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Sting   Listen
noun
Sting  n.  
1.
(Zool.) Any sharp organ of offense and defense, especially when connected with a poison gland, and adapted to inflict a wound by piercing; as the caudal sting of a scorpion. The sting of a bee or wasp is a modified ovipositor. The caudal sting, or spine, of a sting ray is a modified dorsal fin ray. The term is sometimes applied to the fang of a serpent.
2.
(Bot.) A sharp-pointed hollow hair seated on a gland which secrets an acrid fluid, as in nettles. The points of these hairs usually break off in the wound, and the acrid fluid is pressed into it.
3.
Anything that gives acute pain, bodily or mental; as, the stings of remorse; the stings of reproach. "The sting of death is sin."
4.
The thrust of a sting into the flesh; the act of stinging; a wound inflicted by stinging. "The lurking serpent's mortal sting."
5.
A goad; incitement.
6.
The point of an epigram or other sarcastic saying.
Sting moth (Zool.), an Australian moth (Doratifera vulnerans) whose larva is armed, at each end of the body, with four tubercles bearing powerful stinging organs.
Sting ray. (Zool.) See under 6th Ray.
Sting winkle (Zool.), a spinose marine univalve shell of the genus Murex, as the European species (Murex erinaceus).






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Sting" Quotes from Famous Books



... torturers, weary of their work, had allowed her to fall into a painless stupor; but just as she was sinking from sleep to death, heaven sent Radetsky to scourge her back to consciousness; and at the first sting of his lash she sprang maimed and bleeding ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton

... already Of what you've done, too conscious of your failings; And, like a scorpion, whipt by others first To fury, sting yourself in mad revenge. I would bring balm, and pour it in your wounds, Cure your distempered mind, and heal ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden

... composition. To drive Boer riflemen off a rough ridge along which they can retire from one position, when it gets too hot for them, to another, nothing will do but infantry of some sort, and preferably with a bayonet sting left in them for final emergencies. This was an occasion of all others when infantry regiments might have changed the whole course of events to our advantage, but for some reason they had ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse

... interior of the "shanty" as to what he was about. Perhaps the summons would take the form of a pistol-shot, for men who would steal a raft and destroy a thousand dollars' worth of wheat would not be likely to hesitate at anything. At this last thought Winn seemed to feel the deadly sting of a bullet, and in his nervousness only made more intricate the knot he was trying to untie. At length he whipped out his jack-knife and ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe

... "vegetable kingdom." The wood-nettle was growing everywhere; a juicy-looking but coarse weed, resembling our common roadside nettles only in its blossoms. The cattle had found out what I never should have surmised,—having had a taste of its sting,—that it is good for food; there were great patches of it, as likewise of the pale touch-me-not (Impatiens pallida), which had been browsed over by them. It seemed to me that some of the ferns, the hay-scented for example, ought to have suited them better; but they passed these all by, as far ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey

... out my hand and took him by the collar. I felt as though I were grasping some unclean insect, from whom the sting might ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... grave, but we will not deplore thee, For God was thy ransom, thy guardian and guide; He gave thee, He took thee, and He will restore thee, And death hath no sting, ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth

... fields and streets of it. Pleasure and pain there have no sting, The perished self not suffering That lacks all blood ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas

... adapted for that country, being beaten and supplanted by the naturalised productions from another land. Nor ought we to marvel if all the contrivances in nature be not, as far as we can judge, absolutely perfect; and if some of them be abhorrent to our ideas of fitness. We need not marvel at the sting of the bee causing the bee's own death; at drones being produced in such vast numbers for one single act, with the great majority slaughtered by their sterile sisters; at the astonishing waste of pollen by our fir-trees; at the instinctive hatred of the queen bee for her own fertile daughters; ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin

... knife, drugs, serpents, have Edge, sting, or operation, I am safe. Your wife, Octavia, with her modest eyes, And still conclusion,[75] shall acquire no honor Demurring ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... leading from the quay were deserted, except for one lane, down which sleepy passengers were coming in twos and threes to catch the boat, which was chafing and grinding against the timbers of the jetty and pouring from its twin-funnels dense volumes of smoke to take the sting out of the ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs

... should he shun? Where crowds of critics smiling run, To applaud their Allegrante. Why is it worse than viper's sting, To see them clap, or hear her sing? Surely ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi

... What business had we to "boss" the party if we were as ignorant as the mules? We had guaranteed to lead them through to California [!] and had brought them into this "almighty fix" to slave like niggers and to starve.' There was just truth enough in the Jeremiad to make it sting. It would not have been prudent, nay, not very safe, to return curse for curse. But the breaking point was reached at last. That night I, for one, had not much sleep. I was soaked from head to foot, and ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... bitterly. But he went to work at "Success" with the abandon of a house-wrecker, pulling it to the foundation. He used the sledgehammer on scenes he loved. He loosened and pitched out phrases he had mulled over long, and in the dust of the affray he forgot the sting that lay behind Bambi's words. If she wanted him famous, ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke

... noticeable in Linton. As the night wore on distressing memories, memories he considered long dead and gone, arose to harass him. It was true that he had been unhappily married, but tune had cured the sting of that experience, or so he had believed. He discovered now that such was not the case; certain incidents of those forgotten days recurred with poignant effect. He had experienced the dawn of a father's love, a father's pride; he lost himself in a melancholy ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... rubra), which it also resembles in colour. The Eciton legionis lives in open places, and was seen only on the sandy campos of Santarem. The movement of its hosts were, therefore, much more easy to observe than those of all other kinds, which inhabit solely the densest thickets; its sting and bite, also, were less formidable than those of other species. The armies of E. legionis consist of many thousands of individuals, and move in rather broad columns. They are just as quick to break line, on being disturbed, and attack hurriedly ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... in a low voice, charged with passion. "It eats us all! Brr—how I hate it! How I hate the grave! There lies the sting, Mademoiselle—the torture to be a captive: to feel one's best days slipping away, and fate still denying to us poor devils the chance which even the luckiest—God knows—find little enough." He laughed, and to Dorothea the laugh sounded passing bitter. "You will not understand how a man feels; ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... in sight, almost on the crest of the high ground. There she stood for a moment, one hand clutching at her errant hair, the other shielding her eyes from the sting of the rain. He heard her cry, as Heritage had heard her, but since the wind was blowing towards him the sound came louder and fuller. Again she cried, and then stood motionless with her hands above her head. ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan

... Alice inquired a little anxiously. What she really wanted to know was, whether it could sting or not, but she thought this wouldn't be quite a ...
— Through the Looking-Glass • Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll

... preferred to laugh whenever he was called upon to feel annoyed, replied cheerfully, but not without a sting of irony: "Oh, you need not be frightened, I shall never drive you to the verge of bankruptcy; when any of you are ill, I will ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... forgiven, through "the blood of the Cross." "Not till then," as one has it, "will you be able to be a quiet spectator of the open grave at the bottom of the hill which you are soon to descend." "The sting of death is sin, but thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through the Lord ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff

... with delight. The dreamer was hard to awaken, but his tormentor had not yet exhausted his resources. No genuine boy is ever without that fundamental necessity of childhood, a pin, and finding one somewhere about his clothing, he thrust it into the leg of the plowman. The sudden sting brought the soaring saint from heaven to earth. In an instant the mystic was a man, and a strong one, too. He seized the unsanctified young reprobate with one hand and hoisted him at ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss

... the soul, of the life beyond the grave crowded upon him again. Was it not said in the Bible: 'Death, where is thy sting?' And in Schiller: 'And the dead shall live!' (Auch ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev

... huge tomb—the tomb of living royalty, of a line of monarchs, of all the feelings that still bound the heart of man to the cause of France. All now spectral. But, whatever might be the work of my imagination, there was terrible truth; enough before me to depress, and sting, and wring the mind. Within a step of the spot where I sat, were the noblest and the most unhappy beings in existence—the whole family of the throne caught in the snare of treason. Father, mother, sister, children! Not one rescued, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various

... back to see her, and before the day was out. A little bitter self-communion had not taken long to show him his childishness. The sting of loss was hard enough, but the thought, now they could be nothing to each other, that her last impressions of him should be bad, hurt almost as much, and in a way, even more. And further, putting all to the ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London

... purity, that innocence so common formerly among children, is every day disappearing from their midst, many among them have become the victims of sin ere the passions of the heart manifested their presence; and their hearts have quivered from the sting of remorse ere they felt the perfidious lurings of pleasure. Many have received from sin that doleful experience, that premature craftiness, which, far from enlightening the mind, obscures and blinds it,—which, far from fortifying ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi

... fear not the swift arrow's power Since thou art my high, strong-built tower; The darts may have a bitter sting, I shelter 'neath ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr

... own essay of a poem, which immediately he gives you, it is thought he taxes Lucan, who followed too much the truth of history, crowded sentences together, was too full of points, and too often offered at somewhat which had more of the sting of an epigram, than of the dignity and state of an heroic poem. Lucan used not much the help of his heathen deities: There was neither the ministry of the gods, nor the precipitation of the soul, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... of God appeared to us[16]. Outside the flame he was standing on the bank, and was singing "Beati mundo corde" [Blessed are the pure in heart], in a voice far more living than ours: then, "No one goes further, ye holy souls, if first the fire sting not; enter into it, and to the song beyond be ye not deaf," he said to us, when we were near him. Whereat I became such, when I heard him, as is he who in the pit is put[17]. With hands clasped upwards, I stretched forward, looking at the fire, and imagining ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... ... do you fancy that in my memory the sting is not gone from it?—and that I do not carry the thought of it, as the Roman maidens, you speak of, their cool harmless snakes, at my heart always? So let the poor letter be forgiven, for the sake of the dear letter that was burnt, forgiven by you—until you grow angry with me ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... replied the soldier. "They must have suspected that we would chase after the army so as to pick up stragglers, because that is our favorite game these terrible days; anything to sting the snake that is crawling across our beloved country and leaving ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson

... he does not need that manifestation of your being. Your lives are both set to sweetly flowing music. You have never felt the sting of want and suffering, either mental or physical, nor witnessed it to any ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams

... it had no brilliant and vivid style, but the simple facts were enough for Dick. He read once more of the last hope of the great man, never greater than then, praying in the snow, and his own soul leaped at the sting of example. He was only a boy, obscure, unknown, and the fate of but two rested with him, yet he, too, would persevere, and in the end his triumph also would be complete. He read no further, but closed the book and ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler

... cruel sjambok of rhinoceros-hide fell across the Englishman's face, leaving a great blue weal. The arm was raised for a second blow; but the Englishman, prisoner though he was, and though his life hung in the balance, closed with his brutal captor. Other Boers, doubtless feeling the sting of the blow as keenly as the recipient, separated the pair before the unarmed Englishman found the ruffian's throat. But the blow had been struck,—an unarmed prisoner of officer rank had been chastised, an act of savagery fit to rank with the cold-blooded murder of an envoy. Yet the day will doubtless ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer

... laughed in his hearty way, Enjoying his joke, as a monarch may; He laughed till he ached for want of breath: If it lacked in life, it was full of death: Like many, believing the next best thing To a joke with a point is a joke with a sting. Loud he laughed; but he laughed not long Ere he leaped to the back of his charger strong, And bounded forward, axe on high, Circling the tents with his battle-cry,— "Away! away! we shall win the day: In the front ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... is a wasp; its sting is in its tail. Sir, what is this bill? It provides, in the first place, that the civil rights of all men, without regard to color, shall be equal; and, in the second place, that if any man shall violate that principle by his conduct, he shall be responsible to the court; that he may be prosecuted ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes

... has lost its sting. I am going, my dear children, to put an end to the false position in which I have so long been placed; I have come, like a good father, to announce my approaching marriage ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... suffer for days before I die. And so I fear the lion least of all. He is great and noisy. I can hear him, or see him, or smell him in time to escape; but any moment I may place a hand or foot on the little bug, and never know that he is there until I feel his deadly sting. No, I do not fear the jungle. I love it. I should rather die than leave it forever; but your douar is close beside the jungle. You have been good to me. I will do as you wish, and remain here for a while to wait ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... after Walker. His mind worked swiftly. As he came in to the fire he saw that the dogs had already dropped down in their traces and that they were exhausted. Walker's face was pinched, his eyes half closed by the sting of the snow. The driver was half stretched out on the sledge, his feet to the fire. In a glance he had assured himself that both dogs and men had gone through a long and desperate struggle in the storm. He looked at Bucky, and this time there was neither rancor ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood

... then concerting surprises, are quite as wicked as any thing Falstaff does, and have, besides, the further crime of exceeding meanness; but both their meanness and their wickedness are of the kind that rarely fail to be their own punishment. The way in which his passion is made to sting and lash him into reason, and the happy mischievousness of his wife in glutting his disease, and thereby making an opportunity to show him what sort of stuff it lives on, are admirable instances of the wisdom with which the Poet underpins his most ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... "By such things the children perish, Such is not the death of heroes; Know I well the fire to manage, I can quench the flames of passion, I can meet the prowling wild-beasts, Can appease the wrath of serpents, I can heal the sting of adders, I have plowed the serpent-pastures, Plowed the adder-fields of Northland; While my hands were unprotected, Held the serpents in my fingers, Drove the adders to Manala, On my hands the blood of serpents, On my feet the fat of adders. Never will thy hero ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.

... the contrary, took the cause of Shakspeare, or any other cause that she defended, seriously to heart. The wit or raillery of her adversary, if she affected not to be hurt by it at the moment, left a sting in her mind which rankled long and sorely. Though she often failed to refute the arguments brought against her, yet she always rose from the debate precisely of her first opinion; and even her silence, which Mad. de Coulanges sometimes mistook for ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth

... Perkins laughed. The sting of defeat had lost its power to annoy, and his experience had become merely one of a thousand other ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs

... The authors of the day, and their peculiar characteristics (Lowell himself not being spared in the least), are held up to admiring audiences with all their sins and foibles exposed to the public gaze. It was intended to have "a sting in his tale," this "frail, slender thing, rhymey-winged," and it had it decidedly. Some of the authors lampooned took the matter up, in downright sober earnest, and objected to the seat in the pillory which they were forced to occupy unwillingly. But they ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various

... short final clause is intended to be unexpectedly unemphatic, it comes in appropriately, with something of the sting of an epigram. See ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott

... looked at him. Was there that in her eyes which to him robbed memory of its sting? At their feet the water leaped and laughed; curled around the stones, and ran on with dancing bubbles. Perhaps he returned her glance too readily; perhaps the recollection of the ride the night before recurred over-vividly to her, for she gazed suddenly away, ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... The brute, feeling the sting, starts to its feet with an angry scream; this instantly changing to a cry of affright, as the caked powder catches fire, and fizzing up, envelopes it in a shower of sparks. Not a second longer stays it on the ledge, but bounding off makes for the cave's mouth, as if Satan himself ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid

... mine and countermine Duke Borso, who had broken up the circle early by reason of his toothache, went wandering the long corridors of the Schifanoia under the sting of his scourge. He found his spacious pleasure-house valueless against that particular annoy, but (as always) he was the more whimsical for his affliction. Nothing works your genuine man of humour so ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... Katahdin had designed the child for the founder of a mighty race, with the sinews of the very mountains in its frame, that should fill and rule the earth. Yet, one day, in anger at some slight, the mother spoke: "Fools! Wasps who sting the fingers that pick you from the water! Why do you torment me about what you might all see? Look at the boy's face—his brows: in them do you not see Katahdin? Now you have brought the curse upon ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... themselves lost and are willing to be saved in God's way, then the breach is made up—then hope can look across the gap and see its best home and its best friend on the other side—then faith lays hold on forgiveness and trembling is done—then, sin being pardoned, the sting of death is taken away and the fear of death is no more, for it is swallowed up in victory. But men will not apply to a physician while they think themselves well; and people will not seek the sweet way of safety by Christ till ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner

... desk again, watching his eye—humbly watching his eye, as he rules a ciphering-book for another victim whose hands have just been flattened by that identical ruler, and who is trying to wipe the sting out with a pocket-handkerchief. I have plenty to do. I don't watch his eye in idleness, but because I am morbidly attracted to it, in a dread desire to know what he will do next, and whether it will be my turn to suffer, or somebody ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... twitched slightly under the sting, but he retained his outward composure. "My dear girl," he said, "it probably has not occurred to you that the world regards the Express as utterly without excuse for existence. It says, and truly, that a ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... that the sting lies in the tail. That steady growth of the grass is such a reasonable point to be considered, and yet to some readers it will cause considerable perplexity. The grass is, of course, assumed to ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... one time numberless tender things in his mind, which he meant to tell her, but feeling also, while he smarted under the sting of self-reproach (for the indiscretion he had committed), Tai-yue give him a rap, he was utterly powerless to open his lips, much though he may have liked to speak, so he kept on sighing and snivelling to himself. With all these things therefore to work upon his feelings, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... those of Castilla. Some have been seen in the forests of unusual size, and wonderful to behold. [258] The most harmful are certain slender snakes, of less than one vara in length, which dart down upon passersby from the trees (where they generally hang), and sting them; their venom is so powerful that within twenty-four hours the person ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga

... happiness. She knew that the lark might as well plead with the iron bars as she with Henry of Bolingbroke. And the penalty of her refusal was not merely poverty and homelessness. She could have borne that; indeed, the sentence about the estates passed by her, hardly noted. The bitterest sting lay in the assurance thus placidly given her, that her loving little Richard would be consigned to the keeping of a woman whom she knew to hate her fiercely—that he would be taught to hate and despise her himself. He would be ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt

... Shall scourge this howler home to thee again. Yes, yes, rash man, Jove and myself do know That from this wrong shall rouse an Anteros, Fierce as an Ate, with a hot right hand, That shall afflict thee with the touch of fire, Till, scorpion-like, thou turn and sting thyself. What dost thou think—that I shall perish here, Gnawed by the tooth of hungry savageness? Think what thou list, and go what way thou wilt. I, that have truth and heaven on my side, Though but a weak and solitary woman, Forecast no fear of any violence— But thou, false hound! thou ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... methods had forced itself upon him. It was as if the dart being aimed at her, she caught it in her hand in its flight, broke off its point and threw it lightly aside without comment. Most women cannot resist the temptation to answer a speech containing a sting or a reproach. It was part of her abnormality that she could let such things go by in a detached silence, which did not express even the germ of comment or opinion upon them. This, he said, was the result of her beastly sense of security, ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... here, and the trap was laid here, and he slipped through it. Got away through a certain room which Fernand would give a million to keep secret. At any rate the fellow has shown that he is slippery and has a sting, too. He sent a bullet a fraction of an inch past Fernand's head, at one point in the ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand

... start and shiver and catch thy breath, The sting is certain, the venom is death, And the scales are flashing the fruit beneath, And the fang striketh suddenly. At the core the ashes are bitter and dead, But the rind is fair and the rind is red, It has ever been pluck'd since ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... between them that I know of," she said, and then added archly; "but you will feel better at last, when all is over and the sting of defeat tingles through you, if you are conscious of having ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson

... fortunate as to be trained up to understand how well it is worth their while to cultivate such habits of Spartan forbearance, we cannot perform our duty in registering wholesome precepts, in a higher degree, than by disarming luxury of its sting, and making the refinements of Modern Cookery minister not merely to sensual gratification, but at the same time support the substantial excitement of ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner

... rarefied, subtle, strange not only in their own times, but for all times. Those men have their own communication to make to those anxious to add to the fineness of their perception, or merely perhaps to the oddness of experience. If some sting of truth reaches the mind through writing obscure to the general, through language which may be barbarous in form, an author has justified himself; and it would be idle to follow Mr. Brander Matthews in his quotation from the ever-pleasing Lord Chesterfield: "Speak the language of the company you ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James

... Fairy King, Content thee, I am no such thing: I am a Wasp, behold my sting!" At which the Fairy started; When soon away the Wasp doth go, Poor wretch, was never frighted so; He thought his wings were much too slow, O'erjoyed ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... points out Shakspere as 'a crow beautified with our feathers.' The hypothesis seems to us to be little less than absurd.... He parodies a line from one of the productions of which he had been so plundered, to carry the point home, to leave no doubt as to the sting of his allusion. But, as has been most justly observed, the epigram would have wanted its sting if the line parodied had not been that of the ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith

... confidence than this proclamation, threatening alike to reformers and levellers, can scarcely be conceived. On 25th May Grey opposed it in an acrid speech; he inveighed against Pitt as an apostate, who never kept his word, and always intended to delude Parliament and people. The sting of the speech lay, not in these reckless charges, but in the citing of Pitt's opinions as expressed in a resolution passed at the Thatched House Tavern in May 1782, which declared that without Parliamentary Reform neither the ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... tired though willing hand Its earthly destiny hath wrought, Ye wait me in that distant land, And that ye long to have me there, More that I pine your absence here, Shall heal the touch of every care And quench the sting ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various

... hutch. And he knew that the Woman would triumph always as she triumphed now, and that he would grow ever more sickly under her pestering and domineering and superior wisdom, till one day nothing would matter much more with him, and the doctor would be proved right. And in the sting and misery of his defeat, he began to chant loudly and defiantly the hymn of ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki

... high-handed way, without any regard being shown or question asked of the owner of the land, or any compensation offered for the damage done. This was different with foreigners' land; in their case permission was first asked to make the roads; the foreigners were paid for any destruction made." The sting of this count was, I fancy, in the last clause. No less than six articles complain of the administration of the law; and I believe that was never satisfactory. Brandeis told me himself he was never yet satisfied with any native judge. And men say (and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... these lonely days of Mary Haselden's life there was one crowning bliss which was almost enough to sweeten solitude, and take away the sting of separation; and that was the delight of expecting and receiving her lover's letters. Busily as Mr. Hammond must be engaged in fighting the battle of life, he was in no way wanting in his duty as a lover. ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... promptly drawn, signed, and witnessed, each party retaining a copy, and Samuel Gunterson, with the sting of defeat removed by this brilliant achievement, and with his self-esteem and confidence wholly restored, turned blithely toward the South Station on his way ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... seldom curious in her works within, without employing some little pains on the outside; and this more particularly in mischievous characters, in forming which, as Mr. Derham observes, in venomous insects, as the sting or saw of a wasp, she is sometimes wonderfully industrious. Now, when she hath thus completely armed our hero to carry on a war with man, she never fails of furnishing that innocent lambkin with some means of knowing his enemy, and foreseeing his designs. Thus she hath been ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding

... but I never heard of him. With all my philosophy, I'm a poor student of history, sweetheart." Her tone and the name she gave him took the sting out of her confession. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... and love is sweet! The dark sky cleared, the sun shone out again, Earth seemed a heaven, with perfect bliss replete, And new-born gladness healed the sting of pain ...
— Lays from the West • M. A. Nicholl

... would do better." Jesus does not forget the man in caring for his soul—he likes him. He is "the friend of publicans and sinners" (Luke 7:34); he eats and drinks with them (Mark 2:14). Let us remember again that these were taunts and were meant to sting; they were not conventional phrases. See how he can enter into the life of a poor creature. There is the wretched little publican, Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1-10)—a squalid little figure of a man, whom people despised. He was used to contempt—it ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover

... meager wants. He would renounce the idea of that marriage which was his only salvation, and his creditors, as soon as they heard the news that this hope had vanished would fall upon him. He would find himself expelled from the house of his forefathers, pitied by everybody, with a pity that would sting more keenly than insult. He felt himself unequal to witness the final wreck of his house and of his name. What could he do? Where should ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... tumbled into the boat while in a state of insensibility, like poor Captain Alphonse, for I do not recollect anything that occurred immediately after I felt the sting of the shot as I was hit, and when I came to myself again I was horrified to find I was far away from the ship, which I could only dimly discern in ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson

... think I was going to escape, and then, when it had got all the amusement possible out of me, just to give a little sprint and haul me over. Perhaps it was my anger at such undignified treatment of the human race that gave a kind of sting to my running, for I certainly got over the ground at twice the speed I had ever done before, or ever thought myself capable of doing. At times my limbs were on the verge of mutiny, but I forced them onward, and though my lungs seemed bursting, ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell

... to serve my end. 'Twill stand me in good stead now that I know This region well; I'll seek the hostile army And guide it hitherward by secret paths, To your destruction and to my salvation.— The serpent that you trample in the dust So arrogantly still retains its sting! ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen

... hymenoptera that have this paralyzing instinct lay their eggs in spiders, beetles or caterpillars, which, having first been subjected by the wasp to a skilful surgical operation, will go on living motionless a certain number of days, and thus provide the larvae with fresh meat. In the sting which they give to the nerve-centres of their victim, in order to destroy its power of moving without killing it, these different species of hymenoptera take into account, so to speak, the different species of prey they respectively attack. ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson

... upon the blasted tree, went with them. It was a miserable life which they led. The pinch of poverty is never so keenly felt as when the recollection of better days mixes with it like a perpetual sting. All the bright hopes of six years before were over, and the poor ladies could have said, "Behold, was ever sorrow like unto my sorrow!" They grieved for themselves; they grieved most of all for their beautiful little Annie, but Annie ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... the old man. For it should terrify and punish the proud ignorant, secure Old Adam and show him his sin and death, so that, being humiliated, he may despair of himself, and thus become desirous of grace, as St. Paul says: 'The strength of sin is the Law; the sting of death is sin,'[1 Cor. 15, 56.] For this reason he also calls it bonam, iustam, sanctam—good, just, holy. Again, Jeremiah [23, 29]: 'My Word is like a hammer that breaketh the rock to pieces.' Again: 'Ego ignis consumens, ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... keen pain shot across his face now and then, but he received me with a simple courtesy that made his patience thrice heroic. He did not speak of himself or his services, though I knew both to be eminent; but McDowell had insulted him, as he rode disabled from the field, and Geary felt the sting of the word more than the bullet. He had ventured to say to McDowell that the Reserves were badly needed in front, and the proud "Regular" had answered the officious "Volunteer," to the effect that he knew his own business. Not ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... this glorious strife," the latter, as always, wins the obscene contest, "and the pleas'd dame soft-smiling leads away." Nearly all of this account is impudent slander, but Mr. Pope's imputations may have had enough truth in them to sting. His description of Eliza is a savage caricature of her portrait by Kirkall prefixed to the first edition of her collected novels, plays, and poems (1724).[8] Curll's "Key to the Dunciad," quoted with evident ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher

... on their pilgrimage on the last day of October. "This is thy birthday, my sweet Mary," said the mother, as a sting of bitter recollection crossed her mind. "Oh, who could have believed that the head, which, a few years since, was cradled amongst so many rejoicing friends, may perhaps this night seek a ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... down, and the sun smiled out far over the summer sea, And the Spanish fleet, with broken sides, lay round us, all in a ring; But they dared not touch us again, for they feared that we still could sting, So they watched what the end would be. And we had not fought them in vain, But in perilous plight were we, Seeing forty of our poor hundred were slain, And half of the rest of us maim'd for life In the crash of the ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... none the worse for it. He also longed for the luxury of a private bath. Oh! just for half an hour in the porcelain bath in his mother's house! Just to have the exquisite pleasure of feeling the sting of cold pure water around ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking

... him; but it needed Sprudell's sneers to sting his pride, Sprudell's ingratitude and arrogant assumption of success in whatever it pleased him to undertake, to arouse in Bruce that stubborn, dogged, half-sullen obstinacy which his father had called mulishness but which the farmer's ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart

... leave me? I would it were not so; for all around I am hemm'd in by doubters. Perfidy Makes mouths at me. Suspicion rears her head, Hissing upon my path. And my friends drop off, Leaving a sting behind! Stay! Arthur Walton, England doth bid ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards

... coming, sent a single gadfly to sting the tender skin of Pegasus. The gadfly dealt a cruel blow and proud Pegasus thought Bellerophon had dared to ...
— Classic Myths • Retold by Mary Catherine Judd

... her eyes smart and sting, and it choked her so that she coughed and strangled, and I need not tell you that she would have given anything in the world to have been back in her own little ...
— Ruby at School • Minnie E. Paull

... feeling on both sides, and though Mr. ADAMSON feared that the Bill would bring Ireland not peace but a sword, and Mr. ASQUITH appealed to the Government to substitute a measure more generous to Irish aspirations, there was no sting in either of their speeches. The PRIME MINISTER, while defending his scheme as the best that could be granted in the present temper of Southern Ireland, did not bang the door against further negotiations; and Sir EDWARD CARSON said that Ulstermen were beginning to realize that the Parliament ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various

... ground as though she had been a winged creature, her father having to exert himself to keep pace with her. But the whip had descended again and again, another and another of those wild shrieks testifying to the sharpness of its sting, ere they were ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley

... saintliness of both boys during the afternoon's ride took the sting out of Mrs. Burton's defeat. They gabbled to each other about flowers and leaves and birds, and they assumed ownership of the few Summer clouds that were visible, and made sundry exchanges of them with each. When the dog Jerry, who had surreptitiously followed the carriage and grown weary, was ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton

... and as it happened, right down one of the most shady paths, beneath the densely growing apple-trees, where the bees could not fly, so that by the time he reached the river-side he was clear of his pursuers, but tingling from a sting on the wrist, and from two more on the neck, one being among the hair at the back, and the other right down in ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn

... man that sat sketching in my place was the Frenchiest-looking Frenchman you ever saw—with his dark, smoke-dried skin, his long, straight, blue-black hair, his fine, rather ferocious brown eyes, his long, delicate French nose, his bristling black moustache and short, sting-shaped imperial. He wore on his head a soft white felt hat, somewhat of the shape affected by circus clowns, and too small for him. His coat was of green velveteen corduroy and he wore knickerbockers of ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne

... his head with a snort, and trotted toward the ridge as if he, too, had felt the sting of the bullet and was hastening away from ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis

... her friends' behalf. Aunt Soph had made no pretence of anything beyond polite regret. Elma and Mary shared a personal happiness so deep, that, for the time at least, the departure of a friend held no lasting sting. Cornelia could wave adieu to each, rejoicing in their joy, in the remembrance that she had had some small share in bringing it about; yet the torturing pain continued, ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... was bared. "Look! do you see them, do you, Madame?" he said. "His Majesty of Mauravania sends Madame Tcharnovetski a command to leave his kingdom, since he no longer has cause to fear a wasp whose sting has ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew

... known to thee. Ai, ai! Thou, breathing they communicable grace Of life into my light Mine astral faces, from thine angel face, Hast inly fed, And flooded me with radiance overmuch From thy pure height. Ai, ai! Thou, with calm, floating pinions both ways spread, Erect, irradiated, Didst sting my wheel of glory On, on before thee, Along the Godlight, by a quickening touch! Ha, ha! Around, around the firmamental ocean, I swam expanding with delirious fire! Around, around, around, in blind desire To be drawn upward ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various

... of Paul V. was measured and decent, the swarm of Jesuit pamphleteers that forthwith began to buzz and to sting all over Christendom were sufficiently venomous. Scioppius, in his Alarm Trumpet to the Holy War, and a hundred others declared that all heresies and heretics were now to be extirpated, the one true church to be united and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... infinite patience of the wild hunter, the ape-man crouched motionless and silent as a graven image until the fruit should be ripe for the plucking. A poisonous insect buzzed angrily out of space. It loitered, circling, close to Tarzan's face. The ape-man saw and recognized it. The virus of its sting spelled death for lesser things than he—for him it would mean days of anguish. He did not move. His glittering eyes remained fixed upon Rabba Kega after acknowledging the presence of the winged torture by a single glance. He heard and followed the movements ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... fierce; nowhere else is the enemy so goaded by hunger and thirst to desperate measures. It is a place for internecine warfare Hence, all desert plants are quite absurdly prickly. The starving herbivores will attack and devour under such circumstances even thorny weeds, which tear or sting their tender tongues and palates, but which supply them at least with a little food and moisture: so the plants are compelled in turn to take almost extravagant precautions. Sometimes the leaves end in a stout dagger-like point, as with the agave, or so-called ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... them away with a laugh. "April Fool, twins," she said, with a voice so soft that it took all the sting from the words. "I brought you some real silk stockings for a change." And she tossed them a package and started out of the room to escape their thanks. But she stopped in surprise when the girls ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston

... fortunate! As he revolved his later history, and remembered how clearly he had seen that his father must love Lucy if he but knew her, and remembered his efforts to persuade her to come with him, a sting of miserable rage blackened his brain. But could he blame that gentle soul? Whom could he blame? Himself? Not utterly. His father? Yes, and no. The blame was here, the blame was there: it was everywhere and nowhere, and the young man cast it on the Fates, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... about a heated interview with the professor, in which the seer was told that a bargain was a bargain, and that if he had thought Bean was a man to stand nonsense of any sort he was indeed wildly mistaken. Bean was going to hold him to the exact sum, and his parting sting was that the professor had better get a new lot of controls if his old ones hadn't been able to tell him this. After he had cooled a little he reflected that if there were really any small sums the professor would be out of pocket, he would ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson

... wooden mortars, mixed and squeezed to drain off the oil; the hard mass, flavoured with salt or honey, will keep for weeks. The bees are not hived in Congo-land, but smoked out of hollow trees: as in F. Po and Camarones Peaks, they rarely sting, like the harmless Angelito of the Caraccas, "silla," or saddleback; which Humboldt ("Personal Narrative," chap. xiii.) describes as a "little hairy bee, a little smaller than the honey-bee of the north of Europe." Captain Hall found the same near Tampico; and a hive-full ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... accustomed to at home. This was at first refreshing, and one would pick up the cool hailstones—they were about as big as peas—and eat them, and the rattle they made on the helmets was quite musical. When they grew to the size of gooseberries, and began to sting, they provided less amusement, shoulders being shrugged up and necks arched to obtain as much protection as possible. The unfortunate dogs, of which a variety invariably turned up with every column, howled with pain, and ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring

... delighted Beelzebub that he imitated Thy patterns—but he finished them off better than Thou didst; he put them in a human skin, and now they stand in rank and file with the rest of Thy humanity, and one does not recognize them until they begin to scratch and sting! ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... the panther came home. He sat down in the armchair in the room. Then the needles in the cushion stuck into him. So he ran into the kitchen to light the fire and see what had jabbed him so; and then it was that the scorpion hooked his sting into his hand. And when at last the fire was burning, the egg burst and spurted into one of his eyes, which was blinded. So he ran out into the yard and dipped his hand into the water-barrel, in order to cool it; and then the turtle bit it off. ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various

... a gadfly to sting Pegasus. The noble horse reared. He thought his master had struck him and was furious with pain and anger. Bellerophon lost his seat and ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe

... in, with startling abruptness, the end of all this fascination,—a serpent's bite and a basilisk's sting. The kind of poisonous snake meant in the last clause of verse 32 is doubtful, but certainly is one much more formidable than an adder. The serpent's lithe gracefulness and painted skin hide a fatal poison; and so the attractive wine-cup is sure to ruin those who look ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... an eruption on the skin, often coming suddenly and going off again, but sometimes of long standing. It resembles in appearance the sting of a nettle—hence the name. It is accompanied by an intolerable itching, and is a very sore trouble where it continues, or frequently recurs. Its cause is usually defective digestion. We should not depend on drugs for a cure, but treat ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk

... over him." Death may awaken anger, malice, melancholy, fear and terror in our poor, weak flesh, but it hath no more dominion over Christ. On the contrary, death must submit to the dominion of Christ, in his own person and in us. We have died unto sin; that is, we have been redeemed from the sting and power, the control, of death. Christ has fully accomplished the work by which he obtained power over death, and has bestowed that power upon us, that in him we should reign over death. So Paul says ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther

... danger of spilling him off, and he got on fairly well. At the Paria, Jones, who had made a misstep in one of the boats at the Junction and injured one leg, developed inflammatory rheumatism in it, and also in the other. Andy at Millecrag Bend had put on his shoe with an unseen scorpion in it, the sting of which caused him to grow thin and pale. Bishop's old wound troubled him; Beaman and W. C. Powell also felt "under the weather," so that of the whole party left here, Thompson and I were the only ones who remained ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... 20th Lord Yarmouth heard that the Russian envoy had just signed a separate peace with France, whereby the independence of the Ionian Isles was recognized (Russia keeping only 4,000 troops in Corfu), and Germany was to be evacuated by the French. But the sting was in the tail: for a secret article stipulated that Ferdinand IV. should cede Sicily to Joseph Bonaparte and receive the Balearic Isles ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... of any nobility of nature, there can be small satisfaction in honours which he knows are bought with money and bribes; and to the proud young American there was the additional sting of knowing that even the money by which his honours were purchased was not ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... The sting of personal defeat is painful to most men, and doubtless it was so to Lincoln. Yet he regarded the passing struggle as something more than a mere scramble for office, and drew from it the consolation which all earnest ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay

... these, nor is Klesmer Tasso," said Mrs. Arrowpoint, getting more heated. "There is no sting in that sarcasm, except the ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... surely enough, enough, that sorrow had a sting Our England should not court again. The Laureate's accents ring With scorn suppressed, a scorn deserved indeed, if still our part Is to forget a purpose high that was dear to ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various

... prisoner flushed and the look he darted at his counsel had the sting of a reproach in it. Yet he answered: "It was the token of an engagement I didn't believe in or like. I should have hailed any proof that this ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green

... day I speak of, my patience tried to its last strand, I had beaten a lacquey with my hands, and fled from the cursed gibes his fellows aimed at me, out into the misty gardens and the chill January air, whose sting I could, perhaps, the better disregard by virtue of the heat of indignation that consumed me. Was it ever to be so with me? Could nothing lift the curse of folly from me, that I must ever be a Fool, and worse, the ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini

... is no more the king of dread Since our Immanuel rose, He took the tyrant's sting away, And spoil'd our ...
— Hymns and Spiritual Songs • Isaac Watts

... sting Charlotte made Daniel spit tobacco juice on it. She always gave a piece of fat meat to babies because this would make them healthy all their lives. Her favorite remedy was to put a pan of cold water under the ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration

... pleasant for him; things flow into the house, for which he does not seem to pay. But they are all set down against him; and at the year's end, when the bills come in, he is ready to lift up his hands in dismay. Then he finds that the sweet of the honey will not repay for the smart of the sting. ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles

... came,—mighty changes capable of affecting all other transmutations, but thoroughly impotent to annul the inwrought grace of a pre-established beauty. On the other hand, Byron's childhood was, in all these elements, unfortunate. The sting left in his mother's heart by the faithless desertion of her husband, after the desolation of her fortunes, was forever inflicted upon him, and intensified by her fitful temper; and notwithstanding the change in his outward prospects which occurred afterwards, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... house in a fine grove of chestnuts on a hill-side at East Walpole; and there he brought up his children like Greeks and Amazons. Chestnut woods are commonly infested with hornets, but he directed us boys not to molest them, for he wished them to learn that hornets would not sting unless they were interfered with; an excellent principle in human nature. Mrs. Bird resembled her husband so closely in face and figure, that they might have been mistaken for brother and sister. She was an excellent New England woman of the old style, and well adapted to ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns

... not flattering to the southern metropolis. Some comparison was natural in the circumstances; Lister was not speaking for publication and had no idea that a reporter was present. But his remarks appeared in print, with the result that might be expected. The sting of the criticism lay in its truth, and many London surgeons were only too ready to resent anything which might be said by the new professor. When he had been living some time in London, Lister succeeded in allaying the ill feeling ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... bitterness of this criticism rankled, its sting was removed by the thought that lazy and snobbish as Peter Coddington had been, thanks to Peter Strong he was neither lazy nor snobbish now; nor was he, the boy acknowledged, the disappointment to his father that he might have been had ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett

... knoweth—not ye—how oft I fell; how low; How oft in faithless longings yearned my heart For faces of His Saints in mine own land, Remembered fields far off. This, too, He knoweth, How perilous is the path of great attempts, How oft pride meets us on the storm-vexed height, Pride, or some sting its scourge. My hope is He: His hand, my help so long, will loose me never: And, thanks to God, the sheltering grave ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere

... avowal that he is his father,—he has 'blushed so often to acknowledge him that he is now brazed to it!' Edmund hears the circumstances of his birth spoken of with a most degrading and licentious levity,—his mother described as a wanton by her own paramour, and the remembrance of the animal sting, the low criminal gratifications connected with her wantonness and prostituted beauty, assigned as the reason, why 'the whoreson must be acknowledged!' This, and the consciousness of its notoriety; the gnawing ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge

... says (De Gratia et Lib. Arb. vii): "Those who are not in Christ, when they feel the sting of the flesh, follow the road of damnation, even if they walk not according to the flesh." But damnation is not due save to mortal sin. Therefore, since man feels the sting of the flesh in the first movements of the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... is a turning from the regular course of the subject, into an animated address; as, "Death is swallowed up in victory. O Death! where is thy sting? O Grave! where is thy victory?"—1 Cor., ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... near to Jessie from behind, I heard her talking. To whom could she be talking? There was no one by her side; that is to say, no human being. But soon I found she was talking to a wasp that was coming as if to sting her. ...
— The Nursery, January 1877, Volume XXI, No. 1 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various

... Browning and his wife by her simplicity and earnestness, her gentle voice and refinement of manner—"never," says Mrs Browning, "did lioness roar more softly." All pointed to renewed happiness; but before April was over pain of a kind that had a peculiar sting left Mrs Browning for a time incapable of any other feeling. Her father was dead, and no word of affection had been uttered at the last; if there was water in the rock it never welled forth. The kindly ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... petticut instead of trowges, pretending he's a black pirate, with a blood-red flag, one of your penny plain and twopence coloured kind, you know. I did lots of them when I was a young 'un, and had a box of paints. Not me. There's a 'what then' to all this 'ere, a sting to it, same as there is in ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn

... suggest a wiser and better one. He attacked no motive which had a good aim, except in view of some larger and loftier principle. The charm of his imagination and the music of his words took away all the sting from the thoughts that penetrated to the very marrow of the entranced listeners. Sometimes it was a splendid hyperbole that illuminated a statement which by the dim light of common speech would have offended or repelled those who sat before him. ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes



Words linked to "Sting" :   stick, stinger, hurt, bunco game, prickle, hurting, flea bite, con, hustle, flimflam, bruise, trauma, pang, nettle, burn, bunko game, bite, injury, spite, confidence game, pierce, prick, offend



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