owner from their associations, to the visitor hideous. The alien mind which had conceived ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... be sold. Each cheese weighs several hundred pounds, is a foot 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
... "We can take the broken buns and feed them to Skyrocket and Top, and Mr. Nip and Jack will eat them, too," he said to his father. "It will be just as good as buying stale bread for the monkey and the parrot, Daddy. I guess ...
— The Curlytops and Their Pets - or Uncle Toby's Strange Collection • Howard R. Garis
... cuffs to adjust, and there was sometimes a ten or fifteen-minute delay before the bills for the day began to come up. But the afternoons knew no such delays, the girls were tired, the air in the office stale. Every girl, consciously or not, sighed as she took her seat ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... described for the first time in his life by a perfect stranger! This thing happened to me at Bristol, some time ago, in the way I am about to relate. I slept at a Commercial Hotel, and early next morning was joined in the big empty coffee-room, smelling of stale tobacco, by an intensely respectable- looking old gentleman, whose hair was of silvery whiteness, and who wore gold-rimmed spectacles and a heavy gold watch-chain with many seals attached thereto; whose linen was of the finest, and whose outer ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... increase, or positive variation. This is seen in the response of the retina to light. Again, a tissue which normally gives a negative variation may undergo molecular changes, after which it gives a positive variation. Thus Dr. Waller finds that whereas fresh nerve always gives negative variation, stale nerve sometimes gives positive; and that retina, which when fresh gives positive, when stale, ...
— Response in the Living and Non-Living • Jagadis Chunder Bose
... reflection, I followed him down the glittering vestibule, and into a palatial dining-hall. The hour was something between one and two o'clock, and a minute before I had been thoughtfully weighing the relative merits of an immediate allowance of sausages and mashed potatoes for fivepence, or a couple of stale buns for one penny, to be followed at nightfall by a real banquet—seven-pennyworth of honest beef and vegetables. Now, with a trifle over four shillings in my pocket, I was, to outward seeming, carelessly scanning a menu, ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... games for three days, and the players were getting a bit "stale" with nothing to do. Then the sun came out, the grounds dried up and the series was resumed. But the ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... narrow income put the longed-for life in Paris quite out of the question, she looked about her at the people with whom her life must be spent, and shuddered at her loneliness. There was not a single man who could inspire the madness to which women are prone when they despair of a life become stale and unprofitable in the present, and with no outlook for the future. She had nothing to look for, nothing to expect from chance, for there are lives in which chance plays no part. But when the Empire was in the full noonday of glory, and Napoleon was sending the flower of his ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... of European statecraft; and the defence of Christendom (p. 055) became with him, as with others, a hollow pretence, a diplomatic fiction, the infinite varieties of which age could not wither nor custom stale. Did a monarch wish for peace? Peace at once was imperative to enable Christian princes to combine against the Turk. Did he desire war? War became a disagreeable necessity to restrain the ambition ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... a lot of things. I remember forms, and gaits, and faces; and you can't disguise a person that's done me a kindness so that I won't know him thereafter wherever I find him. I know the art of searching for a trail, and I know the stale track from the fresh. I can keep a trail all by myself, with Buffalo Bill asleep in the saddle; ask him—he will tell you so. Many a time, when he has ridden all night, he has said to me at dawn, "Take the watch, Boy; if the trail freshens, ...
— A Horse's Tale • Mark Twain
... mind, overloading the stomach, the use of improper food, such as stale vegetables and meat, unripe fruits, indigestible articles, improperly prepared food, irregular meals, disorderly habits, the use of alcoholic stimulants, loss of sleep, masturbation irritability of temper, anxiety, or grief may all give rise to indigestion. If the functions performed ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... downstairs and into a snug little parlor with a roaring fire that is not altogether unacceptable this dreary evening. The smell of stale tobacco smoke that pervades it is a drawback, but, if you think of it, we can't have ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... of The Crags, the light of dawn stole in through the windows and turned the brilliant light of the lamps into a pale glow. The odor of stale flowers was all about. Mrs. Wellington, with a headache, stood in the doorway. Her husband sat in an armchair with legs outstretched, smoking about his fortieth cigar. Sara Van Valkenberg stood in the middle of ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... need not take the pains With neither beauty, youth, nor brains, For man or maid's desiring: Pert as female, fool as male, As boy too green, as girl too stale ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... of omission, the Worcestershire sauce is left out by braggarts who aver that they can take it or leave it. And, in these degenerate days, when it comes to substitutions for the original beer or stale pale ale, we find the gratings of great Cheddars wet down with mere California sherry or even ginger ale—yet so far, thank goodness, no Cokes. And there's tomato juice out of a can into the Rum Turn Tiddy, and sometimes celery soup in place of milk ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... in a sudden fit of depression, pondering the bitterness of such survivals. There was nothing, it seemed, that grew stale so ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald |
