"Stale" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... because the child was sickly and his friend put it down to the tobacco. "It ought to be a criminal offence for a woman to smoke at all," said Borrow; "fancy kissing a woman's mouth that smelt of stale tobacco—pheugh!" {315} Whether this proves Borrow's susceptibility to female charm I cannot say, but it seems to me rather to prove a sort of connoisseurship, which is ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... of providing for physical, mental, and social wants; for the pleasure that it affords. But it is also important in its relation to work, for without it body and mind become "fagged," people grow "stale" at their work, producing power and power of service ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... Hattie moved through her time. Hugging this melody of Marcia. Through the knife-edged nervous evenings in the theater. Bawlings. Purple lips with loose muscles crawling under the rouge. Fetidness of scent on stale bodies. Round faces that could hook into the look of vultures when the smell of success became as the smell of red meat. All the petty soiled vanities, like the disordered boudoir of a cocotte. The perpetual stink of perfume. Powder ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... cultured ears and to men of the highest eloquence my speech will appear to have little marrow in its views, and its poverty of words will seem jejune. For idle is it, and utterly superfluous, to offer that which is arid to the eloquent, and that which is stale to men of knowledge and wisdom. Whence our Moral Seneca, and, ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... the Eastern Shore. Carl, the prairie-born, had been within five miles of the open Atlantic, though he had not seen it. Along the endless flat potato-fields, broken by pine-groves under whose sultry shadow negro cabins sweltered, the heat clung persistently. The show-tent was always filled with a stale scent of people. ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... fed upon no other aliment than the milk of its mother, or that of a healthy nurse. If other food become necessary before the child has acquired teeth, it ought to be of a liquid form; for instance, biscuits or stale bread boiled in an equal mixture of milk and water, to the consistence of a thick soup; but by no means even this in the first week of its life. Children who are brought up by hand, that is to say, who are not nursed by mother or ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... a distinguished foreigner to dinner. That people should laugh over the same sort of jests, and have many a story of "grouse in the gun-room," many an old joke between them which time cannot wither nor custom stale, is a better preparation for life, by your leave, than many other things higher and better sounding in the world's ears. You could read Kant by yourself, if you wanted; but you must share a joke with some one else. You can forgive people who do not follow you through a philosophical disquisition; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... novel is just that close and enervating. Every page is like the next morning taste of a champagne supper, and is heavy with the smell of stale cigarettes. There is no fresh air in the book and no sunlight, only the "blinding light shed by the electric globes." If the life of New York newspaper men is as unwholesome and sordid as this, Mr. Crane, who has experienced it, ought to be sadly ashamed to tell it. Next morning when Coleman ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... in repairing. Such, too, was his maniacal, sordid avarice that he no longer spent a farthing on himself apart from the money which he paid for his bread—bread of the commonest kind, which he purchased every four days and ate when it was stale, in order that he might make it last the longer. This greatly puzzled the people who were acquainted with him, and never a week went by without the house-porter propounding the question: "When a gentleman of such quiet habits earns eight thousand francs ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... spectre. She saw 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 ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... I feel that I must be a revivalist or my pupils will sag back, just as I do. I find that the revival of yesterday will not suffice for to-day. Like the folks of old, I must gather a fresh supply of manna each day. Stale manna is not wholesome. I suspect that one of my many sins is my laziness in the matter of manna. I found the value of x in the problem yesterday, and so am inclined to rest to-day and celebrate the victory. If I had to classify myself, I'd ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... standing upon the table, only half empty, and one of M. Wilkie's friends called his attention to this fact, but he shrugged his shoulders disdainfully. "You must take me for a fool," he said, contemptuously. "A man doesn't drink stale wine when he has the prospect of such an inheritance as is coming ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... who are amused by the reveries of the stupid novelists, who, knowing little of human nature, work up stale tales, and describe meretricious scenes, all retailed in a sentimental jargon, which equally tend to corrupt the taste, and draw the heart aside from its daily duties. I do not mention the understanding, because never having been exercised, its slumbering energies rest inactive, like ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... the place from the first, with its stale air, its chink of louis d'or, its cry of the croupiers, its strained faces about the tables, and its general atmosphere of wasted hopes and fears and needless misery ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... hours later, as Odin toiled his way downward, he became aware of a growing stench in the stale air. Even this was welcome, for he was becoming obsessed with the idea that the cavern had not changed since the long-ago river had died, and that nothing in it could change. It was an odor of rottenness. Where there was ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... Added to the stale, heavy atmosphere there is now a smell of coffee and tobacco smoke. The old hands have boiled a noon beverage on the gas; the tailors smoke an after-dinner pipe. Put up in newspaper by Mrs. Wood, at my matinal departure, my lunches, after a journey across ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... fours, it ran level, roughly cut, through earth wet with seepage from the river, but packed into a smooth floor by many hands and bare knees. It widened suddenly before him. In the small chamber of the mine, choked with the smell of stale ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... once or twice and larger portions of each food. However, even the man in athletic training needs less food than is customary for men in training to take. If the foot ball teams would eat somewhat less than they do and a smaller proportion of meat, they would be much less likely to "train stale." ...
— The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction - Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male • Winfield S. Hall
... meal-times or other special occasions, the sole illumination of the place. Although the ship was new, and the berth had only been occupied a few days, it was already pervaded by a very powerful odour of paint and stale tobacco-smoke, which made me anxious to quit the place ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... full of fat, and not a frying-pan, should be used for the purpose (see French Frying), except in the case of the sole; and for that, the new fish-fryer, with a wire strainer, is far better than the old-fashioned pan. The bread-crumbs, for fish, should be prepared by rubbing stale ...
— The Skilful Cook - A Practical Manual of Modern Experience • Mary Harrison
... you have a mighty mind to redress among us, is the Parliament of Great Britain, against whom you bring a stale accusation which has been used by every minority in the memory of man; namely, that it was procured by unwarrantable influences and corruptions.—Swift. The freeholders will never ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... me some more beef-tea, so I warmed a cupful for granny and broke up a slice of stale bread in it: it was touching to see her enjoyment of the warm food. The eldest boy, Tim, was nearly eleven years old, and looked a sharp little fellow, so I set him to clean up the kitchen with Peggy and make things a little ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... observed that dramatic representations which depend for their value on their interest lose by repetition, because they are no longer able to arouse curiosity as to their course, since it is already known. To see them often, makes them stale and tedious. On the other hand, works of which the value lies in their beauty gain by repetition, as they are then ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... out at last. Even the old princess, though she was ready for anything, as she expressed it, and no noise wearied her, felt tired at last, and longed for peace and quiet. At twelve o'clock at night, supper was served, consisting of a piece of stale dry cheese, and some cold turnovers of minced ham, which seemed to me more delicious than any pastry I had ever tasted; there was only one bottle of wine, and that was a strange one; a dark-coloured bottle ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... the two met, in a display of aggressive tennis so remarkable that the boy was helpless before it. Richards was stale and below form, but even if he had been at his best, he could not have withstood Johnston's attack. Little Bill followed this up by sweeping Williams off the court by another marvellous streak ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... clapped; and then he tried hard to arouse their altruism—to get them to donate to the strike out of their union funds. However, his speech came limp and a little stale. The applause was good-natured but feeble. Joe sat down, ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... was through a narrow and exceedingly dirty street. It was after midnight, yet the expected attack of the Americans had kept all the inhabitants awake. The prisoners were jeered at repeatedly, and at one point were covered with a shower of mud and stale vegetables. The onslaught might have been more serious had not ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... last, for many weeks, to visit Polpier—cleared up soon after midday. At one o'clock or thereabouts Nicky-Nan, having dined on a stale crust and a slice of bacon, and recovered somewhat from his first alarm (as even so frugal a meal will put courage into a man), ventured to the porch again for a look at the weather. The weather and the set of the wind always come first in a Polpier man's interest. They form ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... when George declined to drink himself drunk or refused to help his former companions fleece a stranger. Nell Gwynn told him that even his language had grown too polite for polite society, and, lacking emphasis, was flat as stale wine. In truth, it may well be said that George had set out to mend his ways under adverse conditions. But he had set out to do it, and that in itself was a great deal, for there is a likable sort of virtue in every good intent. He had reached the first of the three great R's in the ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... to his room. It was at the top of a very dirty and well-worn house, which stood in a narrow and lumpy street, into which few vehicles ever penetrated, except the ash and garbage-carts, and the rickety wagons of the venders of stale vegetables. ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... much studied at our universities. This seems a science to which the meanest intellects are equal. I forget who it is that says, "All men might understand mathematics if they would."' Goldsmith's Present Stale of Polite ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... day — As for Tabby, I have dropt such hints to the Irish baronet, concerning her fortune, as, I make no doubt, will cool the ardour of his addresses. Then her pride will take the alarm; and the rancour of stale maidenhood being chafed, we shall hear nothing but slander and abuse of Sir Ulic Mackilligut — This rupture, I foresee, will facilitate our departure from Bath; where, at present, Tabby seems to enjoy ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... programme. The milk of a mother who persists in eating irregularly, or who willfully caters to an appetite which craves the rich, highly seasoned articles of diet, or who attempts to satisfy a legitimate hunger by drinking large quantities of stale tea or coffee and eating bread, ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... visitor, pacing up and down a railroad siding early one morning, chewing a mouthful of stale sausage meat between thick crusts of rye bread, heard a particular cruelty story which may be used here as an example. It was told by an army surgeon with whom he was having his peripatetic breakfast. On the track alongside stood a so-called Red Cross train, consisting ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... was done, every precious tea-leaf she had to husband for Arthur, and the butter had also to be carefully economised because a good deal was required for his crisp toast, which was unpalatable without it. Beth lived principally on the crusts she cut off the toast. When they were very stale, she steeped them in hot water, and sweetened them with brown sugar. This mess reminded her of Aunt Victoria's bread-puddings, and the happy summer when they lived together, and she learnt to sit upright on Chippendale chairs. She would like to have talked ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... and in a hard-surfaced roadway there were a number of wheeled vehicles moving, which caused the liquefying snow to splash about me. I adjusted my coat controls for warmth and deflection, but that was the best I could do. The reek of stale decay remained. Then there were also the buildings, painfully almost vertical. I believe it would not have disturbed me if they had been truly vertical; but many of them were minutes of arc from a true perpendicular, all of them ...
— The Day of the Boomer Dukes • Frederik Pohl
... 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 of the crowd as it was forced to give way before the high double ladder of the ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... to make a wooden trough of three hundred feet long, fifty broad, and eight deep; which, being well pitched, to prevent leaking, was placed on the floor, along the wall, in an outer room of the palace. It had a cock near the bottom to let out the water, when it began to grow stale; and two servants could easily fill it in half an hour. Here I often used to row for my own diversion, as well as that of the queen and her ladies, who thought themselves well entertained with my skill and ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... board a vessel of this kind is also exceedingly bad. For dinner we have pilau, stale cheese, and onions; in the evening, we get anchovies, olives, stale cheese again, and ship-biscuit instead of bread. These appetising dishes are placed in a tray on the ground, round which the captains (of whom there are frequently two or three), the mate, and those passengers ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... "never looked at both sides of a crown-piece," to use his own language, when he wanted to "do up" his rooms; he had gone with his purse open and his eyes shut to Grindot, who by this time was quite forgotten. It is impossible to guess how long an extinct reputation may survive, supported by such stale admiration. ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... me, side by side, their faces solemn and black, and I walked at their heels. My mouth stank of the drink, and my head was sick with the stale fumes of it, and I would have cut off my right hand for a drink of water, one drink, a mouthful even. And, had I had it, I know it would have sizzled in my belly like water spilled on heated stones for the roasting. It is terrible, the next day after the ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... letter and precede it with the remarks suggested (or with better ones,) and send it to the Globe or some other paper? You can't do me a bigger favor; and yet if it is in the least disagreeable, you mustn't think of it. But let me know, right away, for I want to correct this thing before it grows stale again. I explained myself to only one critic (the World)—the consequence was a noble notice of the play. This one called on me, else I shouldn't have explained ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... The book he opened had been a famous novel, a best-seller, some five years ago. It had been thought "advanced." Advanced!—but now how inconceivably flat and stale! How on earth had anyone ever praised it, called it "epoch-marking," bought it by the thousand thousand? Why, the thing was dead—a dead book, than which there is nothing deader. This reflection gave him something to think of for a while. Instead of counting drops he amused himself by strolling ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... logical, and knew Musette, hence he did not wait for her, but went home with a full heart and an empty stomach. He looked into the cupboard to see whether there were not a few scraps to eat, and perceived a bit of stale bread as hard as granite and ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... made from stale bread, which should be cut in one-third to one-half inch slices. A single slice of toast may be made by holding it over the fire on a fork. In camp a forked stick answers every purpose. The easiest way to make several slices is to put them in a wire toaster and hold them ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... the wolf and the bear explained that they were very sorry, but they would have to eat him. Michael, the fox, did not run away as the others had done, but smiled in a friendly manner, and remarked: 'Things taste so stale in a valley; one's appetite is so much better up on a mountain.' The wolf and the bear agreed, and they turned out of the hollow where they had been walking, and chose a path that led up the mountain side. The fox trotted cheerfully by his two big companions, but on the way ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... Sapphic ode; 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, basta, ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... befell our forefather Adam from eating strange fruits, will avoid it, as they will many more fruits eaten in the Tropics, but digestible only by the dura ilia of Indians and Negroes. Whatever virtue it may have when fresh, it begins, as soon as stale, to give out an odour too abominable to ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... credit dry at Procope and everywhere else, and are gone now to a miserable little den in the Rue du Paon, kept by a fat good-natured old soul called la mere Gaudissart. She will perhaps take compassion on their youth and inexperience, and let them have six sous worth of horsebeef soup, stale bread, and the day before yesterday's vegetables. Nay, don't look so pitiful! We poor devils of the Student Quartier hug our Bohemian life, and exalt it above every other. When we have money, we ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... ingenious and quite as curious were often adopted to conceal dispatches, when the messenger was in danger of capture by an enemy. A boot with a hollow heel, a fragment of corn-pone too stale to tempt a starving man, a strip of adhesive plaster over a festering wound, or a ball of cotton-wool stuffed into the ear to keep out the west wind, often hid a message whose discovery would cost a life, and perhaps endanger an army. The writer has himself seen the hollow half-eagle ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... course "the weather." With buoyant hearts the star-lit heaven we view; Then our next point is "What are we to 'do'?" My pipe I pocket, and with head up-tossed My listening followers I thus accost:— "Mont Blanc, we know, is stupid, stale, and slow, A tiresome tramp o'er lumps of lifeless snow. The Col du Geant is a trifle worse; The Jardin's fit for babies with their nurse: The Aiguille Verte is more the sort of thing, But time has robbed it of its former sting; Alone the Dent du Geant and ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... dingy-faced young negro, clothed in rags unspeakably vile, which scarcely concealed his nakedness, was standing in the midst of a group of white men, toward whom he threw now and then a shallow and shifty glance. The air was heavy with the odour of stale tobacco, and the floor dotted with discarded portions of the weed. A white man stood beside a desk and was ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... that he had ordered that these people be well fed; that he had supplied the money to buy them good and nourishing food. Now, if his poor pensioners received nothing but dry bread, and very stale, hard bread at that, while he paid for good food for them, somebody must be making money out of him, to whom he had no idea of being charitable ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... change their opinions. They take up the New Testament and read Christ's sermon on the Mount; but they find nothing in it to answer their purpose. It is but an ordinary production in their estimation. They pass on through Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. How stale, how dull, how uninteresting these gospels, they are led to exclaim. They see but little beauty in the God-like teaching; or the inimitable example of Christ. His last agonies, his death on the cross is insufficient to move their callous ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... small, The liquorice and the setewall,* *valerian And many a clove-gilofre, And nutemeg to put in ale, Whether it be moist* or stale, *new Or for to ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... murky and dark within; hot, unhealthy, with lingering smells of garlic and stale cooking. He groped for the stairs and started up. He climbed one flight, then another—and one more to the top. Here, treading softly, he made an examination of the landing with a view, evidently, to ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... therwith. [Footnote: The same custom still exists amongst the inhabitants of the Lena Delta] As touching mariages, your Highnes is to vnderstand, that no man can haue a wife among them till he hath bought her whereupon somtimes their maids are very stale before they be maried, for their parents alwaies keepe them till they can sel them. They keepe the first and second degrees of consanguinitie inuiolable, as we do but they haue no regard of the degrees of affinity: for they wil marrie ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... the festa was to take place. It was sleeping peacefully, brooded over by a delicious, sweet smell of dirt and stale incense. Not a soul was to be seen. But as the party marched indignantly up and down the aisles, another smell comes to join the incense—garlic. A merry, good-humoured little priest appears; it is the friend of ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... just when she needed Smelling Salts and Absolute Quiet, her enthusiastic Father would have Fiance up to Dinner to pull the same stale Repertoire and splash around in ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... with flour, and its team of six horses, brave with brass harness and bells, a timber-carriage, and a couple of spring-carts, were drawn up on the half-moon of gravel before the porch; while, from out the open door, came a sound of voices and odour of many pipes and much stale beer. ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... you give your mind this needless care, And for yourself, and me, new pains prepare? I ne'er approved this passion in excess: If you would show your love, distrust me less. I hate to be pursued from place to place; Meet, at each turn, a stale domestic face. The approach of jealousy love cannot bear; He's wild, and soon on wing, if watchful ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... with better principles, to balance the others; it seems every man's duty to choose a side,[1] though he cannot entirely approve of either; and all pretences to neutrality are justly exploded by both, being too stale and obvious, only intending the safety and ease of a few individuals while the public is embroiled. This was the opinion and practice of the latter Cato, whom I esteem to have been the wisest and best of all the Romans. But before things proceed ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... something!" he exclaimed. "It may be stale news, and it may be something for the future, but it's worth trying. I wonder I ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... shelves—one of which supported a dozen or so of dark green bottles—depended from the walls; and that was all. The floor upon which I lay was simply the bare earth, rammed hard, thick with dust and swarming with fleas,—as I quickly discovered,—and the whole place reeked of that hot, stale smell that seems to pervade the abodes of ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... Cut stale bread into finger-shaped pieces, mix 3/4 of a cup of coffee infusion, 2 tablespoonfuls of sugar, 1/4 of a teaspoonful of salt, 1 egg slightly beaten, and 1/4 of a cup of cream. Dip the pieces of bread into the liquid and ...
— 365 Luncheon Dishes - A Luncheon Dish for Every Day in the Year • Anonymous
... what it is to start a piece of work, either intellectual or muscular, feeling stale—or cold, as an Adirondack guide once put it to me. And everybody knows what it is to "warm up to his job." The process of warming up gets particularly striking in the phenomenon known as the "second wind." On usual occasions ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... and Jack, at the periscope, stood Lieutenant Stein, looking at the British ship. The sailors took their stations near the torpedoes. The interior of the boat was now lighted with two small electric bulbs. They made the darkness visible, but gave no light outside. Everywhere was the stale smell of oil. The boys found it impossible to speak to each other because of the noise of the engine and the water. The heat ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... hostelry, and were much amused at the quaint old parlor with its sporting prints, its glass cases of stuffed squirrels and badgers, and its horsehair-seated chairs with crochet antimacassars hung over the backs. The atmosphere was certainly rather redolent of stale beer and tobacco, but a bunch of crimson wall-flowers on the table did their best to spread a pleasant perfume. The tea, when, after much delay, it arrived, was delicious. The Pelican was a farm as well as an inn, and the rosy-faced servant ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... stars are withered with light. The moon is pale with trying to remember something. Light, straining for a stale birth, Distends ...
— Precipitations • Evelyn Scott
... queer soul!' said Charlotte, bursting into a hearty laugh, in which she was joined by Noah; after which they both looked scornfully at poor Oliver Twist, as he sat shivering on the box in the coldest corner of the room, and ate the stale pieces which had been specially ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... stand throng'd with faces, the broadcloth and laces, The booths, and the tents, and the cars, The bookmakers' jargon, for odds making bargain, The nasty stale smell of cigars. ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... broad expanse of white shirt front. At the other end is the so-called stage, while scattered about indiscriminately are the tables and chairs. The air is filled—yea, reeking—with the fumes of bad whiskey, stale beer, and the odor of foul smelling cheap tobacco smoke, and through all this haze the would-be "show," goes on, and the applause is manifested by whistles, cat calls, the pounding of feet on the floor and glasses on the tables. Occasionally some artist (?) ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... that one shouldn't be rationally persuaded. But that's a different thing. 'Influence' makes me think of canting clergymen, and stout pompous women, who don't know what they're talking about, and can't argue—who think they've settled everything by a stale quotation—or an appeal to 'your better self'—or St. Paul. If Mr. Winnington tries it on with ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... disheartening combination which the worst climate in the world—that of central New York—can furnish. He passed rather a busy day in the office in an atmosphere redolent of the unsavory odors raised by the proximity of wet boots and garments to the big cylinder stove outside the counter, a compound of stale ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... passed the doorway stood to contemplate the scene with pleasure. Officials came and studied the situation with appreciation. Then Francis and Aaron returned with a large supply of roast chestnuts, piping hot, and hard dried plums, and good dried figs, and rather stale rusks. They found the water just boiling, Angus just throwing in the tea-egg, and the fellow-passenger just poking his nose right in, he ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... bad as that!" returned Clytie. "It was only dull and stale and stupid; the same old sort of knockabouts and serio-comics you can see everywhere down town, only not a quarter so good—just cheap imitations. And all those poor fellows sat moping over their beer-mugs waiting, waiting, waiting for something new ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... to an ordinary asylum will make it plain to any observer that such extreme types form only a very small minority. The greater number, when drawn outside the small circle of their delusions, often reason with greater acumen than normal persons; and their ideas, unhampered by stale prejudices which hinder freedom of thought, are remarkable for their originality. Fine fragments of prose and poetry and really beautiful snatches of melody, the work of inmates of lunatic asylums, were collected by my father and published, as special monographs, in The Man ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... fish-markets, great fish-mongers strictly examine the gills—if the bright redness is exchanged for a low brown, they are stale; but when live fish are bro't flouncing into market, you have only to elect the kind most agreeable to your ...
— American Cookery - The Art of Dressing Viands, Fish, Poultry, and Vegetables • Amelia Simmons
... apparent in the ordinary society man or woman. On the contrary, most of them exhibit the peculiar and unmistakable signs of physical exhaustion, chief of which is cerebral anaemia. They are overtrained and overworked. In the language of training they are "stale." ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... that Lily was exchanged into the town near the camp, and Willy Cameron suddenly found life a stale thing, and ashes in the mouth. He finally decided that he had not been such a hopeless fool as to fall in love with her, but that it would be as well not to ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... running, and as his legs were all bruised and scraped by sliding, a manager who was not an idiot would have a care of such valuable runmakers for his team. Lake had "Charley-horse." Hathaway's arm was sore. Bane's stomach threatened gastritis. Spike Doran's finger needed a chance to heal. I was stale, and the other players, three pitchers, swore their arms should be ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... plain that among other things they were alluding to the stale and senseless story of the sledge filled with baskets of coin sent by the Spanish envoys on their departure from the Hague, on conclusion of the Truce, to defray expenses incurred by them for board and lodging of servants, forage of horses, and the like-which had accidentally ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of, and he looked about him hastily to see where the "beastly thing" could have got to, but in another moment old Mrs. Nuessler pointed at little Louisa Hawermann, and said with a venomous smile, like a stale roll dipped in fly-poison: "It must be plaited all over again." "What's the matter?" cried her daughter-in-law, and starting up as she spoke, she saw the ends of the cap ribbons hanging down below the hem of the child's frock; she lifted her niece off the chair, and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... picture, children, how the Snarks Rejoiced her frugal mind; They ate the Buns, they ate the Bag, And even stale cheese rind. ...
— The Adventures of Samuel and Selina • Jean C. Archer
... tears, thin and watery blood; Brazening the conscious lie unto the world That it was done for hallowing Freedom's sake, Until the names of "Freedom," "Patriot," stank, Blown on and poison'd by these beggar lips; That men had need to coin fresh words to mean The holy things with stale use so defil'd. ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... as Andrew was out of sight he pulled his leather satchel round so that he could open it with ease, and, having taken a handful of broken and very stale crumbs out of it for immediate use, he dropped Winsome's parcel within. There it kept company with a tin flask of milk which his mother filled for him every morning, having previously scalded it well to restore its freshness. This was specially carefully done after a sad occasion upon which his ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... at 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
... is a sport to see, when a bold fellow is out of countenance; for that puts his face into a most shrunken, and wooden posture; as needs it must; for in bashfulness, the spirits do a little go and come; but with bold men, upon like occasion, they stand at a stay; like a stale at chess, where it is no mate, but yet the game cannot stir. But this last were fitter for a satire than for a serious observation. This is well to be weighed; that boldness is ever blind; for it seeth not danger, and inconveniences. Therefore it is ill in counsel, good in execution; so ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... ridiculing that young man! For five good minutes they stood there, shouting ribaldry at him, deriding him, mocking him, jeering at him. They peppered him with stale jokes, they even made a few new ones and threw at him. They hurled at him all the private family jokes belonging to our set, and which must have been perfectly unintelligible to him. And then, unable to stand their brutal jibes any longer, he turned round ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... detective into a bedroom, which she said was her master's, and where the occupation of the Major was made manifest by divers articles of apparel lying on the chairs and hanging on the pegs, and, furthermore, by a powerful effluvium of stale tobacco, and a collection of pipes ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... therefore, to suppress disorders, to maintain, as far as now practicable, the public peace, and to give security and protection to the persons and property of loyal citizens, I do hereby extend and declare established martial law throughout the Stale of Missouri. The lines of the army of occupation in this State are, for the present, declared to extend from Leavenworth, by way of the posts of Jefferson City, Rolla, and Ironton, to Cape Girardeau, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... the malloc {arena}. Avoidable by use of allocation strategies that never alias allocated core, or by use of higher-level languages, such as {LISP}, which employ a garbage collector (see {GC}). Also called a {stale pointer bug}. See also {precedence lossage}, {smash the stack}, {fandango on core}, {memory leak}, {memory smash}, {overrun ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... was twenty. I do not say that I was not for the most part well enough treated, because I hope I did my best, and I believe I generally gave satisfaction. I had my happy hours like other people. But it was all getting so stale, flat, and unprofitable—I suppose because I was growing weary of it all, and longing for a change. You see I had not quite come to the age when we cease to want changes, and are resigned just to go on as we are to the end. In reality I could see no end, except the poorest of poor ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... for Bert and Nan too, but I must keep that for lunch time. Nobody likes stale news," the ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Country • Laura Lee Hope
... an historian—the historian, in fact—and he persisted heroically in his task, rereading stale paragraphs and checking dreary dates, going over battles and conquests and invasions and interregnums. Despite his mood and despite the heat, the manuscript probably would have arrived at his publishers chronologically complete. So complete, in fact, that schoolteachers all over the galaxy ...
— Collector's Item • Robert F. Young
... 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... he sat with Hagthorpe and Wolverstone over a pipe and a bottle of rum in the stifling reek of tar and stale tobacco of a waterside tavern, he was accosted by a splendid ruffian in a gold-laced coat of dark-blue satin with a crimson sash, a foot wide, about ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... no object, and at last they solved the problem. At first Tom backed up to the jug and held it, though clumsily, for Sam to drink, and then the youngest Rover did the same for his brother. The water was warm and somewhat stale, yet both could remember nothing which had ever tasted sweeter to them. They drank about half of what the jug contained, then set the rest ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... Sermon on the Mount is the greatest lesson in holiness and is from the only one that can teach holiness. Great lessons can be taught by all persons, taught of God, but 'tis better to drink at the fountain than out of a stale bucket. Besides all have imperfection. "To the law and to the testimony if they speak not according to this word it is because there is no light in them." "They shall all be taught of God." "If any lack wisdom, let him ask of God who giveth to all liberally and upbraideth ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... life and no variety—nothing but a deadly monotony of twilit tangle. There is nothing new under the sun—even immediately under it in Central Africa. The only novelty is the human heart—Central Man. That is never stale, and there are depths still unexplored, heights still unattained, warm rivers of love, cold streams of hatred, and vast plains where strange motives grow. These ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... glittering water-meadows too often floats laden with poisonous miasma. Those picturesque villages are generally the perennial hotbeds of fever and ague, of squalid penury, sottish profligacy, dull discontent too stale for words. There is luxury in the park, wealth in the huge farm-steadings, knowledge in the parsonage: but the poor? those by whose dull labour all that luxury and wealth, ay, even that knowledge, is made possible—what ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... of sickness, yet did the host daily grow greater. Many who had stayed behind in various cities, their zeal having grown stale, now came back to the camp, judging that they would do well to take part in an enterprise that was now near to success. Also many that had tarried on the march for the cause of sickness now made shift to ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... upon him. What had he to do, after forty years of reign; after having exhausted everything? Every pleasure that Dubois could invent for his hot youth, or cunning Lebel could minister to his old age, was flat and stale; used up to the very dregs; every shilling in the national purse had been squeezed out, by Pompadour and Du Barri and such brilliant ministers of state. He had found out the vanity of pleasure, as his ancestor ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... were mingled with the "garments rolled in blood" torn from our own dead and wounded soldiers. I picked up a Rebel canteen, and one of our own,—but there was something repulsive about the trodden and stained relics of the stale battle-field. It was like the table of some hideous orgy left uncleared, and one turned away disgusted from its broken fragments and muddy heeltaps. A bullet or two, a button, a brass plate from a soldier's belt, served ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... pounds, is a foot thick, and is as big as a cart-wheel. We eat it every day for luncheon and dinner. I like it so much better, fresh and straight from the farm (if anything four years old can be called fresh), than when stale and grated. ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... back into his face, his eyes were shut, and he was apparently quite insensible of her presence. For the first time she was conscious of a distressful faintness, which, as she had come suddenly out of the stinging frost into the little overheated room, which reeked with tobacco smoke and a stale smell of cooking, was not astonishing. She mastered it, however, and presently, seeing that Hawtrey did not move; glanced about her with some curiosity, for this was the first time ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... scribbler, often seen In Morning Post or Monthly Magazine! There lurk his earlier lays, but soon, hot-press'd, Behold a quarto!—tarts must tell the rest! Then leave, ye wise, the lyre's precarious chords To muse-mad baronets or madder lords, Or country Crispins, now grown somewhat stale, Twin Doric minstrels, drunk with Doric ale! Hark to those notes, narcotically soft, The cobbler-laureates sing ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... will flags, and life becomes a pageant that 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
... that he hoped I would fulfill the expectations of General Grant in the new command I was about to undertake, adding that thus far the cavalry of the Army of the Potomac had not done all it might have done, and wound up our short conversation by quoting that stale interrogation so prevalent during the early years of the war, "Who ever saw a dead cavalryman?" His manner did not impress me, however, that in asking the question he had meant anything beyond a jest, and I parted from the President convinced ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan
... their clothes for weeks at a time and grew rancid and lousy among the rats that were foul enough to share their stinking dens with them. If these gentlemen were wounded, perchance, they added stale blood, putrefaction, and offal to ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... pointed out how dramatic writing has of late years come to be practised entirely by men who have failed in all other branches of literature. Then he drew attention to the fact that signs of weariness and dissatisfaction with the old stale stories, the familiar tricks in bringing about 'striking situations,' were noticeable, not only in the newspaper criticisms of new plays, but also among the better portion of the audience. He admitted, however, that hitherto the attempts made by younger writers in the direction of new subject-matter ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... 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 ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... cannot read for eight hours a day in a temperature of 96 degrees or 98 degrees in the shade, running up sometimes to 103 degrees at midnight. Very few men, even though they get a pannikin of flat, stale, muddy beer and hide it under their cots, can continue drinking for six hours a day. One man tried, but he died, and nearly the whole regiment went to his funeral because it gave them something to do. It was too early ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... which it had pleased Providence to call them, they rode the Great North Road for some days in a northern express. Vine said that the Victoria Falls were all right, but that their surroundings were, many of them, perversely wrong. It was so very stale, the hotel business, with the moonlight river excursions and the Livingstone trips, far too much sleeked and smoothed by foresight, and tamed by taking of thought. If one had only traveled up with pack ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... entered was narrow and stifling—stale odors of thousands of dead-and-gone boiled dinners mingled there, and a stairway with a greasy handrail invited him. The key bore a number. He hunted till he found a room, far up, flight after flight. Through open doors he saw here and there aged women or doddering old ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... 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 had hazelnuts all winter. So ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting - Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913 • Various
... that his mind was at that time no more in the skies than when he quoted Anaxagoras, and declared heaven to be the wise man's home. His heart clung to earth, and to earthly strife; and his uneasiness must at last have become deplorably wretched, since he could consent to pick up stale arguments against Christianity, and leave a piece of patchwork, made up of the shreds of other men's scepticism, as his especial legacy to posterity, in proof of the masterly independence ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... of some age, are better digested than newer fruit; in contrast to old gherkins, about which it has been humorously said, "avoid stale Q-cumbers: they will W-up." In many parts of Germany the peasants literally subsist on Walnuts for several months together; and a young farmer before he marries has to own a certain number of ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... furnished with tables, cane-bottomed chairs and a few prints on the walls. There was a lavish display, however, of bottles and glasses, and several shelves were littered with newspapers in different languages. Acetylene lamps hung from the flat ceiling. An odour of stale tobacco and alcohol pervaded the premises. Flies were buzzing against ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... about counting the stale dainties in a businesslike way; but at that instant Snip came into view from behind his master, and she ceased the task at once to cry ...
— Aunt Hannah and Seth • James Otis
... ca'd a wee before The stale "three score an' ten," When Joy keeks kindly at your door, Aye bid her welcome ben. About yon blissfu' bowers above Let doubtfu' mortals speir; Sae weel ken we that "heaven is love," Since love ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... food. But when we consider the great masses of people in the slums of all cities who are always underfed and whose constant thought is about their next meal; when we see hundreds of able-bodied men waiting in line until midnight for half a loaf of stale bread, surely it seems that there is a possibility of keeping all of the present farmers at work, if not of finding new fields for others, if we make our conditions such that there will be opportunities for every able-bodied worker to labor at ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... away, and if they find a piece on the floor they pick it up and put it in a hole in the wall and keep it. It may be eaten, but may never be otherwise destroyed. I thought of Ruskin telling his readers in The Elements of Drawing that stale crumb of bread is better than india-rubber to rub out their mistakes, but "it crumbles about the room and makes a mess; and besides, you waste the good bread, which is wrong; and your drawing will not for a long while be worth the crumbs. ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... Bread—The cornpopper can be used for toasting odds and ends of stale bread which ...
— Fowler's Household Helps • A. L. Fowler
... strike is not absolute, the Court in a similar manner upheld a statute by the terms of which an officer of a labor union was punished for having ordered a strike for the purpose of enforcing a payment to a former employee of a stale claim for wages.[161] ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... preceding months and unstrained cereal, half of soft-cooked egg, both white and yolk, chopped or strained cooked vegetables, such as spinach and other greens, asparagus, carrots, celery, and squash, stale ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 5 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... city, but also a political one. It has long been the temporal bulwark around the Mormon community. Results which have been seen in Utah affairs, preservative of the Mormon power and people, unaccountable to 'the outsider' except on the now stale supposition that 'the Mormon Church has purchased Congress,' may be better traced to the silent but potent influence of Z. C. M. I. among the ruling business men of America, just as John Sharp's position as one of the directors of U. P. R—-r,—a compeer ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... thought that the King should have no associates in the scheme, and should make no account of the inhabitants of England. Since that time the project had become more difficult of accomplishment, because it was now a stale and common topic of conversation everywhere—in Italy, Germany, and France—so that there could be little doubt that rumours on the subject were daily reaching the ears of Queen Elizabeth and of every one in her kingdom. Hence she had made a strict alliance ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... stainless purity all too lustreless a gift for him she loves, may fancy what were the feelings of Madeline, as love, with its royal longing to give, was born in her heart. With what lilies of virgin innocence would she fain have rewarded her lover! but her lilies were yellow, their fragrance was stale. With what an unworn crown would she have crowned him! but she had rifled her maiden regalia to adorn an impostor. And love came to her now, not as to others, but whetting the fangs of remorse and ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... loss of their beloved companion, Hector and Louis no longer took interest in what was going on; they hardly troubled themselves to weed the Indian corn, in which they had taken such great delight; all now seemed to them flat, stale, and unprofitable; they wandered listlessly to and fro, silent and sad; the sunshine had departed from their little dwelling; they ate little, and talked less, each seeming absorbed in his ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... how pouring champagne into a glass makes it froth up into a million iridescent little bubbles? Well, there was none of that in our married life. There was no fizz in it, no sparkle, no taste, phew! The days were all one color—flat and stale and gray as the devil. And that's why I wanted to get away and forget. You can't forget unless you play. So trying to play I crawled in every sort of muck there is. And you know, it's a funny thing, but ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... no doubt: trust one of our canons for not committing himself so far until he sees very good reason. These tales of treasure are at present rather too stale: we have heard of them ever since the time ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... biscuits or something from the pantry?" she asked, and at the woman's nod she rummaged around among crocks and pans in search of portable edibles. She stuffed a handful of stale doughnuts inside her shirtwaist, together with a ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... 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
... stream. He does not build a house, because a den under a cedar's roots is as safe and warm. He never builds a dam, because there are deep places in the river where the current is too swift to freeze. He finds tender twigs much juicier, even in winter, than stale bark stored under water. As for his telltale tracks in the snow, his wits must guard him against enemies; and there is the open stretch ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... myself from the town for a while, without feeling at a loss the moment I am left by myself. Instead of a friend in a postchaise or in a Tilbury, to exchange good things with, and vary the same stale topics over again, for once let me have a truce with impertinence. Give me the clear blue sky over my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours' march to ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... tearful German, Rickmann, an exceptionally mournful creature, cruelly maltreated by destiny, and fruitlessly consumed by an intense pining for his far-off fatherland. Sometimes, near the stove, in the fearful stuffiness of the close ante-room, full of the sour smell of stale kvas, my unshaved man-nurse, Vassily, nicknamed Goose, would sit, playing cards with the coachman, Potap, in a new sheepskin, white as foam, and superb tarred boots, while in the next room Rickmann would sing, behind ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... for to deny my sovereign's bounty Were to drop precious stones into the heaps Whence they first came; To urge my imperfections in excuse, Were all as stale as custom: no, my lord, My service is my kings; good reason why,— Since life or death ...
— Sir Thomas More • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... floating 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 in ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... notwithstanding the heat of the climate, they are quite tame. When any one goes into a field, the sheep and lambs will come round him and lick his hand. Their pasture is changed every week, for it is found that, when in our climate grass is eaten too closely, noxious insects are bred by the accumulation of stale manure. In or near every pasturage are pools of running water, to which the animals are conducted daily. These are supplied by a very high jet which, when in action, throws its water from a reservoir to a long distance, which may even be increased by means of pipes, and ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... breakfast? Those great men Marlowe and Jonson, Shakespeare, and Spenser before him, drank beer at rising, and tamed it with a little bread. In the regiment we used to drink black coffee without sugar, and cut off a great hunk of stale crust, and eat nothing more till the halt: for the matter of that, the great victories of '93 were fought upon such unsubstantial meals; for the Republicans fought first and ate afterwards, being in this quite unlike the Ten Thousand. Sailors ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... against the 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 ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... uneasiness behind Adelbert's brave front. If now one could enlist such a man for the Cause, that would be worth doing. He had talked it over with the concierge. Among the veterans the old man was influential, and by this new policy of substituting fresh blood for stale, the Government had ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... that night I was feeling blue and restless, tired of New York, tired of dancing, tired of everything. Broadway was full of people hurrying to the theatres. Cars rattled by. All the electric lights in the world were blazing down on the Great White Way. And it all seemed stale and ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... her most suspicious account, in which, according to all appearances, she must have sunk at least ten good years; allowance, too, being made for the havoc which a long course of hackneyship and hot waters must have made of her constitution, and which had already brought on, upon the spur, that stale stage in which those of her profession are reduced to think of showing company, instead of ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... of waking, We shall leave the gentleman in a pretty taking. Give me thy coat, hold this in thy hand: This fellow would be married to Science, I understand. But, ere we leave him, tell me another tale! Now let us make him look somewhat stale. There lie, and there be: the proverb is verified, I am neither idle, nor ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley |
