"Sting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her company. It was not a keen pleasure, but neither was it an embarrassing one; it was exactly what he supposed it would be in case they ever met again—a blending on his part of curiosity, admiration, and reminiscent suffering out of which time and experience had taken the sting. He retained the memory of a minute of intense astonishment once upon a time, followed by some weeks, some months perhaps, of angry humiliation; but the years between twenty-four and thirty-three are long and varied, generating in healthy natures plenty of saving common sense. ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... the light of victory. Happily, searching the skies, our eyes can have their reward. We shall, no doubt, see, outstanding, dark evidence of old animosity; we shall hear fierce war-cries and see raging crowds, but the crowds are less numerous, and the wrath has lost its sting. Men who raged twenty years ago rage now, but their fury is less real; and young men growing up around them, quite indifferent to the ideal, are also indifferent to the counter cries: they are passive, unimpressed by either ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... with the poem for its own felicitous sake; and so indeed am I, but more because it has drawn the sting of my fiftieth year; taken away the pain of it, the grief of it, the somehow shame of it, and made me glad and ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... 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 ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... carefully, 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
... of Paul V. was measured and decent, the swarm of Jesuit pamphleteers that forthwith began to buzz and to sting all over Christendom were sufficiently venomous. Scioppius, in his Alarm Trumpet to the Holy War, and a hundred others declared that all heresies and heretics were now to be extirpated, the one true church to be united and re-established, and that the only ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... unconscious shine, Till, under the pink lids peeping, I wakened it up with mine; And we pledged our troth to a brimming oath In a bumper of blood-red wine. Alas! too well I know That it happened long ago; Those memories yet remain, And sting, like throbs of pain, And I'm alone below, But still the red wine warms, and the rosy goblets glow; If love be the heart's enslaver, 'Tis wine that subdues the head. But which has the fairest flavour, And whose is the soonest shed? Wine ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... immortality of the soul, the life beyond the grave, again visited him. "Is it not said in the Bible: 'O death, where is thy sting?' And in Schiller: 'And the dead also shall live!' (Auch die Todten sollen leben!)—Or here again, in Mickiewicz, 'I shall love until life ends ... and after life ends!'—While one English writer has said: 'Love ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... 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
... how can I avoid feeling that things despicable in themselves are become of a vital power, from the evident intention that they should be insults to me? The insects we despise as they buzz around us become dangerous when they settle on ourselves and we feel their sting! But," added Bolingbroke, suddenly relapsing into a smile, "I have long wanted a nickname: I have now found one for myself. You know Oxford is called 'The Dragon;' well, henceforth call me 'St. George;' ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... because it "points a moral and adorns a 'tail.'" The French always give this extra touch. Everything has its silk snapper. Are not the literary whips of Paris famous for their rhetorical tips and the sting there is in them? What French writer ever goaded his adversary with the belly of his lash, like the Germans and the English, when he could blister him with its silken end, and the percussion of wit be heard ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... boys are coming back," Mr. Linden said, with a smile which hardly belonged to them,—"I must go and get their report. Au revoir, Miss Faith." And he went forward into the midst of the little swarm—so manageable in his hands, so sure to sting ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... eloquent in the expression of his amazement when his quick eye detected the inverted image of the landscape seen through it; then, after one or two futile attempts, he succeeded in focusing the rays of the sun upon his naked arm, giving a little yelp as he felt the sting of the heat. Finally, with a laugh, he handed the lens back to Cunningham; but there was a covetous look in his eyes as he did so which caused me to utter a word of warning to the engineer lest he should awake some fine ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... and perhaps secluded as they are, have a vision rarefied, subtle, strange not only in their own times, but for all times. Those men have their own communication to make to those anxious to add to the fineness of their perception, or merely perhaps to the oddness of experience. If some sting of truth reaches the mind through writing obscure to the general, through language which may be barbarous in form, an author has justified himself; and it would be idle to follow Mr. Brander Matthews in his quotation from the ever-pleasing Lord Chesterfield: "Speak the language of the ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... answer with him; he thought he was to be chief of the Senate, and the most honored person in the State again; he found that he had been allowed to return only to be surrounded by mosquitoes whose delight was to sting him, while the Senate listened with indifference or secret amusement. He had been promised the restoration of his property; but he had a suit to prosecute before he could get it. Clodius had thought ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... man And choirs repeat the chant, While unco' guid with unction urge Repression of the joys that surge, And jail for those who can't. The poor deluded duds forget That something drew the sting When Adam tiptoed to his fall, And made it hardly hurt at all. Of ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... 