"Stinging" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... years from salt-rheum and after having been unsuccessfully treated by a good physician, I began the use of the "Discovery." The humor was in my hands. I was obliged to keep a covering on them for months at a time, changing the covering morning and night. The stinging, burning and itching sensation would be so intense that at times it seemed as if I would go crazy. When I bent the fingers the flesh would crack open and bleed. It is impossible for me to describe the intense pain and suffering ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... up. As she became more herself and the spirit rushed forward in her face, I saw how her beauty had ripened. Hoeing corn and washing in the river does not coarsen well-born women. I knew I should feel the sweetness of her presence stinging through me and following me wherever I ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... of non-resistance with all my power. I pleaded with all the earnestness of my soul, and so did my wife and daughters, but though I am certain many were moved in conscience against the savage outrage, and did their work with a stinging heart, yet they felt that they must stick to their party, and complete the destruction. Slavery, indeed, makes the most hardened savages the world ever knew. The savage war-whoop of the Indian ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... first we saw it; not the forest of the temperate zone with its varied glades and open spaces, but the thick tangle of the tropics, dense, dark, and cold in even the hottest day, where one must walk cutlass in hand to slash the lianas and the red-edged stinging leaves of a certain tree that continually bar one's path. The murmur of streams and cascades fell sometimes upon our ears as we wandered in the deep shade, and mingled with the cooing of wild doves and ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... and the sea's slow swinging, Death that draws, and love that sighs beneath: Yea, life's wine is mingled; sweet, and stinging,— Love and death. ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... the 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 ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... getting cold and the floor beginning to move under me. I had a dim impression of Mr. Dingley rushing out of the room with his napkin still in his hand; then I found myself sitting on the sofa, with a stinging taste of brandy on my tongue, and heard father's voice saying, ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... London came a gale that made the chimneys rock; and after it came ice and snow, sharp, stinging sleet, and thumping hail, with sickening winds from the gray west, sour yellow fogs, and plunging rain, till all the world was weary of ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... reserved and seemly Puritans of Boston, with scandalous impropriety of action bringing the staid Sunday sermon or Thursday lecture to irremediable confusion, with voluble harangue and wealth of stinging epithet pouring scorn upon the self-selected ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... the sharp stinging thrusts of conscience were warring for the victory. Oh, those who have never known the pangs of hunger can but poorly imagine that fearful struggle. At last, thank God! ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... 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 ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... behind us, fairly across our track, and we only got a wipe from the tail of it. Yet this itself we could not have faced in the open. The first gust caught us a few hundred yards from the creek, almost taking us from the saddle, and driving the rain and hail in stinging level sheets against us. We galloped to the edge of a deep wash-out, scrambled into it at the risk of our necks, and huddled up with our horses underneath the windward bank. Here we remained pretty well sheltered until the ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... out on its unused hinges. It creaked so loudly that we held our breath for a moment, but we drew it again with a sharp sensation of relief, as thirsty young animals drink, for fresh night air, sweet, stinging to the nostrils, had surged in upon us, sweeping away fear, and loneliness, and the hot ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... over boulders, ground smooth by rolling floods and burned deep brown by the sun, and as he twisted and turned, throwing his weight against the wheels, Wiley felt the growing heat. His shirt clung to his back, the sweat ran down his face and into his stinging eyes and as he stopped for a drink he noticed that the water no longer quenched his thirst. It was warm and flat and after each fresh drink the perspiration burst from every pore, as if his very skin cried out for moisture. Yet his canteen was getting light and, until ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... you are a very good friend of mine! Please fly down there and sting that big cat for me! It will only take you a moment and it will be a great favor!" But Mrs. Bee was busy filling her bag with honey, and had no time to bother, stinging cats. ...
— Exciting Adventures of Mister Robert Robin • Ben Field
... that I should be toiling in a shoddy-hole to pay the taxes for a gentleman what drinks his port wine and stretches his legs on a Turkey carpet. Hear, hear," he suddenly exclaimed, as Gerard threw off a stinging sentence. "Ah! that's the man for the people. You will see, Mick, whatever happens, Gerard is the man ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... 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 of old ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat Against the stinging blast; He cut a rope from a broken spar, And bound her ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... every now and then broad sunlit days Lovingly lingered, caught among the leaves. Yes, it had known all this, and yet to us It does not speak of mossy forest ways, Of whispering pine trees or the shimmering birch; But of quick winds, and the salt, stinging sea! An artist once, with patient, careful knife, Had fashioned it like to the untamed sea. Here waves uprear themselves, their tops blown back By the gay, sunny wind, which whips the blue And breaks it into gleams and ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... as if in glee over their escape from city confines, they redoubled in fury and tore down to earth—and enveloped Felipe Montoya, a young and good-looking Mexican, and his team of scrawny horses plodding in a lumber rigging, all in a stinging swirl. ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... been right in thinking that the service of Jesus was not for such as he? He flew at Matt with the velocity and ferocity of a tiger. His strength was that of a man, for he had worked hard at all kinds of manual labor. Two or three quick, stinging blows and his passion came to a terrified end as he saw Matt fall to the ground, white ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... a medical point of view," observes Dr. Milligen, "urtication, or stinging with nettles, is a practice not sufficiently appreciated. In many instances, especially in cases of paralysis it is more efficacious than blistering or stimulating frictions. Its effects, though perhaps less permanent, are general and diffused over the limb. This process has been found effectual ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... dispense with working for the "Pictorial Times"); but his indebtedness he felt as a tie, which was none the less irksome that it was a golden fetter which bound him to his friends. Still, to the end he sent in his satires, couplets, and epigrams—stinging, brilliant, and original—jokes and sarcasms by the ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... such things have I heard before. Stinging comforters are ye all! Shall idle words have an end? What pricks thee ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... delighted loyalty. They were living symbols of British unity. From all they will take back a reciprocal message to King and Empire. There is not a single blemish upon the record of the visit. Not one imprudent word was spoken, not one slight left a stinging recollection." ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... remove the fifty or sixty other blades that were also temporarily, piled up there. He finished his shaving in a growing testiness increased by his spinning headache and by the emptiness in his stomach. When he was done, his round face smooth and streamy and his eyes stinging from soapy water, he reached for a towel. The family towels were wet, wet and clammy and vile, all of them wet, he found, as he blindly snatched them—his own face-towel, his wife's, Verona's, Ted's, Tinka's, and the ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... dream—sometimes a nightmare; but it seemed to me that it was not I—the St. Dunstan's student—who had endured cold and wet and forced marches, who had felt the shock of high-explosive shells, the stinging threat of machine-gun and rifle bullets, who had taken part in wild charges over the top, but some other being. However, in the stillness of the night, one incident I had experienced, one scene I had witnessed, ...
— Through St. Dunstan's to Light • James H. Rawlinson
... Papists to leave the capital, in calling out the Train Bands, in frequently and foolishly shutting the gates of Temple Bar, and, which was better and wiser, in making use of Mr. Henry Fielding to write stinging satires upon the Pretender and his party, and hint at the sufferings which were likely to fall upon London when the Highlanders imported their national complaint into the capital. A statesman is reported to have said that this disagreeable jest about the ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... of the wildly blowing storm-clouds above him, then he crashed with stinging force into ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... times since her coming "home," if all family tables were like this one—shadowed over with gloomy looks, frozen by silence, or broken by sharp speeches, which darted about like little arrows pointed with poison, or buzzed here and there like angry wasps, settling and stinging unawares, and making every one uncomfortable, not knowing who might be the next victim stung. True, there was but one person to sting, for Miss Grey never said ill-natured things; but then she said ill-advised and mal-apropos ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... go down from this airy space, this swift white peace, this stinging exultation; And time will close about me, and my soul stir to the rhythm of the daily round. Yet, having known, life will not press so close, and always I shall feel time ravel thin about me; For once I stood In the ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens
... no sound. Each stinging blow of the rope whip knocked the breath out of him, sending him farther and farther away from the table. Sometimes he reeled, sometimes he spun, so that as Barber drove him with lash after lash, he went as if performing a sort of grotesque dance. And all the while his face was purpling in ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... 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 ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... burnishing it as a hand-polisher works at the the blade of a scymitar. For years he had forgotten to ask after the realities of nature as they existed in Lady Mary, and considered only what had the best chance of stinging her profoundly. He looked out for a 'raw' into which he might lay the lash; not seeking it in the real woman, but generally in the nature and sensibilities of abstract woman. Whatever seemed to disfigure the ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... the command of Commodore Chauncy; but they were now formed into a separate department, under Captain Arthur Sinclair. The Americans had, of course, complete supremacy, and no attempt was seriously made to contest it with them; but they received a couple of stinging, if not very important, defeats. It is rather singular that here the British, who began with a large force, while there was none whatever to oppose it, should have had it by degrees completely annihilated; and should ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... white with anger, jumped to his feet and snatching Chula's bridle from Knight's hands, struck the mare a stinging blow with his whip across ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... loomed there under the brooding heavens. But it was a precarious possession. The loss of her now would mean not merely the loss of all their little hoards—it would mean the loss of hope, and the sacrifice of expectations, and the regret of men who have failed in a big task. He realized how stinging would be defeat, for he was building the prospects of his future upon winning ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... landed like a hammer upon his nose and the blood streamed down between his thick lips, choking him. With an inarticulate roar of rage he lowered his bull neck and drove at the other man, but the other man wasn't there! Then another light, stinging blow landed upon his fat face and he flailed out again with a force that turned him completely around, for again his adversary had danced ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant
... of 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 ourselves ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... whole day to myself, and am as happy as a child on a picnic! I roam the beach, I take off my shoes and stockings—there are no newspaper reporters snapping pictures. I dare not go far in, for there are huge black creatures with dangerous stinging tails; they rush away in a cloud of sand when I approach, but the thought of stepping upon one by accident is terrifying. However, I let the little wavelets wash round my toes, and I try to grab little fish, and I pick up lovely shells; and then ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... relative or imaginary, but real and hard. Drawing 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 of his studies ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... a sudden to the boy as if his arms were asleep up to the shoulders; he had a stinging sensation in his flesh and a humming in his ears, which made him fear that his last hour had come. If the bear renewed the attack now, he was utterly defenceless. He was not exactly afraid, but he was numb all over. It seemed to matter little what ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... boatmen who professionally propelled the keels and flats of the Ohio, they were a class unto themselves—"half horse, half alligator," a contemporary styled them. Rough fellows, much given to fighting, and drunkenness, and ribaldry, with a genius for coarse drollery and stinging repartee. The river towns suffered sadly at the hands of this lawless, dissolute element. Each boat carried from thirty to forty boatmen, and a number of such boats frequently traveled in company. After the Indian scare was over, they generally stopped over night in the settlements, ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... back, thus making a bob. There are 27 of these bobs in all. A flogging with such an instrument would no doubt be very severe, but it need not draw blood nor leave marks for all time. A flogging properly administered should produce sharp stinging pain and leave no bad results whatever. Then it becomes a very useful punishment to use upon such men as those whose crimes are characterised by cruelty. Men who violate, torture, or frighten women, ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... cleverness, he felt this feud with Barker like a dark background to all his enjoyment. He even had to manoeuvre daily how to escape him, and violent scenes were of constant occurrence between them. Eric could not, and would not, brook his bullying with silence. His resentment was loud and stinging, and, Ishmaelite as Barker was, even his phlegmatic temperament took fire when Eric shouted his fierce and uncompromising retorts in ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... increase the loneliness of the way, which now traversed tracts of naked moorland, now plunged again into forest, with no sign of habitation but here and there a cowherd's hut under the trees or a chapel standing apart on some grassy eminence. When night fell the waters grew louder, a stinging wind swept the woods, and the carriage, staggering from rut to rut, seemed every moment about to land them in some invisible ravine. Fear and cold at last benumbed the little boy, and when he woke he was being lifted from his seat and torches were flashing on a high escutcheoned ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... immediately received a stinging slap in the face, which afforded my aunt great satisfaction. I heard her gulp, as though she had swallowed some hot tea. From me my ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... three pressed on, through the mighty forests and across the creeks and small rivers. More than once a horse would stumble and almost throw his rider, and the branches of the trees often cut them stinging blows across the faces and necks and hands. Once Dave received a long scratch on the left cheek from which the blood flowed freely, but he did not stop to bind up the ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... as it was uppermost in mine, was the riddle—how much they understood of us. Did they grasp that we in our millions were organized, disciplined, working together? Or did they interpret our spurts of fire, the sudden stinging of our shells, our steady investment of their encampment, as we should the furious unanimity of onslaught in a disturbed hive of bees? Did they dream they might exterminate us? (At that time no one knew what food they needed.) A hundred such ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... loose from the shore and was drifting out to sea. They hurried along the edge of it for some distance in the hope of finding a bridge to shore. In this they were disappointed. Beth could not swim. Fortunately the guide could. Leaping into the stinging water he swam from one cake to the next one, leading the dogs. Beth clung to the back of the sled and was thus brought ashore. After wading many swollen torrents, they at last reached Cape Prince of ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... eyes, now intent on figures, had they in truth ever searched the manned decks of the enemy or trained the sights that had blown Spanish blockhouses to the four winds of heaven? Had it been he or his ghost who had stood behind the Nordenfeldt shields with the bullets pattering against the steel and stinging the air overhead? He or his ghost, barefoot in the sand that sopped the blood of fallen comrades, the ship shaking with the detonation of her guns, the hoarse cheering of her crew re-echoing in his half- deafened ears? A dream, yes; ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... which made him sometimes withdraw his resistance, though never submit; and Felix had some hope that it would be so in the present case, when, while speeding to church in the dark winter Monday morning, he overheard Lance say to Clement, 'I say, Clem, 'tis a jolly stinging frost. If you'll take your skates and give us a lesson, we'll be off for ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... through the 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, I presume. And occasionally the headlight of a switch engine zigzagged across the tracks—I ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... step forward, then stopped, with a sob, shamed tears stinging her eyes. "Will you forgive me?" she begged. "I would rather have died than hurt a blind man, or—or any one who loves a blind man. Lately I've been finding out how sacred blindness is. I ought to have ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... saw very little of each other during the gale, except for a brief interval during the changes of the watch on deck. Each enjoyed his "trick" on deck, as he crouched behind the bulging storm-dodgers and faced the howling wind and the stinging spray. It was greatly to be preferred to being below, cooped up in an atmosphere which resembled that of an underground scullery on washing-day, with the odours of petrol and lubricating oil thrown in ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... open sky, the wood, the fresh air, and, most of all, the slipping canoe spoke to him of Dick. The fierce resentment, the bitter sense of loss, that had been as a festering in his heart these years, seemed somehow to-day to have lost their stinging pain. With every lift of the paddle, with every deep breath of the fragrant spring air, with every slip of the canoe, the buoyant gladness of those old canoeing days came swelling into his heart, and ere he knew he caught ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... Me? Nope. It can't be did. This is a free country, Buster Jack." There was no denying Moore's cool, stinging repetition of the epithet ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... enemy, and this is a moment of terrible danger to the harpooner. But the whale was too much astonished to fight, and, with a terrific splash, he dived deep, deep into the water, to get rid of that stinging thing in his side, in ...
— Kalitan, Our Little Alaskan Cousin • Mary F. Nixon-Roulet
... dared to stir, fearing that he might pitch headlong over some precipice. He felt of his face and hands, but could detect nothing like blood. The boy had received quite a number of severe bruises, however, and when he ventured to stir there were sharp, stinging pains in his ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... when harsh, stern, rigorous, drastic, austere, hard could be substituted for it? When plain, unembellished, unadorned, chaste could be substituted? When acute, violent, extreme, intense, sharp, distressing, afflictive could be substituted? When keen, cutting, biting, stinging, caustic, critical, trenchant ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... like a polished bird's egg. Indeed, it struck Mr. Hamlin that he was as intensely a part of that sylvan seclusion as the hidden brook that murmured, the brown velvet shadows that lay like trappings on the white flanks of his horse, the quivering heat, and the stinging spice of bay. Mr. Hamlin had vague ideas of dryads and fauns, but at that moment would have bet something on the ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... stinging-lizard!" responded the other affectionately. The cigars were brought and I ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... responsibility of safe-guarding all the Upper Mississippi, with its tributary waters, while at the same time the pressure of public opinion, and the avowed impatience of the army officer with whom he was co-operating, were stinging him to action. He had borne for months the strain of overwork with inadequate tools; his health was impaired, and his whole system disordered from the effects of his unhealed wound. Farragut had not then entered the mouth of the Mississippi, and the result of his enterprise was yet in the unknown ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... hope, she was hardly conscious of the suffocating smoke which now filled the cabin, stinging her eyes so that she could hardly see, or of the heat which with her exertions had sent the perspiration streaming down her face. For now, balancing herself with great care, she moved her tortured arms, half numb with ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... most important of the prisoners was William Drummond, a close friend of Bacon. Berkeley hated him and greeted him with the most stinging insult he ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... with me; I got badly stung as high as the elbows by the stinging plant; I was nearly hung in a tough liana—a rotten trunk giving way under my feet; it was deplorable bad business. And an axe—if I dared swing one—would have been more to the purpose than my cutlass. Of a sudden things began to go strangely easier; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Discontent is better than laziness, remorse better than callous selfishness, suffering under extreme cold better than recklessly exposing the body till it is weakened. But as soon as we have reached that stage of rationality where we can choose the better way and stick to it without the stinging goad of pain, the pain is no longer necessary and we may safely learn ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... darkened with involuntary pain and anger. It seemed to him that, by the simple act of showing him the worm-infested chestnut, she had rejected anything approaching even friendship, and had also given him a good but humiliating reason why. He lost his self-possession and forgot that he deserved a stinging rebuke for his insincerity. He would have turned away in coldness and resentment. His visit might have come to an abrupt termination, had not Annie, with that delicate, womanly tact which was one of her most marked characteristics, ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... vicious roar, and the Bow Street Runner, dropping the nobbly stick, tottered weakly and fell,—strove to rise, was smitten down again, and, in that moment, Barnabas was astride him; felt the shock of stinging blows, and laughing fierce and short, leapt in under the blows, every nerve and muscle braced and quivering; saw a scowling face,—smote it away; caught a bony wrist, wrenched the bludgeon from the griping fingers, struck and parried and struck again ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... with the exception of the doctor, the architect, and the steward, who remained plunged in gloomy silence, kept up a conversation that never paused, glancing off one subject, fastening on another, and at times stinging one or the other to the quick. Once Darya Alexandrovna felt wounded to the quick, and got so hot that she positively flushed and wondered afterwards whether she had said anything extreme or unpleasant. Sviazhsky began talking of Levin, describing his strange view that machinery is simply pernicious ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... her in a sort of amused perplexity. Her way of snatching his instructions, her almost viciously determined manner of carrying them out, would have been natural had she been working under the spur of some stinging rebuke, instead of under the ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... pregnant or nursing, is of importance in forming a diagnosis. At first there is a severe, scalding sensation of the tongue, mouth, and fauces, with pain, which is sometimes intense. The color of the tongue is often pink, or a light red, while the mouth is generally of a deeper hue. This stinging, biting sensation is accompanied by a profuse, watery discharge from the mouth, which seems extremely hot and acrid, causing excoriation whenever it comes in contract with the face or chin. The appetite is good, sometimes ravenous, but food or ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... you like 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
... 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
... to have made them more able to bear with the infirmities of the weak, and with the passing moods, however provoking, of one another. But no. And their impatience and contempt and bad temper all came at this crisis to such a head with them that they could only be cured by the small cords and the stinging words of the Shining One. The true key to this so painful part of the parable hangs at our own girdle. We who have been born and brought up in an evangelical church are thrown from time to time into the company of men—ministers ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... not deny that cry of hers. He knew he would come back, knew it with stinging shame, but he could not tell her. It had all turned out so differently from what he had dreamed. If he had not loved her he would not have felt defeat. To have made her his wife would have been to protect her, to possess her even after he ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... despise; and the vulgarity and impudence of Mr Briggs, which ought to have made his familiarity and boldness equally contemptible and ridiculous, served only with a man whose pride out-ran his understanding, to render them doubly mortifying and stinging. He could talk, therefore, of nothing the whole way that they went, but the extreme impropriety of which the Dean of had been guilty, in exposing him to scenes and situations so much beneath his rank, by leaguing him with a ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... she rose hastily, excused herself, and hurried from the room, leaving her companion smarting from the stinging words that had fallen from ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... 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, ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... edge of the cowl; he made Lady Vere de Vere bow to astounded farmers; he went to the movies every evening—twice, in Fargo; and when the chariot of the young prince swept to the brow of a hill, he murmured, not in the manner of a bug-driver but with a stinging awe, "All that big country! Ours to see, puss! We'll settle down some day and be solid citizens and raise families and wheeze when we walk, but—— All those hills to sail over and—— ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... the only carriers known. I was traveling to Fort Worth on business, and was finding the journey anything but a pleasant one. The coach was old and rickety, and the way it lurched and rolled reminded me of a small boat in a rough sea. It was a terrifically hot day, too, and the stinging alkali dust got down your throat and in your eyes until life seemed an unbearable burden. We had traveled steadily all the morning, and along toward afternoon most of the passengers began to feel pretty ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... chosen a vague word because she felt that there were many things which must come to light in unravelling the crime, but, from the police point of view of Inspector Chippenfield, the question whether he had found out anything was a stinging reflection ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... with another; which other, perhaps, (except as a serviceable mask,) would have been a matter of indifference to their feelings. Anne would, therefore, reply to those inevitable reproaches which her own sense must presume to be lurking in her husband's heart, by others equally stinging, on his inability to support his family, and on his obligations to her father's purse. Shakspeare, we may be sure, would be ruminating every hour on the means of his deliverance from so painful a dependency; and at length, after four years' conjugal discord, he would resolve upon that plan of ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... Nekhludoff, motioned him with her head to join her there. He understood her, and ran behind the bushes. But here was a ditch overgrown with nettles, whose presence was unknown to Nekhludoff. He stumbled and fell, stinging and wetting his hands in the evening dew that was now falling, but, laughing, he straightened himself and ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... baleful flashes, green, blue, crimson, and sun-bright, while the bombarding of the thunder was absolutely terrifying, even to us who were by this time growing quite accustomed to tropical storms. With it there came frequent short, sharp, intermittent bursts of rain that swept across our decks, stinging the exposed skin like shot, and enshrouding everything beyond a couple of fathoms away in impenetrable obscurity. Now, too, there came, at irregular but quickly recurring intervals, savage gusts of wind that smote the ship ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... wearied 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 ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... novel lack the brisk movement, the sparkling compactness, the stinging surprises of Mr. Reade's usual style, but he kindles and condenses as he proceeds. As a whole, the work compares favorably with his most brilliant compositions. He is a writer difficult to criticize, because his defects are pleasing defects. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... heart. Narrow-leaved plantain is readily eaten by cattle, and the honey-bee gathers much pollen from it. The ox-eye daisy makes a fair quality of hay if cut before it gets ripe. The cows will eat the leaves of the burdock and the stinging nettles of the woods. But what cannot a cow's tongue stand? She will crop the poison ivy with impunity, and I think would eat thistles if she found them growing in the garden. Leeks and garlics are readily eaten by cattle in the spring, and are said to be medicinal ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... mind them, my fine fellow," said Old Jack, the same man who had spoken so warmly of the Seamen's Friend Society, and he gave me a rough tap on the shoulder, which even my coarse shirt did not prevent from stinging. "They all envy you, for I used to talk just as they do, and when at the worst I would have changed places with any body who had a fair chance of landing ...
— Hurrah for New England! - The Virginia Boy's Vacation • Louisa C. Tuthill
... 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 inmates ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... Thresk's stinging speeches seemed to have been justified. But at the age of twenty-eight he took a holiday. He went down for a month into Sussex, and there the ordered scheme of his life was threatened. It stood the attack; and again it ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... she bother me?" And she added, turning to Vera, "You'll never understand it, because you've never loved anyone. You have no heart! You are a Madame de Genlis and nothing more" (this nickname, bestowed on Vera by Nicholas, was considered very stinging), "and your greatest pleasure is to be unpleasant to people! Go and flirt with Berg as much as you please," ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... man was still sitting erect. He swept his hand hastily across his temple, where he felt a stinging burn. Shunan, dazed, sat his horse for an instant, but his rifle dropped to the ground; and as his horse sprang forward, he himself fell, and so lay, one arm hanging limp and the other raised ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... against the Civil Rights bill. This somewhat mysterious change of front, which nobody seemed able satisfactorily to explain, cost him his confidential intercourse with his former associates in the Senate, and brought upon him stinging manifestations of disapproval from his constituents. He was reported to have expressed profound repentance of what he had done and finally made away with himself as one lost to hope. He was still in the ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... 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 to struggle before they could take their needed cognisance ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... recognized the merits of the beautiful mutilated group subsequently known as 'Pasquino,' and set it upon the pedestal which made it famous, and gave its name a place in all languages, by the witty lampoons and stinging satires almost daily affixed to the block of stone. Many other villas followed in the same direction, and in those insecure days not a few Romans, when the summer days grew hot, were content to move up from their palaces in the lower parts of the city to breathe the somewhat ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... it's all rot (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 been near him since. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 9, 1892 • Various
... endless, wakeful hours he heard that soldier marching back and forth, back and forth, outside the door. Every sound of those steady footfalls was like a blow, stinging afresh the cruel wound which had been opened in his impassive nature. He was under arrest and under guard. If he should try to get out that soldier would order him to halt, and if he didn't halt the soldier would shoot him. He wondered if the guard ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... was such a stinging blow that for a moment I was bewildered, and everything reeled about me. But I did not cry out—I know that, for I asked two ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald |
