"Sting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... what, all flowered with huge wild mignonette; this other moving background of ragged peasants and unutterable galled horses; the desolation of this dead city which I feel behind those mediaeval walls comes home to them, like the sting of the dust whirlpools and roar of the ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... to-day. But beware of the wasps and hornets. The hornets are our most formidable enemy, and the wickedest, and the wasps are a useless tribe of thieves, without home or religion. We are a stronger, more powerful nation, while they steal and murder wherever they can. You may use your sting upon insects, to defend yourself and inspire respect, but if you insert it in a warm-blooded animal, especially a human being, you will die, because it will remain sticking in the skin and will break off. So do not sting warm-blooded ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... Germany, William the War Lord, had set loose in the air a nest of hornets to sting his well-trained warriors. By his side stood only Austria, a composite empire which soon found all its strength too little to hold back the mighty Russian tide that swept across its borders. Thus this one stalwart nation, with its weak auxiliary, ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... as it was her custom to do when he addressed her after such fashion as this. At such times she would not answer him; but she knew that he would press her for an answer. "I blame him more than I do you," continued Trevelyan,—"infinitely more. He was a serpent intending to sting me from the first,—not knowing perhaps how deep the sting would go." There was no question in this, and the assertion was one which had been made so often that she could let it pass. "You are young, Emily, and it may be that you ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... of the best paragraphs I had ever done. A two-line thing, full of point and sting. I had been editing "On Your Way" that day, Fermin being on a holiday and Gresham ill; and I had put the paragraph conspicuously at the top of ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... the past), And will be on my guard against future calamity. I will have nothing to do with a wasp, To seek for myself its painful sting. At first indeed it seemed ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... wonderful thing which we call our being. It is fearful to go from light to darkness, from all that we have ever known and loved, to that of which we know and love nothing. But if death, even thus stingless, is yet full of horror, what is he with his worst sting beside, the sting of our sins? What is he when he is taking us, not to nothingness, but to judgment? He is indeed so fearful then, that no words can paint him half so truly as our foreboding dread of him, and no arguments which the wit of man can furnish can ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... Annie, sole blossom left upon the blasted tree, went with them. It was a miserable life which they led. The pinch of poverty is never so keenly felt as when the recollection of better days mixes with it like a perpetual sting. All the bright hopes of six years before were over, and the poor ladies could have said, "Behold, was ever sorrow like unto my sorrow!" They grieved for themselves; they grieved most of all for their beautiful little Annie, but Annie ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... why Amos Bell's home had been neglected, and was answered with some annoyance, as I pointed down the lane, that it was on our land, though in Hillside parish. 'I am glad to have such neighbours!' observed my mother, and I kept to myself the remarks I had heard, though I was still tingling with the sting of them. ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ridden far before he was vexed with himself. He was not so much sorry, as annoyed that he had behaved in fashion undignified. The thought that his childish behaviour would justify Kirsty in her opinion of him, added its sting. He tried to console himself with the reflection that the sort of thing ought to be put an end to at once: how far, otherwise, might not the old fellow's interference go! I am afraid he even said to himself ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... that there was often found in the woods a most mischievous serpent, called the Flying Snake, which they said darted itself from the boughs of trees on either man or beast that came within its reach, and whose sting they believed to be inevitable death. Besides these mischievous land-animals, the sea hereabouts is infested with great numbers of alligators of an extraordinary size; and we often observed a large kind of flat fish jumping a considerable height out ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... welcome each rebuff That turns earth's smoothness rough, Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but go! 1450 ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... never be harmed by it. You have often spoken insultingly, my lord Kay, to braver and better men than I, for you are given to this kind of thing. The manure-pile will always stink, [33] and gadflies sting, and bees will hum, and so a bore will torment and make a nuisance of himself. However, with my lady's leave, I'll not continue my tale to-day, and I beg her to say no more about it, and kindly not give me any unwelcome command." "Lady," says Kay, "all those ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... The sting of the words sent the blood flying back to Myles's face again, and he looked quickly up. "Nay," said he, with a boldness that surprised himself; "thou shalt do no such unlordly thing upon me as that. I be thy peer, sir, in blood; and though thou mayst kill ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... recks not Of the drought of yesterday; But the dream of power once broken, What shall give repose again? What shall charm the serpent-furies Coiled around the maddening brain? What kind draught can nature offer Strong enough to lull their sting? Better to be born a peasant Than to live an exiled king! Oh, these years of bitter anguish!— What is life to such as me, With my very heart as palsied As a wasted cripple's knee! Suppliant-like for ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... an adept in thinking up remarks that carried a taunt or a sting, and she had one ready to greet her sister that night on her return; but as she looked up, she saw in Olga's face something that held back the provoking words trembling on her tongue. Instead she said, half enviously, "You look ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston
... her chair while speaking, and he also started to his feet. Her words, though such an astounding relief in one sense, had nevertheless given him pain; there was a sting in them which cruelly galled his self-conceit. It was enough to be rejected; she need not have put an eternal gulf between ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... on his knees, trying to rise to his feet, when something like the sting of a whip struck his right cheek and ear. He put up his hand to his face, and drew it away wet and stained. The warm crimson moisture trickled down his neck, and dripped from his chin. He ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... crossed her face, but her lip curved knowingly and her voice came more gently, because of the greater sting that lay behind ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... be the day when my bargeman I brought To fight with Jos. Hudson!—the thought is a sting. I sighing exclaim, by experience taught, Farewell to Tom ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... is covered from head to foot with a dense swarm, blackening grey cloths and giving dark ones a strange spotted appearance. They creep to the unprotected face and neck, the bare hands, and stockinged feet, slowly sink their sting into the skin, and pour the irritant poison into the wound. Furiously the victim beats the blood-sucker to a pulp, but while he does so, five, ten, twenty other gnats fasten on his face and hands. The favourite points of attack are the temples, the ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... liberal, how was this to be achieved but by the acceptance of such influence by some liberal candidate? And if it were right that it should be accepted by any liberal candidate,—then, why not by him? The logic of this argument seemed to him to be perfect. He felt something like a sting of reproach as he told himself that in truth this great offer was made to him, not on account of the excellence of his politics, but because he had been instrumental in saving Lord Brentford's son-in-law ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... Philip, 'the villains gave us letters once—only once—and those what they thought would sting us most. O father, how could you all think such ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... have happened but for the bladder-faced scoundrel ahead of me, now creeping around like a loathsome insect to sting a man of ancient name and fame, and I was eager to be at him again. Sultan, without more urging, had made the furlongs fly in gallant style, and it was time to be looking out for my landmarks. Nance had made me letter-perfect in them. Here, on the right, was the woodward's ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... sting, Lamented like a helpless thing, And by his mighty woe distraught Was lost in maze of troubled thought, Sumitra's son with loving care Consoled him in his wild despair, And while his feet he gently pressed With words like these the chief addressed: "For sternest vow and noblest deed Was ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... courteously; Uncle will be pleased thereby. In the morning: "'Morning to you! Any errand I can do you?" Fetch whatever he may need,— Pipe to smoke, and news to read; Or should some confounded thing Prick his back, or bite, or sting, Nephew then will be near by, Ready to his help to fly; Or a pinch of snuff, maybe, Sets him sneezing violently: "Prosit! uncle! good health to you! God be praised! much good may't do you!" Or he comes home late, perchance: Pull his boots off then at once, Fetch his slippers and his cap, ...
— Max and Maurice - a juvenile history in seven tricks • William [Wilhelm] Busch
... three cows, two fat, one theen. He catch and keel de fat; de lean run off. He roll een dust—make great dust. Cow come for see what make dust; he catch her an' keel. My fader got bees. De devil Bear chaw pine; I know he by hees broke toof. He gum hees face and nose wit' pine gum so bees no sting, then eat all bees. He devil all time. He get much rotten manzanita and eat till drunk—locoed—then go crazy and keel sheep just for fun. He get beeg bull by nose and drag like rat for fun. He keel cow, sheep, and keel Face, too, for fun. He devil. You promise ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Bane. — N. bane, curse; evil &c. 619; hurtfulness &c. (badness) 649[obs3]; 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[obs3], mephitis[obs3], malaria, azote[obs3], sewer gas; pest. [poisonous substances, examples] Albany hemp[obs3], arsenious ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... with great dexterity, are slings for throwing heavy stones, pikes headed with the bones of sting-rays, and clubs about six or seven feet long, made of a very hard and heavy wood. In some instances these are richly carved. The chief of each district leads his own subjects to the field, and reports the number of his men ...
— The Cannibal Islands - Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas • R.M. Ballantyne
... brought out that Maine man who wanted to buy him out. He was anxious to put the money down for the new farm, to have no whip-lash of debt forever whistling about his ears as he ploughed, ready to sting did he stumble in the furrows; and Tim was more anxious than he; but—there was Richards! Richards was a neighbor who thought as he did about Henry George and Spiritualism, and belonged to the Farmers' ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... sting to the threatened exile; for sacrifice and feast are dependent upon the land, which is the nursing-mother and the settled home of the nation, the foundation of its ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... had talked for some time they stretched themselves on the bench to try and obtain some sleep. That was more easily sought for than found, for no sooner were they quiet than countless creatures began to sting, and bite, and crawl over them. Tom was continually slapping himself, and ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... wretches, bewildered by Vesey's boldness and dazed by his terrifying doctrines, reply defensively "we are slaves," the harsh retort "you deserve to remain so," was, without doubt, intended to sting if possible, their abject natures into sensibility on the subject of their wrongs, to galvanize their rotting souls back to manhood, and to make their base and sieve-like minds capable of receiving and retaining, at least, a single fermenting idea. And when ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke
... your eyes so wonderfully blue the reproduction of his, and about your mouth and brows the graceful lines of his, that I shudder while I look at you. Ah, my darling! is it not hard that your beauty should sting like a serpent the mother whose blood filled your veins? The very tones of your voice, the carriage of your head, even the peculiar shape of your fingers and nails, are his—all his! Oh, my baby! my white lamb! my precious little one, if ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... strike, stick, sing, sting, fling, ring, wring, spring, swing, drink, sink, shrink, stink, come, run, find, bind, grind, wind, both in the preterit imperfect and participle passive, give won, spun, begun, swum, struck, stuck, sung, stung, flung, rung, wrung, sprung, swung, drunk, sunk, shrunk, stunk, come, run, ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... not to. You have much to occupy your thoughts. Try to forget me altogether;" and there was just sufficient regret in her tone, the regret at the prospect of losing a valued friend, to take all the sting from her words, to confirm Durrance in his delusion that but for her fear that she would spoil his career, she would answer him in very different words. Mrs. Adair came into the room before he could reply, and thus he carried ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... to be well trained. Horace said to me yesterday, "If every one would kill adders they would come to sting less." I answered: "Of course they would, for there would be fewer." He replied indignantly: "I did not mean that; but the timid adders which run away would be saved, and in time would never sting at all." Natural ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... was ended; but a sting remained. Helena was made to feel what it means to be in disgrace, and above all things what it means to throw up one's post. Society does not approve of changes and nobody would believe that she had voluntarily renounced ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... a former marriage, who proved a noble trustworthy boy; and by degrees he crept into my heart, and raked together the cinders of my dead affections, and kindled a feeble flame that warmed my shivering old age. When I felt assured that I was not thawing another serpent to sting me for my pains, I adopted Thorton Prince, and with the aid of a Legislative enactment, changed his name to Prince Darrington. Only a few months elapsed, before his mother, of whom I was very fond, died of consumption and my boy and I comforted each other. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... feel very uncomfortable. Your face and hands sting and crack; the skin all over your body becomes harsh and dry; your mouth feels parched. The shoes you are wearing feel as if they had been dried over a radiator after being very wet, only they are still harder ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... limited to facts, which could not be distorted or colored. His connections, and the spirit of his mission, prejudiced his judgment, respecting a system which had been the growth of circumstances; but his integrity is transparent, not less than his prepossessions. Time will extract the sting of his disclosures; but their moral results will remain. They tended to destroy those evils which can only live in a congenial atmosphere—and wither, except in ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... 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 is the will ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... freedom, with the vision of a new earth to be created, of a new labor to be dared, I am not surprised that I find you sordid and material, sluggish and incredulous. That I do not despair is because I know also the forces that are driving behind you—because I know the raging lash of poverty, the sting of contempt and mastership, 'the insolence of office and the spurns.' Because I feel sure that in the crowd that has come to me tonight, no matter how many may be dull and heedless, no matter how many may have come out of idle curiosity, or in order to ridicule—there will be some one man whom pain ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... elephant, expand! It fills the space entire, Mist-like melting, ever faster. 'Tis enough: ascend no higher,— Lay thyself at the feet of the Master! Thou seest, not vain the threats I bring thee: With holy fire I'll scorch and sting thee! Wait not to know The threefold dazzling glow! Wait not to know The strongest ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... and hated by the English more than any other of his mistresses. They called her "Madam Carwell," and they seemed to have an instinct that she was no mere plaything of his idle hours, but was like some strange exotic serpent, whose poison might in the end sting the honor ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... The sting in his voice had cured me. I never was a weeper. I sat up, my face blazing, and stared at him. He'd got me to hand over to the cop, but he hadn't ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... the boy's insults, and the sting of the lash, I was now roused to as high a pitch of fury as I had ever in my life reached. I had taken a step towards the horse, to drag the rider from his saddle, and he had raised the whip once more to strike, when a voice from the direction ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... she lives still,—in May Fair. The Eumenides, I suppose, went out of existence at the time when the wail was heard, "Great Pan is dead." I think we could better have spared him than those awful Sisters who sting dead conscience ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... a while to come back with inquiries about the name off the yacht, Varney's air of mystery and all that line of slush. My response was vigorous, yet gentlemanly, straining the truth for all she'd stand, and even bu'sting her open here and there, I gravely fear. However, it was a clincher. It crimped them right. Not a peep have we had ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... reason which prompted Evelyn Verne in associating the young lawyer with "hayseed'" It is only shallow sordid natures as hers can indulge in such meanness, but thank heaven the venom has only a momentary sting, a resting place in proportion to the superficial source ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... finds to do. But he smothered that part of his thought as well as he could; he made every effort to drive it away, and with fair keep it from intruding a little success, but he couldn't now and then, and when it intruded it came suddenly and nipped him like a bite, a sting, a burn. He recognized that thought by the peculiar sharpness of its pang. The others were painful enough, but that one cut to the quick when it calm. Night after night he lay tossing to the music of the hideous ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the sting lies in the tail. That steady growth of the grass is such a reasonable point to be considered, and yet to some readers it will cause considerable perplexity. The grass is, of course, assumed to be of equal length and uniform thickness in every case when the cattle begin to eat. The difficulty is ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... attempt to defend herself. The one means of proving her innocence was closed to her. For Dermot's sake she must endure to be thought a thief! Yes, a thief! She repeated the word under her breath, and the very sound of it seemed to sting her. A Fitzgerald a thief! Oh, it was impossible to bear the reproach! Surely even Dermot's future could not compel her to such a sacrifice? Yes, it must and should. She knew it was the dream of his life to become a Naval cadet, and that her ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... day, and the temperance men only now and then; and out of the group of boys who were my boy's friends, many kindly fellows came to know how strong drink could rage, how it could bite like the serpent, and sting ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... and plays, all speak of sex fulfilled and triumphant, not starved and denied like hers. The same principle is everywhere in Nature—the sky, the sea, the flowers, the green trees, the sound of summer rain—all beautiful sights and sounds have the same meaning, the same burden, the same sharp sting for her. If she is inclined to be morbid, every child's face seen in the street turns the knife in the wound; every sweet baby's cooing is another pang. 'Not for me—not for me!' must be the perpetual refrain in her mind. Her arms are empty, her heart is cold; ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... shaken. And there was a sting in this reproach that carried home to her; there was just a sufficient edge of truth to wound her. Had there been much light, she could have read his face; the dimness of the hall was saving Vance, ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... multitude of evil-doers and magicians. And these venomous and monstrous creatures, rising out of the earth and out of the sea, so prevailed over the whole island that they not only wounded men and animals with their deadly sting, but slayed them with cruel bitings, and not seldom rent and devoured their members. And the demons, who by the power of idolatry dwelled in superstitious hearts, showed themselves unto their worshippers in visible forms; often likewise did they, as if ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... were no longer pale, far from it, no more than Katharina's were; they were crimson! How bright his eyes were, how radiant with satisfaction and gladness!—She only wished she were a viper to sting them both in the heel!—At the same time Paula had lost none of her proud and noble dignity—and he? He gazed at his companion like a rapt soul; she fancied she could see the folds of his mourning cloak rising and falling with the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... hornets' nest, and the tax-payer paid, and paid dearly. For there would have been talk of the expedition beforehand, the force would have found an enemy prepared and fortified. The hornets could sting too! Whereas Drake had burned them out before they had time to buzz. He need not have said one word in exculpation of himself, and that indeed he knew. But he had interests and ambitions of his own to serve; a hint of them ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... a neat, witty, and pointed utterance briefly couched in verse form, usually satiric, and reserving its sting to the last line; sometimes made the vehicle of a quaintly-turned compliment, as, for example, in Pope's couplet to Chesterfield, when asked to write ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... to Miss Panney by a servant, he went his way. Driving along, his conscience stung him a little when he thought of the fable his wife had told him; but the moral of the fable had made but little impression upon him, and as an antidote to the sting he applied his conviction that matchmaking was a bad business, and that in love affairs, as well as in many diseases, the very best thing to do was to let nature ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... as to conceal its real character. It was on the margin of this mire then that General Potter took up his position; and just in the very hottest of the battle, a bee chanced that way in search of flowers, and lighting just under old Battle's tail, so goaded him with its sting that he sprang forward, and then halted with such a sudden motion as to vault the general over his head, and into the mire, his head and three-cornered hat only remaining above the surface. Having served his master this shabby ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... But there was peril near the sleeper. A monster of a bee had been wandering overhead—buzz, buzz, buzz—now among the leaves, now flashing through the strips of sunshine, and now lost in the dark shade, till finally he appeared to be settling on the eyelid of David Swan. The sting of a bee is sometimes deadly. As free-hearted as she was innocent, the girl attacked the intruder with her handkerchief, brushed him soundly and drove him from beneath the maple shade. How sweet a picture! This good deed accomplished, with quickened breath and a deeper blush she stole a glance ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... condemned to be sawn in two; but I thought we might perhaps be able to find a better use for her than that, so I have postponed the operation. She is called the Wasp, and if you have as much enterprise as I give you credit for, you ought to make her sting to some purpose. You will find her in Hulk Hole, and—Stop a minute." He rang a bell and a ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... languid, and even wretched. There will be a wide chasm, which they will not know how to fill up; a dull vacuum of time, which will make their existence insipid; a disappointment, which will carry with it a lacerating sting. In some of the higher circles of life, accustomed to such rounds of pleasure, who does not know that the Sunday is lamented as the most cruel interrupter of their enjoyments?—No shopping in the morning—no theatre ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... of 'em, all on her tongue's end! I don't know but she pointed a gun out of the winder, man-fashion. What did that crittur do but gather up his traps and walk off as harmless as a bumble-bee when his sting is gone. I've heard with my own eyes my grandmother tell that ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... verse. It was a neat, well-bred slap at him as a man without initiative or courage. At the dinner table she had expressed much the same thought that was condensed in the verse, but the quotation, unrelieved by her smile, carried a sting. He read it over until the lines marched with a nimble step through his memory. There was something oddly haunting in them, and he experimented with a variety of emphases and pauses, particularly as to the last line, which he found might be read ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... Jesus said, "Suffer ye thus far." I think the words should have a point of interrogation after them, to mean, "Is it thus far ye suffer?" "Is this the limit of your patience?" but I do not know. With the words, "he touched his ear and healed him." Hardly had the wound reached the true sting of its pain, before the gentle hand of him whom the servant had come to drag to the torture, dismissed the agony as if it had never been. Whether he restored the ear, or left the loss of it for a reminder to the man of the part he had taken against ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... incident of life in Congress must be told to explain the temper of the times. In 1856, during one of the many debates that arose out of Kansas, Sumner recited in the Senate a speech conscientiously calculated to sting the slave-owning Senators to madness. Sumner was a man with brains and with courage and rectitude beyond praise, set off by a powerful and noble frame, but he lacked every minor quality of greatness. He would not call his opponent in debate a skunk, but he would expend great ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... he felt that the removal was very unhandsomely made just as he 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 ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... deliberate circuit he went, sparing himself every ounce of effort that he could, and always shutting his eyes as the log beside him plunged out into the sluice. Gradually, then, he felt himself becoming stupefied by the ceaselessly recurring horror, with the prolonged suspense between. He must sting himself back to the full possession of his faculties by another burst of fierce effort. Fiercely he caught at log after log, without a let-up, till, luck having favoured him for once, he found himself on the inner instead of the outer edge of the procession. Then an idea flashed ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... "thine own deed shall then paint thee more worthless than could my words, though each had a hornet's sting." ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... seemed to animate this whale, for he had not been pursued by the men of the "Essex," though perhaps in some earlier meeting with men he had felt the sting of the harpoon and the searching thrust of the lance. So great is the vitality of the cachalot that it not infrequently breaks away from its pursuers, and with two or three harpoon-heads in its body lives to a ripe, if not a placid, old age. The whale that sunk the New Bedford ship ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... to do?" retorted the bumpkin. "A proper spiteful twoad such as he—why, he'll rumple all the color and booty out o' her wings, and sting her till her ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... learned that the house was closed and that they had gone abroad. He plodded on in his duties a trying year: then came more lively field-work and reviving interest. He was forgetting entirely the sting of his first great sorrow, and mourning gravely the gulf he had placed 'twixt him and his. He thought time and again of his cruel words, and something began to whisper to him he must see that mother again at once, kiss her hand, and implore her forgiveness, or she, too, ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... the Prince of Peace, and He, departing, left His scepter not in her hand, but in her soul. "The time of times" is near when "the new woman" shall subdue the whole earth with the weapons of peace. Then shall wrong be robbed of her bitterness and ingratitude of her sting; revenge shall clasp hands with pity, and love shall dwell in the tents of hate, while side by side, equal partners in all that is worth living for, shall stand the new man with ...
— Pulpit and Press (6th Edition) • Mary Baker Eddy
... than a tent: there you get canopy and carpet, fuel and water, shade and song, and beauty—all gratis; and these are not small matters when one has invited a large party of one's acquaintance. There are insects, it is true, which somewhat disturb our friends; and as they do not know which sting, and which are harmless, they kill all that come within their reach, as a safe general principle. The town boys, too! They know the wood—that is to say, they know where the wild fruits grow, and how to ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... practically impossible for any gunners, however skilful, to disable all its independent sections during the run from long range to torpedo-striking distance. The attacked warship is like an animal exposed to the onslaught of one of those fabled reptiles possessing a separate life and a separate sting in each of its myriad sections; so that what would be a mortal injury to a creature having its vital organs concentrated in one spot produces only the most limited effect in diminishing its ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... road travel we recollect but little. The incipient sea-sickness endured during the first day has now lost its sting; the little differences about the relative virtues of devilled partridge and beef a la mode are forgotten, and only the complete novelty, the heedless happiness of it all, remains. We did not even know ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... the same Gospel which once he so opposed, ridiculed, and despised, to love the man whose life he so often attempted, and to join with him in prayer and praise; and finally, at the time of his departure, to hear a glorious testimony, that the sting of death had been removed, and he was safe ...
— Metlakahtla and the North Pacific Mission • Eugene Stock
... and flee before men if they possibly can, else they are usually beaten to death. The rattlesnakes, however, which have a rattle on the tail, with which they rattle very loudly when they are angry or intend to sting, and which grows every year a joint larger, are very malignant and do not readily retreat before a man or any other creature. Whoever is bitten by them runs great danger of his life, unless great care be taken; but fortunately they are ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... refusal with contempt? Why dash to earth and crush with heaviest scorn The gray-hair'd man, the faithful veteran? Why to the baseness of his parentage Refer him with such cruel roughness, only Because he had a weak hour and forgot himself? But nature gives a sting e'en to the worm Which wanton Power treads on ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... well,—from creatures of the King, Who had dragged Hell of every poisonous thing And, through our country, had spread waste and woe. Beaten at last, they flocked like carion crow, On the dead body of their will to sting, Which drifting Northward, and enlargening, Loomed Dante's Nimrod, ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... wring the mind with anguish, Beyond comparison the worst are those That to our folly or our guilt we owe. In every other circumstance, the mind Has this to say, 'It was no deed of mine;' But when to all the evil of misfortune This sting is added—'Blame thy foolish self!' Or worser far, the pangs of keen remorse; The torturing, gnawing consciousness of guilt,— Of guilt, perhaps, where we've involved others; The young, the innocent, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... span of life Unto my sorrow. Therefore up to heaven Will I: to Zeus's mansion will I go And wail my son, and will put Zeus in mind Of all my travail for him and his sons In their sore stress, and sting ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... child, is a worse viper, who, by his ingratitude, will sting the bosoms of his parents; who, by disobedience and unkindness, will destroy their peace, and thus dreadfully repay them for all their love and care. God will not forget the sins of such a child. His eye will follow you to see your sin, and his arm will reach ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott
... multitude of sins, whether past or future, and perhaps they exert themselves in after life to restore the balance of good and evil. The Turks have a maxim which, like most cynical apophthegms, carries with it the buzzing trumpet of falsehood as well as the small, fine “sting of truth.” “If your friend has made the pilgrimage once, distrust him; if he has made the pilgrimage twice, cut him dead!” The caution is said to be as applicable to the visitants of Jerusalem as to those of Mecca, but I cannot help believing ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... must pass—fame, joy and love, The sting of grief, the blot of shame; The only thing that really counts Is how we bear ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... was very busy and could not give the time that morning. He wanted to make himself believe that he had not been slighted or treated with scant ceremony. But, try as he would, he continued to feel an obstinate, nasty sting that would not let him rest, nor forget his reception. His pride was hurt. The thought came to him to go at once to the President, but he had experience enough to know that such a visit would be vain until ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... of that day on the mountain still clung around his fancy as he went out upon the street again. A horrible something, as penetrable as mist, as keen as the sting of conscience, as inevitable as the burden of life, seemed to inwrap him. He felt it dully, and wondered how much of it was physical and how much mental, and he ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... strange position. And so it came to pass in a few more days that she took to her bed, a wan, wasted, heart-broken creature; but stung as she had been by the conduct of the man she had offered to die to save, she felt even more the sting of ingratitude in herself for not divulging to her mother as much of her secret as would have saved Lindsay from dismissal, for she was now more and more satisfied that it was the strength of his love for her that had driven him to ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... his finger. "What foolishness is this!" he cried, shaking his finger. "Your everlasting pins! And the devil of a pin it is!" he added, looking at the long, golden pin which Colibri slowly thrust into her sash. "It's a regular dagger, it's a sting.... Yes, yes, it's your sting, and you are a wasp, that's what you are, a ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... should happen to fall ill; if the doctors shake their heads, and warn us to make haste to his bedside, there is always a large proportion of honey to be extracted, in obeying the summons, out of the sting of parting, recounting old reminiscences, and gossipping about old times, never, alas! to return. But should we neglect the summons, where would the stings of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various
... little king! Is your happy kingdom lost To the rebel knave, Jack Frost? Have you felt the snow-flakes sting? Houseless, homeless in October, Whither now? Your plight is sober, ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... itself differently in him than in Glanville: in the latter, it was a rapid transition of powerful feelings, one angry wave dashing over another; it was the passion of a strong and keenly susceptible mind, to which every sting was a dagger, and which used the force of a giant to dash away the insect which attacked it. In Tyrrell, it was passion acting on a callous mind but a broken frame—his hand trembled violently—his voice faltered—he could ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... string and flint point, which was destined henceforth to make a decided change in the relative condition of the biped and quadruped hunters of the time. How could they know that something small and sharp would fly down and sting them more deeply than they had ever been stung before, that it would sting so deeply that their arteries might be cut, or their hearts pierced and that then they must lie down and die? The well-thrown spear had been, in other ages, a vast surprise to the carnivora of the period, but ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... absolutely necessary to shut her eyes. At intervals less windy she opened them, and rode on, peering through the yellow gloom for the cabin. Thus she got her eyes full of dust—an alkali dust that made them sting and smart. The fiercer puffs of wind carried pebbles large enough to hurt severely. Then the dust clogged her nose and sand got between her teeth. Added to these annoyances was a heat like a blast from a furnace. Carley perspired freely and that caked the dust on her face. She rode on, gradually ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... years, which would be a tolerably good spell, I don't think I could forget his appearance. His nose, usually the smallest article of the kind that I ever saw, was now swollen as large as my fist, and as purple as a mulberry—the distension of the skin, from the venomous sting of the reptile—for stung he had been by a scorpion—made it semi—transparent, so that it looked like a large blob of currant jelly hung on a peg in the middle of his face, or a gigantic leech, gorged with blood, giving his visage the semblance of some grotesque old—fashioned ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... merciless thorns. In the end it became heartrending toil. His heavy chaps dragged him down; but he dared not go on without them, for, thick and stiff as they were, the terrible, steel-bayoneted spikes of the choyas pierced through to sting his legs. ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... wonder I was jealous. That the feeling lasted only for an instant might be some palliation, but it was no merit of mine that brought it so quickly to a termination. I cannot screen my conduct behind an act of volition; for although the poisoned sting rankled but for a few seconds of time, during that short period I yielded obedience to its ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... here that there was any sinister purpose in this proposition, yet the possibilities, in case of its adoption, were very grave. Like the wasp, the sting was in the tail—"he (the chief justice;) can pronounce decision only as the organ of the Senate, WITH ITS ASSENT! Had that rule been adopted, suppose the Senate, with, its vote of forty-two Republicans and twelve Democrats, upon failure of conviction ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... to persuade Alonzo to request it of his friend, His friend to grant—then from that very grant, The strongest proof of friendship man can give (And other motives), to work out a cause Of jealousy, to rack Alonzo's peace? I have turn'd o'er the catalogue of human woes, Which sting the heart of man, and find none equal. It is the hydra of calamities, The sev'nfold death; the jealous are the damn'd. Oh, jealousy, each other passion's calm To thee, thou conflagration of the soul! Thou king of torments, thou grand counterpoise ...
— The Revenge - A Tragedy • Edward Young |
