"Nettle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... contains of affection he pours at my feet, like the Magdalen's cup of ointment. Believe me, a life of love is an exception to the laws of this earth; all flowers fade; great joys and emotions have a morrow of evil—if a morrow at all. Real life is a life of anguish; its image is in that nettle growing there at the foot of the wall,—no sun can reach it and it keeps green. Yet, here, as in parts of the North, there are smiles in the sky, few to be sure, but they compensate for many a grief. Moreover, women who are ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... grapes, but these were yet hard and green; dwarf filberts grew on the dry gravelly sides of the hills, yet the rough prickly calyx that enclosed the nut, filled their fingers with minute thorns, that irritated the skin like the stings of the nettle; but as the kernel when ripe was sweet and good, they did not mind the consequences. The moist part of the valley was occupied by a large bed of May-apples, [FN: Kilvert's Ravine, above Pine-tree Point.] the fruit of which was of unusual size, but they were not ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... labors; why the tones of her voice made my heartstrings thrill like an AEolian harp; and particularly, why my pulse beat such a furious rattan, when I looked and fingered over her little hand to pick out the cruel nettle-stings and thistles. Thus with me began love and poetry, which at times have been my only, and till within the last twelve months, have been ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... beares our house. He shewes in this, he loues his owne Barne better then he loues our house. Let me see some more. The purpose you vndertake is dangerous. Why that's certaine: 'Tis dangerous to take a Colde, to sleepe, to drinke: but I tell you (my Lord foole) out of this Nettle, Danger; we plucke this Flower, Safety. The purpose you vndertake is dangerous, the Friends you haue named vncertaine, the Time it selfe vnsorted, and your whole Plot too light, for the counterpoize of so great an ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... this he searches for two bulbous plants, which contain a green and glutinous juice; and lastly, collects two species of ants—one very large and black, and so venomous that its sting produces fever, and another little red ant which stings like a nettle. Having scraped the wourali vine and bitter root into thin shavings, he puts them into a sieve made of leaves, which he holds over the earthen pot, pouring water on them. A thick liquor comes through, having the appearance of coffee. ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... my kisses—I shower them not, Allah the All-seeing is my witness! and they be given daintily as 'twere to the leaf of a nettle, or over-hot pilau. Yet haply kisses repeated might restore her to a bloom, and it is certain youth is somehow stolen from her, if the Vizier Feshnavat went before her, and his blood be her blood; and he is powerful, she wise. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... beneath, amid the flowers, once so bright and abundant, where only weeds and stinging thistles were to be seen this winter-time. As for him, wisdom came not with years; "consideration" never whipped the offending Adam out of him—in his character there was no "nettle," but there was no "strawberry." What does he reply to her merrie rallying as she dallies with her looking-glass? He leans his white and jewelled hand upon his hip, and, with a faded smile, listens to her mingled love and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... He took post in the Skinners' bedroom with a rifle, to watch the carcase of the dead rat, and of the others, they took turns to rest from sack-carrying and to keep watch two at a time upon the rat-holes behind the nettle grove. The pollen sacs of the nettles were ripe, and every now and then the vigil would be enlivened by the dehiscence of these, the bursting of the sacs sounding exactly like the crack of a pistol, and the pollen grains as big as buckshot pattered ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... full in its green, rich in substance, simple in form. The inferior leaves are those which have lost strength, and become thin, like paper; which have lost lustre, and become dead by roughness of surface, like the nettle,—(an Apolline leaf may become dead by bloom, like the olive, yet not lose beauty); which have lost colour and become feeble in green, as in the poplar, or crudely bright, like rice; which have lost substance and softness, and have nothing ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... Aurora; on the other hand, he sometimes would succeed in getting his fingers among Occasion's hair, and secure Aurora for his share, while Dr. Tom was apportioned with the slenderer charmer. But the behavior of all was civilized and urbane, and if a thorn pricked or nettle burned, the sufferer concealed his ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... in which it has left us. We shall have trouble in the Philippines. So we shall have trouble in Cuba and in Porto Rico. If we dawdle, and hesitate, and lead them to think we fear them and fear trouble, our trouble will be great. If, on the other hand, we grasp this nettle danger, if we act promptly, with inexorable vigor and with justice, it may be slight. At any rate, the more serious the crisis the plainer our path. God give us the courage to purify our politics and strengthen our Government to meet these new and ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... Tripolium, Bellis perennis, some species of Anthemis, Arnica montana and in a number [237] of other well-known rayed species. Another instance may be quoted; it has been pointed out by Grant Allen, and refers to the dead-nettle or Lamium album. Systematically placed in a genus with red-flowering species, we may regard its white color as due to the latency of ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... afternoon i went butterfling with Potter Goram and got sum splendid red and black ones on the nettle flowers by the side of the road. father he came home from Boston good-natured and was glad to see i was so mutch better and we had the roach and pickeril for supper and they was fine. after supper father went down town for sumthing and we was setting round the table. ...
— Brite and Fair • Henry A. Shute
... our English Chatterton. But, then, no one of these can be called "a dominant historical personage," and the known facts permit themselves to be, and are, "romanticised" effectively enough. So the flower is in each case plucked from the nettle. And there is another flower of more positive and less compensatory kind which blooms here, which is particularly welcome to some readers, and which, from Cinq-Mars alone, they could hardly have expected to find in any garden of Alfred de Vigny's. For this springs from a root of ironic wit ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... aphid, flowers, pollen, and honey. Wood, bark, resin, and honey might have been supplied; but how could green leaves, sap, flowers and pollen, be furnished to those insects absolutely requiring them for existence? Thirty species of insects feed on the nettle, but not one of them could live on dried nettles. Roesel calculates that two hundred species subsist on the oak; but the oak must be in a growing condition to supply them with food. In no other way, then, could the insects have been preserved ...
— The Deluge in the Light of Modern Science - A Discourse • William Denton
... dearie, he'll never die! When the true one's time comes, you'll see, if so be you be alive to see it, as Heaven grant, he will go off like the flame of a candle and nothing be left in his place but a bit of a withered sting nettle. But come, my sweetings, 'tis time I got your supper. I'll put some nice rosy- cheeked apples down to roast, to be soft for ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Diana scornfully. "That's all they know about it. I've told them till I'm tired that it's nettle-rash. I've had it before. I always do get the wretched thing when I eat sausages. They sort of poison me. It'll go away all right if they only let me alone. What did Miss Todd want bringing that black doctor ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... he rhymed it at last, Mother Flower or one of the little girls had always to take the spider beside her, when she sat down, which was of course quite troublesome. The kettle he rhymed first with nettle, and hung a bunch of nettle over it, till all the children got dreadfully stung. Then he tried settle, and hung the kettle over the settle. But that was no place for it; they had to go without their tea, ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... the rooms heavy black cobwebs hung down, covered with dust; in the garden everything grew just as it would; hops and climbing plants ran like a net between the trees and bushes, and the hemlock and nettle grew larger and stronger. The blood-beech had been outgrown by other trees, and now stood in the shade; and its leaves were green like those of the common trees, and its glory had departed. Crows and choughs, in great close masses, ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... of Sauve should be a trident, those of Quissac should be surmounted by an old shoe! In the former place the forked branches of the Celtis australis or nettle tree, Ulmaceae, afford a most profitable occupation. From its tripartite boughs are made yearly thousands upon thousands of the three-pronged forks used in agriculture. The wood, whilst very durable, is yielding, and ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... put his doubt of her father to the proof. Suppose that the account had not been carelessly overdrawn— Suppose— He never for one instant suspected the girl. As soon suspect a rosebud of foregoing its own sweet personality, and of being in reality something else, say a stinging nettle. The girl carried her patent royal of youth and innocence on her face. He made up his mind to say nothing about the check, to lose the ten dollars, and, since dollars were so far from plenty with him, to sacrifice ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the garden, and came to a gray house; withered flowers lay about it, while briers and nettle-bushes clung to its walls; but, worse than all this, there came forth from the house angry, hateful words, and noises of a mad strife. Ruth feared to pass this place, and clung closely ...
— The Angel Children - or, Stories from Cloud-Land • Charlotte M. Higgins
... ashore in a small boat, a clouded moon favoring the enterprise, and started two and two, and far apart, over a low hill, intending to go clear around the Piraeus, out of the range of its police. Picking our way so stealthily over that rocky, nettle-grown eminence, made me feel a good deal as if I were on my way somewhere to steal something. My immediate comrade and I talked in an undertone about quarantine laws and their penalties, but we found nothing cheering in the subject. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the thickest gloom. Never off his guard, he knew when and where to strike, and when to reserve the blow that opportunity only served to encourage; for it is hard for the brave in battle to retain the gauntlet of defiance, and so armed, "out of the nettle ...
— A sketch of the life and services of Otho Holland Williams • Osmond Tiffany
... Aberdeen to Lord John Russell. Lord John had the peculiar temperament that is hard to agitate, but easy to nettle. So polemical a reading of former whig pranks nettled him considerably. Why, he asked, should he not say just as reasonably that Mr. Gladstone held up the whigs to odium in 1841 for stripping the farmer of adequate protection; worked the corn law ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... translated into English. For women they were such as Spray of the Coral Reef, Queen of Parrot's Land, Queen of Strangers, Smooth Water, Wife of the Morning Star, Mother of Her Grandchildren, Ten Whale's Teeth, Mother of Cockroaches, Lady Nettle, Drinker of Blood, Waited For, Rose of Rewa, Lady Thakombau, Lady Flag, etc. The men's names were such as The Stone (eternal) God, Great Shark, Bad Earth, Bad Stranger, New Child, More Dead Man's Flesh, Abode of Treachery, Not Quite Cooked, Die Out of Doors, Empty Fire, Fire in ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... own dis store. Didn't you see de sign ven you come in?" The man's manner and cock-sure air were beginning to nettle him. ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Our difficulty, let it be understood, is not about the natural origination of organs. To the triumphant outcry, "How can an organ, such as an eye, be formed under Nature?" we would respond with a parallel question, How can a complex and elaborate organ, such as a nettle-sting, be formed under Nature? But it is so formed. In the same species some individuals have these exquisitely-constructed organs and some have not. And so of other glands, the structure and adaptation of which, when looked into, appear to be as wonderful as anything in ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... was stung by a Nettle. He ran home and told his mother, saying: "Although it pains me so much, I did but touch it ever so gently." "That was just it," said his mother, "which caused it to sting you. The next time you touch a Nettle, grasp it ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... the little man's soul with jealousy and alarms, but it was stockaded with insolent confidence. He left Dinah, when he went to Paris, with all the conviction of Medor in Angelique's fidelity. When she affected cold disdain, to nettle this changeling by the scorn a courtesan sometimes shows to her "protector," and which acts on him with the certainty of the screw of a winepress, Monsieur de la Baudraye gazed at his wife with fixed eyes, like those of a cat which, in the midst ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... stampede used to ensue; and it was not supposed to be good for the health of the old or young sheep to hurry up the hill-sides in such wild fashion as that in which they rushed away from Rose's attempts to intrude on their society. Nettle may come, for he is but a tiny terrier, and so fond of his mistress that he never strays a yard away from her horse's heels. Brisk, my beautiful, stupid water-spaniel, is also allowed an outing. He is perfect to look at, but not having had any educational advantages ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... Terrys during this litigation, and the methods by which they sought to control decisions. It is entirely probable that they had hopes of intimidating the federal judges, as many believed some state judges had been, and that thus they might "from the nettle danger, pluck ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... bad as the other one I went through climbing up, but I didn't mind this one, because I was so glad I had seen those singular dances and could imitate them. I went down, creeping through the bushes, and a tall nettle stung me on my leg, and made me burn, but I didn't mind it, and I tingled with the boughs and the thorns, but I only laughed and sang. Then I got out of the thicket into a close valley, a little secret place like ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... was soon of the same opinion; for scarcely a day passed when Emma's truthfulness did not prove a nettle to ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
... served to nettle and confuse him. "It is, perhaps, not my place to say, as my future happiness does not directly depend on the permanence of his reformation. But if his word can be depended upon, your happiness to a very ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... sometimes. He said one Sunday "None of you are ower much to be trusted—none of us are ower good, are we? A, bless ya, I sometimes think if I were to lay my head on a deacon's breast—one of our own lot—may be there would be a nettle in't or summut at sooart." He is partial to long "Oh's," and "Ah's" and solemn breathings; and sometimes tells you more by a look or a subdued, calmly-moulded groan than by dozens of sentences. He spices his sermons considerably ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... discovered that possibly in time he might have a weak chest, and he visited her, therefore, every morning in the dairy that he might receive a cup of new milk from her hand. For this, he gave her in return fresh spring-flowers, or, by way of change, a nettle (which was always thrown violently into a corner), and for the rest attentively remarked the occurrences in the dairy, and Susanna's movements, whilst she poured the milk out of the pails through a sieve into the pans, and arranged them on their shelves, whereby it happened that ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... fiber of Hawaii, is found to have promising qualities. This plant resembles ramie and belongs to the nettle family also, but it is without the troublesome resin of the ramie. The fiber is ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... men, such as Mr. Roosevelt and our own Prime Minister, might be cited in the same sense; but Professor Murray's has been chosen because he has had the courage to grasp the nettle. In his words the true position is quite clearly set forth. If Inter-State Law is to become a reality we must "be sure to go far enough." There is no half-way house between Law and no Law, between Government and no Government, ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... the flesh inflame, Fierce as a nettle, and from that the name; Some in huge masses, some that you might bring In the small compass of a lady's ring; Figured by hand divine—there's not a gem Wrought by man's art to be compared to them; Soft, brilliant, tender, through the wave they ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... imagine that my success has not, thus far, amply repaid me for my toil and ingenuity. Having lived upon excitement all my days, I should starve without it. Pleasure, like safety, is the dearer for being plucked from that evergreen nettle, Danger!" ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... innumerable living organisms that make up the dust of the sunshine. Pink and white, black and yellow spores from the mushrooms over the fence in the pasture; pollen pushed from the glumes of the red top grasses and the lilac spires of the hedge nettle and germander by the roadside; shoals of spores from the mosses and ferns by the trees and in the swamp; all these life particles rose and floated in the haze, giving it tints and meanings strangely sweet. When a farmer's buggy passed along the old road the haze became ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... engineer—hydraulic work is his specialty. He has been employed by some company that intended to put in a power plant of some kind on Nettle River, and either the company broke up, or they found the plan was not feasible, or something, and they abandoned it. So Mr. Wentworth isn't doing anything, at present. But he is a fine fellow—so jolly, and ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... with eyes of love a second, In the third year teach with firmness. If she should not heed thy teaching, Should not hear thy kindly counsel, After three long years of effort, Cut a reed upon the lowlands, Cut a nettle from the border, Teach thy wife with harder measures. In the fourth year, if she heed not, Threaten her with sterner treatment, With the stalks of rougher edges, Use not yet the thongs of leather, Do not touch her with the birch-whip. If she should not heed this warning, Should she pay ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... you undertake is dangerous." "Why that is certain: it is dangerous to take a cold, to sleep, to drink; but I tell you, my Lord fool, out of this nettle danger, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... One of Mrs. "Nettle's" greatest triumphs was my Lady Macbeth dress, which she carried out from Mrs. Comyns Carr's design. I am glad to think it is immortalized in Sargent's picture. From the first I knew that picture was going to be splendid. In my diary for 1888 I was ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... rabbits, and so I could hares, but that would be poaching, and therefore I cannot give you hares; but you shall have all sorts of birds—larks, and blackbirds, and sparrows, and young rooks, and wildfowl, and many others; and then there is no end of vegetables. Nettle-tops, when well boiled, are excellent, and so are a number of other plants which are looked upon as weeds; and you have no idea of the number of roots which grow in the fields, and hedges, and hill-sides, which are fit to eat. Then, to give flavour to our birds ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... especially along the courses of the rivers Nore and Barrow; and as picturesque ground implies the existence of hill and valley, wood and rock, the naturalist will find himself at home here. The flora is rich, though without any very marked features; the Nettle-leaved Bell-flower (Campanula Trachelium) being the most characteristic species. Regarding the fauna much has still to be learned. In Tipperary, Queen's County, and King's County we are in typical central plain country—great ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... said, a day and a night in the camp between Aora river and the deep wood of Tarradubh. The plain hummed with our little army, where now are but the nettle and the ivied tower, and the yellow bee booming through the solitude; morning and night the shrill of the piob-mhor rang cheerily to the ear of Dun-chuach; the sharp call of the chieftains and sergeants, the tramp of the brogued feet in their simple evolutions, the clatter of arms, the ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... all the shops he passed were closed, except the beer-shops and the chemists'. "The nettle and ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... be not faint-hearted; Life ne'er was ordained to be shadeless and bright; One morn from the other by night-time is parted; The sun always shines though we see not the light; Misfortunes in life, like the nettle, prove harmless, If grappled stout-hearted and fearlessly presst; Rich sweets, without bitters, soon cloy and grow charmless, Then press on, despair not, and hope ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... a man ought to read as he would grasp a nettle: do it lightly, and you get molested; grasp it with all your strength, and you feel none of its asperities. There is nothing so horrible as languid study, when you sit looking at the clock, wishing the time was over, or that somebody would call ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... conquering races bring new plants. The Romans, during their 300 or 400 years of occupation and civilisation, must have brought more species, I believe, than I dare mention. I suspect them of having brought, not merely the common hedge elm of the south, not merely the three species of nettle, but all our red poppies, and a great number of the weeds which are common in our cornfields; and when we add to them the plants which may have been brought by returning crusaders and pilgrims; by monks from every part of Europe, by Flemings or other dealers ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... the same Mr Curll. 12mo, price 6d. With the Metamorphosis of P. into a Stinging Nettle. ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... and in being comfortable, we should all collapse into a hideous uniformity.... In all things, a man must beware of so conforming himself as to crush his nature, and forego the purpose of his being." And Emerson might have added to that thought, "Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... conscious of my wound. In my intense anxiety about Strahan, in the effort to get my men back in something like order, and in the shock of seeing the lieutenant-colonel struck down, my mind seemed almost unaware of the existence of the body. In the retreat I had felt something sting my hand like a nettle, and now found one of the fingers of my left hand badly shattered. With this hand I had been wiping my brow, for it was intensely hot. I therefore was the most sanguineous-looking man of ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... good which inheres in the private and particular nature,—and he does not call it any hard names at all from his scientific platform; indeed in the vocabulary of the Naturalist we are told, that these names are omitted, 'for we call a nettle but a nettle, and the faults of fools their folly,'—that exclusive good he finds both passive and active, and this also is one of those primary distinctions which 'is formed in all things,' and so too is the subdivision of passive ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... covered with green plants. Ugly sappy plants, it was true, mostly bur-marigolds, that look like a nettle with brown flowers, which is ugly because flowers should be white, yellow, blue or red. And there were true nettles with green blossoms, and burs, sorrel, thistles, and notch-weed; all the ugliest, burning, stinging, evil-smelling plants, which nobody likes, ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... a sweet garden rose, Let it bloom and wither if no man knows: But if one knows when the sweet thing blows, Knows, and lets it open and drop, If but a nettle his garden grows He ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... proposed recreation! Eleanor would not have watched the most brilliant performance at His Majesty's Theatre for a single evening under such uncomfortable circumstances, and to be asked to watch lesser whitethroats creeping up and down a nettle "almost every evening" during the height of the season struck her as an imputation on her intelligence that was positively offensive. Impatiently she transferred her attention to the dinner menu, ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... when compared with the Woolly-bear, but it lives in the nettles, and, whether they like it or not, the hospitable nettles with their stings protect the caterpillar. The crawler may be grateful, but he shows it in a poor way, for he turns on the faithful nettle, and eats it up. In fact the only food he cares about is nettle-salad, and he indulges in it several times a day, yes all day long, eating, growing and bursting his skin a number of times, till he is big enough to hang himself up for the winter, probably in a nettle. Then ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... disease in the Constitution? Not the least. The whole affair was like one of those alarms in a country-town which begin with the rumor of ten cases of confluent small-pox and end with the discovery that the doctor has been called to a case of nettle-rash at Deacon Scudder's. But sober men, who loved the Union in a quiet way, without advertising it in the newspapers, and who were willing to sacrifice everything to the Constitution but the rights it was intended to protect, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... stroke a nettle, And it stings you for your pains; Grasp it like a man of mettle, And it soft as silk remains. Verses written on a Window in ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... bridegroom was astonished, and thought, "She is like my Maid Maleen, and I should believe that it was she herself, but she has long been shut up in the tower, or dead." He took her by the hand and led her to church. On the way was a nettle-plant, and ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... nettle in it, a taunt that made him tingle. It seemed to Wallie he had never known such a "catty" woman, and he meant to tell her so, some day, when he was rich and successful and had proved how wrong she was in ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... slips, to see if they live, to see if they are likely to grow. Now, if she comes to one that is dead, that she is confident will not grow, up she pulls that, and makes to the heap of rubbish with it, where she despisingly casts it down, and valueth it no more than a nettle, or a weed, or than the dust she hath swept out of her walks. Yea, if any that see her should say, Why do you so? the answer is ready. It is dead, it is dead at root; if I had let it stand it would but have cumbered the ground. The strange slips, and also the dead ones, they must be 'a ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... amid brambles, And sting their toes on the nettle-tops, Till, after a thousand scratches and scrambles, They wipe their brows and the ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... bite, the sensation was sharp enough to deserve the name of pain; and this continued for five or six minutes more, but not so forcibly. I might compare it with the sensation produced by the stinging-nettle. A whitish tumefaction almost immediately surrounded the two pricks; and the circumference, within a radius of about an inch, was coloured an erysipelas red, accompanied by a very slight swelling. In an hour and a half, it had all disappeared, except the mark of the pricks, which persisted ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... shot revenges his tortures. The grass stiffens at nightfall (in autumn), and he must creep where he may, if possibly he may escape the frost. No one cares for the humble-bee. But down to the flowering nettle in the mossy-sided ditch, up into the tall elm, winding in and out and round the branched buttercups, along the banks of the brook, far inside the deepest wood, away he wanders and despises nothing. His nest is under the rough grasses and the mosses of the mound; a mere tunnel beneath the ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... 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^, arsenious oxide, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... supply of cotton most carefully, so that, after an unexpectedly long war, a little was still left over. The mills which were running, displayed great assiduity in procuring and utilizing substitutes for cotton. Paper, wood, cellulose, reed and nettle fibres, and other materials were tried, some were manufactured quite extensively. During the war they did good service, but in normal times, they cannot usurp the place of cotton. After surmounting many difficulties, the German cotton industry is once more in full ...
— Bremen Cotton Exchange - 1872/1922 • Andreas Wilhelm Cramer
... loiter behind her when returning in the evening from our labours; why the tones of her voice made my heart-strings thrill like an AEolian harp; and particularly why my pulse beat such a furious rantann when I looked and fingered over her hand to pick out the nettle-stings and thistles. Among her other love-inspiring qualifications she sang sweetly; and 'twas her favourite Scotch reel that I attempted to give an embodied vehicle to in rhyme. I was not so presumptive as to imagine ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... in the Promised Land That flows with Freedom's honey and milk; But 't was they won it, sword in hand, Making the nettle danger soft for us as silk.[7] 235 We welcome back our bravest and our best;— Ah me! not all! some come not with the rest, Who went forth brave and bright as any here! I strive to mix some gladness with my strain, But the sad strings ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... worked splendidly, for I had only to turn to the word 'Toothache' to discover that the fairy remedy was to 'rub the other side of the face with a stinging nettle, and the pain and swelling would ...
— The Mysterious Shin Shira • George Edward Farrow
... like St. Just, Monet of Strasbourg, Rousseline of St. Albin, and Julien of the Drome—in short, the poorly sown and badly cultivated minds, and on which the theory had only to fall to smother the good grain and thrive like a nettle. Add to these charlatans and others who live by their wits, the visionary and morbid of all sorts, from Fanchet and Klootz to Chalier or Marat, the whole of that needy, chattering, irresponsible crowd, ever swarming about large ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... these newfangled iron eyes, and, when it is through, I knot it any way. The "jam" knot is a name to me, and no more. That, perhaps, is why the hooks crack off so merrily. Then, if I do spot a rising trout, and if he does not spot me as I crawl like the serpent towards him, my fly always fixes in a nettle, a haycock, a rose-bush, or whatnot, behind me. I undo it, or break it, and put up another, make a cast, and, "plop," all the line falls in with a splash that would frighten a crocodile. The fish's big black fin goes cutting the stream above, ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... go back from duty and endurance and danger altogether. But we must not. We must rather say to ourselves, Now and here, if not in the past, I must play the man, and, by God's help, the wise man. I must pluck safety henceforth out of the heart of the nettle danger. Yes, I made a mistake. I did what I would not do now, and I must not be too proud to say so. I acted, I see now, precipitately, inconsiderately, imprudently. And I must not gloom and rebel and run away from the cross and the lion. I must not ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... was based upon pride and militant shame. After many trap-settings she had succeeded in making her mother confess that the stay at Breezeland was at Ormsby's expense; and not all of Mrs. Brentwood's petulant justifyings could remove the sting of the nettle ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... have been enabled to silence people who have had the hardihood to throw odium on their superstitions. Believers in amulets and charms remind us that it is a well-ascertained fact in nature, that for every bane there is an antidote. Wherever the stinging nettle grows, the slimy stem of the dock is near; whenever the wasp stings, honey gathered by the industrious bee may be had, without going far, to put on the injured part; when the cold is most intense without, the fire burns brightest within; and ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... let 'em kin' o' taste My live-oak leg, an' so, ye see, ther' warn't no gret o' waste; Fer they found out in quicker time than ef they'd ben to college 'Twarn't heartier food than though 'twuz made out o' the tree o' knowledge. But I tell you my other leg hed larned wut pizon-nettle meant, An' var'ous other usefle things, afore I reached a settlement, 50 An' all o' me thet wuzn't sore an' sendin' prickles thru me Wuz jest the leg I parted with in lickin' Montezumy: A useful limb it's ben to me, an' more of a support Than wut ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... are in fine condition, as the carpathian, peach-leaved (second crop), nettle-leaved, common harebell, and vase harebell. In the case of many of the tall-growing kinds, better results are obtained by treating them as biennials than perennials. No garden should be without the double white feverfew; the more you cut it the more it blooms. Anthemis ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... snatched up my feet and sat up with a jerk, and so did Dave—the cat went over the partition. That door opened, only a little way this time, paused, and shut suddenly. Dave got out, grabbed a stick, skipped to the door, and clutched at the knob as if it were a nettle, and the door wouldn't come!—it was fast and locked! Then Dave's face began to look as frightened as his hair. He lit his candle at the fire, and asked me to come with him; he unlocked the door and we ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... maw, A-seeking sumptuous banquetings, bestowed. For I requesting to be Sestius' guest 10 Read against claimant Antius a speech, Full-filled with poisonous pestilential trash. Hence a grave frigid rheum and frequent cough Shook me till fled I to thy bosom, where Repose and nettle-broth healed all my ills. 15 Wherefore recruited now best thanks I give To thee for nowise punishing my sins: Nor do I now object if noisome writs Of Sestius hear I, but that cold and cough And rheum may plague, not me, but Sestius' self 20 Who asks ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... telling you—please let me speak!" She drew a long breath of desperation and grasped the nettle firmly. "I stole the clothes I came here in. My name isn't Manwaring—it's Sally Manvers. ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... is illustrated in the figure in the upper portion—the peacock butterfly (Vanessa Io). The curious spiked and spotted caterpillar feeds upon the common nettle. This beautiful butterfly—common in most districts—is brilliantly colored and figured on the upper side of the wings, but only of a mottled brown on the under surface, somewhat resembling a dried ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... I plucked a flower That clung with pain and stung with power, Yea, nettled me, body and mind.' ''Twas the nettle of sin, 'twas medicine; No need nor seed of it here Above; In dreams of hate true loves begin.' ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... a little on the east, where it rose into a higher, ivy-covered mass. Within this again was another, less obvious line, similar in plan, and also covered with unchecked growth: within that the uneven surface of the ground was thickly encumbered with rank weeds, beds of thistle, beds of nettle, and a plenitude of bramble and gorse; in one place towards the eastern mass of overgrown wall, a great clump of gorse had grown to such a height and thickness as to form an impenetrable screen. And, peering ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... gain favour by delivering the letters: on the other side, if Basterga retained power to harm, it was not he who had taken the letters, nor he who would be exposed to the first blast of vengeance—but the girl. The blame for her, the credit for him! From the nettle danger his wits had plucked the flower safety. But for his fears he could have chuckled; and then he heard her leave the room, and relock the door. With a gasp of relief, he retired a pace or two, and waited, his eyes fixed on the doorway through ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... or I shall lose even the foothold I have gained. I am subjected, all day long, to insult and annoyance. At times I am almost desperate and on the verge of recklessness. Every one of the coarse creatures that I am compelled to work with is a nettle that loses no chance to sting me; and there is one among them, a big, burly fellow, who is so offensive that I cannot keep my hands off him much longer if I remain my old self. You also know what a reception I must ever expect in the streets when I am recognized. The people act ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... in the wilds a vine called Wourali, which furnishes the chief ingredient. He also adds the juices of a bitter root and of two bulbous plants. Next he hunts till he finds two species of ants, one very large, black, and venomous; the other small and red, which stings like a nettle. He adds the pounded fangs of the Labarri and the Counacouchi snakes; and the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... form of flower, those varieties that approached nearest to the familiar species of the country were visited by insects and cross-fertilised, and thus a closer resemblance would at length be brought about. Another case of close general resemblance, is that of our common white dead-nettle (Lamium album) to the stinging-nettle (Urtica dioica); and Sir John Lubbock thinks that this is a case of true mimicry, the dead-nettle being benefited by being mistaken by grazing animals for ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... van los cincuenta I bet fifty. ira f. anger, ire. iracundo, -a wrathful. irona f. irony. irnico, -a ironical. irreligioso, -a irreligious. irreverencia f. irreverence, disrespect. irritar anger, excite, arouse, provoke, nettle, ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... claimed for a cotton-cloth substitute has been greatly exaggerated. When the Germans realised that Great Britain really meant business on the question of cotton they cultivated nettle and willow fibre, and made a cloth consisting for the most part of nettle or willow fibre with a small proportion of ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... its way through the forests with a strong and steady flight. Many a time have I taken a second look at one, as it has threaded the treetops over my head, thinking to see a bird. Besides the Turnus, I noted here the nettle tortoise-shell butterfly (Vanessa Milberti—a showy insect, and the more attractive to me as being comparatively a stranger); the common cabbage butterfly; the yellow Philodice; the copper; and, much more abundant than any of these, a large ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... scornful squaw worth the hazard of death and the shame that attends defeat? Seek thy lodge and blow away these thoughts as the wind disperses the winged seeds of the stinging nettle." It was evident Manabozho had never been in love, for then he would not have thrown away his advice. He stayed not for a reply, but with a gesture of ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... appearance of a certain Miss Sophia Bonce, with whom Selkirk fell violently in love, and they eloped together to Bristol, which must have proved indeed a sad scandal to the elders and other godly citizens of Largo. Beyond the fact that he was charged at Bristol with assaulting one Richard Nettle, a shipwright, we hear no more of Selkirk until his first will was drawn up in 1717, in which he leaves his fortune and house to "my loving friend Sophia Bonce, of the Pall Mall, London, Spinster." Shortly after this, Alexander basely deserted his loving friend and married a widow, ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... unequal; and the whole thing is broken up for old iron. Capital fables, also, in the same ironical spirit, are "Prometheus Unbound," the tale of the vainglorying of a champagne-cork, and "Teleology," where a nettle justifies the ways of God to nettles while all goes well with it, and, upon a change of luck, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... trouble! Shows we can do better without those Foundry chaps than with 'em! James, ye can have a quart brought in, if ye'n a mind, but I won't have them apprentices drinking! No, I won't! Mrs Nixon'll give 'em some nettle-beer if they fancy it." ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... could not be all evil or all good. She spoke and acted against Ruth Devlin, and yet she pitied her. She had the nettle to sting Roscoe to death, and yet she hesitated to use it. She had said to herself that she would wait till the happiest moment of his life, and then do so. Well, his happiest moment had come. Ruth Devlin's heart was all out, all ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... plants, it occurred to me last fall that some new or rare plants might have sprung up in the cellar of this house, which had been covered from the light so long. Searching there on the 22d of September, I found, among other rank weeds, a species of nettle (Urtica urens), which I had not found before; dill, which I had not seen growing spontaneously; the Jerusalem oak (Chenopodium botrys), which I had seen wild in but one place; black nightshade (Solanum ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... a cold, to sleep, to drink; but I tell you, my lord fool, 'out of this nettle danger, we pluck this flower safety,'" ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... by the side of a young or old woman now, I try to give our conversation a ticklish turn; I forget all reserve and I try to make her talk of those jokes which nettle, those words of double meaning which excite, and to lead her up to the only subject that interests and holds me, to find out what she feels in her body as well as in her heart, on that night, when for the first time, she has to undergo the nuptial ordeal. Some do not appear to understand me, blush, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... turkey, arranged in regular stripes and compartments, encircled it. The cloth on which these feathers were woven, was a kind of linen of neat texture, of the same kind with that which is now woven from the fibres of the nettle. The body was evidently that of a female of middle age, and I should suppose that her majesty weighed, when I saw her, six ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... bending of the garland, and vnder the proiecture of the lyppe of the vessell, there was fixed and placed the head of an olde man, with his beard and haire of his head transformed into nettle leaues, and out of whose mouth gushed out the water of the fountayne by art continually into the hollownes of the broad ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... be mistaken for nasal catarrh, nasal gleet, ulcerated teeth, nettle rash, lymphangitis, distemper, etc. Fortunately, this dreaded disease is not very prevalent in this country, as every precaution has been ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... succeeded in part. First there had been the coiner of Thouars, then the brawling drunkard of Tours, the thief of Valmy, the nettle-gatherer, and lastly Molembrais who held the King's safe-conduct. Truly the meshes of the net of Justice were small when not even a twelve-year thief, a common quarreller in his cups, or the holder ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... young lady, he was very wroth. At first he thought of way-laying young Ferret in the wood and killing him; but then he recollected that the Ferrets were a powerful family, who would never rest till they had been revenged. His next thought was to go to his attorney, Sharp Weasel, Esq., of Nettle Cottage, and consult with him as to the best means of thwarting young Ferret's projects. So the old man took down his pipe and his account-book, and set ...
— The Comical Creatures from Wurtemberg - Second Edition • Unknown
... who is that tall, fair-haired, somewhat parrot-faced gentleman, smiling like a schoolboy over a mess of treacle, and now kissing the tips of his five fingers as gingerly as if he were doomed to kiss a nettle? ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 24, 1841 • Various
... in the other party. Let me be alone to the end of the world, rather than that my friend should overstep, by a word or look, his real sympathy. I am equally baulked by antagonism and by compliance. Let him not cease an instant to be himself.... Better be a nettle in the side of your ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... transparent globes of the "Portuguese Man of War," Physalus urticulus, which are piled upon the lines left by the waves, like globules of glass delicately tinted with purple and blue. They sting, as their trivial name indicates, like a nettle when incautiously touched. ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... Exclaiming "Stop! Who is there?" I rushed forward. I heard scurrying footsteps, like a hare's; a crouching figure whisked by me, whether man or woman I could not tell.... I tried to clutch at it but did not succeed; I stumbled, fell down and stung my face against a nettle. As I was getting up, leaning on the ground, I felt something rough under my hand: it was a chased brass comb on a cord, such as ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... the Knightly Tale of Galogras, The Temple of Glas, Lodge's Nettle for Nice Noses, or the Book of Fayts of Armes, by Christene of Pisa, or Caxton's Pylgremage of the Sowle, or his Myrrour of the Worlde, will be long inquired after before they come to the market, thoroughly contradicting that fundamental principle of political economy, that the supply is always ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... stunted or middle-sized tree, which grew in great abundance on the ranges. We passed a fine large but dry Casuarina creek, coming from the westward, with a broad sandy bed. A large tree, with dark green broad lanceolate stinging leaves, grew on its banks; it resembled the nettle tree, but belonged to neither of the two species growing in the ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... a nettle. And it stings you for your pains; Grasp it like a man of mettle, Silk it in ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... in this house; she said no, but a little farther on at Pont y Meibion; she said, however, that the ground had belonged to him, and that they had some of his blood in their veins. I shook her by the hand, and gave the chubby bare-armed damsel a shilling, pointing to the marks of the nettle stings on her fat bacon-like arms. She laughed, made me a curtsey, and said: "Llawer ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... conjurers, and spoils one's enjoyment of a hitherto enjoyable evening, by showing "how it's done"—how the name of one's departed relative is forged and painted early in the afternoon, instead of "coming out" on the spot—and in spots—like measles or nettle-rash (as we feel defunct relations ought to come) or walking in and out of the corded box at pleasure, and even going so far as to give the address of the clever mechanist down a by-street near Notting-hill Gate, who will make the mysterious ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... vol. X, p. 352). Luis de Leon tried in a friendly way to convince Castro about the errors in his book before it was published and as soon as the printing began (Documentos ineditos, vol. X, p. 351). This intervention would nettle Castro, who seems to have had Jewry on the brain; he mentioned, apparently, that Vatable, St. Jerome, and St. John Chrysostom were all Jews or Judaizers (Documentos ineditos, vol. X, p. 294). What probably nettled Castro still more was that Luis de Leon found fault with ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... to illustrate how full the stop was she allowed herself to go down, very unnecessarily, with a flop to the ground. But she no sooner touched the ground than up she started to her feet again, with an alarmed look on her owlish face, as if she had sat down on a stinging-nettle. ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... his teeth and toiled on, dragging thorny creepers aside, climbing over half-rotten tree-trunks, whose mouldering bark gave way, and set at liberty myriads of virulent ants. Once or twice he grasped leaves which were worse than the home-growing nettle. But he struggled on, though, with the feeling growing stronger, that if he got through the patch of forest before dark, it would be as much as he could manage, for the difficulties ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... that "jewels, master Horace, must be hanged, you know." This "Whip of Men," with Asinius his admirer, are brought to court, transformed into satyrs, and bound together: "not lawrefied, but nettle-fied;" crowned ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... one who examining a fair shrub abruptly discovers that it is a stinging-nettle, Elizabeth realized the truth. This was no innocent young man who stood before her, but the blackest criminal known to criminologists—a stealer of other people's cats. Her manner shot down ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse |
