"Stale" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 washing, I ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... 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 ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... damask was lit both by rose silk-shaded candles and by the radiance of a suspended alabaster bowl. August Turnbull sat at the head of a table laden with silver and crystal and flowers. There were individual pepper mills—he detested adulterated or stale spices— carved goblets for water, cocktail glasses with enameled roosters, ruby goblets like blown flowers and little gilt-speckled liqueur glasses; there were knives with steel blades, knives all of silver, and gold fruit knives; there were slim oyster ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... mostly on top of tall trees or the top of some old ruined farmhouse. From these "pozzies" (positions) a good deal of the country behind the enemy lines could be seen, and the observers, who were given frequent reliefs so that they would not become stale, had their eyes glued to it through a telescope. Every single thing that happened was written down, including the velocity and direction of the wind; the information from all these and other sources being summarized by myself into a daily ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... opinion prevails that the juice has ages ago been pressed out of the free-will controversy, and that no new champion can do more than warm up stale arguments which every one has heard. This is a radical mistake. I know of no subject less worn out, or in which inventive genius has a better chance of breaking open new ground,—not, perhaps, of ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... feel in 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 Quest • Pio Baroja
... merely here and there a half-humorous, but unsuccessful attempt to entangle him in his talk. The meeting agreed with all that had been said regarding the antiquity of the earth and of its life. They had, indeed, known it all long ago, and they rallied the lecturer for coming amongst them with so stale a story. It was quite plain that this large body of clergymen, who were, I should say, to be ranked amongst the finest samples of their class, had entirely given up the ancient landmarks, and transported the conception of life's origin to ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... soap was one requiring the closest attention and many an hour of drudgery. The supplying of the household with its winter stock of candles was a harsh but inevitable duty in the autumn, and the lugging about of immense kettles, the smell of tallow, deer suet, bear's grease, and stale pot-liquor, and the constant demands of the great fireplace must have made the candle season a period of terror and loathing to many a burdened wife and mother. Then, too, the constant care of the wood ashes and hunks of fat and ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... Old Vancouver did the same thing long ago, and no doubt found these shores exactly as we find them to-day. We entered a shallow creek at the top of the cove; landed on a dreary point redolent of stale fish, and the beach literally alive and creeping with small worms above half an inch in length. A solitary squaw was splitting salmon for drying. She remained absorbed in her work while we gathered about and regarded her with impudent ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... wings, no man can tell.[101] Douglas made the stronger impression, though Whigs professed entire satisfaction with the performance of their protagonist. There were some in the audience who took exception to Lincoln's stale anecdotes, and who thought ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... go and ryde and runne and flie thether, they make great hast to cum to her; they make great sute to serve her: yea, I could point out some with my finger that never had gone out of England, but onlie to serve Circes in Italie. Vanitie and vice and any licence to ill living in England was counted stale and rude unto them."[108] ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... for some days past he had practised with the key of the schoolroom door; he did not believe in trusting too much to luck and accident. The key turned stiffly in the lock, but it turned. The door opened, and Nicholas was in an unknown land, compared with which the gooseberry garden was a stale delight, ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... last extremity. He drank the water from the sheet as we caught it (we holding it above him as he lay so as to let it run into his mouth), for we had now nothing left capable of holding water, unless we had chosen to empty out our wine from the carboy, or the stale water from the jug. Either of these expedients would have been resorted to had the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... keep you from the curious and shy Eye of the Game; having your Net so ready that the least pull may do your work, strew'd over with Grass as it lies to hide it: A live Hern, or some other Fowl lately taken, according to what you seek for, will be very requisite for a Stale. And you will have sport from the Dawning, till the Sun is about an hour high; but no longer; and from Sun-set till Twilight; ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... noticed some curious machinery, and were looking at it rather inquisitively when a young lad came up out of the bakery in the cellar, and, in answer to our inquiries, said in a matter-of-course way that it was a mill for grinding old bread and stale crackers into flour, which was again baked into a cheaper class of bread. This grade of flour may make a very nourishing food, but the incident left a most unpleasant ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... both sides of a crown-piece," 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. ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... useless matter is pounded into the pupils. These 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, an ordinary trade; nor ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... town was a morose, surly, and ill-natured man. He sent them only a few bananas, and a calabash of eggs, which were all stale and unfit to be eaten, so that some of their people were obliged to go supperless to bed. The governor ascribed the badness of his fare to extreme poverty, yet his vanity exacted from their Jenna messengers the most abject method of salutation, with which they were acquainted. These men walked ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... Paix is more to your 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
... the most obvious ways to cut down crashes was by making sure that the pilot was in good condition physically. Flight surgeons assigned to every camp were detailed to make a study of the very delicate relationship between a sick and stale pilot and the crash. It was discovered, for instance, that a man who went up not in the best condition multiplied by many times the ordinary hazards in the air. It became the duty of these surgeons to conduct recreation and ...
— Opportunities in Aviation • Arthur Sweetser
... 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 law, which in all its ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... to stay at the hotel, much to Mother's disgust. I'm doing a little medical inspection among Father's poor people, though. That whiles away a few hours every day, and of course, every time I go to the hospital the doctors there tell me about any interesting new cases, so I'm not 'going stale' entirely." ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith
... plura meant. He snorted. "Hoo! Stale! It means, what are you crying about? naturally. Who said it? That letter? Who's it ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... winter, he occupied a couch in the opposite corner. A rude cupboard had been built against the logs next to the fireplace. It contained supplies and utensils. Toward the center, somewhat closer to the door, stood a crude table and two benches. The cabin was dark and smelled of smoke, of the stale odors of past cooked meals, of the mustiness of dry, rotting timber. Streaks of light showed through the roof where the rough-hewn shingles had split or weathered. A strip of bacon hung upon one side of the cupboard, and upon ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... room was all there was of it, and that was smoky and dirty, the air thick with the smells of stale cooking and musty fur garments. Dogs were lying about, and there was a goat-pen in the corner; but a fire roared in the centre, a ring of steaming hot drinks stood around it, and behind them sat a circle of jovial-hearted sportsmen, who seemed to ask no greater pleasure ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... 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
... to see no more of my neighbour, but in he came as I was sitting at breakfast, smelling like a bar-parlour, with stale ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... glances across them, are like a gay southern meadow in June, variegated and brilliant, sweet and pensive and rather luxuriant, and here and there even a little rank. Yet they are swept by the air and the light and the rain of Nature, and so their seduction never grew stale. During sixteen centuries, while the world was spiritually revolutionised again and yet again, the influence of Ovid never failed; it entered even the unlikeliest places. Homer might be an obscure forgotten bard and Virgil become a fantastic magician, ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... themselves, ridiculing that young man! For five good minutes they stood there, shouting ribaldry at him, deriding him, mocking him, jeering at him. They peppered him with stale jokes, they even made a few new ones and threw at him. They hurled at him all the private family jokes belonging to our set, and which must have been perfectly unintelligible to him. And then, unable to stand their brutal jibes any longer, ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... northern part of this country. Without going into detail it seems to me that we have achieved the object of our association, at least to the extent of making practical use of our accumulated knowledge. Public interest has been aroused, which may become stale. Articles have appeared in magazines and newspapers from time to time on subjects relating to nut culture. We are also on a continual lookout for new varieties, and those of our members skilled in the art are constantly improving ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... hooks and lines to be served to all the ship's company, that they might catch fish for themselves; but at the same time I also ordered that no man should keep his fish more than four-and-twenty hours before it was eaten, for I had observed that stale, and even dried fish, had made the people sickly, and tainted the air ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... tricky," said Kerry, "only you've got to think of hearses and stale milk when you read it. That isn't as pash as some ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... at the story at first, but when we came across it about every other week, it began to get rather stale. It was one of those canards that stick, and I shall be spoken of always as the man who forgot his wife within an hour ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... distinguished foreigner to dinner. That people should laugh over the same sort of jests, and have many a story of "grouse in the gun-room," many an old joke between them which time cannot wither nor custom stale, is a better preparation for life, by your leave, than many other things higher and better sounding in the world's ears. You could read Kant by yourself, if you wanted; but you must share a joke with some one else. You can forgive ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... made all things new. Through eternity, new joys, new knowledge, new progress, new likeness, new service will be ours— and not one leaf shall ever wither in the amaranthine crown, nor 'the cup of blessing' ever become empty or flat and stale. Eternity will be but a continual renewal and a progressive increase of ever fresh and ever familiar treasures. The new and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... 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 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... mysterious mortification an instance of that strain of disillusionment which runs like a dark thread through the brilliant texture of the literature of the Grand Siecle. Racine had known to the full the uses of this world, and he had found them flat, stale, and unprofitable; he had found that even the triumphs of his art were all compact of worldliness; and he had turned away, in an agony of renunciation, to lose himself in the ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... in town, as the cattleman learned at Monte Joe's dance-hall, piled high with tables and chairs and reeking with the stench, left over from the previous night, of whiskey fumes and stale tobacco smoke. Monte Joe professed not to know where the puncher had gone, but as Trowbridge pressed him for information the voice of a woman, as shrill as the squawk of a parrot, floated down from ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... little man, and his thin hands shook as he held them out over the stove, and nodded at Roscoe. The bearded man had opened his can, and approached the stove with a pan of water, coming in beside Roscoe without noticing him. He brought with him a foul odour of stale tobacco smoke and whisky. After he had put his water over the fire he turned to one of the bunks and with half a dozen coarse epithets roused Thompson, who sat up stupidly, still half drunk. Henry had gone to a small table, and Scotty followed him with the ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... A cake of dry stale bread will hunger out to flight: Why then are grief and care so heavy on my spright? Death is, indeed, most just, since, with an equal hand, Khalif and beggar-wretch, impartial, it ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... 