"Stale" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that season of the northern year when winter growing stale has a gritty, sticky taste and the relief of spring seems yet far away. After the desert air the steam heat was stifling and nauseating. Jack's head was a barrel about to burst its hoops; his skin drying ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... right!" declared Joe. "I thought it was getting a bit stale. But if the crowd wants to see ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... resolution," rejoined the Old Year; "and, by the way, I have a plentiful assortment of good resolutions, which have now grown so stale and musty, that I am ashamed to carry them any farther. Only for fear that the City authorities would send Constable Mansfield, with a warrant after me, I should toss them into the street at once. ...
— The Sister Years (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... masterless when a man was near her. Morally, nervously, she seemed to be dead; so she followed her new lord as meekly as she had followed her old—that one to Nona across the seas, this one by gloomy, pent ways through the stale-smelling streets of the city to the Rocca ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... promised me some more beef-tea, so I warmed a cupful for granny and broke up a slice of stale bread in it: it was touching to see her enjoyment of the warm food. The eldest boy, Tim, was nearly eleven years old, and looked a sharp little fellow, so I set him to clean up the kitchen with Peggy and make things a little tidier, and ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... looked about the little bar-room, in which there was absolutely nothing of the quaint interest which one associates with a country inn. It was a bare, cold, hard, sandy, dirty room; its air tainted with the stale odors of whiskey, sugar, and wood still wet from its morning mopping. In less than fifteen minutes the man placed before me a cup of coffee and some soda biscuit. The coffee was not very good, but it was hot, and when I had finished it ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... degenerated into boarding houses for the indigent and struggling younger generation, and the wrecks of the past, embodied, in even the blank stare of their exteriors, stupid mediocrity. He fumbled nervously in his pocket for his latch-key, and opening the door climbed the three stale flights to his room. He lighted both gas-jets, but even then the gloom remained. He craved more light—the dazzling light of arc-lamps, the glare reflected from polished mirrors. Better absolute darkness ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... will not quote the remainder, but will say simply that we were all charmed. Welcome, at the commencement of another season, to Mlle. BAUERMEISTER, appearing as Cupid. To-morrow she will be Dame Marta! Wonderful! "Time cannot stale her infinite variety." How is it, O premiere danseuse, my pretty pretty Polly Hop-kino PALLADINO, Principal Shade among all these Happy but Shady characters, that thou didst not choose a classic dance in keeping with the character of the music and of the ideal—I distinctly ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 18, 1891 • Various
... a theatre of the lowest description. Smoking was, of course, permitted. When they arrived the performance was over. People were still sitting at many of the tables. Reeking as the auditorium was with the stench of stale beer, it left the impression of a ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... the End: to make you thankful; to stimulate you; but also to lead you to take for your object what will never pall. All created things go. Only the gospel provides you with a theme which never becomes stale, with objects ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... stale tobacco smoke Ere many days I fear, And hear full many a rattling joke, And feel, ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall
... see, sir, they say I am fantastical; why, true, I know it, and I pursue my humour still, in contempt of this censorious age. 'Slight, an a man should do nothing but what a sort of stale judgments about him this town will approve in him, he were a sweet ass: I'd beg him, i'faith. I ne'er knew any more find fault with a fashion, than they that knew not how to put themselves into it. For mine own part, so I please ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... of dogs had caused much adverse criticism, but Matt warmly defended his choice. "You can't tell me that Tom, Dick and Harry's stale from too much trainin' an' bein' in too many races. I know better; an' you can be certain that 'Scotty' wouldn't have taken 'em if they was goin' t' be a drag on such wonders as Irish, Rover and Spot. Take my word for ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... more than once I have gleaned a hint from the outside of a letter that has proved valuable when applied to the contents. Here, for instance, is a letter which has been opened after being fastened up—apparently by the aid of steam. The envelope is soiled and rubbed, and smells faintly of stale tobacco, and has evidently been carried in a pocket along with a well-used pipe. Why should it have been opened? On reading it I perceive that it should have reached me two days ago, and that the date has been skilfully altered from the thirteenth ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... hard; season with pepper and salt, a little beaten mace, a very little lemon-peel, some parsley chopped fine, a very little thyme, and three anchovies. When these are beat fine, take the crumb of a stale roll, some mushrooms, either fresh or pickled, and the heart of the cabbage which you cut out. Chop it very fine; mix all together with the yolk of an egg; fill the hollow of the cabbage, and tie ...
— The Lady's Own Cookery Book, and New Dinner-Table Directory; • Charlotte Campbell Bury
... shout at Charlie's expense, and I resumed my work, grave as an owl. That furnished amusement until it grew stale, when Charlie came to ask me my name, and I told ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... difficulties of portrait painters I gave in the same lecture has since been so frequently repeated in the Press that I fear it will be stale to most of my readers—the story of the man who called upon the portrait painter and asked him to ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... carry, with which you have no relation, when they take the trouble to praise you. In general, it is their purpose to get the person praised to puff away in return. To me their rank praises no more make amends for their bad poetry than tainted butter would pass off stale fish. ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... 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
... of a 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 people ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with your eyes,"—and they can be more eloquent than any Demosthenes of your New England Athens. Women are younger than men, and nearer to nature; they have more animal life and spirits and glee. Their lively, frolicsome, sunshiny chatter keeps existence from growing mouldy and stale. We have it on the authority of the wittiest of Frenchmen, that for the purposes of pleasant, every-day life, L'enjouement vaut mieux que l'esprit. If I wish to discuss a question of political economy, or of metaphysics, I can ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... "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 of it.' Belike ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... into the dormitory from the fresh, pure, night air he thought at first that he would choke in the atmosphere laden with stale tobacco-smoke and foul odours; but in the end he slept splendidly, despite his ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... fish-markets, great fish-mongers strictly examine the gills—if the bright redness is exchanged for a low brown, they are stale; but when live fish are bro't flouncing into market, you have only to elect the kind most agreeable to your ...
— American Cookery - The Art of Dressing Viands, Fish, Poultry, and Vegetables • Amelia Simmons
... chamber. It was some relief even to promenade the hall, for one so nervous as he was at this time. If any of the Orlando's passengers came near him, he could retreat into his room. He walked up and down several times, but this soon became stale amusement. ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... and slaves, Masters of strange and new commented lusts, For which wise nature hath not left a name. To this (what most strikes us, and bleeding Rome) He is, with all his craft, become the ward To his own vassal, a stale catamite: Whom he, upon our low and suffering necks, Hath raised from excrement to side the gods, And have his proper sacrifice in Rome: Which Jove beholds, and yet will sooner rive A senseless oak with thunder than ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... territory. The whole metaphysical realm consisted in nothing more than creatures of fancy and heavenly things at the precise time when real beings and earthly things were beginning to concentrate all interest upon themselves. Metaphysics had become stale. Helvetius and Condillac were born in the same year that Malebranche and Arnauld, the last great French metaphysicians of ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... of Christianity, those deep and mystical truths underlying the teachings of Christ, than the child at his mother's knee. I have been to your great cathedrals and churches. I saw only lip-service and routine. I heard only stale maxims, weak explanations of the allegories and parables that fill your Biblical records; flowing rhetoric and vague expressions of some undefinable joy and glory in an equally undefinable Hereafter, that was sometimes described as a place, and sometimes as a state. That was all. I feel such things ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... do? There is this matter of the honour of Tamiya." He wrung his hands as in great perplexity, glancing sideways toward O'Iwa. The first part of his speech she disregarded. Such talk and consolation were growing stale. That all should pity her caused no surprise. Her situation was not unusual. It was the last words which caught her ear. "The honour of Tamiya: Cho[u]bei San?" Cho[u]bei turned away; to put some peppermint in his eyes. Tears stood in them as he turned again ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... know where 'twas you learn'd this Impudence? Which you're too cunning in, Not to have been a stale practitioner. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... small, white, ambling Golden house, with its peculiar smell of stale lamb gravy, and on the old broken couch—where her father had snored all through every bright ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... enjoys stretching out in the open until the sun is well up, and then retiring to the nearest available cover. Still, at the risk of seeming to be perpetually qualifying, I must instance finding three lions actually on the stale carcass of a waterbuck at eleven o'clock in the morning of a piping hot day! In an undisturbed country, or one not much hunted, the early morning hours up to say nine o'clock are quite likely to show you lions sauntering leisurely across the open plains ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... parted with his last piece of bread in order not to be outdone by the others in generosity, for our own provisions were running very low. It is true that the bread and biscuits were mildewed, the cheese stale, and the bacon as hard as stone, but the boys gave the best they could, the very poverty and humbleness of the gifts attesting their own desperate plight, and bearing proud witness to the extent of their sacrifice. With tears in their eyes and reiterated protestations ...
— Four Weeks in the Trenches - The War Story of a Violinist • Fritz Kreisler
... was in certain events, political and even personal. They roughly resolve themselves into two: the marriages of Henry VIII. and the affair of the monasteries. The marriages of Henry VIII. have long been a popular and even a stale joke; and there is a truth of tradition in the joke, as there is in almost any joke if it is sufficiently popular, and indeed if it is sufficiently stale. A jocular thing never lives to be stale unless it is also serious. ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... seldom converse, & then but with underlings; not freely but as a schoolmaster with his scholars, ever to teach, never to learn.... You should know many of these tales you tell to be but ordinary, & many other things, which you repeat, & serve in for novelties to be but stale.... Your too much love of the world is too much seen, when having the living" [income] "of L10,000, you relieve few or none: the hand that hath taken so much, can it give so little? Herein you show no bowels of compassion.... ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... judgment, good conduct. The fact makes tragic a truth too little regarded; namely, that while bad cooking can ruin the very best of raw foodstuffs, all the arts of all the cooks in the world can do no more than palliate things stale, flat and unprofitable. To buy such things is waste, instead of economy. Food must satisfy the palate else it will never truly satisfy the stomach. An unsatisfied stomach, or one overworked by having to wrestle with food which has bulk out of all proportion ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... not let be printed again All things to be managed with faction Being the people that, at last, will be found the wisest Business of abusing the Puritans begins to grow stale Cannot get suitably, without breach of his honour Caustic attack on Sir Robert Howard Doe from Cobham, when the season comes, bucks season being past Forgetting many things, which her master beat her for Glad to be at friendship with me, though we hate one another I away with great content, my mind ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Diary of Samuel Pepys • David Widger
... what, in that line—the line of futility—the real thing meant. HE did— having seen it, having tried it, having taken its measure. This was a memory in fact simply to screen out—much as, just in front of him while he walked, the iron shutter of a shop, closing early to the stale summer day, rattled down at the turn of some crank. There was machinery again, just as the plate glass, all about him, was money, was power, the power of the rich peoples. Well, he was OF them now, of the rich peoples; he was on their side—if ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... were empty and the only sound to be heard was the heavy tread of Varr himself as he walked through the main office to the small room where his own desk was located. He frowned at the difference, and sniffed discontentedly at the stale air which seemed already to have taken on the peculiar flat mustiness appropriate to closed and deserted habitations. He frowned again when he drew his finger along a desk and noted the depth of the furrow it had ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... and his head on my shoulders, patted me on the back, and kissed me on both cheeks, a salute which I thought it expedient to return, though his face was not overclean and he smelled abominably of garlic and stale tobacco. ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... rotting away in the stagnant air of St. Benet's Sherehog: interest had lost its interest for him, profits profited not, speculation's self had dull, lack-lustre eyes, and all the hard realities of utilitarian life were become weary, flat, and stale. Sir Thomas was a miserable man—a bereaved old man—who nevertheless clung to what was left, and struggled not to grieve for what was lost: there was a terrible strife going on secretly within him, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... softly on a rail, We shied at him, in careless glee, Some large tomatoes, rank and stale, And eggs of great antiquity — Their wild, unholy fragrance flew About the town ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... to," said Mary vaguely. "I don't care so much about first nights. I like the theatre; but I go so seldom. Aunt Marcelle does not care for English plays; she says they are like stale bread-and-butter. I tell her that is not ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... is in close proximity to its unusually little window. A little library with a scanty supply of books hangs near the stove-pipe, as if the owners thereof thought the contents had become somewhat stale, and required warming up to make them more palatable. A locker runs along two sides of the apartment, on the coverings of which stand several lanterns, an oil-can, and a stone jar, besides sundry articles with an extremely seafaring aspect, ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... could I nould believe your tales and fables stale and trite, Irksome as twice-sung tune that tires the dulld ear ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... My occupation was gone and I began to fear that I had outlived my usefulness. Life seemed flat, stale, and unprofitable. Betty's weekly letters were all that lent it any savor. They were spicy and piquant enough. Betty was discovered to have unsuspected talents in the epistolary line. At first she ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... 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
... sufferer had to lay him down upon at night, or when weary of sitting in the high-backed, creaking armchair. Uncleanness met the eye on every side—in the one greasy plate, on which lay a lump of repulsive-looking food; in the broken-mouthed jug, which reeked with the smell of stale beer; in the window, whose bemired and cobwebbed panes kept out more light than they admitted; in the ceiling, between whose smoke-grimed rafters large rents allowed many an abomination to drop down from the crowded room above; in the three-legged table, which, being loose ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... you mention it—but it's givin' you a 'eap of trouble. If you 'ave such a thing as a bun, it don't matter 'ow stale." ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... said that eggs laid upon Good Friday never got stale, and that butter made on that ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... cathedral, passing the spot where Carmona had struck at me, and the chapel where I had taken Monica. The stones were slippery as the floor of a ballroom, with wax dropped from innumerable candles, and the air was heavy with the smoke of stale incense. ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... dothe Phillis entwyte Demophon / that his father Theseus vn- curteysly and trayterously lefte his loue Ariadna alone in the desert yle of Naxus / & contrary to his promise stale from her by nyght / addynge Heredem patria perfide frau- dis agis. That is to saye / vntrew and false forsworne man / thou playest kyndely the fathers heyre / in deceytable begylynge of ...
— The Art or Crafte of Rhetoryke • Leonard Cox
... however, laid my hand on him and drew him away, though I perceived that he had no impression of having seen me before. It was not till afterwards that I thought this a little stupid of him. I drew him far away (I was conscious of Mrs. Peck and Mrs. Gotch looking at us as we passed) into the empty, stale smoking-room; he remained speechless, and that struck me as like him. I had to speak first, he could not even relieve me by saying 'Is anything the matter?' I told him first that she was ill. It was ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... plausible enough if there hadn't been always the essential falseness of irresponsibility in Schomberg's chatter. However, I was not disposed to investigate the psychology of Falk. I was engaged just then in eating despondently a piece of stale Dutch cheese, being too much crushed to care what I swallowed myself, let along bothering my head about Falk's ideas of gastronomy. I could expect from their study no clue to his conduct in matters of business, which seemed to me totally unrestrained by morality or even by the commonest sort of decency. ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... Masters of Hounds, are scarcely of so much permanent value as the favourite types and characters which Lionardo and Carpaccio repeat again and again. We no more think Claude monotonous than we think "the quiet coloured end of evening" flat and stale. But we may, and must, tire of certain modern combinations too often rehearsed, after the trick has become a habit, and the method ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... have conceived them: unless we imagine to ourselves what AEschylus or Pindar, oppressed by long illness, and forgetful of the gods, might possibly have felt. In its sense of spiritual vacancy, when the world and all its uses have become flat, stale, unprofitable, and the sentient soul oscillates like a pendulum between weariful extremes, seeking repose in restless movement, and hurling the ruins of a life into the gulf of its exhausted cravings, we perceive already the symptoms of that unnamed malady which was the plague of imperial ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... underhandedness seemed to emanate from the letters themselves. Bernard Higginbotham had married his sister, and he knew him well. He let himself in with a latch-key and climbed the stairs to the second floor. Here lived his brother-in-law. The grocery was below. There was a smell of stale vegetables in the air. As he groped his way across the hall he stumbled over a toy-cart, left there by one of his numerous nephews and nieces, and brought up against a door with a resounding bang. "The pincher," was his thought; "too ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... back upon him A piteous glance, and vanish'd. He, as one Caught in a burst of unexpected storm, And pelted with outrageous epithets, Turning beheld the Powers of the House On either side the hearth, indignant; her, Cooling her false cheek with a featherfan, Him glaring, by his own stale devil spurr'd, And, like a beast hard-ridden, breathing hard. 'Ungenerous, dishonorable, base, Presumptuous! trusted as he was with her, The sole succeeder to their wealth, their lands, The last remaining pillar of their house, The one transmitter of their ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... used to buy all her baked victuals of him, 'specially after she found out he was a widower beginnin' to take notice. His cart used to stand at her door so long everybody on the rout would complain o' stale bread. But bime bye Fiddy begun to set at her winder when he druv up, 'n' bime bye she pinned a blue ribbon in her collar. When she done that, Mis' Maddox alles hed to take a back seat. The boys used to call it a ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... a familiar sight to see the saloons of Baxter, Mott and Mulberry streets filled with these boys. It was only a few years ago that they had their own theatre, yclept "The Grand Duke's Theatre," at 21 Baxter street, in the cellar under a stale beer dive, where really clever performances were given of an imitative character, by a company of boys; and which, by the way, was the only theatre which for years defied the efforts of the authorities to collect the license. The admission fee was ten ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable all this appeared to me at the time I will remember; but the obnoxious turns were shaken out, and the sail set again so as to please even the fastidious eye of the Lieutenant, who, seeing nothing more to find fault with, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... public has been surfeited with sea-stories of late, from many sufficiently dull ones up to the genial wisdom of 'Peter Simple,' and the gorgeous word- painting of 'Tom Cringle's Log.' And now the subject is stale—the old war and the wonders thereof have died away into the past, like the men who fought in it; and Trafalgar and the Bellerophon are replaced by Manchester and 'Mary Barton.' We have solved the old sea-going problems pretty well—thanks to wise ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... eye wittily spar'd, that he Might but behold his miserie. She on each spot a wound doth print, And each speck hath a sting within't; Till he but one new blister is, And swells his own periphrasis. Then fainting, sick, and yellow-pale, She baths him with her sulph'rous stale; Thus slacked is her Stygian fire, And she vouchsafes now to retire. Anon the toad begins to pant, Bethinks him of th' almighty plant, And lest he peece-meal should be sped, Wisely doth finish himself dead. Whilst the gay girl, as was her fate, Doth wanton and luxuriate, And crowns ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... stone eggs for the rest of his life. How often have I thought how deplorable it was to see a man issuing a series of books, every one of which is feebler than its predecessor, dishing up the old characters, the stale ideas, the used-up backgrounds. I have always hoped that some one would be kind and brave enough to tell me when I did that. But now that the end seems to have come to me naturally and spontaneously, I cannot accept my defeat. I am like the monkey of whom Frank Buckland wrote, who got ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... significance in the history of our city, but also a political one. It has long been the temporal bulwark around the Mormon community. Results which have been seen in Utah affairs, preservative of the Mormon power and people, unaccountable to 'the outsider' except on the now stale supposition that 'the Mormon Church has purchased Congress,' may be better traced to the silent but potent influence of Z. C. M. I. among the ruling business men of America, just as John Sharp's position as one of the directors of U. P. R—-r,—a compeer ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... devil, Bud called him mentally, with a narrow forehead, eyes set too far apart and the mouth of a brute. Someone spoke to the man, calling him Lew, and he answered with rough good humor, repeating a stale witticism and laughing at it just as though he had not heard others ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... Mexican War had made serious inroads upon his health, from which he never entirely recovered. It was hoped that his life in the East would be beneficial, but it proved otherwise. Meanwhile, the Civil War was raging in the United States, but the news concerning it was very stale long before it reached us. We did not receive the particulars of the battle of Bull Run, for example, until three months after its occurrence. In view of the turbulent state of affairs at home, the government thought it important that Mr. Gouverneur should remain ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... to spare my chest what little I could. I had examined my body a few days ago, one noon up in my room, and I had stood and cried over it the whole time. I had worn the same shirt for many weeks, and it was quite stiff with stale sweat, and had chafed my skin. A little blood and water ran out of the sore place; it did not hurt much, but it was very tiresome to have this tender place in the middle of my stomach. I had no remedy for it, and it ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... hour I desired to be called. I was now resolved to break through all measures to get away; and after sitting down to a monstrous breakfast of cold beef, mutton, neats'-tongues, venison-pasty, and stale beer, took leave of the family. But the gentleman would needs see me part of my way, and carry me a short-cut through his own grounds, which he told me would save half a mile's riding. This last piece of civility ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... fair reader too long, enter into a wholesome dissertation here on the manner of friendship established in those institutions, and the noble feeling of selfishness which they are likely to encourage in the male race? I put out of the question the stale topics of complaint, such as leaving home, encouraging gormandising and luxurious habits, etc.; but look also at the dealings of club-men with one another. Look at the rush for the evening paper! See how Shiverton orders a fire in ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... shuffle-board, peg top, charity, funeral play, prisoner's base, hill-dill; the value and right use of apparatus, and of rabbits, pigeons, bees, and a small menagerie in the playground; tan-bark, clay, the proper alternation of excessive freedom, that often turns boys stale through the summer, with regulated activities; the disciplined "work of play" and sedentary games; the value of the washboard rubbing and of the hand and knee exercise of scrubbing, which a late writer would restore ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... into a very low, close, swampy country, and our goat's flesh began to be very stale through the heat, not only of the sun, but the muletto's back: however, we pleased ourselves we should have one more meal of it before it was too bad to eat; so, having travelled about three miles ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... theatres of the Grand Boulevard; a cup of coffee at the Cafe de la 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 pastry he is ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... your son, ply his old task, Turn the stale prologue to some painted mask; His absence in my verse is all ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... one's stale. It would break your teeth to eat it. (She throws the cake into the bucket.) And the mice have nibbled that one. And there's another as bad. (She throws ...
— The Drone - A Play in Three Acts • Rutherford Mayne
... thumbed by hands possibly in the grave, digging out the thoughts of these minds so remote yet so near, the bony old horse pursued his rounds, and Jude would be aroused from the woes of Dido by the stoppage of his cart and the voice of some old woman crying, "Two to-day, baker, and I return this stale one." ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... upon the roof as long as it appeared safe to do so, in order to husband our fuel. The animals, disappointed of the forage usually furnished them at this hour, stamped impatiently and nosed disdainfully the stale straw and pine plumes which we had emptied from the bunks and which were ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... even though it reached him in a fragmentary and subliminal way. Day after day he told himself that he would have all his faculties at the ready before the train swung into the curve. But morning after morning he was still emerging from the stale fumes of the preceding night's beer, or he allowed himself to be hypnotized by the sound of the wheels or fascinated by the jiggling of another passenger's earlobe at that critical moment. The train had always entered ...
— In the Control Tower • Will Mohler
... and plain need at all envy, and that instead of the perennial smell of the grass and woods and shores, their typical redolence is of soaps and essences, very rare may be, but suggesting the barber shop—something that turns stale and musty in a few ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... momentous day they had visited Westminster Abbey, the Tower Bridge, the Houses of Parliament and Nelson's Monument, had lunched at one of Messrs. Lockhart's establishments, had taken a ride in the Tube and performed a hasty tour of the Zoo, where they had consumed, variously, cups of tea, ginger beer, stale buns and ices. Hyde Park they had viewed from the top of a motor bus and descending from this chariot at London Bridge had caught the train home. In the train Flamby had fallen asleep, utterly exhausted with such a saturnalia, and her parents had eaten ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... to ruin. One is an Italian tenement. The others are inhabited by coachmen, chauffeurs, gardeners, mill-hands, and degenerate Yankees. The inn is a mere barroom. Sounds of revelry and the odor of stale beer come out of it. In front are teams of burden, abandoned, for a time, by their drivers, and sundry human signs of decay loafing in the shadow of the old lindens. Among them are the seedy remnants of a once noble race. They are fettered ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... thinning of the shapeless gloom Shudders to drizzling daybreak that reveals Disconsolate men who stamp their sodden boots And turn dulled, sunken faces to the sky Haggard and hopeless. They, who have beaten down The stale despair of night, must now renew Their desolation in the truce of dawn, Murdering the livid hours that grope ...
— Counter-Attack and Other Poems • Siegfried Sassoon
... suddenly by the thought that he was late. He took three long steps, collided with a sodden old gentleman who was just arising from a bench—and then was standing very still, looking about him as in a daze, unconscious of the mutter of apology which, together with an odor of stale beer, was fermenting beneath his nose. The old gentleman, pursuing a ray of sun, slipped on to a farther bench. But Charles-Norton still stood there, gazing about him in a sort of mild astonishment, as if, while he was not looking, the scene about him had been ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... I honour ye, the first and best of all men, And where that fair opinion leads, 'tis usual These trifles that but serve to set off, follow. I would not have you proud now, nor disdainful Because I say I love ye, though I swear it, Nor think it a stale favour I fling on ye, Though ye be handsome, and the only man I must confess I ever fixt mine eye on, And bring along all promises that please us, Yet I should hate ye then, despise ye, scorn ye, And with as much contempt pursue your person, ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (1 of 10) - The Custom of the Country • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... ended amid the ghastly horrors of war. What was it that caused the destruction of that Church? At this point some historians, being short of facts, have thought fit to indulge in philosophical reflections; and, following the stale philosophy of Bildad—that all suffering is the punishment of sin—have informed us that the Brethren were now the victims of internal moral decay. They had lost, we are told, their sense of unity; they had relaxed their discipline; they had become morally weak; ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... not exactly a success. We invited all the foreigners in Hiroshima, twelve in number, and everybody talked a great deal and laughed at everybody's stale jokes, and pretended to be terribly hilarious. But there was a pathetic droop to every mouth, and not a soul referred to home. Each one seemed to realize that the mere mention of the word would break ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... chaps say it's rather stale to be in the school. I don't see why your fellows should be looked down on, but ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... that Meyerbeer was once dining with some friends, when a discussion arose respecting Mozart's position in the musical hierarchy. Suddenly one of the guests suggested that "certain beauties of Mozart's music had become stale with age. I defy you," he continued, "to listen to 'Don Giovanni' after the fourth act of the 'Huguenots.'" "So much the worse, then, for the fourth act of the 'Huguenots,'" said Meyerbeer, furious at the clumsy compliment paid to his own work at ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... odours from the warm roots of girl's hair; and Sunday. Sunday; stale odours of churches. You wrote out the sermon you had not listened to and had not heard. Somebody told you the text, and you amused yourself by seeing how near you could get to what you would have ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... became familiar. It was a perfect mixture of flavors; oilskins, stale tobacco-smoke, brine, burned grease, tar, and, as a background, fish. His ears almost immediately detected water noises running close by, and he could feel the pull of stout oak timber that formed the inner ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... history of the lives and operations of some of us, who have made names in this country during the last few years," he said, "would make the modern romance seem stale. Even odd scraps of news or surmises are fought for by the Press. The journalists know well enough where to come for their sensation. Our guests at last, I believe. Don't forget what I have been saying to ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... fresh, the boy Tim was delegated to search the newspaper and read therefrom every paragraph bearing upon it, the remainder of the party listening intently and open-mouthed as they sat in a semicircle before the blazing fire. And if the item happened to be so stale as to have passed out of the notice of the papers, the cook would recapitulate for our benefit its leading features, together with any similar events or singular coincidences connected with the case which might occur to her memory at the moment. From the discussion of ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... with its droning old-world smell of ancestor, dry rot, and stale incense. As the clouds came and went, the grey-green, cobweb-chastened, light ebbed and flowed over the walls and ceiling; to watch the fitfulness of its streams was a sufficient occupation. A hen laid ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... news?" present, in my opinion, two totally distinct ideas to the English mind in its ordinary mechanical action. "Intelligence" is not necessarily "new", nor indeed is "News:" in the oldest dictionary I possess, Baret's Alvearie, 1573, I find "Olde newes or stale newes." A.E.B. is very positive that "news" is plural, and he cites the "Cardinal of York" to prove it. All that I can say is, that I think the Cardinal of York was wrong: and A.E.B. thought so too, when his object was not to confound me, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 36. Saturday, July 6, 1850 • Various
... planet of treeless dust, like soiled packs of cards. Each was similar to the next, as one old five-spot of clubs resembles another. Houses, empty bottles, and garbage, they were forever of the same shapeless pattern. More forlorn they were than stale bones. They seemed to have been strewn there by the wind and to be waiting till the wind should come again and blow them away. Yet serene above their foulness swam a pure and quiet light, such as the East never sees; they might be bathing in the air of creation's first morning. ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... been opened, and was being dusted and swept by two slatternly women with dago complexions, and voices like hyenas. It still reeked of stale drink ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... I speak of, which inclose a temperate Air, to ripen Drink in; the constant temperate Air digests and softens these Malt Liquors, so that they drink smooth as Oil; but in the Cellars which are unequal, by letting in Heats and Colds, the Drink is subject to grow stale and sharp: For this reason it is, that Drink, which is brew'd for a long Voyage at Sea, should be perfectly ripe and fine before it is exported, for when it has had sufficient time to digest in the Cask, and is rack'd from the Bottom or Lee, it will bear carriage without injury. ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... perhaps he would be of King Seleucus' opinion, that he who knew the weight of a sceptre would not stoop to pick it up, if he saw it lying before him, so great and painful are the duties incumbent upon a good king.—[Plutarch, If a Sage should Meddle with Affairs of Stale, c. 12.]—Assuredly it can be no easy task to rule others, when we find it so hard a matter to govern ourselves; and as to dominion, that seems so charming, the frailty of human judgment and the difficulty of choice in things ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... in drink, a young Jew, and myself completed the company, which was allowed to make itself free of a flagged and whitewashed hall, absolutely devoid of furniture, and smelling at once sour and stale. I am sorry and ashamed to remember that the Jew was the only person of my four fellows in misfortune who kept up any semblance of manners or proper reserve. He differed, indeed, markedly from the others, not only in his behaviour, which was at least conformable, ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... "at any new subject that my sister-in-law mentions. I haven't heard her speak of this before; and it's only fair to her to say that when she takes up anything fresh, she drops it long before it has the chance of becoming stale. Another cup?" ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... nothing to encourage us to persevere in looking after them, and it must have taken up some time longer to find them, or to prove their non-existence. Every one was impatient to get into port, and for good reasons: As for a long time we had had nothing but stale and salt provisions, for which every one on board had lost all relish. These reasons induced me to yield to the general wish, and to steer for the Cape of Good Hope, being at this time in the latitude of 38 deg. 38' S., longitude 23 ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... cannot see yourself So well as by reflection, I, your glass, Will modestly discover to yourself That of yourself which you yet know not of. 70 And be not jealous on me, gentle Brutus: Were I a common laughter, or did use To stale with ordinary oaths my love To every new protester; if you know That I do fawn on men and hug them hard, 75 And after scandal them; or if you know That I profess myself in banqueting To all the rout, then hold ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... and gained refuge in a "strong place" well behind a fringe of alder-roots, whence Bob, notwithstanding his most strenuous efforts, failed to "bolt" her. I then drew off the hounds, led them towards the throat of the pool, and for a half hour assisted them to work the "stale drag," till I reached a bend of the river where Lutra's footprints were still visible on the fine, wet sand at the brink ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... whistle blows at night all you have is your little hall bedroom in a rooming house that smells of stale smoke and cabbage. There's no place to go except the streets—but you've just got to go somewhere, to break loose and have a little fun,—even though you're so tired you want to throw yourself on the bed ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Camps; who have made free, 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 ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... people have not got tired of quoting "Heureux en jeu; malheureux en amour." It seems one of the least true of all stale, stupid proverbs. Luck will run itself out in more ways than one; and sometimes you will never hold a trump, however often the suit changes. The ancients knew better than we when they called the double-sixes "Venus's ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... I don't know, he's of a temper the most easy to himself in the world; he takes as much always of an amour as he cares for, and quits it when it grows stale or unpleasant. ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... library, like all the other rooms, was foul with stale air and dust-laden. Maskull, having flung the window up and down, fell heavily into an armchair and looked disgustedly ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... that is, for the first time, but afterwards, as the weather-cock found out, they repeated themselves and always told the same stories, and that's very tedious, and there was no one with whom one could associate, for one and all were stale ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... fair bed and hangings be; and it is meerly ratable accordingly, fifty or a hundred pounds as his suit is. His main ambition is to get a knight-hood, and then an old lady, which if he be happy in, he fills the stage and a coach so much longer: Otherwise, himself and his cloaths grow stale together, and he is buried commonly ere he dies in the ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... stop the townspeople from taking a shot at the small flocks as they passed over, from the farm feeding ground to the Lake, but the geese didn't seem to expect that of Jack. He says they would miss it, if the shooting stopped, and get stale; and then it does a similar lot for the town in the critical ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... Jenkins to Dion, after the latter had taken the shower bath. "You aren't as stale as I expected to find you, not near as stale. But I hope you'll keep it up now you've started ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... his tiled roof a foul buzzard blinked at him from red-rimmed eyes, across the 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 ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... grant, I'm very free To use now at my pleasure: Another Month, or Year, d' ye see I'll bate, as I have leasure; So Hair by Hair, from the Mare's Tail I'll pull, as well I may. So what is good, is quickly stale, Though Writ but ...
— Magazine, or Animadversions on the English Spelling (1703) • G. W.
... She had been presented with a quarter of a stale loaf of baker's bread, and a big piece ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... faces watching them. "Bucket Lane" was the street's title to fame. Windows showed dim candles, in the distance a sharp cry broke the silence and then fell away again. The street was very narrow and from the running gutters there stole into the air the odour of stale cabbage. ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... John echoed blankly. For a moment before his mind began to work, he merely stared. The first thought that struggled through was a reluctant recognition of the fact that there was a sort of dignity in the man which not even the stale look, inevitable about one who has just slept in his clothes, could overcome. No more than his pallor and the lines of fatigue deeply marked in his face could impeach his air of authority. There was something to him not quite accountable ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... pushed the door of the dance hall open, and stepped nonchalantly inside. It was the usual scene, there was the usual hilarious uproar, the usual close, almost fetid atmosphere that mingled the odours of stale beer and tobacco. Baldy Jack's was always popular, and the place, even for that early hour, was already doing a thriving business. Jimmie Dale's eyes, from a dozen couples swirling in the throes of the bunny-hug on the polished ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... 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 ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... 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 giving up the writing of tales in verse was that Byron beat him. But there must have been something besides this: it is plain that the pattern of rhyming romance was growing stale. The Lay needs no apology; Marmion includes the great tragedy of Scotland in ...
— Sir Walter Scott - A Lecture at the Sorbonne • William Paton Ker
... hesitate before debating. For to cultured ears and to men of the highest eloquence my speech will appear to have little marrow in its views, and its poverty of words will seem jejune. For idle is it, and utterly superfluous, to offer that which is arid to the eloquent, and that which is stale to men of knowledge and wisdom. Whence our Moral Seneca, and, ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... freshness of an egg, drop into cold water. If the egg sinks quickly it is fresh, if it stands on end it is doubtful, and quite bad if it floats. The shell of a fresh egg looks dull; a stale one is glossy. ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... stale bread and spread with a sardine mixture made as follows:—Skin and bone six sardines, put them in a bowl and run to a paste with a silver spoon. Add two tablespoons of lemon juice, a few drops of Worcestershire sauce, a dash ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum
... a safe haven at last. The house was over-warm, and there was a musty smell of over-aged furniture, old leather, and the pungence of mothballs. It seemed to generate a feeling of firm stability. Even the slightly stale air—there probably hadn't been a wide open window since the storm sashes were installed last autumn—provided a locked-in feeling that conversely meant that the world ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... rummy time with this kid, runnin' off with the old sloop and a prisoner on board to boot. I'm tickled pink to know we're right in action at last, after waitin' so long, an' ding-dongin' around till we both got stale. But how 'bout draggin' that ere mudhook up off the ground—think we c'n tackle ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... choice of items of news, variety in the manner of stating them, and logical order in arranging and connecting them should be cultivated. The writing of good, plain English, rather than "smart" journalese should be the aim. Stale, vulgar and incorrect phrases, such as "Sundayed," and "in our midst," should be avoided. There are two tests in selecting a news item: (1) Will it interest readers? (2) Ought they to know it? When by these tests an item is ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... dame Hears what the mournful Maganzese narrates; And, at first mention of Rogero's name, Her radiant face with eager joy dilates. But, full of pity, kindles into flame As Pinabel his cruel durance states. Nor finds she, though twice told, the story stale; But makes him oft ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto |
