"Stinging" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gate which ordinarily bars passengers from the tracks, but which that night had either been left open or opened by Roland. The wind, as I stepped from under the shelter of the station shed, was terrific: howling across the yards, stinging with sleet. It was very slippery under foot—I had to watch closely. And I was just a trifle nervous because here and there through the yards I could see lanterns—yard workers and track walkers, ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... his eyelid and biting the corner of his eye. They also bite all round the nails of your fingers and toes, unless they are closely covered. It must be said that insects are a great discomfort at Sarawak. Mosquitoes, and sand-flies, and stinging flies which turn your hands into the likeness of boxing-gloves, infest the banks of the rivers, and the sea-shore. Flying bugs sometimes scent the air unpleasantly, and there are hornets in the woods whose sting is dangerous. When we ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... great breath and dashed the stinging sweat from his eyes; and then, hardly seeing the barricade before him or the rifles that thrust out between the rocks, he put down his head and toiled on. Right on the rim, where the narrow trail nicked it, the gunmen had built a low wall and as he came on unheeding ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... hesitate to attack the uncanny vine which bristles with such magical and almost miraculous defences. Moreover, the juice of the squirting cucumber is bitter and nauseous, and if it gets into the eyes or nostrils of man or beast, it impresses itself on the memory by stinging like red pepper. So the trick of squirting serves in a double way as a protection to the plant against the attacks of ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... and woman staggered hand in hand and floundered in the deep snow. They were soaked to the skin, frozen by the cold, and whipped by the stinging hail. Though they bent their heads and bodies, though they clung hand in hand, though they struggled with all their strength, there were times when they could not advance a foot and must needs wait for a lull in the shelter of a porch. At such times the man would perhaps ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... P.M. with the afternoon post, and reached the First Brigade well up to time. Then it began to rain, at first slightly, and then very heavily indeed, with a bagful of wind. On a particularly open stretch of road—the rain was stinging sharply—the engine stopped. With a heroic effort I tugged the bicycle through some mud to the side of a shed, in the hope that when the wind changed—it did not—I might be under cover. I could not see. I could not grip—and ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... such service except for lack of another at hand. And a fair sight it was for one who loved her as I, with no privilege of jealousy, and yet with it astir within him, like a thing made but of claws and fangs and stinging tongue, to see her with that crowd of gallants about her, and the other maids going their ways unattended, with faces of averted meekness, or haughty uplifts of brows and noses, as suited best their different characters. Mistress Mary ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... rare skill in the examination of his own witnesses—a more difficult thing, by the way, than to cross-examine those of an adversary—put him through a sharp and stinging cross-examination. Under pretence of testing his memory, and of showing bias, he took him over the whole course, and it appeared that if he ever had the conversation he claimed with Basil, it must have been after his sale to Cole; ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... functions. And one reason, I believe, why it was that the interest about Pope decayed so rapidly after his death (an accident somewhere noticed by Wordsworth), must be sought in the fact, that the most stinging of his personal allusions, by which he had given salt to his later writings, were continually losing their edge, and sometimes their intelligibility, as Pope's own contemporary generation was dying off. Pope ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... lips opened as do those of one whose tongue's end holds a quick and stinging retort. Then they closed again. She walked over to the big window that faced the street. When she had stood there a moment, silent, she swung around and came back to where T. A. Buck stood, still ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... posture, how I hated Carpet Slippers, and was happy in my hate! I hated the silkiness of his chestnut beard; I hated the sheen of his pink cranium; I hated his soft rotundity and his little curvilinear features; I hated, above all, his poisonous speeches. As I walked to my seat, my body stinging still, I resolved to go to war with Fillet. I declared with all a child's power of make-believe that a state of war existed between Rupert Ray and Carpet Slippers. War, then, war, open ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... write with a diamond on the window of a public inn. At Carron, where he was refused a sight of the magnificent foundry, he avenged himself in epigram. At Inverary he resented some real or imaginary neglect on the part of his Grace of Argyll, by a stinging lampoon; nor can he be said to have fairly regained his serenity of temper, till he danced his wrath away with some Highland ladies ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Raymond in the same dialect. She looked up wondering, and he saw that it was Evadne Zaimi. Evadne, once the idol of Adrian's affections; and who, for the sake of her present visitor, had disdained the noble youth, and then, neglected by him she loved, with crushed hopes and a stinging sense of misery, had returned to her native Greece. What revolution of fortune could have brought her to England, and ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... company so respectable, and so naturally and sweetly holding her own among them without timidity or effort, was to me a pleasure so wonderful that even the quick, light shafts of jealousy—which ignoble but fiery darts were ever buzzing about my ass's ears, sometimes stinging me—could not fatally wound my satisfaction or my deep thankfulness that her dreadful and wretched trials were ended at last, ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... jumped out of her hiding place on the other side of the bushes. She caught a fleeting glimpse of the last speaker, her long, thin neck and green sunbonnet sticking up out of a tangle of bushes, like a stinging nettle in a garden. ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... me assure him, however, that if my life be spared, my name shall one day be known to the world—at least to such extent that common inquiry shall be unnecessary. This, I know will be deemed excessive vanity—but time shall prove it prophetic." To the charge of youth he makes this stinging rejoinder, which evinces the progress he was making in the tournament of language: "The little, paltry sneers at my youth by your correspondent have long since become pointless. It is the privileged abuse ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... walk, but the effort was a failure, and again he sat down and howled, this time with his meagre face upturned to my window. The street was empty, as far as I could see, for twilight was almost come, and cheery firesides were more tempting than slippery pavements and stinging winds. The muffled tones of distress became weaker and more despairing, and I could endure them no longer. I quickly arose and cast off my dressing-gown and slippers. In less than a minute I had on shoes, coat, and great-coat, and was ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... you, and I hear of it, by the beard of the prophet, I'll throw into Allaha such a swarm of stinging bees that all Hind shall hear of it. Now go, and may Allah watch over you, infidels though ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... Bathsheba's willing complicity, her punctilious observance of ceremonial propriety while she is trampling under foot her holiest obligations; the fatal necessity which drags sin after sin, and summons up murder to hide, if it be possible, the foul form of adultery; the stinging rebuke in the conduct of Uriah, who, Hittite as he was, has a more chivalrous, not to say devout, shrinking from personal ease while his comrades and the ark are in the field, than the king has; the mean treason, the degradation implied ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... of Wedmore freed southern England from the Danes. The shores of Wessex were teased now and then by after-descents, but these incursions were swept away like those of stinging hornets. In 894 a fleet of three hundred ships invaded the realm, but they met a crushing defeat. The king was given some leisure to pursue those studies to which his mind so strongly inclined, and to carry forward measures ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... and he was so swelled up with his own venom he looked dropsical. I judged his bite would have caused death in from twelve to fourteen minutes, preceded by coma and convulsive rigors. We called him old Colonel Gila Monster or Judge Stinging Lizard, for short. ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... they were as dry as powder and crumbled to dust in his hands. Coming forward, as if to give the welcome present to the Indians, he suddenly sprang on them and filled their eyes, mouths, and noses with the stinging tobacco dust. The savages were half choked and nearly blinded. While they were dancing about, coughing, sneezing, and rubbing their eyes, Boone slipped out of the shed and got to a place of safety. The Indians were mad as they could be, yet they could hardly help laughing at Boone's trick; for cunning ...
— The Beginner's American History • D. H. Montgomery
... was trying to read, being sharp and stinging on many points to more than one person present, Nathanael went steadily through, though several times his colour changed. No one made any comment except Agatha, who observed "that Uncle Brian must be rather bitter and sarcastic ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... of years, which, for some time, had been chafing amid obstructions, now met a sudden barrier, and flowed over in a raging torrent. A sharp retort met this firm declaration of Amanda, stinging her into anger, and producing a state of recrimination. While in this state, she spoke plainly of his assumption of authority over her from the first,—of her passiveness for a time,—of being finally ...
— Married Life; Its Shadows and Sunshine • T. S. Arthur
... conservative party. "For my part," he said, "I have no fear that learned and pious men will ever ruin the Church. I am far more afraid of the action of those high-minded and stupid schemers, who think more highly of themselves than they ought to think." It is clear to whom these stinging words refer. They are a plain hit at Augusta. "It is absurd," he continued, "to be afraid of learning and culture. As long as our leaders are guided by the Spirit of Christ, all will be well; but when craft and cunning, and worldly prudence creep in, then ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... her skies are clouded o'er, And oft she fronts the stinging sleet, Or feels on some tempestuous shore The ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... and heather, the late October shadows had already dropped their sombre veil upon the landscape, and the sun dipped almost out of sight behind the moorland hills. In a high dogcart, behind a fast horse, we were soon rattling across the undulating stretches of an open and bleak country, the keen air stinging our cheeks and the scents of pine and bracken strong about us. Bare hills were faintly visible against the horizon, and the coachman pointed to a bank of distant shadows on our left where he told us the sea lay. Occasional stone farmhouses, standing back from the road among ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... left a sum of money to an eminent King's counsel, "Wherewith to purchase a picture of a viper stinging his benefactor," as a perpetual warning against the ...
— Cupology - How to Be Entertaining • Clara
... sunk into oblivion. We therefore carried on a very pleasant and vivacious conversation, as the night was warm and we were not inclined to sleep. Suddenly the old Cure pulled off the handkerchief and said in a gruff voice, "It is the time for sleeps and not for talks." and, having uttered this stinging rebuke, re-covered his head and left us in penitent silence. We arrived at Evians-les-Bains in good time, and went to a very charming hotel with a lovely view of the Lake of Geneva in front. Unfortunately, ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... Mr. Gulick possessed was exercised to prevent premature publicity. The report of the Federal Council was not issued until between four and five months after the atrocities began. A Presbyterian organization, The New Era Movement, issued a stinging report on its own account, a few days before. The report of the Federated Council was preceded by a cablegram from Mr. Hara, the Japanese Premier, declaring that the report of abuses committed by agents of the Japanese Government in Korea had been engaging his ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... an essay for Edwardes which you weren't going to read. I hadn't done mine, so Dennison said you wouldn't mind me using yours. He got it, and I went to Edwardes at six o'clock to read it, but as soon as I started he began to jump about as if something was stinging him, and after I had read about half a page he kicked ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... since, forgetting all the good I ever knew, forgetting prayer save as I went through the form from old habit's sake, forgetting God, who has overtaken me at last and punished me so sorely that every nerve smarts with the stinging blows." ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... his will and his passions, which tears the heart asunder, and always makes sorrow and tumult wherever it comes. It takes away the sense of sin. It gives us, instead of the torpid conscience, or the angrily-stinging conscience—a conscience all calm from its accusations, with all the sting drawn out of it:—for quiet peace lies in the heart of the man that is trusting in the Lord. The Gospel works joy, because the soul is at rest in God; joy, because every function of the spiritual nature has found ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Loop-hound, took on the look of a sad old man. And suddenly he was no longer Jo, the sport; old J. Hertz, the gay dog. He was Jo Hertz, thirty, in love with life, in love with Emily, and with the stinging blood of young manhood coursing ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... quite as strongly from a different source. The cause of the Queen had enjoyed every assistance which a considerable portion of the press could afford it; and Thomas Moore and George Cruikshank manufactured the most stinging satires and the most ludicrous caricatures upon every person of distinction who opposed her; but a writer had entered the field on the other side, whose caustic humour told more damagingly on the popular idol and her chief supporters than the ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... rapidly darker and darker, and at length so dark that I could no longer see anything of it but its eyes. I felt it spring lightly on the bed. The two broad eyes approached my face, and suddenly I felt a stinging pain as if two large needles darted, an inch or two apart, deep into my breast. I waked with a scream. The room was lighted by the candle that burnt there all through the night, and I saw a female figure standing at the foot of the bed, a little at the right side. It was ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... when morning broke. The scene was a wild one. They seemed to be in the centre of a circle of mist, which closed in at a distance of half a mile or so, all round them. At times the rain fell, sweeping along with stinging force but, wet as they were, this mattered little ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... himself with passionate tossings, prompted by stinging recollection. Towards morning he fell into a dead sound sleep. He was roused by a hasty knocking at the door. It was broad full daylight; he had overslept himself, and the smack was leaving by the early tide. He was even now summoned on board. He dressed, ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... apostles, That the land is full of fossils, That the waters swarm with fishes Shaped according to his wishes, That every pool is fertile In fancy kinds of turtle, New birds around him singing, New insects, never stinging, With a million novel data About the articulata, And facts that strip off all husks From the history of mollusks. And when, with loud Te Deum, He returns to his Museum, May he find the monstrous reptile That so long the ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... ordained of God, as plagues unto men, and so shalt thou be plagued," quoth he; whereupon came scorpions, wasps, emets, bees, and gnats, which fell to stinging and biting him, and all the whole house was filled with a most horrible stinking fog, insomuch that Faustus saw nothing, but still was tormented; wherefore he cried for help, saying, "Mephistophiles, my faithful servant, where art thou? Help, help, ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... their conversation brilliant, and I used to listen with astonishment to the stinging humour with which they would tear a brother-author to pieces the moment that his back was turned. The artist has this advantage over the rest of the world, that his friends offer not only their appearance and their character ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... him that young Hylas had not come back, and that they were fearful for him. Heracles flung down the pine tree that he was fashioning into an oar, and he dashed along the way that Hylas had gone as if a gadfly were stinging him. "Hylas, Hylas," he cried. But Hylas, in the cold and glimmering cave that the nymphs had drawn him into, did not hear the call ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... sometimes they camped for the hunting; sometimes the great, fierce storms of the north drove them to shelter, snowed them under, and passed on shrieking. The wind opposed them. At first of little account, its very insistence gave it value. Always the stinging snow whirling into the face; always the eyes watering and smarting; always the unyielding opposition against which to bend the head; always the rush of sound in the ears,—a distraction against which the senses had ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... across her eyes as if to shut out some dreadful vision, and seemed to cower and shrink as if some one was smiting her with a stinging lash. ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... opinion might be appended as proof that we stopped under no discouragement. It is useless to affect that I don't know I have a morbid susceptibility of exasperation, to which the meanness and badness of the law in such a matter would be stinging in the last degree. And I know of nothing that could come, even of a successful action, which would be worth the mental trouble and disturbance ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... number of pale red medusas, such as I had usually seen on the East Coast at the entrances of rivers, and which, on being touched, produced a sensation like the stinging of a nettle. There was also a red scum on the water, and some of it was taken up to be examined by Mr. Brown in a microscope. It consisted of minute particles not more than half a line in length, and each appeared to be composed ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... A sharp, stinging pain, and then an agonizing, painful death, my head swollen hideously to twice its size, my body held there in that mechanical vice, suffering all the ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... chorus of triumphant shouts then—but not for long. David had only hurried to the woodpile to lay down his violin. He came back then, on the run—and before the tallest boy could catch his breath he was felled by a stinging ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter
... it?" he snarled, slapping the helpless, half-conscious man in the face with his open hand—loud, stinging blows that almost knocked the head off the shoulders. "Will you agree to ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... sharp, stinging pain, the dull, heavy pain, the throbbing, jumping pain, the cramping, tearing pain, the sickening, nauseating pain? Then you know all about them. Nobody can tell you anything more. ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham
... vote were to send to Parliament their own positive opinions on the point of that vote, with the Scripture proofs. Selden's hand is distinctly visible in this ingenious insult to the Assembly. [Footnote: Commons Journals, April 17 and April 22, 1646; Baillie, II. 344.] It was a more stinging punishment than adjournment or dissolution would have been, though that also had been thought of, and Viscount Saye and Sele had recommended it ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... was one point. And, when he entered the ring, his only object in life for the next three minutes was to score points. Consequently Trevor, sparring lightly and in rather a futile manner at first, was woken up by a stinging flush hit between the eyes. After that he, too, forgot that he liked the man before him, and rushed him in all directions. There was no doubt as to who would have won if it had been a competition. Trevor's guard was of the most rudimentary order, and O'Hara got through when and how he liked. But ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... the most powerful reprobation which ever shot from the indignant lip of the moralist, would not be too strong for the baseness which stooped to such a treaty, or the folly which entangled itself in its toils. No burning language of prophecy would be too solemn and too stinging for the premeditated wretchedness, and incurable calamity, of such a bond. No; if we must violate the simplicity of our national interests by such degrading, and such desperate involvements—if we should not shrink from this conspiracy against ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... warm in his seaman's coat Against the stinging blast; He cut a rope from a broken spar, And bound her ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... movement, for I did it hastily and with the consequence that my head went under. I inhaled a quantity of the stinging briny salt water, and raising my head as I choked and sputtered, I turned back again, struck out two or three times, and then began to beat the surface frantically like a dog which has been thrown into the water for the ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... was first discovered by chance, and that each young Gaucho sees exactly how the others do it, and then with a very little practice learns the art. Now I suppose that the sand wasps originally merely killed their prey by stinging them in many places (see page 129 of Fabre's 'Souvenirs,' and page 241) on the lower and softest side of the body—and that to sting a certain segment was found by far the most successful method; and was inherited ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... been aroused, when Van der Kemp turned to him again, and continued his narrative—"I know not how it was, unless the Lord gave me strength for a purpose as he gave it to Samson of old, but when I recovered from the stinging blow I had received, and saw the junk hoist her sails and heard my child scream, I felt the strength of a lion come over me; I burst the bonds that held me and leaped into the sea, intending to swim to her. ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... stories of them were already rife throughout the country, such, for instance, as that of four uhlans galloping into a town with drawn revolvers and taking possession of it, when the corps to which they belonged was a dozen miles away. They were everywhere, preceding the columns like a buzzing, stinging swarm of bees, a living curtain, behind which the infantry could mask their movements and march and countermarch as securely as if they were at home upon parade. And Maurice's heart sank in his bosom as he looked at the road, crowded with chasseurs and hussars which our leaders ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... lesser Powers in a way which they deemed incompatible alike with circumspect statesmanship and the proverbial hospitality of his country. For he is incapable of resisting the temptation to launch a bon mot, however stinging. It would be ungenerous, however, to attach more importance to such quickly forgotten utterances than he meant them to carry. An instance of how he behaved toward the representatives of Britain and France is worth recording, both ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... this time, and thus a strong movement is produced inside the glass, which generates gas enough to burst the vessels briskly, adding thereby considerably to the cost. This is known as the gaseous fermentation, and the effect of it is to render the wine more enlivening, more stinging to the taste, and more fruity. "This last effect results from this, that the flavor of the fruit mostly passes off with the carbonic acid gas, which is largely generated in the first or vinous fermentation, ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... the fire, and presently returned with an earthenware dish of roasted pumpkin and sweet potatoes and, kneeling at my side, fed me deftly with a small wooden spoon. I did not feel grieved at the absence of meat and the stinging condiments the Indians love, nor did I even remark that there was no salt in the vegetables, so much was I taken up with watching her beautiful delicate face while she ministered to me. The exquisite fragrance of her breath was more to me than the most delicious viands ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... men met the "white hope" was the aggressor. He rushed in to close quarters aiming a stinging blow at Billy's face, and then to Cassidy's chagrin and the crowd's wonder, the mucker lowered his guard and took the wallop full on the jaw. The blow seemed never to jar him the least. The "hope" swung again, and there stood Billy Byrne, like a huge bronze statue taking blow after blow that ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the real gravity of his condition, fights death daily without a thought of the unequal strife, or the suspense of his physicians. He had abandoned himself to study, immersed himself in work; he was neither morbid nor an amorist; and while he felt a stinging misery for ever in his heart, he bore it with manly reticence, without complaint, without despair. Love, in his case, had meant the idealisation of the whole of life—the life of action and the life within ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... in a pitiful mood, and now he grew hot and forgot himself wholly before her stinging contempt. She did not reply to his question ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... joyous wind, with resulting appetites, and much yelling at each other—"Here, drop that!" ... "Hurry up, slow poke!"—that he was happy again before he knew it. After the work was over they had a lazy hour before the fire, their eyes stinging with smoke which seemed to envelop them, no matter on which side they sat; an hour in which Rover drowsed at Maurice's feet, and Johnny, in spectacles, read A Boy's Adventures in the Forests of Brazil, ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... Baffled, mortified, and stinging with humiliation as if he had been whipped, Stephen watched him disappear round the ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... the stricken men on the hillside. The breaking of glass, the cries of the jungle animals trapped in their cages, the shrieks of dying peons who were eaten at a gulp by the big frogs or stung to death, impaled on the mandibles of some great stinging centipede. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... across the open waste to the lonely post where Sergeant Inglis might be found. Resting, however, was out of the question. They must move to keep from freezing, and though the snow began again, they plodded on, with heads lowered to meet the blast that drove the stinging ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... I think I'm stinging somebody, as Morson too perceives— Go to the river and dig ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... the First Lord of the Treasury. He is virtually the governor of Great Britain. But really the Home Secretary is not a man to be envied. He has a thousand things to decide which, decide them how he may, are sure to bring about his ears a nest of stinging critical hornets. He is responsible for so many things that his name is sure to be in the papers every day, and the notices of his words and actions are no less sure to be in the majority of instances unfavourable. Truly, it is a "fierce light" which beats upon the Home ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... but one thought—Mother. I sent the children home—my work with them was done. Now I could go to her, and with a sprig of laurel to lay upon my brow, could silence stinging tongues while I worked quietly on at home. Home! never would I leave its blessed roof again. Oh, how my longing heart hurried my laggard feet. I did not write; no pen should cheat my tongue of the blessed story. I wished ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... Her stinging stroke was like a spark to a magazine; but paying no heed to her, he sprang toward her laughing ally with fierce oaths upon his lips, and by a single blow sent him reeling to the floor. The machinery was stopped sharply, as far as possible, ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... to blow in several directions at once. It swooped down around the children and blew stinging snowflakes into their eyes. It howled and shrieked and tore over the roofs of the houses, bringing great sheets ...
— Sunny Boy and His Playmates • Ramy Allison White
... on their hats and undershirts as protection against sunburn. As Madden walked from the awning through the stinging sun rays, crimping up his naked feet from the blistering deck, Galton called ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... they grew to circles of flame, and all at once lifted themselves up as if in angry surprise. Then for the first time thrilled in Mr. Bernard's ears the dreadful sound that nothing which breathes, be it man or brute, can hear unmoved,—the long, loud, stinging whirr, as the huge, thick-bodied reptile shook his many-jointed rattle and flung his jaw back for the fatal stroke. His eyes were drawn as with magnets toward the circles of flame. His ears rung as in the overture to the swooning dream of chloroform. Nature was before man with her ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... I whirled down the avenue beside him. I had not been Yone to him before. How quiet we were! he driving on, bent forward, seeing out and away; I leaning back, my eyes closed, and, whenever a remembrance of that instant at noon thrilled me, a stinging blush staining my cheek. I, who had believed myself incapable of love, till that night on the balcony, felt its floods welling from my spirit,—who had believed myself so completely cold, was warm to my heart's core. Again that breath fanned me, those lips touched ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... a family seems to awaken a slight apprehension, in every mind around, as if each felt in danger of a reproof, for something either perpetrated or neglected. A woman, who should go around her house with a small stinging snapper, which she habitually applied to those whom she met, would be encountered with feelings very much like to those which are experienced by the inmates of a family, where the mistress often uses her countenance and voice, to inflict ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... down the Nevskiy Prospekt and across the Winter Palace Square, where the great angel towers upon its rose-granite monument. Forward, forward he was carried, along the bank of the frozen Neva and over the Troitskiy bridge, the powdered snow stinging his face like pinpoints as it flew up from the nails in his little horse's shoes. Then followed a magnifying of the picture—massed buildings rising from the snow—buildings gold and turquoise-domed, that, even as ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... replied, gazing steadily at her without feeling or resentment and speaking slowly, "yes, I'm an 'ign'rant, savage, stupid brute,'" deliberately accenting each word as he repeated the stinging phrase, "—but—what's the use?" he finished with a mirthless laugh. "Anyhow," he added, glancing again at the cat and Skinny's futile efforts to catch it, "I ain't interferin' this time, at least, with that ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... memories of some of that day, all a broken- hearted mad rage against fate—of my hair down and whipped wet and stinging about me in the driving rain; of endless tears of weeping contributed to the general deluge, of passionate outbursts and resentments against a world all twisted and wrong, of beatings of my hands upon my saddle pommel, of asperities ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... receiver and looked around the room discontentedly. A stinging twinge of his ankle added to his discomfort. He gave an angry snarl and pushed the wavering curtain aside, wishing those everlasting bells ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... wit and humor which are in their essence allied to the merriment and the satire of Hawthorne and Lowell, Holmes and Saxe, although, of course, they are not yet developed with like delicacy and brilliance. There is in these pages a vast deal of genuine, hearty fun, and of sharp, stinging sarcasm; there are also hundreds of cleverly drawn and cleanly cut illustrations. Better than these, there is a fearlessness of consequences and of persons, when a wrong is to be combated, an error ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... and greater things that say must to me. Oh, my dear, have you forgotten them? Things you yourself have spoken to me—the great stinging things of the spirit, that are greater than you and I, ...
— Theft - A Play In Four Acts • Jack London
... arose as a giant refreshed with his rest, and drove the dark thunder- clouds upward before the sounding pinions of his might like demon hounds upon the track of a flying world. Then came the sharp swift hiss of the stinging hail and rain, and the baying of the hurricane, and the awful roll of the storm that shook the whole broad heaven from end to end. Strange! that in the tumult of such a wild and terrible night as this, so gentle and so calm a soul should be destined to pass away! ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... valley of the Loire, the German street, the Spanish inn, with the kindling fancy of the scholar and poet. The moral and emotional elements are quite wanting in Irving; they are characteristic of Longfellow. But the sweetness of soul, the freedom from cynicism or stinging satire, which is most unusual in American, or in any humorous or descriptive literature, is remarkable in both. "I have no wife, nor children, good or bad, to provide for," begins Geoffrey Crayon, quoting from old Burton. But neither had he an enemy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... to send murderers to Macduff's castle. They did not find Macduff, and asked Lady Macduff where he was. She gave a stinging answer, and her questioner called Macduff a traitor. "Thou liest!" shouted Macduff's little son, who was immediately stabbed, and with his last breath entreated his mother to fly. The murderers did not leave the castle while one of its ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... She was furious that his wife, whom she hated, was about to share in his honours. For the mischievous tongues of court-ladies had been collecting or fabricating many unpleasant rumours. A swarm of idle but piquant stories had been buzzing about the Queen's ears, and stinging her into a frenzy of jealousy. The Countess—it was said—was on the point of setting forth for the Netherlands, to join the Earl, with a train of courtiers and ladies, coaches and side-saddles, such as were never seen before—where ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... junction with the grand army. These troops did not join as soon as Lord Gough expected, and the Bombay division, under the Hon. Major-general Dundas, was so dilatory as to evoke from the good-natured general-in-chief a most stinging rebuke. The major-general was urged by despatches to advance with all possible celerity, but he expressed himself as not perceiving the necessity of such speed. "Tell him," said the gallant commander, "to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... think constantly and longingly of the unattained. 'Brethren! I count not myself to have apprehended.' Endless aspiration and a stinging consciousness of present imperfection are the loftiest states of man here below. The beholders down in the valley, when they look up, may see our figures against the skyline, and fancy us at the summit, but our loftier elevation reveals untrodden ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... I met Ted Marks in Maxim's. Maxim's is in Paris, you know, my dear. It gives me a sharp, stinging pain. Those burgs ain't such a much. You can get just as good things to drink right here in New York, so, I says to him, 'what's the use of making a fool trip like that?' But he's noodly on the subject and spends half of his spare time reading 'Short Trips in ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... be light, too, in this upper story. Spinning spiders and stinging wasps are not half so terrible to the children who will make a half-way paradise of the garret as the darkness that is ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... at an end when the ball was sent among the spectators. Seeing it coming towards him, Bob Bangs leaped up and tried to catch the sphere. It hit the tips of his fingers, stinging them greatly. Then the ball came towards Randy and he caught it and threw it back into ...
— Randy of the River - The Adventures of a Young Deckhand • Horatio Alger Jr.
... become a regular psychopath.... [Looking round] Only, between ourselves, I want to go down to see Chechotte or Merzheyevsky. There's some devil in me, brother. In moments of despair and suffering, when the gnats are stinging or the tenors sing, everything suddenly grows dim; you jump up and race round the whole house like a lunatic and shout, "I want blood! Blood!" And really all the time you do want to let a knife into somebody or hit him over the head with a chair. ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... of our hidden forces the noble Erpingham gives the signal for the English archers to fire. Now like a storm the cloth-yard-long arrows sped by the strong bows of Spanish yew strike the French horses, stinging them like serpents through the withers. Every bowman stands to his place, not one deserting; every true English heart rejoices in ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... as he spoke, and brought it down heavily on the lad's shoulders. Hugo uttered a cry like that of a wild animal in pain, and fought with hands, feet, teeth even, against the infliction of the stinging blows; but he fought in vain. His cousin's superior strength mastered him from the beginning; he felt like an infant in Richard's powerful grasp. Not until the storm of furious imprecations in which the lad at first vented his impotent rage had died away into stifled moans and sobs of pain, did Richard's ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... number of scenes in which she, caught extraordinarily red-handed, was forced to listen to his exposition of the evil of such methods as hers. He would say to her, "I remember that you once said to me, Mrs. Farron—" Anger cut short his vision as a cloud of her phrases came back to him, like stinging bees. ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... feast in his own soul: while others say there is casting down, he shall say there is lifting up; for he shall save the humble person (Job 22:23-30). Some indeed, in the midst of their profession, are reproached, smitten, and condemned of their own heart, their conscience still biting and stinging of them, because of the uncleanness of their hands, and they cannot lift up their face unto God; they have not the answer of a good conscience toward him, but must walk as persons false to their God, and as traitors to their own eternal welfare; ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... whose haunts have hitherto been so little known. He is a scarce and solitary animal, living in trees, and being good food, is never allowed to escape. He inhabits remote and gloomy forests, where snakes take up their abode, and where cruelly stinging ants and scorpions, and swamps, and innumerable thorny shrubs and bushes obstruct the steps of civilized man. We are now in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... arms are strong enough to grasp a mussel shell, and hold it firmly until its contents are devoured. At the least touch a dark color instantly appears spread over the whole body of this curious creature, and dark prickly spines arise, which impart a stinging sensation when handled, like the anemone ...
— Harper's Young People, April 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... agent, Champagny, and the learned and astute Junius de Jonge, representative of the Prince of Orange and Governor of Yeere. The communication of De Jonge consisted of a brief note and a long discourse. The note was sharp and stinging, the discourse elaborate and somewhat pedantic. Unnecessarily historical and unmercifully extended, it was yet bold, bitter, and eloquent: The presence of foreigners was proved to have been, from the beginning of Philip's reign, the curse of the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... place at the tea-tray and with purpose in her eyes walked round the table. "You take that for impertinence, sir!" she said, and administered a stinging slap to Franky's cheek. His intention of immediate retaliation was frustrated by Mr. Gibbon's seizing the tea-spoon he was about to hurl ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... scene to Elitha, who assured me that I had been highly favored by those Indians for they had permitted me to witness their annual "Grub Feast." The Piutes always use burning fagots to drive hornets and other stinging insects from their nests, and they also use heat in opening the comb cells so that they can easily remove the larvae, which they ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... no empty phrases, but music with a sting in its tail. It acts differently upon different people: some find it rich in national sweetness; some of us are rather constrained to grit our teeth and howl in melancholy wise. Never was stinging music ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... passed through Lowry's and Beach's breasts. Then Charley Osgood, son of our Lieutenant, a quiet, fair-haired, pleasant-spoken boy, but as brave and earnest as his gallant father, sank under the combination of hunger and cold. One stinging morning he was found stiff and stark, on the hard ground, his bright, frank blue eyes ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... good by it."—And in the Buddhist Jatakas we find what is probably the original of a world-wide story: A man was chopping a felled tree, when a mosquito settled on his bald head and stung him severely. Calling to his son, who was sitting near him, he said, "My boy, there is a mosquito stinging my head, like the thrust of a spear—drive it off." "Wait a bit, father," said the boy, "and I will kill him with one blow." Then he took up an axe and stood behind his father's back; and thinking to kill the mosquito with the axe, he ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... might have done worse than decide to say no more about the plot, but to keep my own eyes wide open. (I was particularly sore with Gloria, and derived much unwise consolation from considering stinging remarks I would make to her when the actual ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... retired, grumbling and muttering like some tremendous monster robbed of its prey. Then the rain began, pouring down in torrents, dashing itself upon the cabin roof and windows with such violence it seemed solid wood and glass must give way before it. It raged; it danced in frenzy; it hurled itself in stinging dagger points upon the deck, while the wind ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... as disconnected as a dictionary. They were so abrupt. Incidents were noted which stimulated my young imagination like stinging-nettles; and then nothing more. ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... aspect that I was constrained to laugh out of sheer pity. The same day, a colony of wasps was discovered in my chamber, where they had remained throughout the winter, and were now just bestirring themselves, doubtless with the intention of stinging me from head to foot A similar discovery was made in Mr. Farley's room. In short, we seem to have taken up our abode in a wasps' nest. Thus you see a rural life is not one of unbroken quiet ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... essence of peppermint or sassafras, a few drops of which, sprinkled on a lump of loaf-sugar, he seemed to consider a great luxury. I don't know what would have become of us at this crisis, if it hadn't been for that omnipresent bottle of hot stuff. We poured the stinging liquid over our sugar, which had kept dry in a sardine-box, and warmed ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... going to be, and hurrying along with the crowds of shoppers; everybody so smiling and happy and good-natured, no matter how much they were bumped into. I felt Christmasey down to my finger-tips, although they were nearly frozen. Last night's snow was almost a blizzard, and left it stinging cold. ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... his arms upon the mantel-piece and dropped his head upon them. He felt a queer contraction in his throat, a stinging beneath his eyelids, such as he had not experienced since the days of childish mortifications and sorrows. But the instinctive manliness of him, held back the actual tears. He was debarred, even in solitude, from that ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... spite of many wounds, broke through the ranks of the hornets. They had nearly reached Weeng when the bees, buzzing more indignantly than ever, made one fierce dash at them. The gray squirrels fought bravely, but at every turn they met terrible, stinging blows. At last they could not see what they were doing, and, like the red squirrels, many of them ...
— Thirty Indian Legends • Margaret Bemister
... of bees, jelly fish and other stinging animals are treated with a very weak solution of ammonia in water applied as a lotion. Or apply a very weak solution of carbolic acid in water, a strong solution of baking powder, a slice of crushed raw onion, a moist quid of tobacco, witch hazel, listerine, ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... his children, though he was often weary of them, and their pain was pain to him. But besides emotion, and stronger than emotion, was the anger that August roused in him; he hated and despised himself for the barter of the heirloom of his race, and every word of the child stung him with a stinging ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... more closely than ever within himself, he became a still more ardent reader and student, devoting himself with passionate industry to examining the works of Rousseau, the poison of whose political doctrines instilled itself with fiery and grateful stinging into the thin, cold blood of the unhappy cadet. In many respects the instruction he received was admirable, and there is a traditional anecdote that he was the best mathematician in the school. But on the whole he profited little by the short continuation ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... exclaimed, violently. And now the girl's voice came stinging like a whiplash. In Garson's face, too, was growing fury, for in an instant of illumination he guessed something of the truth. Mary's next question confirmed ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... the tongue. render pungent &c adj.; season, spice, salt, pepper, pickle, brine, devil. smoke, chew, take snuff. Adj. pungent, strong; high-, full-flavored; high-tasted, high-seasoned; gamy, sharp, stinging, rough, piquant, racy; biting, mordant; spicy; seasoned &c v.; hot, hot as pepper; peppery, vellicating^, escharotic^, meracious^; acrid, acrimonious, bitter; rough &c ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... (it you will excuse the expression), but I thought it would be fun to try the nettle diet on my Uncle JAMES, who never gives me a tip when I go to visit him, although my Mother says he's as rich as Creesers, though I don't know who they are. So I got one or two good stinging ones (I knew they were stingers, because I tried them on Cook first) and cut off little bits and put them in Uncle JAMES's sandwiches, which he always has for lunch. It was awful larks to watch him eat them. I thought he'd have a fit. Then I said good-bye, and I haven't ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 9, 1892 • Various
... beggar man's ghost besets my dreams, At night to make me madder,— And my wretched conscience, within my breast, Is like a stinging adder;— I sigh when I pass the gallows' foot, And look at ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... and of the circumstances under which it acquired its since illustrious name. It was, perhaps, natural that a little town, in the centre of insolent and bitter enemies, should assume a name which would long convey to their whole neighborhood a stinging lesson of mortification, and of prudential warning against similar molestations. As to the chronology of this little state, the Albanian author assures us, upon the testimony of the same old Suliotes, that "seventy years before" there were barely one hundred men fit for the ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... he meant to sport him in his hap; The virgin frowned like Phoebus in a cloud; "Go pack, sir boy, here is no room for such, My breast no wanton foolish boy must shroud." This said, my love did give the wag a touch; Then as the foot that treads the stinging snake Hastes to be gone, for fear what may ensue, So love my love was forced for to forsake, And for more speed, without his arrows flew. "Pardon," he said, "For why? You seemed to me My mother Venus in her pride ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... butter-colored skull as if he had suddenly received a stinging blow on it with a switch, and his red face became crimson-hued at the sight of Sulpice, his successor in office, standing before him, politely holding out to him his two ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... them every bad name she could think of, and dealt them some stinging blows, she flew along the road to seek them. The road wound about pretty much, and as they were nowhere in sight, she concluded they must have gone by it. She came back furiously angry and disappointed, and continued her search till nightfall in the immediate neighbourhood of ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... suppose they are. You see them, perhaps, most clearly in such lands as mine. The pioneer has a good deal against him—frost and floods, hard rock and sliding snow; he must face every discomfort, hunger and stinging cold. The prospector crawls through tangled forests, and packs his stores across snowy divides; shallow shafts cave in, rude dams are swept away. A man worked to exhaustion on the trail runs out of provisions and ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... understood to need any special exposition. But the two often go together; though there is a form of wit, much more common, that burns and dries the juices all out of the mind, and turns it into a kind of sharp, stinging wire. Now Rosalind's sweet establishment is thoroughly saturated with humour, and this too of the freshest and wholesomest quality. And the effect of her humour is, as it were, to lubricate all her faculties, and ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... loading the engine tender from a woodpile. The rich brown smoke of the turpentine knots was filling the train with its stinging fragrance. The elder of the two Northern passengers, with sharp New England angles in his face, ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... lifeboat we cheered, and the leaping of my heart made me feel sick and deathlike. As the dawn brightened we could see more plainly, and it was frightful to notice how the men looked at her, meeting the stinging spray borne upon the wind without a wink of the eye, that they might not lose sight of the boat for an instant; the salt whitening their faces all the while like a layer of flour as they watched. She ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... the persons were not all named "Billy," that being used only by way of illustration. Sometimes they would be called "Doc" or "Hank" or "Al" or "Chris." Nor was my companion invariably called "shellback." "Horned-toad" and "Stinging-lizard" were also epithets much in favour ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... Jerrold's soul had once stirred in the warm darkness under the first stinging of remorse, so now it pushed and struggled to be born; all his will fought against the darkness to deliver his soul. His soul knew that Anne saved it. If her will had been weaker his would not have been so strong. At this moment an unscrupulous Anne might have damned him to ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... ants that fight, ants that run away; ants that live under coldest stone, ants that dwell among the treetops; silent ants, ants that literally "kick up" a row; good ants, bad ants, ants that are merely so so—we have them all and would not part with any—not even the stinging green ants, which are among the most singular of the tribe, nor even the "white ant" (which is not an ant), that would literally eat us out of house and home if not rigorously excluded and warred against with poison, for they are the great scavengers ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... 30th of May, the General Assembly made choice of their delegates in Congress for the following year. Lee was again elected, but by so small a vote that his name stood next to the lowest on the list.[288] Concerning this stinging slight, he appears to have spoken in his next letters to the governor; for, on the 18th of June, the latter addressed to him, from ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler |