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 ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... there was peril near the sleeper. A monster of a bee had been wandering 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 good deed accomplished, with quickened breath and a ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... personal cause to spurn at him, BUT FOR THE GENERAL. He would be crown'd:— How that might change his nature, there's the question. It is the bright day that brings forth the adder; And that craves wary walking. Crown him? That;— And then, I grant, we put a sting in him, That at his will he may do danger with. The abuse of greatness is, when it disjoins Remorse from power: And, to speak truth of Caesar, I have not known when his affections sway'd More than his reason. But 't is a common proof, ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... same time the same classes in Glasgow were taking action, and passing resolutions, the biting phrases of which were probably prompted as much by a desire to sting the Admiralty as by a personal sense of national abasement. "At a time when we are at peace with all the rest of the world, when the maintenance of our marine costs so large a sum to the country, when the mercantile and shipping interests pay a ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... "don't worry about that. They were only rock-salt bullets. They didn't penetrate far. They'll sting for some time, but they're antiseptic, and they'll dissolve and ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... 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 ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... sting of Miss Baylis' sarcasm rose hastily, and with her as hastily rose Petty's foot to a horizontal position, encountering in its ascent the rung of Electra's chair and toppling it over with ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... home and rest. On winged feet she flew back through the hedge-gap and ordered Ragtime saddled once more; yet when she touched that splendid beast with the crop and sent him at a gallop down the drive, there was no longer any sting in the lash. Even the groom, with critical eye, noticed the difference in the girl's seat that afternoon; for days and days to come he was the better contented with the companionship of horses, which was his lot, in dwelling upon the crazy moods of women. And Miriam Burrell, sighting Barbara's ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... the Sabbaths of childhood, and pangs of remorse for ill-gotten lessons in the catechism, and for erratic fantasies or hardly suppressed laughter in the middle of long sermons. Occasionally, I tried to take the long-hoarded sting out of these compunctious smarts by attending divine service the open air. On a cart outside of the Park-wall, (and, if I mistake not, at two or three corners and secluded spots within the Park itself,) a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... prayin'! Braave savor for the Lard's nose—sweeter than the blood o' beasts. You'm a shinin' light, cap'n—a trumpet in the battle, like the sound o' the sea-wind when it begins to sting afore heavy weather, an' the waters roll to the top o' the bulwarks an' awver. 'The snorting of his horses was heard from Dan'—sea-horses us calls 'em nowadays. Mount an' ride, mount an' ride! 'Cursed be the man that trusteth in man,' saith the Lard; but the beasts be truer, ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... forward—ever forward—and the line of hills drew near. Then he began to stir himself, and she with him. He shouted to them to charge, and she echoed him, leaving his side at last to take command of a wing and sting the tired-out men-at-arms into new enthusiasm. In a minute they were a roaring tide that swept forward to the foot of the hills and surged upward without a check. In a little while they were hurling boulders down on an enemy that seemed ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... small head sunk into the pillow, had jerked from head to foot. "Take her West. I know a ranch in Wyoming—Yarnall's. She'll get outdoor exercise, tonic air, sound sleep, release from all these pestiferous details, like a cloud of flies, that sting women's nerves to death. Don't pay any attention to whether she likes it or not. Let her behave like a naughty child, let her kick and scream and cry. Pick her up, Morena, and carry her off. Do you hear? ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... for the undoing of poor Humanity, surely findeth no readier ally than the blind and merciless Spirit of Mortified Pride. Thus I, minding the Lady Joan's scornful look and the sting of her soft-spoke words, fell to black and raging fury, and vowed that since rogue and galley-slave she had named me, rogue she should find me in very truth henceforward if I might but escape ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... quite sure. I have some business that has hung fire an unconscionable time, and ungallant as it seems, we twentieth century fellows have to put business before pleasure." He smiled propitiatingly and therein lay the sting, that he did not even take the trouble to conceal that he was trying to appease her. Their parting sank to the level of the commonplace for he shook hands hastily, and her look of appeal flattened ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... But I was first in the melee, and on me fell the blame of saving Talcott from merited chastisement. For this the Professor upbraided me. He spoke as though Talcott had been the aggressor. Had not Talcott struck him a blow under the eye? Yes, but it was feebly given. But the sting of it was to the Professor's pride, and he would regret to his dying day that I had withheld him from giving the young scoundrel his ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... 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 ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... way is a bit narrow," you think. "And it's steep. There are sharp-edged stones under foot. And those bushes are growing rank on both sides narrowing the path. And thorns scratch and hurt and sting. This other road where I am now—this is a good Christian road. My Christian brothers are here. ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... spider approached—touched him—and he felt the large, cold, and hairy paws of the monster encircle him. He thought himself dead, but suddenly he heard a kind of humming noise, clear and acute, and saw a little golden gnat, which had a kind of sting as fine and brilliant as a diamond needle, flying round the spider in a furious manner, and a voice (when I say voice, just imagine the voice of a gnat!)-a voice said to him, 'Poor little fly! you have saved ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... you are mighty good to me, Uncle George, and I am very grateful to you." The relief was not overwhelming, for the burden of the debt had not been heavy. It was only the sting of his father's refusal that had hurt. He had always believed that the financial tangle would be straightened ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... curse and sting of all temporal plagues, yea, and of death itself, causing all to work together for good to such as love him, Rom. viii. 28. He hath killed him that had the power of death, that is, the devil, Heb. ii. 14; and through him the sting of death, which ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... out there too! Then came on a steady pour of rain, which held on till noon, as if trying to make us miserable. At 9 A.M. I got back into my tent. The large Sirafu have mandibles curved like reaping-sickles, and very sharp—as fine at the point as the finest needle or a bee's sting. Their office is to remove all animal refuse, cockroaches, &c., and they took all my fat. Their appearance sets every cockroach in a flurry, and all ants, white and black, get into a panic. On man they insert the sharp curved mandibles, and ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... had given up the living, and that the martyrs were triumphant, even in this world, over the powers o' Sin and o' Death. Yea, they were indeed triumphant;—and well might the faithfu' sing aloud in the desert, 'O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory?' for these three bodies were but as the weeds on which they lay stretched out to the pitying gaze of the multitude, but their spirits had gane to heaven to receive the eternal rewards o' sanctity ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... She was ambitious too, and had not won her position without many secret wounds. When misfortunes came, the blows that fell upon her husband struck with double force into her own heart. She was destined to share with him the chill of censure and neglect, the bitter sting of ingratitude, the lonely isolation of one fallen from a high place, whose friendship and ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... 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
... your experience have been hitherto!" replied the old man. "Everything lives and moves, only to die and to rot: everything feels, only to feel pangs. Our inward agony spurs us on to what we call joy; and all wherewith spring and hope and love and pleasure beguile mankind, is only the inverted sting of pain. Life is woe, hope sadness, thought ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... (Arethusa) as it sailed past us close under the counter. These animals are common, but few can realize how beautiful they are until they see them, fresh-coloured from the deep sea, floating and sailing in a big glass bowl. It vainly tried to sail out, and vigorously tried to sting all who ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... the voices; but a burden threatening to sink them to Tophet, a burden grievous to be borne, to such as would arise and go to the Father. The contradiction between Job's idea of the justice of God and the things which had befallen him, is constantly haunting him; it has a sting in it far worse than all the other misery with which he is tormented; but it is not fixed in the hopelessness of hell by an accepted explanation more frightful than itself. Let the world-sphinx put as many riddles as she will, she can devour no man while he waits an answer from the world-redeemer. ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... Jerrold. He was one of the Eyes, and always on the lookout for a good thing, or the opportunity of saying one. He was certainly, in my opinion, the wittiest man of his day. But at times his wit was more hurtful than amusing. Wit should never leave a sting. ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... 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 within my heart." ...
— The Black-Sealed Letter - Or, The Misfortunes of a Canadian Cockney. • Andrew Learmont Spedon
... well as she had a wonderful dexterity in snapping off the heads of those whom she admired. Her consent to the death of her husband was easily gained, and she bade him dip the points of two arrows in the poison of her sting. This he did and after retiring within the fortification he levelled one arrow at the head of the husband, while he deposited the other in that of the wicked wife. The horrid monsters rolled over in agony, and rent the air with their death-shrieks, while ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... warm'd a Viper in my bosom, That wanted only heat enough to sting me, And give me ...
— The Fatal Jealousie (1673) • Henry Nevil Payne
... Ruth back from the window, he clambered through himself and poised his body for the leap. The sentry looked up again, saw what was about to happen, and let out a startled scream at the same instant that he flung up an arm and fired. Steve felt a sharp sting in his leg as he descended through the air. He landed astride on the shoulders of the Mexican. The man went to earth, hammered down so hard that the breath ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... whom I may hereafter find the consolation of sympathy. I sometimes feel faint with the fatigue of checking the overflowings of my unbounded abhorrence for this miserable wretch. But she is no more than a blind and loathsome worm, that cannot see to sting. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... in it lies the secret of a powerful and direct expression of sentiment) and by a vivid realization of movement. Proud by nature, delicate in health, his life was far from happy; he never ceased to feel the sting of adverse criticism. "For more than thirty years I have been given over to the wild beasts," he said once. He had warm friends, who have left many records of his sweetness of disposition when the outer barrier ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... is more than matched; she's overmanned; and by a madman! Insufferable sting, that sanity should ground arms on such a field! But he drilled deep down, and blasted all my reason out of me! I think I see his impious end; but feel that I must help him to it. Will I, nill I, the ineffable ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... tastes through life, and have no doubt that I come of a gen'l'm'nly origum." We cannot admit that there is wit, or even humour, in bad spelling alone. Were it not that Yellowplush, with his bad spelling, had so much to say for himself, there would be nothing in it; but there is always a sting of satire directed against some real vice, or some growing vulgarity, which is made sharper by the absurdity of the language. In The Diary of George IV. there are the following reflections on a certain correspondence; "Wooden you phansy, now, that the author of such a letter, instead ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... ants found their way into my provision boxes. A large one, dark-gray, almost black, in colour, more than a centimetre long, was very fond of sweet things. According to the Malays, if irritated it is able to sting painfully, but in spite of its formidable appearance it is timid and easily turned away, so for a long time I put up with its activities, though gradually these ants got to be a nuisance by walking into my cup, which they sometimes filled, or into my drinking-water. Another species, much ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... fisherman; but as his house, built of black tarred timber, stood right on the foreshore a few yards from the pier, he was employed in such cases as a sort of ferryman. He was a big, black-browed youth generally silent, but something seemed now to sting him into speech. ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... recollect that I was bound to sing (I promised so, but it escaped my mind) Of a suspicion, fraught with suffering To Bradamant of more displeasing kind, And made by keener and more venomed sting Than caused that other wound, wherewith she pined, Which, hearing Richardet his news impart, Had pierced her breast ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... But now, when the dread laugh of a seemingly more righteous world was daily, hourly, to be feared against her—when the cold finger of scorn was preparing to be pointed at her fading beauty, and her altered form—now, when indulgence is most due, and cruelty has a sting more scorpion than ever—to be taunted with that once-kind tongue with having rightfully inherited a curse—to be told, in a sort of fiendish triumph, that some ancient family grudge, forsooth, against her father's fame, certainly as much as the selfish motives of a libertine professed, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... derived from that great naturalist, Dr. Isaac Watts. In common with every one who has been a child I knew that the insect in question improved each shining hour by something honey something something every something flower. I had also heard that bees could not sting you if you held your breath, a precaution which would make conversation by the herbaceous border an affair altogether too spasmodic; and, finally, that in any case the same bee could only sting you once—though, apparently, there was no similar provision of Nature's that the ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... new sorrow is a many-cornered thing; having its sharp points that sting, and its jagged points that wound; with others so dull and heavy and immoveable that one is ready to wish they could pierce through and make an end. And it is quite impossible to tell beforehand on which of them we may happen ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... and the smoke comes thicker and blacker, and hides everything but those two, and I see them climbing down and down over the rough, sharp rocks, toward the caverns of the dwarfs, while the little tongues of flame shoot out at them from the fissures, as if they were trying to catch and burn and sting them, just as they shoot out from between the black, charred ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... Chad to him whenever he would come. But the boy would not go. There was no definite reason in his mind. It was a stubborn instinct merely—the instinct of pride, of stubborn independence—of shame that festered in his soul like a hornet's sting. Even Melissa urged him. She never tired of hearing Chad tell about the Bluegrass country, and when she knew that the Major wanted him to go back, she followed him out in the yard that night and found him on the fence whittling. A red star was sinking behind ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... unable to comprehend the feelings of the girl, shifted uneasily beneath the sharp sting of her words, yet ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... itself, and the people flocked in crowds to this new doctrine, the best seasoning of which was personality and abuse. Thus continued food was supplied to fanaticism, and the hatred of two churches, that were such near neighbours, was farther envenomed by the sting ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... pledge their glorious chief. The flush of gratified vanity blooms in his young cheek, he caresses his mustache and plays with his blonde hair, he jokes with his guests; his jests are keen, light, witty, piercing like the sting of a wasp, and loud applauses greet his eager ear. Gliding over the surface of life, knowing nothing of its depths, he floats gracefully through its shallows. His blood, quickened by praise, flushes his face, his eye sparkles, his features play, but his heart is empty, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of truth in Buonarroti's criticism—a truth which added to the sting—that by this time Pietro's art had already begun to show old motives carelessly repeated. "Pietro," says our Vasari, "had worked so much, and had always such abundance of work in hand, that he often put the ...
— Perugino • Selwyn Brinton
... said the mate. "If you bathe in a sea like this you can feel quite an irritation of the skin, while the large jelly-fish sting like ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... the tangled mazes of the old carboniferous forests! With what bitter mockeries must he have watched the fierce wars which raged in their sluggish waters, among ravenous creatures horrid with trenchant teeth, barbed sting, and sharp spine, and enveloped in glittering armor of plate and scale! And how, as generation after generation passed away, and ever and anon the ocean rolled where the land had been, or the land ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... upon that sting to see her pass him at the top of the outer steps, half an hour later, on the arm of that one of his colleagues who had been called the "best-dressed man in the Legislature." She swept by him without a sign, laughing that same ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... A swarm, a swarm? Spite of the devil, how they sting my heart! How long hast thou ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... recalled the words of Curtis. He must be honest, impartial, and just. No one knew better the faults of Prejudices. As he began to write, the old spirit of the slater came over him. His better self conquered. He forgot for the moment that he was the author. He hardly realised the sting of his own sarcasms even when he saw them in proof. It was not until it appeared, and the papers were full of the controversy, that the cruelty and unfairness of the attack dawned on him. I was much shocked at the confession, and the extraordinary duplicity of Burrage, ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... on the morning of the game, Winthrop stopped the car in front of her door, he was in love with all the world. In the November air there was a sting like frost-bitten cider, in the sky there was a brilliant, beautiful sun, in the wind was the tingling touch of three ice-chilled rivers. And in the big house facing Central Park, outside of which his ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis
... foreground of vague tombs, masonry heaven knows what, all flowered with huge wild mignonette; this other moving background of ragged peasants and unutterable galled horses; the desolation of this dead city which I feel behind those mediaeval walls comes home to them, like the sting of the dust whirlpools and roar of the wind. ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... 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 Face, too, for fun. He ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... 