"Sting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said Mr. Thorpe, resenting the interruption but not its sting. "After a careful campaign, Arthur Tresslyn was elected. He had a great deal of money, a kind heart and scarcely any brains. He was an ideal choice, everybody was agreed upon that. The fellow that Constance was really in love with at the time, Jimmy Gordon, was ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... continued the youth; "then the sting has been harmless. But I crave your pardon, General—I am claiming an exemption from censure which may not be conceded by all. Commodore, how shall I dispose of ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... avowal that he is his father,—he has 'blushed so often to acknowledge him that he is now brazed to it!' Edmund hears the circumstances of his birth spoken of with a most degrading and licentious levity,—his mother described as a wanton by her own paramour, and the remembrance of the animal sting, the low criminal gratifications connected with her wantonness and prostituted beauty, assigned as the reason, why 'the whoreson must be acknowledged!' This, and the consciousness of its notoriety; the gnawing conviction ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... its sting just as futile waiting and searching does, and I awoke one morning in a long and involved debate between my id and my conscience. I decided at that moment that I would take that highway out and pay a visit to the Harrison farm. I was salving my ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... scandals merely oral could spread little and must perish soon. It is writing, it is printing more emphatically, that imps calumny with those eagle-wings on which, as the poet says, "immortal slanders fly." By the press they spread, they last, they leave the sting in the wound. Printing was not known in England much earlier than the reign of Henry the Seventh, and in the third year of that reign the court of Star-Chamber was established. The press and its enemy are nearly coeval. As no positive law against libels existed, they fell under the indefinite ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... strange fear came over me with the chill of the early morning air. Had anything happened to Enriquez? I had always looked upon his extravagance as part of his playful humor. Could it be possible that under the sting of rejection he had made his grotesque threat of languishing effacement real? Surely Miss Mannersley would know or suspect something, if it ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... a dangerous and slippery stage, upon which a young and inexperienced man may lightly slip, unless held up by a strong arm. Many will hate you because you are in favor, and the hate of many is like the sting of hornets: one sting is not fatal, but a general attack sometimes brings death. Make use, therefore, of your sunshine, and fix yourself strongly ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... conventional words of welcome there was so much cordiality, in spite of a hidden sting of irony, that Jean-Christophe grew more at ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... who had denied his Master, growing into a cold, cynical, formal life, writing novels that were social successes, but each one with a sting in it, the reminder of his denial, the bitter remorse that, do what he would, ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... civilised Europe a conception of education just, humane, rational, truly scientific, because founded upon facts; that if it had not been written by one writhing under the bitter consequences of mis-education, and feeling their sting and their brand day by day on his own spirit, Miss Edgeworth might never have reformed our nurseries, or ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... demonstrates that the annihilation of taxes would be their ruin! The interests of a great nation, among themselves, are often contrary to each other, and each seems alternately to predominate and to decline. "The sting of taxation," observes Mr. Hallam, "is wastefulness; but it is difficult to name a limit beyond which taxes will not be borne without impatience when faithfully applied." In plainer words, this only signifies, we presume, that Mr. Hallam's party would tax us without "wastefulness!" Ministerial ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... address those who were around him in such grand and Christian language as this: "It is no new thing to know that I must die; for twelve years past my lingering and painful life has been for the most part an apprenticeship thereto. My sufferings have so dulled the sting of death that I rather count upon it than dread it; happy to have had so long a delay to teach me to make a good end, and to rid me of the things which formerly kept me from that knowledge. Happy to meet ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... so much evil is like that serpent of the Indies whose dwelling is the leaf of a plant which cures its sting; it presents, in nearly every case, the remedy by the side of the suffering it has caused. For example, the man whose life is one of routine, who has his business cares to claim his attention upon rising, visits at such an hour, loves at another, can lose his mistress ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... to a state of fury by young Hamilton's appearance, surrounded the unhappy young man in the college court, and preventing all egress, heaped every sarcastic insult upon him, words that could not fail to sting his haughty spirit to the quick. Myrvin's eye flashed with sudden and unwonted lustre, and ere Herbert, who with his brother had hastily joined the throng, could prevent it, he had raised his arm ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... up in Himself by virtue of His Incarnation. Hence it follows that you, the individual, have been crucified with Him; just as you, the individual, have been buried with Him, and raised with Him in your Baptism (Rom. vi., 4). How completely this takes the sting out of the reproach brought against Christianity, on the ground of the immorality of the Crucifixion! It is no longer the Innocent one suffering instead of the guilty, but it is the sinless One taking upon Himself ...
— The Discipline of War - Nine Addresses on the Lessons of the War in Connection with Lent • John Hasloch Potter
... it is representative government that takes the sting out of all the older criticisms of democracy. Plato devotes one of the saddest portions of his Republic to showing how in a brief time, democracy must inevitably fall and be replaced by tyranny. With the democracy Plato knew this was true. It was impossible ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs
... sting of your jelly-fish of a conscience made you try to be nice to me. There are words and acts from a man to a woman which may be lovely to the woman if they come spontaneously and naturally. If they are produced as by a force-pump, they are an insult. ...
— If Winter Don't - A B C D E F Notsomuchinson • Barry Pain
... Theo's mother took the sting out of the rector's speech, which was not intended to have any sting, and was only a stray gleam of insight out of a confused realisation of the state of affairs; but it was so true that it was difficult to ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... can hear the iron rattle, I can see the arrows sting In some far-off northern battle, Where the long swords sweep and swing; I can hear the scalds declaiming, I can see their eyeballs flaming, Gathered in a frenzied circle Round ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... that long life had only been equaled by its acerbity. Her virtue had dwelt in hardness, and she had poured forth her unstinted usefulness with a bitter smile upon her lips. And now the sacredness of years brought the proud woman her punishment. She was not to die as she had lived. The sting was to be taken out of her: she was to be made soft; she was to be reduced to compliance and complacency. The change came gradually, but ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... doesn't. You have to be inside in order to understand it. The Church takes you, smiling. She gives to you generously, and then, with a smile, she breaks you; and, hating to be broken, you break, knowing that it is best for you. She pets you, and then she whips you; and the whips sting, but they leave no mark on the soul, except a good mark, if you have learned. But pardon me, here's a parishioner—" A woman, old and bent, was coming up the steps. "Come on, Mrs. O'Leary. How is ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... sting of accusation, had instinctively pressed itself against his pocket. Now guiltily and self-consciously it came away and he found himself idiotically echoing ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... 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 foals ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... he is rather to be pointed at than talked about, when there are so many stars and planets whose regular courses have to be observed and recorded. He was like a sharp knife drawn across the face of Spain, gashing it here and there, but for the most part just touching it lightly enough to sting and to leave a mark. As a Court painter he was an unqualified success, his salary under Charles IV. rising in ten years from 15,000 to 50,000 reals; but his official productions are not the less devoid of interest on that account, and are ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... Miss Airedale's threat, at Atlantic City they both fell into a kind of dreamy reverie. The wine-like tingle of that salty air was a quiet drug. The apparently inexhaustible sunshine was sharpened with a faint sting of coming autumn. Gissing suddenly remembered that it was ages since he had simply let his mind run slack and allowed life to go by unstudied. Mr. and Mrs. Airedale occupied a suite high up in the terraced mass of the huge hotel; they wrapped themselves in rugs and basked on their ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... contest with a fierce, untamed African lion. The lion, according to the programme, springs upon the proprietor, whose only defense is his whip. This simple weapon in his hands (according to the programme) will change itself into a fiery sword and shield. The end of this whip will sting as a rattlesnake, flash as lightning, shoot as a thunderbolt, and keep at a proper distance the enraged monster, who vainly roars and tries to jump on the artist. This is not the end yet: sixteen-year-old ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... hounds? To the river, every man of you, and curse your leprous, indolent souls! Why in the fiend's name—" But here he came to an abrupt stop on the lowest step, the sting of a sword's point at his throat, and now, out of breath, his purple face ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... hornet's nest," exclaimed Ben. "Keep still, Nancy. Don't run. They won't sting you if you are ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... brought an accusation against Carder, it was like opening a door to a swarm of hornets. He has made so many people hate him that when the timid ones found it would be safe to loosen up, they were ready to fall upon him and sting him to death. He's safe to get a long sentence, and it will be time enough when he comes out to talk to him about Mr. ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... our extreme sufferings with the affection of a father or a brother. Though incapable of violating their trust, they knew how to do their duty without harshness of any kind. If there were something hard in the forms, they took the sting out of them as much as possible by various ingenious traits and turns of a benevolent mind. I was sometimes angry at them, but they took all I said in good part. They wished us to feel that they had become attached to us; and they rejoiced when we expressed as ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... wound to dwarf, at saving intervals, the sting of Aunt Agatha's frightened revelation. Thereafter, the memory of Philip's loyal rebuke was to trouble her sorely, temper a little the old intolerance and arouse her keen remorse. The consciousness that Philip disapproved ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... upon him, while the swollen river still barred his retreat. There was a sudden drop in the flood, however; one ford became passable, and over it, upon the last day of February, De Wet and his bedraggled, dispirited commando escaped to their own country. There was still a sting in his tail, however; for upon that very day a portion of his force succeeded in capturing sixty and killing or wounding twenty of Colenbrander's new regiment, Kitchener's Fighting Scouts. On the other hand, De Wet was finally ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of rye bread full of grains of chickweed. There were weiner-wurst and frankfurter sausages. There was unsalted butter. There were pretzels. There was cold underdone chicken, which one ate in slices, plastered with a wonderful kind of mustard that did not sting. There were dried apples, that gave Mr. Sieppe the hiccoughs. There were a dozen bottles of beer, and, last of all, a crowning achievement, a marvellous Gotha truffle. After lunch came tobacco. Stuffed to the eyes, McTeague drowsed over his pipe, ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... inimitable masterpiece,' which less-favoured nations ought not only to admire but adopt, if they wished to advance and go forward in the direction of liberty, prosperity, and peace. There was just enough truth in such assertions to render them amusing, though not enough to give them a sting. There were times when Lord John was the 'stormy petrel' of foreign politics, but there never was a time when he ceased to labour in season and out for what he believed to be the honour of England. 'I ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... the common cause of man and of society. He gives no intimation of any individual interest, but his argument throughout glows with a white heat of concealed emotion, such as could only he stirred by the sting of ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... (grey-eyed Aurora) yet Held all the meadows in a cooling sweat, The milk-white gossamers not upwards snow'd, Nor was the sharp and useful-steering goad Laid on the strong-neck'd ox; no gentle bud The sun had dried; the cattle chew'd the cud Low levell'd on the grass; no fly's quick sting Enforc'd the stonehorse in a furious ring To tear the passive earth, nor lash his tail About his buttocks broad; the slimy snail Might on the wainscot, by his many mazes, Winding meanders and self-knitting traces, Be follow'd where he stuck, ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... stay here, and don't any of you throw stones or yell!" he said, in a guarded undertone; "for if them hornets find out what is up, they'll come swarming out by the million and sting ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... naturalized productions from another land. Nor ought we marvel if all the contrivances in nature be not, as far as we can judge, absolutely perfect, as in the case even of the human eye; or if some of them be abhorrent to our ideas of fitness. We need not marvel at the sting of the bee, when used against an enemy, causing the bee's own death; at drones being produced in such great numbers for one single act, and being then slaughtered by their sterile sisters; at the ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... author may be wrong about his critic. An editor frequently makes slight insertions or omissions—I mean slight in quantity of type—as he goes over the last proof; this he does in a comparative hurry, and it may chance that he does not know the full sting of his little alteration. The very bit which the writer of the book most complains of may not have been seen by the person who is called the writer of the article until after the appearance of the journal; ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... 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 Mrs. McKay and Nannie so resented, he replied ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... them that I know of," she said, and then added archly; "but you will feel better at last, when all is over and the sting of defeat tingles through you, if you are conscious of having used ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... and very reflectively began to rub its still shadowy nose with a shadowy paw. I think that it remembered the sting of the salt water in the cut made by the glass of the window ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... rough sneer, and the Black Colonel made the sting sharper by adding, "You'll be thinking it an assured capture, with the ends of the Pass sealed by red-coats and its sides so steep that only those tough sheep over there ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... He was the last male arrival in a slow season; he seemed interesting and promising; evidently they had had hopes. "But," asked one of them, "how is it you are willing to register openly from such a town as that?"—and Raymond had felt the sting. "Such nerve, such bumptiousness!" he said to me in recalling that query some years later. But he did not add that he had tried to deliver any riposte. Instead he was now to make a belated return at home, where effort most counted. The years ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... been easier ever since to quell emotion than to incur the consequence of venting it. But this ill-tempered anticipation that she could desire visits which might be disagreeable to her husband, this gratuitous defence of himself against selfish complaint on her part, was too sharp a sting to be meditated on until after it had been resented. Dorothea had thought that she could have been patient with John Milton, but she had never imagined him behaving in this way; and for a moment Mr. Casaubon seemed to be stupidly undiscerning and odiously ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... juices of certain plants, and at night enclosing one's self in a tent made of tucuyo (cotton cloth), or palm-tree bast, are the only means of protection against their painful stings. The clothes commonly worn are not sufficient, for they are perforated by the long sting of the larger species, particularly of the much-dreaded huir-pasimi-sancudo (Lip-gnat). Regularly every evening at twilight fresh swarms of these mischievous insects make ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... for a moment, his head raised, his chest out, his soul in flight, feeling the sharp sting of the raindrops upon his cheek; then, with a little breath of pleasure and happiness, he crossed the Green to the little dark door of ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... amount of covering to protect them from the heat during the hot summer months that they do in winter, on the principle explained in previous chapters. It is not possible to keep them in stables, owing to the terrible white fly, which has a poisonous sting. When out in the open the flies and mosquitoes are blown away by ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... studied human nature deeply, and he knew that of all the torments which afflict the mind of man (and far beyond bodily torture), the pains of jealousy were the most intolerable, and had the sorest sting. If he could succeed in making Othello jealous of Cassio, he thought it would be an exquisite plot of revenge, and might end in the death of Cassio or Othello, or ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Schwalbach pump, the Bois l'Hery pump, and how many others as well? Some enormous and noisy with screaming pistons, some quite dumb and discreet with clack-valves knowingly oiled, pumps with tiny valves, dear little pumps as fine as the sting of insects, and like them, leaving a poison in the place whence they have drawn life; all working together and bound to bring about if not a complete drought, at least a serious lowering ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... was the work of demoniacal agencies, and not a mere disease like other diseases. Half the tragedy of insanity is that it shocks people, and cannot be alluded to or spoken about; but one can take the sting out of almost any calamity if one can make fun of it, and this ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... all just, as Barbara was obliged to acknowledge to herself, from beginning to end, however much it might sting her, and therefore she was always in a hurry to ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... carry those that did be thin and flat, and I to roll those that did be great and round. And I made a place that did be long and narrow; and afterward, I set the flat stones round the sides, that there be no little hole by which any creeping thing should come inward to sting us ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... indeed, so clear was the water that we could see vast numbers of monster fish,—not only sharks and devil-fish, but saw-fish, jew-fish, sting rays, whip rays, and other specimens of the finny tribe, of great size,—swimming below and around us in such numbers that they threatened to upset the canoe, and we actually struck them over and ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... of exchanging friendly remarks with Rhoda, while at supper an amount of attention was bestowed upon her plate which was positively embarrassing. It was a delightful change, but through all the relief rang the sting of remembering that it had been accomplished by Thomasina, not herself; that the new friendliness was the result of Thomasina's orders rather than her own deserts. To her fellow-students she was still an insignificant new-comer, with no claim to distinction. ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... doomed city, doomed by the persistent refusal to recognise the Divine voice. But we are here on still deeper ground. The true explanation of the fourth word is to be found in that great principle which St. Paul has laid down in a familiar, but little understood, sentence: "the sting ...
— Gloria Crucis - addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907 • J. H. Beibitz
... colours on the abdominal rings. Others are marked with small projections of bright colours from which tufts of hair or bristles may grow. In some, as Io, these bristles are charged with an irritating acid that will sting for an hour after coming in contact with the skin, but does no permanent injury. On a few there are what seem to be small pockets of acid that can be ejected with a jerk, and on some a sort of filament that is supposed to distil a ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... was entering upon active operations. Lincoln, on the other hand, undoubtedly looked upon it in precisely the opposite light, and conceived that the opportunity of the moment deprived of any apparent sting a change which he had determined to make. The duties which were thus taken from McClellan were assumed during several months by Mr. Stanton. He was utterly incompetent for them, and, whether or not it was wise to displace the general, it was certainly very unwise to let the secretary ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... with the bee added. What the bee gets from the flower is sweet water: this she puts through a process of her own and imparts to it her own quality; she reduces the water and adds to it a minute drop of formic acid. It is this drop of herself that gives the delicious sting to her sweet. The bee is therefore the type of the true poet, the true artist. Her product always reflects her environment, and it reflects something her environment knows not of. We taste the clover, the thyme, the linden, the sumac, and we also taste something that has ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... favoured of heaven; but the flesh is easily puffed up. And for this cause, and because it may be well that thou thyself and all men shall know that thou art but human flesh and blood, thou shalt not escape unscathed in warfare; but thou too shalt feel the sting of fiery dart, and know the ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... wisely to herself. Gradually she was learning that the way to rob Dolly's jokes and teasing tricks of their sting, and the best way, at the same time, to cure Dolly herself of her fondness for them, was never to let the joker know that they had had the effect ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Long Lake - Bessie King in Summer Camp • Jane L. Stewart
... would afford him a living, with less labour and certainly with less pain. Pain, indeed! he never succeeds in plundering the store of the lanyeh, without being severely stung by the insects; and though their sting is quite as painful as that of the common wasp, experience seems to have rendered the Dyak almost indifferent to it. He ascends the flimsy ladder without fear—carrying a blazing torch in his hand, and a cane basket on his back. By means of the torch, he ejects ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... me,—that after all my endeavours, there should be people here, and many people, who find a gratification in doing that which they think I shall look upon as an annoyance. The sting is in their desire to sting, and in my inability to show them their error, either by stopping what they are doing, or by proving myself indifferent to it. It isn't the building itself, but the double disgrace ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... three-quarter inch gouge, 52, still more guardedly, and barely so deep, and to a very fine point, both curves, ready to receive the two joined pieces of purfling which is to present you with what is called the "Bees' sting." Do all this as well as lies in your power, for upon this channel being well cut will depend much of the success of ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... a grave injustice, Murphy. In the first place, I do not possess the nature of an Indian, and am not out for revenge. Your slashing at me down in Glencaid has n't left so much as a sting behind. It's completely blotted out, forgotten. I haven't the slightest desire to kill you, man; but I do want to clear my name of the stain of that crime. I want you to tell the whole truth about ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... to him for that! He would make me a slave now, as he did then, if he dared, but he has found that, poor, trodden worm as I was, I had life enough left to turn and sting." ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... it was in the Wolf's hand. Porky felt a sting as the bullet grazed his shoulder. Then Hen's weapon ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine
... ornament T' enrich their houses, for the continent Of the strange virtues all approved it held; For even the very look of it repelled All blastings, witchcrafts, and the strifes of nature In those diseases that no herbs could cure; The wolfy sting of avarice it would pull, And make the rankest miser bountiful; It kill'd the fear of thunder and of death; 160 The discords that conceit engendereth 'Twixt man and wife, it for the time would cease; The ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... over again, in a strange land among strange people. I tried O, Elersley! God knows how hard, to earn honest bread, but I did not deserve success, and so God refused to bless my labor. I left Maine, and came here to New York, two years ago. I turned my hand to everything, but the bitter sting of misfortune was at the bottom of all. I tried my pen, recently, for my limbs seemed incompetent for any active service, but sitting here in this little narrow room, through the long night, trying to invent some gay little snatch of ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... without reproach; For I will leave my relics in your land, And you may carve a shrine about my dust, And burn a fragrant lamp before my bones, When I am gather'd to the glorious saints. While I spake then, a sting of shrewdest pain Ran shrivelling thro' me, and a cloudlike change, In passing, with a grosser film made thick These heavy, horny eyes. The end! the end! Surely the end! What's here? a shape, a shade, A flash of light. Is that the angel there That holds a crown? Come, blessed brother, come, ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... 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 ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... Roman satirists, properly speaking. The satirical spirit animates the piquant epigrams of his friend Martial, but their purpose is not moral or didactic. They sting the individual, and render him an object of scorn and disgust, but they do not hold up vice itself to ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... abbot. "I took it in mockery of Cromwell and the ecclesiastical commissioners, and I rejoice that they have felt the sting. The Abbot of Barlings called himself Captain Cobbler, because, as he affirmed, the state wanted mending like old shoon. And is not my title equally well chosen? Is not the Church smitten with poverty? Have not ten thousand of our brethren been driven from ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... shrouds in spite of the whip-like sting of sleet and spray, watching the struggle against wind, wave ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... that? Oh, I knows; what they writes in elections. Why, Miss, mayhap—" here Peter paused, and winked significantly—"but the Corporal's a passionate man, you knows: but I could so sting him—Aha! we'll see, we'll see.—Do you know, your honour," here Peter altered his air to one of serious importance, as if about to impart a most sagacious conjecture, "I thinks there be one reason why the Corporal has ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... an eminently fortunate man in all the trifles which make up the sum of a frivolous existence; and though his successes had been for the most part small social triumphs, they had not been the less agreeable. He had never felt the sting of failure until he stood in the Yorkshire orchard that chill October evening, and pleaded in vain to Clarissa Lovel. She was little more than a schoolgirl, and she rejected him. It was us if Lauzun, after having played fast-and-loose with ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... think all different. Common flies and mosquitoes (or gnats) are abundant, and the latter so tormenting as to make one conclude that if the flies in Egypt were mosquitoes, the plague must be almost insupportable. Here are beetles of many species; scorpions of two sorts, the sting of the smallest not mortal; land crabs in abundance, and an amazing number of other kinds of insects. Fish is very plentiful, and the principal animal food of the inhabitants. I find fewer varieties of vegetables than I could have ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... heavily drawn sigh, which her mother charged to the body's weariness, came from the mind's longing. And in the solitude of the night, when her breath was quick and her pulse was high and she knew everything was going wrong, the thought came with a sting of agony,—if there was such a helmet, and she could not have it. O to be well and strong, and need none!—or while lying before death's door to see if it would open, O to have that talisman that would make its opening peace! It was not at Eleanor's hand, and ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... you be, take care lest you foster the serpent that will diffuse its subtle poison over the cherished blossoms which you are, or ought to be, training for heaven, and leave a sting which may pierce your own hearts. One thing we may be sure of, that the faults which we, through negligence or weak indulgence, leave unchecked in our children in early life, a wiser though severer hand than ours ...
— Aunt Mary • Mrs. Perring
... last; and then, with the tone of one reading: '"From a believer so largely blessed by Providence with this world's goods,"' she continued, '"the Church awaits in confidence some signal mark of piety." There lies the sting. Am I not right? These are the ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... rendered her uneasy at times; but Marian was too much beloved, too happy, in the enjoyment of too many honors, and of too great wealth, to be open to the convictions of conscience. It is in our hours of pain and privation that we begin to feel its sting: if we are prosperous, we fancy we reap the fruits of our own merit; but if we are unfortunate, the voice of truth seldom fails to remind us that we are deserving of our fate:—a blessed provision of Providence that often makes the saddest hours of our earthly ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... For, as the AEgyptians us'd by Bees, &c.] The AEgyptians represented their kings, (many of whose names were Ptolemy) under the hieroglyphick of a bee, dispensing honey to the good and virtuous, and having a sting for ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... men in fevered covert there,—of little children crying for their mothers,—of girls betrayed to hell,—of flesh and blood at price,—of blistering, crisping fagot and stake to-day,—of all the anguish and despair down there before him. And with the vivid sting of it such a wrath raged along his veins, such a holy fire, that it seemed there were no arms tremendous enough for his handling, through his shut teeth darted imprecatory prayers for the power of some almighty ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... sense of joy that young people have in loving, and in being beloved again, in fond meetings and fonder partings, in endless walks and talks, in sweet kisses and clinging arms. Such happiness was not for her: when she saw it the lot of others, she said to herself sometimes with a natural sharp sting of pain, but oftener with a solemn acquiescence, "It is the will of God; it ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... o'er the skeleton With which men image out the unknown thing That hides the past world, like to a set sun Which still elsewhere may rouse a brighter spring— Death laughs at all you weep for:—look upon This hourly dread of all! whose threaten'd sting Turns life to terror, even though in its sheath: Mark how its lipless mouth ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... the same classes in Glasgow were taking action, and passing resolutions, the biting phrases of which were probably prompted as much by a desire to sting the Admiralty as by a personal sense of national abasement. "At a time when we are at peace with all the rest of the world, when the maintenance of our marine costs so large a sum to the country, when the ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... of July passed. The troop horses came with the regularity of clockwork twice a day down to drink under her window, and, as the weather grew hotter, kicked up their heels and shook their heads furiously under the maddening sting of the dun-fly. The green leaves in the garden became of a darker dye, the gooseberries ripened, and the three brooks were reduced to half ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... was not what it would have been to leave her at the mercy of any man who could afford to buy a doll. There was no excuse for men to "butt into" Mantles, unless accompanied by female belongings, and thus accompanied, their sting was gone. ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... another. The musical tones of Faith's voice; the smiles evoked for his sake, that played around those lips sweeter than the damask rose, clustered inevitably about that one thought. But, he felt them as a swarm of angry bees, that eagerly settle upon a living thing to sting it into torture. That living thing was his burning, sensitive heart, quivering, bleeding, convulsed, longing for the bliss of annihilation. And thus, in an agony far greater than that which the martyr endures in the chariot of flame which is to waft him to heaven, as the sufferings ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... clauses would have been of little import in Elizabeth's eye's, except as they implied her yielding to dictation; the real sting lay in the last. And the last was the one which Philip would be most loth to yield. With a touch of grim humour, His Catholic Majesty sent his ultimatum in ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... time the prisoner flushed and the look he darted at his counsel had the sting of a reproach in it. Yet he answered: "It was the token of an engagement I didn't believe in or like. I should have hailed any proof ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... some manticores, a most strange sort of creatures, which have the body of a lion, red hair, a face and ears like a man's, three rows of teeth which close together as if you joined your hands with your fingers between each other; they have a sting in their tails like a scorpion's, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... is very necessary to make truth known to the people; but an editor really independent must have a heart of oak, nerves of iron, and a soul of adamant, to carry it through. His first attempt will bring a hornet's nest about his head; and, if they do not sting him to death or to blindness, he will have to pursue his march with them continually swarming over him, and be beset on all sides with ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... high His head is borne, His mighty pow'r asunder Thy gates hath burst, thy bands hath torn, Thyself hath trodden under His feet; who doth in Him confide Thy pow'r and claims may now deride And say, "Thy sting, where is it?" ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt
... disgust, are you?" said he. "It is no more than I expected. You remember I told you years ago that you would be treated so. So he is tired of you? Ha! ha! ha! The virtuous madam don't like to hear about it, does she? Ha! ha! ha!" There was a sting in his calling me virtuous madam. I no longer had the power of answering him as I had formerly done. He continued: "So it seems you are trying to get up another intrigue. Your new paramour came to me, and offered ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... not so far forget themselves as to assail me. At the same time, it is equally on the cards that the inmates of the hive I so foolishly approached would be a dull lot—shall we say, Baeotian bees? Or an impulsive lot, who sting first and look for qualities afterwards. In short, mistakes will occur, and, as an orphan and a useful member of society, I must ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... regarded Leslie with a perfectly innocent expression, there was lurking malice in her wide blue eyes. She had not liked the dignity Marjorie had shown when returning her property. It rankled in her petty soul. With the gratitude of the proverbial serpent, she was quite ready to sting the hand which had ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... Additional sting was given the enforcement laws by provision for the superintendence of federal elections, under specified conditions, by federal officials called "supervisors of election." The supervisors were given large powers over the registration of voters and the casting and ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... somewhat the better of it, for his assault was fierce, and he forced the older and cooler man to be satisfied with guarding himself. He did more indeed, for presently thrusting over Ramiro's guard, he wounded him slightly in the left arm. The sting of his hurt seemed to stir Ramiro's blood; at any rate he changed his tactics and began to attack in turn. Now, moreover, his skill and seasoned strength came to his aid; slowly but surely Adrian ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... a word used in the theatrical business to distinguish the full-evening drama, its actors, producers, and its mechanical stage from those of burlesque and vaudeville. Originally coined as a word of reproach against vaudeville, it has lost its sting and is used by vaudevillians as well ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... their respective epigraphs. On the title-page of the first I inscribed this passage from the prophet Isaiah: "Say ye not, a confederacy, to all them to whom this people shall say, a confederacy;" and on that of the second, the words of St. Paul: "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" What I chiefly desired was to convince power itself that sound policy and true justice called for very rare examples of trial and execution in political cases; and that in exercising against all offenders the utmost severity of the laws, it created more perils ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... a word, but one gray head was bent, and the happy light died out of the old eyes and never came to them again. Below all the squalor and discomfort was the agony of suspense or the certainty of death. But the parsnip coffee and the empty purse certainly did give a sting to the great overwhelming misery, like gnats ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... hitherto!" replied the old man. "Everything lives and moves, only to die and to rot: everything feels, only to feel pangs. Our inward agony spurs us on to what we call joy; and all wherewith spring and hope and love and pleasure beguile mankind, is only the inverted sting of pain. Life is woe, hope sadness, ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... course impeded by the terrified human wrestling in 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 ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... know we can not conscientiously bestow, it is a sacred duty to refuse it him, even though we are sensible that it will give much pain, and when the duty is performed in a Christian manner it will leave no lasting sting, but will itself prove a healing balm ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... can have their reward. We shall, no doubt, see, outstanding, dark evidence of old animosity; we shall hear fierce war-cries and see raging crowds, but the crowds are less numerous, and the wrath has lost its sting. Men who raged twenty years ago rage now, but their fury is less real; and young men growing up around them, quite indifferent to the ideal, are also indifferent to the counter cries: they are passive, ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... from a publishing bookseller, to inquire whether he still thought of giving the world his valuable work on insects. The doctor was amazed. "My valuable work! Why, Rose, they all refused it, and this person in particular recoiled from it as if my insects could sting ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... Mollusca. It consisted of a small bladder about seven inches long, very much resembling the air-bladder of fishes, from the bottom of which descended a number of strings of a bright blue and red, some of them three or four feet in length, which upon being touched sting like a nettle, but with much more force. On the top of the bladder is a membrane which is used as a sail, and turned so as to receive the wind which way soever it blows: This membrane is marked in fine pink-coloured veins, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... Oberon, great Fayrie King, Content thee I am no such thing, 210 I am a Waspe behold my sting, At which the Fayrie started: When soone away the Waspe doth goe, Poore wretch was neuer frighted so, He thought his wings were much to slow, O'rioyd, they so ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... Governor Phillip himself went again to explore the coast between Port Jackson and Botany Bay. In this journey few of the natives were seen, but new proofs were observed of their having been distressed for food. In the preceding summer they would not eat either the shark or the sting-ray, but now even coarser meat was acceptable, and indeed any thing that could afford the smallest nourishment. A young whale had just been driven upon the coast, which they were busily employed in carrying away. All that were seen at this time had ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... enough to see the dumb pain in his eyes. She exclaimed aloud, "Philip! Is it Channing then, after all? You think he has come between you—irrevocably? No, but you are wrong! That is over, absolutely over. It is for you to take out the sting.—See, Philip, I am going to be quite frank with you, franker than women generally are, even with themselves. You don't know much about girls. I do—about my own girl, at least, for I was just such a girl once.—There comes a time to young women, as to all young animals, when we ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... yes, and soundless too; For you have stol'n their buzzing, Antony, And very wisely threat before you sting. ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... grim dejection such as nobody could understand but which was caused by the thought of impending nihility. When I was most successful I was to general wonder most depressed. The fatal question, "What avails it?" rang like a knell in my ears. But the sharpest sting of this torment was that it came with a secret sense of shame, which rendered me unable to confide my thoughts to another. Husband and wife lying side by side in the darkened room may quiver with the same shudder ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... sank or sunk sunk [adj. sunken] sit sat [sate] sat slay slew slain slide slid slidden, slid sling slung slung slink slunk slunk smite smote smitten speak spoke spoken spin spun spun spring sprang, sprung sprung stand stood stood stave stove (staved) (staved) steal stole stolen stick stuck stuck sting stung stung stink stunk, stank stunk stride strode stridden strike struck struck, stricken string strung strung strive strove striven swear swore sworn swim swam or swum swum swing swung swung take ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... in good-humour, but for some reason it seemed to sting her to the quick. I could see it in the flash of her eyes and the renewed flush at ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... they vanish as quickly as they come, and never leave a poisonous sting behind, because a universal remedy is employed against them, which is called 'Forgive, forget, amend!' and which the earlier applied the better, and which makes also the visits of these ugly fiends of rarer occurrence; they come, indeed, in pure and ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... willing not to perform a certain action. Any stimulus may, on occasion, be strong even if it has ceased to be characteristic or habitual in a man's behavior. This is particularly the case with some of the primary physical drives to action. Even the ascetic feels the strong sting of sense-desire. A man in resisting temptation, in denying the pressure of an immediate stimulus, is setting up to block or inhibit it all the contrary reactions and emotions which have become part of the "permanent self." In more familiar language he is setting ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... tiny yellow ducks, and flourishes a long willow wand to keep them from straggling out of their compacted trot, does undoubtedly present rather an absurd appearance; yet I cannot explain why the sight should have seemed to prick like a sting through the wide weary disgust which Mick experienced as he stood in the twilit boreen waiting for Paddy to come out. He had scarcely a grunt to exchange for Peter's cheerful "Fine evenin'." What does it signify in a universal desert whether evenings be fine or foul? Altogether, ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... of indelicacy!" This indictment had a wriggling sting, and lost no venom from the fact that he could in no wise have perceived where the indelicacy of his conduct lay. But he did not try to perceive it. Against himself, clergyman and gentleman, the monstrosity of the charge was clear. This was a point of morality. He felt no anger against ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... a fenny snake, In the caldron boil and bake; Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog, Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting, Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing, For a charm of powerful trouble; Like a hell-broth boil ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... the people could comprehend the full sting of this word, which conveyed the searching, persistent disapproval of an entire class, whose code, if viewed from the moral point of view, was painfully slack, though from its own standard of decorum it ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... bi yure huzban fur mame Deux fischtaminelle, hee goze their evry eavning, yu ar az blynde az a Batt. Your gott wott yu dizzurv, and I am Glad ovit, and I have thee honur ov prezenting yu the assurunz ov Mi moaste ds Sting guischt respecks." ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... read the brotherly tribute in the new issue of The Hornet, and Xoa's eyes glistened behind her spectacles, though she decorously deplored the heat of the sting dealt by Usial. Frank, watching her efforts to hide mirth and display womanly concern at this distressing affair between brothers, forgot some of his own troubles in his amusement. Therefore the Squire's tactics were successful, and the ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... way? He drew a deep sigh and looked helplessly at his companion. Then he did a hard thing. He tried to justify Kate, just as he had been trying all the morning to justify her to himself. The odd thing about it all was that the very deepest sting of his sorrow was that Kate could have done this ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... countenance of her maternal friend seemed for a moment present to her senses; and then the dreariness and desolation that succeeded as the delusion vanished, and all was stillness and vacuity! Even self-reproach shot its piercing sting into her ingenuous heart; levities on which, in her usual gaiety of spirit, she had never bestowed a thought, now appeared to her as crimes of the deepest dye. She thought how often she had slighted the counsels and neglected the wishes of her gentle monitress; how she had wearied of her ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... a sound deepens into silences; It was of earth and came not by the air; The earth was cooling and drew down the sky. The air was crumbling. There was no more sky. Rails of a broken bed charred in the grate, And when he touched the bars he thought the sting Came from their heat—he could not feel such cold ... She said 'O, do not sleep, Heart, heart of mine, keep near me. No, no; sleep. I will not lift his fallen, quiet eyelids, Although I know he would awaken then— He closed them thus but now of his own will. He can ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... security. What could discovery and exposure do but set her free in her reality? Anne would have rejoiced to see her lie go up in one purifying flame of revelation. But to go safe in her lie, hiding her reality, and yet defenceless under the sting of Maisie's loving, was more than she could bear. She had brought all her truth and all her fineness to this passion which Maisie's innocence made a sin, and she was punished where she had sinned, wounded by the subtle God in her fineness and her truth. If only Jerrold ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... admiration from the wit, the wickedness, the triumphant mischief of the thing. The sketch of Addison—who had offended Pope by praising a rival translation of Homer—as "Atticus," is as brilliant as any thing of the kind in Dryden. Pope's very malignity made his sting sharper than Dryden's. He secreted venom, and worked out his revenges deliberately, bringing all the resources of his art to bear upon the question of how to give the ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... to my gown, That's not the way that we bathe our feet, or wear our pearls, up in town! As for picking flow'rs, I have tried at a hedge, sweet eglantine roses to snatch, But, mercy on us! how nettles will sting, and how the long brambles do scratch; Besides hitching my hat on a nasty thorn that tore all the bows from the crown, One may walk long enough without hats branching off, or losing one's bows about town. ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... wretched young Puritan spawn! Would you sting?" growled the man, as Fred made a desperate effort to use his ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... guard and defend her; and she seemed to herself lonely. It fell to her to guard and defend her mother; and her father? what was he about?—There swept over her an exceeding bitter cry of desolateness, unuttered, but as it were the cry of her whole soul; with again that sting of pain which seemed unendurable, how can a father let his child be ashamed of him! She turned away that St. Leger might not see her face; she felt it was terribly grave; and betook herself now to the examination ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... The theatrical business is the only one that permits outside interference—as if the public couldn't tell a good play from a poor one. It wouldn't be so bad if we were always honest; but we're not: we have to be smart to hold our jobs. We're like a patent dandruff cure—we don't cure, but we sting, and the ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... 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 is not like that difference of opinion between yourself ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... loving self-reproach. The weight of a heavy shame to think of the past, and to know now of His beauty, and His love, and His care, care for so careless a soul, love for a soul so loveless,—this will sting with an extreme severity the soul humbled before Him. And here we should do well to remember that, as the characters of each differ almost infinitely, whereby there are innumerable shades and degrees of every conceivable distinction of merit and of sin, ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson
... remark, the very brevity of which carried a barb of sarcasm, escaped from Madeleine's lips before she had fairly intended it. Ratcliffe felt the sting, and it started him from his ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... a vicious one, with the sting of sleet and hail in its drops, pelted about by gusts that ruffled up the puddles into ripples, all set on end, like the feathers of a frightened hen. The hens themselves stood disconsolately sheltering under the bank, mostly on one leg, ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... the gnats, John, That hum at close of day: That sting, and leave a scar behind, Then ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 335 - Vol. 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828 • Various
... prisoners be sent to the furthest point possible from the portals of the impervious wall, left their putrid odour should so terrify the entire City pf Destruction that no one would ever enter Eternity from that side of the gulf, and I, in consequence, would be unable to cool my sting, and you should have no commerce betwixt earth and hell. But I leave you to judge them, and to cast them into the cells you ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... an instinctive aversion to anything mean or low in others. A man of great liberality and generous to a fault he often found it hard to say no, but when obliged to adopt that attitude it was done with a tact and courtesy which left no sting. In all business matters he required a rigid economy though never ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... he points out Shakspere as 'a crow beautified with our feathers.' The hypothesis seems to us to be little less than absurd.... He parodies a line from one of the productions of which he had been so plundered, to carry the point home, to leave no doubt as to the sting of his allusion. But, as has been most justly observed, the epigram would have wanted its sting if the line parodied had not been that of the very ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... hide the fact that his conduct, even towards those who desired to be his friends, and to whom he owed obligations for acts of sympathy and kindness, frequently admitted of no excuse. His anger, though sharp, was short, and left no sting behind; but his unjust suspicions and scornful treatment of men whose confidence he had won by his genius and force of character, were the cause of sorrow and suffering to those whom he attacked, as well as of remorse to himself, whereby his whole life ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... Dante, though feeling the sting intended by the word "beard," did as he was desired. The angels had ceased to scatter their clouds of flowers about the maiden; and be beheld her, though still beneath her veil, as far surpassing her ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... representations of the danger to the Carolinas, and the murmurings of the people against the French, who were accused of forsaking their allies, having rendered them no service, but on the contrary having profited by the cordial help of the Bostonians to refit their crippled fleet. There was a sting of truth in the alleged failure to help, which impelled D'Estaing to disregard the orders actually in his hands to return at once to Europe with certain ships. Instead of obeying them he sailed for the American coast with twenty-two ships-of-the-line, ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... all the Treaty Powers, it had for Japan the added sting of injustice. She had been ejected from her own territory, fairly won in war, because her presence would endanger the independence of Korea and the peace of the Orient. She now saw Russia in full occupation of this very territory, and the absorption ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... to attract the attention of those surgically ambitious. The ovariotomy or celiotomy expert began to feel the sting of envy and jealousy aroused by those who were making history in the new surgical fad—appendectomy—and they got busy, and, as disease is not exempt from the economic law of "supply always equals demand," the disease accommodatingly sprang up everywhere; it was no time before a surgeon ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... I have warm'd a Viper in my bosom, That wanted only heat enough to sting me, And give me Death ...
— The Fatal Jealousie (1673) • Henry Nevil Payne
... brother; and one day it will all be spread out before you, and you will be bid to read it, and to say what you think of it. The stings of a nettle will burn for days, if they are touched with water. The sting and inflammation of your evil deeds, though it has died down, is capable of being resuscitated, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... proofs in the Filipino stories have no parallel in the Indian tales; viz., duck for louse, gun or horn for voice, tail of sting-ray (pagui) for hair. The suggestion for this last comparison may have come from the belief among the Filipinos that the tail of the sting-ray is a very efficacious charm against demons and witches. It ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... his royal palace: he orders the torches and candles to be lighted, but they are of no avail—his thoughts' scorpions sting his soul. ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... sting in what he said. Perhaps, after all, I was playing a cowardly part. And the more I thought about it the more it appeared that my duty to myself lay in doing what he had advised, lay in joining forces ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... come to thank us for. Never crossed our door-sill since we returned home! Does not your conscience sting ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik |
