"Stale" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... time should be lost in handling the fish after being caught. Putrefaction starts rapidly, and the fish must be handled promptly. The sooner it is canned after being taken from lake, stream or ocean, the better. Never attempt to can any fish that is stale. ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray
... home; so are the health, the morals, the education of his children. All these are the true realities of life to him; but the beauty which changes to deformity by the small-pox, which fades under dyspepsia, grows stale by habit, and is worn threadbare by the end of twenty years, is only a skin-deep grace which he does not value. Perhaps he is right. Certainly, some of the happiest marriages among one's acquaintances are ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... no 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
... impaired the vitality now of Christian presentations of ethics.) So that to have announced it positively, at that time, would have served his purpose but little: men would have said, "We have heard all that before; had he nothing better to give us than stale ideas from the Mysteries or Pythagoras?" What he wanted to do was to take it out of the region of religion, where familiarity with it had bread an approach to contempt; and restate it robbed of that familiarity, and clothed ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... deadlocks and more critical crises than had ever before come whooping out of the inexhaustible store where they were kept for the public entertainment. Austria, and then Germany, made a not bad attempt on public attention by raking up some forgotten sensation over a stale excitement at a place called Sarajevo; but on the twenty-sixth, Ireland magnificently filled the bill again by the far more serious affair of Nationalist Volunteers landing three thousand rifles ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... place where the Red Flag Club had met the night before was still reeking with stale smoke and the effluvia of the unwashed; but the windows were open and a negro was sweeping up ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... old, old theme, Never stale, but never new, Floating like a pleasant dream, Back to ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... and not of the State Council," said Pollnitz, in a fawning voice. "If your majesty designed to be angry, it was not necessary to light the pipes and fill the beer-mugs; for while you are neither smoking nor drinking, the pipe goes out, and the beer becomes stale." ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... the players face their task he gains a new respect for the profession. It is with a sense of shame that the wincing author hears his lines repeated night after night—lines that seem to him to have grown so stale and disreputably stupid, and which the ingenuity of the players contrives to instill with life. With a sense of shame indeed does he reflect that because one day long ago he was struck with a preposterous idea, here are honest folk depending on it to earn daily bread and travelling ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... herrin'-gutted bush-ranger over yonder? He'd stale the milk out of your tea, he would, be the same token. Well, last night he got vicious and took a crack at my lines. I had rayson to suspect he'd be afther tryin' somethin' on, so I laid for him. I planted a certain mule where he could stale it an' guarded the rest ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... 6. Stale or Decayed Foods.—Food which has been allowed to stand until it is spoiled, or has become stale, musty, or mouldy, such as mouldy bread or fruit, or tainted meat, is unfit to be eaten, and is often a cause of very severe sickness. Canned fish or other meats spoil very quickly after the cans ...
— First Book in Physiology and Hygiene • J.H. Kellogg
... given some biscuits and stale cake, looked up at them inquiringly, as much as to say, "Aren't we going home now?" Visions of his comfortable bed rose before him, and he felt very inclined for a noon-day nap. But the children told him he was not to go home yet, and he agreed, ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... satirist in the exposing of the cant and knavery of the pretenders to religion, what room is there for him to lash the infamies of the law! On this point the French are babes in iniquity compared to us—a counsel prostituting himself for money is a matter with us so stale, that it is hardly food for satire: which, to be popular, must find some much more complicated and interesting knavery whereon ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... lustily, would drinke so many carouses as there were letters in the names of their mistresses, or lovers; so easily were they overcome with this vice, who by their virtue some other time, became masters of the world; but these devices are peradventure stale now; there be finer devices ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 348, December 27, 1828 • Various
... stumbled through the streets in the bleak darkness of winter mornings, when the trains from the north came into Caxton covered with ice, and the trainmen stood on the deserted little platform whipping their arms and calling to Jerry Donlin to hurry with his work that they might get back into the warm stale ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... ever grow "stale and rung-upon," however much the chilly hand of a pedantic psychology seeks to brush the bloom away from the wings of ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... get the 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
... pleasures, whereas it will only dampen the zeal and eagerness of the first child. There is a hearty simple type of person who is naively eager and enthusiastic, full of desire, passion and enthusiasm, who finds joy and satisfaction in simple things, whose purposes do not grow stale or monotonous; there is a finicky type, easily displeased and dissatisfied, laying weight on trifles, easily made anhedonic, victims of any reduction in their own energy (which is on the whole low) or of any disagreeable ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... again for prayer, when I found that 10s. 6d. more had come in since the morning. With this 1l. 10s. 6d. we were able to buy, even this Saturday evening, the usual quantity of bread, (as it might be difficult to get stale bread on Monday morning,) and have some money left. God be praised, who gave us grace to come to the decision not to take any bread today, as usual, nor to buy any thing for which we cannot pay at once. We were very comfortable, thankfully taking this money out of our Father's hands, as a proof ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself. Second Part • George Mueller
... knew that John Kollander was opening a can of something, gathering the boys around him and as they ate, recounting the hardships of army life to add spice to an otherwise stale and unprofitable meal. Afterward probably he would go to some gathering of his comrades and there fight, bleed and die for his country. For he was an incorrigible patriot. The old flag, his country's honor, and the ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... I come aboard," Harrison said to me at the galley door, as he returned the dinner pots and pans from the forecastle. "Somehow Tommy's grub always tastes of grease, stale grease, and I reckon he ain't changed his shirt since ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... unlimited means and no particular occupation, the pleasures of a life of fashionable amusement are apt to grow "weary, flat, stale, and unprofitable," after a certain time. Douglas Dale was beginning to be very tired of balls and dinner parties, flower-shows and morning concerts, when he happened to meet his cousin, Reginald Eversleigh, at a club to which both ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... forth in gold letters, with a printed legend underneath announcing that Diana McNally was licensed to sell wines and spirits to be consumed on the premises. Here Bridget and Mary Nolan held sway. They were "stale girls" in the opinion of the neighbours, and therefore, as their aunt felt, the most suited for this post. Maggie, their youngest sister, migrated between shop and bar, and spent much of her time in rolling up "ha'porths ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... breakfasted five hours earlier on stale bread and a few sardines, lunched, with small appetite, on biscuits and a slab of chocolate, and moistened his parched throat with tepid whisky-and-water. Quenching his thirst was an achievement past hoping for till Kohat itself ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... the distaff from BIARTEY) Out and be gone, be gone. Lie with the mountains, Smother among the thunder; stale dew mould you. Outstrip the hound, or he shall ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... of the shadows of the dark landing the dog came slowly and warily, ready to turn and slink off if he met no welcome, but Tode was in the mood when even a strange dog was better than his own company. He fed the half-starved creature with some stale sandwiches, and then talked to him and tried to teach him some tricks until to his own surprise he heard the city clocks striking nine, and the long, lonely evening he had ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... in silently preparing a cup of tea, which, with a quantity of sea-biscuit, a little cold salt pork, and a hunch of stale bread, constituted his supper. Pup watched his every movement with an expression of earnest solicitude, combined with goodwill, ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... work and to his play, while the wife attends to her social and domestic duties. The evening brings reunion with new impressions and new interests to discuss. Such a life with its brief restorative separations prevents love growing stale, and soothes the irritation of nerves which, by the strain of petty repetitions, are exasperated sometimes into blasphemy of the heart's true creed. But the Barrington menage was an unusual one. By adopting a life of travel, they had devoted ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... of the kind—a fresh egg! Fresh eggs are worth their weight in gold. We have a stale egg, ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... world is old, lad, And all the trees are brown; And all the sport is stale, lad, And all the wheels run down; Creep home, and take your place there, The spent and maimed among; God grant you find one face there, You loved when all ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... I don't come into that sort of scheme. I never ought to have been there at all. Still, I'm glad I showed him he'd got something in himself beside the stale accumulations of many banker ancestors; if it's only for the sake of the next litte banker, who may want to lay ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... your vows. Elsewhere you trimmed and taught these lamps to burn; You bring them stale and dim to serve my turn. You lit those candles in another shrine, Guttered and cold you offer them on mine. Take ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... does not rise above 75 deg. or 80 deg.. In such a case if the manure is otherwise in good condition and fresh, it is well enough and a good crop may be expected. But if the manure, to begin with, had been a little stale, rotten and inert, I certainly would not hesitate to at once break up the bed, add some fresh horse droppings to it, mix thoroughly, then make it up again. Or a fair heat may be started in such a stale bed ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... wakes stale at morn, From heavy sleep that no rest brings: This life of quiet joy wakes fresh, And claps its ...
— Foliage • William H. Davies
... months they were married. Terry was surprised into it. Not that she was not fond of him. She was; and grateful to him, as well. For, pretty as she was, no man had ever before asked Terry to be his wife. They had made love to her. They had paid court to her. They had sent her large boxes of stale drugstore chocolates, and called her endearing names as they made ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... reply and dropped heavily into a chair. He brought with him the fumes of whisky and stale tobacco, and as these reached her across the intervening space Evelyn made a little grimace ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... the saloon when the three reached the door of "old man" Smith's reeking den. The proprietor was sweeping the bar, in a vain effort to clear the atmosphere of the nauseating stench of stale tobacco and drink. John was propped against the bar mopping up his fourth "Collins." He usually had a thirst that took considerable quenching in the mornings now. His over-night potations were deep and strong. Morning "nibbling" had consequently ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... or creeping ran; The liquorice, and valerian, Clove-gillyflowers, sun-dressed; And nutmeg, good to put in ale, Whether it be moist or stale, - Or ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... this advancement of knowledge in one of its most delightful departments, has been the gradual extension of its study from stale books written by men, to that book ever fresh from the hand of God. And the second—another yet the same—has been the gradual change wrought by a philosophical spirit in the observation, delineation, and arrangement of the facts and laws with which the science is conversant, and which it exhibits ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... the pretensions of the Americans. The moon served as a pretext for a thousand stale puns and a score of ballads, in which bad taste contested the palm with ignorance. But as formerly the French paid before singing, so now they paid after having had their laugh, and they subscribed for a sum of 1,253,930 francs. ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... "don't you get awful tired of being a jackass? Sometimes I want to kiss you, and sometimes I feel as if I had to kick you. I 'll compromise with you now by letting you bring me some more beer. This got all stale while your sister was here. I saw she did n't like it, and so I would n't drink any more for fear she 'd try to ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... butterfly for whom the healing rays had come too late. We crossed some deserted public gardens commanded by a gorgeous casino, its porticos heaped with chairs and tables; so past kiosques and cafs, great white hotels with boarded windows, bazaars and booths, and all the stale lees of vulgar frivolity, to the post-office, which at least was alive. I received a packet of letters and purchased a local time-table, from which we learned that the steamer sailed daily to Borkum via Norderney, touching three times a week at Juist ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... to go a-fishing, as we called it; that is, to let down their ragged hats through the broken window-panes by cords torn from the edges of our blankets. Now and then the poor folks near by filled these nets with stale bread or potatoes; but one day, after long ill luck, a hat was of a sudden felt to be heavy, and was declared a mighty catch, and hauled up with care. When it was found to be full of stones, a strange misery appeared on the faces of these eager, half-starved wretches. The ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... to stamp, that is, to make an impression and a stamp; stow, to stow, to bestow, steward, or stoward; stead, steady, stedfast, stable, a stable, a stall, to stall, stool, stall, still, stall, stallage, stage, still, adjective, and still, adverb: stale, stout, sturdy, stead, stoat, stallion, stiff, stark-dead, to starve with hunger or cold; stone, steel, stern, stanch, to stanch blood, to stare, steep, steeple, stair, standard, a stated measure, stately. In all these, ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... People have lived—innumerable people—exhausted experience, and yet other people keep on coming to hand, none the wiser, none the better. It is like a waterfall more than anything else in the world. Every year one has to turn to and warn another batch about these stale old things. Yet it is one's duty—the last thing that remains to a man. And as a piece of worldly wisdom, that has nothing to do with wives, always leave a few duties neglected for the comfort of your age. There are such a lot of other things ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... quite aloof, Herr Schurz, I'm certain, but not on your side exactly either. I like to look on and hold the balance evenly, not to throw my own weight too lightly into either stale. The objective attitude of the mere spectator is after all the right one for an impartial philosopher ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... tea, as too commonly found at our hotels and boarding-houses, are that it is made in every way the reverse of what it should be. The water is hot, perhaps, but not boiling; the tea has a general flat, stale, smoky taste, devoid of life or spirit; and it is served, usually, with thin milk instead of cream. Cream is as essential to the richness of tea as of coffee. We could wish that the English fashion might generally prevail, of giving ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to your maids and men I bring both points and pins; Come bid me welcome then, The good New Year begins: And for my love Let me approve The friendship of your Maid, Whose nappy ale, So good and stale, ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... Age cannot wither him, nor custom stale his infinite variety. Wonderful, all the same, what perversely bad hits he will persist in making, at times. Does things now and again you'd think a school-girl with a ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various
... to look the wind and weather straight in the face, there in the glacial air, in the gloom under the pale sheen of the arc-lights fastened to the mast. He shuddered at the thought of a night in the oppressive confines of his cabin, with the closed port-hole and the hot, stale air. But that alone was not the reason which kept him chained to the deck. It was the urge, in case of danger, to be near Ingigerd Hahlstroem. And when he seated himself near the smoke-stack, with ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... measure running over, but never tedious—nunquam sufflaminandus erat. He is one of those writers who can never tire us, not even of himself; and the reason is, he is always 'full of matter.' He never runs to lees, never gives us the vapid leavings of himself, is never 'weary, stale, and unprofitable,' but always setting out afresh on his journey, clearing away some old nuisance, and turning up new mould. His egotism is delightful, for there is no affectation in it. He does not talk ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... Stale cigarette smoke, the acrid odors of sweaty clothing, the vapors of alcohol, the breathing of a crowded multitude, worse by far than a trainful ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... a crowded back seat, where, leaning one elbow on his knee, he shaded his eyes with his hand. On his right a big, sweaty farmer was smoking a stale pipe. The smell of the cheap, vile tobacco, bad as it was, became a welcome substitute for the odor ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... 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
... a land-lover, but he wants land so that he may live on it, an' he wants to see it before he gives his money for it. Now, ye go to an Englishman, an' till him ye've a bit of land in the cintre of a lost island in the middle of the Pacific say, an' pfwhat does he do? He'll first thry to stale ut, thin thry to bully ye out of ut; but he'll ind by buyin' ut, at anny price ye've conscience to ask, an' he'll thrust to Providence to be able to find the island some day. That's wisdom. I've seen the ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... dictionaries of the day, but it was in the soldier's vocabulary, now obsolete. Chip up bacon in fine particles, place in an oven and fry to a crisp. Fill the oven one-third or one-half full of branch water, then take the stale corn bread, the more moldy the better, rub into fine crumbs, mix and bring the whole to a boil, gently stirring with a forked stick. When cold, eat with fingers and to prevent waste or to avoid carrying it on the march, eat the four ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... not have found a more amused admirer. "Pinafore" never grew stale for her, and her brothers yielded to her fancy, or pleased it, by naming their little steamer Pinafore. She went to the theatre again and again to see this, and all the succeeding comedies by the same hands. She never seemed to weary ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... 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; these ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... Clement, smiling, "as the old woman said when her husband did not die before the funeral cakes were stale. But could it not come off at ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... eggs in a nest, it throws out one and deposits its own instead. I revisited the nest a few days afterward and found an egg again cast out, but none had been put in its place. The nest had been abandoned by its owner and the eggs were stale. ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... first looking back, as though to beckon to some unseen person outside, came, very deliberately, into the room, and was closely followed by a little man in brown, very much the worse for wear, who brought with him a mingled fumigation of stale tobacco and fresh onions. The clothes of this gentleman were much bespeckled with flue; and his shoes, stockings, and nether garments, from his heels to the waist buttons of his coat inclusive, were profusely embroidered with splashes of mud, caught a fortnight previously—before ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... cliff was long and black, and the air was stale and thick with the stench of rodents. Stanton stood still for a minute, stretching his muscles. Crawling through that cramped little opening had not been easy. He looked around him, trying to probe the luminescent gloom that the goggles ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... to the Hall, and repeated to a jaded audience, week after week, the same stale list of grievances. From any other man the repetition would be intolerable. But the public ear had become attuned to his accents, to which, whatever the sense of his language, men listened as to a messenger of heavenly tidings. Mr. Duffy ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... has been cooked in the open air under weeping skies. While waiting for it, we shall clean the same old rifle. When night falls, we shall sleep uneasily upon a comfortless floor, in an atmosphere of stale food and damp humanity. In the morning we shall rise up reluctantly, and go forth, probably in heavy rain, to our labour until the evening—the same labour and the same evening. We admit that it can't be helped: the officers and the authorities do their best for us ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... is of this unsounded depth, it may well afford to repeat the same forms forever, nor incurs thereby any danger of exhausting its significance and becoming stale. Vital repetition, accordingly, goes on in Nature in a way not doubtful and diffident, but frank, open, sure, as if the game were one that could not be played out. It is now a very long while that buds have burst and grass ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Why, the ideas which I have quoted, if they were carried to logical lengths, would make heaven a farcical kill-joy, a weary, stale, flat, unprofitable morgue of disappointed hopes, with Ennui for janitor. I admit that the old heaven of the Semitic poets was constructed somewhat along these lines. But that was no real heaven. The real heaven is a quiet, harpless, ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... not an explicit contract that some of the experiences and events of a settler's life should be duly described and recorded? How to fulfil that obligation and at the same time avoid what is ordinarily regarded as the dull and prosaic, the stale, the flat, the unprofitable, is the trouble. I would gladly shirk even this small responsibility, even as greater ones have been outmanoeuvred, but a written promise unfulfilled may be troublesome to a conscience, which, when reminiscent ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... thought I; but 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 shaver and closed ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... the young and vigorous country. In the correspondence of Henry Brevoort and Washington Irving and others one gets delightful little pictures—vignettes, as it were—of social life of that day. Mr. Emmet writes begging for some snuff "no matter how old. It may be stale and flat but cannot be unprofitable!" Brevoort asks a friend to dine "On Thursday next at half-past four o'clock." He paints us a quaint sketch of "a little, round old gentleman, returning heel taps into decanters," at a soiree, adding: "His heart smote him at ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... must fly round and be ready for them," said Amy, as the sun woke her next morning. She spoke briskly, but in her secret soul she wished she had said nothing about Tuesday, for her interest like her cake was getting a little stale. ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... are green! Every grape you pick breaks in your jaws, for city grapes are glass bubbles! Having taken from the sparrow only his make-up and grimace, you are just a clumsy understudy, a sort of vice-buffoon! And you serve up stale old cynicisms picked up with crumbs in fashionable club-rooms, poor little bird, and think to astonish us with your ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... simply stand by the ditch with their hands in their pockets sucking a stale pipe. They would rather lounge there in the bitterest north-east wind that ever blew than do a single hour's honest work. Blackguard is written in their faces. The poacher needs some courage, at least; he knows a penalty awaits detection. These fellows have no idea of sport, no courage, ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... through the crowd and whispers in Campbell's ear, "Put Balfour and Martin in the scrim. They are fresher." He has noticed that the scrim line on both sides is growing stale, and can do no more than grimly hold on. At once Campbell sees the wisdom of this suggestion. The Don, though not so heavy as Shock, is quite as strong, and is quicker than the big centre, who is beginning to show the effect of the tremendous ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... he entered was meagre and stale-smelling, with bare floor and stained and sagging wall-paper; unfurnished save for a battered ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... was a union to distance every wonder of the kind.—The attachment of Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax became commonplace, threadbare, stale in the comparison, exciting no surprize, presenting no disparity, affording nothing to be said or thought.—Mr. Knightley and Harriet Smith!—Such an elevation on her side! Such a debasement on his! It ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... Ohio make its appearance than a number of critical labels were fixed on it: the revolt against the village, the espousal of sexual freedom, the deepening of American realism. Such tags may once have had their point, but by now they seem dated and stale. The revolt against the village (about which Anderson was always ambivalent) has faded into history. The espousal of sexual freedom would soon be exceeded in boldness by other writers. And as for the ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... at thee: Sirrah, this comes of couzening, home and spare, eat Reddish till you raise your sums again. If you stir far in this, I'le have you whipt, your ears nail'd for intelligencing o'the Pillory, and your goods forfeit: you are a stale couzener, leave ...
— The Scornful Lady • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... brown stuff dress, with a red bandanna round her head, was mounted on the top step of the stairs which led down to her door, and was employed in setting out her goods—that is, on one side of her door she placed a tin milk-can, and on the other some bunches of stale vegetables, flanked with yellowed cabbages. At the bottom of the steps, in the shadowy depths of the cellar, one could see the light of the burning charcoal in a little stove. This shop situated at the side of the passage, served ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... the dresser two showy cups and placed them on the table. Then she went to the kitchen and brought in the coffee, already poured into two chipped bowls, and a plate with a few stale cakes. ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... in my telling you how I know these things," she said, "but it is enough to tell you I do know them, and I also know that the children made their last breakfast with Miss Dingus, alias Hester Broughton, alias Margery Dubois, on a pickle and a stale cream puff. Miss Dubois is now doing a dance turn in Chicago with one Mike Brady. She fondly imagines when you want to see the children she can come to Dorfield and get them away from the Children's Home as easily as she put them there. The fact is, Miss Dingus ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson
... the corner of Catherine street, opposite the Catherine Market—a region remarkable for a very 'ancient and fish-like smell.' This Market was a large, rotten old shanty, devoted to the sale of stale fish, bad beef, dubious sausages, suspicious oysters, and dog's meat. Beneath its stalls at night, many a 'lodger' often slumbered; and every Sunday morning it was the theatre of a lively and amusing scene, wherein ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... is still much that I might say about the transactions of that time, but I think that even what I have said is more than enough. The blame rests with Aeschines, who has drenched me with the stale dregs[n] of his own villainy and crime, from which I was compelled to clear myself in the eyes of those who are too young to remember the events; though perhaps you who knew, even before I said a single word, of Aeschines' service ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... diamond-shaped slices of 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 ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum
... with the greatest difficulty we secured a small wooden compartment with seats sharp and narrow and a smell of cabbage, bad tobacco, and dirty clothes. The floor was littered with sunflower seeds and the paper wrappings of cheap sweets. The air came in hot stale gusts down the corridor, met the yet closer air of our carriage, battled with it and retired defeated. We flung open the windows and a cloud of dust rose gaily to meet us. The whole of the Russian ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... time the boy was howling, and holding one hand under his arm, while he danced a hornpipe and protested, that, if I'd save him this time, he'd "niver stale another cint's worth as long as he ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... 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
... possess any for her. She was as out of place in it as a mourning dove in a city mob. Her spirit sought tranquillity, and she found it in the serene and changless convent life. You and I might seek in vain for anything like peace of spirit in such a place: we might find it a stale and profitless imprisonment; and perhaps it speaks badly for both of us that it is so. The violet finds its silent cell in the earth-crevice by the hidden spring a sufficient refuge, and rejoices in it, but the sea-grass that has all its life tossed in the surges would ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... showing faint dawn tints and the clamor had worn itself out perforce—because even the leaders were, after all, but men, and there was a limit to their endurance—Manley entered the parlor, haggard enough, it is true, and bearing with him the stale odor of cigars long since smoked, and of the baptism of bad whisky, but also with the air of conscious rectitude which sits so comically upon a man unused ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... 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
... king Bele said, "The helmet now is heavy, and stale the mead; The fate of man grows darker, but all the clearer High Valhal shines before me, as ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... accusations, as also to detect the errours of certeine writers concerning this Island, vnto good and well affected men (for the common people will be alwayes like themselues, stubbornly mainteining that which is false and foolish, neither can I hope to remooue them from this accustomed and stale opinion) I haue ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... having heard that his physician and friend was imprisoned by the Inquisition, under the stale pretext of Judaism, addressed a letter to one of them to request his freedom, assuring the inquisitor that his friend was as orthodox a Christian as himself. The physician, notwithstanding this high recommendation, was put to the torture; and, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... has now become the great variety artist, one in truth whose infinite variety detention cannot stale any more than Customs officers can arrest ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... Men who had praised London as the only place to live in were now vying with one another to live furthest from a station, to have no chimneys visible on the most distant horizon, to depend on tradesmen who only called once a week from cities so distant that fresh-baked loaves grew stale before delivery. "Rival ruralists would quarrel about which had the most completely inconvenient postal service; and there were many jealous heartburnings if one friend found out any uncomfortable situation which the other friend had ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... intended to send to Black Castle in form of a newspaper, but I found that though every day's conversation and occurrences appeared of prodigious importance just at the moment they were passing, yet afterwards they seemed so flat and stale as not to be worth sending. I must however tell you that I had materials for one brilliant paragraph about the Duchess of York. Mr. Lloyd had seen the wondrous sight. "When she was to be presented to the Queen, H.R.H. kept Her Majesty waiting nearly an hour, till at last the ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... first in all cleanness was given To corruption unveiled and assailed by the malice of Heaven— By the heart-shaking jests of Decay where it lolled on the wires— To be blanched or gay-painted by fumes—to be cindered by fires— To be senselessly tossed and retossed in stale mutilation From crater to crater. For this we shall take expiation. But who shall return ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... gained for us the plaudits and the gratitude of the world was due to this short period of intensive training, "under men who were intelligent enough to know just what was needed and just how to go about to secure it"—men not hampered by any pedagogical nonsense or grown stale over a long attempt to discriminate between the "infinity of nothingness and the nothingness of infinity" (as one might summarize a rather common criticism), rather than to the former years of patient toil, and discipline, and accomplishment ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... into the dormitory from the fresh, pure, night air he thought at first that he would choke in the atmosphere laden with stale tobacco-smoke and foul odours; but in the end he slept splendidly, despite ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... through somehow, sitting bolt upright in a car thick with tobacco smoke and smelling of stale food ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... isle, tost on ill fortune's waves, Ordain'd by fate to be the land of slaves; Shall moving Delos now deep-rooted stand; Thou fix'd of old, be now the moving land! Although the metaphor be worn and stale, Betwixt a state, and vessel under sail; Let me suppose thee for a ship a while, And thus address thee ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... may be gone to-morrow. We know of no inquisition more curious, no speculation more lofty, than may be found in the Essays of Charles Lamb. We know no place where conventional absurdities receive so little quarter; where stale evasions are so plainly exposed; where the barriers between names and things are at times so completely flung down. And how, indeed, could it be otherwise? For it is truth that plays upon his writings ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... full view, in the second row of benches, that night, and I began on him. I tried him with mild jokes, then with severe ones; I dosed him with bad jokes and riddled him with good ones; I fired old stale jokes into him, and peppered him fore and aft with red-hot new ones; I warmed up to my work, and assaulted him on the right and left, in front and behind; I fumed and sweated and charged and ranted till I was hoarse and sick and frantic and furious; but I never moved him once—I never started ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... could not do round ranch houses, she finished in a dream, turning with a touch the house into a home; flowers for the middle of the big table, dishes pitchforked down replaced in order, corner cobwebs speared with a duster on a broom, Navajo rugs uncurled and squared, stale cooking expelled from littered shelves, flies pursued to the last ditch, breaks in the mosquito wire round the piazza tacked up, heaps of mended socks and overalls sent out to the bunk house for the ranch hands, milk ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... that in time, when the novelty was gone off and the story of his victory over the Fire-god had grown stale, although the work of conversion went on steadily, many of the people grew weary of the white man and his doctrines. Soon this weariness found expression in various ways, and in none more markedly than ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... 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 palate and ...
— American Cookery - The Art of Dressing Viands, Fish, Poultry, and Vegetables • Amelia Simmons
... because it was called revolutionary. But the other revolutionists were abruptly startled by the presentation of quite rational and ingenious arguments on their own side. The dreary thing about most new causes is that they are praised in such very old terms. Every new religion bores us with the same stale rhetoric about closer fellowship and the higher life. No one ever approximately equalled Bernard Shaw in the power of finding really fresh and personal arguments for these recent schemes and creeds. No one ever ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... not so fast, I pray you! Better a double mouthful of stale porpoise fat, with a fin bone in it, than so many ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... Scandinavians and dark men with earrings from southern latitudes, in red or checked shirts, blue dungarees and glazed black hats with trailing ribbons, or in cheap and clumsy shore clothes. There was a scraping of fiddle from an upper window, the sound of heavy capering feet and the stale ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... dyke Between his own and others' intellect; But Wordsworth's poem, and his followers, like Joanna Southcote's Shiloh[215] and her sect, Are things which in this century don't strike The public mind,—so few are the elect; And the new births of both their stale Virginities Have proved but Dropsies, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... but what you will, and stale at that," said the ugliest of his children, young Chilblain, giving his father's big toe a tweak as he passed, and grinning when he heard Frozen ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... pale almost putrescent fatty body in the douche—Judas with whom I talked one night about Russia, he wearing my pelisse—the frightful and impeccable Judas: take this man. You see him, you smell the hot stale odour of Judas' body; you are not afraid of him, in fact, you hate him; you hear him and you know him. But you do ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... say—for I live in a very honest neighborhood. The only two thieves that were in it—Charley Folliott and George Austin—were hanged not long ago, and I don't know anybody else in the country side that would stale it." ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... happiness is that to leave the home Of the Waywode, my father, for the house Of some count palatine, a grateful bride? What do I gain of new from such a change? And can I joy in looking to the morrow When it brings naught but what was stale to-day? Oh, tasteless round of petty, worn pursuits! Oh, wearisome monotony of life! Are they a guerdon for high hopes, high aims? Or love or greatness I must have: all else Are unto me alike indifferent. Smooth off the trouble from thy brow, dear father! Let's trust the stream that bears ...
— Demetrius - A Play • Frederich Schiller
... that her son was an honest man, getting his bread after an honest fashion. The Grinder's mode of life was too well known for even a mother to attempt to deny it. But she pretended that she was very honest herself, and appealed to sundry brandy-balls and stale biscuits in her window, to prove that she lived after a decent, honest, ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... goods, article by article, round to the back door, out of the way of casual passers. This done, he walked round the mill in a more regardful attitude, and surveyed its familiar features one by one—the panes of the grinding-room, now as heretofore clouded with flour as with stale hoar- frost; the meal lodged in the corners of the window-sills, forming a soil in which lichens grew without ever getting any bigger, as they had done since his smallest infancy; the mosses on the plinth towards the river, reaching as high as the capillary ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... despot's name;— To rush into the list, unaskt, alone, And make the stake of all the game of one! Then would the world have seen again what power A people can put forth in Freedom's hour; Then would the fire of France once more have blazed;— For every single sword, reluctant raised In the stale cause of an oppressive throne, Millions would then have leaped forth in her own; And never, never had the unholy stain Of Bourbon feet disgraced ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... and the acorns would be an intolerable extravagance; but not so from Mr. Davies, who knows and loves all beasts of the field; who knows what it is to tramp over stones and to tread the grass, so that his "stones like grass" rings freshly, while the dew-drinking Phoebus is stale. ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... the Bishops will 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 ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Diary of Samuel Pepys • David Widger
... 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
... accept men's flattery and expect their compliments, because it is a traditional homage that survives the chivalry that inspired it; but we don't mistake chaff for wheat, and the purest, sweetest, noblest and holiest friendship in life is that of a true, good woman. The perfume is as different as the stale odor of a cigar, from the breath of the honeysuckle that bleached all night under crystal dew, floats in at your window like a message from heaven, I love you dearly, my pretty Portia, hence I wince a trifle at your harsh ascription of cave canem motives in my marriage. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Amid these stale things Who care not for gaying, And those junketings That used so to joy her, And never to cloy her As us they cloy! . . . But She is shut, she is shut From the cheer of them, dead To all done and ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... thieves' sanctuary, who rob more safely in a crowd than a wilderness, while every pillar is a bush to hide them. It is the other expense of the day, after plays and taverns; and men have still some oaths to swear here. The visitants are all men without exceptions; but the principal inhabitants are stale knights and captains out of service, men of long rapiers and short purses, who after all turn merchants here, and traffic for news. Some make it a preface to their dinner, and travel for an appetite; but thirstier ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... 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 heard if you had listened. ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... a 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
... slackned, and the Soldiers that are to watch them grow remiss in their Duty; so that now the Ambassadours walk about the Streets, and any body goes to their houses and talks with them: that is, after they have been so long in the Countrey, that all their news is stale and grown out of date. But this liberty is only winked at, not allowed. When they have been there a great while, the King usually gives them Slaves, both men and women, the more to alienate their minds from their own Country, and that they may stay with him with the more ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox |