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, is ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... from my way; but to be so great as my head, and very fat and lazy, so that surely I kickt a good number, from my path, even as you shall kick a ball with the foot; and three I burst in this way. And truly it did be well that I had on me mine armour, else had they been like to sting me very quick unto death; for ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... poem, 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 ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... victim of a mistake, but the atheist was the deliberate son of darkness, the source of fearful dangers. An atheist in their midst was like a scorpion in a flower-bed—no one could tell when and where he would sting. Rough misdemeanours among them had been many, there had once been a murder in the parish, but the undefined horrors of infidelity were more shameful than crimes ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... He felt the sting of so unwonted a rebuke. "I daresay you're right, Mater," he acknowledged. "I'll be ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... Jimmie Dale's quick smile robbed his curt dismissal of any sting. "Benson, of course, ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... virtue of His Incarnation. Hence it follows that you, the individual, have been crucified with Him; just as you, the individual, have been buried with Him, and raised with Him in your Baptism (Rom. vi., 4). How completely this takes the sting out of the reproach brought against Christianity, on the ground of the immorality of the Crucifixion! It is no longer the Innocent one suffering instead of the guilty, but it is the sinless One taking upon Himself human nature, with all its guilt and consequent punishment, and "in His own body ...
— The Discipline of War - Nine Addresses on the Lessons of the War in Connection with Lent • John Hasloch Potter
... obliging way, in order to take any sting away from the laughter, repeated the well-known family story of how she herself, when the twins were children and slept together, had been wont to awake them in order to identify them by the different color of their eyes. The others, Beauchene and Valentine, ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... resident," a contemporary informs us, "was badly stung by a wasp last week." At this time of year these insects are apt to sting badly, but in the summer ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... there never had been any porcupines in the world, or that all of them had died before silly, hateful people ever thought of trimming hat with them! They curl round and tickle my ear! They blow against my cheek and sting it like needles! They do look outlandish, you said so yourself a minute ago. Nobody ever had any but only just me! The only porcupine was made into the only quills for me and nobody else! I wish instead of sticking OUT of the nasty beasts, that ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... see why I should explain myself to you, sir. If you choose to give this girl your name you will be doing a good act. At present the poor creature is—nobody." She let the last word drop from her lips slowly, so as to give Paul its full sting. ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... has his 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 I not ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... Belford, what spiteful wretches, are poor mortals!—So rejoiced to sting one another! ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... he's raised," he remarked. "It may be only a drop in the bucket. We'll have to go through all this again, probably, and the next time he won't find it so easy to sting a millionaire." ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... first, a vine with long hooks and spurs on it, that once fast, seem determined never to let go again; the stalk being as tenacious and tough as wire, and binding the scrub trees together so as to render advance impossible without first cutting a way. The other, a tree with broad leaves, the sting produced by touching which is so painful that horses, who on first being stung have plunged about and been stung all over, have died from the ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... It wasn't genuine tact, but it was tact, of a sort—the sort that is as useful as the genuine, and saves even more situations at Board meetings. Henry treated a marriage like a funeral, item by item, never raising his eyes to the whole, and "Death, where is thy sting? Love, where is thy victory?" one would ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... spring 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 - ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... not of antagonism against, the law of God, go to every trifling transgression, you will think twice before you call it small. And if it be small, a microscopic viper, the length of a cutting from your finger nail, has got the viper's nature in it, and its poison, and its sting, and it will grow. A very little quantity of mud held in solution in a continuously flowing river will make a tremendous delta at the mouth of it in the course of years. And however small may have been the amount of evil and deflection from God's law in that flowing river of my ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... which she repaid his loan. The 'Spy's' accusation is true. If it can be proved that my wife induced me to appoint Fleetwood, it may be argued that she sold him the appointment. But it can't be proved, and the 'Spy' won't waste its breath in trying to, because my statement will take the sting out of its innuendoes. I propose to anticipate its attack by setting forth the facts in its columns, and asking the public to decide between us. On one side is the private fact that my wife, without my knowledge, borrowed money from Fleetwood just before I appointed him to an important post; on ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... Calhoun's growing 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 during an engagement. The crafty Major was busily thinking ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... swim, 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, wrung, sprung, swung, drunk, sunk, shrunk, stunk, come, run, found, bound, ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... they had destroyed Laocoon, 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 ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... reflectively began to rub its still shadowy nose with a shadowy paw. I think that it remembered the sting of the salt water in the cut made by the glass of the window through ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... himself together, bent down, and grasped his carbine with both hands, holding the right on the lock and the left at the middle of the barrel; he dodged and skipped, and at times crouched down; he let go with his left hand, and thrust forward the weapon with his right, like the sting from the jaws of a serpent; and again he withdrew it and rested it on his knees; and thus dodging and jumping he ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... steady voice when he was with them. If it were a question of courage, that would be the least courageous course. It would be easier to suffer anything than to put himself beyond the possibility of ever seeing Hilda again. He owned, in bitter self-contempt, that this was absolutely true. The sting of death was there, in the choice of total extinction, in the act of leaving all that he loved, as well as in the extermination of that self which held the power to love. But for one thought, life would still be sweet. All the torment of an existence ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... sweet and fine, Ju—if only we'd all done with our opportunities as you have!" Oftener it was Jim's voice that consciously or unconsciously on his part stabbed Julia to the very soul. For him, the sting was gone, because, at the first prick, Julia was there to take it and bear it. No need to conceal from her now the bitterness of his moods; she would meet him halfway. He was worrying about that ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... sharp sting, sir, at times, back and front; but I always find that it is when we are going to have ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... see what was happening. It didn't take long to find out. Even as he looked, he felt another sharp pain which brought another "Ouch!" from him and made him kick harder than ever. Two very angry little insects were just getting ready to sting him again, and more were coming. They were Yellow Jackets, which you know belong to the wasp family and carry very sharp little lances in their tails. The fact is, this old house of Johnny Chuck's had been deserted so long the Yellow ...
— The Adventures of Jimmy Skunk • Thornton W. Burgess
... 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, that was ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... measures. It is a place for internecine warfare Hence, all desert plants are quite absurdly prickly. The starving herbivores will attack and devour under such circumstances even thorny weeds, which tear or sting their tender tongues and palates, but which supply them at least with a little food and moisture: so the plants are compelled in turn to take almost extravagant precautions. Sometimes the leaves end in a stout dagger-like point, as with the agave, or so-called ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... 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 ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... more attention to the knife than to a bee-sting, he had violently seized Isabelle in his arms before she could raise ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... 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 ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... the roses fly? Where is the light of the flashing eye? Where has the rounded lips, ruby red, Gone, since we parted beside the dead? The white owl entered the casement high, O'er the brow of the dying I saw it fly; Presager of death! I hailed its wing, She scorned the omen but felt the sting Of bitter grief, when another day Bore her angel Mother from earth away. I warned her, when on the coming blast I saw the phantom-like shades flit past; She smiled on my words as idle play, But wept when her sire, in the midnight fray, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... grass and tossed it into the water. 'In the old days,' he said, 'I have heard that Those Above sent the Delight-Makers to make the people laugh so that the way should not seem long, and the Earth be fruitful. But now the jests of the Koshare are scorpions, each one with a sting in its tail for the enemies of the Delight-Makers. I had sooner strike mine with a knife ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... looking forth nor back, The present gives the lie to all her past. Will cruel time restore what she doth lack? Why was no shadow of this doom forecast? Ah! she hath played with many a keen-edged thing; Naught is too small and soft to turn and sting. ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... hope. As she no longer lived in Toyland when he went, the wrench of parting was not what it would have been to leave her at the mercy of any man who could afford to buy a doll. There was no excuse for men to "butt into" Mantles, unless accompanied by female belongings, and thus accompanied, their sting ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... pedlar, "let us hurry down the hill; for to tell the truth," said he, dragging Halbert along earnestly, "a Scottish noble's march is like a serpent—the head is furnished with fangs, and the tail hath its sting; the only harmless point of ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... I so much admired, and which so confirmed my impression of the youth of my mistress, were executed by Madame Stephanie Lalande. The eyeglass was presented by way of adding a reproof to the hoax—a sting to the epigram of the deception. Its presentation afforded an opportunity for the lecture upon affectation with which I was so especially edified. It is almost superfluous to add that the glasses of the instrument, as ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... 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 ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... Barrett, and it informed Oleron that he, Barrett, would be obliged if Mr. Oleron would make other arrangements for the preparing of his breakfasts and the cleaning-out of his place. The sting lay in the tail, that is to say, the postscript. This consisted of a text of Scripture. It embodied an allusion that could only ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... necessity of speaking to a friend, however intimate, on the subject of his wife's conduct or character; because there are few things a man respects more intimately than his fellow-man's reserve. Wyndham knew, moreover, that the real sting of his communication would lie less in the facts themselves than in Mrs Desmond's probable concealment of them; and his natural kindliness prompted him to a passing pity for Evelyn, who, in all likelihood, had not yet penetrated beyond the outer shell of her husband's ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... rights—with the added consciousness that an equally questionable passion had drawn him into it, and that SHE knew it—death seemed to offer the only escape from the explanation he could never give. If another sting could have been added it was the absurd conviction that Cressy would not appreciate his sacrifice, but was perhaps even at that moment calmly congratulating herself on the felicitousness of the complication in ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... the sofa, and began to communicate the present state of the firm. It was no cheerful picture that he drew, but it proved his entire confidence, and helped to allay the sting of ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... might have but five minutes to do it in. Lady Betty, at least, 'twas known had once had coquettish and sentimental passages with him, if no more; and whether 'twas her vanity or her heart which had been wounded, some sting rankled, leaving her with a malice against him which never failed to show itself when she spoke ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... a sting of bitterness and self-pity in the taunt at the end of the words. Elizabeth felt it, as she seized her pistol from her belt, and pointed it at the astonished group. They were not accustomed to girls with pistols. "Open that door, or I will shoot ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... which was destined henceforth to make a decided change in the relative condition of the biped and quadruped hunters of the time. How could they know that something small and sharp would fly down and sting them more deeply than they had ever been stung before, that it would sting so deeply that their arteries might be cut, or their hearts pierced and that then they must lie down and die? The well-thrown spear had been, in other ages, a vast surprise to the carnivora of ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... without becoming obtrusive. It steals into the senses as quietly as the dawn and causes life to smile. Wit may flash, but humor blithely glides into the consciousness with a radiant and kindly smile upon its face. Wit may sting and inflame, but humor soothes and comforts. The man who has a generous admixture of humor in his nature is an agreeable companion and a sympathetic friend to grown-up people, to children, and to animals. His spirit is genial, and people become kindly and magnanimous ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... springs upon the proprietor, whose only defense is his whip. This simple weapon in his hands (according to the programme) will change itself into a fiery sword and shield. The end of this whip will sting as a rattlesnake, flash as lightning, shoot as a thunderbolt, and keep at a proper distance the enraged monster, who vainly roars and tries to jump on the artist. This is not the end yet: sixteen-year-old Orso, an "American Hercules," born of a white father ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... account of the reference to his marriage made by Chang, the Taoist, the day before, so when he heard Lin Tai-yue's utterances: "If others don't understand me;" he mused, "it's anyhow excusable; but has she too begun to make fun of me?" His heart smarted in consequence under the sting of a mortification a hundred times keener than he had experienced up to that occasion. Had he been with any one else, it would have been utterly impossible for her to have brought into play feelings of such resentment, but as it was no other ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin |
