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More "Sting" Quotes from Famous Books



... haff three cows, two fat, one theen. He catch and keel de fat; de lean run off. He roll een dust—make great dust. Cow come for see what make dust; he catch her an' keel. My fader got bees. De devil Bear chaw pine; I know he by hees broke toof. He gum hees face and nose wit' pine gum so bees no sting, then eat all bees. He devil all time. He get much rotten manzanita and eat till drunk—locoed—then go crazy and keel sheep just for fun. He get beeg bull by nose and drag like rat for fun. He keel cow, sheep, and keel ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton

... its sting before we rob it of its treasures. And whence comes the sting of these troublesome gnats? It resides in the riches of the church and the privileges of the nobles. But the noble shall bow his haughty ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... the merciless sun slew all things alive, and even scorpions sought shelter under stones and writhed there in a mad desire to sting, he sat motionless under the sunrays, his blue face and the uncouth, bushy beared lifted up, bathing in the ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various

... thou think'st not of the thorns 'tis fill'd with: Fly, ere they gall thee. There's a lurking serpent, Ready to leap and sting thee to the heart: Art ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway

... for he nodded to them quite as amicably as to the young girls. He was so bold and gay, his cheeks were brown, his teeth fresh and white and his coal-black eyes glittered; he was a handsome young fellow and but twenty years old. The icy water did not sting him when he swam, he could turn around in it like a fish; he could climb as did no one, and he was as firm on the rocky walls as a snail—for he had good sinews and muscles that served him well in leaping—the cat ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen

... who have ventured further have been blinded by mists and clouds of rhetoric, lost in inexplicable puzzles and wrecked disastrously. There in those half explored and altogether unsettled hinterlands, lurk desires that sting like adders and hatreds ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells

... that to sting him. He smarted under its lash, but held his temper in check because he was sorry for the girl. "Perhaps you're right," he conceded; "perhaps I have some other motive. But that's neither here nor there. I'm ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance

... large block, I noticed for the first time the colors of the rainbow in the crystal ice. Immediately I thought of my glass marbles at home. With my bare fingers I tried to pick out some of the colors, for they seemed so near the surface. But my fingers began to sting with the intense cold, and I had to bite them hard ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa

... as yours," she replied, "but so long that if they were left that way always they would make a great deal of trouble. As the wool grows on them, they would catch burrs and sharp, prickly things, which would pull the wool and sting the skin. The farmer knows this, so when the little Lambs are about as old as you are now, he and his men make their ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson

... sun and went shrieking across the high levels, taking with it clouds of sand and bouncing tumbleweeds that rolled and lodged for a minute against some rock or bush and then went whirling on again in a fresh gust. Starr had not ridden two miles before his face began to feel the sting of gravel in the sand clouds. His eyes, already aching with a day's hard usage and a night of no sleep, smarted with the impact of the wind. He fumbled at the band of his big, Texas hat and pulled down a pair of motor ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower

... grimmest, largest, most grotesque trees I have ever seen of the kind. I had always been a little afraid of them, even in the daytime, but they did me no hurt, and I stood in the vast hall of the silent night—alone: there lay the awfulness of it. I had never before known what the night was. The real sting of its fear lay in this—that there was nobody else in it. Everybody besides me was asleep all over the world, and had abandoned me to my fate, whatever might come out of the darkness to seize me. When I got round the edge of the stone wall, which on another side ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald

... be long, Or it may end to-day; Deeath gethers in the young an strong, Along wi' th' old an gray. Then nivver do an unkind thing, Which yo will sure regret, Nor utter words 'at leeav a sting,— Yo'll find it's ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley

... the 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 ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne

... Dale's quick smile robbed his curt dismissal of any sting. "Benson, of course, will ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... him from the face of the earth at that moment as remorselessly as if he had been a viper in my path striking to sting me. Yet I advanced toward him with no demonstration or intentions of this kind, having the habits of lady-like breeding and usual innocence of weapons, and ignorance of the use thereof ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... this thought wrinkle my forehead any more than any other. It is impossible but we must feel a sting in such imaginations as these, at first; but with often turning and returning them in one's mind, they, at last, become so familiar as to be no trouble at all: otherwise, I, for my part, should be in a perpetual fright and frenzy; for never man was so distrustful ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... fellow is an adept at quick, fine casting—I wonder what fly he has on—why, he's going to try downstream now? I hurry forward, and as I near him, I swerve to the left out of the way. S-s-s-s! a sudden sting in the lobe of my ear. Hey! I cry as I find I am caught; the tail fly is fast in it. A slight, grey-clad woman holding the rod lays it carefully down and comes towards me through the gathering dusk. My first impulse is to snap the gut and take to my heels, but I am ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various

... had no such ready way of freeing himself from their burden. He groaned and toiled under them, going to his lawyer with them, and imploring permission to bring an action for libel against Mr Maguire. The venom of the unclean animal's sting had gone so deep into him, that, fond as he was of money, he had told his lawyer that he would not begrudge the expense if he could only punish the man who was hurting him. But the attorney, who understood something of feeling as well as something of money, begged him to be quiet at any rate till ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope

... did he fulfil Faithfully; for my son was mightiest Of men. But Zeus made brief 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

... will regret you? How much time does a man devote to grief before he begins to enjoy? A great man must keep his heir at his feast like a living memento mori. If he holds very much by life, the presence of the other must be a constant sting and warning. "Make ready to go," says the successor to your honour; "I am waiting: and I could hold ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... his long absence? My friend, did I say? Nay, my son. He escapes being murdered by a fellow whom I will tomorrow clear this house of, and you treat him as if he had done wrong in dashing from him the snake which was about to sting him!" ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... commenced his day's labour. Yes, it had been lost a good hour ere he found it out, for he had fancied that he had felt it there, and often did he feel, but his fancy was a button; and when he made the dread discovery, what a sting of momentary anguish, what a sickening fear, what an eager search! and, as the grim truth became more evident, that, indeed, beyond all remedy, his new-got, ill-got, egg of coming wealth was all clean gone—oh! this was worm-wood, this was bitter as ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... Dante, though feeling 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

... his misery, and he obstinately went through his five years of married life, trying to recollect every detail month by month, day by day, and every disquieting circumstance that he remembered stung him to the quick like a wasp's sting. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... forward, his palm resting amid a bed of nettles. He did not appear to feel their sting, although, while he spoke, I saw the bark of his hand whiten slowly with blisters— "well, then, you can't go for to argue with me that the A'mighty would go for to strike the chap that repented by means o' the chap that didn'. Tisn' reasonable nor religious ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... that covered the street, and wafting it along for a few yards, drop again to its repose, till another stronger gust, prelusive of the wind about to rise at sun-down,—a wind cold and bitter as death—would rush over the street, and raise a denser cloud of the white water-dust to sting the face of any improbable person who might meet it in its passage. It was a keen, knife-edged frost, even in the house, and what Robert saw to make him stand at the desolate window, I do not know, and I believe he could not ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... intentions towards me, all a mere dream; Estella not designed for me; I only suffered in Satis House as a convenience, a sting for the greedy relations, a model with a mechanical heart to practise on when no other practice was at hand; those were the first smarts I had. But, sharpest and deepest pain of all,—it was for the convict, guilty of I knew not what crimes, and liable to be taken out of those rooms where ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... Ah, you are laying down very different rules of policy in India from those which for the best part of your life you laid down for Ireland. Yes, but that reproach will only have a sting in it, if you persuade me that Ireland with its history, the history of the Rebellion, Union and all the other chapters of that dismal tale, is exactly analogous to the 300 millions of people in India. I am not at all afraid of facing your test. I cannot but remember that in speaking ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)

... seemed to him like a vision seen by a spirit in torment, something horribly unreal and torturing. The two streams of beauty and misery appeared to run side by side, so distinct, so unblending; but the horrible fact was that though sorrow was able not only to assert its own fiery power, like the sting of some malignant insect, it could also obliterate and efface joy; it could even press joy into its service, to accentuate its torment; while the joy and beauty of life seemed wholly unable to soothe or help ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson

... outfit—not, at least, unless you're pretty sure there's a trace of human humour in the make-up of the specimen. I'm making a collection of those stereotypes; it helps a lot. O table-talk! where is thy sting—when a fellow ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance

... words which express the sudden emotions of the speaker; as, "Alas! I fear for life;" "O death! where is thy sting?" ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham

... found an asylum from the vengeance of the enraged people behind the shield of the statue of Minerva. And, in the same manner, everything that is grovelling and venomous, everything that can hiss, and everything that can sting, would take sanctuary in the recesses of this new temple ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... be your only sting! Know that Fiesco of Lavagna has changed the diadem of your illustrious brother for a halter, and means this night to hang the thief of the republic. (She is struck with terror—he continues with a sarcastic laugh.) Ha! that was unexpected. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... so much of which she was unaware that he felt himself to be continually making her acquaintance. That quiet slipping now of her hand into his, while her gaze maintained its calm detachment, the charm of her mingled tenderness and independence, had its vague sting for Gregory. She accepted him and whatever he might mean with something of the happy matter-of-fact with which she accepted all that was hers. She loved him with a completeness and selflessness that had made the world suddenly close round him ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... I've surveyed with half-shut eyes, Over the winking Champagne wine, What I shall do when Father dies And hands me down his right divine, Often I've said that, when in God's Good time he goes, I mean to show 'em How scorpions sting in place of rods, Taking my ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various

... he had seemed a fellow for whom life was over; driven into the ground like a post, or like those Chinese criminals who are planted upright in the earth, with only their heads left out for birds to peck at and insects to sting. All his comrades had been tucked away in prairie towns, with their little jobs and their little plans. Yet here they were, attended by unknown ships called in from the four quarters of the earth. How had they come to be worth the watchfulness and devotion of so many men ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather

... shut quite tight suddenly, and he looked steadily and triumphantly at me, with his head on one side. I opened my mouth, and the mere motion seemed to sting him to fresh ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton

... the train brought a little stir and variety; but it was not of the most pleasurable kind, for she was so disappointed and indignant at finding her mother absent, that till the first sharp sting of vexation had abated, nothing could be got out of her but sobs and broken words of complaint. Even when she grew calmer, things were still rather melancholy; for she was too tired and depressed for speech, and just sat in silence, leaning her head against Candace's shoulder until bedtime. ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge

... penetrating the bulwarks. Two had been wounded at one of the guns, and carried below. Christy stepped over to the end of the bridge to call a hand to take the place of Boxie, and at that moment he felt a sharp sting, as it were, in his right arm, above the elbow. Involuntarily he raised his hand to the place, and felt the warm blood oozing from the wound. It produced a momentary faintness; but he braced himself up, and wound his handkerchief around his arm, calling upon ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic

... have these hibernating serpents in our consciences, and nobody knows when the needful warmth may come that will wake them and make them lift their forked heads to sting. The whole landscape of my past life lies there behind the mists of apparent forgetfulness, and any light air of suggestion may sweep away the clouds and show it all. What have you laid up in these ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren

... cruel steel forth from the wound and laid Cool leaves and healing honey on the smart. Yet all so little knew the boy of pain That curiously into his wrist he pressed The arrow's barb, and winced to feel it sting, And turned with tears to soothe ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold

... this ministry of ennoblement! We reap a harvest of insignificance from the seeds of sorrow sown in our hearts. We let our cares dishonour us. The little cares rasp and fret and sting the manliness and the womanliness and the godlikeness out of us. And the great cares crush us earthward till there is scarcely a sweet word left in our lips or a noble thought in our heart. A man cannot save his soul in the day of trouble. He cannot by himself make good the wear and ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth

... for their regimen and their studies. When they have done well during the week, I invite them to breakfast and dine with me on the Sabbath. The proof that they are in good health is that they have grown much. Napoleon had one eye slightly inflamed yesterday from the sting of a gnat. He was not, however, on that account, less well than usual. To-day it is no longer manifest. It would not be worth mentioning, were we not in the habit of rendering you an exact account of every ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott

... will understand my motive in coming to you," he said softly. "I have no desire but to serve you. England has no further concern for Archduke Ferdinand. Forewarned is forearmed. His sting is already drawn. But death, like this—sudden, violent, without a chance—England has never looked with kindness upon the killing of ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs

... Stockmar speaks with the greatest contempt, calling him "a frivolous aristocrat who delighted in making mischief. "It does not appear whether the two men ever came into collision with each other, but if they did, Lord Derby was likely enough to leave a sting. ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... the persistent refusal to recognise the Divine voice. But we are here on still deeper ground. The true explanation of the fourth word is to be found in that great principle which St. Paul has laid down in a familiar, but little understood, sentence: "the sting of death ...
— Gloria Crucis - addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907 • J. H. Beibitz

... morning boasted all those qualities which November- morning writers are so prone to bestow upon the month. But the words wine, and sparkle, and sting, and glow, and snap do not seem to cover it. Emma McChesney stood on the bottom step, looking up and down Main Street and breathing in great draughts of that unadjectivable air. Her complexion stood the test of the merciless, astringent morning and came up ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber

... the door. A lucky turn of the wind sent the pure sweet air, crisp with the touch of spring, pouring into their cavern. It was like the breath of Heaven, taking away the sting of smoke from nostrils and throat. The place itself soon filled entirely with a new atmosphere, vital and strong. Then, one by one, they bathed their eyes and faces at the rill, and soon they were all gathered together again at the door, feeling as if they ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler

... King and his council. It was to the effect that the Inkosazana had no need to ask permission to come or to go. Her Spirit, they knew, was mighty and could wander where it willed; all the impis of the Zulus could not hold her Sprint. But—and here came the sting of this clever answer—it was necessary, until her sayings had been considered, that the body in which that Spirit abode should remain with them a while. Therefore the King and his counsellors and the whole nation ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard

... admitted thoughtfully; "but I imagine your father expected you to have rather a difficult time of it. Perhaps he wants you to, so that a defeat or two will sting you into having a little more serious purpose in life than you have at present. I'd like, myself, to see you handle, with credit to him and to you, the splendid establishment ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester

... with a host of bitter-sweet memories for Claire Robson. Not that she could look back on any holiday season with unalloyed happiness, but time had drawn the sting from the misfortune of the old days. Through the mist of the years outlines softened, and she was more prone to measure the results by the slight harvest that their efforts had brought. For instance, they had never been too poor to deny themselves the luxury of a tree. And a tree to ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie

... M. de 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 foppish and ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... is like the gnats, John, That hum at close of day: That sting, and leave a scar behind, Then sing and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 335 - Vol. 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828 • Various

... Probus, and Carus. She may indeed gain a single battle, for her genius is vast, and her troops well disciplined and brave. But the loss of a battle would be to her the loss of empire, while to Rome it would be but as the sting of a summer insect. Yet this she does not or will not see. To triumph over Aurelian is, I believe, the vision that dazzles, deludes, and ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware

... than ever in the morning sun that glittered on its windows, each belonging to some well-loved room. Almost before they had settled themselves into the car, sent from Southampton to fetch them to the station, they were gone away to return no more. A sting at Margaret's heart made her strive to look out to catch the last glimpse of the old church tower at the turn where she knew it might be seen above a wave of the forest trees; but her father remembered this ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... supplanted the original close of the section. The meaning of the phrase "the tabernacle (booth) of David that is fallen'' (ver. 11) is not perfectly clear. Beyond reasonable doubt, however, the writer seeks to take out the sting of the preceding passage in which Israel is devoted to utter destruction. The penitent and God-fearing Jews of the post-exilic age needed some softening appendix, and this the editor ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... they do, but if you go near their hives they think you are going to take their honey. They don't like that, so they sting folks ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on Grandpa's Farm • Laura Lee Hope

... crowded as the passages to the opera; he has but to print his prophetic sermons and bind them in lilac and gold, and they will adorn the drawing-room table of all evangelical ladies, who will regard as a sort of pious "light reading" the demonstration that the prophecy of the locusts whose sting is in their tail, is fulfilled in the fact of the Turkish commander's having taken a horse's tail for his standard, and that the French are the very frogs ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... happy light died out of the old eyes and never came to them again. Below all the squalor and discomfort was the agony of suspense or the certainty of death. But the parsnip coffee and the empty purse certainly did give a sting to the great overwhelming misery, like gnats ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam

... see them. They did not know that anything was near until they felt the sting of the hunters' arrows. One reindeer dropped to the earth. The other was not killed. He flung his head in the air and galloped away, and they could hear the thud, thud, of his hoofs long after he ...
— The Eskimo Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... humming, and whirring, and swarming that every one was uneasy and afraid, and on both sides they advanced against each other. But the willow-wren sent down the hornet, with orders to get beneath the fox's tail, and sting with all his might. When the fox felt the first sting, he started so that he drew up one leg, with the pain, but he bore it, and still kept his tail high in the air; at the second sting, he was forced to put it down for a ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers

... houses and whipped its way through the scurrying snow with all the rage of a lion. The snow, on account of the bitter cold in the air, did not fly in big flakes, but whizzed like tiny bullets, cutting the flesh of men and beasts like the sting of wasps. It was a good night to be indoors over a roaring fire or in bed between extra blankets. No one, unless commanded by emergency, had the temerity to be abroad ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon

... flowers" or Fleurs de lys. The origin dates back to the time of the early Egyptians, who symbolised their kings under this emblem, the honey indicating the reward they gave to the well-doers, and the sting the punishment they inflicted on the evil. More than 300 golden bees were found in the tomb of Childeric, A.D. 1653. Offer your song to some composer. Sometimes they are in request; more frequently ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various

... she packed. But Hilton, though her contempt for German ways was so great as to be almost unutterable, was reconciled to a mistress who had so quickly given in to her wish to be taken back to Hill Street, and the venom was of an abstract nature, containing no personal sting of unfavourable comparisons with duchesses; so that Susie was sipping her milk in a fairly placid frame of mind when there was a knock at the door, and Anna asked if ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp

... from the great red gorilla, that had felt something sting him, and on feeling it threw up his paw to scratch the place, no doubt fancying it to be but the bite of a mosquito or hornet. The piece of stick broken off by his fingers may have seemed to him rather strange, but not enough so to arouse him from ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid

... an envelope with another letter, and written on a piece of note-paper, was something that made her start as if at the sting of a viper. No! it could not be a will! She knew what wills were like. They were sheets of foolscap, written by lawyers, while this was only an old man's cramped and crooked writing. Perhaps, when he was in a rage, he had so far carried out his threat, ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... sailors in my mind; and so I lived in daily touch with death, honour, and dishonour. Yet I never saw a sailor in the shrouds, or heard the night watch call 'All's well!' in the midst of night and mutiny, that I did not long for a word from you that would take away the sting of death. Those days at sea for ten long weeks were never free from anxiety, not anxiety for myself, only for the men who had put me where I was, had given me captain's ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... swelling, hard and white in the centre; bright red, elevated, hard swelling of the place where he was stung, and round about a chilly feeling. 1170-1173: red place where he was stung, with swelling and red streaks along the fingers and arm; red streaks along the lymphatic vessels, proceeding from the sting along the middle finger and arm; inflammatory swelling, spreading all around. 1181: throbbing in the swelling. 1182: wide-spread cellular inflammation, terminating in resolution. 1224, 1225: swelling ...
— Apis Mellifica - or, The Poison of the Honey-Bee, Considered as a Therapeutic Agent • C. W. Wolf

... bottle. 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 ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter

... There be moe Waspes that buz about his Nose, Will make this sting the sooner. Cardinall Campeius, Is stolne away to Rome, hath 'tane no leaue, Ha's left the cause o'th' King vnhandled, and Is posted as the Agent of our Cardinall, To second all his plot. I do assure you, The King cry'de ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... anything could add a sting to my already irritated feelings," said Henry, "this conduct of ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... Innocence, from out the budding lip Darts her young smiles along his rounded cheek. Grief hath not dimm'd the brightness of his form, Love and Affection o'er him spread their wings, And Nature, like a nurse, attends him with Her sweetest looks. The humming bee will bound From out the flower, nor sting his baby hand; The birds sing to him from the sunny tree; And suppliantly the fierce-eyed mastiff fawn Beneath his feet, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various

... class, but of all. She ran up a fair score of blunders, but not one of them was the blunder of meanness or vulgarity. Her nature was inventive and poetic, and the rich fulfilment that had overtaken her own personal desires did but sting her eager passion to give and ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... 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 ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson

... King's Crest had never asked favors of the country-folk, or if they had, they had paid generously for what they had received. To go now among them saying, "I have something to sell," carried a sting. There had been nothing practical in Randy's education. He had no equipment with which to meet the sordid questions of ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey

... be ready fo' a pusson wot acts like a snake in de grass? He'll sting befo' yo' hab de chance ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer

... beginning, and now scarcely a day passed without its new sting. The girl was not conscious of any instinct for bravery; she did not want to be brave, she wanted to draw back from the rack—to escape, rather than to endure. A first glimpse of happiness had awakened fineness in her nature; she had been generous, sweet, ambitious, ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris

... printed conversations were pretty displays of social sword-play. It had become a sort of habit with him to thrust and parry quickly; but the sudden smile on his lined face, the kindly glance from behind the spectacles, always took away the sting and demonstrated that it was mere "copy," to fill up the dull columns of life and throw in a ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman

... charlatan about twenty times. He was not thin-skinned; and he certainly was good-tempered and forgiving; and he could make allowances for jealousy and envy. Nevertheless, now and then, some casual mention of him, or some omission of his name from a list of names, would sting him ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett

... living royalty, of a line of monarchs, of all the feelings that still bound the heart of man to the cause of France. All now spectral. But, whatever might be the work of my imagination, there was terrible truth; enough before me to depress, and sting, and wring the mind. Within a step of the spot where I sat, were the noblest and the most unhappy beings in existence—the whole family of the throne caught in the snare of treason. Father, mother, sister, children! Not one rescued, not one safe, to relieve the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various

... brushing the hair back delicately from the side of his skull. Then there was the biting sting of antiseptic, sharp enough to bring a groan from his lips. Sheila's hair fell over her face as she bent ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey

... 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 blood ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... hands had placed the best tablecloth upon it, and there, in its nest of field flowers, was the great bowl which had been the most serviceable of the handful of wedding gifts fifty years ago. Since the crisp sting had not yet gone out of the air the high red tide in the bowl was steaming ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory

... moved by, to find her engaged to another, and confessing her partiality for me! Yet engaged to a man who, by her intimation, and his libertine conversation with me, I fear, does not merit her. Aye! there's the sting; for, were I assured that Maria was happy, my heart is not so selfish but that it would dilate in knowing it, even though it were with another. But to know she is unhappy!—I must drive these thoughts from me. Charlotte has some books; and this is what ...
— The Contrast • Royall Tyler

... King, Content thee, I am no such thing: I am a Wasp, behold my sting!" At which the Fairy started; When soon away the Wasp doth go, Poor wretch, was never frighted so; He thought his wings were much too slow, O'erjoyed they ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... on the Cross, the sting Of death was torn away,— O, by Thy victory over death Give life to ...
— Hymns from the Greek Office Books - Together with Centos and Suggestions • John Brownlie

... could to lose her own warm blushes, and prayed that bees might sting her and so change her hues; but the bees were of low taste, and kept their pearl-powder and rouge and other pigments for the use of common flowers, like the evening primrose or the butter-cup and borage, and never came near to do her any ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee

... that kingly garland which is his glory. All the wealth of the Indies could not shed as dazzling a light as that thorny crown. Like the brave soldier who gathered into his own breast the spears of the enemy, Christ has taken the sting from our sorrows and made us more than conquerors over the wounds of earth. Surely he has tasted it all for us,—the baseness and coldness and ingratitude and treachery which have wrung human hearts all through the ages,—when Judas betrayed him, Peter denied him and they all forsook ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black

... experience, for during the twelve years of her life she had been governed by love alone, and a blow of that sort had never touched her before. The smart of her hand and the ache of her heart were forgotten in the sting of the thought, "I shall have to tell at home, and they will ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... perpetually made at his expense, and yet never ceased, it seemed wilfully, to expose himself to them. He was constantly wounded, and yet his good-nature was such that he could not bear malice: the viper might sting him, but he never learned by experience, and had no sooner recovered from his pain than he tenderly placed it once more in his bosom. His life was a tragedy written in the terms of knockabout farce. Because I did not laugh at him he was grateful to me, and he used to pour into my sympathetic ear ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham

... departed, leaving a sting under the pin-feathers of the poor little hen mamma, who began to see that her darlings had curious little spoon-bills, different from her own, and to worry and ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... of Mr. Edgerton the hand of his daughter, and learned that she was not free, at least until she had met a certain gentleman who was every day expected, his soul recoiled with a sudden sting; he had so leaned upon this staff of happiness, and now it bent like a fragile reed. May laughed in scorn that she should prefer any one to Marion, but he learned that the stranger was talented, handsome, wealthy, ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray

... shall this rose turn nettle,' said Althea, plucking a white rose off a bush and giving it to him. 'Keep it, I pray you; and when you find it will sting you to touch it, then conclude ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling

... 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 ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous

... the star-pranked universal vine, Hast nought for me? To thee Come I, a poet, hereward haply blown, From out another worldflower lately flown. Wilt ask, 'What profit e'er a poet brings?' He beareth starry stuff about his wings To pollen thee and sting thee fertile: nay, If still thou narrow thy contracted way, — Worldflower, if thou refuse me — — Worldflower, if thou abuse me, And hoist thy stamen's spear-point high To wound my wing and mar mine eye — Nathless I'll drive me to thy deepest sweet, Yea, richlier shall that pain ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... where I can look at you while you rub my head with your hands. It aches enough to split, and I believe the bumble bees are swarming; but they can't get out, and if they could, they are the white-faced kind, which never sting.' ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes

... would make things right for him. He came either to us or to the Red Cross building across the road, according to his company. One soldier with a torn thumb cried bitterly, looking at his thumb and shaking his head at it, but he alone showed any emotion. The others suffered the sting of the iodine without a word, walking off when they were bandaged, or carried by our sanitars on the stretchers, still with that look of wonder and ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole

... man easily masters every other art and science. His discoveries as to stars and stones and shrubs provoke ever fresh surprise. His inventions, who can number? He easily masters winds and rivers. He takes the sting out of the thunderbolt and makes it harmless. Afterward with electric lamps he illumines towns. With invisible sunbeams he paints instantaneous pictures of faces, palaces, mountains, and landscapes. With the dark X-rays he photographs ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis

... the peasants were 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 ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... a few moments, lifting up her eyes, and the hand her cousin held not between his. Then, O Death! said she, where is thy sting! [the words I remember to have heard in the burial-service read over my uncle and poor Belton.] And after a pause—It is good for me that I was afflicted! ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... be sacrificed, or the individual needlessly destroys half the possibilities of living. A great purpose in life, something that unifies the strands and threads of each day's thinking, something that takes the sting from the petty trials, sorrows, sufferings and blunders of life, is a great aid to Concentration. Soldiers in battle may forget their wounds, or even be unconscious of them, in the inspiration of battling for what they believe is right. Concentration dignifies ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan

... rapture, Mr. Garrick.' The little great man's anger instantly cooled. The readiness of this Italian flattery operated exactly contrary to the last line of an epigram—the honey was tasted, and the sting forgot." ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart

... a pit may fall into it; him who breaketh down walls a serpent may sting. 9. Whoso removeth stones may be hurt therewith; he who cleaveth wood ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon

... 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

... same pitiless judgment she watched her mother. Either Grace was very big, or very indifferent to the sting of old Anthony's tongue. Sometimes women suffered much in silence, because they loved greatly. Like Aunt Elinor. Aunt Elinor had loved her husband more than she had loved her child. Quite calmly Lily decided ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... the, at times, morbidly, sensitive youth, he had soon forgotten the sting caused by the letter in a return to the dreams which he regarded as not only the chief joy but the chief business of his life; for though he was preparing himself for the profession of a soldier, he ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard

... kindly, conventional words of welcome there was so much cordiality, in spite of a hidden sting of irony, that Jean-Christophe grew more at ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... placing a scorpion within a circle of burning coals; that it ran round and round in extreme pain; and finding no way to escape, retired to the centre, and like a true Stoick philosopher, darted its sting into its head, and thus at once freed itself from its woes. 'This must end 'em[158].' I said, this was a curious fact, as it shewed deliberate suicide in a reptile. Johnson would not admit the fact. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... his lips whereby his keenest, most delighted listener could have probed to the heart of his mood. To the loss of his claim was attributed all his pyrotechnics, and no one, unless it was Rickart, was aware of the old proverbial "woman in the case," who had planted the sting ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... at her, really not knowing what this style of conversation might mean. Maude continued; she had a habit of putting forth a sting on occasion, or what she ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood

... know!), what he meant, in fact, and who declared that, as a mere simple matter of choice, they liked to hear a word now and again from an actor, goes without telling. There are troublesome people in every grade of society,—gnats that will sting. Silence is golden, as all the world knows; and Mr. Ryde is of it: so of course he forgot his part whenever he could, and ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown

... lords, cold snow melts with the sun's hot beams. Henry my lord is cold in great affairs, Too full of foolish pity, and Gloster's show Beguiles him as the mournful crocodile With sorrow snares relenting passengers, Or as the snake roll'd in a flowering bank, With shining checker'd slough, doth sting a child That for the beauty thinks it excellent. Believe me, lords, were none more wise than I— And yet herein I judge mine own wit good— This Gloster should be quickly rid the world, To rid us from the fear we have ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]

... that hurt our peace, That press the soul, or wring the mind with anguish, Beyond comparison the worst are those That to our folly or our guilt we owe. In every other circumstance, the mind Has this to say, 'It was no deed of mine;' But when to all the evil of misfortune This sting is added—'Blame thy foolish self!' Or worser far, the pangs of keen remorse; The torturing, gnawing consciousness of guilt,— Of guilt, perhaps, where we've involved others; The young, the innocent, who fondly lov'd us, Nay, more, that very love their cause of ruin! O burning hell! ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... as you behave yourself," she declared. "But remember! I'll make it hot for you if you try any tricks on me! Don't forget that I carry a sting! And what's more, I know how ...
— The Tale of Freddie Firefly • Arthur Scott Bailey

... interest,—whose hearts are touched with the distresses of foreigners, and are abundantly awake to all the tenderness of human feeling on such an occasion, even at the moment that they are inflicting the very same distresses, or worse, on their fellow-citizens, without the least sting of compassion or remorse. To commiserate the distresses of all men suffering innocently, perhaps meritoriously, is generous, and very agreeable to the better part of our nature,—a disposition that ought by all means to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... the removal was very unhandsomely made just as he was entering upon active operations. Lincoln, on the other hand, undoubtedly looked upon it in precisely the opposite light, and conceived that the opportunity of the moment deprived of any apparent sting a change which he had determined to make. The duties which were thus taken from McClellan were assumed during several months by Mr. Stanton. He was utterly incompetent for them, and, whether or not it was wise to displace the general, it was certainly very unwise to let the secretary ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse

... there are 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 reminder of his ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny

... hour! 'twixt love and duty, All others I to others give; But you are mine to yield to Beauty, To glean Romance, to greatly live. For in my easy-chair reclining . . . I feel the sting of ocean spray; And yonder wondrously are shining The ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service

... of no great power, I find the velvet to be composed of small star-like groups of smooth, strong, oval leaves,—intensely green, and much like the young leaves of any other plant, except in this;—they all have a long brown spike, like a sting, at ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... his no more;— One sting at parting and his grasp is o'er, "What! drooping now?"—thus, with unblushing cheek, He hails the few who yet can hear him speak, Of all those famished slaves around him lying, And by the light of blazing ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... too well,—from creatures of the King, Who had dragged Hell of every poisonous thing And, through our country, had spread waste and woe. Beaten at last, they flocked like carion crow, On the dead body of their will to sting, Which drifting Northward, and enlargening, Loomed Dante's Nimrod, ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle

... heels,' he said, when advised to be quiet, 'the dog his teeth, the hedgehog his spines, the bee his sting. I myself have my tongue and my pen, and why should ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... had forced itself upon him. It was as if the dart being aimed at her, she caught it in her hand in its flight, broke off its point and threw it lightly aside without comment. Most women cannot resist the temptation to answer a speech containing a sting or a reproach. It was part of her abnormality that she could let such things go by in a detached silence, which did not express even the germ of comment or opinion upon them. This, he said, was the result of her beastly sense of security, which, in its turn, was the result of ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... below mediocrity as to be incapable of affording a respectable return when employed in the proper direction, I thought this picture from life might also be of service. When I say that no genuine young poet will apply it to himself, I think I have so far removed the sting that few or none ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... horribly, while the snaky moustache on his upper lip writhed as if it had truly a serpent's power and could sting. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... turns deadly pale,— Then Passion's half-coiled adders spring, And, smitten through their leprous mail, Strike right and left in hope to sting. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... recognized more than one of whose company she had agreeable recollections, more than one whom in her cold-blooded, calculating way, she had made her tool for a time. Something like regret arose within her,—regret at her treason. She went back to the Puye with a sting in her heart forever. Outwardly she led a contented life as the consort of Cayamo, and the Tehuas looked upon her as a useful accession, if not as one who had at one time become the saviour of their tribe; but she could never think of the Rito nor hear it mentioned without feeling ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... 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 ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost

... with life—the life and vigor which a touch of frost gives to the autumn world in a country where the blood tingles to the dry, sweet sting of the air. Beautiful, and spacious, and buoyant, and lonely, the valley and the mountains seemed waiting, like a new-born world, to be peopled by man. It was as though all had been made ready for him—the birds whistling and singing in the trees, the whisk ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker

... grounded upon a Falsehood, I trouble my self no further about it, and look upon my Name at the Head of it to signify no more than one of those fictitious Names made use of by an Author to introduce an imaginary Character. Why should a Man be sensible of the Sting of a Reproach, who is a Stranger to the Guilt that is implied in it? or subject himself to the Penalty, when he knows he has never committed the Crime? This is a Piece of Fortitude, which every one owes to his own Innocence, and without which it is impossible for ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... it burned like the sting of a wasp and bled in a most disgraceful manner all over my sock. Then my ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler

... The authors of the day, and their peculiar characteristics (Lowell himself not being spared in the least), are held up to admiring audiences with all their sins and foibles exposed to the public gaze. It was intended to have "a sting in his tale," this "frail, slender thing, rhymey-winged," and it had it decidedly. Some of the authors lampooned took the matter up, in downright sober earnest, and objected to the seat in the pillory which they ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various

... its awakening,—we have not escaped them by leaving the routine that brought them forth. We know when the first violets are blowing in the woods, and we paint for ourselves the tasselling of the alder and the red of maple-buds. We taste still the sting of checkerberry and woodsy flavor of the fragrant birch. When fields of corn are shimmering in the sun, we know exactly how it would seem to run through those dusty aisles, swept by that silken drapery, and counselled in whispers from the plumy tops so far above our heads. The ground-sparrow's ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown

... pain. To this end, watchings, fastings, hair-shirts, remote and solitary banishments, perpetual imprisonments, whips and other afflictions, have been introduced amongst men: but so, that they should carry a sting with them, and be real afflictions indeed; and not fall out as it once did to one Gallio, who having been sent an exile into the isle of Lesbos, news was not long after brought to Rome, that he there lived as merry as the day was ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... object of derision, particularly as she was the cause; but this did not prevent her treating him with overbearing airs herself; but it is thought, and not without reason, that although the rebuffs of the lady one loves may inflict misery, they do not sting like practical jokes. The Indian, seeing himself so honoured, was beside himself with delight, and set to overwhelming her as usual with a thousand attentions. Fernanda accepted them with a grave demeanour, but not with repugnance. Then came as usual that game of "three times yes, ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds

... Some day he had expected to come under the black shadow of it himself—not in a quiet and peaceful way, but all at once, with a shock. And the time had come. He knew that he was dying; and he was calm. More than that—in dying he was achieving a triumph. The red-hot death-sting in his lung had given birth to a frightful thought in his sickening brain. The day of his great opportunity was at ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood

... air the moisture that can no longer be drawn from the earth. But if you put back this plant in its old home, it will lose its hair—becoming bald. Sometimes, plant hairs are connected with glands of poisonous liquid, as with the nettle, whose hairs we say 'sting,' because of the pain the poison gives when the skin is ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various

... be as dear to thee as thine own; and be not easily moved to anger; and repent one day before thy death; and warm thyself by the fire of the Sages, and be careful that their coal does not burn thee, for their bite is as a bite of a fox, and their sting is as the sting of a scorpion, and their burn is the burn of a fiery serpent, and all their words are ...
— Hebrew Literature

... he returned, still manifesting angry feeling. "That you have been slandering me is plain; and, also, betraying the confidential transactions of the house. It is full time we parted—full time. I didn't dream that I was warming an adder to sting me?" ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur

... went down, and the sun smiled out far over the summer sea, And the Spanish fleet, with broken sides, lay round us, all in a ring; But they dared not touch us again, for they feared that we still could sting, So they watched what the end would be. And we had not fought them in vain, But in perilous plight were we, Seeing forty of our poor hundred were slain, And half of the rest of us maim'd for life In the crash of the cannonades and ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... what you wish—as from your silence I conclude it is—be assured, Agatha, that I shall consent. I will take no wife against her will. The kisses of her lips would sting me, if there were no love in ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)

... 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 ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall

... sting would have lost its venom for the Home-Davises, but Elinor, fearing disaster, cut the sentence short. "Oh, for mercy's sake, mother, let Mary have her own way," she broke in. "You can see she means to in the end, so why disturb yourself? Nothing can ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... could not help thinking of how beautifully you keep business house for my husband. Why, Mary Faithful, aren't you afraid I am going to be jealous?" She was laughing, but the intention was to have the laugh blow away and the sting of the truth remain. ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley

... at her pleasantly, taking the sting out of his words, turning them into a joke, and she smiled too, to show Neville she didn't mind, didn't take it seriously. Jim might hurt her, but if he did no one should know but Jim himself. She knew that at times she irritated even his good temper by being uneducated and so on, so that he ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay

... the seer was told that a bargain was a bargain, and that if he had thought Bean was a man to stand nonsense of any sort he was indeed wildly mistaken. Bean was going to hold him to the exact sum, and his parting sting was that the professor had better get a new lot of controls if his old ones hadn't been able to tell him this. After he had cooled a little he reflected that if there were really any small sums the professor would be out of pocket, he would ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson

... evidently supplanted the original close of the section. The meaning of the phrase "the tabernacle (booth) of David that is fallen'' (ver. 11) is not perfectly clear. Beyond reasonable doubt, however, the writer seeks to take out the sting of the preceding passage in which Israel is devoted to utter destruction. The penitent and God-fearing Jews of the post-exilic age needed some softening appendix, and this ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... course of time, however, the sting had worn off and the young patrolman learned to smile again. His hollow cheeks had filled out amazingly during the period of the brewery beat and on that late autumn day when he stepped into the ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie

... gun breeds endless fun, and makes men jump like rockets, And turnip-heads on posts Make very decent ghosts: Then hornets sting like anything, when placed in waist-coat pockets - Burnt cork and walnut juice Are not without their use. No fun compares with easy chairs whose seats are stuffed with needles - Live shrimps their patience tax When put down people's backs - Surprising, too, what ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert

... the bee added. What the bee gets from the flower is sweet water: this she puts through a process of her own and imparts to it her own quality; she reduces the water and adds to it a minute drop of formic acid. It is this drop of herself that gives the delicious sting to her sweet. The bee is therefore the type of the true poet, the true artist. Her product always reflects her environment, and it reflects something her environment knows not of. We taste the clover, the thyme, the linden, the sumac, and we also ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... nature which, instead of an egotistical whine for its own deliverance, sets itself to plead the common cause of man and of society. He gives no intimation of any individual interest, but his argument throughout glows with a white heat of concealed emotion, such as could only he stirred by the sting of some personal ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... is another peril to the esparto picker. The great rock-scorpion of the Sahara is about as ugly as the centipede of Arizona and Mexico; in size it is also about as large—from six to ten inches in length. Its sting, too, is about as dangerous as the fangs of the rattler. But the esparto picker has a method of heroic treatment for both the bite of the viper and the sting of the scorpion. He squats calmly upon the sand while a brother ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson

... to treat with scorn thy benefactor. And now Gushtasp, with foul ingratitude, Would bind me hand and foot! But who on earth Can do that office? I am not accustomed To hear harsh terms, and cannot brook their sting, Therefore desist. Once in Kaus's court, When I was moved to anger, I poured out Upon him words of bitterest scorn and rage, And though surrounded by a thousand chiefs, Not one attempted to repress my fury, Not one, but all stood ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... paper in my hand, I tried to look up; but it was in vain. The sting of sudden and complete disillusion had struck me to the heart; I knew my husband to ...
— The Hermit Of ——— Street - 1898 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)

... warring men the Prince of Peace, and he, departing, left his scepter not in her hand, but in her soul. "The time of times" is near when "the new woman" shall subdue the whole earth with the weapons of peace. Then shall wrong be robbed of her bitterness and ingratitude of her sting, revenge shall clasp hands with pity, and love shall dwell in the tents of hate; while side by side, equal partners in all that is worth living for, shall stand the new man with the ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy

... all it was to congratulate himself with a laugh that he had found the proper setting for the final exit of a man whom Life had equipped to conquer, and Fate, in her most ironic mood, had challenged to battle; with the sting of death in victory if he won. He had beaten her at her own game. He had always aimed at consummation, the masterpiece; and here, in his final degradation, he had ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton

... took the form of a personal assault, which became the sensation of the hour and the topic of the newspapers. "Evidently," remarked the "Herald" (those were the days of the elder Bennett, who in his vast experience in New York journalism had more than once felt the sting of a horse-whip), "to be slapped is what some faces are made for!" But the Governors did not see the matter in the light that the "Herald" did, and the pugilistically inclined manager was summarily expelled, the board refusing to settle the matter ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice

... the sand. They cover them up again with the same instruments, and leave them to be hatched by the sun. We had not thought about this, when one day, as we were pulling across the bay in our canoe, we remarked the great number of sharks, and dog-fish, and sting-rays swimming about. Presently, as we got close in with the shore, we saw a number of young turtle crawling out of the sand and making their way to the sea, expecting, of course, to enjoy a pleasant swim; instead of which, a very large number of the poor ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston

... Ah, how careless of him he had been! How little companionship the two had had! How very little help the boy had received from the man! Now, believing that only four more days lay before him to use to the glory of God, Robert Hardy felt the sting of that bitterest, of all bitter feelings, useless regret—the regret that does not carry with it any hope of redeeming a ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon

... deepened As a sound deepens into silences; It was of earth and came not by the air; The earth was cooling and drew down the sky. The air was crumbling. There was no more sky. Rails of a broken bed charred in the grate, And when he touched the bars he thought the sting Came from their heat—he could not feel such cold ... She said 'O, do not sleep, Heart, heart of mine, keep near me. No, no; sleep. I will not lift his fallen, quiet eyelids, Although I know he would awaken then— He closed them thus but now of his own will. He can stay ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various

... grew momentarily more severe. He lashed back at it savagely with the side of his horn, but the arrow was just out of his reach. Then, bewildered and alarmed, he tried to escape from this new kind of fly with the intolerable sting by galloping furiously up and down the glade. As he passed the deodar, Grom let drive another arrow, at close range. This, too, struck, and stuck. But it did not go deep enough to produce any serious effect. The animal roared again, stared about him as if he thought the ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts

... various species. effects of the sting of. migration of. voracity of. sting of. scourge of. ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt

... hands, and as instantly releasing them. "Why, do you begin to understand what this actually means to me? It means the retention of manhood, of self-respect. It will save me the degradation which I dreaded most of all—the toiling in the fields beside negro slaves, and the sting of the lash. Ay, it ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish

... magic from a neighbor's field the coming crop can charm, Or stop the viper's lifted sting ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus

... arranged that I was to go that night; and we walked back to the chateau, speaking little, but our hearts full of true affection, and—save for that one sting of ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards

... touched and thankful for his escape from a horrible death; but the sting of the charge of vanity thus made once more against him came through his humility. He was about to reply angrily, when suddenly a great awe fell upon him as he remembered the warning words of the half-crazy letter-carrier: 'Meet ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker

... go; In the poisoned entrails throw. * * * * * * 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: * * * * * Maw of ravening salt-sea shark, Root of hemlock digged in the dark." Macbeth, Act ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR

... examining Ash Island we found many large timber trees intermixed with ash, one of which I took on board...it has much the likeness of hickory. I found several other woods, some of them light and pretty, and in particular a tree, the leaves of which sting like nettles. This acquired from us the ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee

... him such objects as might conduce to his enjoyment and pleasure. And it came to pass that one day an ant stung the boy at his hip. And the boy screamed loudly on account of the pain caused by the sting. And forthwith the mothers were exceedingly distressed to see how the child had been stung by the ant. And they stood around him and set up cries. Thus there arose a tumultuous noise. And that scream of pain suddenly reached (the ears of) the sovereign of the earth, when he was seated in the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... 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 of suns, like golden bees, gleam through the awful mystery ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford

... the gradual progress of scheme and intrigue, against which he could not be on his guard. He had not been accustomed to receive ridicule, and he could ill endure its sting; he resented it, and this only drew upon him a louder laugh. To escape from such scenes, he fled into solitude, and there the image of Emily met him, and revived the pangs of love and despair. He then sought to renew those tasteful studies, which had been the delight of his early ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... has much the same effect as distance of place. It is not surprising that fancy colours the prospect of the future as it thinks good, when it even effaces the forms of memory. Time takes out the sting of pain; our sorrows after a certain period have been so often steeped in a medium of thought and passion that they 'unmould their essence'; and all that remains of our original impressions is what we would wish them to have been. Not only the untried steep ascent before us, but the ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... the view was any thing but satisfactory. The wind here was tremendous, and the sleet blew down in long, horizontal lines, every separate particle giving its separate sting, while the accumulated stings amounted to perfect torment. I paused for a while to get a little shelter, and take breath before ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille

... 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 ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... little before I trusted myself to say any more. In that moment of silence, I hardly know which I felt most keenly—the sting which her contempt had planted in me, or the proud resolution which shut me out from all ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins

... and indicated by a toss of the head that the wheedling of a woman did not make up for a blow. It was the insult more than the pain; and from her—there was the sting of it. ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr

... [Smilingly.] No, no, I don't complain. But the brother— the wife! Just when they imagined they had bagged the truant—there's the sting! ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero

... his loyalty to the Crown, though apparently sheltered from the main fury of the storm by the interest of his Presbyterian father-in-law; and in his own person he had at one time been carelessly profuse. But all this was nothing. The sting of Pope's story requires him to have been a pauper; and yet—O heaven and incredulous earth!—a pauper hunting upon blood-horses, in a star and garter, and perhaps in a collar of SS! The plain, historical truth, meanwhile, survives, that this pauper was ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey

... that of the great Michael's David pictured in the living-room; a figure whose muscles ran rippling with leanness and suppleness, without the bunching over-development of the athlete. He bubbled in shivery delight with the first frigid sting of the downpour; he laughed in ecstasy as he pulled the valve wide open, inviting ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... acquaintance with the native bee, and would certainly have been counted mad by any stranger who could have seen us sitting in the smoke of a fire in the broiling sun! This was the only way to escape them; not that they sting, on the contrary they are quite harmless, and content themselves by slowly crawling all over one, up one's sleeve, down one's neck, and everywhere in hundreds, sucking up what moisture they may—what an excellent flavour their honey ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie

... 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 should effectually ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... is the only one of the wood folk who has learned the trick of attacking Unk Wunk without injury to himself. If, when very hungry, he finds a porcupine, he never attacks him directly,—he knows too well the deadly sting of the barbs for that,—but bothers and irritates the porcupine by flipping earth at him, until at last Unk Wunk rolls all his quills outward and lies still. Then Mooween, with immense caution, slides one paw under him and with a quick flip hurls him against the nearest ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long

... spiteful mood. There is not that infusion of personal venom which appears so strongly in the character of Sporus and similar passages. In reading them we feel that the poet is writhing under some bitter mortification, and trying with concentrated malice to sting his adversary in the tenderest places. We hear a tortured victim screaming out the shrillest taunts at his tormentor. The abuse in the Dunciad is by comparison broad and even jovial. The tone at which Pope is aiming is that suggested by the "laughing and shaking ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen

... that what Mary thought of her? Did others think the same? Was that the character she had earned? The words rang in her ears, the mortification bit deep. It was hateful to be so spoken to by a little ignorant country servant; but the sharpest sting lay in the knowledge that Mary was right. No one knew, and Audrey would not have liked anyone to know how she loathed doing the things that she blamed others for ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... through the whole of her life, even to her deathbed. It was he who robbed the death pangs of their sting, since she knew that they bore her to him. In the midst of her greatest suffering the mother could smile at the thought that she was going ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof

... the drunkards every day, and the temperance men only now and then; and out of the group of boys who were my boy's friends, many kindly fellows came to know how strong drink could rage, how it could bite like the serpent, and sting like ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells

... their faces, both men fell strangely silent. To George it was the last word of the north which they were leaving, and his recent home-sickness came back and silenced him. But to Lewis, his mind already busy with his errand, this sting of wind was the harsh disturber which carried him back to a lonely home in a cold, upland valley. It was the wintry weather which was his own, and Alice's face, framed in a cloak, as he had seen it at the Broken Bridge, rose in the gallery of his heart. In a moment he was disillusioned. ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan

... air seemed filled 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 with ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... and the ring of oaks curved up like a dark green vault. There were nettles growing thick and rank in the foss; they looked different from the common nettles in the lanes, and Lucian, letting his hand touch a leaf by accident, felt the sting burn like fire. Beyond the ditch there was an undergrowth, a dense thicket of trees, stunted and old, crooked and withered by the winds into awkward and ugly forms; beech and oak and hazel and ash and yew twisted and so shortened and deformed ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen

... night went down, and the sun smiled out far over the summer sea, And the Spanish fleet with broken sides lay round us all in a ring; But they dared not touch us again, for they fear'd that we still could sting, So they watch'd what the end would be. And we had not fought them in vain, But in perilous plight were we, Seeing forty of our poor hundred were slain, And half of the rest of ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood

... It was meant for a blessing; for the one blessing of her life! It was meant, doubtless, as the mother herself hath told us, for a retribution too; a torture to be felt at many an unthought-of moment; a pang, a sting, an ever-recurring agony, in the midst of a troubled joy! Hath she not expressed this thought in the garb of the poor child, so forcibly reminding us of that red ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... me so much as being deceived by the man I have helped and trusted. I should feel the sting of all this much less if the thief had come from the outside, broken in, and robbed me, but this, after all these years, ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... metal, hide and vegetable fibre, into useful objects. In other words, life depended on human power over the natural materials of the earth. At the same time there were many things which could not be controlled by power over the earth and its elements,—the sting of the scorpion, the bite of the adder, the rise of the Nile, sickness, the sudden onslaught of the enemy, the straying of cattle, the disfavor of the god. For these evils man's only hope was magic,—the set words spoken in the proper manner which have power over all unseen influence. ...
— The Egyptian Conception of Immortality • George Andrew Reisner

... aristocrat forgotten, all his being tense with purpose, strung taut—as taut at least as that soft body, only half-masculine in mould and enervated by loose living, could ever be. One thought of a rather elderly and unfit snake, stirred by the sting of some long-buried passion out of the lassitude of years of slothful ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance

... aristocratic seclusion, people would not neglect so rare an opportunity to even old scores. She would be a grass widow, a subject for all the vulgar jest and loathsome wit of the community. Country people know how to sting and annoy in a thousand ways. However, the possibility of this sort of retribution was put entirely away by the baby's illness. By the time Jack had recovered, the young mother was worn to a lifeless machine, compelled to accept what came to her. Her youth, her health, her strength ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger

... name; a fact which he did not understand. More than two hundred years later it was explained by David Hume. It is simply a proof that monotheism grows out of polytheism; or, if you like, that Theism is a development of Idolatry. This is a truth that takes all the sting out of Lord Bacon's observation that "against Atheists the very savages take part with the very subtilest philosophers." We may just remark that the philosophers must be very hard pressed when they call up their ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote

... clouds drifted swiftly across her face; it was a cold morning—past one o'clock. Josephs was at his window standing tiptoe on his stool. Thoughts coursed one another across his broken heart as fast as the clouds flew past the moon's face. But whatever their nature, the sting was now out of them. The bitter sense of wrong and cruelty was there, but blunted. Fear was nearly extinct, for hope ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... Essex marshes and southward to the river, and bears yellow brick and cemeteries for corn. Well! Tressady knew that the thought of this monotony, and of the thousands under its yoke, was to Watton a constant sting and oppression; he knew, too, or guessed, the religious effects it produced in him. For Watton was a religious man, and the action of the dream within showed itself in him and all he did. But why should everyone make a grief of ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... presence of so many guns was a clear indication that a strong force was not far off, and Jackson had no intention of attacking a position which had not yet been reconnoitred until his rear division had closed up, and the hostile artillery had lost its sting. ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... in a tumult of rage under the sting of this report, as he was able to piece it out from Kitty. But he kept his self-command, and by dint of it he presently arrived at some notion of her own share in the scene. Horror, recoil, disavowal—a wild resentment of the charges heaped upon her, of the ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... of honor himself, he had an instinctive aversion to anything mean or low in others. A man of great liberality and generous to a fault he often found it hard to say no, but when obliged to adopt that attitude it was done with a tact and courtesy which left no sting. In all business matters he required a rigid economy though never at the expense ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow

... persistently and ceaselessly; never let up; the more tired he may be the more steadily you must talk, and the more irritating your theme must be. Go to the gadfly; consider her ways and be wise. Buzz, buzz, buzz; sting, ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington

... Pennington, as the last of Forrest's cavalrymen passed out of sight, "and if we were not in such strong force I fancy they would sting ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler

... Burr, smarting under the sting of this continual opposition by a man who himself was shelved politically through his own too fiery ambition, sent a note by his friend Van Ness to Hamilton, asking whether the language he had used ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... themselves in after life to restore the balance of good and evil. The Turks have a maxim which, like most cynical apophthegms, carries with it the buzzing trumpet of falsehood as well as the small, fine “sting of truth.” “If your friend has made the pilgrimage once, distrust him; if he has made the pilgrimage twice, cut him dead!” The caution is said to be as applicable to the visitants of Jerusalem as to those of Mecca, but ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake

... the poisoned sting hidden beneath this tender consideration. He must live that Timea might suffer; for if she became a widow, nothing would stand in the way of her happiness. And that would ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai

... ironically. He knew that she regarded him as a kind of god, for reasons of caste. Yet she was the daughter of a Morebury piano tuner, of unblemished parentage for generations. She had never known hunger and cold and the real sting of poverty. Miss Winwood herself knew more of drunken squalor. He saw himself a ragged and unwashed urchin, his appalling breeches supported by one brace, addressing her in familiar terms; and he saw her transfigured air of lofty disgust; whereupon he laughed aloud in the middle ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... various readings of the word which is here translated prowess, e.g. cobnet, colwed, eofned, but all of them are capable of that construction, thus "cobnet" comes from cobiaw, to thump, "colwed," from col a sting, or a prop, whilst "eofned" literally ...
— Y Gododin - A Poem on the Battle of Cattraeth • Aneurin

... money and I am ruined. You are staking your honor against Hilliard's bank-notes." Her look commanded him, pleaded with him, to stop; but her silence only made him the more fiercely determined to force an explanation. "Oh, I'm in no mood to speak gently," he said; then added, with a sting of contempt in his tone: "I didn't think you would pay quite that price for ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach

... swoln to obscene bulk, Lurk'd the dark toad beneath the infected turf; The slow-worm crawl'd, the light cameleon climb'd, And changed his colour as his pace he changed; The nimble lizard ran from bough to bough, Glancing through light, in shadow disappearing; The scorpion, many-eyed, with sting of fire, Bred there,—the legion-fiend of creeping things; Terribly beautiful, the serpent lay, Wreath'd like a coronet of gold and jewels, Fit for a tyrant's brow; anon he flew Straight as an arrow shot from his own rings, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 286, December 8, 1827 • Various

... it not in truth A poisoned sting in every social joy, A thorn that rankles in the writhing flesh, A drop of gall in each domestic sweet, An irritating petty misery,— That I can never look on one I love And speak the fulness of my burning thoughts? That I can never with ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... And in a sense that is quite as real as yours, even if it differ from your sense in form, I also make bold to say, this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality—Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of Humanity, for as much as ye know that your labour is not in vain ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell

... the facts at that hospital and linked them together and brought an accusation against Carder, it was like opening a door to a swarm of hornets. He has made so many people hate him that when the timid ones found it would be safe to loosen up, they were ready to fall upon him and sting him to death. He's safe to get a long sentence, and it will be time enough when he comes out to talk to him about Mr. ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham

... was designed," it is said, "to make our pleasures less." Religion also, if we know what it means, will ever lead us to what are true, innocent, and elevating pleasures, and keep us from those that are false, bad in their influence, and which "leave a sting behind them." "Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart and in the sight of thine eyes: but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment." Let those who practise the first ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees

... turn nettle,' said Althea, plucking a white rose off a bush and giving it to him. 'Keep it, I pray you; and when you find it will sting you to touch it, then conclude Althea ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling

... strike, stick, sing, sting, fling, ring, wring, spring, swing, drink, sink, shrink, stink, come, run, find, bind, grind, wind, both in the preterit imperfect and participle passive, give won, spun, begun, swum, struck, stuck, sung, stung, flung, rung, ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson

... moss a while ago. We're all trout, we and the shareholders. You, Wimperley, are that five pounder. We all rose to the fly of one R.F.C., and we were all landed in the back woods. There are more trout in that stream, and, if we stand for it, the fishing is still good, but I've got the sting of the fly still in my gills. Also I'm thinking about ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan

... Nile. It passed into the hands of the British by the treaty of Alexandria, and was deposited in the British Museum in the year 1801." There is a whole volume of history in that brief inscription—and a bitter sting thrown in, if the reader chance to be a Frenchman. Yet the facts involved could scarcely be suggested more modestly. They are recorded much more bluntly in a graven inscription on the side of the stone, which ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... had not relieved was now at his own hearth. But there were parents and nurses, and great physicians, and skilful surgeons, and all the army that combine against Death, and there were ease, and luxury, and kind eyes, and pitying looks, and all that can take the sting from pain. And thus, the very night on which Catherine had died, broken down, and worn out, upon a strange breast, with a feeless doctor, and by the ray of a single candle, the heir to the fortunes once destined to ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... Ah, that was the sting—his poverty had been the gulf between him and happiness, and he had not dared to stretch his hand across it to the woman he loved; and now, when his opportunity had gone and he had lost her irrevocably, Fate had showered these golden gifts upon him, as though ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... hook. Being called upon to estimate his weight, I give it as 11 lb., much to the Twins' sorrow—they think it 15 lb. Half an hour passes, and we catch but half a dozen silvery bream and some small baby whiting, for now the sun is beating down upon our heads, and our naked feet begin to burn and sting; so we adjourn to the old house and rest awhile, leaving our big lines securely tied. But, though the breeze for which we wait comes along by two o'clock, the fish do not, and so, after disinterring our takes from the wet sand, wherein we had buried them as they were caught, ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke

... Governments, not for the reasons just stated, but because it is wholly unnecessary as a means of their protection. In the government of nature the weaker animals and insects, dependent on themselves for safety and life, are provided with means of defense. The bee has its sting and the despised serpent its deadly poison. So, in the Governments of men, the weak must be provided with power to inspire fear at least in the strong, if not to command their respect. Political power was claimed originally by the people as a means of protecting themselves ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... went 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 flash of bitter memory to ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats

... the dream of power once broken, What shall give repose again? What shall charm the serpent-furies Coiled around the maddening brain? What kind draught can nature offer Strong enough to lull their sting? Better to be born a peasant Than to live an exiled king! Oh, these years of bitter anguish!— What is life to such as me, With my very heart as palsied As a wasted cripple's knee! Suppliant-like for alms depending On a ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun

... would quit Racine for a better thing—de l'eau sucre. Mrs. Somers, on the contrary, took the cause of Shakspeare, or any other cause that she defended, seriously to heart. The wit or raillery of her adversary, if she affected not to be hurt by it at the moment, left a sting in her mind which rankled long and sorely. Though she often failed to refute the arguments brought against her, yet she always rose from the debate precisely of her first opinion; and even her silence, which Mad. de Coulanges ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth

... Adam! and my cousin Euphemia! and Mr. Gregg!" I had a vision of that grey old life now brought to an end—"and high time too"—a vision of those Sabbath streets alternately vacant and filled with silent people; of the babel of the bells, the long-drawn psalmody, the shrewd sting of the east wind, the hollow, echoing, dreary house to which "Ecky" had returned with the hand of death already on his shoulder; a vision, too, of the long, rough country lad, perhaps a serious courtier of the lasses in the hawthorn ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... Simon; but he can get no answer, for Mr. Godwin's energies, quickened by a word from within like a jaded beast by the sting of a whip, is straining his ears to catch what is passing within. And what hears he?—The song is ended, and ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett

... It is the sting in the tail of an injunction that makes it especially formidable. The debtor who fails to pay to the sheriff, when demand is made upon an execution, a judgment for money damages commits no contempt of court. The man who keeps on doing what a court ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD

... wandering Through the crowded towns for gain, You and I who loved the sting Of the salt spray and the rain And ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various

... "But of course. He's like you—with his father's tricks." That was perfectly true. "And that's your sister, of course. Pretty woman. Like you too—you in a sunset." Perfect unconsciousness robbed this open commentary of sting. ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... 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

... of our Lord, of which we have had occasion to see so many examples in these valedictory discourses. The world is full of all unrighteousness and wickedness, lust and immorality, intemperance, cruelty, hatred; all manner of buzzing evils that stink and sting around us. But Jesus Christ passes them all by and points to a mere negative thing, to an inward thing, to the attitude of men towards Himself; and He says, 'If you want to know what sin is, look at that!' There is the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... this Morning, it occurred to me that Mr. Milton intended bringing me to Forest Hill about this Time; and that if I had abided patientlie with him through the Winter, we might now have beene both here happily together; untroubled by that Sting which now poisons everie Enjoyment of mine, and perhaps of his. Lord, be merciful to me ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning

... a poet of gentle heart. His keen wit never had any sting. He has described our Yankee folk with as clever humour as Bret Harte delineated Rocky Mountain life. Like Harte, Mr. Foss had no unkindness in his make-up. He told me that he never had received an anonymous ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn

... felt a sudden sting of pain in his right foot. A bullet, sent in low, had ripped the sole of his shoe, inflicting a ...
— Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz • H. Irving Hancock

... 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 a dead soldier's ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... he felt that the removal was very unhandsomely made just as he was entering upon active operations. Lincoln, on the other hand, undoubtedly looked upon it in precisely the opposite light, and conceived that the opportunity of the moment deprived of any apparent sting a change which he had determined to make. The duties which were thus taken from McClellan were assumed during several months by Mr. Stanton. He was utterly incompetent for them, and, whether or not it was wise to displace the general, it ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse

... be no true peace till the fear of death be conquered by the sense of sin forgiven, through "the blood of the Cross." "Not till then," as one has it, "will you be able to be a quiet spectator of the open grave at the bottom of the hill which you are soon to descend." "The sting of death is sin, but thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through the ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff

... yes, and soundless too; For you have stol'n their buzzing, Antony, And very wisely threat before you sting. ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson

... 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

... made her eyes smart and sting, and it choked her so that she coughed and strangled, and I need not tell you that she would have given anything in the world to have been back in her ...
— Ruby at School • Minnie E. Paull

... truth, the weight of the sorrow of it all, and yet that sorrow was unaccountably transmuted, as by a chemical process, into something which for the first time had a meaning—he could not say what meaning. The sting of despair had somehow been taken out of it, and it ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... said Kamar al-Zaman. "Hath this thing happened to thee?" Replied Obayd, "No! But whenever I have by me a guest like thee, he complaineth in the morning of the mosquito bites, and this happeneth only when he is like thee beardless. If he be bearded the mosquitoes sting him not, and naught hindereth them from me but my beard. It seems mosquitoes love not bearded men."[FN413] Rejoined Kamar al-Zaman, "True." Then the maid brought them early breakfast and they broke their fast and went out. Kamar ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton

... virulently as possible to sting Weyrother's vanity as author of the military plan, argued that Bonaparte might easily attack instead of being attacked, and so render the whole of this plan perfectly worthless. Weyrother met all objections with a firm and contemptuous smile, evidently prepared beforehand to meet all objections ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... century, should happen to fall ill; if the doctors shake their heads, and warn us to make haste to his bedside, there is always a large proportion of honey to be extracted, in obeying the summons, out of the sting of parting, recounting old reminiscences, and gossipping about old times, never, alas! to return. But should we neglect the summons, where would the stings of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... that passes over this scarcely-covered human charnel-house wafts the 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

... idealization of the present to mislead and flatter him. Our latest book on the new railway across Asia describes the dulness of the Siberian farmer and the vulgar pursepride of the Siberian man of business without the least consciousness that the sting of contemptuous instances given might have been saved by writing simply "Farmers and provincial plutocrats in Siberia are exactly what they are in England." The latest professor descanting on the civilization of the Western Empire in the fifth century feels bound to assume, in the ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw

... idealised Messiah shrined in the modern Pantheon, and yourselves "a chosen generation," leprous with the sin of usury; "a royal priesthood," paralysed with the cant of hireling clergy; "a holy nation," rotten with the luxury of wealth, or embittered by the sting of poverty; "a peculiar people," deformed to Lucifer's own pleasure by the curse of caste; while, in this pandemonium of Individualism, the weak, the diffident, the scrupulous, and the afflicted, are thrust aside ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... with the American to leeward. I have already discussed fully the reasons for rejecting in this instance the British report of their own force and loss. This was the last defeat that the British officially reported; the admiralty were smarting with the sting of successive disasters and anxious at all costs to put the best possible face on affairs (as witness Mr. Croker's response to Lord Dundonald's speech in the House). There is every reason for believing that in this ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt

... China-roses and pyracanthus—more homelike than ever in the morning sun that glittered on its windows, each belonging to some well-loved room. Almost before they had settled themselves into the car, sent from Southampton to fetch them to the station, they were gone away to return no more. A sting at Margaret's heart made her strive to look out to catch the last glimpse of the old church tower at the turn where she knew it might be seen above a wave of the forest trees; but her father remembered this too, and she silently acknowledged his greater right to the one window from ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... said to the Duke, who had followed him into the fireplace, and stood at the foot of the steps. "Some of these bricks may drop inside, and they'll sting you up if they fall ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson

... view of what he had promised to do. Even Rosalie's smile was scarcely compensation for the pang he felt when he reflected that the splendid Christmas present he had in store for the man who had given him his chance in life must be used for selfish ends, and Martin must wait. That was the sting; Martin was always waiting, and when ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith

... 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 blood becomes full of greasy ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow

... wish him to curse Israel said, "If it be so, then I shall bless them." God: "They have not need of thy blessing, for they are blessed." God said to Balaam as one says to a bee: "Neither thy honey nor thy sting." ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... his 'Juvenal' in the 'Edinburgh Review', was composing his 'Gentle Alterative prepared for the Reviewers', which appears on pp. 56, 57 of 'Lady Jane Grey'. There are some curious points of resemblance between the two poems, though Hodgson's lines can hardly be compared for force and sting to 'English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers'. Like Byron (see 'English Bards, etc'., line 513, note 7), he makes merry over the blunder of the 'Edinburgh' reviewer, who, in an article on Payne Knight's 'Principles of Taste', severely criticized ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero

... suspense to him. She might, indeed, recollect the youth Pierre Philibert, thought he, as she did a sunbeam that gladdened long-past summers; but how could he expect her to regard him—the full-grown man—as the same? Nay, was he not nursing a fatal fancy in his breast that would sting him to death? for among the gay and gallant throng about the capital was it not more than possible that so lovely and amiable a woman had already been wooed, and given the priceless treasure of her love to another? It was, therefore, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... in their rise and decadence, may be likened unto great rivers which, at the point of fullest greatness, break up into innumerable tiny streams and are lost in the sands." Still following this imagery, he compares "Egyptian art to a fine tree whose growth is stopped by a sting; Etruscan art to a torrent; Greek art to a ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... and had studied human nature deeply, and he knew that of all the torments which afflict the mind of man (and far beyond bodily torture), the pains of jealousy were the most intolerable, and had the sorest sting. If he could succeed in making Othello jealous of Cassio, he thought it would be an exquisite plot of revenge, and might end in the death of Cassio or Othello, or ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... listening. She had a burning wish to escape from the soft buzzing of the senora's words, which, a velvety, sting-infested swarm, whirred around her bee-like, seeking ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead

... my way as honest a man as you in yours. I have never been false to the hand that fed me. If, therefore, I divert to you a certain packet which of rights goes elsewhere, my sin must be made worth my while. My conscience will sting me sorely, but with the aid of a glass and a lass I may contrive to forget ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle

... have the damaging assailant invited to join Punch's Staff. Mrs. Landells, without straining their friendship, called him "the little wasp" to his face; but, as Leigh Hunt more justly said, if he had the sting of the bee, he also had the honey. When Jerrold said in his wife's presence that a man ought to be able to change a spouse like a bank-note—change one of forty for two of twenty—he indulged in kindly chaff which she ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... Happily the torture did not last above two hours; and, which is more surprising, it is all the real pain I have felt; for though my hand has been as sore as if flayed, and that both feet are lame, the bootikins demonstrably prevent or extract the sting of it, and I see no reason not to expect to get out in a fortnight more. Surely, if I am laid up but one month in two years, instead of five or six, I have reason to think ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... had the courage to rebuke wrong, but this article was a sting—a revengeful attempt to make one a laughing stock. It had no good motive. But it haunted him. He turned the question of his duty over and over ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth

... the probability that my course on earth may be short occurred forcibly. I recurred to the words quoted by J.T., "The sting of death is sin," with encouragement to hope for "the victory." However, the future is not my care. May I be the care of Him whose care the ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall

... Jesus said, "Suffer ye 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 against his Lord, and the return the Lord had made him, ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald

... debt, have you?" Allen noticed that the question did not contain the usual sting. The old man would have rejoiced at this opportunity to express his sympathy in the only ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt

... strength and fragrance from the surrounding forest. The only drawback to our comfort was a hornets' nest in an old apple-tree close to the summer-house. The hornets used to buzz round us at every meal, and at first we supposed they might sting us. This they never did, though we waged war on them fiercely. But no one wants to be chasing and killing hornets all through breakfast and dinner, so we asked the maid of the inn what could be done ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

... in those detestable slippers. She took them and her dear silk stockings off and started barefoot. That was not pleasant either; her feet were very tender and the pebbles and ruts of the road hurt them. Her blistered heels smarted. But physical pain was almost forgotten in the sting of humiliation. This was a nice predicament! If Kenneth Ford could see her now, limping along like a little girl with a stone bruise! Oh, what a horrid way for her lovely party to end! She just had to cry—it was too terrible. Nobody cared for her—nobody bothered about her at all. Well, if ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... grow; judges and rewards; owes and pays; inhale and exhale; expand and contract; flutters and alights; fly, buzz, and sting; ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... to be hit—a giant is easy to fight," says he, "but egad, these pigmies crawl all over you and sting to death before they are visible ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut

... to serve your admirers as you do that ill-fated flower," said Kenelm, with some severity of tone. "But concealed in the flower you may sometimes find the sting of a bee. I see by your countenance that you did not tell Tom Bowles that you hated him till it was too late to prevent his losing his wits ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... king's. None other of high estate would have inspired so spiteful a letter. But the appointment to Masaarah made Atsu forget the sting in the second reading. To Masaarah! To Masaarah and Rachel! He folded the broken sheet and thrust it into his bosom. Meeting the keen eye of his guest, the color rushed back to the taskmaster's face and he summoned two attendant Hebrews ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... — N. bane, curse; evil &c. 619; hurtfulness &c. (badness) 649[obs3]; painfulness &c. (cause of pain) 830; scourge &c. (punishment) 975; damnosa hereditas[Lat]; white elephant. sting, fang, thorn, tang, bramble, brier, nettle. poison, toxin; teratogen; leaven, virus venom; arsenic; antimony, tartar emetic; strychnine, nicotine; miasma, miasm[obs3], mephitis[obs3], malaria, azote[obs3], sewer gas; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... all the franticness to yourself," she says; but as she says it she puts her own soft little hand over the one that encircles her waist, to take the sting out of her words; though why she said it puzzles even herself: nevertheless there is great truth, in her remark, and he ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

... said the Captain, when the servant entered and confuted him,—for the letter was for him. He took it up wonderingly and suspiciously, as Glumdalclitch took up Gulliver, or as (if naturalists) we take up an unknown creature that we are not quite sure will not bite and sting us. Ah! it has stung or bit you, Captain Roland; for you start and change color,—you suppress a cry as you break the seal; you breathe hard as you read; and the letter seems short—but it takes time in the reading, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... pleasant 'twould be, 'neath an almond-tree, In sunshine and perfume to loll, Forget our own spring, with its wind and its sting, And sing to the praise of the Doll-doll-doll, And sing to the praise of ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various

... to me within himself remorseful; O noble conscience, and without a stain, How sharp a sting ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante

... newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog, Adder's fork, and blindworm's sting, Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing, For a charm of ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley

... "Fork-headed shafts of a cloth-yard in length, and these shot within the breadth of a French crown, are sting enough." ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various

... then to turn on her suddenly and ridicule the other woman's puny symptoms and tell her she didn't even know the rudiments of being ill and snap her up sharply when she tried to answer back. And then she would deliver a final sting and go away without waiting to bury her dead. The poison was in the postscript—it nearly always is with that type of female. But afterward she would justify herself by saying people must excuse her manner—she didn't mean anything by it; it was just her way, and they must remember that ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... cannot, Mr. Stevens, I cannot! It is haunted, and my guardian will murder me. He means to. I read it in his eyes. He as good as tried this morning. To die without one word to those I love—without any explanation of what has passed—that would give a sting ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... half-shut eyes, Over the winking Champagne wine, What I shall do when Father dies And hands me down his right divine, Often I've said that, when in God's Good time he goes, I mean to show 'em How scorpions sting in place of rods, Taking my ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various

... voraciously. Little Red Riding Hood knew well the difference of a wasp and a bee—how lazy the one, and how industrious the other—yet, as they are all God's creatures, she wouldn't kill it, and only said: "Take as much honey as you like, poor wasp, only do not sting me." The wasp buzzed louder, as if to thank her for her kindness, and, when he had sipped his fill, flew away. Presently, a little tom-tit, who had been hopping about on a bough opposite, darted down on the basket, and pecked at ...
— Bo-Peep Story Books • Anonymous

... look at Foresta and his mother. Tears were in Foresta's eyes and Henry knew that they were helpless. It simply meant that he was to have a pick on his leg and work the streets of Almaville. He dropped his head disconsolately, nervously fumbled his hat, and tears appeared in his eyes. The sting went deep into his boyish soul as he ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs

... there is a slight infusion of the vexation of unappreciated labor in my father's criticism of Kean. He forgets that power is universally felt and understood, and refinement seldom the one or the other, and for a thousand who applaud Kean's "What, wouldst thou have a serpent sting thee twice?" probably not ten people are aware of his exquisite "nevertheless" in the reading of Antonio's letter. Most eyes can "see a church by daylight;" not many stop to look at the lights and shadows that are forever ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... hollow tree, in which the formidable wasps of the tropics have built for ages. The average savage hurries past the spot in mere bodily fear; for if they come out against him, they will sting him to death; till at last there comes by a savage wiser than the rest, with more observation, reflection, imagination, independence of will—the genius of ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley

... and always treated Lady Temple as a prime minister might treat a queen, his tendency to conversation with Rachel was becoming marked, and she grew increasingly prone to consult him. The interest of this new intercourse quite took out the sting of disappointment, when again Curatocult came back, "declined with thanks." Nay, before making a third attempt she hazarded a question on his opinion of female authorship, and much to her gratification, and somewhat to her ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... that he is periodically either carried in triumph down the village street or else burned in effigy, according to his latest exploit. He is said to have about seven lawsuits upon his hands at present, which will probably swallow up the remainder of his fortune and so draw his sting and leave him harmless for the future. Apart from the law he seems a kindly, good-natured person, and I only mention him because you were particular that I should send some description of the people who surround us. He is curiously employed at present, for, being ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle

... pleasure on drawing tears of anguish from the young man's eyes. He detested him, perhaps, more than he did the others, and this because he was an excellent workman and never drank. He brought all his instincts of refined cruelty into play, in order to invent atrocious falsehoods which should sting the poor lad to the heart; then he revelled in his pallor, his trembling hands and his heart-rending looks, with the delight of some evil spirit who measures his stabs and finds that he has struck his victim in the right place. When ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... owns it not, Though ceaseless warfare is thy lot Against disease and woe; No ills for thee have power to sting, Nor to thy lip a murmur bring, Save those ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various

... the inevitable, a foul seen only by me, which called for an immediate penalty. This led to scathing criticism and accusations of unfairness by many that did not understand the incident, altogether leaving a sting that will go down with me to my grave in spite of my happy recollections of the game. I had always taken a great pride in the job, and in what the confidence of the big universities from one year to another meant. I knew a little ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards

... to which this chapter principally relates, as Mary sat weeping, and as Mrs. Wilson comforted her by every tenderest word and caress, she revealed, to the dismayed and astonished Jane, the sting of her deep sorrow; the crime which ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell

... only girl that'll ever be willing to make a whip out of herself that'll keep you going and won't sting, honey. I know you're soft and lazy ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst

... yourselves hoarse, Ye howling ministers by whom I climb! For this I've wrought until my weary tongue, Blistered with incantation, flags in speech, And half declines its office. Every brave Inflamed by charms and oracles, is now A vengeful serpent, who will glide ere morn To sting the Long-Knife's sleeping camp to death. Why should I hesitate? My promises! My duty to Tecumseh! What are these Compared with duty here? Where I perceive A near advantage, there my duty lies; Consideration strong which overweighs All other reason. Here is Harrison— Trepanned ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair

... emphasis put upon aspiration as a habit of the mind. The pursuit of an ideal, a divine discontent with present accomplishment, are enjoined upon man. The gleams of heaven on earth are not meant to be permanent or satisfying, but only to sting man into hunger for full light. When a human being has achieved to the full extent of his perceptions or aspirations, he has, thinks Browning, met with the greatest possible disaster, that of arrested ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... new treasure to his perfectly arranged rooms, and in consequence some new song to his seductive repertoire, left a new sting in her soul. She had been influencing somebody or something all her life. She had been educating and directing and benefiting till she was forced to be grateful to that providential generosity that caused new ...
— A Philanthropist • Josephine Daskam

... but I wasn't thinking about what he said then. So that's his rattle at the end of his tail, with a sting in it." ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn

... the 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 ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous

... for their future welfare. And we are justified, maybe, in our flight to this opposite extreme. Nobody can read one line ahead in the book of fate. No child is guaranteed to become an adult. Any child may die to-morrow. How much greater for us the sting of its death if its life shall not have been made as pleasant as possible! What if its short life shall have been made as unpleasant as possible? Conceive the remorse of Mrs. Thompson here if one of her children were to die untimely—if one ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... settled upon the horses in a close-fitting blanket of gray. The girls tried to fight off the stinging pests that attacked their faces and necks in whirring clouds. But they fought in vain and in vain they endeavored to urge the horses to a quickening of their pace, for impervious alike to the sting of the insects and the blows of the whip, the animals plodded along in the unvarying walk they ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx

... louder shoutings; of the sting on his cheek; of the traffic, drifting on—slowly. Then he, too, started to walk away, in the opposite direction; it mattered little whither he bent his footsteps now. Dandy Joe had disappeared; the hope of attaining his end ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham

... which compares the sharp sting which passion drives into our breasts to the spurring given the flanks of a horse, was not true of Dorsenne. The application of the proverb to the circumstance was not, however, entirely erroneous, and the novelist commented upon it in his passion, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... mine, to come and look at it. He told me that it belonged to the class Arachnida, It had two claws and eight legs, or stigmata, with a very long tail. He laughed at the common notion that the scorpion will sting itself to death when surrounded by fire, and showed how that would be impossible, as he has no muscular power to drive his sting through his breast-plate, nor could he do much more, when curling it up, than tickle his back with it. He cannot even twist his ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... confined to the "vegetable kingdom." The wood-nettle was growing everywhere; a juicy-looking but coarse weed, resembling our common roadside nettles only in its blossoms. The cattle had found out what I never should have surmised,—having had a taste of its sting,—that it is good for food; there were great patches of it, as likewise of the pale touch-me-not (Impatiens pallida), which had been browsed over by them. It seemed to me that some of the ferns, the hay-scented for example, ought to have suited them better; but ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey

... "So that's why they used to act so standoffish whenever they'd run across each other here at the studio. Well, well! And what's your idea of applyin' a poultice to Twombley-Crane's twelve-year-old sting?" ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford

... little turn of the wrist, so slight you would not see, would cause death. I will take it from him; the viper dare not sting me!" ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour

... mistress's poverty. She said the simple fact was that the baron had contracted debts, and the baroness, being the soul of honor, was living in great economy to pay them off. Then, as to Dard getting no supper up at Beaurepaire, a complaint that appeared to sting her particularly, she assured him she was alone to blame: the baroness would be very angry if she knew it. "But," said she, "Dard is an egotist. Perhaps you may have noticed that ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade

... vexatious reflection. The sting of poverty itself could not be so sharp as the pain of being known to ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon

... ought to be done to stop those crooks or they'll kill us legitimate promoters. You can't sting a crowd too often ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... whose griefs, that roamed far afield by day, the darkness has brought all home: in legions they throng around. A favor I have with 'Amr, a favor his father bore toward me of old; a grace that carried no scorpion sting. I swear (and my word is true—an oath that hath no reserve, and naught in my heart is hid save fair thought of him, my friend)— If these twain his fathers were, who lie in their graves; the one al-Jillik, the others al-Saida, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... from which new enemies will arise, new battles, perhaps new defeats. What have I gained by consecrating my heart to my friends? They are but serpents—I have nourished them in my breast, and they will sting when I least suspect them. Even those whom I still trust, forsake me now when I ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach

... and made furiously for the panther, whom they attacked on all sides, while the baboon soon climbed up out of the way, crying, as he perched himself on the branch of a tree, 'I wish you joy of your children!' while from afar the jackal's voice was heard exclaiming: 'Sting, her well! don't let ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various

... life, the vassal of the changeful hour, Nor burdened bliss, but Truth and Love attest The solemn splendor of immortal power,— The ever Christ, and glorified behest, Poured on the sense which deems no suffering vain That wipes away the sting of death—sin, pain. ...
— Poems • Mary Baker Eddy

... it—at the anxiety of the old woman that he should proceed singly, and without the knowledge of her guests, on the search. He nevertheless continued to wander on,—pausing often to listen for the rush of the river, and then starting forward with fresh rapidity, to rid himself of the sting of his own thoughts, which became painfully intense when undisturbed by bodily motion. His way was now frequently interrupted by rocks, that thrust their huge gray heads from the ground, compelling him to turn aside, and thus depriving him, fortunately, perhaps, of all remaining ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... suffered, during this summer, such repeated devastations, that Marcellus, and not Hannibal, would appear to have been the conqueror at Cannae; while the Romans boast that you had strength only to inflict a single blow; and having as it were left your sting, now lie torpid. For near a century we waged war with the Romans, unaided by any foreign general or army; except that for two years Pyrrhus rather augmented his own strength by the addition of our troops, than ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius

... the many errors of detail into which he has (not inexcusably) fallen. These are the accidents,—not the essence of his paper. The root of bitterness with the Author is, clearly enough, the Theory of Religious Belief in the Church of England. His concluding words shew this plainly. The sting of the ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... "Wouldn't the bee sting him?" asked Bunny. "I was stung by a bee once, on Grandpa's farm, and I wasn't climbing the ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Big Woods • Laura Lee Hope

... reason, while it lasted. The second black inexorable semicircle was ready to enclose the little moment, but its contents had the condensed character of that which stands within limits, and reminded her, with a little sting, as of spur to horse, of her sharp, terrible aptitude for delight and her hunger for it. Why not, why not? What pinched, ungenerous philosophy was it that insisted on voluntary starvation? One saw its offspring in the troops ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... suppose that the sand wasps originally merely killed their prey by stinging them in many places (see page 129 of Fabre's 'Souvenirs,' and page 241) on the lower and softest side of the body—and that to sting a certain segment was found by far the most successful method; and was inherited like the tendency of a bulldog to pin the nose of a bull, or of a ferret to bite the cerebellum. It would not be a very great step in advance ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... with a sharp stinger on the end of the tail. When excited or disturbed, they would curl their tails over their backs, and get over the ground quite rapidly. The tarantulas were just big hairy spiders, of a blackish-gray color, about as big as toads, and mighty ugly-looking things. The sting of the tarantula, and the bite of a spider, were very painful, but when that happened to any of us (which was seldom), our remedy was to apply a big, fresh quid of tobacco to the wound, which would promptly neutralize ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell

... immediately after hoeing the potatoes the second time, or just as the young potato begins to set, sprinkle on the main vines, next to the ground, a tablespoon full of the above mixture to each hill, and be sure to get it on the main vines, as it is found that the rot proceeds from a sting of an insect in the vine, and the mixture coming in contact with the vine, kills the effect of it before it reaches the potato." I cannot but consider Professor Bollman's as the most important of the ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... to move them: to support the megatherium, we must have a humerus a foot in diameter, though perhaps not more than two feet long, and that in a vertical position under him, while the gnat can hang on the window frame, and poise himself to sting, in the middle of crooked stilts like threads; stretched out to ten times the breadth of his body on each side. Increase the size of the megatherium a little more, and no phosphate of lime will bear him; he would crush his own legs to powder. (Compare Sir Charles Bell, "Bridgewater Treatise ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin

... words!" says Hamlet, disparagingly. But God preserve us from the destructive power of words! There are words which can separate hearts sooner than sharp swords—there are words whose sting can remain in the heart through ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer

... only been merciful and at once killed her hope. She loved him so then. If he of his own accord had told her everything, there would never have been any sting in her soul against him. But when he saw her pain at being deceived, and yet went on misleading her, that had hurt her too bitterly. She had never really forgiven him that. She could of course say to herself that he had wanted to take her with him as far as possible so that ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof

... is this well-dressed mob thus mustered here?" I asked my guide. "On every face a sneer Curls—when it is not smirking. Scorn of each other seems the one sole thing In which they sympathise, the asp whose sting ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various

... sacrificed, or the individual needlessly destroys half the possibilities of living. A great purpose in life, something that unifies the strands and threads of each day's thinking, something that takes the sting from the petty trials, sorrows, sufferings and blunders of life, is a great aid to Concentration. Soldiers in battle may forget their wounds, or even be unconscious of them, in the inspiration of battling for what they believe is right. Concentration dignifies an humble life; it makes ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan

... of Iphigenia far from her own land on Euripos' shore so sting her mother to the arousal of a wrath of grievous act? Or had nocturnal loves misguided her, in thraldom to a paramour's embrace? a sin in new-wed brides most hateful, and that cannot be hidden for the talk of stranger tongues: for the ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar

... harlequinade; the man was bad. It was a plausible scoundrel, a vulgar profligate with a handsome face and a few cheap talents—had he not been reduced to stealing the picture of his friend?—whom these two women had loved, to whom one of them was married. Ah, the sting of it lay there! Good or bad, he was Eve's husband, and she was his wife, bound to him until the end. And then, for the first time, seeing her there, helpless and terrified, in her forlorn prettiness, he deceived himself no longer, wrapped up his tenderness for the woman, his angry ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... was sparkling with life—the life and vigor which a touch of frost gives to the autumn world in a country where the blood tingles to the dry, sweet sting of the air. Beautiful, and spacious, and buoyant, and lonely, the valley and the mountains seemed waiting, like a new-born world, to be peopled by man. It was as though all had been made ready for him—the ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker

... overpowered the scent of pines coming at other times with strength and fragrance from the surrounding forest. The only drawback to our comfort was a hornets' nest in an old apple-tree close to the summer-house. The hornets used to buzz round us at every meal, and at first we supposed they might sting us. This they never did, though we waged war on them fiercely. But no one wants to be chasing and killing hornets all through breakfast and dinner, so we asked the maid of the inn what could be done to get rid of them. She ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

... if I sleep, then percheth he, With pretty flight,[26] And makes his pillow of my knee The livelong night. Strike I my lute, he tunes the string. He music plays, if so I sing. He lends me every lovely thing Yet cruel! he, my heart doth sting. 'Whist, wanton! still ye!' ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... 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 one; for deceased's contribution is a robbery of his heirs. Shall the ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... Butter and Eggs with the gaping lips, Sweet Hawthorn that hardens to haws, and Roses that die into hips; Lords-with-their-Ladies cheek-by-jowl, In purple surcoat and pale-green cowl; Family groups of Primroses fair; Orchids rare; Velvet Bee-orchis that never can sting, Butterfly-orchis which never takes wing, Robert-the-Herb with strange sweet scent, And crimson leaf when summer is spent: Clustering neighbourly, All this gay company, Said to us seemingly— 'Pluck, children, pluck! But leave some for good luck: Some for the Naiads, ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... were no better satisfied than Raymond had been; and though they performed their duty in setting sail with entire precision, they were sour and morose. The sting of an overwhelming defeat thorned them. They were mortified, humiliated, and crest-fallen. They were enraged at the conduct of their rebellious companions of the milder stripe, who had deserted them, and they were reaping the general consequences ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic

... this feeling with regard to the magnificent harbour of Vis, which even President Wilson suggested they should have, and contented themselves with the smaller Yugoslav island of Lastovo (Lagosta). The pity is that the Nationalists should have forced into their hands anything which may turn and sting them. ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... the noble and the bourgeois, the von Adel and the buerger, acknowledged by those who regret or resent as distinctly as by those who would uphold it. The unpardonable sin of the noblesse, the inheritance of which they could not be deprived but with their lives, the secret sting that maddened the Jacobin to slay not merely the beardless heirs but the innocent and helpless daughters of the captured chateau, may perhaps be hinted in a question and answer like the following, between Senior and De Tocqueville, after the third Revolution had ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various

... by its use as a beverage. Its leaves drip with poison and the bones of its dead victims would build a pyramid as high as Appenines piled on the Alps. Jesus withered the tree that produced nothing. We license and cultivate the tree whose fruitage the Bible compares to the bite of a serpent, the sting of an adder ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain

... woods, through blizzards, stalking game, encountering all the dangers of the backwoodsmen's life, and enjoying the close contact with Nature in all her moods. His descriptions are so vivid that you can almost feel the tang of the frosty air, the biting sting of the snowy sleet beating on your face, you can hear the crunch of the snow beneath your feet, and when, after heartlessly exposing you to the elements, he lets you wander into camp with the characters of the story, you stretch out and bask ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts

... who does it consciously is apt to overdo it, out of sheer enthusiasm, and if a girl suspects that it is done intentionally, the hurt loses its sting and changes her love to bitterness. A succession of attempts is also useless, for a man never hurts a woman twice in exactly the same way. When he has run the range of possible stabs, she is out of his reach—unless she ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed

... open stairway, it afforded ample cover for escape, when, alarmed by Nita's cry, Gray and the corporal came springing to her aid. To Gray himself it gave only a few minutes' forgetfulness of his trouble, for, smarting under the sting of a woman's only half-hidden disdain, he would have welcomed with almost savage joy some fierce battle with a skillful foe, some scene in which he could compel her respect and admiration. He was still smarting and stung when ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King

... makes sorrow and tumult wherever it comes. It takes away the sense of sin. It gives us, instead of the torpid conscience, or the angrily-stinging conscience—a conscience all calm from its accusations, with all the sting drawn out of it:—for quiet peace lies in the heart of the man that is trusting in the Lord. The Gospel works joy, because the soul is at rest in God; joy, because every function of the spiritual nature has found now its haven and its object; joy, because health has ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... children use impieties familiarly, and she was not startled. She was disturbed, however, by an unfavourable hint in the speaker's tone. He was six, probably, but the sting of a criticism is not necessarily allayed by knowledge of its ignoble source, and Alice had already begun to feel a slight uneasiness about her cane. Mrs. Dowling's stare had been strikingly projected at it; other women more than merely glanced, ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington

... Cruz, the white strip of beach, the lights of the sugar steamers in the harbor, the voices of the drunken sailors in the distance, the jostling stevedores, the flaming passion in the Mexican's face, the glint of the beast-eyes in the starlight, the sting of the steel in his neck, and the rush of blood, the crowd and the cries, the two bodies, his and the Mexican's, locked together, rolling over and over and tearing up the sand, and from away off somewhere the mellow tinkling ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... o' his coming there without Sir Arthur: he had gotten a sair gliff the night afore, and never intended to look near the place again, unless he had been brought there sting and ling. He ken'd weel the first pose was o' his ain hiding, and how could he expect a second? He just havered on about it to make the mair o' ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... Lady Baltimore made very much of her, and treated her with the kindliest observances, and——But one had often heard of the serpent that one nourished in one's bosom only that it might come to life and sting one! The County grew wise over this complication; and perhaps when Mrs. Monkton had hinted to Joyce of the "odd people" the Baltimores asked to the Court, she had had Lady Swansdown in ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

... his best and only friend he had lied, persistently and unforgiveably, for twelve years. There was the sting—and there the pity ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... and he was only too happy that they fell upon himself and not upon the King, since it was his fixed idea that, without the maintenance of a good understanding between Victor Emmanuel and Garibaldi, Italy would not be made. Few men under the sting of personal attacks have ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... do sting, sir," said Buck, "because I did hear of a fellow being killed by one in a precious ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn

... red hair and a big nose. But he was a gentleman in the fine old English sense; he was a soldier with but one idea, that every physically able man should fight. Every sentence that he spoke was charged with this belief, and every sentence carried a sting ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey

... one who saw angels' footprints even in the common ways of life, and who dreamed sweet, innocent dreams of the splendors of a heavenly home? To these sort of natures even threadbare garments can be worn proudly, for to these free spirits even poverty loses its sting. It is not "how we live," but "how we think about life," that stamps our characters, and makes us the men and women that ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... toil, and partners of their care: The laugh, the jest, attendants on the bowl, Smoothed every brow, and opened every soul: With growing years the pleasing licence grew, And taunts alternate innocently flew. But times corrupt, and Nature, ill-inclined, Produced the point that left a sting behind; Till friend with friend, and families at strife, Triumphant malice raged through private life. Who felt the wrong, or feared it, took th' alarm, Appealed to law, and justice lent her arm. ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope

... far before he was vexed with himself. He was not so much sorry, as annoyed that he had behaved in fashion undignified. The thought that his childish behaviour would justify Kirsty in her opinion of him, added its sting. He tried to console himself with the reflection that the sort of thing ought to be put an end to at once: how far, otherwise, might not the old fellow's interference go! I am afraid he even said to himself that such was a consequence of familiarity with inferiors. Yet angry ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald

... 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

... vaster a monarch's power, the greater his need to meditate on the fickleness of fate; but the lessons of wisdom are never recalled till they are useless; they are whispered into his ears only when they can but add a sting to defeat. ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... seemed to have forgotten every thing but the slanders against my character; and though the hussy whose oath had sealed my doom was removed to Washington, where she was atoning for her outraged virtue by practicing the arts of the fair but frail, it neither lessened the sting of my misfortunes, nor restored me my character. She had sworn falsely, when her morals were no better than they should be. She now offered to do me justice by swearing to the truth; but so public had become the character she bore, that though she might swear to the truth of her own falsehood a thousand ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... heavenly, healing balm, that gift from Providence, blended with persecutions to blunt the sharpness of their sting and hinder the unfortunate from being overwhelmed, and sinking under the load of their afflictions, never dies out—never abandons the distressed. "We don't believe in dangers," says Machiavel, "until they are over our heads; but ...
— The Campaign of 1760 in Canada - A Narrative Attributed to Chevalier Johnstone • Chevalier Johnstone

... evil deeds and their memories, our pride, our selfishness, our malice, our passions, which by conscience or by habit pursue us with a relentlessness past the power of figure to express. We know how they persist from youth unto the grave: the sting of death is sin. We know what they want: nothing less than our whole character and will. Simon, Simon, said Christ to a soul on the edge of a great temptation, Satan hath asked ...
— Four Psalms • George Adam Smith

... what Paul means when he says, "The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who hath given us the victory through our ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke

... of sand and bouncing tumbleweeds that rolled and lodged for a minute against some rock or bush and then went whirling on again in a fresh gust. Starr had not ridden two miles before his face began to feel the sting of gravel in the sand clouds. His eyes, already aching with a day's hard usage and a night of no sleep, smarted with the impact of the wind. He fumbled at the band of his big, Texas hat and pulled down a pair of motor goggles ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower

... largely monosyllabic, there are many significations attached to one word, and these often widely different. Thus kab means, a hand; a handle; a branch; sap; an offence; while cab means the world; a country; strength; honey; a hive; sting of an insect; juice of a plant; and, in composition, promptness. It will be readily understood that cases will occur where the context leaves it doubtful which of these ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various

... teeth. "Of a sort... Perhaps high priest would be nearer the truth. There's a certain purposeful cruelty about that term which appeals to me. I'm a bit of a fanatic, you know... But I like to get my recruits when they're bleeding raw. I like them when the salt of truth can sting deep... Wounds heal so ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie

... breeds endless fun, and makes men jump like rockets, And turnip-heads on posts Make very decent ghosts: Then hornets sting like anything, when placed in waist-coat pockets - Burnt cork and walnut juice Are not without their use. No fun compares with easy chairs whose seats are stuffed with needles - Live shrimps their ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert

... single file through the thickets. These belonged to the species called Dinoponera grandis. Its colonies consist of a small number of individuals, and are established about the roots of slender trees. It is a stinging species, but the sting is not so severe as in many of the smaller kinds. There was nothing peculiar or attractive in the habits of this giant among the ants. Another far more interesting species was the Sauba (Oecodoma cephalotes). This ant is seen ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... 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 bite may be fatal to man. The poison glands are situated at the point ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America

... 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

... was like that to me—all sun and a sweet sting in the air. At night to sit and tell tales and such things; and perhaps a little brown brandy, a look at the stars, a half-hour with the cattle—the same old game. Of course, there was the wife of Hilton the factor—fine, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... I soon forget it. But a sneer, a shrug of the shoulder, mean more. Either is a blow at my sensitiveness, my inner feelings, and which through no ordinary effort of mind can be altogether forgotten. It is a sting that burns long and fiercely. How much better to have ignored the greater offences which could be reached, and to have thus avoided the lesser ones, which nothing can destroy! How much wiser to stand like a vast front of fortification, on some ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper

... he sat silent among Randall's guests; nor the Samuel Thayor who had faced his wife; nor the Samuel Thayor, the love of whose daughter put strength in his arms and courage in his heart. But a man with cheeks ruddy from the sting and lift of the morning air; all the worn, haggard look ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith

... heart-surprising blaze Of great goodwill and innocence. And perfect joy proceeding thence! Ah! made for earth's delight, yet such The mid-sea air's too gross to touch. At thought of which, the soul in me Is as the bird that bites a bee, And darts abroad on frantic wing, Tasting the honey and the sting; And, moaning where all round me sleep Amidst the moaning of the deep, I start at midnight from my bed— And have no right to strike him dead. What world is this that I am in, Where chance turns sanctity to sin! 'Tis crime ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore

... slanderer! a base calumniator! The Roman attacks you with naked weapons, but you slink in the dark, like a scorpion, and try to sting your enemy in the heel. Apelles, the painter, warns us—the grandchildren of Lagus—against folks of your kidney in the picture he painted against Antiphilus; as I look at you I am reminded of his Demon of Calumny. The ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... itself, however, be shocked at causing injury to our fellows. It is when we pass out of this point of view, and enter into the mental state of the spectator of our actions, that we feel the sense of injustice and the sting of Remorse. Though it may be true that every individual in his own breast prefers himself to mankind, yet he dares not look mankind in the face, and avow that he acts on this principle. A man is approved when ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain

... young ones; but I am ashamed to repeat all that was said, for, though they had right on their side, the unfortunate woman was set upon by all, and if tongues could sting, she would not have been alive now. At last she sat down in a remote corner of the rock, to weep and bewail herself, thinking, I dare say, that she had escaped from one set of savages into another. ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton

... bitterness of 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 ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett

... lord, I cannot live at Twickenham and not think of you: I have long wanted to write, and had nothing to tell you. My Lady D. seems to have lost her sting; she has neither blown up a house nor a quarrel since you departed. Her wall, contiguous to you, is built, but so precipitate and slanting that it seems hurrying to take water. I hear she grows sick of her undertakings. We have been ruined by deluges; ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... my endeavours, there should be people here, and many people, who find a gratification in doing that which they think I shall look upon as an annoyance. The sting is in their desire to sting, and in my inability to show them their error, either by stopping what they are doing, or by proving myself indifferent to it. It isn't the building itself, but the double disgrace of ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope

... Brunswick and marched his troops back to New York. Here was an opportunity for Morgan's Rangers. They followed Howe's army like a swarm of angry hornets. When too annoying, the British would turn and drive them back, but, as soon as the march was resumed, they would return and again sting the rear ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane

... earth. At the same instant a dozen rifles crackled among the bushes. The light-hearted Frenchman fell stone dead, a bullet through his head, and two more men were wounded. A bullet had grazed Larkin's shoulder, burning like the sting of a hornet, and, wild with pain and anger, he sprang again to ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler

... 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 ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter

... I imagine your father expected you to have rather a difficult time of it. Perhaps he wants you to, so that a defeat or two will sting you into having a little more serious purpose in life than you have at present. I'd like, myself, to see you handle, with credit to him and to you, the splendid establishment ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester

... 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 a defenseless animal can surely give none, but it ...
— The Nomad of the Nine Lives • A. Frances Friebe

... result of his having been bitten by some poisonous insect, and were 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 of any sort." ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew

... clapped both hands over his mouth and swung a leg to the floor. His eyes wide open in the dark began to sting violently. He caught his breath and burst into a spasm of coughing. Somewhere from the wall by the bedside came the faint sound of gas hissing ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee

... perceived amongst the wealthier inhabitants of the United States that proud contempt of physical gratifications which is sometimes to be met with even in the most opulent and dissolute aristocracies. Most of these wealthy persons were once poor; they have felt the sting of want; they were long a prey to adverse fortunes; and now that the victory is won, the passions which accompanied the contest have survived it: their minds are, as it were, intoxicated by the small enjoyments which they have pursued for forty years. Not but that in the United States, ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... exclamation, the most frequent in his mouth, the unfortunate man clutched both hands upon his breast as if an intolerable sting or torture impelled him to rend it open and let out the living mischief, even should it be intertwined with his own life. He then freed himself from Herkimer's grasp by a subtle motion, and, gliding through the gate, took refuge in his antiquated family residence. The sculptor did not pursue ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... though they are less common than we are apt to suppose in which the good of the individual is hopelessly at variance with that of the community. If our fellows could be counted on for a fair reciprocity of self-denial and service, we should not begrudge these necessary sacrifices. The sting lies not so much in the loss of personal pleasures as in the lack of appreciation and return; to do our part when others are not doing theirs takes, indeed, a touch of saintliness. Socrates drinking the hemlock, Jesus dying in agony on the cross, Regulus returning ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... bequeathed, the former to his "dear daughter, Mary Rayner" and the latter to his "son, Thomas Gerrard, together with such moneys as might be at his (the testator's) death, lying to the credit of the two stations." Then—and here came the sting of the "certain reservation" to Elizabeth Westonley—to his "dearly esteemed son-in-law, Edward Westonley, of Marumbah Downs, I give and bequeath the sum of one thousand pounds, to be by him used in the manner he may deem best for ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke

... above, overwhelmed me with abuse and reproaches, which, as they were uttered in the queen's presence, and would be repeated, I knew, to the Concinis and Galigais of her suite, who had no occasion to love me, carried a double sting. ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman

... bright-eyed citizen, and he sees it right enough. If the worst happens, Kaiser will fling overboard a lot of ballast in Europe, and it will look like a big victory for the Allies, but he won't be beaten if he has the road to the East safe. Germany's like a scorpion: her sting's in her tail, and that tail stretches way ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan

... 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

... more than I can say of mine, for he was at it all day. Hold out your right hand, now your left," continued he, mimicking; "my eyes! how it used to sting. I don't think I should mind it much now, continued the lad, turning up his hand; it's a little harder than it was then. Here's the shop, come in; if you haven't no money I'll ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat

... rich and bright, Its rubies flash upon the sight, An adder coils its depths beneath, Whose lure is woe, whose sting is ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley

... would devour both knight and steed, armour and all, in a moment. But the brave Saint George, knowing well how to deal with dragons, and all such-like monsters, quickly wheeled his horse out of his way, and with such force did the monster rush on that he drove his sting full three feet into the ground. Returning again, however, with furious rage, he made at the Knight, and would have carried both him and his charger to the ground, but that Saint George, thrusting his spear at his throat, the monster, to avoid it, threw himself back, and fell happily over, ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston

... might know what the people thought of their God, here in Old Bergamo. For it was not so much their wish to insult God that made them rejoice in the tumult; but they felt satisfaction in knowing that each of their blasphemies was a sting in the hearts of ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen

... lesser; for surely, my good ladies, you must both of you have observed, in what you have read and seen, that I am naturally of a saucy temper: and with all my appearance of meekness and humility, can resent, and sting too, when I ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... overhead—buzz, buzz, buzz—now among the leaves, now flashing through the strips of sunshine, and now lost in the dark shade, till finally he appeared to be settling on the eyelid of David Swan. The sting of a bee is sometimes deadly. As free-hearted as she was innocent, the girl attacked the intruder with her handkerchief, brushed him soundly and drove him from beneath the maple shade. How sweet a picture! This ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... I felt a sting on my leg. A pebble had hit me on the shin and dropped at my feet. I picked it up. It was the size of a small walnut—a huge bowlder six feet or more in diameter it would have been in Lylda's eyes. At the thought of her I was ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings

... speak of him openly as a dotard who had outlived his usefulness and should yield his place to a younger genius. Paul IV. had the wisdom to retain Michael Angelo in his important post, and the tact to take the sting from Ligorio's removal by giving him the commission for the casino in the Vatican Gardens which (as it was not finished until the pontificate of Pius IV.) was destined to bear the name of the ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney

... are thy wonders! Hell! where are thy thunders! Death, where is thy sting! Jesus rose victorious, Reigns in heaven glorious As our Lord and King. Him, the Lord, Who did accord Us so great a joy and favor, We will ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg

... hissed, and next instant Ken felt the sting of steel grazing his left shoulder. The sharp pain maddened him, and his grip tightened so fiercely that he heard the breath whistle ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges

... backyards grow only alders, elders, and weeds. Everywhere docks thrust up heads through cracks in the fences to catch at the legs or the skirts of passers-by, while masses of nettles squeeze their way under fences to sting little children. Apropos, the latter are all thin and hungry, in the highest degree quarrelsome, and addicted to prolonged lamentation. Also, each spring sees a certain proportion of their number carried off by diphtheria, while scarlatina and measles are as epidemic ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... raising their leaf-like dark green heads, these cobras hissed furiously and so loudly that the sound was audible a hundred paces off. Their "stings" quivered like lightning, and their small eyes glittered with anger at the approach of every passer-by. The expression, "the sting of a snake," is universal, but it does not describe accurately the process of inflicting a wound. The "sting" of a snake is perfectly harmless. To introduce the poison into the blood of a man, or of an animal, the snake must pierce the flesh ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky

... of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog, Adder's fork and blindworm's sting, Lizard's leg and owlet's wing, For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker

... after his long absence? My friend, did I say? Nay, my son. He escapes being murdered by a fellow whom I will tomorrow clear this house of, and you treat him as if he had done wrong in dashing from him the snake which was about to sting him!" ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... mark of His pity, of His tenderness, in a word of His grace. That unclouded intellect, that unruffled temper, that cheerful resignation, that brave and yet calm facing of the inevitable future, that ever-fresh hope, which is no delusion but a token that God Himself has taken away the sting of death and the victory of the grave, till the very thought of death has vanished, or is looked on merely as the gate to a life of health, and strength, and peace, and joy:—all these symptoms, so common, so normal, all but universal—this Euthanasia which ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... the first question ever asked of a man is in reference to his income, rather than his character. How many slaves does he keep; how many acres does he own; what dishes are his table spread with?—these are the universal inquiries. Poverty, bitter though it be, has no sharper sting than this,—that it makes men ridiculous. Who was ever allowed at Borne to become a son-in-law, if his estate was inferior? What poor man's name ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord

... a neat, witty, and pointed utterance briefly couched in verse form, usually satiric, and reserving its sting to the last line; sometimes made the vehicle of a quaintly-turned compliment, as, for example, in Pope's couplet to Chesterfield, when asked to write ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... her I'll be home soon as I capture them desperadoes." He was moving toward the front gate. Caroline's paraphrase pursued him and left a sting: ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon

... didn't mind breaking the blister (I felt the warm stuff ooze out, and the sting that followed); but those heavy legs! As a Scout I ought to have skipped up the hill as springy and long-winded as a goat; but instead I had to shove myself. But up I went, nip and tuck—and my head thumped when my heart did, about ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin

... desiring that her acknowledgments should be presented to her English Majesty, accepted the present as significative. "Tis the fabled virtue of the lizard (she said) to awaken sleepers whom a serpent is about to sting. You are the lizard, and the Netherlands the sleepers,—pray Heaven they may escape the serpent's bite." The Prince was well aware, therefore, of the plots which were weaving against him. He had small faith in the great nobles, whom he trusted "as ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... 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 here ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost

... the wine when it was red, and found in its dregs the sting of the adder. He had participated in the maddening excitement of the gaming-table, from which remorse and horror pursued him with scorpion lash. He had entered the "chambers of death"—though avenging demons guarded its threshold. Poor, tempted Louis! ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz

... the throng like a golden shuttle—ah, did she know how adorable she was! Was Tom right: is it the attainable unattainable to one man and given to some other that leaves a deeper mark upon him than success? At all events the unattainable was now like a hot sting in the heart, but yet a sting more precious than a balm. The voice ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington

... errors poize, Scorning remembrance of our vanish'd joys; When for the love-warm looks, in which I live, But cold respect must greet me, that shall give No tender glance, no kind regretful sighs; When thou shalt pass me with averted eyes, Feigning thou see'st me not, to sting, and grieve, And sicken my sad heart, I cou'd not bear Such dire eclipse of thy soul-cheering rays; I cou'd not learn my struggling heart to tear From thy lov'd form, that thro' my memory strays; Nor in the pale horizon of Despair ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward

... Carus. She may indeed gain a single battle, for her genius is vast, and her troops well disciplined and brave. But the loss of a battle would be to her the loss of empire, while to Rome it would be but as the sting of a summer insect. Yet this she does not or will not see. To triumph over Aurelian is, I believe, the vision that dazzles, deludes, and will ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware

... had an instinctive aversion to anything mean or low in others. A man of great liberality and generous to a fault he often found it hard to say no, but when obliged to adopt that attitude it was done with a tact and courtesy which left no sting. In all business matters he required a rigid economy though never ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow

... gazed ahead into the chaotic tangle through which it led. At any moment he expected to hear the sharp crack of a rifle and to see Mukoki tumble forward upon his face. Or there might be a fusillade of shots and he himself might feel the burning sting that comes with rifle death. At the distance from which they would shoot the outlaws could not miss. Did not Mukoki realize this? Maddened by the thought that his beloved Wabi was in the hands of merciless enemies, was ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood

... state when he thus expressed himself, "Oh, wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" To which he replies, "I thank God, it is done through Jesus Christ our Lord." It is He who conquers death in us through His own life. Then there is no longer a sting in death, or thorn in the flesh, capable of paining or ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon

... the anxiety of the old woman that he should proceed singly, and without the knowledge of her guests, on the search. He nevertheless continued to wander on,—pausing often to listen for the rush of the river, and then starting forward with fresh rapidity, to rid himself of the sting of his own thoughts, which became painfully intense when undisturbed by bodily motion. His way was now frequently interrupted by rocks, that thrust their huge gray heads from the ground, compelling him to turn aside, and thus depriving him, fortunately, perhaps, ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... studied human nature deeply, and he knew that of all the torments which afflict the mind of man (and far beyond bodily torture) the pains of jealousy were the most intolerable and had the sorest sting. If he could succeed in making Othello jealous of Cassio he thought it would be an exquisite plot of revenge and might end in the death of Cassio or Othello, or ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... calms, subsides, or ceases; but lost—which hope prevents mourning as dead, and whose death-like absence almost precludes the idea that they live, engenders in the soul of true affection, a gloomy, torturing and desponding sorrow, more agonizing than the sting actual death leaves behind. I have endeavored to depict what must have been, what were the feelings of Peter Houp's wife. She mourned and grieved, and still hoped on, though months and years passed away without imparting the slightest clue to the unfortunate fate of her ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... however, is the following: bees are very fierce, and for their size are the most pugnacious of creatures, and leave their stings in the wounds which they make, but the king himself has no sting: nature does not wish him to be savage or to seek revenge at so dear a rate, and so has deprived him of his weapon and disarmed his rage. She has offered him as a pattern to great sovereigns; for she is wont to practise herself ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various

... of that day on the mountain still clung around his fancy as he went out upon the street again. A horrible something, as penetrable as mist, as keen as the sting of conscience, as inevitable as the burden of life, seemed to inwrap him. He felt it dully, and wondered how much of it was physical and how much mental, and he didn't care ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton

... or physical energy must be sacrificed, or the individual needlessly destroys half the possibilities of living. A great purpose in life, something that unifies the strands and threads of each day's thinking, something that takes the sting from the petty trials, sorrows, sufferings and blunders of life, is a great aid to Concentration. Soldiers in battle may forget their wounds, or even be unconscious of them, in the inspiration of battling for what they ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan

... were forbidden to the women on pain of death, viz., pork, bananas, cocoanuts, turtles, and certain kinds of fish, as the ulua, the humu, the shark, the hihimanu or sting-ray, etc. The men of the poorer class often formed a sort of eating club apart from their wives. These laws were rigorously enforced. At Honannau, Hawaii, two young girls of the highest rank, Kapiolani and Keoua, having been detected in the ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... talking rot. There is nothing very complex or stimulating about the passion of war, when men kill one another unseen; where you feel the sting in your heart which comes from God knows where, and you crumple up, with never a chance to have a go at the chap who has potted you from the trenches, or behind a rock, a thousand yards off. Mine is going ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... dead, than persecute the living. Schools do you call them? call them rather dunghills, where the viper of intolerance deposits her young, that when their teeth are cut and their poison is mature, they may issue forth, filthy and venomous, to sting the Catholic. But are these the doctrines of the Church of England, or of churchmen? No, the most enlightened churchmen are of a different opinion. What says Paley? "I perceive no reason why men of different religious persuasions should not sit upon the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... Nor ought we marvel if all the contrivances in nature be not, as far as we can judge, absolutely perfect, as in the case even of the human eye; or if some of them be abhorrent to our ideas of fitness. We need not marvel at the sting of the bee, when used against an enemy, causing the bee's own death; at drones being produced in such great numbers for one single act, and being then slaughtered by their sterile sisters; at the astonishing ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various

... sobbed Frances. "She is like a wasp—all sting." After a long pause devoted to drying her eyes, she continued, "But it has not been much ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major

... which he had once had an epicurean palate. The effort had ended in his being overpowered again by his horrors—the horrors in which he found himself staring at that end of things when no pleasure had spice, no debauchery the sting of life, and men, such as he, stood upon the shore of time shuddering and naked souls, watching the great tide, bearing its treasures, recede forever, and leave them to the cold and hideous dark. During one day of his ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... objects which can not be relinquished by those who will be satisfied with nothing short of a change in our political system. The consolation, however, which results from conscious rectitude, and the approving voice of my country, unequivocally expressed by its representatives, deprive their sting of its poison, and place in the same point of view the weakness ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... may such joy, chastised and pure, Beyond the bounds of earth endure; Nor pleasure in the wounded mind Shall leave a rankling sting behind. ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams

... you' money, yaas. I cannot sleep, I cannot eat, I only cry, and t'ink, and weesh fo' mon violon; and Minesse, an' de ol' woman too, dey mope an' look bad too, all for mon violon. I try fo' to use dat money, but eet burn an' sting lak blood money. I feel lak' I done sol' my child. I cannot go at l'opera no mo', I t'ink of mon violon. I starve befo' I live widout. My heart, he is broke, I ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar

... life—the life and vigour which a touch of frost gives to the autumn world in a country where the blood tingles to the dry, sweet sting of the air. Beautiful, and spacious, and buoyant, and lonely, the valley and the mountains seemed waiting, like a new-born world, to be peopled by man. It was as though all had been made ready for him—the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... pose, Darley. This is a compliment, I think; moreover, it's the reason most of all why I like you." He laughed in turn, unconsciously removing the sting from the observation following. "I can't see any other possible excuse for our being friends. We're as different as night ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge

... did not teach, nor did she believe, that the innocence of childhood required the certificate of the church. All the rest of her children had professed religion and received baptism according to the rites of the Baptist Church, but little William left in the mother's heart the sting of uncertainty. Had he lived long enough to transgress the Law and not repented? was to her an ever-present question of terrible import. Years rolled by without weakening this torture of apprehension that this little lamb of all ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James

... to be thinking, which was the castigation of his brains with every sting wherewith a native touchiness could ply immediate recollection, led him to conclude that he must bring Van Diemen to his senses, and Annette running ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... parents and his fellow-villagers; but once having joined his regiment, he is perhaps worse off than the foot-soldier. "He is thrown to the ground among thorns:—a scorpion wounds him in the foot, and his heel is pierced by its sting.—When his kit is examined,—his misery is at its height." No sooner has the fact been notified that his arms are in a bad condition, or that some article has disappeared, than "he is stretched on the ground—and overpowered with blows from a stick." This ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... Isidore tells of a little fly that is called Saura, and this fly betokens grace stirring beforehand. This kind of fly is said to be the enemy of all venomous worms, so that when he sees any worm (going) toward man to sting him when he sleeps in the wilderness; he flies before to the man, and lights upon his face, and bites him a little; and therethrough he wakes before the beast comes to sting him. By this Saura is understood grace that GOD sends to man against the temptations of the fiend, who often stings ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole

... his ears to catch the least sound to hint to him where his enemy was, for he knew that if he failed to discover him his first intimation of his proximity might well come in the shape of the white-hot sting of a bullet, ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon

... popularity with the command, and his hatred, if possible, grew more bitter. The sting of the blow he had received still rankled in his heart, and he swore sooner or later to have his revenge. His attempts to assassinate Calhoun in time of battle, so far had failed, and Calhoun's extreme wariness now usually kept them apart ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn

... 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 ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... colour swept into Harriet's face as Rosmore turned to her with a smile. Doubt and uncertainty had been hers a moment ago, and the sting of Crosby's words had hurt her; now this open declaration clothed her with a pleasant confusion, vindicated her presence in these rooms, and it was natural, perhaps, that there should be gratification in her heart that her former ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner

... many passions could conquer the fear of it. As for his father, he had not tasted death; he had not seen it; his death was but a word; and the grave was not deep. No, the grave was not deep. Ah, what sting lay in that thought!—what fresh sting ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine

... find out presently, Olaf. One I can warn you of, however—the sting of jealousy. Advancement such as yours draws eyes to you, not all of ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard

... 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 bare idea of his being jealous of ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins

... collect again from their ignominious flight, and it was observable that they were all laughing at one another in an accusatory manner, each feeling full of contempt for the pusillanimous behaviour of the others, while the looks of Morris might have given the whole party a conscious sting. ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn

... desire to reserve a part of a former self? Fortune had not favored his birth, but accident had thrown him in the way to be rich and therefore powerful. Accident! What could be more of an accident than life itself? Then came the last sting. The woman whom he loved, should she become his wife, would never know her name; his children—but how vain and foolish was such a questioning. Was his name worth preserving? Should he not rejoice in the thought that he had thrown it off? He stopped on ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read

... of pain and death, this noble contempt, so universal amongst the men of that time, deprived cruelty of its sting. Our degenerate race has scarcely a conception of the strength which made the men of past times find a pleasure even in pains, since they spurred their courageous souls to the highest pitch of heroism; since in such moments they felt themselves able to be more than men. Therefore sung ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer

... hearts shall feel a sting From ill we meet or good we miss, May touches of his memory bring 55 Fond healing, like ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth

... meant to have. The zest for it sparkled in his quick eyes as he rode briskly through the devious forest ways. Had Galors or any other dark-entry man met him now and chanced a combat, he would have bad it with a will, but he would have got off with a rough tumble and sting or two from the flat of the sword. The youth was too pleased with ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett

... my reach, While all the stars went blank. The smell of oil and death enveloped me, And I could feel The crouching figures straining at a crank, Knees under chins, and heads drawn sharply down, The heave and sag of shoulders, Sting of sweat; An eighth braced figure stooping to a wheel, Body to body in the stifling gloom, The sob and gasp of breath against an air Empty and damp and fetid as a tomb. With them I seemed to reel Beneath the spin and heel When combers took them fair, Bruising their bodies, ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen

... loved tenderly, by longing for my dear whom I might not see, by self-reproach because I had let the Spaniard go when I held him fast, and by the anger of my father and my brother. Indeed those days were so dark and bitter, for I was at the age when shame and sorrow sting their sharpest, that I wished that I were dead beside my mother. One comfort reached me indeed, a message from Lily sent by a servant girl whom she trusted, giving me her dear love and bidding me to be ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard

... for the baby moths are very fond of wax. It's not an easy matter to get in when the bees are not looking, but she manages it quite often; and when the little larvas hatch out of the eggs, they eat the wax and the mischief is done. When Mother Bee-Moth is seen the bees rush upon her and sting her to death. They have good cause to hate her, for the wax is precious, hard to make and to mould into the little cells. It is not pleasant to have some miserable worm eat the roof from your head. Oftentimes the bees are so discouraged ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody

... an additional sting to his humiliation, that he knew every servant in and about the house rejoiced at his discomfiture, and he imagined that there was a veiled smile of satisfaction, at his bruised visage and his notorious disgrace with the squire, on the face of every man he met outside, and of every ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty

... wouldn't you like to know where? Yah!" And to Alma's horror slapped her quite roundly across the cheek so that for an hour the sting, the shape of the red print of fingers, ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst

... thou bitter sky, Thou dost not bite so nigh As benefits forgot: Though thou the waters warp, Thy sting is not so sharp As friend remembered not. Heigh-ho! sing heigh-ho! unto the green holly: Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly: Then, heigh-ho, the holly! This ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... to them quite as amicably as to the young girls. He was so bold and gay, his cheeks were brown, his teeth fresh and white and his coal-black eyes glittered; he was a handsome young fellow and but twenty years old. The icy water did not sting him when he swam, he could turn around in it like a fish; he could climb as did no one, and he was as firm on the rocky walls as a snail—for he had good sinews and muscles that served him well in leaping—the cat had first taught him this, and later the chamois. One could not trust one's ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen

... has been defeated for re-election is not in a fit frame of mind to legislate for his people. There is a sting in defeat that tends to engender the feeling of resentment which often finds expression in the vote of such members against wholesome legislation. That same feeling often produces such a want of interest in proceedings ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith

... probably felt 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 ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed

... preserve her from his Wife's Jealousy, turned into a Heifer, Juno suspecting the Fact, obtained this Heifer of her Husband, and set Argus to watch over her. Jupiter wanting to visit his old Friend, sent Mercury to kill Argus; in revenge of which, Juno ordered a Gad-Bee to sting the poor Heifer; which thereupon growing mad, ran to Egypt, where she was again restored to the Shape of a Woman, and married to Osiris. The Feast of Isis was celebrated in Rome ten Days together by the Women, and was a time of ...
— The Lovers Assistant, or, New Art of Love • Henry Fielding

... not that he should put on paper that he believed in slavery, who, with treason, with murder, with cruelty infernal, hovered round that majestic man to destroy his life. He was himself the lifelong sting with which Slavery struck at Liberty, and he carried the poison that belonged to Slavery; and as long as this Nation lasts it will never be forgotten that we have had one Martyr-President—never, never while time ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... very rare in France. In Germany and England, on the other hand, where the antiquated laws against this perversion still prevail, homosexuality is extremely prominent, and its right to exist is vigorously championed. The law cannot suppress these impulses and passions; it can only sting them into active rebellion.[211] ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... lot, a fame petite, A brief campaign of sting and sweet Is plenty! Is enough! A sailor's business is the shore, A soldier's — balls. Who asketh more Must seek ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson

... May I tell you, Aunt Lily? Some of the others cannot bear to mention my poor Hal; but to me the worst of the sting is gone, since I ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... scenes had served to put Frank's conscience to sleep again. However, it received a sting, when, on the day of leaving Annapolis, he learned that the secessionist whose turkeys had been stolen, had, in revenge for his wrongs, quitted his farm, and gone ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge

... Into those days of peace the serpent of my Eden projected his sting. We were all sitting in the grove one morning when a rider dashed up to the inn and flung himself from his horse. 'Twas Tony Creagh, and he carried with him a placard which offered a reward of a hundred guineas for the arrest of one Kenneth Montagu, Esquire, who had, with other ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine

... an aged couple, in whose eyes Shone that deep light of mingled love and faith, Which makes the earth one room of paradise, And leaves no sting in death. ...
— Poems of Purpose • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... spur to prick the sides of his intent, and Hamlet, too, would be sure to see how apt ambition is to overleap itself, and so would blunt the sting of the desire. This monologue alone should have been sufficient to reveal to all critics the essential identity of Hamlet and Macbeth. Lady Macbeth, too, tells us that Macbeth left the supper table where he was entertaining the King, in order to indulge himself in this long monologue, and when ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... the leading man could be tied to the stick of his fellow behind, which was slewed round to the front for the purpose. Their wrists were also tied, some in front, others behind their backs. Secured thus, Hercules himself might have been reduced to obedience, especially if he had felt the frequent sting of the cruel lash that was laid on these captives, a lash whose power was made manifest by the numerous seams and scars which crossed and recrossed their backs and limbs. The women and children were deemed sufficiently ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne

... 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 light ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse

... into the background being satisfactorily accounted for by the French descent of her existing dynasty, by the visible deterioration in the royal manufacture of cigars, and, more than either, "by the tardiness of military promotion." This last grievance was the sting. "If justice had been done," exclaimed the new-feathered warrior, rising in his stirrups, and waving his hand, as if he was in the act of cleaving down a Moor, "I should long since have been a general. If I had been a general, the armies of Spain would long since ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... them to serve my end. 'Twill stand me in good stead now that I know This region well; I'll seek the hostile army And guide it hitherward by secret paths, To your destruction and to my salvation.— The serpent that you trample in the dust So arrogantly still retains its sting! ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen

... of a wasp at the finger-end announces itself to the brain as pain. The impression made by the sting travels, in the first place, with comparative slowness along the nerves affected; and only when it reaches the brain have we the fact of consciousness. Those who think most profoundly on this subject hold ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... just what had happened, what she had said. But now she felt the sting of the bay breeze in her face and Antonio's steady hand upon ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... sarcastic comments on the speeches and methods of Trumperton and his friends which tickled the House amazingly. But he did not make the mistake of pushing his personalities too far. To a speaker of a certain sort nothing is easier than to sting to madness. If he likes, his every word is barbed. Wounds so given fester; they are not easily forgiven;—it is essential to a politician that he should have his firmest friends among the fools; or his climbing days ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh

... stared into the face of the speaker, and quailed before the flash of something primitive and savage in the eyes that met her own. Under the sting of it, however, she found a first natural and moving word, as she ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... screened by the 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 ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.

... opened my lips to make one more attempt at reconciliation, by saying some pacifying words to her—when she planted that last sting in me. French flesh and blood (whatever English flesh and blood might have done) could bear no more. I silently turned my back on ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins

... charge, but Deerfoot could not wholly curb his anger. The chief, however, did not seem to feel the sting of the words, though more than one of his warriors, who had drawn up their horses and were looking on and listening, ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis

... 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

... all I know. It is never hot here - 86 in the shade is about our hottest - and it is never cold except just in the early mornings. Take it for all in all, I suppose this island climate to be by far the healthiest in the world - even the influenza entirely lost its sting. Only two patients died, and one was a man nearly eighty, and the other a child below four months. I won't tell you if it is beautiful, for I want you to come here and see for yourself. Everybody on the premises ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... find it necessary to make criticisms or suggestions to the accompanist, do this privately, not in the presence of the chorus. Much of the sting of a criticism frequently results from the fact that others have heard it, and very often if the matter is brought up with the utmost frankness in a private interview, no bad blood will result, but if a quarter as much be said in the presence ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens

... elected head, the abbot. The cenobitical life rapidly and necessarily superseded that of the solitary. In fact the monks were now no more solitaries than are the jackdaws in a cleft, or the bees in a hive, but unlike the jackdaws, they were under discipline, and unlike bees were without a sting. ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould

... is planted to beets and carrots and turnips. You mustn't step on it," my pleasant-voiced cousin admonished me. "And we will not go up very close to that little shed there. That is the bee-house. See all those hives! The bees will sometimes sting any one they don't know. Ad isn't afraid of them; I am not much afraid; they have never stung me. They sting Halstead like sport, if he goes up in front of the hives. Grandfather puts on a veil and some gloves and takes them ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens

... felt keenly the accusation that he had been nominated when his duty was due another; and he was aware that friends had given color to accusation by a zeal that was unseemly. He was pathetic in his anxiety to be very right; and only the assurance that Conkling was implacable took the sting out of the haughty presumption he encountered in that severe gentleman, whose egotism was so lofty it was ever imposing, when it would have been absurd ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various

... of personality! In that dread thought there lies, to most of us, all the sting of death and the victory of the grave. It seems, with such a fate in store, that immortality were futile, and life itself a mockery. Yet the idea, when dwelt upon, assumes an aspect of strange familiarity; it is an old friend, after all. Can we deny that all our sweetest hours ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer

... 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 ...
— The Sylvan Cabin - A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln and Other Verse • Edward Smyth Jones

... that this was the sting—this was the "pin in the lash," which had hurt her more than the lash. How dared Mrs. Lovejoy say a word about her own mother, who was certainly the best woman that ever lived, always excepting the good ...
— Little Prudy's Sister Susy • Sophie May

... the matter, however, which never entered his mind; there was only that general dissatisfaction with himself which is, though men try hard to deny the fact, none other than the supernatural sting of conscience. He tried "to lay to his soul the flattering unction" that he might, after all, be of use to Mrs. Vavasour, by using his power over her husband: but he knew in his secret heart that any move of his in that direction ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... and you are my home now; but, after all, I did want to see the old New England hills once more. One yearns for familiar scenes after years of war. I meant to have gone back and brought you here, away from the cold winters that sting, and bite, and kill. I hoped that, after rest, I might recover strength, and that you might, here escape the shadow ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... is often the real cause of the sting of inequality and of the keeping of men apart; until this is eradicated and replaced by the master passion of love—employer for employee and employee for employer—no agreements and no legislation, between the contending forces will serve the purpose. It was the master passion ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell

... Neaera, to the accompaniment of her lyre, sings one of Sappho's most passionate odes—whispers something in the ear of the brilliant vocalist, which visibly provokes a witty repartee, with a special sting in it for Horace himself, at which the little man winces—for have there not been certain love-passages of old between Neaera and himself? The wine circulates freely. Maecenas warms, and drops, with the ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin

... given,—not paid," said Crawley; and as he spoke something of the black cloud came back on his face. "And I am well aware how hard Mrs Arabin strove to take away from the alms she bestowed the bitterness of the sting of eleemosynary aid. If you please, Arabin, we will not talk any more of that. I can never forget that I have been a beggar, but I need not make my beggary the matter of conversation. I hope the Holy Land has ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... spinal cord; the philosopher dropped; but presently came to. 'Adzooks! I'll bend or break you! Up, up, and I'll run you home for this.' But wonderful to tell, his legs refused to budge; all sensation had left them. But a huge wasp happening to sting his foot, not him, for he felt it not, the leg incontinently sprang into the air, and of itself, cut all manner of capers. Be still! Down with you!' But the leg refused. 'My arms are still loyal,' thought ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... mosquito so well that it makes you fidget and fret and fume all night, and robs you of your rest. Then the sun rises and frightens the mosquitoes away, and you think that's what the sun is for and are thankful; but why the deuce a mosquito should sting you, you can't make out!—mystery ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... help of a green branch, we could not keep off the swarms, and around the horses' eyes were dozens of them. Several menacing hornets also troubled us. They are there so fierce that they can easily sting a man or ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray

... third mate was as brave as steel, and did not think a bit about his good looks; but the sting, somehow or other, struck deeper than ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston

... left so little sting, but were followed by closer and closer rapprochement between the United States and Great Britain, was fortunate in view of the failure of the Anglo-American Arbitration Treaty. This had been negotiated by Mr. Cleveland's able Secretary of ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews

... upon his bed. The sorrow Mr. Beaufort had not relieved was now at his own hearth. But there were parents and nurses, and great physicians, and skilful surgeons, and all the army that combine against Death, and there were ease, and luxury, and kind eyes, and pitying looks, and all that can take the sting from pain. And thus, the very night on which Catherine had died, broken down, and worn out, upon a strange breast, with a feeless doctor, and by the ray of a single candle, the heir to the fortunes once destined to her son wrestled also with the grim Tyrant, who ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... 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 result ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... money. Neither was Lady Gould likely to be pacified by her son-in-law's remark that she was now "in an advanced age"; while his suggestion that his "noble" family would be of far more advantage to his children than that of the respectable Goulds would have the added sting of undeniable truth. ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden

... their evening song, the flowers closing their bright eyes, the wind whispering "good night" to the shimmering, graceful elms—all was peace, and the hot, angry heart grew calm and still. Bitter tears rose to the burning eyes—tears that fell like rain, and seemed to take away the sharpest sting of her pain. ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme

... 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 he ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood

... white blotches of various forms. A representation of this eruption is given in Colored Plate III, Fig. 17. It is appropriately named nettle-rash, from its resemblance to the irritation caused by the sting of a nettle. There is the same sharp, tingling sensation and a similar white wheal or blotch, caused by the muscular spasm of the corium, a layer ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... his side, his face toward the door. His arms and legs began to sting with the sensation known as sleep. He was glad his father had overheard the initial conversation. A wave of terror ran over him at the thought of being set ashore while Jane went on. Still he could have sent a British water ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath

... for sartin, sir, which end it was; but you said they did it so sharp, sir, that it killed a man out-and-out before the doctor could 'stract the sting." ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn

... front of my trembling sister. The captain was a brute, and his wife was hardly better than a brute. I feared that she, supported by her husband, would again lay violent hands upon Flora, knowing that such a course would sting me deeper than a ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic

... work, reported the real state of the case to the Pope. His holiness thereupon turned to Pompeo and said: "You are a most abandoned wretch, but one thing I can assure you of—you have stirred a snake that will sting you, and that is what ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... faith in this substituted work of Christ, because it has an atoning virtue, and can pacify a perturbed and angry conscience; can wash out the stains of guilt that are grained into it; can extract the sting of sin which ulcerates and burns there. It is the idea of expiation and satisfaction that we now single out, and press upon your notice. Sin must be expiated,—expiated either by the blood of the criminal, or by the blood of his Substitute. You must either die for your ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd

... the Long Vacation. They told me I ought to read this book and that. Harvey Anderson used to come primed with arguments. I could always overthrow them, but when I came to glory in doing so, perhaps I prayed less. Anyway, they left a sting. It might be that I doubted my own sincerity, from knowing that I had got to argue, chiefly because I liked to be looked on as ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... realization of his weakness, when he had gotten, as she believed, beastly drunk at the moment so much depended on him the day of the two-mile sweepstakes, had hurt deeply. Somehow, even his magnificent ride and the fact that, in spite of his condition, he won the race, had not taken the sting away. She had thought the Ramblin' Kid was real—rough and crude, perhaps, but all man, rugged-hearted and honest. Sometimes she wondered if the queer unexplainable antagonism between herself and the sensitive young cowboy had not, in a measure, been ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman

... or horned asp is not more real. Unbelievable,—those,—unless you had seen them; no fable could have been coined out of any human brain so dreadful, within its own poor material sphere, as that blue-lipped serpent—working its way sidelong in the sand. As real, but with sting of eternal death—this worm that dies not, and fire that is not quenched, within our souls or around them. Eternal death, I say—sure, that, whatever creed you hold;—if the old Scriptural one, Death of perpetual banishment from ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin

... heard him tearing the branches savagely and muttering, 'Thanks to God, it's the blue beech.' I shall never forget how he turned and held to my hand and put the whip on me as I lay in the snow, and how the sting of it started my blood. Up I sprang in a jiffy and howled and danced. The stout rod bent and circled on me like a hoop of fire. Then I turned and tried to run while he clung to my coat tails, and every step I felt the stinging grab of the beech. There ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller

... approval greeted this malicious sally, followed by the retailing of various anti-American anecdotes that made up in sting what they lacked in delicacy. These showed no signs of abatement until, slightly nettled, Selwyn put ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter

... 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 caught ...
— The Boy Allies At Verdun • Clair W. Hayes









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