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 their key to life. They may be necessary—as ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... fellows and where the net was; the black fellows closing in behind, followed quickly. Poor Noorunglely floundered into the net, up rushed a black fellow and, seizing her, wrung her neck. Having secured her, they would next secure her eggs; that they might be a trifle stale was a matter ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... protecting nook where one could escape them and sit in any degree of comfort. The cabin was close and stuffy, and its atmosphere was heavy with that indescribable odor that rises from the bowels of old ships. The smoking room, bare and dismal and reeking with stale tobacco smoke, was deserted, save when the mail boat doctor and Hugh Wise were occasionally discovered there in ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace
... a bowl of nice-looking eggs in the pantry and a piece of home-cured bacon neatly sewed into a white muslin bag and partly sliced. This, with slices of golden brown toast—the bread box held only half a loaf of decidedly stale bread—solved her breakfast menu. There were two pans of milk standing on the table, thick with yellow cream, and Betty was just wondering if Bob had milked and when, for the cream could not have risen under two or three hours' time, when the boy came whistling cheerfully ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... all tune, to the pain and astonishment of Pen, who thought that she was as beautiful as an angel, and that she sang like a nightingale; and when Hoppus came on as Sir Harcourt Featherby, the young man of the piece, the gentlemen in the box declared that Hoppus was getting too stale, and Tiptoff was for flinging Miss Blenkinsop's bouquet ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... becoming more crowded; while at the two patent theatres "a beggarly account of empty boxes," and an equally beggarly account of flat, stale, and unprofitable performances, greets me whenever I am rash enough to take my post of observation. Lady Romford has a private box, which she visits only in preference to staying at a still duller home, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 531, Saturday, January 28, 1832. • Various
... by a single squadron of the 17th Lancers. Upon this the Boers made a sudden and very fierce attack, their approach being facilitated partly by the mist and partly by the use of khaki, a trick which seems never to have grown too stale for successful use. The result was that they were able to ride up to the British camp before any preparations had been made for resistance, and to shoot down a number of the Lancers before they could reach their horses. So terrible was the fire that the single squadron lost ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... new rooms on Twenty-Eighth Street, there was an odor of stale tobacco, permeating the confusion created by a careless person. Dresser had been occupying them lately. He had found Sam Dresser, whom he had known as a student in Europe, wandering almost penniless down State Street, and had ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... the strong tea, and did her best to relish the little blocks of cake, though they were slightly stale; and not the less did she enjoy them that she settled in her private mind to propose buttered toast next time, and to prepare it herself. She listened and replied to Miss Sandys' conversation, which did not now run so much on school incidents as on affairs in general. Miss Sandys' ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... 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 explain the ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... chaps say it's rather stale to be in the school. I don't see why your fellows should be looked down on, ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outr results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable." ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... shuffled after her, her slippers, evidently down at the heel, pattering on the worn oil-cloth in the entry as she shambled toward the front door. Hope opened it. The morning was pleasant, though cool, and the air refreshing after the odor of mingled grease and stale ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... the man in his present stale of mind. He recognizes Calypso as beautiful, deathless, ever young; still he must have something more than sensuous life and beauty; though it last forever, it can never satisfy. Not to be compared with ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... I didn't let on. A stale actor in a play couldn't have pulled himself together in a more unconcerned-I-do-this-every-night fashion than I signed for the note, tipped the poor little ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... some of the zest out of what had seemed, once Lieutenant Ernst's loan had saved him from his most pressing worry, likely to be a bully adventure. Now it seemed rather flat and stale. But that was partly because having tramped all night, he was really beginning to be tired. So he went on to the village, and there he found a little inn, where he got a good breakfast and a bed, in which, as soon as he had eaten his ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine
... she didn't have some made with stale bread, that she could let me have for five cents, but she said they didn't sell stale sandwiches. She seemed real put-out about it, too. She needn't have. Stale bread's better for you than ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... It was a perfect mixture of flavors; oilskins, stale tobacco-smoke, brine, burned grease, tar, and, as a background, fish. His ears almost immediately detected water noises running close by, and he could feel the pull of stout oak timber that formed the inner ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... glowing with 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
... and a crowd of more than fifty half-drunken men and women, smoking and drinking stale beer, sat at the little tables which were placed against the walls. The centre of the room was kept clear for the dancers. He was amazed to find among them a lot of boys and girls not out of their teens. Many of the dark-visaged brutes who sat at the tables watching the dancers were beyond a doubt ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... comes to consciousness Of faint stale smells of beer From the sawdust-trampled street With all its muddy feet that press To early coffee-stands. With the other masquerades That time resumes, One thinks of all the hands That are raising dingy shades In a ...
— Prufrock and Other Observations • T. S. Eliot
... afterwards. The truth was perhaps that Dr. Spencer's visit was to every one more of an excitement and amusement than it was to Ethel. Not that she did not like him extremely, but after such a week as she had been spending, the home-world seemed rather stale and unprofitable. ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... latter just getting out of bed. I shall always think of him in his proletarian grey woollen underdrawers and undershirt. In which he had evidently slept. He had the bed-habits of the masses. And the room was stale with bad air; like the masses, he, too, ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... stale in London without Barty that I became a quite exemplary young man when I woke up from that long nap on the floor of my laboratory in Barge Yard, Bucklersbury; a reformed character: from sheer grief, I ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... sweepers employed a boy to climb up the inside of the chimneys and sweep the parts that could not be reached with their brush from below, the method of screwing one stale to the end of another and reaching the top in that way being then unknown. These boys were often cruelly treated, and had even been known to be suffocated in the chimney. The nature of their occupation ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... in the British camp. Vaudreuil could not keep any news to himself. But he tried to keep news from Montcalm and to carry out thwarting plans of his own. Wolfe had no drawbacks like this. News from his camp was always stale, because the fleet was a perfect screen, and no one on the French side could tell what was going on behind it till long after the ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood
... 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 any further ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... the broad lady who paid for one seat and was compelled by Nature to use three, "you know there's only five in our family, and so I take just five slices of stale bread and have a bowl of water ready in which I've dropped a pinch of salt. Then I take a piece of butter about the size of a walnut, and thoroughly grease the bottom of a frying-pan; then beat five eggs ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... Sith, since, Sithen, afterwards, since, Skift, changed, Slade, valley, Slake, glen, Soil (to go to), hunting term for taking the water, Sonds, messages, Sort, company, Sperd, bolted, Spere, ask, inquire, Spered, asked, Sperhawk, sparrowhawk, Sprent, sprinkled, Stale, station, Stark, thoroughly, Stead, place, Stert, started, rose quickly, Steven, appointment,; steven ser. appointment made, Steven, voice, Stigh, path, Stilly, silently, Stint, fixed revenue, Stonied, astonished,; became confused, ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... straps and the backs of seats, clutching each other with little gusts and ripples of laughter, they filled the aisle of the crowded car with a fresh and joyous life that touched the tired woman like a breath of spring. In all this work stale, stupidly weary, world there is nothing so refreshing as the wholesome laugh of a happy, care free, young girl. The woman whose heart was heavy with knowledge of life would have liked to take them in her arms. She felt ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... advance a judgment of their own, But catch the spreading notion of the town; They reason and conclude by precedent, And own stale nonsense which they ne'er invent. Some judge of author's names, not works, and then Nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men. Of all this servile herd, the worst is he That in proud dulness joins with Quality. A constant critic at the great ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... with the same wretched pretence of exclusive favoritism? And do we not know that no warrant has ever been given to you to recite a single line before the emperor, either in or out of the arena? We are here to revel, not to listen to your stale aphorisms upon death and immortality. Ho, there, more wine! Take off these viands, which already pall ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Scotland and other countries the peasantry use a Lichen, called Lecanora tartarea to furnish a red or crimson dye. It is found abundantly on almost all rocks, and also grows on dry moors. It is collected in May and June, and steeped in stale urine for about three weeks, being kept at a moderate heat all the time. The substance having then a thick and strong texture, like bread, and being of a blueish black colour, is taken out and made into small cakes of about 3/4 lb. in weight, which are wrapped ...
— Vegetable Dyes - Being a Book of Recipes and Other Information Useful to the Dyer • Ethel M. Mairet
... that stiffened rather than relaxed his lips. Then he drew out the duplicate key he always carried, and, inserting it quietly, opened the door. A close, unpleasant smell greeted him as he entered the small passage that divided the bed and sitting rooms—a smell of whiskey mingling with the odor of stale smoke. With a quick gesture he pushed open the bedroom door; then on the threshold he paused, a look of contempt and ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... love to them," interrupted Margaret, again laughing in the gayest fashion. "Could you blame the poor unfortunates for wanting to shin up them and pick peaches and apples and everything else? The only fruit they had ever seen was stale and on city stands, and when they saw the real article it was no wonder that they wanted it. ...
— The Hilltop Boys on the River • Cyril Burleigh
... and when it has grown a little cold, add the yolk of one egg, and a few drops of lemon-juice. Sprinkle in a slice of stale bread, and enough grated cheese to flavor it strongly, and leave it to cool for two hours. Then shape into small pieces like corks, dip them into the beaten whites of your egg, and then into grated breadcrumbs. Have ready some hot fat, ...
— The Belgian Cookbook • various various
... themselves at leisure to mind him. I could observe the old Fellow was very uneasy at the Affront, and at his being obliged to repeat his Commands several times to no purpose; 'till at last one of the [Lads [2]] presented him with some stale Tea in a broken Dish, accompanied with a Plate of brown Sugar; which so raised his Indignation, that after several obliging Appellations of Dog and Rascal, he asked him aloud before the whole Company, Why he must be used with less Respect than that Fop there? pointing to ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... arm of Vere's chair, speculative yellow eye observant of his master's carving, while the Swedish Cristina served us her good food with the spice of an occasional comment on farm or neighborhood events—how perfect a beginning for the day! How stale beside our breeze-swept table was any board at which I had ever sat! I do declare that I have never seen a more winning face than the bright one of my little cousin whom her world had pronounced "plain." Vere and I basked in ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... before this black shadow of war had loomed up with its deadly menace a great party of German editors had returned our visit and once again I had listened to speeches about the blood- brotherhood of the two nations, a little bored by the stale phrases, but glad to sit between these friendly Germans whom I had met in their own country. We clinked glasses again, sang "God Save the King" and the "Wacht am Rhein," compared the character of German and English literature, of German and English ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... cat lay asleep on a chair, a dog under the table. One perceived an odor of milk, apples, smoke, that indescribable smell peculiar to old farmhouses; the odor of the earth, of the walls, of furniture, the odor of spilled stale soup, of former wash-days and of former inhabitants, the smell of animals and of human beings combined, of things and of persons, the odor of time, and of ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... we 're ca'd a wee before The stale "three score an' ten," When Joy keeks kindly at your door, Aye bid her welcome ben. About yon blissfu' bowers above Let doubtfu' mortals speir; Sae weel ken we that "heaven is love," Since ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the skillful shifting of painted masks, false-faces, continued uninterrupted its progress. A new lethargy enveloped Lee: his interest, his confidence, in what he was trying to prevent waned. What did it matter who went and who stayed? In the end it was the same, unprofitable and stale. All, probably, that his thought had accomplished was to rob his ride of its glow, make flat the taste of the whiskey and charged water he prepared. However, shortly a pervading warmth—but it was of the spirits—brought ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... frequently attempts to stale, and passes a little urine at each time; he still walks and stands with his back bound. Syr. papav. et rhamni, with tinct. ferr. mur., a large spoonful being given ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... broad expanse of white shirt front. At the other end is the so-called stage, while scattered about indiscriminately are the tables and chairs. The air is filled—yea, reeking—with the fumes of bad whiskey, stale beer, and the odor of foul smelling cheap tobacco smoke, and through all this haze the would-be "show," goes on, and the applause is manifested by whistles, cat calls, the pounding of feet on the floor and glasses on the tables. Occasionally some artist (?) will appear who does not seem to strike ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... back, through the lapse of nearly sixty years, upon that toilsome and perilous journey, notwithstanding its numerous harrowing events, memory presents it to me as an itinerary of almost continuous excitement and wholesome enjoyment; a panorama that never grows stale; many of the incidents standing out to view on recollection's landscape as clear and sharp as the things of yesterday. That which was worst seems to have softened and lapsed into the half-forgotten, while the good and happy features have grown brighter ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... been within five miles of the open Atlantic, though he had not seen it. Along the endless flat potato-fields, broken by pine-groves under whose sultry shadow negro cabins sweltered, the heat clung persistently. The show-tent was always filled with a stale scent ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... plaudits of the flower of the Stale the monarch affixed the cherished tokens to the heroes' breasts. "My Braves!" he exclaimed. "In the name of the Fatherland ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 2nd, 1914 • Various
... abandon of a man who has changed a dress-coat for a morning-gown; "Certes, thou art destined for great things; even here, where fate had seemed 'to do its worst' to thee, a little paradise opens, and what, to ordinary mortals had proved but a 'flat, stale, and most unprofitable' quarter, presents to thee all the accumulated delight of a hospitable mansion, a kind, almost friendly, host, a condescending Madame Mere, and daughters too! Ah ye Gods! But what is this;" ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... expected an affirmative reply to this question, she was doomed to disappointment. Disgusted with such paltry meanness, Clemence, who had pushed her plate away, unable to partake of the stale food, replied quietly, "I should say they ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... prevented games for three days, and the players were getting a bit "stale" with nothing to do. Then the sun came out, the grounds dried up and the series was resumed. But the Cardinals ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... Jennie Stone solemnly, "burned incense upon any and all occasions—red letter days, labor days, celebrating Columbus Day and the morning after, I presume. But we moderns burn gasoline. And, phew! I believe I should prefer the stale smoke of incense in the unventilated pyramids of Egypt to this odor of gas. O-o-o-o, Tommy, do ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... never monotonous or stale. There was always Pisah, the fish, to be caught in the many streams and the little lakes, and Sabor, with her ferocious cousins to keep one ever on the alert and give zest to every instant that one ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... at least, my troubles straight, (Let women have their boast;) Homed well with chance, and passing where The gods kept house would take a chair, Perchance at ease, with naught ado, With Jove would toss a quip or two; The nectar stale, A mug of ale On goodly ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... The lovelorn damsel reads well in erotic novels, but remember this, the men don't like stale beer." ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... fine for building; and also many cedar trees of beautiful color and strong perfume. Some Indians came alongside of us in their canoes, whom we called on board, and bought from them a very large striped bass, as large as a codfish in the Fatherland, for a loaf of stale bread worth about three stivers, Holland money, and some other fish for a little old ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... off into somewhere—one had no idea where. It was dingy, with a worn wooden floor, some heavy, plain, wooden benches lining the four sides, no pictures or ornaments of any kind. A single two-arm gas-pipe descended from the center of the ceiling. It was permeated by a peculiarly stale and pungent odor, obviously redolent of all the flotsam and jetsam of life—criminal and innocent—that had stood or sat in here from time to time, waiting patiently to learn what a deliberating fate ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... 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 then ask him how he liked the feeling. The fact that ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the book was called for; it was translated even into Japanese and Hindustani; the stagnation of scientific thought, which Buckle, only a few years before, had so deeply lamented, gave place to a widespread and fruitful activity; masses of accumulated observations, which had seemed stale and unprofitable, were made alive; facts formerly without meaning now found their interpretation. Under this new influence an army of young men took up every promising line of scientific investigation ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... travelling. I shall send you to a particular place for a particular purpose, and you will have to write about it on lines which I shall indicate. The danger of this sort of life is that of getting stale. That's why I don't want you to see too much of each other. And last of all," he said, rather gravely, "you must do what I tell you to do. There must be no mistake about that—but with all the apparent discipline of it, I believe you will ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... efficiency. But the atrophy of responsibility proved the canker at the heart of the Empire. Deprived of the stimulus that freedom and the habit of responsibility alone can give, the Roman world sank gradually into the morass of Routine. Life lost its savour and grew stale, flat and unprofitable, as in an old-style Government office. 'The intolerable sadness inseparable from such a life', says Renan, 'seemed worse than death.' And when the barbarians came and overturned the whole fabric of bureaucracy, ...
— Progress and History • Various
... Gentleman of Figure in a County would make his Family a Pattern of Sobriety, good Sense, and Breeding, and would kindly endeavour to influence the Education and growing Prospects of the younger Gentry about him, I am apt to believe it would save him a great deal of stale Beer on a publick Occasion, and render him the Leader of his Country from their Gratitude to him, instead of being a Slave to their Riots and Tumults in order to be made their Representative. The same thing might be recommended to all who have made any Progress in any Parts ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... 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 ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... shocked people and that we ought, perhaps, to give it up. I listened closely to what she had to say, and at the end remarked that it appeared to me to be quite absurd. Godfrey Webb agreed with me and said that people who were easily shocked were like women who sell stale pastry in cathedral towns; and he advised us to take no notice whatever of what any one said. We hardly knew the meaning of the word "fast" and, as my mother went to bed punctually at eleven, it was unthinkable that men and women friends should not be allowed to join us. Our bedroom had ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... ale And beer that is stale Rosa-solis and damnable hum, But we will rack In the praise of sack 'Gainst Omne quod exit ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... insidiously crept in on my brain; and as before, the noise and glitter of the Toledo had been unbearable, so now I found it a relief and a distraction. Two maskers bedizened in violet and gold whizzed past me like a flash, one of them yelling a stale jest concerning la nnamorata—a jest I scarcely heard, and certainly had no heart or wit to reply to. A fair woman I knew leaned out of a gayly draped balcony and dropped a bunch of roses at my feet; out of courtesy I stooped to pick them up, and then raising ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... with a sanatorium, or a rest-cure. The walls were hidden by dark blue hangings, in which sparkled tiny mirrors, the floor was covered with Turkish rugs, the lights concealed inside lamps of dull brass bedecked with crimson tassels. In the air were the odors of stale tobacco-smoke, of cheap incense, and the sickly, sweet smell of opium. To Ford the place suggested a cigar-divan rather than a bedroom, and he guessed, correctly, that when Prothero had played at palmistry and clairvoyance this had been the place ...
— The Lost House • Richard Harding Davis
... all, that awful parody on municipal charity, the police station lodging room, is gone, after twenty years of persistent attack upon the foul dens,—years during which they were arraigned, condemned, indicted by every authority having jurisdiction, all to no purpose. The stale beer dives went with them and with the Bend, and the grip of the tramp on our throat has been loosened. We shall not easily throw it off altogether, for the tramp has a vote, too, for which Tammany, with admirable ingenuity, found a new use, when the ante-election inspection of lodging ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... never-changing tale Of mortal maladies is worn and stale. You cannot charm, or interest, or please, By harping on that minor chord, disease. Say you are well, or all is well with you. And God shall hear your words ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... wakes stale at morn, From heavy sleep that no rest brings: This life of quiet joy wakes fresh, And claps its wings ...
— Foliage • William H. Davies
... disagreeable. As most of the men who have attracted me have been great smokers, there is doubtless a direct association of ideas. It has only once occurred to me that an indifferent unpleasant smell became attractive in connection with some particular person. In this case it was the scent of stale tobacco, such as comes from the end of a cold cigar or cigarette. It was, and is now, very disagreeable to me, but, for the time and in connection with a particular person, it seemed to me more delightful and exciting than the most delicious perfume. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... length the old woman came into the room with two plates, one spoon, and a dirty cloth, which she laid upon the table. This appearance, without increasing my spirits, did not diminish my appetite. My protectress soon returned with a small bowl of sago, a small porringer of sour milk, a loaf of stale brown bread, and the heel of an old cheese all over crawling with mites. My friend apologized that his illness obliged him to live on slops, and that better fare was not in the house; observing, at the same time, that a milk diet was certainly the most healthful; and ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... the door, showed himself a burly individual, with traces of coal-dust in all comers not to be reached by hurried and not too fastidious ablutions. Clouds of tobacco-smoke preceded and followed him, and much stale incense from the fragrant weed exhaled itself from his well-worn corduroys. "I ha' not nivver seed him afore," he remarked after a gruff by no means-ill-natured greeting, signifying the stranger by a duck of the head ...
— "Seth" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... do men, Save for the thousandth man, deny themselves And live in meagreness to make sure a life Of meagreness by hearth stones long since stale; And live in ways, companionships as fixed As the geared figures of the Strassburg clock. You wonder at war? Why war lets loose desires, Emotions long repressed. Would you stop war? Then let men live. ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... although it possesses not a few drawbacks, can be made both amusing and instructive; we can even find something attractive in the quality of the local atmosphere, which suggests at one and the same time sunshine, garlic, incense, stale fish and wood smoke; it is the pungent but characteristic aroma of the South, filled "with spicy odours Time can never mar." And what truly charming pictures do the family groups present in the wide archways giving on the untidy courts ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... had to do any sums that made more than three," is the putative horse's comment. "But there are only two possible, alas! And the totals are stale, as ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... this light occurs more frequently in big, than small Oysters; in those that are pierced by the Worm, oftner, than {206} in those that are not, and rather upon the Convex-side, than the other; and more in fresh ones; than in the stale. ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... ay, to order goblets of champagne, and, in the end, not having change to repair the "damage" (a mean, but true, term, as often applied), they get young Brown to pay the complicated sum added up by the waiter, upon a mahogany ditto, in lieu of a slate, with stale stout spilled in the corner, receipted with a wipe of the towel:—and so, home in the "safety" cab, with large wheels and a spanking grey,—lettered along the side "Nil desperandum," thinking "handsome is as Hansom does;" tumbling into bed just before the peep o' ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... Stale as it all was, unprofitable and a weariness to the flesh as it had all become, the strangeness of it still struck him at times. He wondered lazily what the people he knew at home would think if they were following him at that moment on a tour of inspection. Especially his Uncle ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... my soul— as the black cup, sullen and dark with fire, burns till beside it, noon's bright heat is withered, filled with dust— and into that noon-heat grown drab and stale, suddenly wind and thunder and swift rain, till the scarlet flower is wrecked in the slash of ...
— Hymen • Hilda Doolittle
... must continually furnish his mind, and which, after he has acquired them, he must continually apply and exercise. They must be not only entries in note-books, to be hurriedly consulted; in the actor's phrase, he must be STALE in them; in a word of my grandfather's, they must be 'fixed in the mind like the ten fingers and ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... Bacchus, later born, The old world was sure forlorn, Wanting thee; that aidest more The God's victories than before All his panthers, and the brawls Of his piping Bacchanals; These, as stale, we disallow, Or judge of thee meant: only thou His true Indian Conquest art; And, for Ivy round his dart, The reformed God now weaves A finer Thyrsus ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... up in bed, with her teapot, tea-cup, and a piece of stale loaf, laid out on a tray before her; and little Judy beside her, drinking out of a cracked mug. Judith's eyes had a strange look of fright in them, but there was an air of ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Garland, and his man Rowley. Aug. 13th, Mr. Thomas Sowthwell ryd to Prag ward from Trebon. He told us of the philosopher (his scholemaster to write) whose name was Mr. Swyft, who gave him a lump of the philosopher's stone so big as his fist: a Jesuit named Mr. Stale had it of him. Aug. 14th, Mr. Sowthwell cam againe. Aug. 24th, vidi divinam aquam demonstratione magnifici domini et amici mei incomparabilis D. Ed. Kelei ante meridiem tertia hora. Aug. 27th, John Basset (so namyng ...
— The Private Diary of Dr. John Dee - And the Catalog of His Library of Manuscripts • John Dee
... to see the play "Bartholomew-fair," with puppets. and it is an excellent play; the more I see it, the more I love the wit of it; only the business of abusing the Puritans begins to grow stale and of no use, they being the people that at last will be found the wisest. This night Knipp tells us that there is a Spanish woman lately come over that pretends to sing as well as Mrs. Knight; [A celebrated singer and favourite of Charles Il. Her portrait was engraved in 1749 ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... not scruple to put this diseased or unfortunate version of yourself into the jail cauldron, to stew there with others like or worse than himself, for doing what, in most cases, he actually could not help doing; and when at last he was ejected like stale refuse, you were indignant because his looks did not please you, because he bore upon him the stains and the stench which the cauldron had fastened on him, because he did not, in the teeth of the secret service, the postoffice ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... as every one of us may find Him, in Christ, has found a Good that cannot change, pass, or grow stale. His blessedness will always last, as long as he keeps fast hold of that which he has, and lets no man ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... was full of reproach. "The very thought of that place, with its smell of stale beer and those awful creatures behind the bar, makes me shiver," he confessed. "I shall walk for an hour before lunch in Kensington Gardens. If I have a moment to spare I shall run into the Museum and spend a ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... feats of horsemanship are always well worth seeing, but the rest grows very tiresome on frequent repetition. Persons must be very fond of this sort of thing who can twice visit the circus, as year after year the clown repeats the same stale jests, and shows up the same style ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... up to him, but, to his amazement, none came. As a man may walk unhurt amid a shower of bullets, he had walked unseen under twenty policemen's eyes. From Castlereagh Street came a murmur of voices. The theatres were out, and a huge crowd, fresh from the painted scenes and stale odours of the stalls and gallery, watched with hilarious interest the harlequinade on the roofs. In half an hour a procession was formed, two deep, guarded by the police, and followed by a crowd stumbling over one another to keep pace ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... and all these pieces have their accidents, corresponding with the trines and quadrates, and conjunction and opposition, and ascendancy and decline—such as the heavenly bodies have; and the eclipse of the sun is figured by shah caim or stale mate;' and much more to the same purport. We question whether the astronomer-royal ever suspected he was illustrating his own science when engaged in one of his quiet games of chess with the master ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... requisite to breakfast? Those great men Marlowe and Jonson, Shakespeare, and Spenser before him, drank beer at rising, and tamed it with a little bread. In the regiment we used to drink black coffee without sugar, and cut off a great hunk of stale crust, and eat nothing more till the halt: for the matter of that, the great victories of '93 were fought upon such unsubstantial meals; for the Republicans fought first and ate afterwards, being in this quite unlike the Ten Thousand. Sailors I know eat nothing for some hours—I mean those ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... Bacchus, later born, The old world was sure forlorn, Wanting thee, that aidest more The god's victories than before All his panthers, and the brawls Of his piping Bacchanals. These, as stale, we disallow, Or judge of thee meant; only thou His true Indian conquest art; And, for ivy round his dart, The reformed god now weaves A finer ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... 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, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet |
