"Stale" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... British princes that were in the Romane armie, perceiuing how greatlie this mishap had discouraged the Romans, and again by the small circuit of their campe, gessing that they could be no great number, and that lacke of vittels sore oppressed them, they stale priuilie away one after another out of the campe, purposing to assemble their powers againe, and to forestall the Romans from vittels, and so to driue the matter off till winter: which if they might doo (vanquishing these or closing them ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (3 of 8) • Raphael Holinshed
... the greater part of its folk-lore. Certain it is that the witch stories of Yorkshire, as those of Lancaster at another time, by their mysterious and romantic elements made the trials of the south seem flat, stale, and unprofitable. Yet they rarely had ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... Modena, where thou slew'st Hirtius and Pansa, consuls, at thy heel Did famine follow; whom thou fought'st against, Though daintily brought up, with patience more Than savages could suffer: thou didst drink The stale of horses, and the gilded puddle Which beasts would cough at: thy palate then did deign The roughest berry on the rudest hedge; Yea, like the stag when snow the pasture sheets, The barks of trees thou browsed'st; on the Alps It is reported thou ...
— Antony and Cleopatra • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... children of a respectable artisan or small tradesman; but what chiefly attracted my attention was the very great pleasure the elder girl appeared to take in the birds. She had come well provided with stale bread to feed them, and after giving moderately of her store to the wood-pigeons and sparrows, she went on to the others, native and exotic, that were disporting themselves in the water, or sunning themselves on the green bank. She did not ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... writers have gone back to these fountains, flowing in these wild mythic wastes of the Past, and have drunk inspiration thence. Percy, Scott, and Carlyle, by so doing, have infused new sap from the old life-tree of their race into our modern English literature, which had grown effete and stale from having had its veins injected with too much cold, thin, watery Gallic fluid. Yes, Walter Scott heard the innumerous leafy sigh of Yggdrasil's branches, and modulated his harp thereby. Carlyle, too, has bathed in the three mystic ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... 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 ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... herself at forty another such passe newspaper woman trudging from one indifferent editor to another peddling "space." And why not? Mae Smith had been young and good-looking once, also a local celebrity in her way when she had signed a column in a daily. But she had grown stale with the grind, and having no special talent or personality had been easily replaced when a new Managing Editor came. Now, though chipper as a sparrow, she was always in need of ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... to the closet and opened the door. On a shelf he saw half a loaf of bread, dry and stale. He took ...
— Mark Mason's Victory • Horatio Alger
... LXXIX. "Age cannot stale, nor creeping years impair Stout hearts as ours, nor make our strength decay. Our hoary heads the heavy helmet bear. Our joy is in the foray, day by day To reap fresh plunder, and to live by prey. Ye love to dance, and dally with the ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... paid any attention to him, Tom ascended the stairs and entered the cabin. He wanted to see what sort of a looking place it was, but almost recoiled when he opened the door, for it was filled so full of stale tobacco smoke that he did not see how anybody could live in it. But he knew that he would have to become accustomed to that smell before he was on the prairie very long, so he kept on and finally found a chair at the further end of the cabin. There was no ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... and the like on one side of the water, and for Congress, Senate, or Presidency on the other, who have gone to school to the old men at Shechem? The prizes of politicians are often still won by this stale device. The young counsellors differ only in the means of gaining the object. Neither set has the least glimmer of the responsibility of the office, nor ever thinks that God has any say in choosing the king. Naked, undisguised selfishness animates both; ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... writing— Feeling a bear's wet grinder biting About thy frozen spine! Or thou thyself art eating whale, Oily, and underdone, and stale, That, ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... vein in the shoulder look blue or bright red, it is newly killed; but if black, green, or yellow, it is stale. The leg is known to be new by the stiffness of the joint. The head of a calf or a lamb is known by the eyes; if sunk or wrinkled, it is stale; if plump and lively, it ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... Jack said, as the boys faced each other in the dim light. "While we sat in there waiting for some one to get us out, you got a move on and did something! Say," he added, with a grin, "ain't this tie-up game getting stale? Suppose we knock this fellow on the head? He may get away if we don't. And these others? Think they are sufficiently soused ...
— Boy Scouts on Motorcycles - With the Flying Squadron • G. Harvey Ralphson
... destiny, that seems to enrap babys, and lunatiks, and soft little wimmen, when their heads get kinder turned by a man, and to Abram's honest face when she should compare it with Bial Flamburg's, and to Abram's pure, sweet breath with that mixture of stale cigars, tobacco, ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... BEEF, MUTTON, AND VEAL, form the basis of all good soups; therefore it is advisable to procure those pieces which afford the richest succulence, and such as are fresh-killed. Stale meat renders them bad, and fat is not so well adapted for making them. The principal art in composing good rich soup, is so to proportion the several ingredients that the flavour of one shall not predominate over another, and that all the articles of which it is composed, shall form an ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... my misfortune to write eternally about husbands and wives and their variants. My public expects it of me. I do so envy journalists who can write about plagues and strikes and Anarchist plots, and other pleasing things, instead of being tied down to one stale ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... 'The same is our intent and all our people: God help the right!' So the cardinal returned to Poitiers. In his company there were certain knights and squires, men of arms, who were more favourable to the French king than to the prince; and when they saw that the parties should fight, they stale from their masters and went to the French host; and they made their captain the chatelain of Amposte,[3] who was as then there with the cardinal, who knew nothing thereof till he ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... Stale bread, pilot-bread, dried corn-cakes, and crumbs, soaked a few minutes in water, or better still in milk, and fried, are all ...
— How to Camp Out • John M. Gould
... the luncheon was finished the party returned to the Exposition. There was such a dense crowd in the galleries, it seemed impossible to penetrate it. An odor of perspiring humanity, a stale smell of old gowns and coats, made an atmosphere at once heavy and sickening. No one looked at the pictures any more, but at faces and toilets, seeking out well-known persons; and at times came a great jostling ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... men from getting out of hand. But a glance at them as they made free with the natives' provisions relieved him on this score, and when Smith explained that he had on board the aeroplane certain delectables in the shape of chicken patties (becoming rather stale), doughnuts, plumcake, a bottle of Australian burgundy, and sundry other remnants of the provisions furnished by the hospitable folk of Palmerston, he voted an immediate adjournment for lunch, and the officers, with the Smiths, were soon ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... that some Buddhist authors whom Arnold has followed in his "Light of Asia" make Buddha but little better than a stale prisoner, and would have us believe that the glimpses he got of the ills that flesh is heir to were gained in spite of all precautions, as he was occasionally taken out of his rose embowered, damsel filled prison-house, and not as any prince of high intelligence and ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... is wanted is a new Martin Chuzzlewit, told by a wiser Mark Tapley. It is typical of something sombre and occasionally stale in the mood of Dickens when he wrote that book, that the comic servant is not really very comic. Mark Tapley is a very thin shadow of Sam Weller. But if Dickens had written it in a happier mood, there might have been a truer meaning in Mark ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... at the ridge, then gazed curiously around, and finally walked down along the stone wall to a pasture. Here, where they were building the barracks, there had been a camp; and the place was still smelling stale enough. Tents were now being loaded on ox wagons; and a company of Colonel Thomas's regiment was filing out along the road after the convoy which we had seen moving through the ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... whether he would like photographs of your house and the picturesque breakwater. I do so wish that you and he and I did not suffer so much, but could be at least moderately happy. I am sure you would be glad if you knew even in this time of sorrow, when all seems stale, flat, unprofitable, the pleasure and interest I have had in reading your Vol. 3 ["Modern Painters"]. I study your character in your writings, and I find so much to elevate, to love, to admire—a sort of education for ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... Madison street, and this is the stuff she feeds them on. Poor wretch! She has a drunken husband and three drinking sons. She means well, would like to do better by her boarders, but there is rent and gas and wear and tear of all sorts, and she buys bob veal and stale fish and rotten vegetables and alum bread, trying to make the ends meet. I've been there and tasted the messes that come to her table, and I would drink too if forced to live on them. She's got sense, a little—enough ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... stale and old, Often she sits and sighs; Life to me is a tale untold, Each day is a glad surprise. Dell will marry, of course, some day, After her belleship is run; She will cavil the matter in worldly way And wed Dame Fortune's ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... clouds, the sun, he had the Rampio, he had Annunziata, he even had Annunziata's uncle; and with all this he had a sense of having stepped out of a world that he knew by heart, that he knew to satiety, a world that was stale and stuffy and threadbare, with its gilt rubbed off and its colours tarnished, into a world where everything was fresh and undiscovered and full of savour, a great cool blue and green world that from minute ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... that's stale here, will be new there a twelvemonth hence; and if a man of the town by chance come amongst them, he's reverenced ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... dispute, to see what a man will answer,—to make him your butt!' (angrier still.) BOSWELL. 'My dear Sir, I had no such intentions as you seem to suspect; I had not indeed. Might not this nobleman have felt every thing "weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable[1039]," as Hamlet says?' JOHNSON. 'Nay, if you are to bring in gabble, I'll talk no more. I will not, upon my honour.'—My readers ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... Sullivan, too, could 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 of ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... of hers mean that she would be extravagant and selfish to obtain them? Could a young man with no great fortune offer her the luxury that was necessary to her? and even so, what changes come with time! He had a full realization of what the boredom of family life can be, when passion has grown stale. ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... window looked with a sunny aspect down upon the quad, and over the opposite buildings were seen the spires of churches, the dome of the Radcliffe, and the gables, pinnacles, and turrets of other colleges. This was pleasant enough: pleasanter than the stale odours of the Virginian weed that rose from the faded green window-curtains, and from the old Kidderminster carpet that had been charred and burnt into holes with the fag-ends ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... 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 ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... found a shut door which let him into yet a third room, wherein he barked both shins on a chair; and escaped to a fourth whose atmosphere was highly flavored with reluctant odors of bygone cookery, stale water and damp plumbing—probably the kitchen. Thence progressing over complaining floors through what may have been the servants' hall, a large room with a table in the middle and a number of promiscuous ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... and at once,' quoth he. 'Have your largest double-couched chamber ready with your softest lavender-scented sheets, for we have had a weary ride and must rest. And hark ye, landlord, no palming off your stale, musty goods as fresh, or of your washy French wines for the true Hainault vintage. I would have you to understand that my friend here and I are men who meet with some consideration in the world, though we care not to speak our names to every underling. ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... The stale heat of the long day in town, the dusty promiscuity of the suburban train were now but the requisite foil to an evening of scented breezes and tranquil talk. They had been married more than a year, and each home-coming ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... a dripping square coated with molasses. As he began to chew he knew that nothing before that moment had ever tasted so good, been so much an answer to all the disasters of the day. The world shrank; it was now the size of a battered tin plate smeared with molasses and the crumbs of stale crackers. ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... think of the native nuts. I grew up in Northern Illinois and could go out on a day like this and gather two or three bushels of hickory nuts. How I enjoyed the black walnut, especially when it was just shriveled so it would leave the shell—it got rather too rich when it was dried and stale in the winter time—but how delicious it was when just wilted! Also there was the butternut and the wild hazelnut. I used to take a one-horse wagon into the woods on a Saturday and gather enough hazelnuts in the shucks to fill it; then we ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting - Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913 • Various
... particular, Samuel Weller and Mrs. Gamp, of which I say no more. I am pining for Broadstairs, where the children are at present. I lurk from the sun, during the best part of the day, in a villainous compound of darkness, canvas, sawdust, general dust, stale gas (involving a vague smell of pepper), and disenchanted properties. But I hope to get ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... delights and dignities of freedom. He has no idea of cares yet, or of bad health, or of roguery, or poverty, or to-morrow's disappointment. The play has not been acted so often as to make him tired. Though the after drink, as we mechanically go on repeating it, is stale and bitter, how pure and brilliant was that first sparkling draught of pleasure!—How the boy rushes at the cup, and with what a wild eagerness he drains it! But old epicures who are cut off from the delights of the table, and are ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... said Lanigan, laughing; "and after that, let's drop the business. What's new and what's stale ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... a man's room, where a window is never opened except to let in a dog, or to shout at a gardener, and where years of stale tobacco brood in every nook and curtain, enveloped its occupant with a delicious sense of snug repose, and exerted ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... 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 were ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... by persons isolated as we are, I have the charity to believe they would devote a little more time, and exert a little more candor, in penning them. For, after all, how large a portion of all that a newspaper contains is, at least to remote readers, "flat, stale, and unprofitable." The mind soon reacts, and asks if ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... feele their drought, their pangs, their qualmes, Their rack in writing, who doe write for almes, Whose wretched Genius, and dependent fires, But to their Benefactors dole aspires. Nor hadst thou the sly trick, thy selfe to praise Under thy friends names, or to purchase Bayes Didst write stale commendations to thy Booke, Which we for Beaumonts or Ben. Johnsons tooke: That debt thou left'st to us, which none but he Can truly pay, Fletcher, ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes - Volume I. • Beaumont and Fletcher
... eyes Lord Morley's crowning achievement in literature is his biography of Mr. Gladstone. How easy it would have been to smother Mr. Gladstone in stale politics!—and how stale politics may become in that intermediate stage before they pass finally into history! English political literature is full of biography of this kind. The three notable ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the end of his life he chafed at such restraint: "when pressed to stay in country houses," he writes in 1872, "I have had the frankness to say that I have not discipline enough." Repeatedly he speaks with loathing of the "stale civilization," the "utter respectability," of European life; {6} longed with all his soul for the excitement and stir of soldiership, from which his shortsightedness debarred him; {7} rushed off again and again into foreign travel; set out immediately on ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... 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
... small pieces stale sponge cake or lady fingers, a few macaroons, some French cherries and apricots (glace), and mix all together. Make a custard of 1 quart milk and 6 eggs, and when cooked, reserve 1 cupful for a sauce, and ...
— The Cookery Blue Book • Society for Christian Work of the First Unitarian Church, San
... heat of the place, which has almost sent me to sleep; the exceeding number of times in which that becasse had been re-roasted, and the extortionate length of our bills, I say of Very's, what Hamlet said of the world, 'Weary, stale, and unprofitable!'" ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a platform thronged with fellow passengers similarly haunted by the seven devils of haste, beneath a high glazed but opaque vault penning an unappetizing atmosphere composed in equal parts of a stagnant warm air and stale steam, into a restaurant that had patently been up all night, through the motions of swallowing alternate mouthfuls of denatured coffee and dejected rolls, up again and out and down another platform—at last into the hot and dusty haven of ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... doesn't need me below for the present, Jack, so I came up to relieve you at the wheel. I don't want to see your steering wrist going stale when the race starts, so you'd better let me have the wheel, while you keep yourself fresh for the ...
— The Submarine Boys' Lightning Cruise - The Young Kings of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... When all this fret and tumult that we hear Do seem more stale than to the sexton's ear His own ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... praise, and continued to look about the room over his shoulder. She was not like a girl at her first ball, for whom all faces in the ballroom melt into one vision of fairyland. And she was not a girl who had gone the stale round of balls till every face in the ballroom was familiar and tiresome. But she was in the middle stage between these two; she was excited, and at the same time she had sufficient self-possession to be able to observe. In the left corner of the ballroom ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... the trees that grew in among the houses of Paradise Street were fresh and green, though one of the hot, burning breaks of blue sky and glaring sunlight had baked the road into Indian-red dust once more, and the interior of Mhtoon Pah's curio shop was heavy with stale scents and dark shadows that crept out as the gloom of evening settled in upon it. Mhtoon Pah moved about looking at his goods, and touching them with careful hands. He hovered over an ivory lady carrying an umbrella, and looked long at a ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... last his piercing fires. Over the stale warm air, dull as a pond And moveless in the grey quieted street, Blue magic of a summer evening glowed. The sky, that had been dazzling stone all day, Hollowed in smooth hard brightness, now dissolved ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... splendor of brass buttons and livery, but merely a little trouble (I doubt about money) is saved on the choicest luxuries of the year. The idea of going out of their rural paradises to buy half-stale fruit! But this class is largely at the mercy of the "hired man," or his more disagreeable development, the pretentious smatterer, who, so far from possessing the knowledge that the English, Scotch, or German gardeners ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... evening, with the addition of punch now and then. After these great people and aristocracy of Kolomna, come the rank and file. It is as difficult to put a name to them as to remember the multitude of insects which breed in stale vinegar. There are old women who get drunk, who make a living by incomprehensible means, like ants, dragging old clothes and rags from the Kalinkin Bridge to the old clothes-mart, in order to sell them ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... have been on the watch then place sticks in the ground to mark the place where they may be found, and they are the next morning dug out in enormous quantities, and exported to various parts of Borneo and the adjacent islands. The eggs have a stale fishy flavour, are very sandy, and to my mind extremely nasty, although they are considered a great delicacy by the natives, who eat ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... for the present and that the proper remedy is to refrain for a little while from further efforts in that line. We have possible justification for this interpretation when we reflect that a vacation does us much good, and though we begin it feeling stale, we end it feeling ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... during the 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 ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... to see them, and when she heard what they wanted she brought out a plate of stale bread and a thick ...
— Four Little Blossoms and Their Winter Fun • Mabel C. Hawley
... workers in their struggle for better conditions. By means of newspaper-made war hysteria the profiteers of Big Business entrenched themselves in public opinion. By posing as "100% Americans" (how stale and trite the phrase has become from their long misuse of it!) these social parasites sought to convince the nation that they, and not the truly American unionists whose backs they were trying to break, were working for the best interests of the American people. Our form of government, forsooth, ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... the Stem of a Plaintain Tree about 5 feet high, on the Top of which stood a Cocoa Nutt shell full of fresh water, and on the side of the post hung a small Bag, wherein was a few pieces of Bread Fruit roasted ready for eating. Some of the pieces were fresh and others Stale. The Natives did not seem to like that we should go near the body, and stood at a little distance themselves while we examin'd these matters, and appeared to be pleased when we came away. It certainly was no very agreeable place, for it stunk intollerably, and yet it ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... this doubtful information till after the discussion was over, and the matter in debate settled. The public, however, were now becoming more enlightened, and withal more curious, and these garbled and stale speeches did not satisfy them;—they longed for a full reporting newspaper, and the printers were encouraged by the general feeling to venture upon giving the proceedings in parliament from week to week, or from day to day, as they occurred. They were the more induced to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... pig of a suitable size, clean it well, and rub the inside with pepper and salt. Make a stuffing of bread, butter, parsley, sage and thyme; if the bread is stale, pour a little boiling water on it; mix altogether; fill the pig, and sew it up with strong thread; put in the skewers and spit, and tie the feet with twine; have a pint and a half of water in the bottom of the tin kitchen, with a spoonful of lard and a little salt, with this baste ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... fared on, riding the mule given him by the king and devising of one thing and another with the latter's servant, till hard upon tierce, when he said, 'Methinketh it were well done to let our beasts stale.' Accordingly, they put them up in a stable and they all staled, except the mule; then they rode on again, whilst the squire still took note of the gentleman's words, and came presently to a river, where, as they watered their cattle, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... time to spare. The ship sailed from Southampton in forty eight hours and I had only just arranged to accompany Lord Mountmorres on a tour in the Congo Free Stale. He was going out for the purpose of discovering the true condition of affairs in that country and of writing articles thereupon for the Globe but incidentally hoped to have some big game shooting. After one has read ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... Bread will surely fail to rise at all if you have scalded the yeast; the water must never be too hot. In winter, if it gets chilled, it will only rise slowly, or not at all, and in using baker's or German yeast take care that it is not stale, which ...
— Culture and Cooking - Art in the Kitchen • Catherine Owen
... brain; and as before, the noise and glitter of the Toledo had been unbearable, so now I found it a relief and a distraction. Two maskers bedizened in violet and gold whizzed past me like a flash, one of them yelling a stale jest concerning la nnamorata—a jest I scarcely heard, and certainly had no heart or wit to reply to. A fair woman I knew leaned out of a gayly draped balcony and dropped a bunch of roses at my feet; out of courtesy I stooped to pick ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... cried Teddy. "We can take the broken buns and feed them to Skyrocket and Top, and Mr. Nip and Jack will eat them, too," he said to his father. "It will be just as good as buying stale bread for the monkey and the parrot, Daddy. I guess they'll ...
— The Curlytops and Their Pets - or Uncle Toby's Strange Collection • Howard R. Garis
... Heavens, how stale and distasteful his former pursuits and friendships appeared to him! He had not been, up to the present time, much accustomed to the society of females of his own rank in life. When he spoke of such, ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the appearance of energy which momentarily satisfies a public demand that something shall be done. It also afforded Canning the peg on which to hang a grievance, and dexterously to prolong discussion until the matter became stale in public interest. By the irrelevancy of the punishment to the crime, and by the intrusion of secondary matters into the complaint, the "Chesapeake" issue, essentially clear, sharp, and impressive, became hopelessly confused with other considerations. Upon the proclamation followed ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... of the matter, least by our silence, like contention might arise betweene us, as fortuned betweene Eteocles and his Brother. When they had reasoned together in this sort, they swore both earnestly, that neither of them stale or tooke away any jote of the meate, wherefore they concluded to search out the Theefe by all kind of meanes. For they could not imagin or thinke, the Asse who stood alone there, would eate any such meates, neither could ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... the closest geographical, commercial, and social contact with the system of slavery. His fate was not different from that of his colleagues, in respect of interruptions of his meetings by mob violence, personal assaults with stale eggs and other more dangerous missiles, and a public sentiment which everywhere ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... the First, the loss of whose head saved England from disgrace. How strange, that even in this day of intelligence and liberty-loving, it should stand a shrine before which very respectable old gentlemen poured out their stale patriotism! At last I found myself in Downing street—at the door of a massive and sombre-looking mansion (No. 12) in front of which stood methodical-looking men with grave countenances. And, too, ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... disgust. I'm doing a little medical inspection among Father's poor people, though. That whiles away a few hours every day, and of course, every time I go to the hospital the doctors there tell me about any interesting new cases, so I'm not 'going stale' entirely." ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith
... stale news!" cried Miss Prunty, jumping up. "And Gon'ril (since I'll have to call her so) must be tired ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... in the mercantile world, and for many days I had heard nothing spoken of but the vast losses which houses and individuals of high character and standing had incurred, and the bankruptcy with which the community had become suddenly threatened. The subject had grown stale and wearisome to me. It had little interest, in fact, for one whose humble salary of one hundred and fifty pounds per annum depended so little upon the great fluctuations of commerce, and I accordingly disposed myself for sleep as soon as the words bills, money, and bankruptcy, became ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... used always to do the moment I was abed. Instead of going over my river in my mind as was my duty, I threw business aside for pleasure, and killed Brown. I killed Brown every night for months; not in old, stale, commonplace ways, but in new and picturesque ones;—ways that were sometimes surprising for freshness of design and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the Rue de Rennes, beside a plot of waste and, was a stall where an old woman sold dusty ginger-bread and sticks of stale barley-sugar. She had a face the colour of brick dust under a striped cotton sun-bonnet, and eyes of a pale, steely blue. Her whole stock-in-trade had not cost a couple of francs, and on windy days ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... of a bake-shop under a shed, we noticed some curious machinery, and were looking at it rather inquisitively when a young lad came up out of the bakery in the cellar, and, in answer to our inquiries, said in a matter-of-course way that it was a mill for grinding old bread and stale crackers into flour, which was again baked into a cheaper class of bread. This grade of flour may make a very nourishing food, but the incident left a most unpleasant taste ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... hands shook as he held them out over the stove and nodded to Billy. Bucky had opened his can, and approached the stove with a pan of water, coming in beside Billy without noticing him. He brought with him a foul odor of stale tobacco smoke and whisky. After he had put his water over the fire he turned to one of the bunks and with half a dozen coarse epithets roused Thompson, who sat up stupidly, still half drunk. Henry had gone to a small table, ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... seemed all aglow; he wrote, on such occasions, with extraordinary rapidity, and with that cheery appreciation of his labor which to any author is an immense stimulant. But following upon these happy humors came seasons of wearisome depression; the stale manuscript of yesterday lost its charm; the fancy refused to be lighted; he has not the heart to hammer at the business with dull, lifeless blows, and flings down his pen in despair. There are successive months during which this mood hangs ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... hath ceased to entertain. As I moved through the mist and the silence, and felt the tug of the thong that bound me to the wrist of the savage who stalked before me, I cared not how soon they made an end, seeing how stale and unprofitable were all things ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... among her things; and this was John Hollands' idea, as Jane afterwards found out from another fellow- servant, who was sorry for her, and had overheard the two making up their plans together. But Georgina said: 'No; that were a stale trick, and her ladyship might believe Jane's positive assertion of innocence. She would manage it better than ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... of fun seemed to be in a comic piece, which, however oft repeated, appeared never to grow stale. It ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... 15 For naught than laughter silly sillier be. Thou Celtiber art, in Celtiberia born, Where man who's urined therewith loves a-morn His teeth and ruddy gums to scour and score; So the more polisht are your teeth, the more 20 Argue they sipping stale in ampler store. ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... himself afresh to the faithful Master he served. God's blessings were to him always new and fresh. Answered prayers never lost the charm of novelty; like flowers plucked fresh every hour from the gardens of God, they never got stale, losing none of their beauty ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... the first visit; therefore I shall forage to a limited extent. I go ostensibly for bread. As I may not get any, you perhaps should bring some from whatever farmhouse you choose as the scene of your operations. Bread is always handy in the camp, fresh or stale. When in doubt, buy more bread. You can never go ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... the previous history of literature in this or perhaps any other country. When we see two post octavos of travels newly done up by the binder, we are prepared for a series of useless remarks, weak attempts at jokes, disquisitions on dishes, complaints of inns, stale anecdotes and vain flourishes, which almost make us blush for our country, and the cause of intelligence over the world. The Russian Emperor, who unquestionably has the power of licensing or prohibiting any of his subjects to travel at his own pleasure, is said to concede ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... the doctor's mother company. From the dingy short curtains in the windows you would have guessed at the shabby thrift behind them without setting foot in the dreary place. What could those wall-cupboards contain but stale scraps of food, chipped earthenware, corks used over and over again indefinitely, soiled table-linen, odds and ends that could descend but one step lower into the dust-heap, and all the squalid necessities of ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... anything less clubable than a set of men like this? You might as well set before me the stale bon-bons and sugar-plums of a dessert for a dinner, as ask me to take such people for associates and companions. The tone of everlasting trifling disgraces even idleness; and these men contrive in their lives to reverse the laws of physics, since it is ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... of fine stale breadcrumbs, not dried, and moisten them with as much milk as they will absorb and become thoroughly softened. Beat the yolks of four eggs with the whites of two, add four tablespoons of sugar and the ...
— Good Things to Eat as Suggested by Rufus • Rufus Estes
... and resumed acquaintance with all my old haunts, the illusion had gone. I strolled into Saint Sauveur's, wandered a while through its dim, dusky aisles, and then sat down near the high altar, where the air was heaviest with stale incense, and indulged in retrospect. I was there for more than an hour. I doubt whether it was quite wise. At my time of life one had best keep out of cathedrals; they are vault-like places, pregnant with rheumatism—at best they are full of ghosts. ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... above a page yesterday; most weary, stale, and unprofitable have been my labours. Received a letter I suppose from Mad. T.——, proposing a string of historical subjects not proper for my purpose. People will not consider that a thing may already be so well told in history, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 348, December 27, 1828 • Various
... the hunk of bread I had stolen, and pulling it out of my haversack I began to munch that ungrateful breakfast. It was hard and stale, and gave me little sustenance; I still gazed upwards into the uniform meaningless light ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... business to discharge, except to run away from myself, and therefore every little peculiarity, every minute feature of men, women, or things, that suggested themselves to my aimless scrutiny were carefully reviewed and criticized. I went placidly on now casting a passing glance on exhibitions of stale confectionery, now on a display of attractive millinery, again it was a "ten cent" establishment, offering such bargains as might puzzle the most economical house-wife, and finally my attention was caught by a succession ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... wine mingled with rain, a few minutes to choke over a mouthful of stale bread, and we were off again, longing for the next halt, for a dry shelter, for ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... by vain conceit perchance, On public taste to foist thy stale romance. Though Murray with his Miller may combine To yield thy muse just half-a-crown per line? No! when the sons of song descend to trade, Their bays are sear, ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... about this, some said, Well enough—he has become quite incompetent of late. Getting stale, probably. Unable to discover the obvious, losing his keenness. Ten years in the Far East about does for one. But with Lawson, the situation was different. He had become so tired of boundary lines, of perpetual swaying back and forth from one side to the other, ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... with manure; the swiftly dug trenches of a year ago have given way to the peaked mounds in which turnips wait transplanting. Where there were vast stretches of mud, scarred with intrenchments, with the wheel tracks of guns and ammunition carts, with stale, ill-smelling straw, the carcasses of oxen and horses, and the bodies of men, is now a smiling landscape, with miles of growing grain, ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... beasts at Ephesus every day.... This week I publish a pamphlet on the Catholic question, with my name to it. There is such an uproar here that I think it is gallant, and becoming a friend of Lord Grey's, to turn out and take a part in the affray.... What a detestable subject!—stale, threadbare, and exhausted; but ancient errors cannot be ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... she thinks till he return again, And yet the duteous vassal scarce is gone. The weary time she cannot entertain, For now 'tis stale to sigh, to weep, to groan: So woe hath wearied woe, moan tired moan, That she her plaints a little while doth stay, Pausing for means to mourn ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... Christmas tree for a whole month. But it's a going tree. Its going is very sad. Just one little wee day of perfect splendor it has. And then it begins to die. Every day it dies more. It tarnishes. Its presents are all gathered. Its pop-corn gets stale. The cranberries smell. It looks scragglier and scragglier. It gets brittle. Its needles begin to fall. Pretty soon it's nothing but a clutter. It must be dreadful to start as a Christmas tree and end by ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... sharp work with Sir Arthur: he tried some of his stale tricks, but soon found that I was Yorkshire, too; it would not do—you understand me. We went to the work like good ones, head, heart, and soul; and in fact, since I came here, I have lost no time. I am rather fagged, but ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... who of my contemporaries—that is, men between thirty and forty-five—have given the world one single drop of alcohol?... Science and technical knowledge are passing through a great period now, but for our sort it is a flabby, stale, dull time.... The causes of this are not to be found in our stupidity, our lack of talent, or our insolence, but in a disease which for the artist is worse than syphilis or sexual exhaustion. We lack "something," that is true, and ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... and so on and so on. After three days Ippolita found herself yawning her head off; the longing for freedom returned, for the open country, the hills, the goatherds. Not for her home in the Vicolo: this everlasting love-making with its aftertaste of stale sugar had turned her sick of Padua. The whole city, to her mind, reeked of bergamot; she guessed a fawning lover at every street corner, a pryer at every window—basta, ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... Atlantic, though he had not seen it. Along the endless flat potato-fields, broken by pine-groves under whose sultry shadow negro cabins sweltered, the heat clung persistently. The show-tent was always filled with a stale scent of people. ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... bog-houses, that, becoming impregnated with the volatile salts of the excrements, it may be rendered brisker, stronger, and more f[oe]tid." It is said to be a fact, that in manufacturing tobacco, it is frequently sprinkled with stale urine. ...
— A Disquisition on the Evils of Using Tobacco - and the Necessity of Immediate and Entire Reformation • Orin Fowler
... in its physical aspects, to be typical of the breed and district. It was small, crowded, overheated, underlighted, and stuffy to suffocation with the mingled aromas of stale drink and cheap perfume. As we entered a wrangle was going on among a group of young Frenchmen picturesquely attired as art students—almost a sure sign that they were not art students. An undersized girl dressed in a shabby black-and-yellow frock was ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb |
