"Sting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... know the shape, expression, or bearing of one of his gods. Yet man has cursed man, hated man, hunted man, tortured man, and murdered man, for the sake of shadows and fantasies of his own terror, or vanity, or desire. We tiny, vain feeblenesses, we fussy ephemera; we sting each other, hate each other, hiss at each other, for the sake of the monster gods of our own delirium. As we are whirled upon our spinning, glowing planet through the unfathomable spaces, where myriads ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... whipt me with the same; Myrtle the twigs were, merely to imply Love strikes, but 'tis with gentle cruelty. Patient I was: Love pitiful grew then And strok'd the stripes, and I was whole again. Thus, like a bee, Love gentle still doth bring Honey to salve where he before did sting. ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... happy and congenial group. Fate will soon separate us. Some will grow old; some will die before their time; some will perhaps be rich in this world's goods; possibly some will experience poverty's sting. Yet none of us, fellows, need ever want for real friendship; and, after all, it's that which makes life glad and beautiful for us, or sad and unhappy if we do not have it. I have often warned my memory never to lose the picture of a single ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... minutes in discovering a black horse well within the outer fringe of the cottonwoods, switching mechanically at the flies and mosquitoes that infested the place, and throwing his head impatiently to his side now and then when the sting was too sharp to ignore. With the glasses he could see the sweat-roughened hide ripple convulsively to dislodge the pestering insects, could see the flaring nostrils as the horse blew out the dust gathered from his hungry ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... With his temper vexed by the persistent neglect and insult cast upon him by the Milanese doctors he would naturally sit down con amore to compile a list of the errors perpetrated by the ignorance and bungling of the men who affected to despise him, and if his object was to sting the hides of these pundits and arouse them to hostility yet more vehement, he succeeded marvellously well. He was enabled to launch his book rather by the strength of private friendship than by the hope ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... Theo's mother took the sting out of the rector's speech, which was not intended to have any sting, and was only a stray gleam of insight out of a confused realisation of the state of affairs; but it was so true that it was difficult to believe it was that, and no more. ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... have spoken sincerely," she said; "but you have failed to do justice to my son's good sense; and you are—naturally enough, in your position—incapable of estimating his devoted attachment to Carmina." Having planted that sting, she paused to observe the effect. Not the slightest visible result rewarded her. She went on. "Almost the last words he said to me expressed his confidence—his affectionate confidence—in my niece. The ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... ants 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. On ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... without them; and, had she been less aware from her own experiences and those of others, that this is a world in which you must stand up very stiffly if you do not want to be pushed down; she might have sunk, at least for a time, under all this publicity and blame. Even the praise had its sting. ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... either," cried Kirkpatrick, once more looking boldly up, and shaking his broad claymore: "My thistle has a point to sting all to death who would pass between this arm ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... knife, drugs, serpents, have Edge, sting, or operation, I am safe. Your wife, Octavia, with her modest eyes, And still conclusion,[75] shall acquire no honor Demurring ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... stranger the confidence warranted mutual reciprocity. If it were merely an act dictated by the impulse of his feelings at that moment, the secret was now laid broadly open. He was father of the children, and, sensible of their critical situation, the sting was goading him to their rescue. The question was-would he interpose and declare them as such? Ah, he forgot it was not the father's assertion,—it was the law. The crime of being property was inherited from the ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... in any country, but especially so in warm tropical climates. Their ugly appearance, their destructive habits, but, above all, the pain of their sting, or rather bite—for ants do not sting as wasps, but bite with the jaws, and then infuse poison into the wound—all these render them very unpopular creatures. A superficial thinker would suppose that such troublesome insects could be of no ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... right had I to hint the same thing by my actions, at the cost of utter misapprehension and pain to her? Mrs. Simcoe, I do love Hope Wayne too tenderly, and respect her too truly, not to try to protect her against the sting of her own womanly pride. And so I have not staid away. I have not avoided a woman in whom I must always have so deep and peculiar an interest, I have been friend and almost father, and never by a whisper even, by a look, by a possible hint, have I ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... Wells does not hesitate to use both that word and its correlative, damnation. From what, then, are you saved? Why, from quite a number of things. You are saved "from the purposelessness of life" (p. 18). God's immortality has "taken the sting from death" (p. 22). You have escaped "from the painful accidents and chagrins of individuation" (p. 73). "Salvation is to lose oneself" (p. 73); it is "a complete turning away from self" (p. 84). "Damnation is really ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... not damp them. Cold could not chill them. Every hardship became a joke. . . . Never was such a triumph of spirit over matter. . . . If it was another fellow that was hit, it was an occasion for tenderness and grief. But if one of them was hit, O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory? . . . Life? They did not value life! They had never been able to make much of a fist of it. But if they lived amiss they died gloriously, with a smile for the pain and the dread of it. What else had they been born for? It was their chance. ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... grass (With the queen's leave) her elephant and ass. Giants from Africa shall guard the glades, Where hiss our snakes, where sport our Tartar maids; Or, wanting these, from Charlotte Hayes we bring Damsels, alike adroit to sport and sting. Now to our lawns of dalliance and delight, Join we the groves of horror and affright; This to achieve no foreign aids we try,— Thy gibbets, Bagshot! shall our wants supply; Hounslow, whose heath sublimer terror fills, Shall with her gibbets lend her powder-mills. ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... reader may perhaps remember that the young Duchess of Omnium lived in Carlton Terrace. "I can trace it all there. I won't stand it if it goes on like this. A clique of stupid women to take up the cudgels for a coal-heaving sort of fellow like that, and sting one like a lot of hornets! Would you believe it?—the Duke almost refused to speak to me just now—a man for whom I have been working like a slave ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... with this frivolous talk. The American Board accepts contributions from me every year: then why shouldn't it from Mr. Rockefeller? In all the ages, three-fourths of the support of the great charities has been conscience-money, as my books will show: then what becomes of the sting when that term is applied to Mr. Rockefeller's gift? The American Board's trade is financed mainly from the graveyards. Bequests, you understand. Conscience-money. Confession of an old crime and deliberate perpetration of a new ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... special price That were allow'd it, as an ornament T' enrich their houses, for the continent Of the strange virtues all approv'd it held; For even the very look of it repell'd 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; The discords that conceit engendereth 'Twixt man and wife, it for the time would cease; The flames of love it quench'd, and would increase; ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... sacred Egyptian ateuchus, that the Egyptians of Upper Egypt venerated as gods. It is here that those sphinxes with heads of death, now spread over all Europe, belong, and also those 'Idias Bigote,' whose sting is particularly dreaded by the Senegalians of the coast. Yes; there are superb things to be found here, and I shall find them, if these honest ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... lady walked out, followed by Felicie, who was crying too, for she had become accustomed to Etienne. The dreadful Madame Cardot got into her hackney-coach again, staring insolently at the hapless Dinah, in whose heart the sting still rankled of "that is all very fine in words"; but who, nevertheless, like every woman in love, believed in the ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... to love him too well as she had a wonderful dexterity in snapping off the heads of those whom she admired. Her consent to the death of her husband was easily gained, and she bade him dip the points of two arrows in the poison of her sting. This he did and after retiring within the fortification he levelled one arrow at the head of the husband, while he deposited the other in that of the wicked wife. The horrid monsters rolled over in agony, and rent the air with their death-shrieks, while all ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... the shriveled heart and body, did the most human thing he had done for years. At the little table opposite the bar he sat with brandy and a glass and deliberately drank until he felt neither the ache of his old wounds nor the sting of this fresh thrust of fate. Then he knew that he was drunk, but that his keen, crooked mind would obey his will, unfeelingly, yet with no hesitation ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... years ago, and Bet is a matron now, with golden-haired and beautiful children of her own. She is a grave-looking woman, and in some ways she will carry the sting of that two months' agony to her death. She is religious too; but she says little about her belief, she only acts on it. The sailor Will has the best home in Liverpool, and those who are in trouble have a way of coming to Bet for help and counsel. ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... same night of mine and countermine Duke Borso, who had broken up the circle early by reason of his toothache, went wandering the long corridors of the Schifanoia under the sting of his scourge. He found his spacious pleasure-house valueless against that particular annoy, but (as always) he was the more whimsical for his affliction. Nothing works your genuine man of humour so nearly as himself. The sight of his own image, puffed ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... the blow waver or deflected her resolute aim. She had thought at once of Laura, and Laura was his only, his inevitable, resource. His anxious mind pictured his sister's wonder, and made him wince under the sting of Henley Fairford's irony: Fairford, who at the time of the marriage had sat silent and pulled his moustache while every one else argued and objected, yet under whose silence Ralph had felt a deeper protest than under all the reasoning of the others. It was no comfort to reflect that Fairford ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... "thine own deed shall then paint thee more worthless than could my words, though each had a hornet's sting." ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... acting as a rival 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 over, Ndaka ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... 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 fine Scotch relations ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... accursed a wrong? Tell me, ye loud-voiced winds that ceaseless roll, Eternal miracles from pole to pole, Breathes there on earth so vile and mean a thing That crushed, it will not turn again and sting? And say! ye tyrants in your boasted halls, Read ye no warnings on your darkened walls? Hear ye no seeming mutterings of the cloud Break from the millions which your steps have bowed? Think ye, ye hold in your ignoble thrall, Mind, soul, thought, taste, hope, feeling, valor, ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... hasty word of mine,' said Bella with a little sting of self-reproach, 'to make me seem—I don't know what. I spoke without consideration when I used it. If that was bad, I am sorry; but you repeat it after consideration, and that seems to me to be at ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... imperfect bud a matter of some doubt. Cornelia peeped cautiously about, putting aside the wet twigs gingerly, and lifting up one flower after another; desisting every once in a while to slap at the fine sting of a mosquito ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... battles with sanguinary fleas. The discomforts and grievances of his palate under the ordeal of foreign cooking were a real relish for us. On a hot morning in the tropics, we see him pulling on his stocking with a scorpion in it, and dancing in involuntary joy under the effects of the sting. Let him dance; it is all for our amusement. Let him meet with what he will—robbers, cannibals, jungle-tigers, and rattlesnakes, the more the better—since we know that he will get off alive, and come to regard them so many god-sends in the way ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... Prussia has beaten them? How much cleverer if he has taken three lieutenant-generals and an hundred pieces of cannon? How much cleverer still, if he has left fifteen thousand Muscovites dead on the Spot?(939) Does the loss of only three thousand of his own men take off from or sharpen the sting of this joke? In short, all this is fact, as a courier arrived at Sion Hill this morning affirms. The city, I suppose, expect that his Majesty will now be"at leisure to step to Ticonderoga and repair our mishaps.(940) But I shall talk no more politics; ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... no mind to give up. Throwing caution to the winds, he now struck out swiftly and sharply with his sword. Once or twice the thrusts went home. Chester felt a sting in his left shoulder. The bayonet of a German trooper had pricked him slightly. Chester whirled about and seized the bayonet with his left hand. A powerful wrench and it was wrested from the hands of the German soldier, who had been ...
— The Boy Allies At Verdun • Clair W. Hayes
... useful sort than an earl finds to do. But he smothered that part of his thought as well as he could; he made every effort to drive it away, and with fair keep it from intruding a little success, but he couldn't now and then, and when it intruded it came suddenly and nipped him like a bite, a sting, a burn. He recognized that thought by the peculiar sharpness of its pang. The others were painful enough, but that one cut to the quick when it calm. Night after night he lay tossing to the music of the hideous snoring of the honest bread-winners ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... places in Ireland where you would not get a drink of water if they knew you came from Cork. And it was the very same, the North Cork, that went of their own free will to the Boer war, volunteered, asked to go that is. They had the same sting in them always. A great many of them were left dead in that war, and a great many better men than themselves. There was one battle in that war there was no quarter given, the same as Aughrim; and the English would kill the wounded that would ...
— The Kiltartan History Book • Lady I. A. Gregory
... gemman before I went to the inn at Hounslow, and flung him a horse down worth ninety guineas, by endeavouring to show off before some ladies that I met on the road. Turn your horse out to grass throughout May and the first part of June, for then the grass is sweetest, and the flies don't sting so bad as they do later in summer; afterwards merely turn him out occasionally in the swale of the morn and the evening; after September the grass is good for little, lash and sour at best; every horse should go out to grass, if not his ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... The sting of a scorpion is in its tail. Mavis stooped down and picked up the little photo which had fallen from the envelope on to the floor. Clive had used his Brownie camera at Chagmouth and had promised to post them the ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... often of a different color from the rest of the body and {99} greatly resembles a "horn," being conical and pointed, and has thus given rise to another equally silly fable, viz., that of the horn snake, or hoop snake, which is said to have a sting in its tail and to be deadly poisonous. The lizards are all perfectly harmless, except the sluggish Gila monster (pronounced Heela, named from the Gila River in Arizona) which lives in the deserts of Arizona and Mexico, and whose ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... his head And speech knew, and the company of speech, And from his alien presence wild beasts fled And birds flew wary from his arrow's reach, And cattle trampling the long meadow weed Did sentry in the wind's path set; when each Horn, hoof, claw, sting and sinew against man Was turned, and the ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... gratifications, and you will make them languid, and even wretched. There will be a wide chasm, which they will not know how to fill up; a dull vacuum of time, which will make their existence insipid; a disappointment, which will carry with it a lacerating sting. In some of the higher circles of life, accustomed to such rounds of pleasure, who does not know that the Sunday is lamented as the most cruel interrupter of their enjoyments?—No shopping in the morning—no theatre or route in the evening—Nothing but dull heavy church stares them ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... freely when he was left alone. He had ended forever the error of his life. The only thing in this visit that left a sting was the countess's hesitation before the portrait. She had recognized it sooner than Cotoner, but she too had hesitated. No one remembered Josephina; he alone kept ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... bigoted malignity of any individual been crushed? Or has the stability of the government or that of the country been weakened? Or is one million of subjects stronger than four millions? Do you think that the benefit they have received, should be poisoned by the sting of vengeance. If you think so, you must say to them: You have demanded emancipation, and you have got it; but we abhor your persons; we are outraged at your success, and we will stigmatize by a criminal prosecution the adviser of that relief which you have obtained from the voice of your ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... jelly-fishes who were constantly to be met floating about, their long tentacles streaming behind, and their umbrella-shaped disks expanding and contracting as they swam, for he knew that the Jelly-Fish was a cousin of the Sea-Anemone, and that its tentacles could sting most unpleasantly. So he admired them from a distance, and very beautiful they were, especially at night, when their gleaming phosphorescent bodies lighted up the darkness of the ...
— How Sammy Went to Coral-Land • Emily Paret Atwater
... inch and a quarter in length, and stout in proportion. The creatures were marching in single file, coming out from a hole formed in the roots of a small tree. I took up one to examine it, and received a sting for my pains, but the pain soon went off. We all suffered much more from the stings of several smaller ants, especially the fire-ants, by which we had on more than one occasion ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... moan'd "For his lost child; but when the flames he saw "Ascending, four times 'mid the funeral fires "He strove to plunge; four times from thence repuls'd, "His rapid limbs address'd for flight, and rush'd "Like a young bullock, when the hornet's sting "Deep in his neck he bears, in pathless ways. "Ev'n now more swift than man he seem'd to run: "His feet seem'd wings to wear, for all behind "He left far distant. Through desire of death, "Rapid he gain'd Parnassus' loftiest ridge. "Apollo, pitying, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... Homer long ago, And made him beg his bread Through seven cities, ye all know, His body fought for, dead. Spurn not oppression's blighting sting, Nor scorn thy lowly fare; By them I'll teach thy soul to sing ...
— The Sylvan Cabin - A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln and Other Verse • Edward Smyth Jones
... trickled down their sides. Unluckily, we had to camp for one night in this region; but we partly evaded the ravenous things by banking up our tent walls with earth, and then, before turning in, sweeping and smoking out such as had got inside. Yet with all this there seemed hundreds left to sing and sting throughout the night. The mules being without protection, we tried hard to save them from the vicious insects by creating a dense smoke from a circle of smothered fires, within which chain the grateful ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... pleasing trait was his genial, social manner. Always gay, cheerful, and humorous, he scattered flowers on the pathway of his friends and acquaintances. His wit was free from sting. If in the excitement of debate he inflicted pain, he was ready and prompt to make amends, and died, as far as I know, without an enemy or an unhealed feud. I had with him more than one political debate and controversy, but they left no coolness or irritation. In our last conversation ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... yet preserved me alive. Besides, another time, being in the field with one of my companions, it chanced that an adder passed over the highway; so I, having a stick in my hand, struck her over the back; and having stunned her, I forced open her mouth with my stick, and plucked her sting out with my fingers; by which act, had not God been merciful unto me, I might, by my desperateness, have brought ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... strength and means of hostility. Thus the bull attacks with his horns, and the horse with his heels, the beast of prey with his claws, the bird with his beak, and insects and other venomous creatures with their sting. We know not by what impulse they are prompted to the use of the various means which are so intimately connected with their preservation and welfare; and we call it instinct. We may be certain it does not arise from a careful survey of their parts and ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... poor prey round which a spider spins its bewildering web. It was also curious to observe the sudden suspicion that darkened his face at some innocent remark,—the quick shrinking and intrenched retirement, the manifest sting and rancor, as I touched his wound with a swift flash of my slender weapon and sheathed it again, and, after the thrust, the espionage, and the relief at believing it accidental. He had many threads to gather up and hold;—little ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... unholy miasma to the city of the living. In the scorching days of August the keepers deny admission to the place: there are flies that bear upon them the poison of the carrion, pestilential flies whose sting is deadly! ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... high His head is borne, His mighty pow'r asunder Thy gates hath burst, thy bands hath torn, Thyself hath trodden under His feet; who doth in Him confide Thy pow'r and claims may now deride And say, "Thy sting, ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt
... Bible says that 'Death passed upon all men, for all have sinned,' it does not merely mean the physical fact of dissolution, but it means that fact along with the accompaniments of it, and the forerunners of it, in men's consciences. 'The sting of death is sin,' says Paul, in another place. By which he implies, I presume, that, if it were not for the fact of alienation from God and opposition to His holy will, men might lie down and die as placidly as an animal does, and might strip themselves for it 'as for a bed, that longing ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... in the intercourse of my friends, was the talk, the laughter, the good turns we did each other, the common study of the masters of eloquence, the comradeship, now grave now gay, the differences that left no sting, as of a man differing with himself, the spice of disagreement which seasoned the monotony of consent. Each by turns would instruct or listen; impatiently we missed the absent friend, and savoured ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... cunning, cautious, and selfish, to contemplate a mode of revenge which could not be accomplished without risk to himself. In any case, however, she was clearly convinced that the best plan was to go boldly upon him at once. It was like taking the sting out of a nettle, by grasping it suddenly. She thought he would shrink from publicity; and that if we refused to give him a struggle in the dark, we ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... insects, but upon each other. For this state nature seems perfectly well to have formed it. Its head and breast are covered with a strong natural coat of mail, which is impenetrable to the attempts of every other insect, and its belly is enveloped in a soft, pliant skin, which eludes the sting even of a wasp. Its legs are terminated by strong claws, not unlike those of a lobster; and their vast length, like spears, serve to keep every assailant ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... remember the old story of the tender-hearted man, who placed a frozen viper in his bosom, and was stung by it when it became thawed? If we take a cold-blooded creature into our bosom, better that it should sting us and we should die than that its chill should slowly steal into our hearts; warm it we never can! I have seen faces of women that were fair to look upon, yet one could see that the icicles were forming round these women's hearts. I ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... rebuff, That turns earth's smoothness rough, Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand nor go. Be our joys three parts pain! Strive, and hold cheap the strain; Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... measures. It is a place for internecine warfare Hence, all desert plants are quite absurdly prickly. The starving herbivores will attack and devour under such circumstances even thorny weeds, which tear or sting their tender tongues and palates, but which supply them at least with a little food and moisture: so the plants are compelled in turn to take almost extravagant precautions. Sometimes the leaves end in a stout ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... general had held strictly to the terms of the bargain—"but only a devil and one with not a single gentlemanly instinct would insist on such a bargain." It took away much of the shame, and all of the sting, of despising herself to feel that she was looking still lower when she turned to ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... this and destroyed them. They were bitter and contemptuous, and as each was finished she realised its futility. She could but sting; she could not seriously hurt. Even her sting would not trouble him much, for a man who had done what he had done, was proof against the scorn and hate of a woman. Only greater power than his own could make him feel. Her powerlessness maddened her—her powerlessness contrasted with his ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh
... this criticism rankled, its sting was removed by the thought that lazy and snobbish as Peter Coddington had been, thanks to Peter Strong he was neither lazy nor snobbish now; nor was he, the boy acknowledged, the disappointment to his father that he might have been had not prompt and heroic measures been taken. Yet even ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett
... invectives against Lamb which have recoiled on the memory of his critic—to the credit of English sympathies with the most lovable of slightly erring men—with more than the force of a boomorang. A sheaf of sharp sayings of the same date owe their sting to their half truth, e.g. to a man who excused himself for profligate journalism on the old plea, "I must live, sir." "No, sir, you need not live, if your body cannot be kept together without selling your soul." Similarly he was abusing the periodicals—"mud," ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... in, and for the first time there was light enough to see mademoiselle's face, and as I looked there came to me a sting of regret for the days that would never return. It was as if some devil had flashed before me a mirror in which the past was reflected; and, believe me, when one has lived and regretted it is not necessary to be in love for such a lightning ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... International Mutual Tontine has done a glorious work toward mitigating the wrath of the grim destroyer; under the grace of its soothing balm bereavement becomes an actual pleasure, death loses its sting, and the ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... not look at her without feeling the sting of concupiscence. As I was leaving my room I saw the door half open, and I stopped short and offered my services as a neighbour. She thanked me politely, and asked me in. I saw a handsome young man sitting up in bed, so I went up to ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... displace Jermyn from the pedestal on which Cosmo had set him. What! if all the ladies in the world should forsake him, was not God yet the all in all? But now as he lay shivering, the words entering his ears seemed to issue from his soul. He listened like one whom the first sting has paralyzed, but who feels the more every succeeding invasion of death. It was a silent, yet a mortal struggle. He held down his heart like a wild beast, which, if he let it up for one moment, would fly at his throat and strangle him. Nor could ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... He crouched in the snow, himself unseen, and watched. After a few minutes of inaction, the frost began to bite in, and he rested the rifle across his knees and beat his hands back and forth. Then the sting in his feet became intolerable, and he stepped back from the bank and tramped heavily up and down among the trees. But he did not tramp long at a time. Every several minutes he came to the edge of the bank and peered up and down the trail, as though by sheer will he could materialise ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... then in his ordinary voice, but there was no reply. Was Mrs. Mellen deaf? he had not noticed it before. He pondered distressfully for a few moments; then dropped his eyes, and the book swallowed him again. Yet the sting remained, for when presently the figure at the mantelpiece turned round, he looked up hastily, and flushed again as he met his hostess' gaze, calm and untroubled as ...
— "Some Say" - Neighbours in Cyrus • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... remind you of it, I only do so in the hope that I may be able to serve you," answered Victor. "I have tasted all the bitterness of poverty, Miss Brewer. Forgive me, if I ask whether you, too, have been acquainted with its sting?" ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... simple courtesy that made his patience thrice heroic. He did not speak of himself or his services, though I knew both to be eminent; but McDowell had insulted him, as he rode disabled from the field, and Geary felt the sting of the word more than the bullet. He had ventured to say to McDowell that the Reserves were badly needed in front, and the proud "Regular" had answered the officious "Volunteer," to the effect that he knew his own business. Not the ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... unchanging doubt which never left him; and, more than all, under the incessant reproaches of his own conscience, aroused by the sense that he was evading a responsibility which it was his solemn, his immediate duty to undertake. But no sting of conscience, no ill treatment at home, and no self-reproaches for failing in his duty of confession as a good Catholic, were powerful enough in their influence over Gabriel to make him disclose the secret, ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... "Woddyer mean sting me? I know all abart parrots, I do. My brother Joe's wife's sister 'ad one of 'em. They don't 'urt yer, not if you're kind to 'em. You know yer pals when you see 'em, don't yer, mate?" he went on, addressing Bill, who was contemplating the finger ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... scarcely swallow it. He got used to it at length, however, and found that he was none the worse for it. He also longed for the luxury of a private bath. Oh! just for half an hour in the porcelain bath in his mother's house! Just to have the exquisite pleasure of feeling the sting of cold pure water around ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... purpose and worse than none. Even Herve's love and gratitude failed him now; the knowledge that Herve could never quite forget or forgive his plotting with Adelaide and Ratoneau, was the sharpest sting of all; worse even, as his wife felt with a throb of rapturous joy, than the fact that Adelaide would ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... Come hither, and the fields and groves Their horn shall empty at your feet. Here, shelter'd by a friendly tree, In Teian measures you shall sing Bright Circe and Penelope, Love-smitten both by one sharp sting. Here shall you quaff beneath the shade Sweet Lesbian draughts that injure none, Nor fear lest Mars the realm invade Of Semele's Thyonian son, Lest Cyrus on a foe too weak Lay the rude hand of wild excess, His passion on your chaplet wreak, ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... when the boy was a boy, with all those safeguards of nature, than when he was a man? John kept his mind to this question with the firmness of a trained intelligence, not letting himself go off into other matters, or pausing to feel the sting that was in Elinor's words, the reminder that though he had been so much, he was still nothing to the family to whom he had consecrated so much of his life, so much ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... wants to settle for his lost eye, which makes him lively. Also I see stones ahead, which are bad for camels. Then there is the river, and I don't know if camels can swim, but Jana can as Marut learned. Do you think, Baas, that you could manage to sting him up with a bullet in his knee or that great trunk of his, just to give him something to ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... ease, while he sipped the delicious compounds the richly furnished bar afforded, never once dreaming that a serpent lay concealed in the cup that he held to his lips—a serpent that one day would sting him, ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... painful experience, and that the doctrine of "Thy will be done" was found to be a great deal more than a mere profession of faith. The sympathies of relatives, friends, and other mourners, their deeds and words of condolence, followed by a solemn religious service, took the sting out of the affliction, although it must again be confessed that so deep was our sorrow for the dead child's mother that for some time we could not bear to look her in ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... no more the king of dread, Since our Immanuel rose; He took the tyrant's sting away, ...
— The Otterbein Hymnal - For Use in Public and Social Worship • Edmund S. Lorenz
... any risk she was likely to incur. When he returned he would find the house in mourning, for she had already decided within herself that only by apparent death could this child be safely robbed of her endowments as an Ocumpaugh and an heiress. He would grieve, but his grief would lack the sting of shame, and so in course of time would soften into a lovely memory of one who had been as the living sunshine to him and, like the sunshine, brief in its shining. Thus and thus only could she show her consideration for him. For ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... of the number of speeches to be learnt took off the sting of Cis's disappointment, though she would not allow that it did so, declaring with truth that she could learn by hearing faster than any of the boys. Indeed, she did learn all Humfrey's speeches, and Antony's to boot, and assisted both of them with all her might in committing ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... would lacerate our bosoms. The Pandavas are too proud ever to accept back from us the lands which they have relinquished; therefore it is only meet that we draw some great sorrow down on our heads so as to deprive that unmerited reward of its sting. ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... pass—fame, joy and love, The sting of grief, the blot of shame; The only thing that really counts Is how we bear the praise ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... fisherman. pescuezo neck. peseta silver coin (one fifth of a Spanish dollar). peso weight. pestanear to move the eyelashes, blink. petrificar to petrify. petulancia presumption, impertinence. piadoso pious, merciful, compassionate. picapleitos pettifogger. picar to prick, sting, mince, nibble. picardia rascality, deceit. picaro knavish, roguish, villainous. pichon -a pigeon, dove, darling. pie m. foot. piedad f. piety, pity. piedra stone. piel f. skin, fur. pierna leg. pimiento red pepper. pinchazo ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... the 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 suddenly ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... eyes fixed on the two horses, as they reared, backed, reared again, then, receiving a cut from the whip, kicked out, swerved violently from one side to the other, received another cut from Mansana, jibbed, and then finally, after one more sharp sting from the lash, started forward. The rough handling of the whip certainly did not seem to ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... From that liberal hand on his foes he rains, iv. 97. From the plain of his face springs a minaret, viii. 296. From wine I turn and whoso wine-cups swill, i. 208. Full many a reverend Shaykh feels sting of flesh, v. 64. Full many laugh at tears they see me shed, iii. 193. Full moon if unfreckled would favour thee, iv. 19. Full moon with sun in single mansion, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... profound ignorance of Congress concerning men and affairs abroad, Lee was able for a long time to run his mischievous career without discovery or interruption. He buzzed about Europe like an angry hornet, thrusting his venomous sting into every respectable and useful servant of his country, and irritating exceedingly the foreigners whom it was of the first importance to conciliate. Incredible as it seems, it is undoubtedly true that he did not hesitate to express in Paris his deep antipathy to France and Frenchmen; ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... after acting as his solicitor, attended him to the last. But Lord Lovat felt deeply the circumstance of his having been convicted by his own servants: "It is shocking," he observed, "to human nature. I believe that they will carry about with them a sting that will accompany them to their grave; yet I ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... word took Mrs Ford's mind off the matrimonial future of Mr Burns, and brought him into prominence in his capacity of knight-errant. She laughed happily. The contemplation of Mr Burns as knight-errant healed the sting of defeat. The affair of Mr Mennick began to appear in the ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... with streams of light like falling stars; the booming sound of humble-bees was heard, as fairy knights and ladies came hastening to the call through the moon-lit air; the knights pricking their chargers with their wasp-sting spurs, and the ladies urging theirs quite as fast ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... we are placed by God; we are bound to learn its lessons, and do its duties: there is no halo of self-sacrifice around it—the position rightly viewed gives us no choice. "I must,"—there is the sting, the irksomeness to us. We can submit cheerfully to our self-chosen Pope, and seem most sweet-tempered in bearing criticism and in doing tiresome duties,—the "I must" is not there. This wilful obedience is worth just nothing as discipline of character, compared with obedience ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... motives, but what was more, they would readily fight outside of Greece, if they were paid well for it; the latter would only fight when they were flogged to it, and officers had to carry whips to drive them into battle by the sting of the lash. ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... you had an insect at the North with a sting!" replied Marguerite, suffering it, a little maliciously, to escape in the lady's face, and following the flight with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... in himself abundantly the attributes (of the Tao) is like an infant. Poisonous insects will not sting him; fierce beasts will not seize him; birds of prey will ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze
... evil is like that serpent of the Indies whose dwelling is the leaf of a plant which cures its sting; it presents, in nearly every case, the remedy by the side of the suffering it has caused. For example, the man whose life is one of routine, who has his business cares to claim his attention upon rising, visits at such an hour, loves at another, can lose ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... 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 be no Gods? ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... me. Slighted by her, on whom my heart by its last fibre hung, where shall I turn? I wake with her by my side, not as my sweet bedfellow, but as the corpse of my love, without a heart in her bosom, cold, insensible, or struggling from me; and the worm gnaws me, and the sting of unrequited love, and the canker of a hopeless, endless sorrow. I have lost the taste of my food by feverish anxiety; and my favourite beverage, which used to refresh me when I got up, has no moisture in it. Oh! cold, solitary, sepulchral breakfasts, compared ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... shone with safety. People enjoyed his hospitality, for they knew that it was disinterested; and admired his acquirements, for they felt that they were unobtrusive. Sometimes (as in his dialogue with the Cynic) the whim of the moment, or the sting of a sarcasm, drew from him a hint at his station, or a display of his eccentricities; but, as he was always the first soon afterwards to lead the laugh at his own outbreak, his credit as a noble suffered nothing by his infirmity ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... person in the whole valley that wasn't laughing at him and giving him false sympathy with a sting in its tail was Minna Humphrey. Homer told her all about the foul conspiracy against his fortune, and how his life would be blasted by marrying into a family with three outcasts like he'd been told these was. And what was our courts coming ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... Christian religion possessing the heart that arms a man completely against the fear either of death itself, or the consequents of it. It giveth the most powerful consolation, that not only overcometh the bitterness and taketh out the sting of death, but changeth the nature of it so far as to make it the matter of ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... to the people; but an editor really independent must have a heart of oak, nerves of iron, and a soul of adamant, to carry it through. His first attempt will bring a hornet's nest about his head; and, if they do not sting him to death or to blindness, he will have to pursue his march with them continually swarming over him, and be beset on all ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... with a certain sarcasm, of which Marthe felt the sting. But, before she had time to retort, Philippe ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... means of proving her innocence was closed to her. For Dermot's sake she must endure to be thought a thief! Yes, a thief! She repeated the word under her breath, and the very sound of it seemed to sting her. A Fitzgerald a thief! Oh, it was impossible to bear the reproach! Surely even Dermot's future could not compel her to such a sacrifice? Yes, it must and should. She knew it was the dream of his life to become ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... wagons pushed and dragged up the steep inclines by convicts, who drew themselves up in the wagons when the trucks dashed down the slope, and acted as drags. Sylvia felt degraded at being thus drawn by human beings, and trembled when the lash cracked, and the convicts answered to the sting—like cattle. Moreover, there was among the foremost of these beasts of burden a face that had dimly haunted her girlhood, and only lately vanished from her dreams. This face looked on her—she thought—with bitterest loathing and scorn, and she felt ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... might struggle, and destroy a good deal of apparatus, but he could not hope to overwhelm them. He lay on the couch as directed. Almost instantly the overweight one was behind him, seizing his arm. He felt the sting of a needle. The thin one was at his feet, looking down at him soberly. "He will rest," the thin one said, "and then we shall know what ...
— The Memory of Mars • Raymond F. Jones
... Fillet of a fenny snake, In the caldron boil and bake; Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog, Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting, Lizard's leg, and howlet's wing,— For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil ...
— Macbeth • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... of this train of thought, she experienced again a sting of regret, (as she fancied) she should not have given way to such idle thoughts and missed attending to the ballads; but when she once more came to listen, the song, by some ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... there was much discussion as to the ethics of reprisals and G.K. used against reprisals two arguments one of which was a rare example of a fallacy in his arguments. If a wasp stings you, he said, you do not sting back. No, we might reply, but you squash it—you have as a man an advantage over a wasp and so do not need to use its own weapons ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... admiral's intensity was awful. "You blasted his good name, you sought his life, you sought his wife, you broke every bond, human or divine, to destroy him. At last, to silence conscience' sting, you thought you did a deed of mercy in sending him in captivity to a death in life. Fool! Nemesis is not mocked. Glaucon has lain at death's door. He has saved Hellas, but at a price. The surgeons say he will live, ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... browsed in a clump of weeds, the howdah at a rakish angle, like the cocked hat of a bully. Kathlyn stared at her hands. There were no burns there; she passed a hand over her face; there was no smart or sting. A dream; she had dreamed it; a fantasy due to her light-headed state of mind. A dream! She cried and laughed, and the ape jibbered ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... that humanity could conceive he did to suppress the cruelties of war and soothe its sorrows. He never struck a coward's blow. To him age, infancy, and helplessness were ever sacred. He tolerated no extremity unless to curb the excesses of his enemy, and he never poisoned the sting of defeat by the exultation of ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... not!" cried the old gentleman rabbit. "I know you and your tricks! That is a hornets' nest, and if I struck it they would fly out, and sting me. Oh, no! You can't catch me again. Now you go away, or I'll tell a ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Adventures • Howard R. Garis
... feeling the sting of the rebuke, bit his under lip to check an angry retort, Ancyrus, the elder, rejoined suavely, trying to pour the oil of his honeyed words on the troubled water ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... sure investment, which she repays a thousand-fold, which she repays most prodigally when the heart is bankrupt and full of bitterness, as Ruth's heart was that day. For in Nature, as Wordsworth says, "there is no bitterness," that worst sting of human grief. And as Ruth walked among the quiet fields, and up the yellow aisles of the autumn glades to Arleigh, Nature spoke of peace to her—not of joy or of happiness as in old days, for she never lies as human ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... person at my side, losing the inefficient cords of his prudence beneath the sting. "Who's a rabbit? For two guinea-pigs I'd mow all the grass between here and the Spaniards with your own left ears," and not permitting me sufficient preparation to withhold the chain more firmly, he abruptly cast himself down among ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... An editor frequently makes slight insertions or omissions—I mean slight in quantity of type—as he goes over the last proof; this he does in a comparative hurry, and it may chance that he does not know the full sting of his little alteration. The very bit which the writer of the book most complains of may not have been seen by the person who is called the writer of the article until after the appearance of the journal; nay, if he be one of those—few, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... whether John Franklin will confirm it, although there is more truth in the charge than I wish there were. In this land, those malignant qualities are ostentatiously displayed. I am made to feel their sting most poignantly. My mind has been taught a lesson in philosophy, and my judgment has gained an accession of experience that will ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... necessities of war, so that when the regents of the young King ground down the citizens with more oppression and ill-considered taxes, there is small wonder that their patience came suddenly to an end, and they burst into open revolt in February 1381. These exactions came upon the citizens with a double sting. For not only were they exhausted by previous misery, but the good King Charles had upon his death-bed remitted these excessive imports, and left his heart to the Cathedral in token of his eternal goodwill to the town of Rouen, where he had so often ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... talking, and at every step my spirits sank lower and lower. How different every thing seemed now, from what it did an hour ago. True, I had been treated with harshness, but I had no right to rebel as I had done. Had I kissed the rod, it would have lost its sting,—had I borne the smart with patience and gentleness, my companions would have sympathized with and pitied me; it would not have been known beyond the walls of the academy. But now, it would be blazoned through the whole town. The expulsion of ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... Mollusca. It consisted of a small bladder about seven inches long, very much resembling the air-bladder of fishes, from the bottom of which descended a number of strings of a bright blue and red, some of them three or four feet in length, which upon being touched sting like a nettle, but with much more force. On the top of the bladder is a membrane which is used as a sail, and turned so as to receive the wind which way soever it blows: This membrane is marked in fine pink-coloured veins, and the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... present year was not over yet. Lucy was sewing at her wedding things. Eliza Monk, smarting at their sight as with an adder's sting, ran away from it to visit a family who lived near Oddingly, an insignificant little place, lying, as everybody knows, on the other side of Worcester, famous only for its dulness and for the strange murders committed there in 1806—which have ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... them over and put them in the hive. He even picked up the queen and held it up and showed it to me. I was afraid to get too close for fear I'd get stung, for I didn't have a veil on. He said he understands bees and that they never sting him." ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... imparted the news to the men, as well as the orders. Heartfelt expressions of regret came from all, for in spite of his constitutional nervousness, Billy was a prime favorite. But I knew that I was the only one with whom the pain and sting would live; the men were so calloused by such happenings that they no longer made ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... so, and soon he heard a great buzzing sound, and he saw hundreds of bees flying in and out of a hollow tree. At first some of the bees were going to sting the bunny uncle, but ...
— Uncle Wiggily in the Woods • Howard R. Garis
... at them. He understood now why his friend had gone out twice during the week. He felt the pain and the sting which treachery and ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... property or established rights is certain to create a buzzing of the ecclesiastical bees, who will swarm against the invader with every sting prepared for action. As the case was investigated by a special court of inquiry, and terminated, as might have been expected, completely in favour of Colonel Warren, it is not necessary to enter upon minute ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... a fact! 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 you ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... to herself. Gradually she was learning that the way to rob Dolly's jokes and teasing tricks of their sting, and the best way, at the same time, to cure Dolly herself of her fondness for them, was never to let the joker know that they had had ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Long Lake - Bessie King in Summer Camp • Jane L. Stewart
... war of the sections might have been averted, if the South had made an adequate coup d'etat before the inauguration of Lincoln, and while the Democratic party everywhere was yet writhing under the sting and mortification of defeat. Then the arm of the Republican party would have been paralyzed, for the attitude of the Democratic party would at least have been a menacing one; but now, the Government has been suffered to fall into the possession of the ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... which construct in the corners of the verandahs clay cells for their larvae, are very numerous in the neighbourhood of Rio. These cells they stuff full of half-dead spiders and caterpillars, which they seem wonderfully to know how to sting to that degree as to leave them paralysed but alive, until their eggs are hatched; and the larvae feed on the horrid mass of powerless, half-killed victims—a sight which has been described by an enthusiastic naturalist as ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... little devil in the shape of an octopus was in Tene-napa's brain. And he gave instructions how to get the fiend out, and also further instructions to one of the girl attendants to fix, point-upwards, in the sick woman's mat the foto, or barb of the sting-ray. So when Kennedy, who, in his rough, careless way, had some feint fondness for the woman who three years ago he went mad over, heard a loud cry in the night and was told that Tenenapa was dead, he did not know that as the ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... exquisite work of literary art exhibits a certain crudeness and coarseness, when we turn to it from Nature,—as the smallest cambric needle appears rough and jagged, when compared through the magnifier with the tapering fineness of the insect's sting. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various |
