"Sting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it is to be well trained. Horace said to me yesterday, "If every one would kill adders they would come to sting less." I answered: "Of course they would, for there would be fewer." He replied indignantly: "I did not mean that; but the timid adders which run away would be saved, and in time would never sting at all." Natural ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... of sunlight streaming in through the west window of the prison in Jamestown. And all this sunbeam was horribly barred like the body of a wasp by the iron grating of the window, and had a fierce sting of heat in it, for it was warm though only May, and I was in a high fever by reason of my wounds. And another thing which served to hale me back to acquaintance with my fixed estate of life was a great swarm ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... primitive, not to say heroic. For example, one man, who had exhausted all other remedies for rheumatism, was advised to go to the forest, thrust the ailing foot and leg into one of the huge ant-hills which abounded there, and allow the ants to sting him as long as he could bear the pain, for the sake of the formic acid which would thus be injected into the suffering limb. I confess that I should have liked to be present at this bit of— surgery, shall I call it? It would have been an opportunity for observing the Russian peasant's ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... my crimes is risen to haunt me through life! I am a murderer—yet she lives, and my guilt is not the less! The stamp of eternal infamy is upon me—the finger of scorn will mark me out—the tongue of reproach will sting me like that of a serpent—the deadly touch of shame will cover me like a leper—the laws of society will crush the murderer, not the less that his wickedness in blood has miscarried: after that comes the black and terrible tribunal of the Almighty's vengeance—of ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... begun, the words came with fierce swiftness. He seemed to mean them to sting, to cut, to stab. It was hard not to cry out with the pain of hearing them. All that I understood was that he meant to wrench himself from me with a force that should make the breach impassable. This I felt, though still his eyes gave the lie ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... for accounting for his death that way. But, of course, the entire absence of poison in the blood soon put an end to that idea, so it was certain that whatever he died from, it was not from a bite or a sting ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... power to wound me, be forbearing in its exercise. Heaven knows that I would not, from the vain desire of showing command over you, inflict upon you a single pang. Ah! do not fancy that in lovers' quarrels there is any sweetness that compensates the sting." ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... said presently, with my hand full of her hand—"still I daresay we shall get used to it in time—forgetting the day, I mean. After about the fourth lapse there will be hardly any sting in our little piece of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 10th, 1920 • Various
... so happy," she moaned; "I dreamed that Bessie and I were gathering pond lilies—she was wreathing them about my head—then just as I woke I saw a snake sting her—before that it was all bright. Oh, dear, if I could ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... For you know I have not much of the—of that sort of thing about me—I am not a poet—poetess, author, you know." Said Miriam in her blandest tone, without a touch of sarcasm in her voice, "Oh, if he has ever seen you, the mistake is natural!" If I had spoken, my voice would have carried a sting in it. So I waited until I could calmly say, "You know him well, of course." "No, I never saw him before!" she answered with a new outburst ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... hunger, the boy's insults, and the sting of the lash, I was now roused to as high a pitch of fury as I had ever in my life reached. I had taken a step towards the horse, to drag the rider from his saddle, and he had raised the whip once more ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... would stamp the brow of the hardened ruffian or hired assassin, more incorrigible and undisguised. The portraits of Tyrrel and Forrest were, no doubt, done from the life. We find that the ravages of the plague, the destructive rage of fire, the poisoned chalice, lean famine, the serpent's mortal sting, and the fury of wild beasts, were the common topics of their poetry, as they were common occurrences in more remote periods of history. They were the strong ingredients thrown into the cauldron of tragedy, to make it "thick and slab." Man's life was (as it appears to me) more full of ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... anatomical structure, the provisions for the flight of birds, and for the movements of fishes; with instances of arrangements to suit particular conditions—the long neck of the swan, the minute eye of the mole, the beak of the parrot, the sting of the bee—all furnishing an ever accumulating body of irrefutable evidence to attest the existence and operation of an intelligent Author ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... regarded Leslie with a perfectly innocent expression, there was lurking malice in her wide blue eyes. She had not liked the dignity Marjorie had shown when returning her property. It rankled in her petty soul. With the gratitude of the proverbial serpent, she was quite ready to sting the hand which had ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... a knocker, Wrinkles that would puzzle Cocker: Mouth which marks the envious scorner, With a scorpion in each corner, Turning its quick tail to sting you In the place that most may wring you: Eyes of lead-like hue, and gummy; Carcass picked out from some mummy Bowels (but they were forgotten, Save the liver, and that's rotten); Skin all sallow, flesh all sodden— Form the Devil would frighten God in. Is't a corpse stuck ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... felt easier in her mind in the matter of the quarrel with Judge Harvey. The sting and humiliation of his words she had now cast out of her system; she was really superior to such criticism. There remained only Judge Harvey's offense. Certainly he had been inexcusably outspoken and officious. ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... sting of the prelate's delicate sarcasm. At bottom, beneath this make-believe Florentine all-angelicalness, with long curly hair and mauve eyes which grew dim with rapture at sight of a Botticelli, there was a thoroughly practical, business-like young man, who took admirable ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... a sharp sting in his right shoulder. The knife had missed his breast—the sudden swerving had saved him. Even as it struck, he threw himself on his assailant. Then came a struggle. The long fingers of the man with the white beard clove to the knife like ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... scrupulous and conscientious exactness in every detail. He had wanted, or said he wanted, to be a boy again like Dick, and accordingly he had become a perfect duplicate, even to the contents of the pockets. Evidently nothing on the face of things showed the slightest difference. Yet—and here lay the sting of the metamorphosis—he was conscious under it all of being his old original self, in utter discordance with the youthful form in which he was ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... if they were of like wits to us, to forecast the deeds to come, and weigh the chances nicely, and unravel tangled clews. Rather they move like to the stares in autumn, or the winter wild-geese, and will all be thrust forward by some sting that entereth into their imaginations. Therefore, if they have appointed one moon to wear before they fall upon us, they will not stir till then, and we have time enough to do what must be done. Wherefore am ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... most abundant quantity of snakes, almost all of which cause death when they sting. There is but one remedy for the wounds, namely, if they happen to have a little of the earth from San Pablo. By having it blessed, they are infallibly cured; and he who is treated with this remedy does not die. There are other snakes which are not poisonous. They are so large that they ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various
... thirteen segments, and each of these has its own nervous centre or ganglion. Hence if the caterpillar is to be reduced to a state of immobility, or to state so nearly approaching immobility that the egg may be safely laid upon it, a single sting, such as is given by some of the Pompilidae to their captured spiders, will be scarcely sufficient. All this we knew from Fabre's "Souvenirs," and yet we were not at all prepared to believe that any plain American wasp could supply us with such a thrilling performance as that ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... he. "Don't bother about the mistakes of yesterday. Remember them—yes. If one has a good memory, to forget is impossible—not to say unwise. But there ought to be no more heat or sting in the memory of past mistakes than in the memory ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... him the Wasp, his Companion, did bring, But they promis'd, that Evening, to lay by their Sting. And the sly little Dormouse crept out of his Hole, And brought to the Feast his ...
— The Butterfly's Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast • Mr. Roscoe
... did not sting, but there was a large red ant, half an inch long, who was most pugnacious; he stood up on his hind legs and fought you with amazing courage, and his jaws were formidable. We made our first acquaintance with white ants while we lived in the court-house. ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... [adj. sunken] sit sat [sate] sat slay slew slain slide slid slidden, slid sling slung slung slink slunk slunk smite smote smitten speak spoke spoken spin spun spun spring sprang, sprung sprung stand stood stood stave stove (staved) (staved) steal stole stolen stick stuck stuck sting stung stung stink stunk, stank stunk stride strode stridden strike struck struck, stricken string strung strung strive strove striven swear swore sworn swim swam or swum swum swing swung swung take took taken tear tore torn thrive throve ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... prisoner flushed and the look he darted at his counsel had the sting of a reproach in it. Yet he answered: "It was the token of an engagement I didn't believe in or like. I should have hailed any proof that ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... in the city; there they are, ready to sting and fully armed, and some of them owe money, some have forfeited their citizenship; a third class are in both predicaments; and they hate and conspire against those who have got their property, and against everybody else, and are eager ...
— The Republic • Plato
... Candale. I watched all his movements, and complained to Mademoiselle de Chevreuse, but she gave me indirect answers. I began to be out of humour, and was soon appeased. I grew peevish again; and Mademoiselle de Chevreuse saying in his presence, to please me and to sting him, that she could not imagine how it was possible to bear a silly fellow, "Pardon me, mademoiselle," replied I, "we suffer fops sometimes very patiently for the sake of their extravagances." This man was notoriously ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... not feel the soft, sun-packed snow under the beat of his feet. He received the lash of low-hanging bushes without experiencing the sensation of their sting. Only he knew that he wanted air—more and more air; and to get it he ran with open mouth, struggling and gasping for it, and yet not knowing that Jean de Gravois would have called him a fool for the manner in which ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... dear Viponts! what of them all? Crawl they, sting they, bask they in the sun, or are they in anxious process of a change ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... believer in the justice of our age of consent, and would leave corporal punishment for statutory rape to the discretion of the trial court. The terms of imprisonment as now prescribed are doubtless long enough, but let us add to them the sting and shame of the ancient whipping post. For the third degree, in the court's discretion, not more than seven lashes. For the second degree two floggings of twenty lashes each, soundly administered within twelve months. And for the first degree, three ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... unpleasant results, and Colonel Matthews Taylor[7] knew several persons of this character in India, and who regarded the bite of the cobra or tic paloonga with nearly as much indifference as the sting of a gnat or mosquito. Again, in 1868, Mr. Drummond, a prominent magistrate of Melbourne, Australia,[8] met with untimely death under circumstances that attracted no little attention. An itinerant vender of nostrums had on exhibition a number of venomous reptiles, by ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... home, disdaining the waiting carriage. She had forgotten her hat and the sunset lent radiance to a face that needed no more. By rare tact and kindness, Allison had removed the sting from her shame and the burden she had borne so long was lifted from ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... language of Paul V. was measured and decent, the swarm of Jesuit pamphleteers that forthwith began to buzz and to sting all over Christendom were sufficiently venomous. Scioppius, in his Alarm Trumpet to the Holy War, and a hundred others declared that all heresies and heretics were now to be extirpated, the one true church to be united and re-established, and that the only road to such a consummation was ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... ready fo' a pusson wot acts like a snake in de grass? He'll sting befo' yo' hab de ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer
... one of the five hundred guilders which he doth receive for our teaching. And sure, if the burgomaster and schepens will have none of the old dominie, why then no more will we who know how stupid are his lessons, and how his switch doth sting. So, hoy, lads, ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... extracted its sting. As for Miss Rushford, I might see her again," suggested Collins, who had been pacing nervously up ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... Edgerton, no! You must not refuse me the only atonement you can make. You must not couple that atonement with a sting. Hear me! You have violated the rites of hospitality, the laws of honor and of manhood, and grossly abused all the obligations of friendship. These offences would amply justify me in taking your life without scruple, ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... hard, to earn honest bread, but I did not deserve success, and so God refused to bless my labor. I left Maine, and came here to New York, two years ago. I turned my hand to everything, but the bitter sting of misfortune was at the bottom of all. I tried my pen, recently, for my limbs seemed incompetent for any active service, but sitting here in this little narrow room, through the long night, trying to invent some gay little snatch of fiction out of ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... that purity, that innocence so common formerly among children, is every day disappearing from their midst, many among them have become the victims of sin ere the passions of the heart manifested their presence; and their hearts have quivered from the sting of remorse ere they felt the perfidious lurings of pleasure. Many have received from sin that doleful experience, that premature craftiness, which, far from enlightening the mind, obscures and blinds it,—which, far from fortifying the ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... with the sting of his well-merited humiliation. A brief moment of reflection was enough to show its probable origin. It was evident that the secret of his marriage had found its way to the manor, where the court he had been paying to Marguerite had consequently ceased to be regarded as a harmless gallantry, ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... youth must seem a wonderful possession to a man: we are so prone to let it slip by unheeded! Well, he is changed. I never hoped for half as much. He tells me that the demon has fled. He has never a sting of its tail. That may be because he never really craved drink save when writing—until these last years. It is this I wish to talk to you about. You have the most solemn responsibility that ever descended upon a woman: a beautiful soul, a ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... are coming back," Mr. Linden said, with a smile which hardly belonged to them,—"I must go and get their report. Au revoir, Miss Faith." And he went forward into the midst of the little swarm—so manageable in his hands, so sure to sting ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... bed full of saddening thoughts. Not even under the Leads did I pass so wretched a day. I thought I must have risen under some unhappy star! I loathed myself. With regard to Lucie I felt the sting of remorse, but at the thought of M. d'O—— I hated myself. I considered that I should cause him a loss of three or four hundred thousand florins; and the thought was a bitter drop in the cup of my affection for Esther. I fancied, she, as well as her ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... it was in the Wolf's hand. Porky felt a sting as the bullet grazed his shoulder. Then Hen's ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine
... and helpful. But she had little society, less and less as she grew older that was congenial to her, and her mind preyed upon itself; and the mystery of her birth at once chagrined her and raised in her the most extravagant expectations. She was proud and she felt the sting of poverty. She could not but be conscious of her beauty also, and she was vain of that, and came to take a sort of delight in the exercise of her fascinations upon the rather loutish young men who came in her way and ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... close recurs the full flow of funeral song, with the hymnal harmonies. In the refrain of the stormy duet the sting of passion is gone; the whole plaint dies away amid the fading echoes of ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... is sometimes better for the sheep to pass the valley in the black and dark night, than when daylight, by revealing the horrors of the place, would excite fear. All this may safely be left to those hands which spoiled death of his sting, and to that love which is stronger than death. Wherever, and whenever, and in whatever manner we may die, it will be under the care and direction of Him who will no more see us in the power of ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... the sting intended by the word "beard," did as he was desired. The angels had ceased to scatter their clouds of flowers about the maiden; and be beheld her, though still beneath her veil, as far surpassing her former self in loveliness, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... not break! They sting and ache For old love's sake, But do not die, Though with each breath They long for death As witnesseth The living I! Oh, living I! Come, tell me why, When hope is gone, Dost thou stay on? Why linger here, Where all ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... was a good old sort, she thought, and wasn't going to make trouble, after all,—merely lecture them a bit, and she composed her face properly to receive his scolding. It came, but it was not very bad, at least Adelle did not feel its sting. ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... sea, they leave their native stream, and reach the shores of Methymnaean Lesbos.[5] Here an infuriated serpent attacks the head thrown up on the foreign sands, and the hair besprinkled with the oozing blood. At last Phoebus comes to its aid, and drives it away as it tries to inflict its sting, and hardens the open jaws of the serpent into stone, and makes solid its gaping mouth just as it is. His ghost descends under the earth, and he recognizes all the spots which he has formerly seen; and seeking Eurydice through the fields of the blessed, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... mock at sin, will not believe It carries such a dagger in its sleeve. How can it be, say they, that such a thing, So full of sweetness, e'er should wear a sting? They know not that it is the very spell Of sin, to make men laugh themselves to hell. Look to thyself, then, deal with sin no more, Lest He that saves, against thee shut ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... were new! They bring A host of phantoms rare: Old jests that float, old jibes that sting, Old faces peaked with care: Menage's smirk, de Vise's stare, The thefts of Jean Ribou,—{4} Ah, publishers were hard to bear When these Old ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... of the great tragedy soon to come. The roar of the cannon had died down, but from every direction came the firing of scattered riflemen, skirmishers and pickets. They buzzed like angry bees, and no man on the front of either army was safe from their sting. But all through the Wilderness along the line of Jackson's charge the dead and wounded lay. Here and there clumps of fallen and dead wood of the winter before, set on fire by the shells, were burning slowly. The smoke from so much firing drifted in vast banks of vapor ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the kisses that sting, With the thief's mouth red from the feast, With the blood on the hands of the king, And the lie on the lips of ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... Judge Holt as I did, having firm faith in his version of the controversy, believing him to be a victim of gross injustice and realizing withal how keenly through all these years he had felt the sting of misrepresentation, I wrote him a lengthy letter. It was not long before I received his reply, and I copy it here, as I believe it casts an additional sidelight upon a subject which caused this brilliant and high-minded gentleman bitter suffering from which ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... ornament T' enrich their houses, for the continent Of the strange virtues all approved it held; For even the very look of it repelled All blastings, witchcrafts, and the strifes of nature In those diseases that no herbs could cure; The wolfy sting of avarice it would pull, And make the rankest miser bountiful; It kill'd the fear of thunder and of death; 160 The discords that conceit engendereth 'Twixt man and wife, it for the time would cease; The flames of ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... Moving on a string, And when we think that we are IT, The axe will fall—"Gezing!" O, Grave, where is thy victory? O, Death, where is thy sting? ...
— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck
... silent, motionless figure of the Woman, covered as with a pall, by the drifting snow, and in the shadowy string of dogs faintly seen, from time to time, when a rare lull cleared the air to a dim and misty grayness. Something terrifying in the cruel sting of the bitter wind that cut into the flesh like whip-lashes, and shrieked and howled in its unspent rage over that lonely and ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... Wesley took a cup, weakened the drug and said to Billy: "Man, these sores on you must be healed. Then you must eat the kind of food that's fit for little men. I am going to put some medicine on you, and it is going to sting like fire. If it just runs off, I won't use any more. If it boils, there is poison in these places, and they must be tied up, dosed every day, and you must be washed, and kept mighty clean. Now, hold still, because I am going to put ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... totally different reasons. Fanaticism is not a cause of war. It is the means which helps savage peoples to fight. It is the spirit which enables them to combine—the great common object before which all personal or tribal disputes become insignificant. What the horn is to the rhinoceros, what the sting is to the wasp, the Mohammedan faith was to the Arabs of the Soudan—a faculty ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... poison, and danger we open our national ports with an unwisdom which is criminal stupidity, and of which we shall inevitably reap the benefit. America cannot warm the asp of anarchy in her bosom without expecting it to turn and sting her. ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... go there when I would give so much to save you from going there yourself?' This was a terrible thing for a mother to say to her own child on the eve of her wedding, but it had been now said so often as to have lost something of its sting. It had come to be understood that Mrs. Bolton would not allow herself to give any assent to the marriage, but that the marriage was to go on without such assent. All that had been settled. But still she might go to the church with them ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... a match to the tapers. He held the burning match aloft and contemplated the door through which the soldier had gone. The sting of ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... nature, yet in possession of some such sparks of ingenuity and nobleness, as that, but to disguise evil, he would not lie. The body, the sin, is the serpent's; and the garment that covers it, the lie, is his too. These are his, but the hiding of sin from ourselves is he himself: when we have the sting of the serpent in us, and do not sting ourselves, the venom of sin, and no remorse for sin, then, as thy blessed Son said of Judas, He is a devil;[138] not that he had one, but was one; so we are become devils to ourselves, and we have not only a serpent ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... it? It was a joke to them. There was a sting to it for us. We must pay them back in like manner, but without being ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... ambuscade," replied the soldier. "They must have suspected that we would chase after the army so as to pick up stragglers, because that is our favorite game these terrible days; anything to sting the snake that is crawling across our beloved country and leaving death ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... James, almost whimpering, "the trouble I've had already, and the anxiety and worry, not to speak of the pain, miss. Them wasps, their sting is very sharp, and even my lady's blue-bag did not remove them at once. And then the show I am, miss, in this respectable house! But that is nothing to what poor cook felt when the toad poisoned the bread. And there was Mary Ann, ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... the discovery that grandma was standing behind us. We did not know how long she had been there nor how much she had overheard, nor which she meant to strike with the switch she had in her hand. However, we were sitting close together and my left arm felt the sting, and it aroused in me the spirit of rebellion. I felt that I had outgrown such correction, nor had I deserved it; and I told her that she should never, never strike me again. Then I walked ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... The sting of it lashed Ally's brain to a retort. (All that she had needed hitherto to be effective was a little red blood in her veins, and she ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... knows?) These may be winged one day like those; If thrushes, close-embowered to sing, Pierced through with June's delicious sting; If swallows, their half-hour to run Star-breasted in the setting sun. At first they're but the unfledged proem, Or songless schedule of a poem; When from the shell they're hardly dry If some folks thrust them forth, must ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... an eruption on the skin, often coming suddenly and going off again, but sometimes of long standing. It resembles in appearance the sting of a nettle—hence the name. It is accompanied by an intolerable itching, and is a very sore trouble where it continues, or frequently recurs. Its cause is usually defective digestion. We should not depend on drugs for a cure, but treat first the whole spinal system. ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... Well, well!" breathed Babbitt, feeling much calmer, and much happier about the way things were going in the world. "Well, it's been nice to stop and parleyvoo a second. Guess I'll have to get down to the office now and sting a few clients. Well, so long, old man. See ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... when they can sting us through metal and glass at will," growled Dex. "Do you suppose they can turn the juice on harder? Or is that bee-sting ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... quite sure. I have some business that has hung fire an unconscionable time, and ungallant as it seems, we twentieth century fellows have to put business before pleasure." He smiled propitiatingly and therein lay the sting, that he did not even take the trouble to conceal that he was trying to appease her. Their parting sank to the level of the commonplace for he shook hands hastily, and her look of appeal flattened itself ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... and the smoke comes thicker and blacker, and hides everything but those two, and I see them climbing down and down over the rough, sharp rocks, toward the caverns of the dwarfs, while the little tongues of flame shoot out at them from the fissures, as if they were trying to catch and burn and sting them, just as they shoot out from between the black, charred sticks ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... neighbor's field the coming crop can charm, Or stop the viper's lifted sting before it work ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... from words that bear a sting, That pain to any brother bring: Inbreathe Thy calm ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... she said at last; and then, with the tone of one reading; "'From a believer so largely blessed by Providence with this world's goods,'" she continued, "'the Church awaits in confidence some signal mark of piety.' There lies the sting. Am I not right? These ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... remaynes that viperous German brood, the mother whereof would haue come to light, as it were at a second birth, without name, that it might so much the more freely wound the fame of the Islanders with venomous sting. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... Gracchi left the people without a leader, and the optimates easily kept possession of the government, though they did not yet feel disposed to proceed at once to carry out their own wishes fully, for fear that they might sting the populares beyond endurance. They stopped the assignments of lands, however, allowing those who had occupied large tracts to keep them, and thus the desolation and retrogression which had so deeply moved Gracchus continued and ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... the hardest and cruelest sting Was that father once called you a horrid old thing: He said, 'What a battered and wretched old fright! Do take her away, ...
— Harper's Young People, May 18, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... family name, and of the many proud eyes that were turned upon her in the present and out of the past. There was a sting for her in the remembrance and the sting ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... went and ordered a cap this morning, to be quite ready," said she at last, letting out the secret which gave sting to Mrs Jamieson's intimation. "Mrs Jamieson shall see if it is so easy to get me to make fourth at a pool when she has none of her ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... fate before my eyes, with the knowledge that my days were numbered, and that the sun of my life could never reach its meridian, woo you to my love, to make you miserable! No, dearest! your gentle heart will mourn the brother and the friend too much for its own peace; it needed not the sting of a ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... therefore not of the body? And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body?" 1 Cor. 12:15, 16. Here is personification without a trope. "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" (1 Cor. 15:55), here is a majestic personification ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... to attract the attention of those surgically ambitious. The ovariotomy or celiotomy expert began to feel the sting of envy and jealousy aroused by those who were making history in the new surgical fad—appendectomy—and they got busy, and, as disease is not exempt from the economic law of "supply always equals demand," the disease accommodatingly sprang up everywhere; it ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... federal agent. But I'm not here to give you my history. Do you surrender?" The boys could hear the sting in ...
— The Boy Ranchers on Roaring River - or Diamond X and the Chinese Smugglers • Willard F. Baker
... It is quite Attic in its flavor and exquisitely delicate in its combined good-humor and freedom from rancor. An epigram, according to the old definition, should be like a bee; it should carry the sweetness of honey, although it bears a sting at the end. Sometimes the end has a point which does not sting, as in the following quatrain of ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... his span of life Unto my sorrow. Therefore up to heaven Will I: to Zeus's mansion will I go And wail my son, and will put Zeus in mind Of all my travail for him and his sons In their sore stress, and sting his soul with shame." ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... an angry cow, rendered furious by the sting of some insect, plunged frantically into the wedding circle, bellowing, tossing her head, and flourishing her tail in a terrific and antinuptial manner. The Rev. Mr. Sifter was the first one to leave, and, being very spare, he passed swiftly ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... enervating reflections of grief! Read nothing in the past but lessons for the future. When you think of its pleasures, think also of the cares they produced and the anxieties they cost you. Behold, they are ended, and forever. Have you reaped from them a moral, or have you been poisoned with their sting? Have you not discovered that pleasure is a phantom, which vanishes in proportion to the eagerness with which it is pursued? that by itself it fatigues without satisfying—that it knows no limits ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... understood—since almost any other would afford him a living, with less labour and certainly with less pain. Pain, indeed! he never succeeds in plundering the store of the lanyeh, without being severely stung by the insects; and though their sting is quite as painful as that of the common wasp, experience seems to have rendered the Dyak almost indifferent to it. He ascends the flimsy ladder without fear—carrying a blazing torch in his hand, and a cane basket ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... bite you, you sting me. Such want of confidence! Oh how cruel! how cruel! Why can you not trust me? Am I a child? No one is young who has suffered what I have suffered. Secrets disunite a family: and we were so united. And then you are so stupid; ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... of whom calls up only a vague sort of wonder how they ever could have fallen into the state of infatuation in which they once were. The same may be said of many women. Heart-breaking separations have taken place between young men and young women who have learned that the sting of parting does not last forever. The heart, lacerated by a hopeless or misplaced attachment, when severed from the cause of its woe, gradually heals and prepares itself to receive fresh wounds, for affection requires either a constant contemplation ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... studied words of a written part: he has the right of free speech, and he may retort upon his sibilant surrounders. Macready records that on one occasion, when Sheil was hissed, he "extorted the applause of his assailants by observing to them, 'You may hiss, but you cannot sting.'" Even finer was the retort of Coleridge under similar circumstances: "When a cold stream of truth is poured on red-hot ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... thus far." I think the words should have a point of interrogation after them, to mean, "Is it thus far ye suffer?" "Is this the limit of your patience?" but I do not know. With the words, "he touched his ear and healed him." Hardly had the wound reached the true sting of its pain, before the gentle hand of him whom the servant had come to drag to the torture, dismissed the agony as if it had never been. Whether he restored the ear, or left the loss of it for a reminder to the man of the part he had taken ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... sting of the boat-race mishap more sensitively than any boy in Willoughby, was pacing the playground in a dispirited mood a morning or two after, when Dr Patrick ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... that sting you!" he breathed fiercely, turning up his trousers and stepping gingerly ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... the letter. The current had turned and was running landward. The evil thing cast out upon its flood was riding back. I hoped it might sting cruelly the hand ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... entertainment to the house lamps inside for some of the best insect society in Africa, who after the manner of the insect world, insist on regarding us as responsible for their own idiocy in getting singed; and sting us in revenge, while we slap hard, as we howl hymns in the fearful Igalwa and M'pongwe way. Next to an English picnic, the most uncomfortable thing I know is an open-air service in this part of Africa. Service being ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... unless you make it so," put in Polly. "I like all kinds of little creatures so long as they don't bite or sting, and some of those, like bees, for example, I like, though I don't want them to get too near me. Of course when it comes to rattlesnakes or copperheads, or such, I am afraid of them, but these little grass snakes ...
— Three Little Cousins • Amy E. Blanchard
... between them that I know of," she said, and then added archly; "but you will feel better at last, when all is over and the sting of defeat tingles through you, if you are conscious of ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... more irritating than the bites of flies, partly because the barbed sting is left in the wound and partly because of the quantity and quality of the venom. When a swarm attacks an animal the ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... sting was given to such taunts by a great event that happened about this time. In the summer of 1497, Vasco da Gama started from Lisbon for the Cape of Good Hope, and in the summer of 1499 he returned, after having doubled the cape and crossed ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... trying, waiting, thirty-two years of his life went by, and they left him true, sympathetic, patient. The sharp private griefs that sting the heart so deeply, and leave a little poison behind, did not spare him. But he bore everything so bravely, so silently,—often silent for a whole evening in the midst of pleasant talkers, but not impertinently sad, nor ever sullen,—that we ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... felt the ineffable sting Of life, though I be art's valet. I have painted the cloud and the clod, Who should have possessed the earth. ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... and that I had to endure only the knowing and strangely sarcastic smiles of my namesake himself. Satisfied with having produced in my bosom the intended effect, he seemed to chuckle in secret over the sting he had inflicted, and was characteristically disregardful of the public applause which the success of his witty endeavours might have so easily elicited. That the school, indeed, did not feel his design, perceive its accomplishment, and participate ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... rejoiceth in death. "When he walks the dark valley, God's rod and staff comfort him—He fears no evil because God is with him." He is sometimes, ready to exclaim in the triumphant language of the resurrection, "O death! where is thy sting? O grave where is ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... The sting of the cocktail whipped up his eagerness for the iced tender clams. His narrowed gaze rested on Emmy; she was actually seven years older than he, but from her appearance she might be a hundred, a million. There was nothing ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Mahdi so near his end as at that moment, for, as our hero felt the sting, and heard the low laugh, all the blood in his body seemed to leap into his brow, and the lance of office quivered as his hand tightened on it. The fact that two guards with drawn swords stood at his side, and that their ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... a few good friends, some of whom I have kept to this day. I remember that I learned to shun boys, for they were apt to throw stones. How they can be so cruel I cannot understand. If they realized how the stones cut and sting, they would never use them for missiles and us for targets. I nursed a wound on my hip bone for weeks, which was very painful and was caused by a boy hitting me with a sharp stone. What satisfaction can it be to them? Harming ...
— The Nomad of the Nine Lives • A. Frances Friebe
... for him that these shots were the first fired in anger for a hundred and fifty years. He heard bullets whacking over his head, felt a splash of molten metal sting his ear, and perceived without looking that the whole opposite facade, an unmasked ambuscade of red police, was crowded and bawling ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... we are unable to avoid we should not dwell upon. If a person seeks that which we know we can not conscientiously bestow, it is a sacred duty to refuse it him, even though we are sensible that it will give much pain, and when the duty is performed in a Christian manner it will leave no lasting sting, but will itself prove a healing balm to the ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... Ishmael has burrowed you in the very bottom of a hollow tree, where your eyes will be of no more use than the sting of a drone. I, too, know something of that very wagon, and I may say that I have lined the squatter down into a flat lie. Harkee, friend; do you think a girl, like Ellen Wade, would become the companion of ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... leads us to admire with enthusiasm a multitude of inimitable contrivances in Nature, this same reason tells us, though we may easily err on both sides, that some contrivances are less perfect. Can we consider the sting of the wasp or of the bee as perfect, which, when used against many attacking animals, cannot be withdrawn, owing to the backward serratures, and so inevitably causes the death of the insect by tearing out ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... accomplices, and hush up the business. He then returned home, clasped the trembling Constantia in his arms, and conjured her never to name her unworthy cousin. "I would bid you not think of him," said he; "but the viper will be remembered by its sting, after we have discovered it to be a poisonous reptile with a beautiful outside. And much gratitude is due to Heaven, that the base infection of his nature has been fully disclosed, before you were bound to him by indissoluble ties." Constantia asked if Monthault was the ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... yet too many colonists that have felt the disabilities of Dissent in the old country who are unable to put on the armour of forgiveness, or rather of forgetfulness in the new. The enemy has lost his sting, but they will not allow him to live on the remembrance of his past greatness without a ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... friend, I don't know what your game is, but you can't sting me." The agent finished locking up, then walked away, leaving his visitor to reflect anew upon the average human being's ignoble lack of faith ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... far as I can cast my care upon him, I find strength to do his will. May he give me grace to trust him till the last moment! I do not fear death, because I believe that he has taken away its sting. And oh! what happiness beyond! Tell me, sir, whether you think I am right. I hope I am under no delusion. I dare not look for my hope in anything short of the entire fulness of Christ. When I ask ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... informs us, "was badly stung by a wasp last week." At this time of year these insects are apt to sting badly, but in the summer they do it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... sting Annora beyond all measure. Sometimes she would reply by pouring out a catalogue of all the worst offences of our own Church, and Heaven knows she could find enough of them! Or at others she would appeal to the lives of all the best people she had ever heard of in England, and especially of ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... eloquent in the expression of his amazement when his quick eye detected the inverted image of the landscape seen through it; then, after one or two futile attempts, he succeeded in focusing the rays of the sun upon his naked arm, giving a little yelp as he felt the sting of the heat. Finally, with a laugh, he handed the lens back to Cunningham; but there was a covetous look in his eyes as he did so which caused me to utter a word of warning to the engineer lest he should awake some fine morning and discover that ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... whilst we cook our beans in the rags that charity—American charity—has flung us! I tell you that the hour the American flag waves above the fort of Monterey is the hour of the Californians' doom. We have lived in Arcadia—ingrates that you are to complain—they will run over us like ants and sting us to death!" ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... mark the recoil, the intolerable recoil, upon the Pagan mind, of that sting which vainly they pretended to have conquered on behalf of their Pantheon. Did the reader fancy that I was fatiguing myself with any task so superfluous as that of proving the Gods of the heathen to ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... in, Bradjaga, and if the burden in your arms is no corpse it will soon become one! The night has been hell. Bozhe moi! At the first crossing to the left is a tea-house—Get along you brutes!—Pour the vodka into his throat; it will sting ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... in his seat, "whom I have warmed and nourished in my bosom; viper! whom I took to my hearth, and kept there till the returning sense of life gave vigour to your blood, and fresh venom to your sting! Is it thus you pay me back for food and raiment—thus you heap upon me the expressions of a glowing gratitude!—with threats and deadly accusations? Spit forth your malice! Pile up falsehoods to the skies!—WHO WILL BELIEVE THE ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... The jarring sting of the punches, although dazing him slightly, brought Redmond to his senses, as he realized how vulnerable his momentary loss of temper had rendered him. He now braced himself with dogged determination and, covering up warily, circled his adversary with clever foot-work. ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... indirect messages from the unseen world; that all our "simulated thunder-claps," all our "counterfeited truths," all those glimpses of beauty which startle while they elude the soul, are messages of this kind: darts shot from the spirit world, which rebound as they touch, yet sting us to the consciousness of its existence. And so Rene Gentilhomme had had a true revelation, in what reminded him that there are things higher than ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... ample time between his sentences for Mahommed ben Hamza to translate into my wet and itching ear. But every sentence of his speech had measured weight in it, and every word he used was chosen for its poison or its sting. ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... of the length Of time's uncertain wing, It goads me, like the goblin bee, That will not state its sting. ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... Stirling house but she left some sting or sneer of affected superiority behind her, and when the work was done took it home, and the next day sent a note complaining that the handkerchiefs were spoiled, inclosing about one-fifth the usual compensation for such labor. But she did not ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman |
