"Sting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the kisses that sting, With the thief's mouth red from the feast, With the blood on the hands of the king, And the lie on the lips ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... The sting of these words moved him more than a blow would have done; but as he knelt beside her, I noted there was little of the old ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... perfectly true), and kind of half-listening to the man with the electric machine, declaring: "Ground is the first conductor; water is the second conductor," and you'll be thinking how slippery the grass is to walk on, when a face in the crowd will, as it were, sting your memory. "I ought to know that man," says you to yourself. "Now, who the mischief is he? Barker? No, 't isn't Barker, Barkdull? No. Funny I can't think of his name. Begins with B I'm pretty ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... influence by some liberal candidate? And if it were right that it should be accepted by any liberal candidate,—then, why not by him? The logic of this argument seemed to him to be perfect. He felt something like a sting of reproach as he told himself that in truth this great offer was made to him, not on account of the excellence of his politics, but because he had been instrumental in saving Lord Brentford's son-in-law from the violence of garrotters. But he crushed ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... at every breath you draw, to Him, who says, 'Him that cometh unto Me, I will in no wise cast out'; and 'He that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.' Joyfully sing the believer's song, 'O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory? Thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ!' Let your surviving friends triumph over you, as one faithful unto death as one triumphing in ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... earth groaned for ten years under the sad calamity, and there was apparently no hope. But whether scourged, or lacerated, or imprisoned, or burned, the martyrs showed patience, faith, and moral heroism, and invoked death to show its sting, and the ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... surroundings and by Carminow's words, was assailed again by the thought of her, but not as keenly as before. Shocked senses had been responsible for that first keenness, and imagination, however aided, could not sting to the same depth. He thought as he fell asleep of Blanche and Cloom. Life had ugly, unthought-of things in it, but, thinking of her steady radiance, he could not believe that any fate would dare to dim ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... grey ones, a little further off; that she had left yes, for the last time; and Fleda's thoughts went forward swiftly to the time of the promise "Then shall be brought to pass the saying which is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ." And then, as she looked, the ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Rhoda beside herself with wrath. In writing it he knew it would come into her hands; he hoped to sting her with jealousy. So Mrs. Widdowson had done him a service. He was free to devote himself to Agnes Brissenden, with her six languages, her extreme ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... lonely life, lived more in shadow than in sunshine, and with every temptation to the selfishness which is so apt to follow self-dependence, and the bitterness that to a proud spirit so often makes the sting of poverty. Yet he was neither selfish nor bitter; only a little reserved, silent, ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... coffee is not laborious, and the harvest much more easily gathered than one of corn. The negro, while plucking the coffee, stands erect, and the tree protects him from the heat of the sun. His only danger is from poisonous snakes, and a sting from one of these is a very ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... one, with the sting of sleet and hail in its drops, pelted about by gusts that ruffled up the puddles into ripples, all set on end, like the feathers of a frightened hen. The hens themselves stood disconsolately sheltering under the bank, mostly on one leg, as if they preferred to keep up the slightest possible ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... storing in little granaries, mounted on four posts, men, women, and children being all equally busy. The quantity of gigantic nettles (Urtica heterophylla) on the skirts of these maize fields is quite wonderful: their long white stings look most formidable, but though they sting virulently, the pain only lasts half an hour or so. These, however, with leeches, mosquitos, peepsas, and ticks, sometimes keep the traveller in a ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... collided with an iceberg. Glittering coldness is an admirable surface to watch; but not an altogether comfortable one upon which to rest. The touch set her to stinging, although she realized that the sting was out of all proportion to the touch. She was silent, and ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... the tickling sting of snuff; Yet all their claim to wisdom is—a puff; Lord Foplin smokes not—for his teeth afraid: Sir Tawdry smokes not—for he wears brocade. Ladies, when pipes are brought, affect to swoon; They love no smoke, except the smoke of Town; But courtiers hate the puffing tube—no matter, ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... no sting now to mar Dotty's pleasure in her new possession. Her troubles seemed to be over; life was blossoming into beauty ...
— Dotty Dimple at Her Grandmother's • Sophie May
... of the bond-servant, leaving the sting of innuendo behind him, had turned all eyes toward the traveller, and Bagby but voiced the curiosity of the roomful when he inquired, "What did Fownes call ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... though our Lord felt it not as 'shame', nor was wounded by the revilings of the people in the way of any correspondent resentment or sting, which yet we may be without blame, yet he suffered from the same as sin, and as an addition to the guilt of his persecutors, which could not but aggravate the burden which he had taken on himself, as being sin in its ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... without soft concealments. Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor's terms imposed upon the vanquished. It would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory upon which terms of peace would rest, not permanently, but only as upon quicksand. Only a peace between equals can last. Only a peace the very principle of which is equality and a common participation ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... back for us!—"What delighted me in the intercourse of my friends, was the talk, the laughter, the good turns we did each other, the common study of the masters of eloquence, the comradeship, now grave now gay, the differences that left no sting, as of a man differing with himself, the spice of disagreement which seasoned the monotony of consent. Each by turns would instruct or listen; impatiently we missed the absent friend, and savoured the joy of his return. ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... by Tagus bred; for oft The breeder of these beasts to war assigned, When first on trees burgeon the blossoms soft Pricked forward with the sting of fertile kind, Against the air casts up her head aloft And gathereth seed so from the fruitful wind And thus conceiving of the gentle blast, A wonder strange and ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... but midway in the plot it is revealed to them that they are being tried—, with the result that they feign faithlessness, play the part out and at the close declare their knowledge, turning the sting against the authors of the unworthy comedy. The contents may be ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... again, mother, that I cannot. You need not think you can bait me with honied words. The insidious bee that fluttered around the flowers of my once happy affections has left its sting-wound ...
— The Black-Sealed Letter - Or, The Misfortunes of a Canadian Cockney. • Andrew Learmont Spedon
... fire-weed? But such incongruities are not 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 ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... conjectures. The subject, I find by my feelings since I began this letter, is too agonizing,—too bewildering. It carries back my thoughts to a time of misery, to which distance, instead of soothing it into apathy, only adds a new sting. ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... clattering and jolting toward the lurid sunset that burned upon the edge of the plain. Jack-pines and scattered birches stood out hard and black against the glare, the rails blazed with crimson fire and faded as the ruddy light changed to cold green, and there was a sting of frost ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... miss," said James, almost whimpering, "the trouble I've had already, and the anxiety and worry, not to speak of the pain, miss. Them wasps, their sting is very sharp, and even my lady's blue-bag did not remove them at once. And then the show I am, miss, in this respectable house! But that is nothing to what poor cook felt when the toad poisoned the bread. And there was Mary Ann, the second housemaid; Miss Irene caught her and put two ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... mother took the sting out of the rector's speech, which was not intended to have any sting, and was only a stray gleam of insight out of a confused realisation of the state of affairs; but it was so true that it was difficult to believe it was that, ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... a rough sneer, and the Black Colonel made the sting sharper by adding, "You'll be thinking it an assured capture, with the ends of the Pass sealed by red-coats and its sides so steep that only those tough sheep ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... 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
... know Only 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 ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... demolished—she heard an odd sort of chuckling laugh up in the air, and, looking up, saw that the ball had seated itself, very quietly, in its old place on the top of the cabinet. How her tail smarted! it was worse a great deal than the sting. She was just trying to curl it round to lick it, when the door opened, and in came the housekeeper! She had not advanced many steps when the broken china caught her eye; her back was towards the mirror, so she did not see that—but she ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin
... dealer of such a hurt I felt to be my right. Though a man of small beginnings and of a stock which such as you call common, I have a pride which few of your blood can equal. I could not work, or sleep or eat with such a sting in my breast as she had planted there. To rid myself of it, I determined to kill her, and I did. How? Oh, that was easy, though it has proved a great stumbling-block to the detectives, as I knew ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... not ridden 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 ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... himself open to the charge of desiring to turn poetry into sermons. But it is bare justice to point out that such a charge cannot fairly be brought against him; or that it can only be brought with such qualifications as rob it of its sting. ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... Williamson, to provide for his wants; and, after acting as his solicitor, attended him to the last. But Lord Lovat felt deeply the circumstance of his having been convicted by his own servants: "It is shocking," he observed, "to human nature. I believe that they will carry about with them a sting that will accompany them to their grave; yet I wish ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... would again be running parallel, 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 case the reports were garbled; exactly as at a later date ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... of a bee's sting," says Tit Bits, "is only one thirty-second of an inch." We are grateful for this information because when we are being stung we are always too ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... find. I have already told you that 'chance' was a word I wished to keep and use. Let us then examine exactly what it means, and see whether it ought to be such a terrible bugbear to us. I fancy that squeezing the thistle boldly will rob it of its sting. ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... whoever you be, take care lest you foster the serpent that will diffuse its subtle poison over the cherished blossoms which you are, or ought to be, training for heaven, and leave a sting which may pierce your own hearts. One thing we may be sure of, that the faults which we, through negligence or weak indulgence, leave unchecked in our children in early life, a wiser though severer hand than ours will use the rod of correction to eradicate. And can this really be love, that ...
— Aunt Mary • Mrs. Perring
... ever spent at Sandypoint, came back to her full of bitter meaning now: "Whatever the future brings, don't blame me." The future had brought loneliness, and poverty, and despair—all her own fault—her own fault. That was the bitterest sting of all—it was her own work from first to last. She had dreaded poverty, she had bartered her heart, her life, and him in her dread of it, and lo! such poverty as she had never dreamed of had come upon her. If she had only been true to herself and her ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... sting on this "human face divine," already defaced by the bloody sweat, and to be yet more by the mocking reed, and smiting hand and piercing thorn. The vision of the prophet seven hundred years before becomes ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed
... within me!'—'Father,' cried my son, "is this your fortitude?'—'Fortitude, child! Yes, he shall see I have fortitude! Bring me my pistols. I'll pursue the traitor. While he is on earth I'll pursue him. Old as I am, he shall find I can sting him yet. The villain! The perfidious villain!'—I had by this time reached down my pistols, when my poor wife, whose passions were not so strong as mine, caught me in her arms. 'My dearest, dearest husband,' cried she, 'the bible is the only weapon that is fit for your old ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... alone that bring The curse, the ravage, and the downward doom, Although to these full oft the yawning tomb Owes deadly surfeit; but a keener sting, A more immortal agony will cling To the half fashioned sin which would assume Fair Virtue's garb; the eye that sows the gloom With quiet seeds of Death henceforth to spring What time the sun of passion burning fierce Breaks through the kindly cloud of circumstance; The bitter word, and ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... "What difficulty we find in pronouncing that word! One would think that there was a sting in the very name of death: and so there is, Miss Sliver, until God gives us the victory, ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
... by Vesey's boldness and dazed by his terrifying doctrines, reply defensively "we are slaves," the harsh retort "you deserve to remain so," was, without doubt, intended to sting if possible, their abject natures into sensibility on the subject of their wrongs, to galvanize their rotting souls back to manhood, and to make their base and sieve-like minds capable of receiving and retaining, at ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke
... as the AEgyptians us'd by Bees, &c.] The AEgyptians represented their kings, (many of whose names were Ptolemy) under the hieroglyphick of a bee, dispensing honey to the good and virtuous, and having a sting for the ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... those words—paused in a momentary terror. The sting of Mrs. Lecount's pity had nearly irritated her into forgetting her assumed character, and ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... on him even more than the signature was a little sting he had been silent on—the phrase "married relation"—What an idiot it made him seem as her lover! If Sue had written that in satire, he could hardly forgive her; if in suffering—ah, ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... did, sir; 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 sting of the woman's words looked like overwhelming the man's restraint. But the black shadow of his brows suddenly lightened, and again he shrugged his heavy shoulders with a ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... 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 Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... dem sassy boys didn't pleg me—say I ain't got no mammy—ur daddy—ur nothin'. But dey won't say it ter me ag'in, not whiles I got dis whup in my han'! She sting lak a rattlesnake, she do! She's a daisy an' a half! Cher-whack! You gwine sass me any mo', you grea' big over-my-size coward, you? Take dat! An' dat! An' dat! Now run! Whoop! ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... for he never knew before that bumble-bees were of any use, but then he had never had much to do with them. One day when he was playing he had caught a bee in his little paws and had received a sting, and he never forgot how sore his paws were and how they swelled so that he was unable to climb for several days. Since that time he had always made it a practice to move away when a ...
— Hazel Squirrel and Other Stories • Howard B. Famous
... 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
... mile along the line. A reconnoitering force of Federal cavalry had ridden too close to the rifle pits of the Confederates, and, as Morrison himself expressed it, "the hornets came out and began to sting." ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... now again. I am a terribly nervous person, and hate and dread literary scrapes, or indeed disputes of any sort. But I ought not to have worried you. Just tell me if you think this sort of preface will take the sting from the title, for I dare say Mr. ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... the nectar of the Loves, rash drinkers of the strong unmixed wine of beauty? let us run far away, as far as we have strength to go, and in calm I will pour sober offerings to Cypris the Placable. But if haply there likewise I be caught by the sting, be you wet with chill tears and doomed for ever to bear deserved pain; since from you, alas! it was that we fell into all this ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... 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
... doth the little honey bee In self defense excel. She gives her life for one sharp sting Yet hath she ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... as to this special brand of philanthropy, but I was touched by the grief of her disappointed hopes. I knew the particular sting. At the same time my hand twitched to shake her for going into this thing in so impractical a way. Teaching and preaching in a foreign land may include romance, but I've yet to hear where the most ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... how could I ever brush the flies off my sides and my hind legs any more? You who have tails just whisk the flies off without thinking about it, and you can't tell what a torment it is to have them settle upon you and sting and sting, and have nothing in the world to lash them off with. I tell you it is a lifelong wrong, and a lifelong loss; but thank heaven, ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... him shy and sensitive in daily intercourse with strangers, and as to criticism, he freely confessed that a midge of dispraise could sting, while applause gave him little pleasure. Yet no poet altered his verses so much in obedience to censure unjustly or irritatingly stated, yet in essence just. He readily rejected some of his "Juvenilia" on Mr Palgrave's suggestion. The same friend tells how ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... Catholic brethren? Has 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 ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... Heraclianus, and by their standard measures such men as Aurelian, and 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, ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... hideous tangle to owe itself to the joyous gambollings of the firemen's mascot dog. And there was more to it than the hopeless smashing of the Saturday's plans. Into the midst of the mordant reflections, and adding a sting which was all its own, came the thought of this newest obligation laid upon him by his father and his father's wife. They had taken him in and were loading him down with kinsman gifts of care and loving-kindness, while his purpose had been—must ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... shrieked around the corners of lightless 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 ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... - pardon my saying so. Not at all. The sting of the whip will make us move faster. Orders are issued already for the reinforcement and reorganisation of the army. General McClellan is to take command here; and we will get ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... we recur to them? They are passed, and as we are again friends and dear cousins the sting of them ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... she thought of nothing but her mother's pain. No consciousness of self interposed between her and her filial service; then, as the weeks passed, little blighted hopes began to stir and ache in her breast; defeated ambitions raised their heads as if to sting her; unattainable delights teased her by their very nearness; by the narrow line of separation that lay between her and their realization. It is easy, for the moment, to tread the narrow way, looking neither to the right nor left, ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... suffering and death unto us. So that the death of a Christian is henceforth to be regarded as the brazen serpent of Moses, [Num. 21:8] which indeed hath in all things the appearance of a serpent, yet is quite without life, without motion, without venom, without sting. Even so the righteous seem, in the sight of the unwise, to die; but they are in peace. We resemble them that die, nor is the outward appearance of our dying unlike that of others; but the thing itself is different, because for us death is dead. In like manner ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... which immediately he gives you, it is thought he taxes Lucan, who followed too much the truth of history, crowded sentences together, was too full of points, and too often offered at somewhat which had more of the sting of an epigram, than of the dignity and state of an heroic poem. Lucan used not much the help of his heathen deities: There was neither the ministry of the gods, nor the precipitation of the soul, nor the fury of a prophet (of which my author speaks), in his Pharsalia; ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... like scorpions, containing stings with which to "hurt men"—operating in the religious world—symbolize their position as propagators of a false faith. Thus they are set forth in their two-fold character—as invincible warriors and as the zealous professors of a delusion, whose sting was like that of a scorpion when ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... the quay were deserted, except for one lane, down which sleepy passengers were coming in twos and threes to catch the boat, which was chafing and grinding against the timbers of the jetty and pouring from its twin-funnels dense volumes of smoke to take the sting ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... raging inwardly and grumbling outwardly was the normal condition of Ursus. He was the malcontent of creation. By nature he was a man ever in opposition. He took the world unkindly; he gave his satisfecit to no one and to nothing. The bee did not atone, by its honey-making, for its sting; a full-blown rose did not absolve the sun for yellow fever and black vomit. It is probable that in secret Ursus criticized Providence a good deal. "Evidently," he would say, "the devil works by a spring, and the wrong that God does is having let go the trigger." He approved of none but ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... his father, he would have been possessed by a secret joy. Not so, however, Prince Michael. Nothing in all his merciless life had hurt this man of shadows like the defection of his son. Nor did the rolling years soften the sting of loss. Rather, as, little by little, the mantle of loneliness was drawn closer and closer about him, muffling him at last even from contact with the companions of his relaxation and license, the hardness and the bitterness in him increased, till something of it was surmised ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... them climbing down and down over the rough, sharp rocks, toward the caverns of the dwarfs, while the little tongues of flame shoot out at them from the fissures, as if they were trying to catch and burn and sting them, just as they shoot out from between the black, charred sticks ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... have left them to take, anyhow," said a voice,—and "That's so," chorused the crowd; and the whistle sounding, the Captain, whose reign was over, departed, hard-hit and growling, but left, so to speak, his sting behind him: for the last of his speech had one terrible ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • 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
... advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous," and to Him she went with her sin and sorrow; she applied anew to the pardoning, peace- speaking blood of Christ—that "blood of sprinkling that speaketh better things than that of Abel;" and thus the sting of conscience was taken away and her peace restored, and she was soon resting quietly on her pillow, for, "so He ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... [sate] sat slay slew slain slide slid slidden, slid sling slung slung slink slunk slunk smite smote smitten speak spoke spoken spin spun spun spring sprang, sprung sprung stand stood stood stave stove (staved) (staved) steal stole stolen stick stuck stuck sting stung stung stink stunk, stank stunk stride strode stridden strike struck struck, stricken string strung strung strive strove striven swear swore sworn swim swam or swum swum swing swung swung take took ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... inevitable, my lord,' said Cargrim, preparing to drive his sting into the bishop, 'and certainly, the sooner Mr Gabriel is advanced to the living the better it will be ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... her, a smile of triumph on her lips; but with the exception of myself the cabinet was empty, though a murmuring crowd filled the rooms without. It was then, and only then, she realised that the victory was not all hers, and felt the sting of the Parthian arrow shot by the Queen. Her cheeks burned red, and I saw the hand that held her fan tremble like a leaf in the wind. Then with an effort she recovered herself, and with another glance at me, full of superb disdain, swept from the room. As for me, my last hope had ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... was standing bareheaded now at the edge of the cliff, watching the flight of the bird. It was delightful to see the faint pink come back to her cheeks with the sting of the salt wind. Nevertheless, I had an idea in my mind that it was not wholly for her health's sake that Lady ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... never have reward, Unlesse it be with sting of conscience; And thats a torment worse than Sisipus, That rowles a ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... been getting after me a bit," agreed Uncle Andy, dealing firmly with his own assailants, now that the Babe was all right. "But this jab under the eye is the only one that matters. Here, see if you can get hold of the sting." ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... their minds a picture of a creature somewhat like the flying tigers of Hodell, except that the color was black, shading off to iridescent green at the extremities. Also, it was armed with a short and heavy, but very sharp, sting. ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... been depicting lasts with but little abatement until October, when the night frosts begin to sting, bronzing the grasses, and ripening the leaves of the creeping heathworts along the banks of the stream to reddish purple and crimson; while the flowers disappear, all save the goldenrods and a few daisies, that continue ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... act Roma seemed to feel a sting on her arm where the Baron had touched it, and she was conscious of colouring up when the ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... disappointment as a lesson, we soon take the sting out of it. A spider will teach us that. He is watching for a fly, and away the nimble fellow flies. The spider upon this runs round his net to see whether there be any holes, and to mend them. When doing so, he comes upon an old body of one ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... again; but there was no sting in what she said: "I guess you have made up your mind already that the Up and Doing Club is the one Helen ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... as usual, my husband was in the same danger, I became ill with influenza, my friends continued to die of wounds, my relations to be killed one by one; but in all this there was no pain: the sting, the anguish, had gone out of every single thing ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley
... whatsoever is evil, evil just because it is enacted and does not merely occur, passes within the reach of knowledge and understanding, and in the measure that it passes into the light, not merely loses its sting and its force, but is convertible and converted into a strengthening condition of that which in its first appearance it seemed merely to thwart. Even regress is seen to be a necessary incident in progress, and the seasons ...
— Progress and History • Various
... and appeared to put that author upon a level with Warburton, 'Nay, (said Johnson,) he has given him some smart hits to be sure; but there is no proportion between the two men; they must not be named together. A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.' BOSWELL. Johnson in his Preface to Shakespeare (Works, v. 141) wrote:—'Dr. Warburton's chief assailants are the authors of The Canons of Criticism, and of The Revisal of Shakespeare's ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... for 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! Words of ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... the meanings of untold desires Should charm thy pain of one faint sting, I will arise amid the scorching fires, ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... on hearing such interior replies, to a general consideration of regret, and was prepared, if any honest publisher should have come whistling through that wood, with an offer proper to the occasion, namely, to produce no less than five volumes on the Nature of Regret, its mortal sting, its bitter-sweetness, its power to keep alive in man the pure passions of the soul, its hints at immortality, its memory of Heaven. But the wood was empty of publishers. The offer did not come. The moment was lost. ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... you make it so," put in Polly. "I like all kinds of little creatures so long as they don't bite or sting, and some of those, like bees, for example, I like, though I don't want them to get too near me. Of course when it comes to rattlesnakes or copperheads, or such, I am afraid of them, but these little ...
— Three Little Cousins • Amy E. Blanchard
... was nearly a mile from the sea, but the breath of it was always strong at the windows and doors in the early morning, and when there were heavy "southwesters" blowing in the winter, the wind brought the sharp sting of sand to her cheek, and the rain an odd taste of salt to her lips. On this particular December afternoon, however, as she stood in the doorway, it seemed to be singularly calm; the southwest trades blew but faintly, and scarcely ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... were nights when I awoke with a pain at my heart that made me hold my breath. I did not dare move. After perhaps ten minutes of dread, I would shift my position an inch at a time. Less frequently I felt this sting in the daytime, and believed I was dying while my friends were talking to me. I never mentioned these experiences to a human being; indeed, though a medical man was among my companions, I cunningly deceived him ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... in sight, almost on the crest of the high ground. There she stood for a moment, one hand clutching at her errant hair, the other shielding her eyes from the sting of the rain. He heard her cry, as Heritage had heard her, but since the wind was blowing towards him the sound came louder and fuller. Again she cried, and then stood motionless with her hands above her head. It was only for an instant, for the next he saw she had turned ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... dance around that. In other parts of Ireland, the boys had a mischievous habit of running through the streets with bundles of nettles, with which they struck the face and hands of every one they met. The sting of nettle, perhaps you know, is a very uncomfortable pain. The same people are very superstitious, and they believed that the power of the Evil Eye was greater on the first of May than at any other time; ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... had brought up even Helen Starratt with a round turn. One might have called them both peasants with equal temerity. No, Hilmer had not made that point consciously, and therein lay its sting. ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... dreadfully. At first they knew not which way to get rid of them. Their men, Pascoe, Sam, and Jowdie, seeing the condition they were in, landed from the canoe, and made large fires in the form of a ring, and they laid down in the midst of them and slept till daylight. The sting of a black ant is quite as painful ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... blood. List! list, O list! If thou did'st ever thy dear father love,— 'Tis given out that sleeping in my orchard A serpent stung me. So the whole ear of Denmark Is by a forged process of my death Rankly abused; but know thou, noble youth, The serpent that did sting thy father's life ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... of a little child? Would it not suffice to make the most irksome work pleasant, if we could look up and discern the Father's good pleasure and smile of approval? Would it not suffice to rob pain of its sting, if we could detect the Father's hands adjusting the heat of the furnace? Would it not suffice to shed a light across the dark mystery of death, if we felt that the Father was waiting to lead us through the shadows ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... The sting in his voice had cured me. I never was a weeper. I sat up, my face blazing, and stared at him. He'd got me to hand over to the cop, but he hadn't got me ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... with a detached air. Trent's attitude toward her amused him. It was more deferential and admiring than infatuated. . . . Whatever her charm, she was no longer in her first youth, and only unripe fruit could sting that senescent palate. But the other two! Clavering smiled sardonically. Dinwiddie, hanging on her every word, was hardly eating. He was a very handsome man, in spite of his shining pate and heavy white ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... urging. To an American horse accustomed to the prairies there is no spur like the yell of an Indian; for he knows that along with it usually comes the shock of a bullet, or the sting of a barbed shaft. ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... with the incessant hum in various notes, now the busy hum of the working bee flying quickly off, then the blaring of the lazy drone, and the excited buzz of the bees on guard protecting their property from the enemy and preparing to sting. On the farther side of the fence the old bee-keeper was shaving a hoop for a tub, and he did not see Levin. Levin stood still in the midst of the beehives and ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... would bring bad luck. The same if you shook the table-cloth after sundown. And he said if a man owned a beehive and that man died, the bees must be told about it before sun-up next morning, or else the bees would all weaken down and quit work and die. Jim said bees wouldn't sting idiots; but I didn't believe that, because I had tried them lots of times myself, and they wouldn't ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... evil is like that serpent of the Indies whose dwelling is the leaf of a plant which cures its sting; it presents, in nearly every case, the remedy by the side of the suffering it has caused. For example, the man whose life is one of routine, who has his business cares to claim his attention upon rising, visits at such an hour, loves at another, can lose ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... Garrick—alvay the vay I go ven I haf the greatest 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
... anticipated puncture more perceptible when it should come at last. He would have worn it on all his fingers in succession had the conformation of his robust hand admitted of its being placed on any but the slenderest. Thousands of times he could have sworn that he felt the admonitory sting; thousands of times he turned the trinket round and round with desperate impatience; but Aurelia's form remained as invisible, her thoughts as inscrutable, as before. His great dread was that he might be pricked in his sleep, on which account he would sit up watching ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... but you, Senorita Perfecta!" cried Rita; but the sting was gone from her tone, and she had wholly forgotten her moment of spite. "Here! here is mine. Behold me, a gallant of the court! I advance, I bow—but my cloak, where is my cloak? Quick, Marguerite, the ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... Bishops. But no man had in larger measure that evil courage which braves and even courts disgust and hatred. No decencies restrained him: his spite was implacable: his skill in finding out the vulnerable parts of strong minds was consummate. All his great contemporaries felt his sting in their turns. Once it inflicted a wound which deranged even the stern composure of William, and constrained him to utter a wish that he were a private gentleman, and could invite Mr. Howe to a short interview behind Montague House. As yet, however, Howe was reckoned among ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... it had not occurred to her. But now that it was done, it was not in her present fury against all the world to disclaim intention to insult so small a part of it. Glad of an excuse to outrage some one, any one,—and, even then, preferably Sissy,—to make her sister share some of that hurt and sting and smart that burned within herself, she met Sissy's ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... sting of an insect or the thorn of a plant. It is the sting or thorn which here is considered in prison ...
— A Little Book of Filipino Riddles • Various
... he, doing here on the Atlantic? Two years ago 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 ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... conflict the germs of which may be detected as far back as the fatal crime of the Polish Partition in the eighteenth century. The policy of Germanisation in Austria has been gradually undermined by causes which it would take too long to enumerate, but its sting has survived in the maintenance of a foreign policy which treats 26,000,000 Slavs as a mere annexe of militant Germanism and as "gun-fodder" for the designs of Berlin; while in Hungary the parallel policy of Magyarisation has increased in violence from year to year, poisoning the ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... if by a sting. He saw that some one had betrayed his plan to the officers. Even fur traders were standing under arms. To this day it is not known who secretly warned the fort of Pontiac's conspiracy; but the most reliable ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... The sting of these closing words was sharp. It was not the first time Mr. Birtwell had heard his wife use them, and they never failed to shock his fine sense ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... an instance in proof,' Colney said. He waved hand at the house. His meaning was hidden; evidently he wanted victims. Sight of Lakelands had gripped him with the fell satiric itch; and it is a passion to sting and tear, on rational grounds. His face meanwhile, which had points of the handsome, signified a smile asleep, as if beneath a cloth. Only those who knew him well were aware of the claw-like alertness under the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... perseverance, rather above than below the average level of the population of the mother country. The aboriginal peasantry, on the contrary, were in an almost savage state. They never worked till they felt the sting of hunger. They were content with accommodation inferior to that which, in happier countries, was provided for domestic cattle. Already the potato, a root which can be cultivated with scarcely any art, industry, or capital, and which cannot ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... from the silence of their cotemporaries, is, that they never met again as friends. But it is consoling to remember that in his grave, the survivor rendered him that tribute of justice which almost takes the undying sting out of the philippic of 1783; it is well to know, also, that one of Grattan's latest wishes, thirty years after the death of Flood, when he felt his own last hours approaching, was, that it should be known that he "did not speak the vile abuse reported in the ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... him in repose, one who knew him well could almost read the ideas gathering and passing through his mind. There was a pleasant vein of satire in his nature, sometimes expressed, but always in words and in a manner which plucked away its sting: ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... its sting—the lie dropped into the background and left comfort behind it. The next point came to the front: had he rendered that service? Well, here was Goodson's own evidence as reported in Stephenson's letter; there could be no better ...
— The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg • Mark Twain
... with the confusion which themselves create. I must own I was vexed and offended with myself, when I found that the something overlooked on this occasion was the gift of my Louisa. Ingratitude with all its reproaches rose up to sting me; and I immediately resolved to punish myself, by informing my Louisa how unworthy I am of the gifts of such a friend. It was at the first stage where we changed horses that I made this discovery. One moment I was inclined to petition ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... soothed, and the heaving ocean in our hearts becomes as a summer's sea and 'birds of peace sit brooding on the charmed waves.' It is in that same consciousness that conscience ceases to condemn, and loses its sting. The prophet from whom our text is taken ends his wonderful ministry, that had been full of fiery denunciations and dark prophecies, with words that are only surpassed in their tenderness and the outpouring ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... well have hailed the wind. Her family dissensions were well aired in The Star next morning, and she always kept the cutting at the bottom of a little rosewood work-box where she stored away divers small treasures, and never looked at the box without a swift dart of pain as from a hidden sting and the consciousness as of the presence of ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... we suppose), but the love of Nature is a sure investment, which she repays a thousand-fold, which she repays most prodigally when the heart is bankrupt and full of bitterness, as Ruth's heart was that day. For in Nature, as Wordsworth says, "there is no bitterness," that worst sting of human grief. And as Ruth walked among the quiet fields, and up the yellow aisles of the autumn glades to Arleigh, Nature spoke of peace to her—not of joy or of happiness as in old days, for she never lies as human comforters do, and ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... bold and bloody, was the kind of thing Whose temporary passion was quite flattering, Because each lover looked a sort of King, Made up upon an amatory pattern, A royal husband in all save the ring—[jn] Which, (being the damnedest part of matrimony,) Seemed taking out the sting to leave ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... anything." Was 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 ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... enemies murmur'd at as wrong. Nay, when my ears are pierc'd with widow's cries. And undone orphans wash with tears my threshold, I only think what 'tis, to have my daughter Right Honourable; and 'tis a powerful charm, Makes me insensible of remorse, or pity, Or the least sting of conscience. In one word, therefore, Is it a ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... those features, how pallid but touchingly beautiful that face! Love, affection, and tenderness, there repose so calmly! All that once gave out so much hope, so much joy, now withers before the blighting sting of misfortune. "Poor child, how fondly she loves me!" says Marston, placing his right arm under her head, and raising it gently. The motion quickens her senses-she speaks; he kisses her pallid cheek-kisses and kisses it. "Is it you uncle?" she whispers. ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... feverish agitation, partly created by the immense interest he takes in my success. But I greatly fear that his efforts will result in a serious reaction. His own grief, which at this moment he is repressing, has not in reality lost its sting. Have you not been struck by the rather flighty and mocking tone of his letters, some of which he has shown to me? That is not in his nature, for in his happiest days he was never turbulently gay; and I ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... dalliance, and with all the sweet persuasion that maternal fondness, religious precept, polished manners, and hourly example could administer—she fostered me: [weeps.] and shall I now turn viper,—and with black ingratitude sting the tender heart that thus hath cherished me? shall I seduce her house's heir, and kill her peace?—No—though I loved to the mad extreme of female fondness; though every worldly bliss that woman's vanity or man's ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... now, but it will feel it then. The fire of His love will kindle a fire of loving self-reproach. The weight of a heavy shame to think of the past, and to know now of His beauty, and His love, and His care, care for so careless a soul, love for a soul so loveless,—this will sting with an extreme severity the soul humbled before Him. And here we should do well to remember that, as the characters of each differ almost infinitely, whereby there are innumerable shades and degrees of every conceivable distinction of merit and of sin, so the proportion ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson
... men were, the sting of the steel woke the Dark Master to a burst of energy. As the two fell over the thwarts, he twisted above and bore Brian down and tried to break the grip on his throat, but could not. For the second time in his ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... 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 ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... pain—for were that the case, in what would courage consist?—but I say it should be assuaged by patience, if there be such a thing as patience: if there be no such thing, why do we speak so in praise of philosophy? or why do we glory in its name? Does pain annoy us? Let it sting us to the heart: if you are without defensive armor, bare your throat to it; but if you are secured by Vulcanian armor, that is to say by resolution, resist it. Should you fail to do so, that guardian of your honor, your courage, will forsake and leave you.—By the ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... 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 ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... toothache, tormina^, torticollis^. spasm, cramp; nightmare, ephialtes^; crick, stitch; thrill, convulsion, throe; throb &c (agitation) 315; pang; colic; kink. sharp pain, piercing pain, throbbing pain, shooting pain, sting, gnawing pain, burning pain; excruciating pain. anguish, agony; torment, torture; rack; cruciation^, crucifixion; martyrdom, toad under a harrow, vivisection. V. feel pain, experience pain, suffer pain, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... shrub the warm effluvia cling, Hang on the grass, impregnate earth and skies. With nostrils opening wide, o'er hill, o'er dale, The vigorous hounds pursue, with every breath Inhale the grateful steam, quick pleasures sting 360 Their tingling nerves, while they their thanks repay, And in triumphant melody confess The titillating joy. Thus on the air Depend the hunter's hopes. When ruddy streaks At eve forebode a blustering stormy day, Or lowering clouds blacken the mountain's ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... are secret humiliations to which no man would submit, as such, but from which love, when it is real, can take away the sting and the poison. The man of heart, who does not love but is loved in spite of himself, fears to accept a sacrifice, lest in so doing he should seem to declare his readiness to do as he is done by, from like motives. But when love is on both sides there is no such drawing back ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... winter off the Cape that year. The relieved helmsmen came off flapping their arms, or ran stamping hard and blowing into swollen, red fingers. The watch on deck dodged the sting of cold sprays or, crouching in sheltered corners, watched dismally the high and merciless seas boarding the ship time after time in unappeasable fury. Water tumbled in cataracts over the forecastle doors. You had to ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... the Carolinas, and the murmurings of the people against the French, who were accused of forsaking their allies, having rendered them no service, but on the contrary having profited by the cordial help of the Bostonians to refit their crippled fleet. There was a sting of truth in the alleged failure to help, which impelled D'Estaing to disregard the orders actually in his hands to return at once to Europe with certain ships. Instead of obeying them he sailed for the American coast with twenty-two ships-of-the-line, having in view two objects,—the relief ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... the soul,—though the grave should forever shut them from our communion. But this relation of memory has peculiar propriety and efficacy when associated with a Christian faith. If the dead live no more, what would memory be to us but a spectre and a sting? Should we not then seek to repress those tender recollections,—to close our eyes to those pale, sad visions of departed love? Should we not invoke the glare and tumult of the world to distract or absorb our thoughts? Would we not say, "Let it come, the ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... and Jules had penetrated on the previous day, was flattened or torn to shreds, was converted into a species of smoking volcano. It was terrific! It was a master-stroke on the part of the French Command, and a shattering misfortune to the enemy. Indeed, it took the sting out of their attack entirely; it sent those of their men who had survived this awful ordeal racing back to cover; and it put a peremptory and sudden stop to the cunning German effort to drive in that wedge they had already inserted along the Meuse and so to shorten dangerously ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... companion 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
... of five months he was devoutly, even pathetically, hoping that his uncle was no false prophet. He loathed Thorberg; he hated the inhabitants; he smarted under the sting of royal disdain; he had no real friends, no boon companions and he was obliged to be good! What wonder, then, that the bored, suffering, vivacious Mr. Chase seized the first opportunity to leap headforemost into the very thick of a most ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... said Sal, in a disgusted tone, as she closed the door after him. "I'm not a viper to sting the bosom as fed me," from which it may be gathered she was advancing rapidly in ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... with an air of desolation and utter abandon brooding over all; and as he reflected that his own complex nature, rather than any special malice of fortune, had brought this to him, Jose's heart began to sink under the sting of a condemning conscience. He turned back into his house. Its pitiful emptiness smote him sore. No books, no pictures, no furnishings, nothing that ministers to the comfort of a civilized and educated man! And yet, amid this barrenness ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... easier in her mind in the matter of the quarrel with Judge Harvey. The sting and humiliation of his words she had now cast out of her system; she was really superior to such criticism. There remained only Judge Harvey's offense. Certainly he had been inexcusably outspoken and ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... happiness. True it has its pleasures and it is hard to lose them, but death rids us of so many ills, that in the end we gain by it. That's simple, and not so terrible, is it?" said Yourii, aloud, with a sigh of relief; but suddenly he started, as another thought seemed to sting him. "No, a whole world, full of life and extraordinarily complicated, suddenly transformed into nothing? No, that is not the transformation of the boy Youra into Yourii Svarogitsch! That is absurd and revolting, and therefore terrible ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... life's journey may 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 ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... back to the lawn to rejoin her companions. The flood of misery within made movement the only relief. Some instinct of her own came to the aid of the Marchesa's words, helped them to sting all the more deeply. She felt herself ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... lover standing on the moving ship watching her with his heart in his eyes, filled her whole consciousness. Never would it be possible for her to forget it, or to put any other image in its place. She thanked her good angel for giving her such a comforting memory; it seemed as if the sting had been taken out of her sorrow. Henceforward she was resolved to love without a doubt. She would believe in Joris, no matter what she had seen, or what she had heard. There were places in life to which alas! truth could not come; and this might be one of them. Though all the ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... The wing'd Ichneumon, l. 33. Linneus describes seventy-seven species of the ichneumon fly, some of which have a sting as long and some twice as long as their bodies. Many of them insert their eggs into various caterpillars, which when they are hatched seem for a time to prey on the reservoir of silk in the backs of those animals ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... morning 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 stained her dead ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... both at once exclaimed, that these spots in the gnat, and streaks in the wasp, had nothing to do with their stinging us. "The buzzing of the gnat," said S——, "would, I think, be a very agreeable sound to us, if we did not know that the gnat would sting, and that it was coming near us; and, as to the wasp, I remember stopping one day upon the stairs to look at the beautiful black and yellow body of a wasp. I did not think of danger, nor of its stinging me then, and I did not know ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... so, Patience; there is always some little sting of disgrace in punishment: now I am not going to hold myself ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... get clothes and china and linen and furniture,—we ought to move out of this house and this block!" Susan wanted to say. But with some effort she refrained from answering at all, and felt tears sting her eyes when Billy carried the baby off, to do with his big gentle fingers all the folding and pinning and buttoning that preceded Martin's disappearance ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris |
