"Sting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... about at the faces of these men, and seeing disappointment in their faces, lost the keen sting of her own humiliation. "In the midst of such a fight as this, how can he give time or thought to me?" Painful as the admission was, she was forced to admit that she was a very humble factor in a very large campaign. ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... pull himself up that notched pole the Arab was holding against the wall, feeling desperately for any hold for toes and fingers in the rough chunks between the old bricks, and breathing hard he reached the top and threw one leg over. He felt something grind through the serge of his trousers and sting into ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... her: she had been told of their fate, but everything had been forgotten in the later anguish. Now she remembered with a sharp sting of pain, and she turned her face toward the speaker, waiting to hear why ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... and buzzing like a hornet's nest. Soon they would feel the sting of the swarm unless they beat an immediate retreat. One sweep of his eyes told the bandy-legged fellow as much. He could hear voices crying the alarm, could see men running to and fro farther down the street. Even in the second he stood ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... adage which compares the sharp sting which passion drives into our breasts to the spurring given the flanks of a horse, was not true of Dorsenne. The application of the proverb to the circumstance was not, however, entirely erroneous, and the novelist commented upon it in his passion, although in another form, by repeating ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... behooved him, kissed his child behind the vestry door, to soothe all sting, and then he strode forth toward the reading-desk; and the tuning of fiddles sank to ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... artful, and had studied human nature deeply, and he knew that of all the torments which afflict the mind of man (and far beyond bodily torture), the pains of jealousy were the most intolerable, and had the sorest sting. If he could succeed in making Othello jealous of Cassio, he thought it would be an exquisite plot of revenge, and might end in the death of Cassio or Othello, or ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... not see them. They did not know that anything was near until they felt the sting of the hunters' arrows. One reindeer dropped to the earth. The other was not killed. He flung his head in the air and galloped away, and they could hear the thud, thud, of his hoofs long after he had disappeared ...
— The Eskimo Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... children, whose sobbing cries served but to heighten the torments of the dying.—Husbands, cruelly lacerated, and by piece-meal deprived of life, in view of the tender partners of their bosoms, whose agonizing shrieks, increasing the anguish of torture, sharpened the sting ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... are lit at dawn. Then King Mark blessed those swallows which, by happy courtesy, had brought the Hair of Gold, and Tristan also he blessed, and the hundred knights who, on that adventurous bark, had gone to find him joy of heart and of eyes; yet to him also that ship was to bring sting, ...
— The Romance Of Tristan And Iseult • M. Joseph Bedier
... of stock is he alive As keenest cattle king; A thoroughbred he deigns to drive, But not a mongrel thing; The very bees within his hive Are crossed—without a sting. ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... the Licentious.] The fine and subtill perswader when his intent is to sting his aduersary, or els to declare his mind in broad and liberal speeches, which might breede offence or scandall, he will seeme to bespeake pardon before hand, whereby his licentiousnes may be the better borne withall, as he that said: If my speech ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... 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 laws of Lycurgus, and by those ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... 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 ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... wretched soul you sting me, Eustacia! I can keep it up, and hotly too. Now, then, madam, tell ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... gossips departed, leaving a sting under the pin-feathers of the poor little hen mamma, who began to see that her darlings had curious little spoon-bills different from her own, and to worry and fret ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... away this ultimate passion, and it turned my doubt into its own exquisite sting, the very thrill ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... the thing yourself: Monopoly decrees That, if boys go making honey, they must lose it, like the bees. But, oh, be warned, my Postmaster, it's not a pleasant thing To incur a bee's resentment and to suffer from its sting: And (to change my humble parallel) I like not him who takes A nest prepared by others, like the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 28, 1891 • Various
... in all the clamour was struck by pain's forefinger, jealousy. Now, at least, he felt that keenest sting—a mounting love unworthily bestowed. Whatever she might be, he loved her; he bore in his own breast his doom. A grating, comic flavour to his predicament struck him suddenly, and he laughed creakingly as he swung down the ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... and an open heart! He had been most treacherously misused! Treachery was no adequate word for the injury inflicted on him. The more potent is a man, the less accustomed to endure injustice, and the more his power to inflict it,—the greater is the sting and the greater the astonishment when he himself is made to suffer. Newspaper editors sport daily with the names of men of whom they do not hesitate to publish almost the severest words that can be uttered;—but ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... were infinitely sweeter, even here below, than the impure pleasures of worldlings. Feeling thus, he could not but contrast the mortified life of that holy man with his own indulged and pampered existence. He had never known the sting of adversity, and rarely been thwarted in a single desire; yet how much greater his sins than those of Father Omehr! Amid such reflections he felt—and it is a salutary feeling—the truth of ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... our 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 ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... in Mrs. Burton's direction with an insouciance that somehow robbed the act of any serious sting. "Poor Mrs. Ralston holds such a high opinion of everybody," she said, "that she must meet with a ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... smarting under the 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 ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... the horizon, by intervals damaging every order of men concerned as parties to the Affghan affair, whether by action, by sanction, by counsel, or by subsequent opinion, may claim to be indifferent censors. We have political attachments: we do not deny it; but our own party is hardly touched by the sting of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... and out, watching Tom's left as though it was a snake and trying unsuccessfully to get through his guard. But the sharp lefts kept snapping his head back and his face began to redden, not only from the sting of the blows but with the mounting fury of ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell
... mirror." Chopin wrote many perfect lines; he is, above all, the faultless lyrist, the Swinburne, the master of fiery, many rhythms, the chanter of songs before sunrise, of the burden of the flesh, the sting of desire and large-moulded lays of passionate freedom. His music is, to quote Thoreau, "a proud sweet satire on the meanness of our life." He had no feeling for the epic, his genius was too concentrated, ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... TEMPERANCE REFORM? Who will indulge in what he calls the temperate use, flattering himself that he can control his appetite, when thousands, who have boasted of self-control, have found themselves, ere they were aware, within the coil of a serpent whose touch is poison, and whose sting is death? O, who that regards his neighbor, his family, his own reputation, or his own soul, will in this day of light be found dallying with that which affords at best only sensual pleasure, and which at the last biteth like a serpent, and ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... in many duststorms, but never in such a storm so far from the haunts of men. Awaking in his blanket with his mouth full of sand, he had opened his eyes to the blinding sting of a storm which already shrouded the very tree under which he lay. Other landmarks there were none; the world was swallowed in a yellow swirl that turned browner and more opaque even as Vanheimert shook himself out of his blanket and ran for the fence as for his life. He had only left ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... assuredly satisfy Munkir and Nakir.[45] Small wonder if no manner of life, however vile, stamps ill-livers in Morocco with the seal we learn to recognise in the Western world. For the Moslem death has no sting, and hell no victory. Faith, whether it be in One God, in a Trinity, in Christ, Mohammed, or Buddha, is surely the most precious of all possessions, so it be as virile and living a thing as it ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... firm on the defensive. His hair was soaked in sweat, his clothes were torn in many places, and he could feel the sharp sting of a wound in his shoulder. It was some time before he could believe that the fight was indeed over. The change from storm to calm had been sudden; and it was only when he understood that strength was no longer needed that he began to feel the evidences of fatigue. ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... discharging, at the same time, an acrid fluid from them, which caused the pain he felt. We all laughed at him at first very much; but he suffered so considerably during the day from the effects of the sting, that the more humane really pitied him, in spite of the ridiculous ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... close recurs the full flow of funeral song, with the hymnal harmonies. In the refrain of the stormy duet the sting of passion is gone; the whole plaint dies away amid the fading ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... them were the mountains with their almost impassable roads, the jungles filled with poisonous plants and the terrible prickly underbrush and pointed grass, in which skulked the land crab and various reptiles whose bite or sting was dangerous; twenty miles of this inhospitable country lay between them and Santiago, their true objective. And somewhere on the road to that city they knew they were destined to meet a well-trained foe, skilled ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... adamant it rests secure; As free from chance and malice ever found, And fears and hopes that vulgar minds confuse, As it is loyal to each manly thing And to the sounding lyre and to the Muse. Only in that part is it not so sound Where Love hath set in it his cureless sting." ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... . . Before the gates there sat On either side a formidable shape; The one seem'd woman to the waist, and fair, but ended foul in many a scaly fold Voluminous and vast, a serpent arm'd With mortal sting: about her middle round A cry of hell hounds never ceasing bark'd With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung A hideous peal: yet, when they list, would creep, If aught disturb'd their noise, into her womb, And kennel there; yet there still bark'd and howl'd ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... older that was congenial to her, and her mind preyed upon itself; and the mystery of her birth at once chagrined her and raised in her the most extravagant expectations. She was proud and she felt the sting of poverty. She could not but be conscious of her beauty also, and she was vain of that, and came to take a sort of delight in the exercise of her fascinations upon the rather loutish young men who came in her way and whom ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... against him as if he would devour both knight and steed, armour and all, in a moment. But the brave Saint George, knowing well how to deal with dragons, and all such-like monsters, quickly wheeled his horse out of his way, and with such force did the monster rush on that he drove his sting full three feet into the ground. Returning again, however, with furious rage, he made at the Knight, and would have carried both him and his charger to the ground, but that Saint George, thrusting his spear at his throat, the ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... the books of the New Testament were shocked or amused when told that the censor had allowed the following passage to appear in an eloquent speech delivered by the ex-Premier, M. Painleve: "As Hall Caine, the great American poet, has put it, 'O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... hardy and adventurous men made laws unto themselves, and their somewhat hasty and inconsiderate hands began to sting the aboriginal population, there lived on this Isle a stalwart native whose force of character constituted him a captain ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... then percheth he, With pretty flight,[26] And makes his pillow of my knee The livelong night. Strike I my lute, he tunes the string. He music plays, if so I sing. He lends me every lovely thing Yet cruel! he, my heart doth sting. 'Whist, wanton! still ye!' ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... a silence full of secret things, like the silences of their first meeting, there by the same gate, long ago. This one, however, had a vibration that seemed to sting them. ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... he is the buccaneer, the flinger of foul oaths, and terrible damning curses. But as a rule they are not vindictive, they have no sting—for Hawk is a forgiving and humble man in reality, in spite ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... continuing 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 ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley
... to all she could say, but just waved his hand once impatiently. Petty consolation seemed to sting him. ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... in himself abundantly the attributes (of the Tao) is like an infant. Poisonous insects will not sting him; fierce beasts will not seize him; birds of prey will not ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze
... fellow-villagers; but once having joined his regiment, he is perhaps worse off than the foot-soldier. "He is thrown to the ground among thorns:—a scorpion wounds him in the foot, and his heel is pierced by its sting.—When his kit is examined,—his misery is at its height." No sooner has the fact been notified that his arms are in a bad condition, or that some article has disappeared, than "he is stretched on the ground—and ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... sting of remembering troops of follies and errors, is best alleviated by the thought that they may make me better able to help those who have to go through like experiences, and who are so dear to me that I would ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... allowed its merit. But when they went farther, 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, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... thou learn that thus it fares with age, When pleasure, wealth, or power the bosom warm; This baffled hope might tame thy manhood's rage, And disappointment of her sting disarm. But why should foresight thy fond heart alarm? Perish the lore that deadens young desire! Pursue, poor imp, the imaginary charm, Indulge gay hope, and fancy's pleasing fire: Fancy and hope too soon shall ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... dewy harvest in; Once, when the lovely Pleiades arise, And add fresh lustre to the summer skies; And once, when hastening from the watery sign, They quit their station, and forbear to shine. The bees are prone to rage, and often found To perish for revenge, and die upon the wound Their venomed sting produces aching pains, And swells the flesh, and shoots among the veins. When first a cold hard winter's storms arrive, 310 And threaten death or famine to their hive, If now their sinking state and low ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... should strip it of the skin for gloves—cursed him fiercely in farewell, struck off the leathern bands of the harness, kicked his body aside into the grass, and, groaning and muttering in savage wrath, pushed the cart lazily along the road up-hill, and left the dying dog for the ants to sting and for the crows ...
— A Dog of Flanders • Louisa de la Rame)
... Crocodile, Dreadfully grinding in her sharp long teeth The broken bowels of a silly fish. His back was armed against the dint of spear, With shields of brass that shined like burnished gold; And as he stretched forth his cruel paws, A subtle Adder, creeping closely near, Thrusting his forked sting into his claws, Privily shed his poison through his bones; Which made him swell, that there his bowels burst, That did so much in his own greatness trust. So Humber, having conquered Albanact, Doth yield his glory unto Locrine's sword. Mark ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... felt, and the silky reddish-brown beard had in it wide, ragged streaks of grey. He had worshipped the woman who had given up all for him; they had lived only for, and in one another during four wonderful years. Hardly a passing twinge of regret, never a scorpion-sting of remorse, spoiled ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... the sneering raillery, the whole seasoned with Berrichon jests, with phrases smacking of the soil, with the taunts, often well-deserved, which narrow, but logical, minds can utter on occasion, and which sting with their vulgar patois like an insult from ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... Barbara was obliged to acknowledge to herself, from beginning to end, however much it might sting her, and therefore she was always in a ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... all," Mr. Newman went on. "At the sting of the lash, as though some one had turned a switch, the daylight went out—to the sound of that gross animal laugh. There was again the frozen dark, the solitude—the chill—and I heard you saying, as from another planet, ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... must pass—fame, joy and love, The sting of grief, the blot of shame; The only thing that really counts Is how we bear the praise ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... her crape bodice Mlle. Vinteuil felt the sting of her friend's sudden kiss; she gave a little scream and ran away; and then they began to chase one another about the room, scrambling over the furniture, their wide sleeves fluttering like wings, clucking ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... troubles came— The same old story—land and game; And Dubois' Men were the first to feel The bullet-sting and the clip of steel; And last in battle 'gainst thousands sent, With Gatling guns for our punishment. Every cause has its traitor; then How should it fare with Dubois' Men! Beaten their cause was, and hunted down, Like to a moose in the chase ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... I lay Jan Grimbal knaws the reason if you doan't. The worm that can sting does, if you tread on it. ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... with the native bee, and would certainly have been counted mad by any stranger who could have seen us sitting in the smoke of a fire in the broiling sun! This was the only way to escape them; not that they sting, on the contrary they are quite harmless, and content themselves by slowly crawling all over one, up one's sleeve, down one's neck, and everywhere in hundreds, sucking up what moisture they may—what an excellent flavour their honey ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... man surrenders his imagined individual rights, of whatever sort. That takes away one keen sting which is common to all ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... sentence for her, and love resumed its sway; but when alone and wakeful on her pillow, she recalled his look, the sting of her first doubt darted through her uneasy heart, and feeling eagerly after the ring she tore it from its ribbon and put it on ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... blade before their eyes, flourishing a semicircle with it, and making it dart here and there like the tongue of an angry snake; and instantly every man in front of me felt uncomfortable, not knowing where the snake was going to sting, and then, as I said before, they were fighting for money and not for honour. When I had dazzled their eyes for a moment with this sword-play and bewildered their dull brains, I suddenly changed my tactics and thrust ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... wife intensely, he took Lucrezia Crivelli for his mistress, a thing which caused Beatrice the most bitter anguish of mind, but could not alter her love for him. And remorse for the pain which he had caused Beatrice gave the sharpest sting to Lodovico's own despair, on that sad day when he wept for his young ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... its coils, he, seeking no contest with the mightier biped, casts loose his envenomed arms, and swims away. The amputated weapons severed from their parent body vent vengeance on the cause of their destruction, and sting as fiercely as if their original proprietor itself gave ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... are not considered of sufficient importance for any display of feeling to attract attention. When I hear such complaints, and they are not unfrequent from the younger members of large families, I have little doubt that the sting in all these murmurs is infixed by their pride. They assure me, at the same time, that if there was any one to care much about it, to watch anxiously whether they were vexed or pleased, they would be able to exercise the strictest control ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... reach of human thought is lost! What, what must be the parent's heart-felt pangs, Who sees his child, perchance his only child! Thus struggling in the abyss of despair, To sin indebted for a life of woe. Still worse, if worse can be! the thought must sting (If e'er reflection calls it from the bed Of low oblivion) that ignoble wretch, The cruel instrument of all their woe; Sure it must cut his adamantine heart More than ten thousand daggers onward plung'd, With all death's tortures quivering on ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... pull-up on foot and on horseback, on hearing their dreaded warning! There is also the cobra-capello, nearly as dangerous, several black snakes, and the boem-slang, or tree-snake, less deadly, one of which I once shot seven feet long. The Cape is also infested by scorpions, whose sting is little less virulent than a snake-bite; and by the spider called the tarantula, which is extremely dreaded.—The Cape, by ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... Guarini chose to adopt the attitude of a guardian of morals, and Bellarmino's words clearly possessed a special sting. This pose was in truth but a part of the general attitude he assumed towards the author of the Aminta. His superficial propriety authorized him, in his own eyes, to utter a formal censure upon the amorous dream of the ideal poet. He paid the price of his unwarranted conceit. Those passages ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... mood in which she meets him this particular evening, when his card was brought to her door. Twice has "Miss Mischief" essayed to enter the room and "make up." Conscience has been telling her savagely that in the impulse and sting of the moment she has given an unfair coloring to the whole matter. Mr. Stanley had volunteered no such remark as that she so vehemently quoted. Asked point blank whether he considered as given "on suspicion" the report which ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... cannot, therefore, see the extremity, wherein lay the sting and force of the whole creature,—the chamber, namely, built by the Doge Gradenigo; but the reader must keep that commencement and the date of it carefully in his mind. The body of the Palace Serpent will soon ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... are before me. Slighted by her, on whom my heart by its last fibre hung, where shall I turn? I wake with her by my side, not as my sweet bedfellow, but as the corpse of my love, without a heart in her bosom, cold, insensible, or struggling from me; and the worm gnaws me, and the sting of unrequited love, and the canker of a hopeless, endless sorrow. I have lost the taste of my food by feverish anxiety; and my favourite beverage, which used to refresh me when I got up, has no moisture in it. Oh! cold, solitary, sepulchral breakfasts, compared ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... the contrivances in nature be not, as far as we can judge, absolutely perfect, as in the case even of the human eye; or if some of them be abhorrent to our ideas of fitness. We need not marvel at the sting of the bee, when used against an enemy, causing the bee's own death; at drones being produced in such great numbers for one single act, and being then slaughtered by their sterile sisters; at the astonishing waste of ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... resounds afar, like that of an angry cartman beating his horses. The blood flows, the long wounds cross each other, strips of skin are raised without softening either the hand of the executioner or the heart of the master, who cries 'sting him harder.' ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... is the only one of the wood folk who has learned the trick of attacking Unk Wunk without injury to himself. If, when very hungry, he finds a porcupine, he never attacks him directly,—he knows too well the deadly sting of the barbs for that,—but bothers and irritates the porcupine by flipping earth at him, until at last Unk Wunk rolls all his quills outward and lies still. Then Mooween, with immense caution, slides one paw under him and with a quick flip hurls him against the nearest ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... under his breath, "he's sure a corker t' paint cold that fair makes yer nose sting." And he curled up in a chair behind, where he could steal a look, now and then, without ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... passed through Khartum were slaves—"black ivory," as they were called by their heartless Arab torturers. Elephants' tusks are heavy, and cannot be transported on horses or oxen from the depths of the forest, for draught animals are killed by the sting of the poisonous tsetse fly. Therefore the tusks had to be carried by men, and when these had finished their task they were themselves sold into Egypt, Syria, and Turkey. The forests and deserts were not inexhaustible; ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... gun breeds endless fun, and makes men jump like rockets, And turnip-heads on posts Make very decent ghosts: Then hornets sting like anything, when placed in waist-coat pockets - Burnt cork and walnut juice Are not without their use. No fun compares with easy chairs whose seats are stuffed with needles - Live shrimps their patience tax When put down people's backs - Surprising, too, what one can do with ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... is charmed 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 ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... (metaphorically) into his detested carcase, discovered I had been attacking the wrong man. It is a lesson I have never forgotten; and I pray you, my younger brothers of the pen, to lay it to heart. Believe rather that your unfriendly critic, like the bee who is fabled to sting and die, has perished after his attempt on your reputation; and let the tomb be his asylum. For even supposing you get the right sow by the ear—or rather, the wild boar with the 'raging tooth'—what can it profit you? It ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... gleaming cutlasses and from the faces of demons. This fear it was—a fear like this, as I have often thought—which must, amidst her other woes, have been the Aaron woe that swallowed up all the rest to the unhappy Marie Antoinette. This must have been the sting of death to her maternal heart, the grief paramount, the "crowning" grief—the prospect, namely, that her royal boy would not be dismissed from the horrors of royalty to peace and humble innocence; but that his fair cheek would be ravaged by vice as well ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... would love them better than all the wealth in the world! I would love them better than my own life! Ah, the sting it is to think of ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May
... into the whole that the blade may bend double without breaking. But to Veronica it was different; for she guessed instinctively how he looked upon such trifles, and she did not wish them to multiply unduly. Each one was a sting to ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... two months after the first talk they had another. Sam, who had not allowed his grief over the loss of Janet or his nightly efforts to drown the sting of it in hard drinking, to check the big forward movement that he felt he was getting into the work of the offices and shops, sat one afternoon deeply absorbed in a pile of factory cost sheets. His shirt sleeves were rolled to the elbow, showing his white muscular forearms. ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... exclaimed. And there was a note in her voice that made my eyelids sting. "How little I guessed. And you seem ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... lordship appeared on a race-course—it was at Ascot, a few months later—he was greeted with thunders of cheers from the bookmakers, a tribute to his pluck and sportsmanship, which must have taken away some of the sting of defeat. But fate which had dealt this merciless blow to the Marquess was in no mood to spare him further disaster. The second stroke fell within five months of the first—at the Newmarket second October Meeting. The favourite for the Middle ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... a second neither of us stirred; for a second, too, I could see that her body had relaxed as mine had relaxed. Then I felt the sting of wrecked pride—the pride from which I suppose I never shall escape. I can remember that I drew a long breath, made a low bow, which, though not so intended, must have been both insulting and absurd, and walked through the curtains ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... wound, which warlike hand of enemy Inflicts with dint of sword, so sore doth light, As doth the poisonous sting which infamy Infixeth in the name of noble wight; For by no art, nor any leeches might, It ever can recovered ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... there was a sting in this reproach that carried home to her; there was just a sufficient edge of truth to wound her. Had there been much light, she could have read his face; the dimness of the hall was saving Vance, and he ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... self-reproach and failure, defiance and fun, and then—oh, the ache I would not confess, the glory of being provoking, and, oh, the final anguish I brought on myself and on you all; and I went on, when it began to wear away, still stifling the sting which revived whenever I came home, and all was renewed! Really, whenever I shammed it was only remorse. I don't think that real repentance, and the peace after it, began till those quiet days ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... There's the sting,— That I, an insect of to-day, outsoar The reverend worm, nobility! Wouldst shame me With my poor parentage!—Sir, I'm the son Of him who kept a sordid hostelry In the Jews' quarter—my good mother cleansed Linen for honest ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... her face, but her lip curved knowingly and her voice came more gently, because of the greater sting that ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... the miserable fate of possessing the temperament of genius without the electric spark itself, magnified the help he had given, and felt extreme bitterness at the shortness of memory shown by the great writer, whom he vainly strove to sting into feeling by the ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... dissolved in tears! Justly indeed; for Charles is dead, the great, (Who can so much as such great griefs repeat?) King Charles the good, in whom that day there fell More than one tribe in this our Israel! Ah! cruel Death! we find thy fatal sting In losing him who was so good a King, - A King so wise, so just, and he'd great part In Solomon's wisdom and in David's heart; A King! whose virtues only to rehearse Rather requires a volume than a verse. Sprung from the ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... what was the hardest and cruelest sting Was that father once called you a horrid old thing: He said, 'What a battered and wretched old fright! Do take her away, ...
— Harper's Young People, May 18, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... suggestions to make; but I may just mention that I had intended to try the effects of touching the dampened seeds with the minutest drop of formic acid at the end of a sharp glass rod, so as to imitate the possible action of the sting of the ant. I heartily hope that you may be rewarded by coming to some definite result; but I fail five times out of six in my own experiments. I have lately been trying some with poor success, and suppose that I have done too much, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... he exclaimed—"the spectre of all my crimes is risen to haunt me through life! I am a murderer—yet she lives, and my guilt is not the less! The stamp of eternal infamy is upon me—the finger of scorn will mark me out—the tongue of reproach will sting me like that of the serpent—the deadly touch of shame will cover me like a leper—the laws of society will crush the murderer, not the less that his wickedness in blood has miscarried: after that comes the black and terrible tribunal of the Almighty's vengeance—of His fiery indignation! ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... "I could not help it, but there was no one to see. Just like a silly great gal. It is being hungry, I suppose, and weak with my wound; and, my word, it does sting! But ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... have never entered into, Bob," answered Maud, slightly blushing, and openly smiling, and that in a way, too, to take all the sting out of her words—"as young ladies can have more suitable occupations, one might think. You will admit I guided you faithfully and skilfully into the Hut last evening, and such a service should suffice for the present. But, my mother tells me ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... of life. She touches everything so daintily, she hits off a character in a sentence, she gives the pith of a dialogue without tediousness, she mimics without vulgarity; her narration sparkles, but it does n't sting. The picture of her day is full of vivacity, and it gives new value and freshness to common things. If we could only have on the stage such actresses as we have in ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... game to put your courage and your pulse to the test there is always a troop of smaller animals that make game of you and prove your force of resistance. A rat bites your heel whilst you are asleep; the leeches suck your blood; all sorts of insects sting you. These little annoying incidents irritate flesh and spirit and may be the cause of feverishness, but a dose of quinine and a compress over the wound soon ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... there was a hidden sting behind the jibe. He appeared to be about to say something more, but checked himself, and went back to his seat by ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... has also become the idol of some of the criminals. For if he discovers (as sometimes happens) that the criminal is a good sort after all, he is just as likely to warn his prey, once he has all proofs of the guilt and a conviction is certain. Possibly this is his way of taking the sting from his irresistible impulse to ferret out hidden mysteries. But it is rather inconvenient, and he has hurt himself by it—hurt himself badly. They were tired of his peculiarities at the capital, and wanted to make his years an excuse ...
— The Case of the Golden Bullet • Grace Isabel Colbron, and Augusta Groner
... composition. To drive Boer riflemen off a rough ridge along which they can retire from one position, when it gets too hot for them, to another, nothing will do but infantry of some sort, and preferably with a bayonet sting left in them for final emergencies. This was an occasion of all others when infantry regiments might have changed the whole course of events to our advantage, but for some reason they had been ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... while the overseers would wave them off from afar to avoid a useless interchange of words. If, in the years of the French milliards, the workingman had turned socialist out of sheer envy and wantonness, he became so now under the sting of adversity, and in all the length and breadth of Berlin there was hardly one of the proletariat who was not a fanatical disciple of the new doctrine, with its slashing denunciations against all that was, ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... hard and white in the centre; bright red, elevated, hard swelling of the place where he was stung, and round about a chilly feeling. 1170-1173: red place where he was stung, with swelling and red streaks along the fingers and arm; red streaks along the lymphatic vessels, proceeding from the sting along the middle finger and arm; inflammatory swelling, spreading all around. 1181: throbbing in the swelling. 1182: wide-spread cellular inflammation, terminating in resolution. 1224, 1225: swelling and ...
— Apis Mellifica - or, The Poison of the Honey-Bee, Considered as a Therapeutic Agent • C. W. Wolf
... found a great gadfly, as big as a bat, and sent it to buzz in the white cow's ears, and to bite her and sting her so that she could have no rest all day long. Poor Io ran from place to place to get out of its way; but it buzzed and buzzed, and stung and stung, till she was wild with fright and pain, and wished that ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin
... who instantly and noisily voice their antagonisms, who, under the sting of a hurt to their vanity indulge in threats of violence, ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... was 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 rare, she ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... judgment she watched her mother. Either Grace was very big, or very indifferent to the sting of old Anthony's tongue. Sometimes women suffered much in silence, because they loved greatly. Like Aunt Elinor. Aunt Elinor had loved her husband more than she had loved her child. Quite calmly Lily decided that, ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... yet preserved me alive. Besides, another time, being in the field with one of my companions, it chanced that an adder passed over the highway, so I, having a stick in my hand, struck her over the back; and having stunned her, I forced open her mouth with my stick, and plucked her sting out with my fingers; by which act, had not God been merciful unto me, I might by my desperateness have brought myself to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... odd-job fellow, decent enough, I dare say, but hardly the man for her, I thought, after studying his portrait. There was a sort of foppish weakness in his face. And indeed his going seemed to have worked her no hardship, nor to have left any incurable sting of loss. ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... as possible to sting Weyrother's vanity as author of the military plan, argued that Bonaparte might easily attack instead of being attacked, and so render the whole of this plan perfectly worthless. Weyrother met all objections with a firm and contemptuous ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... heart desires to share, are the men who are restless till they are on the path, whose eyes are ever travelling to the goal, who have a 'divine discontent' with distance from God, and who know the impulse and the sting that sends them ever travelling on the path that ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... understand how life can slip away so," said Hester. "Is there ever a day without its sting?—without doubt of somebody, disappointment in oneself or another, dread of some evil, or weariness of spirit? Prosperity is no more of a cure for these than for sickness and ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... Its head and breast are covered with a strong natural coat of mail, which is impenetrable to the attempts of every other insect, and its belly is enveloped in a soft, pliant skin, which eludes the sting even of a wasp. Its legs are terminated by strong claws, not unlike those of a lobster; and their vast length, like spears, serve to keep every ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • 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 giveth His ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... before he was vexed with himself. He was not so much sorry, as annoyed that he had behaved in fashion undignified. The thought that his childish behaviour would justify Kirsty in her opinion of him, added its sting. He tried to console himself with the reflection that the sort of thing ought to be put an end to at once: how far, otherwise, might not the old fellow's interference go! I am afraid he even said to himself that ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... sky lighten, turn rosy and then gold. The sun shone upon him, but some time elapsed before he felt its warmth. All of a sudden a pain, like a sting, shot through his shoulder. He could not see what caused it; probably a bee. Then he felt another upon his leg, and about simultaneously with it a tiny, fiery stab in his side. A sickening sensation ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... N. bane, curse; evil &c 619; hurtfulness &c (badness) 649 [Obs.]; painfulness &c (cause of pain) 830; scourge &c (punishment) 975; damnosa hereditas [Lat.]; white elephant. sting, fang, thorn, tang, bramble, brier, nettle. poison, toxin; teratogen; leaven, virus venom; arsenic; antimony, tartar emetic; strychnine, nicotine; miasma, miasm^, mephitis^, malaria, azote^, sewer gas; pest. [poisonous substances, examples] Albany hemp^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... camel, and he wants to settle for his lost eye, which makes him lively. Also I see stones ahead, which are bad for camels. Then there is the river, and I don't know if camels can swim, but Jana can as Marut learned. Do you think, Baas, that you could manage to sting him up with a bullet in his knee or that great trunk of his, just to give him something to think ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... very weak and faint and weary, though the cold rain and the open night air beat on his upturned face with a sting that ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... called him a Pumpkin— Pun-King—a paraphrase on New England pronunciation of the word), and in conclusion gave us a sentiment: "The Hive! May it be a hive, full of working bees, who make a little noise, a great deal of honey, and sting not at all." ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... the wearer of all the French medals and the bearer of twenty-five wounds received in battle—he sneaked away, afraid and humble and sullen, to hide himself from the curious. That action of Ferier's was a revelation to Dorn. He felt a sting of shame. There were two classes of people in relation to this war—those who went to fight and those who stayed behind. What had Delorme or Mathie or Ferier to do with the world of selfish, comfortable, well-fed men? Dorn heard a million voices of France ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... dangers of sisterhood. The dangers are as real, though we trust not as great, as the advantages. Family quarrels are apt to be bitterest; a chance word will seem unkind and unbearable from a near kinsman, which, coming from a stranger, would carry no sting at all. As Lowell very truly said, "The common blood, and still more the common language, are fatal instruments of misapprehension." But behind this statement there lies a far deeper though still obvious truth. We misunderstand because we understand; and it ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... melancholy than they really were. Men suffered much in those days, but the idea of grief being never separated from that of penalty, suffering was either an expiation or a test, and sorrow thus regarded loses its sting; light and ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... pails and spades, All you who sturdily take your stand On your pebble-buttressed forts of sand, And thence defy With a fearless eye And a burst of rollicking high-pitched laughter The stealthy trickling waves that lap you And the crested breakers that tumble after To souse and batter you, sting and sap you— All you roll-about rackety little folk, Down-again, up-again, not-a-bit brittle folk, Attend, attend, And let each girl and boy Join in a loud "Ahoy!" For, lo, he comes, your tricksy little friend, From the clear caverns of his crystal home Beyond the tossing ridges of ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... a field open for women as confidence men. To have a female confidence game played on a man would leave less of a sting than to be bilked by a male. But, as burglars, the idea seems revolting. To think of women going about nights with a jimmy and a dark lantern, and opening doors, or windows, and sneaking about rooms, is ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... was at Meudon as usual, was stupid enough to present himself at the coach door as the King and his companions descended. Madame de Bourgogne was much offended, constrained herself less than usual, and turned away her head with affectation, after a sort of sham salute. He felt the sting, but had the folly to approach her again after dinner, while she was playing. He experienced the same treatment, but this time in a still more marked manner. Stung to the quick and out of countenance, he went up to his chamber, and did ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... a wasp darted fiercely at me and planted its sting in my neck, and for that afternoon my anticipated pleasures were dispelled. Arriving at camp I found the men grumbling; their provisions were ended, and there was no prospect for three days, at least, of procuring any. With the improvidence usual ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... chiefly by the sting of her taunting tongue, by the blaze of her dark, disdainful eyes; and perhaps by the changed feeling toward this creature whom he had left a half-grown girl and returned to find a woman. At any rate, he crossed and seized her wrists and gazed ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... soon stroke a nettle myself," said the cook, "but there's no accounting for taste! You take my word for it, if she goes on stroking much longer, she'll get a sting as she won't forget in ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... sting of her rebuke, though but half convinced, he concluded the purchase and went out, bearing the box of ornamented paper under his arm. An hour later, after the letter was written, misgivings besieged him anew, and he stood holding the envelope at arm's length, while he frowned dubiously ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... gentlemen, what was the chief point about my spite? Why, the whole point, the real sting of it lay in the fact that continually, even in the moment of the acutest spleen, I was inwardly conscious with shame that I was not only not a spiteful but not even an embittered man, that I was simply scaring sparrows at random and amusing ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... had happened, but I could not bring myself to speak first. If she would ask me—But nobody asked. Nobody looked away from me. Everybody congratulated me, and my father and mother and my remotest relations. But the sting of shame smarted just the same; I could not be consoled. I had made a fool of myself: Mr. Swan ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... lonely heart he still prayed and he was heard. The cup was not removed, but "There appeared unto him an angel from heaven, strengthening him." He was given grace to drain the cup to its very dregs and death lost its sting and the grave its terror. He was fitted for perfect sympathy with those who are called upon to face the mystery of "unanswered prayer." "He became unto all them that obey him the author ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... devoid of a nervous system. I wouldn't treat a Saturday Reviewer myself as that spider treated the wasps when once she was sure of them. She went at them with a sort of angry, half-contemptuous dash, kept cautiously out of the way of the protruded sting, began in most business-like fashion at the head, and rolling the wasp round and round with her legs and feelers, swathed him rapidly and effectually, with incredible speed, in a dense network of web poured forth from her spinnerets. In less than half a ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... beat, and sent the faint blood creeping to her cold extremities. Her torturers, weary of their work, had allowed her to fall into a painless stupor; but just as she was sinking from sleep to death, heaven sent Radetsky to scourge her back to consciousness; and at the first sting of his lash she sprang maimed and ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... way," said he, "in which I can speak to you without receiving wounds that sting like the fangs of a serpent? Be patient with me. If I offend, try to be a little forbearing just now, for the sake of yourself, if for nothing else. See, I am humbling myself. I ask your forbearance. I wish to speak ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... the hags and cleuchs i' the moors, that the sea 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
... return 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, ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... thickly sown with golden bees instead of "Louis flowers" or Fleurs de lys. The origin dates back to the time of the early Egyptians, who symbolised their kings under this emblem, the honey indicating the reward they gave to the well-doers, and the sting the punishment they inflicted on the evil. More than 300 golden bees were found in the tomb of Childeric, A.D. 1653. Offer your song to some composer. Sometimes they are in request; more frequently there are more offered than are required. All depends on the fancy of the composer. Only ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various
... such men, and usually, after they had seen that the law was inevitable, they had resigned themselves to the new condition and had become pretty fair citizens. He had imagined that Dunlavey would prove to be no exception, that after the first sting of defeat had been removed he would meet his adversaries half way in an effort to patch up their differences. The danger was in the time immediately following the realization of defeat. A man of the Dunlavey type was then ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... oaths like a man gone mad. Again and again the revolver spat wickedly and here and there a pony plunged recklessly forward, nicked in the ear by one of those venomous singing pellets. Helpless to defend himself and expecting every moment to feel the sting of a bullet somewhere in his body, Cameron hurried his pony with all his might down the trail, dragging the pack animals after him. In huddled confusion the terrified brutes followed after him in a mad rush, for hard upon their ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... his soul to bathe a while in divine eye-beams of flattering approval, then gave him a little sting to bring him to life. "You are pretty old, not to be married," she remarked. "I hope you won't find some woman to put an end to your high intentions, but men generally do. Men fall in love, and when they finally pull themselves out, they've lost sight of ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... asked him whence he had come, or how long he would stay. She had a strong persuasion that Rollo would discover in time who was his best friend, and was supremely anxious that when that time came there should be nothing to get over in his return to her—no remembrance of painful scenes—no sting of reproach—no shame but such as he must endure from his own heart. Strong as was her confidence in the final issue, the time did seem long to her yearning spirit, lonely as she was. Many a night she ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau |
