"Sting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... turn. It was with joy almost fierce he discovered what he thought to be proof that the subaltern was no saint, and, never stopping to give his better nature time to rise and rebuke him, he had summoned Janet. It was to sting Blakely, more than to punish the girl, he had ordered Natzie to the guard-room. Then, as the hours wore on and he realized how contemptible had been his conduct, the sense of shame well-nigh crushed him, and though ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... so long as the sun was in the heavens. Many times the hearts of the two women stood still when they saw him climb to the highest point of the scaffolding in order to direct the work from there. Fate had only to make his foot slip one little inch or decree that a wasp should sting him on the finger to put an end to his existence. The poor mother was doubly anxious because he seemed so unconscious of the risk he ran up there and looked about him even more boldly ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... went through his five years of married life, trying to recollect every detail month by month, day by day, and every disquieting circumstance that he remembered stung him to the quick like a wasp's sting. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... don't do anything." Was that what Mary thought of her? Did others think the same? Was that the character she had earned? The words rang in her ears, the mortification bit deep. It was hateful to be so spoken to by a little ignorant country servant; but the sharpest sting lay in the knowledge that Mary was right. No one knew, and Audrey would not have liked anyone to know how she loathed doing the things that she blamed others ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... cracked, but it was in the Wolf's hand. Porky felt a sting as the bullet grazed his shoulder. Then Hen's weapon ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine
... conversing with him at his cookhouse door for more than an hour; and before they went away they stepped inside, and the sliding doors were closed; and then we heard some one reading aloud and preaching; and after that a psalm was sting and a benediction given; when the door opened again, and the congregation came out in a great perspiration; owing, I suppose, to the chapel being so small, and there being only one ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... homes, and in a strange land reduced us to slavery. I loathed them as being the meanest as well as the most wicked of men. As I read and contemplated the subject, behold! that very discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted would follow my learning to read had already come, to torment and sting my soul to unutterable anguish. As I writhed under it, I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... The sting in his voice had cured me. I never was a weeper. I sat up, my face blazing, and stared at him. He'd got me to hand over to the cop, but he hadn't got ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... guardian dowager or beguiling dot, becomes increasingly pathetic as the narrative advances; and her eventual failure, though signalized merely by her resolution to desert the inhospitable circles of privilege for the wider universe of work, carries with it the sting of tragedy. ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... a threat or a promise?" she asked, the sweetness of her smile almost taking away the sting of ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... Herndon by a French engineer and architect, M. de Lincourt, who witnessed it at Manduassu, a village on the Tapajos river. Mr. Herndon adds: "The Tocandeira ants not only bite, but are also armed with a sting like the wasp; but the pain felt from it is more violent. I think it equal to that occasioned by the sting of the black scorpion." He gives the name of the Indians as Mahues, but I assume that they are the same as the Mauhes ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... hopes of 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 brought up as a stranger to her; he would be led to associate ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... and he wants to settle for his lost eye, which makes him lively. Also I see stones ahead, which are bad for camels. Then there is the river, and I don't know if camels can swim, but Jana can as Marut learned. Do you think, Baas, that you could manage to sting him up with a bullet in his knee or that great trunk of his, just to give him something to ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... jarred, sometimes seriously; Helena was often provocative and aggressive; and Buntingford could make a remark sting without intending it. But on the whole Lucy Friend felt that she was watching something which had in it possibilities of beauty; indeed of a rather touching and rare development. But not at all as the preliminary to a love-affair. In Buntingford's ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... face realities and to face them without soft concealments. Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor's terms imposed upon the vanquished. It would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory, upon which terms of peace would rest, not permanently, ...
— Why We are at War • Woodrow Wilson
... day for Helen Conway. She went to the mill with less bitterness than ever before—the sting of it all was gone—for she felt that she was helpless to the fate that was hers—that she was powerless in the hands ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... greater frequency of imitation with insects than with other animals, is probably the consequence of their small size; insects cannot defend themselves, excepting indeed the kinds furnished with a sting, and I have never heard of an instance of such kinds mocking other insects, though they are mocked; insects cannot easily escape by flight from the larger animals which prey on them; therefore, speaking ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... act Roma seemed to feel a sting on her arm where the Baron had touched it, and she was conscious of colouring up when the ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... it, and no one learned or taught it; the syllabus ignored it, because it led to nothing. For Fabre only, notwithstanding, it was his fixed idea, his constant preoccupation, and "while the dictation class was busy around him, he would examine, in the secrecy of his desk, the sting of a wasp or the fruit of the oleander," and intoxicate himself with poetry. (1/9.) His pedagogic studies suffered thereby, and the first part of his stay at the normal school was by no means extremely brilliant. In the middle of his second year he was declared idle, and even marked as ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... first critical labour, grudgingly bestows a moderated praise on this exquisite satire, which he characterises for "its airy petulance, suitable enough to the levity of the controversy." He compared this attack "to a fly, which may sting and tease a horse, but yet the horse is the nobler animal."[176] Among the prejudices of criticism, is one which hinders us from relishing a masterly performance, when it ridicules a favourite author; but to us, mere historians, truth will ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... it isn't an estate," said Lasse suddenly, in order to take the sting out of further criticism. Pelle was ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... little devil in the shape of an octopus was in Tene-napa's brain. And he gave instructions how to get the fiend out, and also further instructions to one of the girl attendants to fix, point-upwards, in the sick woman's mat the foto, or barb of the sting-ray. So when Kennedy, who, in his rough, careless way, had some feint fondness for the woman who three years ago he went mad over, heard a loud cry in the night and was told that Tenenapa was dead, he did not know that as the sick woman lay on her side the watchers had quietly ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... have a point of interrogation after them, to mean, "Is it thus far ye suffer?" "Is this the limit of your patience?" but I do not know. With the words, "he touched his ear and healed him." Hardly had the wound reached the true sting of its pain, before the gentle hand of him whom the servant had come to drag to the torture, dismissed the agony as if it had never been. Whether he restored the ear, or left the loss of it for a ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... hunger that I might eat, Would take the bitter and leave me the sweet; But once, when I made her jealous for fun At something I whispered or looked or done, One Sunday, in San Antonio, To a glorious girl in the Alamo, She drew from her garter a little dagger, And—sting of a wasp—it made me stagger! An inch to the left, or an inch to the right, And I shouldn't be maundering here tonight; But she sobbed, and sobbing, so quickly bound Her torn rebosa about the wound That I swiftly forgave her. Scratches don't count In Texas, ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... sea-wall is the first proof. All right! If any one wants to fight us he shall find that we know how to fight back, and that we can hit hard. Harry, from this minute on we're after those crooks, and we'll make them realize that there's some sting ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... street, on which abutted the gardens of the houses of its more aristocratic neighbour, Napier Terrace. Once, in a moment of unbridled temper, Vie Vernon had alluded to the Garnett residence as being located "at our back door," and though she had speedily repented, and apologised, even with tears, the sting remained. ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... embarrassing one; it was exactly what he supposed it would be in case they ever met again—a blending on his part of curiosity, admiration, and reminiscent suffering out of which time and experience had taken the sting. He retained the memory of a minute of intense astonishment once upon a time, followed by some weeks, some months perhaps, of angry humiliation; but the years between twenty-four and thirty-three are long and varied, ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... that covered the street, and wafting it along for a few yards, drop again to its repose, till another stronger gust, prelusive of the wind about to rise at sun-down,—a wind cold and bitter as death—would rush over the street, and raise a denser cloud of the white water-dust to sting the face of any improbable person who might meet it in its passage. It was a keen, knife-edged frost, even in the house, and what Robert saw to make him stand at the desolate window, I do not know, and I believe he could not himself have told. There he did stand, however, ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... underwent further a constant, irregular pillage by gangs of mounted rascals who claimed attachment, some to the British, some to the Americans, but were not owned by either. It was, too, overridden by the cavalry of both sides in attempts to surprise outposts, cut off supplies, and otherwise harass and sting. Unexpected forays by the rangers and dragoons from King's Bridge and the Harlem were reciprocated by sudden visitations of American horse and light infantry from the Greenburg Hills and thereabove. ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... nought for me? To thee Come I, a poet, hereward haply blown, From out another worldflower lately flown. Wilt ask, 'What profit e'er a poet brings?' He beareth starry stuff about his wings To pollen thee and sting thee fertile: nay, If still thou narrow thy contracted way, — Worldflower, if thou refuse me — — Worldflower, if thou abuse me, And hoist thy stamen's spear-point high To wound my wing and mar mine eye — Nathless I'll drive me to thy deepest sweet, Yea, richlier ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... permitted him rapidly to run down into its consequence, and then brilliantly and wittily to skew its defects. In this he eminently excelled. The beauties of the anti-Jacobin are replete with his satire. He never attempted a display of depth, but his dry sarcasm left a sting which those he intended to wound carried off 'in pain and mortfication'. This scheme of Pantisocracy excited a smile among the kind-hearted and thinking part of mankind; but, among the vain and restless ignorant would-be-political economists, it met with more attention; and they, ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... cheerily exclaimed the skipper, as Singleton ran up the ladder on to the top of the deck-house. "Glorious morning, isn't it? But it is going to be roasting hot a little later on; the sun has a sting already, in spite of ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... their kindness, but the sentiment she entertained for them was more like filial love than gratitude. For the first time she realized that she was a pensioner on another's bounty, and felt the sharp sting ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... these, while they added to his sense of loss and loneliness, yet took so much of the sting out of Mr. Bruce's great sorrow, that he could realise it for minutes at a time without being goaded to madness or stunned to ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... to a chair. His hands were then untied, the coat sleeve cut away and an examination made of his injury. It proved not serious. The man told Bob where to find a bottle of iodine. He winced under the sting of its application, but made no outcry. Then a rough bandage was made of clean handkerchiefs, and the boys stood back to examine their handiwork, for all had taken part in ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... the list of Roman satirists, properly speaking. The satirical spirit animates the piquant epigrams of his friend Martial, but their purpose is not moral or didactic. They sting the individual, and render him an object of scorn and disgust, but they do not hold up vice itself to ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... pitiless judgment she watched her mother. Either Grace was very big, or very indifferent to the sting of old Anthony's tongue. Sometimes women suffered much in silence, because they loved greatly. Like Aunt Elinor. Aunt Elinor had loved her husband more than she had loved her child. Quite calmly Lily decided that, as between her husband and herself, her mother loved her husband. Perhaps ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... a memory, and a sting too. Yes, my lord—since you are good enough to call me venomous. [To CANYNGE] I quite understand—I'm marked for Coventry now, whatever happens. Well, I'll ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... sorrow and tumult wherever it comes. It takes away the sense of sin. It gives us, instead of the torpid conscience, or the angrily-stinging conscience—a conscience all calm from its accusations, with all the sting drawn out of it:—for quiet peace lies in the heart of the man that is trusting in the Lord. The Gospel works joy, because the soul is at rest in God; joy, because every function of the spiritual nature has ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... their sides. Unluckily, we had to camp for one night in this region; but we partly evaded the ravenous things by banking up our tent walls with earth, and then, before turning in, sweeping and smoking out such as had got inside. Yet with all this there seemed hundreds left to sing and sting throughout the night. The mules being without protection, we tried hard to save them from the vicious insects by creating a dense smoke from a circle of smothered fires, within which chain the grateful brutes gladly stood; but this relief was only ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 6 • P. H. Sheridan
... her go, because he's in the habit of letting her do whatever she wants to do, fancying (and she fancies it, too) that he is master. You see, we thought it was only a fatigue-headache. Foolishly, we didn't connect it with the sting, for Julian O'Farrell was bitten, too, and didn't ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... and lashed out a random fist, which struck Lanyard's cheek a glancing blow that carried just enough sting to kindle resentment. So the virtuous householder was rather more than unceremonious about yanking the princely housebreaker inside and lending him a foot to accelerate his return to the living-room; where Victor brought up, on all-fours again, in almost ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... Water, the ranch owner rode rapidly over the sun-baked ground, too full of rage to take notice of anything except his own helplessness. The sting of Jensen's impudence lay in Wade's realization that to enlist the aid of the sheriff against the sheep man would be very difficult, if not altogether impossible. There was very little law in that region, and what little ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... Two years ago he had seemed a fellow for whom life was over; driven into the ground like a post, or like those Chinese criminals who are planted upright in the earth, with only their heads left out for birds to peck at and insects to sting. All his comrades had been tucked away in prairie towns, with their little jobs and their little plans. Yet here they were, attended by unknown ships called in from the four quarters of the earth. How had they come to be worth the watchfulness and devotion of so many ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... wind had a clean sweep her tracks were filling already with snow. If she did not wait, and if Jack got away now, they couldn't track him at all. She really owed him that much of a chance to beat them. She put up her muff, shielded her face from the sting of frozen snowflakes, and went on, buffeted down the steep slope where Kate had sprained her ankle, and thinking that she must be careful where she set her feet, because it would be frightful if she had such ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... happens to be dangerously in love, but a woman hurt as Ann had been hurt does not stop to count risks, but only seeks blindly for something—anything—that may serve to distract her thoughts and keep at bay memories of which the smart and sting is too ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... wind which struck the vessel with increasing violence had swept unimpeded over 5000 miles of ocean and carried in their breath the edge of the Arctic frost. The sleet felt warm compared with it, and the flying spray lost its sting. ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... not dangerous and flee before men if they possibly can, else they are usually beaten to death. The rattlesnakes, however, which have a rattle on the tail, with which they rattle very loudly when they are angry or intend to sting, and which grows every year a joint larger, are very malignant and do not readily retreat before a man or any other creature. Whoever is bitten by them runs great danger of his life, unless great care be taken; but fortunately they are not numerous, ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... upon the President and opposed the attack. "Mr. President," he said, "at this time, it is suicide, murder, and will lose us every friend at the North. You will wantonly strike a hornet's nest which extends from mountains to ocean, and legions, now quiet, will swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary; it puts us in the wrong; it is fatal." He clung to the idea expressed in his dispatches to the commissioners, that "So long as the United States neither declares war nor establishes peace, the Confederate ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... slay, and scorpions sting? Because it is their nature, I suppose," replied Master Putnam philosophically. "Because, Mistress Dulcibel openly ridiculed and denounced her and the whole witchcraft business. And you will note that there has not been a single instance of this being done, that the circle of ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... mothers used to sit surrounding their son and every one giving him such objects as might conduce to his enjoyment and pleasure. And it came to pass that one day an ant stung the boy at his hip. And the boy screamed loudly on account of the pain caused by the sting. And forthwith the mothers were exceedingly distressed to see how the child had been stung by the ant. And they stood around him and set up cries. Thus there arose a tumultuous noise. And that scream of pain suddenly ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... 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
... petition, added the express condition[32], that no allusion should be made to Marigni's tragical end. The monument was destroyed in the revolution; but the murder of the treasurer is one of those "damned spots," which will never be washed out of the history of France.—Charles de Valois soon felt the sting of remorse; and within a year from the wreaking of his vengeance, he caused alms to be publicly distributed in the streets of Paris, with an injunction to every one that received them, "to pray to God for the souls of Enguerrand de Marigni, and Charles de Valois, taking care ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... sting or smart. Amazement and then darkness sweeping over everything. The hot, brutal face before me, the face of the man who had killed me, seemed to recede. ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... humming, and whirring, and swarming that every one was uneasy and afraid, and on both sides they advanced against each other. But the willow-wren sent down the hornet, with orders to get beneath the fox's tail, and sting with all his might. When the fox felt the first sting, he started so that he drew up one leg, with the pain, but he bore it, and still kept his tail high in the air; at the second sting, he was forced to put it down for ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... Waterfowl as might be surprised had failed, and his very life depended on food, would not there be much eating off the body of this Bull Buffalo? Therefore let him wax fat. At first A'tim only thought of it just a little—a flash-light of evil, like the sting of a serpent; but daily it grew stronger. What was Shag to him? He was not of his kind. If, when they came to the Northland, to the forests of the Athabasca, the Wapoos were in the year of plague, and all other animals had fled the boundaries because of this, ...
— The Outcasts • W. A. Fraser
... in autumn and winter precede damp weather, and we will stake our reputation as a prophet that three successive white frosts are an infallible sign of rain. Spiders do not spin their webs out of doors before rain. Previous to rain flies sting sharper, bees remain in their hives or fly but short distances, and almost all ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... frightened me so badly, I had heard of men in their sleep being attacked by the white ants, and bitten to death. Such memories came crowding upon me at the moment, until I felt certain, that if I did not soon escape from that spot, the ants would sting me to death ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... no further resistance. Now I should as soon say a wasp reasoned because a stingless drone, or male, when you capture him, will make all the motions with its body, curving and thrusting, that its sting-equipped fellows do. This action is from an inherited instinct, and is purely automatic. The wasp is not putting up a bluff game; it is really trying to sting you, but has not the weapon. The shell-less crab quickly reacts at your approach, as is its nature to do, and then quickly ceases its defense ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... or more, with a fly in her grasp, with which she re-enters her mine. On again emerging, the entrance is carefully closed with sand. During this interval she has laid an egg on the body of the fly which she had previously benumbed with her sting, and which is to serve as food for the soft, footless grub soon to be hatched from the egg. From what I could make out, the Bembex makes a fresh excavation for every egg to be deposited; at least in two or three of the galleries which I opened there ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... sting, but they may infest the victuals," said Miss Allan, and measures were taken at once to divert the ants from their course. At Hewet's suggestion it was decided to adopt the methods of modern warfare against an invading army. The table-cloth ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... the nail on the head," replied the other. "And like everything that Percy manages, it is gotten up in a way to sting. We might decline an ordinary, everyday challenge; but he manages to fix it so that you've just got to accept, or be ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... you like to know where? Yah!" And to Alma's horror slapped her quite roundly across the cheek so that for an hour the sting, the shape of the red print of fingers, lay on ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... itself shall then be vanquished And his sting shall be withdrawn; Shout for gladness, oh, ye ransomed Hail with joy ...
— The Otterbein Hymnal - For Use in Public and Social Worship • Edmund S. Lorenz
... "Louis flowers" or Fleurs de lys. The origin dates back to the time of the early Egyptians, who symbolised their kings under this emblem, the honey indicating the reward they gave to the well-doers, and the sting the punishment they inflicted on the evil. More than 300 golden bees were found in the tomb of Childeric, A.D. 1653. Offer your song to some composer. Sometimes they are in request; more frequently there are more offered than are required. ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various
... reptiles, for whose sting there is no remedy, and if you would like to have a list of these interesting creatures, according to the names by which they are known in these parts, I can furnish you with one from the best authority. These, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... everybody's shortcomings and mistakes that Aunt Kate forgot that the Doctor was a stranger; and with this forgetfulness the sharp pang of humiliation at a stranger's knowledge of such a family difficulty, and the little sting of resentment at Ally's attitude towards them all, was overborne to such an extent that she could frankly admit that her husband was right, and that none of them had had love and patience enough to help the child to fit into the ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... to thank us for. Never crossed our door-sill since we returned home! Does not your conscience sting ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... they reached the school grounds, and directly Waterman's ears caught the suggestion of a jibe—and he had rather sharp ears considering how lazy he was—he would start whistling a popular tune, so that the jibe had a good deal of the sting taken from it by the time ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... joy, chastised and pure, Beyond the bounds of earth endure; Nor pleasure in the wounded mind Shall leave a rankling sting behind. ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... up in the night, opened the case, and touched the strings. This furtive touch merely served to whet his appetite, and he tried the bow. Then he began to play very softly; then, carried away with enthusiasm, he played louder and louder, until suddenly he felt the sharp sting of his father's whip across his shoulders, and the little violin fell to the floor ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... read the brotherly tribute in the new issue of The Hornet, and Xoa's eyes glistened behind her spectacles, though she decorously deplored the heat of the sting dealt by Usial. Frank, watching her efforts to hide mirth and display womanly concern at this distressing affair between brothers, forgot some of his own troubles in his amusement. Therefore the Squire's tactics were successful, and the talk at the supper table over the hot biscuits and ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... forth the length of the little building. He could not sleep. Tomorrow he was to be shot! Bridge did not wish to die. That very morning General Villa in person had examined him. The general had been exceedingly wroth—the sting of the theft of his funds still irritated him; but he had given Bridge no inkling as to his fate. It had remained for a fellow-prisoner to do that. This man, a deserter, was to be shot, so he said, with Bridge, a fact which gave him an additional twenty-four hours of life, since, he ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Thus the sting would have lost its venom for the Home-Davises, but Elinor, fearing disaster, cut the sentence short. "Oh, for mercy's sake, mother, let Mary have her own way," she broke in. "You can see she means to in the end, so why disturb yourself? ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... clothes and skin. Tree-snakes turn the Kru-boys not pale but the colour of boiled liver; their 'bowels fail them,' as the natives say. Each tree has its ant, big or small, black or red; and all sting more or less. We see their armies marching up the trunks, and the brush of a bough brings down a little shower. Monstrous mangrove-flies and small brown-coloured 'huri,' most spiteful biters, and wasps here and there, assail the canoe; and we ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... A rattlesnake had given her its fatal sting, and the outcast, dreading all men and the coroner not the least, had, silently and alone, ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... beneath the bottom of the sea, are so rich they do not know how rich they are. But it is a peril to be rich. Jesus, Paul and Solomon unite in saying so, and it is especially a peril when wealth comes suddenly. When a man starts poor, and has felt the sting of contempt because of his poverty, and then finds himself rich and prosperous and flattered, and tempted to indulge in every luxury, then this man is in great peril; and there is no security against this danger like using the wealth that God has given him ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... ranting round in Pleasure's ring, [frolicking] Religion may be blinded; Or, if she gie a random sting, It may be little minded; But when on life we're tempest-driv'n— A conscience but a canker— A correspondence fix'd wi' Heav'n Is sure a ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... "It would sting you, and bleed you into the bargain," returned the lawyer with some contempt. "No one makes mosey out of newspapers in these times. If I had money, I would be a deputy. With prudence there is much to be earned in the Chambers, and petitioners know ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... him, Guarini chose to adopt the attitude of a guardian of morals, and Bellarmino's words clearly possessed a special sting. This pose was in truth but a part of the general attitude he assumed towards the author of the Aminta. His superficial propriety authorized him, in his own eyes, to utter a formal censure upon the amorous dream ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... heavy work with Lionel. He had destroyed his own happiness—that was nothing; he could battle it out, and nobody be the wiser or the worse, save himself; but he had blighted Lucy's. There was the sting that tortured him. A man of sensitively refined organisation, keenly alive to the feelings of others—full of repentant consciousness when wrong was worked through him, he would have given his whole future life and all its benefits, to undo the work of the last few months. Either ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... his rear were already clambering over the corral fence. One of them had a scarlet handkerchief around his neck. Beaudry fired from his hip and the vivid kerchief lurched forward into the dust. Almost at the same moment a sharp sting in the fleshy part of his leg told the officer that ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... 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, nor the fury of a prophet (of which my author speaks), in his ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... be well trained. Horace said to me yesterday, "If every one would kill adders they would come to sting less." I answered: "Of course they would, for there would be fewer." He replied indignantly: "I did not mean that; but the timid adders which run away would be saved, and in time would never sting at all." Natural ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... Haughton; it would be easier to name an antidote for the sting of the snake than for the ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... discharging, at the same time, an acrid fluid from them, which caused the pain he felt. We all laughed at him at first very much; but he suffered so considerably during the day from the effects of the sting, that the more humane really pitied him, in spite of the ridiculous ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... douloureux [Fr.], toothache, tormina^, torticollis^. spasm, cramp; nightmare, ephialtes^; crick, stitch; thrill, convulsion, throe; throb &c (agitation) 315; pang; colic; kink. sharp pain, piercing pain, throbbing pain, shooting pain, sting, gnawing pain, burning pain; excruciating pain. anguish, agony; torment, torture; rack; cruciation^, crucifixion; martyrdom, toad under a harrow, vivisection. V. feel pain, experience pain, suffer pain, undergo pain &c n.; suffer, ache, smart, bleed; tingle, shoot; twinge, twitch, lancinate^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... lifting up her hands, "what terrible thing has happened? O Ralph, Ralph, thy silly gostering speeches, I do fear me, have had a sting in their tail thou hast little ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... ignorance of the past combines with his idealization of the present to mislead and flatter him. Our latest book on the new railway across Asia describes the dulness of the Siberian farmer and the vulgar pursepride of the Siberian man of business without the least consciousness that the sting of contemptuous instances given might have been saved by writing simply "Farmers and provincial plutocrats in Siberia are exactly what they are in England." The latest professor descanting on the civilization of the Western Empire in the fifth ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... glance of a basilisk. The Assessor was less noisy and less given to gestures than the Notary, thinner and shorter; but he was terrible at masquerade, ball, or village diet, for they said of him that he had a sting in his tongue. He could make up such witty jests that you might have had them printed in the almanac; they were all so malicious and pointed. He had formerly been a man of property, but he had entirely squandered his inheritance from his father, and his brother's estate as well, through cutting ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... scoundrel, a vulgar profligate with a handsome face and a few cheap talents—had he not been reduced to stealing the picture of his friend?—whom these two women had loved, to whom one of them was married. Ah, the sting of it lay there! Good or bad, he was Eve's husband, and she was his wife, bound to him until the end. And then, for the first time, seeing her there, helpless and terrified, in her forlorn prettiness, he deceived himself no longer, wrapped up his tenderness for ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... no guilt; I feel no remorse; I need no repentance. For me justice has no terrors, and conscience no sting. Let me be judged solely by the motives which actuated me, and the importance of the end accomplished, and I shall pass, unscathed, both temporal ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... was alarmed and buzzing like a hornet's nest. Soon they would feel the sting of the swarm unless they beat an immediate retreat. One sweep of his eyes told the bandy-legged fellow as much. He could hear voices crying the alarm, could see men running to and fro farther down the street. ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... and you should mind. I know you've had one o' they jelly-fish float up agen yer face, and they sting dreadful sometimes." ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... would be sweet to humiliate the Delancy and Schuyler Blunt set, as Henderson could. But what would she gain by that? It would be sweeter still to put them under obligations, and profit by that. She had endured a good many social rebuffs in her day, this tolerant little woman, and the sting of their memory could only be removed when the people who had ignored her had to seek social favors she could give. If Henderson only cared as much for such things as she did! But he was at times actually brutal about it. He seemed to have only one ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... neither joy nor honor, but shall moulder to dry ashes in his grasp. In the midst of his exultation, it pierces his ear with the cry of injured Justice; it denounces against him the indignation of an enlightened and civilized age; it turns to bitterness the cup of his rejoicing, and wounds him with the sting which belongs to the consciousness of having outraged the opinion of mankind. ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... "Gives me a sharp sting, sir, at times, back and front; but I always find that it is when we are going to have ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... preference to any other fish. Here in Peru the nofu would bury itself in the soft sand and watch for its prey, and could always be taken with a hook. And yet in Eastern Polynesia and in the Equatorial Islands of the Pacific many deaths have occurred through the sting of this fish, children invariably succumbing to tetanus within twenty-four ...
— John Corwell, Sailor And Miner; and, Poisonous Fish - 1901 • Louis Becke
... trap—sugar on the outside of a pill! The sting's in the tail of it. They're all like ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... Ivan; "I would love them better than all the wealth in the world! I would love them better than my own life! Ah, the sting it is to think of my ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May
... good deal. I think the Grays'll make a snappy resistance," said the brigade commander honestly. "The way we feel them out, they're getting back their wind, and for the first time we'll be fighting them up-hill. Yes, there's a sting in a retreating army's tail when it ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... would courage consist?—but I say it should be assuaged by patience, if there be such a thing as patience: if there be no such thing, why do we speak so in praise of philosophy? or why do we glory in its name? Does pain annoy us? Let it sting us to the heart: if you are without defensive armor, bare your throat to it; but if you are secured by Vulcanian armor, that is to say by resolution, resist it. Should you fail to do so, that guardian of ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... grow; judges and rewards; owes and pays; inhale and exhale; expand and contract; flutters and alights; fly, buzz, and sting; restrain or punish. ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... a man surrenders his imagined individual rights, of whatever sort. That takes away one keen sting which is common to ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... enjoying the advantages and exposed to the dangers of sisterhood. The dangers are as real, though we trust not as great, as the advantages. Family quarrels are apt to be bitterest; a chance word will seem unkind and unbearable from a near kinsman, which, coming from a stranger, would carry no sting at all. As Lowell very truly said, "The common blood, and still more the common language, are fatal instruments of misapprehension." But behind this statement there lies a far deeper though still obvious ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... breeds endless fun, and makes men jump like rockets, And turnip-heads on posts Make very decent ghosts: Then hornets sting like anything, when placed in waist-coat pockets - Burnt cork and walnut juice Are not without their use. No fun compares with easy chairs whose seats are stuffed with needles - Live shrimps their patience tax When put down people's backs - Surprising, too, what one can ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... attraction; or the coarse taunt which, by shameless implication, unjustly accuses the soldier of cowardice, the diplomat of having betrayed the secrets of his country, or the lawyer of having sold his brief. All the more, therefore, was it to Morris's credit that he felt the lash sting without a ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... Bertie. Cecil shut the instrument, and effected a strategical retreat to her bed-room, where, in the luxury of solitude, she might worry and torment herself to her heart's content. His absence was trial enough, but the sting lay in the way it was done, which was such a proof of indifference, that shame urged her to crush out all thoughts of him, and suffer anything rather than let him see the impression his careless affection had ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... would leave a very uncomfortable sting behind—the sting of cowardice," said Rose Tuttle, with very red cheeks. "I tell you what, my dear fellow sophs," she went on, after an irresolute pause, "if Miss Minturn had given us away to-day every mother's daughter of us would have called her a 'spy' ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... Red Cross building across the road, according to his company. One soldier with a torn thumb cried bitterly, looking at his thumb and shaking his head at it, but he alone showed any emotion. The others suffered the sting of the iodine without a word, walking off when they were bandaged, or carried by our sanitars on the stretchers, still with that look of wonder and trust ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... and warrior's hatred sting them to their dying breath, For they feared my boy in battle, hunted ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... therefore perhaps, he shall never after win thereto. Isidore tells of a little fly that is called Saura, and this fly betokens grace stirring beforehand. This kind of fly is said to be the enemy of all venomous worms, so that when he sees any worm (going) toward man to sting him when he sleeps in the wilderness; he flies before to the man, and lights upon his face, and bites him a little; and therethrough he wakes before the beast comes to sting him. By this Saura is understood grace that GOD sends to man against the temptations of the fiend, who often stings ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole
... this fact because it "points a moral and adorns a 'tail.'" The French always give this extra touch. Everything has its silk snapper. Are not the literary whips of Paris famous for their rhetorical tips and the sting there is in them? What French writer ever goaded his adversary with the belly of his lash, like the Germans and the English, when he could blister him with its silken end, and the percussion of wit be ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... it was Spartan, she was totally destitute of the knicknacks so dear to the girlish heart, and though she had grown used to looking at grapes like Reynard in the fable, I am sure she often felt the sting of her grandfather's needless, almost cruel, economy. This was evidenced by what was ever after spoken of by us ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... right. But no, I had to come racing off here in the hot sun and I knew I oughtn't to, and then I went into the blackberry patch and I knew I hadn't any right to, and all I got to say is, it's a wonder a hundred bees didn't sting me instead of one. ...
— A Little Question in Ladies' Rights • Parker Fillmore
... minister might treat a queen, his tendency to conversation with Rachel was becoming marked, and she grew increasingly prone to consult him. The interest of this new intercourse quite took out the sting of disappointment, when again Curatocult came back, "declined with thanks." Nay, before making a third attempt she hazarded a question on his opinion of female authorship, and much to her gratification, and ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "widow" Bertie actually blushes. There is more sting in this light chaff than his comrades suppose, for the vision of a villa at Richmond with its dark-haired divinity rises between the dust of the two carriages, soothing his ruffled feelings and drowning Eleanor's fair form in ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... this one's message be that which is first spoken, so that the later and more enduring words of our remembrance may be devoid of sting. A star has shone across my mediocre path which now an envious cloud has conspired to obscure. This meeting will doubtless be ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... from out my ear, you Ants, Come and sting the Elephants; Sting their trunk, and sting their head, Sting them ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... words!" says Hamlet, disparagingly. But God preserve us from the destructive power of words! There are words which can separate hearts sooner than sharp swords—there are words whose sting can remain in the heart through ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... not sting, but there was a large red ant, half an inch long, who was most pugnacious; he stood up on his hind legs and fought you with amazing courage, and his jaws were formidable. We made our first acquaintance with white ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... was a sharp sting in his right shoulder. The knife had missed his breast—the sudden swerving had saved him. Even as it struck, he threw himself on his assailant. Then came a struggle. The long fingers of the man with the white beard clove to the knife like a dead soldier's to the handle of a sword. Twice ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... like an actual whip, and under the sting of it he barely followed the meaning of what came after. He was so staggered that he ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... wharf,[105] Wouldst thou not stir in this. Now, Hamlet, hear: 'Tis given out that, sleeping in mine orchard,[106] A serpent stung me; so the whole ear of Denmark Is by a forged process[107] of my death Rankly abus'd: but know, thou noble youth, The serpent that did sting thy father's life Now ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... me, but I do not love you?' And what right had I to hint the same thing by my actions, at the cost of utter misapprehension and pain to her? Mrs. Simcoe, I do love Hope Wayne too tenderly, and respect her too truly, not to try to protect her against the sting of her own womanly pride. And so I have not staid away. I have not avoided a woman in whom I must always have so deep and peculiar an interest, I have been friend and almost father, and never by a whisper even, by a look, by a possible hint, have I ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... suavely enough, but a half-uttered protest from Captain Stanhill indicated that he, at least, realized the sting contained within it. But Miss Heredith, looking at Merrington with her ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... never reproached her, not by a look. I saw her point of view. My infernal failing, even then. Not by a look I ever reproached her. I thought I'd forgotten it, absolutely. But I haven't. It came out in that moment that I haven't. 'The life you've—taken!' I meant it to sting. Damn me, it did sting. That look she gave! As if I had struck her.—What rot! How could it sting her? How could she mind? Only ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... silk stockings off and started barefoot. That was not pleasant either; her feet were very tender and the pebbles and ruts of the road hurt them. Her blistered heels smarted. But physical pain was almost forgotten in the sting of humiliation. This was a nice predicament! If Kenneth Ford could see her now, limping along like a little girl with a stone bruise! Oh, what a horrid way for her lovely party to end! She just had to cry—it ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... called upon to estimate his weight, I give it as 11 lb., much to the Twins' sorrow—they think it 15 lb. Half an hour passes, and we catch but half a dozen silvery bream and some small baby whiting, for now the sun is beating down upon our heads, and our naked feet begin to burn and sting; so we adjourn to the old house and rest awhile, leaving our big lines securely tied. But, though the breeze for which we wait comes along by two o'clock, the fish do not, and so, after disinterring our takes from the wet sand, wherein we had buried ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... several long resolutions, with names telling whom they were by, Canonizing some harmless old brother who had done nothing worse than to die; There were traps on that table to catch him, and serpents to sting and to smite him; There were gift enterprises to sell him, and bitters attempting to bite him; There were long staring "ads" from the city, and money with never a one, Which added, "Please give ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton
... from Babylon, Out of the plains and the glare, To the little hills of our own country And the sting of our kindred air; To the rickle of stones on the red rock's edge Which Kedron cleaves like a sword. We will build the walls of Zion again, To the glory of ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... It was the sting of shame which this last thought aroused, following in the train of her bitter reasoning, that caused her to quicken her pace and clinch her hands. That same pride, which had been her ally hitherto, had come to her rescue once more. She said to herself that she had done what ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... that effect. "But remember that it is our duty to seek diligently for all who may be opposed to our order and system, and to destroy them without compunction, with their wives and children, so that none of the viper's brood remains to sting us." ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston
... of pain and death, this noble contempt, so universal amongst the men of that time, deprived cruelty of its sting. Our degenerate race has scarcely a conception of the strength which made the men of past times find a pleasure even in pains, since they spurred their courageous souls to the highest pitch of heroism; since in such moments they ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... had studied human nature deeply, and he knew that of all the torments which afflict the mind of man (and far beyond bodily torture), the pains of jealousy were the most intolerable, and had the sorest sting. If he could succeed in making Othello jealous of Cassio, he thought it would be an exquisite plot of revenge, and might end in the death of Cassio or Othello, or both; he ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... these evils should die with me, but you have won me to alter my determination. You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did; and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been. I do not know that the relation of my disasters will be useful to you; yet, when I reflect that you are pursuing the same course, exposing yourself to the same dangers which have rendered me what I am, I imagine that you may deduce an apt moral from my tale, one ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... again. A figure darted out from behind a tree, an instinct rather than reason caused the artist to guard himself by throwing up his left arm. He caught the knife thrust in the fleshy part of it, and the pain was like the red-hot sting of a gigantic wasp. It flashed through his brain then that the term cold steel was a misnomer. The next moment his right hand had brought down the heavy knob of his stout stick on the curly head of the Italian, and Pietro fell like a log at his feet. Standish set his teeth, and as gently as possible ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... man devote to grief before he begins to enjoy? A great man must keep his heir at his feast like a living memento mori. If he holds very much by life, the presence of the other must be a constant sting and warning. "Make ready to go," says the successor to your honour; "I am waiting: and I could hold it ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... responsibility. Shut up in a barn with a furious woman, in a lawless defence of questionable rights—with the added consciousness that an equally questionable passion had drawn him into it, and that SHE knew it—death seemed to offer the only escape from the explanation he could never give. If another sting could have been added it was the absurd conviction that Cressy would not appreciate his sacrifice, but was perhaps even at that moment calmly congratulating herself on the felicitousness of the complication in which she ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... for him the country itself must have burned out the hornets' nest, and the tax-payer paid, and paid dearly. For there would have been talk of the expedition beforehand, the force would have found an enemy prepared and fortified. The hornets could sting too! Whereas Drake had burned them out before they had time to buzz. He need not have said one word in exculpation of himself, and that indeed he knew. But he had interests and ambitions of his own to serve; a ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... though couched in seemingly courteous language, contained the most aggravating sort of sting, in the hope expressed that the Kearsarge would not leave until the Alabama was ready to go out, and the intimation—undoubtedly false—that the sole business of the Union vessel was to take charge of the prisoners ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... You can scarce refuse it, for your own dignity, to one who is a plexus of weaknesses. Nor was the fault entirely mine. Had the papers been innocent, it would have been at most an indiscretion. Your own guilt is the sting of my offence." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tremulous old lady. "You have drawn the sting of yours and kept only the honey," which saying astonished Charles greatly. He had no idea his mother could say things like that. She had had time to think plenty of them, indeed, but there had never been ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... great deal about it; and now it was getting to be a matter of course to oppose gentleness and a meek heart to all the trials that came upon her. In proportion as this was true, they grew easier to bear; far less hard and heavy; the sting seemed to be going out of them. Nevertheless the struggle and the sorrow and the confinement made the child's face grow thin and pale. Mrs. Candy said it ...
— Opportunities • Susan Warner |
