"Stinging" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... threatened that he would move the whole world to bring just retribution upon those who had participated in that night's work. And his threats and violence had been received with a tolerant laughter. A derision more stinging and ominous than ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... bottom moistened his fingers. Imber did not understand his speech, but the others did, and he knew that it made them angry. Sometimes it made them very angry, and once a man cursed him, in single syllables, stinging and tense, till a man at the table ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... emphasis—"but waiving all questions of propriety, I do feel that we should administer a stinging rebuke to the use of such appallingly infantile language by one of our students. Surely a man's culture should show itself, above all, in the addresses he pays to the young lady of his choice. What vanity to build and conduct a great institution of learning, such ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... stinging ray fish, and also the mullet were incarnations of Moso the strong in another family. If visitors or friends caught or brought with them either of these fish, a child of the family would be taken and laid down in an unheated oven, as a peace-offering ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... this, be sure, to-night thou shalt have cramps, Side-stitches that shall pen thy breath up; urchins Shall forth at vast of night that they may work All exercise on thee: thou shalt be pinch'd As thick as honeycomb, each pinch more stinging Than bees ...
— The Tempest • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... and elevating of what I recognized as myself. Whatever would make me greater, so that my torture, intensified, it might well be, should yet have room to dash itself hither and thither without injuring the walls of my being, would be welcome. If I might become so great that, my grief yet stinging me to agony, the infinite I of me should remain pure and calm, God-loving and man-cherishing, then I should be saved. God might be able to do more for me—I could not tell: I looked for no more. I would myself be such as to inclose my pain in a mighty sphere ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... more than a hint of snow in the sharp, stinging air this afternoon, even down in the valley, and now the keen wind from the northeast whipped up the faces of the two riders as they turned their horses at a sharp trot up the ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... hitched behind the Mackenzie River dogs, and while 'Merican Joe plodded ahead, Connie had all he could do at the tail rope. An hour later the wind suddenly changed and came roaring out of the north. The whole sky became overcast and stinging particles of flinty snow were driven against their faces. The storm increased in fury. The stinging particles changed to dry, powdery snow dust that whirled and eddied about them so thickly that Connie could not see the dogs from the rear of ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... of hunger, the sharp stinging thrusts of conscience were warring for the victory. Oh, those who have never known the pangs of hunger can but poorly imagine that fearful struggle. At last, thank God! Conscience ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... making for a sawmill where we expected to get work, and we were caught in one of those three-days' gales, with rain and hail in it and cold enough to cut off a man's legs. Camping out was not to be thought of, so we just tramped on in silence, with the stinging pain coming between our shoulder-blades—from cold, weariness, and the weight of our swags—and our boots, full of water, going splosh, splosh, splosh along the track. We were settled to it—to drag on like wet, weary, muddy working bullocks till ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... whole day to myself, and am as happy as a child on a picnic! I roam the beach, I take off my shoes and stockings—there are no newspaper reporters snapping pictures. I dare not go far in, for there are huge black creatures with dangerous stinging tails; they rush away in a cloud of sand when I approach, but the thought of stepping upon one by accident is terrifying. However, I let the little wavelets wash round my toes, and I try to grab little fish, and I pick up lovely shells; and then I go on, and I see a huge turtle ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... Sir, And what they have prepar'd for men turn'd Devils? Did you never hear their thunder? start and tremble, Death sitting on your bloud, when their fires visit us. Will nothing wring you then do you think? sit hard here, And like a Snail curl round about your Conscience, Biting and stinging: will you not roar too late then? Then when you shake in horrour of this Villainy, Then will I rise a Star in Heaven, and ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (2 of 10) - The Humourous Lieutenant • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... a lovely lane till they came to a gentle acclivity, by which time, having given vent to his exuberance, the pony settled down into a crawl. Vainly did Reginald crack his whip—vain even stinging switches on Robin's fat sides. Out of that crawl nothing could move him. The sun was gaining power with every moment, and blazing down upon the occupants of the car; but Robin cared not at all. He ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... the long river wave through its stone-troubled bound, And the crickets that sing all the night. There are hours Which belong to unknown, supernatural powers, Whose sudden and solemn suggestions are all That to this race of worms,—stinging creatures, that crawl, Lie, and fear, and die daily, beneath their own stings,— Can excuse the blind boast of inherited wings. When the soul, on the impulse of anguish, hath pass'd Beyond anguish, and risen into rapture at last; When ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... and by the light of the fire, the blanket bags in which the men sought to protect themselves, seemed literally black with their crawling and stinging persecutors. Woe to the unhappy wretch who had left unclosed the least hole in his bag; the persevering mosquitoes surely found it out, and as surely drove the luckless occupant out of his retreat. I noticed one man dressed as if in the frozen north, hold his bag over the fire till it was quite ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... biting, a. stinging, sharp, cutting, sarcastic, caustic, scathing, bitter, satirical, pungent, piquant; nipping, blasting; erosive, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... Here the guns are emplaced in ice caverns which can be reached only through tunnels cut through the drifts; here the men spend their days wrapped in shaggy furs, their faces smeared with grease as a protection from the stinging blasts, and their nights in holes burrowed in the snow, like the igloos of Esquimaux. On no front, not on the sun-scorched plains of Mesopotamia, nor in the frozen Mazurian marshes, nor in the blood-soaked ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... at some of the larger cracks between the logs, until they could thrust in their noses, he peeled a piece of tough bark from the side of the pen, and began striking at them, giving them many stinging blows. ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... weary of them, and their pain was pain to him. But beside emotion, and stronger than emotion, was the anger that August roused in him: he hated and despised himself for the barter of the heirloom of his race, and every word of the child stung him with a stinging sense of shame. ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... strange theology to the members of Mount Olivet Church. It was a stinging rebuke to their crooked ...
— The Deacon of Dobbinsville - A Story Based on Actual Happenings • John A. Morrison
... stinging-lizard!" responded the other affectionately. The cigars were brought and I felt constrained ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... Abolitionists by the thousand. The masses of any people, however intelligent, are very little moved by abstract principles of humanity and justice, until those principles are interpreted for them by the stinging commentary of some infringement upon their own rights, and then their instincts and passions, once aroused, do indeed derive an incalculable reinforcement of impulse and intensity from those higher ideas, those sublime traditions, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... WORDS.—It is necessary to one's personal happiness, to exercise control over one's words as well as acts: for there are words that strike even harder than blows; and men may "speak daggers," though they use none. The stinging repartee that rises to the lips, and which, if uttered, might cover an adversary with confusion, how difficult it is to resist saying it! "Heaven, keep us," says Miss Bremer, in her 'Home', "from the destroying power of words! There are words that sever hearts more ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... stinging degradation to me, almost an officer on the quarter-deck of one of his Majesty's frigates! However, without taking time to weigh exactly my own dignity, I seized a large slate, and, turning sharply round, sent it hissing into his very teeth. I wish I had knocked one or two of them out. I wished ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... the shore and was drifting out to sea. They hurried along the edge of it for some distance in the hope of finding a bridge to shore. In this they were disappointed. Beth could not swim. Fortunately the guide could. Leaping into the stinging water he swam from one cake to the next one, leading the dogs. Beth clung to the back of the sled and was thus brought ashore. After wading many swollen torrents, they at last reached Cape Prince of Wales in safety. ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... North-East wind blew up, sawing and fretting through the oaks in a way I remembered. The wildfire roared up, one last time in one sheet, and snuffed out like a rushlight, and a bucketful of stinging hail fell. We heard the Boy walking in the Long Slip—where ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... drive on, as he knew he should. Instead he stopped the car and got out to see if he could possibly "extract" her. Failing to frighten her into pulling herself out, he goaded her into a frenzy by throwing sharp stinging rocks at her. One landed on her tender flank and she tossed her horns and struggled. The Chief stooped, with his back to her, for another rock, just as ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... to have led a dissipated life, and to have mixed with very bad company. But he had kept out of reach of the law. A man may be a profligate vagabond; may insult a lady; may say threatening things to her, in the first stinging sensation of having his face slapped—but it doesn't follow from these blots on his character that he has murdered her husband in the dead ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... increasing wind and thickening storm all day, so that my afternoon train out was delayed and dropped me at the station long after dark. The roads were blocked, the snow was knee-deep, the driving wind was horizontal, and the whirling ice particles like sharp sand, stinging, blinding as I ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... his "noble army of martyrs" before the universe of men and angels, that army will not be found officered and led by just such women as these, who fought silently with the flesh and the Devil by their own hearth, quickened by no stinging excitement of battle, no thrill of splendid strength and fury in soul and body, no tempting delight of honor or even recognition from their peers,—upheld only by the dull, recurrent necessities ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... sleepless night, was so crowded and haunted by miserable images, that she longed for day; and when day came, with its stinging realities, she wearied and grew sick for the solitude of night. For the next week, she seemed to see and hear nothing but what confirmed the idea of Mr Farquhar's decided attachment to Ruth. Even her mother spoke of it as a thing which was impending, ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... without knowing the action and effect of objects on our senses: for example, when a man touches nettles without knowing their stinging quality, or when he swallows opium without ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... same, July 28.-Reflections on loss of youth. Entrance into old age through the gate Of infirmity. A month's confinement to a sick bed a stinging lesson. Whiggism—413 ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... with a disease the reverse to that called the stinging of the tarantula, and would run dog-mad at the noise of music, especially a pair of bagpipes {148a}. But he would cure himself again by taking two or three turns in Westminster Hall, or Billingsgate, or in a boarding-school, or the Royal Exchange, ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... abiding, calm, sorrowful conviction of the man's whole being. Sore must be the heart of the man of middle age, who often thinks that he is thankful his father is in his grave, and so beyond mourning over his son's sad loss in life. And even when the stinging sense of guilt is absent, it is a mournful thing for one to feel that he has, so to speak, missed stays in his earthly voyage, and run upon a mud-bank which he can never get off: to feel one's self ingloriously and uselessly stranded, while those who started ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... an oil from the species of the C. Guianensis, Aubl., with which the negroes anoint themselves to keep away stinging insects. Wood soaked in this oil ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... dumb in their trouble, not stinging back at her; not heeding her mood. A tenderness spread over Grace like a dew. It was well, very well, conventionally, to address either one of them in the wife's regulation terms of virtuous sarcasm, as woman, creature, or thing, for losing their hearts ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... across her eyes as if to shut out some dreadful vision, and seemed to cower and shrink as if some one was smiting her with a stinging lash. ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... she sat beside her dying fire trying to collect her faculties, and realize the extent of the calamity which had befallen her. The first, and, for the time, dominant emotion was a stinging sense of shame, an agony of rage and humiliation which tingled hotly through her, and caused her cheek to flame, and her body to writhe as from the lash of a whip. She had been degraded; an insult had been put upon her. Her eyes blazed, and her hands clinched. Oh, for strength to hurl ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... good shot slays a feather-decked pony and sends his rider sprawling, and wisely the others veer away to right and left and scurry to more distant range. But up the slopes to the south still others dart. From three sides now the Indian bullets are hissing in. In less than four minutes of sharp, stinging fight, gallant Sergeant Carey is stretched on the turf, with a shattered elbow, Corporal Burke and two troopers are shot dead, Loring, with white, set face and a scorching seam along the left cheek, seizes a dropped ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... love with life, Roaming like wild cattle, With the stinging air a-reel As a warrior might feel The swift orgasm of the knife Slay ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... out. Misery had betrayed her—her pet companion, her little dumb, loyal friend, whose companionship she had longed for for many days. She could hardly see Baker's movements through the stinging tears that ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... your pity. Never was any offence expiated with more stinging remorse; if you were to see his grief, it would touch your heart, and you would pardon him. It is well known that the Prince is of an age at which we abandon ourselves to first impressions; that in fiery ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere
... that a motion should be made for censuring ministers, without calling for papers, and without any allusion to the circumstances which had occurred in 1830 and 1831, and on which the interpretation of the treaty might in a great degree depend. After some stinging comments upon this speech, Sir Robert Peel wound up the debate in one of his most plausible parliamentary addresses. He clearly confuted the main arguments which Lord Althorp used, and produced an effect unfavourable to ministers. When the house divided, the previous question was carried ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the room, tripped, went to their knees, then rose, still intertwined in that desperate embrace. The odd, stiff feeling in Blake's side had increased rapidly; it began to numb his muscles and squeeze his lungs. His eyes were stinging with sweat and smoke; his ears were roaring. As they swayed and turned he saw that Margherita had made no effort to escape and he was seized with an extraordinary rage, which for a ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... secretly poisons their good conscience. Some disingenuity, some simulation or dissimulation of affection, some downright or constructive dishonesty, some lack towards some one of open and entire integrity, some breach of good faith in spirit if not in letter, some still stinging tresspass of the golden rule, some horn or hoof of the golden calf, the bitter dust of which they taste to this day in their sweetest cup and at their most grace-spread table. There are more men and women in the Church of Christ than any one would believe who sing with a ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... the sluggish blood, And dulls the tooth of pain. Ay—but within its glowing deeps A stinging serpent, unseen, sleeps. ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... than ever within himself, he became a still more ardent reader and student, devoting himself with passionate industry to examining the works of Rousseau, the poison of whose political doctrines instilled itself with fiery and grateful stinging into the thin, cold blood of the unhappy cadet. In many respects the instruction he received was admirable, and there is a traditional anecdote that he was the best mathematician in the school. But on the whole he profited little by the short continuation ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... him in a dazed manner, and yet again applied his handkerchief to his stinging eyes. Whoever could have seen him now must have failed to recognize the radiant Gianapolis so well-known in Bohemian society, the Gianapolis about whom floated a halo of mystery, but who at all times was such a good fellow and so debonair. He took up his hat ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... play no more. He was livid with rage. He had lost his wager (he had bet Abellino a thousand ducats that he would never seduce Fanny)—he had lost his money, and he had to bear, besides, the stinging sarcasms of his triumphant rival. His heart was full of gall and venom. More than once he was on the point of making a vigorous demonstration with a heavy candlestick; but he thought better of it, and at last got ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... observer of the perforators may soon learn to distinguish between a Xylocopa and a Bombus as they work among the flowers. It is also interesting to know that the Xylocopas are not so inclined to sting as the humble bees, and the males, of course, being without stinging organs, may be handled ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... louder now, gaining on the tired human. Legs aching and bruised, stinging from insect bites, Alan tried to force himself to run holding his hands in front of him like a child in the dark. His foot tripped on a barely visible insect hill and a winged swarm exploded around him. Startled, Alan jerked sideways, ...
— Survival Tactics • Al Sevcik
... contemporary literature," said Etienne, when they came away. "Poor Vernou cannot forgive us for his wife. He ought to be relieved of her in the interests of the public; and a deluge of blood-thirsty reviews and stinging sarcasms against successful men of every sort would be averted. What is to become of a man with such a wife and that pair of abominable brats? Have you seen Rigaudin in Picard's La Maison en Loterie? You have? Well, like Rigaudin, Vernou will not fight himself, but he will set others ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... of the passengers are heard to pause, and some well-known face appears in the free sunshine behind the iron bars, brimful of mirth and drollery, the owner whereof stands on tiptoe to tickle poor Dr. Bullivant with a stinging sarcasm. Then laugh the little boys around the prison door, and the wag goes chuckling away. The apothecary would fain retaliate, but all his quips and repartees, and sharp and facetious fancies, once so abundant, seem to have been transferred ...
— Dr. Bullivant - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... almost shrieked Mrs. Forest. "I stand none of your impudence!" And with these words her passion so took possession of her that she leaned forward and with her open hand struck her daughter a stinging blow on one of her cheeks. "You are fond of crying," she said, "so take ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... manhood, the courteous and self-possest tone, the flow of modulated speech, sparkling with matchless richness of illustration, with apt allusion and happy anecdote and historic parallel, with wit and pitiless invective, with melodious pathos, with stinging satire, with crackling epigram and limpid humor, like the bright ripples that play around the sure and steady prow of the resistless ship. Like an illuminated vase of odors, he glowed with concentrated and perfumed fire. The divine energy of ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... me, thus into timelessness. The stone beside us waxes old, the carven stone that says: "On this spot once Confucius stood and felt the smallness of the world below." The stone grows old: Eternity is not for stones. But I shall go down from this airy place, this swift white peace, this stinging exultation. And time will close about me, and my soul stir to the rhythm of the daily round. Yet, having known, life will not press so close, and always I shall feel time ravel thin about me; For once I stood In the white windy ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... chief, or our own Metis, might admire us in this costume, but the ladies of Captain Stephens' acquaintance would shrink from doing that in which we see naught amiss. He may think it indelicate and—." Once more the blood came stinging with a thousand sharp points in ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... moments after the stinging rebuff he had endured, Leopold felt that, if she did, it would be her turn to suffer, for he could never humble himself to implore for the second time. But, as he stood in the soft stillness of the night, gazing towards ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... tops, swayed to every wind, and drooped their graceful boughs earthward to shower the mossy sward with glittering leaves; heavy oaks turned purple-crimson through their wide-spread boughs; and the stately chestnuts, with foliage of tawny yellow, opened wide their stinging husks to let the nuts fall for squirrel and blue-jay. Splendid sadness clothed all the world, opal-hued mists wandered up and down the valleys or lingered about the undefined horizon, and the leaf-scented south wind sighed in the still ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... on their hats and undershirts as protection against sunburn. As Madden walked from the awning through the stinging sun rays, crimping up his naked feet from the blistering deck, ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... herein I took my chief delight, I saw (alas!) the gaping earth devour The spring, the place, and all clean out of sight— Which yet aggrieves my heart unto this hour.... At last, so fair a lady did I spy, That thinking yet on her I burn and quake, On herbs and flowers she walked pensively.... A stinging serpent by the heel her caught, Wherewith she languished as ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... himself understood if he told his secret to others. To the born Catholic there is no such difficulty. He is so fully accustomed to the verification of the inner action of God, enlightening his mind and stinging his conscience, by God's external action in the Church, that he often confounds the two. He knows the Voice better by its echo than by its own tones. There are many good Catholics, but few enlightened ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... the river, the boys crossed the old yard siding. Stumbling over the rails, partially blinded with the now stinging smoke, both suddenly ran into something, and fell in a heap. Scrambling to their feet, they found an ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... stinging pain in his left arm and, in a sudden access of weakness, he leaned for support against the doorway. His senses left him for a moment, and when he came to, he saw a company of soldiers passing the spot where he stood. The ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... white with anger, jumped to his feet and snatching Chula's bridle from Knight's hands, struck the mare a stinging blow with ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... thoughts I am conscious of a hand. Whatever moves me, whatever thrills me, is as a hand that touches me in the dark, and that touch is my reality. You might as well say that a sight which makes you glad, or a blow which brings the stinging tears to your eyes, is unreal as to say that those impressions are unreal which I have accumulated by means of touch. The delicate tremble of a butterfly's wings in my hand, the soft petals of violets curling ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... nor about her response to it. Her presence was treated by both of them as a basic fact of the situation which it would be well not to disturb by comment. Sophia could not hide her shame, but her shame only aggravated the stinging charm of her beauty. She was wearing a hard Amazonian hat, with a lifted veil, the final word of fashion that spring in the Five Towns; her face, beaten by the fresh breeze, shone rosily; her eyes glittered under the dark hat, and the violent colours of her Victorian frock— ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... to be ploughed: for, as the saying is, it lacketh weathering: this gear lacketh weathering; at least way it is not for me to plough. For what shall I look for among thorns, but pricking and scratching? What among stones, but stumbling? What (I had almost said) among serpents, but stinging? But this much I dare say, that since lording and loitering hath come up, preaching hath come down, contrary to the apostles' times: for they preached and lorded not, and now they lord and preach not. For they that be lords will ill go to plough: it is no meet office for them; ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer
... example, the cleaving to Him, the holding by His skirts or by His hand, and the treading in His footsteps, is the only way by which the heart can receive the solid satisfaction in which it rests, and the conscience can cease from accusing and stinging. The way of wisdom is a path of pleasantness and a way of peace. Only they who walk in Christ's footsteps have quiet hearts and are at amity with God, in concord with themselves, friends of mankind, and at peace with ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the window where her little riding-whip still lay, came back to her; and for the next few minutes she forgot mental distress in sharp, physical pain, as the stinging, though not heavy, blows fell thick and fast on her thinly ...
— Elsie's Kith and Kin • Martha Finley
... her right to such services. In fact they did not question either. To them she was a goddess and each loved her and each hoped that he would be chosen as her mate, so they slaved for her and bore the stinging lash of her displeasure and the habitually haughty disdain of her manner ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... out to him?" demanded the skipper, gripping the girl's shoulders with his great hands, and glaring down into her colorless face. For answer, she wrenched herself away, and struck him a stinging blow across the mouth with her ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... her knees, and rocked herself to and fro. A second blast of hot-stinging cold enveloped us; the moon shone out clear, and I saw her face—gaunt and ghastly, besmeared ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... connection with another; which other, perhaps, (except as a serviceable mask,) would have been a matter of indifference to their feelings. Anne would, therefore, reply to those inevitable reproaches which her own sense must presume to be lurking in her husband's heart, by others equally stinging, on his inability to support his family, and on his obligations to her father's purse. Shakspeare, we may be sure, would be ruminating every hour on the means of his deliverance from so painful a ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... mon ami?" said Calvert, touching a man on the shoulder who had been pushed close to the sleigh. The man addressed looked around. He was poorly and thinly clothed, with only a ragged muffler knotted about his throat to keep off the stinging cold. From under his great shaggy eyebrows a pair of wild, sunken eyes gleamed ferociously, but there was a smile ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... of St. Augustine, by the gale, I found beautifully luxuriant. In this place, it was my fate to experience the plague of sand-flies. Clouds of them came into the steamboat alighting on our faces and hands and stinging wherever they alighted. The little creatures got into our hair and into our eyes, and crawled up our sleeves and down our necks, giving us no rest, until late in the night the vessel left the wharf and stood ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... stinging clouds of powdered plaster Colonel Craig entered the room, hastily pulling on his slashed coat as ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... the musquitoes, which the cattle bring home. These are often a dreadful annoyance, nothing but a thick cloud of smoke dispelling them, and that only for a time. At night they are particularly a nuisance, buzzing and stinging unceasingly through the silent hours, forbidding all thought of sleep till the dawn shows them clinging to the walls and windows, wearied and bloated with their night's amusement. Those who are sufficiently acclimated ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... their own positive opinions on the point of that vote, with the Scripture proofs. Selden's hand is distinctly visible in this ingenious insult to the Assembly. [Footnote: Commons Journals, April 17 and April 22, 1646; Baillie, II. 344.] It was a more stinging punishment than adjournment or dissolution would have been, though that also had been thought of, and Viscount Saye and Sele had recommended it in ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... ill-tempered, ugly featured, and quarrelsome. Once when I visited an English line-of-battle ship, the gunner's gang were fore and aft, polishing up the batteries, which, according to the Admiral's fancy, had been painted white as snow. Fidgeting round the great thirty-two-pounders, and making stinging remarks at the sailors and each other, they reminded one of a swarm of black wasps, buzzing about rows of white headstones ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... the tiger in the Senator from Illinois. When he addressed the Senate on January 30th, he labored under ill-repressed anger. Even in the expurgated columns of the Congressional Globe enough stinging personalities appeared to make his friends regretful. What excited his wrath particularly was that Chase and Sumner had asked for a postponement of discussion, in order to examine the bill, and then, in the interval, had sent out ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... as this, nearly twenty years before, of which the woman was thinking. She was once again in a room in a private hospital, lying weak and helpless from the ordeal through which she had passed. It all came back to her now with a stinging intensity, causing her white hands to clench hard, and her eyes to widen ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody
... the merciless words as beneath a stinging lash: but the man knew no pity; he would not spare ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... that, among the many utterances with which we were treated in the year 1883, many should be very foolish, and not a few mischievous and erroneous. Itinerant Windbags are rarely scrupulous about their facts, and the allusive style flavoured with stinging invective is far more telling than any historical narrative, however picturesque and eloquent it may be. Luther the Monk will always be a more attractive subject in the lecture hall than Luther ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... thousand of those vigilant minds, even as it was uppermost in mine, was the riddle—how much they understood of us. Did they grasp that we in our millions were organized, disciplined, working together? Or did they interpret our spurts of fire, the sudden stinging of our shells, our steady investment of their encampment, as we should the furious unanimity of onslaught in a disturbed hive of bees? Did they dream they might exterminate us? (At that time no one knew what food they needed.) A hundred such ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... delegates. "After the fall of Sumter, many members of that majority went over to the original Disunion minority, and with them adopted an ordinance withdrawing the State from the Union." In his own peculiar style, Mr. Lincoln made the stinging comment, "Whether this change was wrought by their great approval of the assault upon Sumter, or by their great resentment at the government's resistance to that assault, is not definitely known." Though the Virginia convention ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... path, and, hardened foresters though they were, they shuddered. Occasionally an incautious foot sank to the knee and it was pulled out again with a choking sigh as the mud closed where it had been. Mosquitoes and many other buzzing and stinging insects assailed them, but ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... was done. Then began as hideous a martyrdom for Isaac Wolferstein, as had ever come to a soul loyal to God. The flies, ants, and a score of other stinging things found him out. His honey-smeared flesh was black ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... greater things that say must to me. Oh, my dear, have you forgotten them? Things you yourself have spoken to me—the great stinging things of the spirit, that are greater than you and I, ...
— Theft - A Play In Four Acts • Jack London
... which Talfourd's written opinion might be appended as proof that we stopped under no discouragement. It is useless to affect that I don't know I have a morbid susceptibility of exasperation, to which the meanness and badness of the law in such a matter would be stinging in the last degree. And I know of nothing that could come, even of a successful action, which would be worth the mental trouble and ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... he could not help her in her ceaseless watching which was telling so fearfully on her strength. In an agony of anguish and despair he slipped out to the back steps and sat heavily down in the shade of the house, dropping his hot head on his arms and two stinging tears coursing ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... the old Fabre would do if stung," writes the wasp, "I repeatedly stuck my sting in his leg—but without any effect. I afterward discovered however I had been stinging his boots. This was one of my difficulties, to tell boots and Fabre apart, each having a tough wizened quality and a ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... he isn't," grumbled Ralston. "He ought to be well. So far as I can make out, he is well. But he goes about looking like a sick fly and stinging ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... laugh, passing along those damp walls of Sandford Manor House; we could imagine her leaning from that window, conversing with, and rallying, her royal "lover," who stands beneath, amid the flowers, once so bright and abundant, where only weeds and stinging thistles were to be seen this winter-time. As for him, wisdom came not with years; "consideration" never whipped the offending Adam out of him—in his character there was no "nettle," but there was no "strawberry." What does he reply to her merrie rallying as she dallies with her looking-glass? ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... her warm in his seaman's coat Against the stinging blast; He cut a rope from a broken spar. And bound her ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... no more, but merely state that Jack, when he got on the other side of the hedge, found that he had pitched into a small apiary, and had upset two hives of bees, who resented the intrusion; and Jack had hardly time to get upon his legs before he found them very busy stinging him in all quarters. All that Jack could do was to run for it, but the bees flew faster than he could run, and Jack was mad with pain, when he stumbled, half-blinded, over the brickwork of a well. Jack ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... ironically. When I hear complaints, that the abolitionists of this State rallied, as such, at the last State Election, I cannot easily avoid suspecting, that the purpose of such complaints is the malicious one of reviving in our breasts the truly stinging and shame-filling recollection, that some five-sixths of the voters in our ranks, either openly apostatized from our principles, or took it into their heads, that the better way to vote for the slave and the anti-slavery cause was to vote for their respective political parties. You would be ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... it would be dust and ashes without her. Then why not take that step which would bring her to me?" He faced his cowardice angrily, and resolved to post the letter. But he stopped before he had walked fifty yards, for his doubts followed him, buzzing and stinging like bees. Striving to rid himself of them, and weary of considering his own embarrassed condition, he listened gladly to Lizzie, who deplored Mount Rorke's cruelty and her husband's ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... contents of a large coffer of jewels. As the door opened they turned round and, on seeing a solitary officer, sprang forward with terrible oaths. Fergus shot one of them as they did so, dropped the pistol, and seized his sword. Both men fired. Fergus felt a stinging sensation in his left arm, and the pistol held in that ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... flashes of flame as the rifles were fired. In the darkness it seemed confused and vague, but he knew that it was guided by order and precision. Now and then a spent bullet pattered upon the leaves, and one touched him upon the wrist, stinging for a moment or ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the hospital with a bandage around his head and a stinging pain in his shoulder whenever he tried ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... battle fearlessly, and his terse pen dealt stinging blows straight in the face of the opponent. Indeed, as an editor he has been rarely equaled. While Greeley would devote a column to an article, he would take the same subject and in a few words put the argument in such shape as to carry far more conviction. His two ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... endless, wakeful hours he heard that soldier marching back and forth, back and forth, outside the door. Every sound of those steady footfalls was like a blow, stinging afresh the cruel wound which had been opened in his impassive nature. He was under arrest and under guard. If he should try to get out that soldier would order him to halt, and if he didn't halt the soldier would shoot him. He wondered if ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... I heard before. Stinging comforters are ye all! Shall idle words have an end? What pricks thee that ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... and obliging disposition; and she liked Amelia rather than otherwise. Even her hard words, reproachful as they were, were complimentary—the groans of a person stinging under defeat. Meeting Mrs. O'Dowd, whom the Dean's sermons had by no means comforted, and who was walking very disconsolately in the Parc, Rebecca accosted the latter, rather to the surprise of the Major's wife, who was not accustomed to such marks of politeness from Mrs. Rawdon ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... intensity. I resolved to mount the low hill down which I had seen the Spahi ride, to descend into the fold of desert beyond it, to pause there a moment, out of sight of the hamlet, listen to the breeze, look at the darkening sky, feel the sand-grains stinging my cheeks, ...
— The Desert Drum - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... resumed De Wardes, who had observed that this was the only means of stinging Raoul, so as ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... biting the corner of his eye. They also bite all round the nails of your fingers and toes, unless they are closely covered. It must be said that insects are a great discomfort at Sarawak. Mosquitoes, and sand-flies, and stinging flies which turn your hands into the likeness of boxing-gloves, infest the banks of the rivers, and the sea-shore. Flying bugs sometimes scent the air unpleasantly, and there are hornets in the woods whose sting is dangerous. ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... passed a number of pale red medusas, such as I had usually seen on the East Coast at the entrances of rivers, and which, on being touched, produced a sensation like the stinging of a nettle. There was also a red scum on the water, and some of it was taken up to be examined by Mr. Brown in a microscope. It consisted of minute particles not more than half a line in length, and each appeared to be composed of several cohering ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... eyes blinded by stinging tears, and feeling very much more maddened by regret than by mortification, Leonetta fled to her room. She was not only staggered, she was also thoroughly ashamed. A boy suddenly butted by a lamb, which he had believed ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... deliberate belief that no man ever gave heartier love and homage to another than I to you; but while one woman in America may be lawfully sent to the whipping-post on such occasion, I will hold your existence and name, if they come between me and her rescue, but as the life of a stinging gnat! I love you,—but cannot quite sacrifice to you the sanctity of womanhood, and all the honor and all the high hopes of a great nation. Your scheme of "life-hire" will therefore have to undergo very essential modifications, such as will ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... we help coming back? There came flying bees in countless numbers from all parts of the world, and began stinging us on all ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... the clean, dry dust, the aromatic smell of mountain plants that had been baked all day in sunlight, and the expressive silence of the night. My negro blood had carried me unhurt across that reeking and pestiferous morass; by mere good fortune, I had escaped the crawling and stinging vermin with which it was alive; and I had now before me the easier portion of my enterprise, to cross the isle and to make good my arrival at the haven and my acceptance on the English yacht. It was impossible by night to follow such a track as my father had ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in unusually early, and the air was sharp and stinging. A score or more of the boys were down in the gymnasium, chinning the bar and swinging ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... Drinking anew of every odorous breath, Supremely happy in her ignorance Of Time that hastens hourly and of Death Who need not haste. Scatter your fumes, O lime, Loose from each hispid star of citron bloom, Tangled beneath the labyrinthine boughs, Cloud on such stinging cloud of exhalations As reek of youth, fierce life and summer's prime, Though hardly now shall he in that dusk room Savour your sweetness, since the very sprig, Profuse of blossom and of essences, He smells not, who ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... circles of flame, and all at once lifted themselves up as if in angry surprise. Then for the first time thrilled in Mr. Bernard's ears the dreadful sound that nothing which breathes, be it man or brute, can hear unmoved,—the long, loud, stinging whirr, as the huge, thick-bodied reptile shook his many-jointed rattle and flung his jaw back for the fatal stroke. His eyes were drawn as with magnets toward the circles of flame. His ears rung as in the overture to the swooning dream of chloroform. Nature was before ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... Carley became specifically acquainted with the driver's meaning of a bad day. A gust of wind, raw and penetrating, laden with dust and stinging sand, swept full in her face. It came so suddenly that she was scarcely quick enough to close her eyes. It took considerable clumsy effort on her part with a handkerchief, aided by relieving tears, to clear her sight again. ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... author in another place remarks as follows: "As long back as my memory will carry me, down to the present day, there has been scarcely a monosyllable in our language which seemed to convey so stinging a reproach, or to let a man down in the general estimation half as much, as ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... forward, had thrown the strength of her whole body into the blow, could not but lose her seat. But it was only to stand upright on her feet, fronting her— call him enemy, antagonist, victim, what you will. Gordon was grasping his head: the blow had for a moment blinded him. She gave him another stinging cut across the hands. ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... Cormac, "a knight of Christ," who three times sailed forth in a coracle to find some desert isle, and three times failed of his purpose; and how, in his last voyage, he was driven northward by the wind fourteen days' sail, till he came where the summer sea was full of foul little stinging creatures, of the size of frogs, which beat against the sides of the frail boat, till all expected them to be stove in. They clung, moreover, to the oar blades; {256} and Cormac was in some danger of never seeing land again, had not St. ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... The midsummer sun was stinging hot outside the little barber-shop next to the corner drug store and Penrod, undergoing a toilette preliminary to his very slowly approaching twelfth birthday, was adhesive enough to retain upon his face much ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... they say of every girl who is not married to somebody by the time she is twenty-five. It matters not whether she cares for him or not. Having but one object in existence, there can be but one species of disappointment. Marry she must, or be PITIED!" with a stinging emphasis on ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... paddled with the whipping paddle upon the bottom of his feet, by old Master Jack, until blood blisters arose, when he took his knife and opened them. I was then sent for salt and water, and the bruises of the suffering chattel were washed as usual in the stinging brine. ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... stinging sensation where the spiral struck, but that was all. He was astounded. He had feared this weapon, had been sure it portended some form of horrible death. But all it did was to produce a ...
— Hellhounds of the Cosmos • Clifford Donald Simak
... was stinging cold, and running after those expensive dogs was an occupation that palled. By-and-by, "How much is your sled worth?" he asked ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... not control him as she thought she could. He had a keen memory stinging his mind, a new set of sensations working in his consciousness. Something new was alert in him. At the back of his reticent, guarded mind he kept his secret alive and vivid. She was at his mercy, for he was unscrupulous, his ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... earth was cut by deep ravines, zig-zagging in nearly all directions, and great rocks often obstructing the way. Here the trail of the deer they were following was lost amid the tracks of others which had gone into the deep rugged gullies to escape the stinging wind. ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... view, it was probably meant to be. In it Broke showed himself as adroit with his pen—the adroitness of Canning—as he was to prove himself in battle. Not to speak of other points of irritation, the underlining of the words, "even combat," involved an imputation, none the less stinging because founded in truth, upon the previous frigate actions, and upon Lawrence's own capture of the "Peacock." In guns, the "Chesapeake" and "Shannon" were practically of equal force; but in the engagement the American ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... sight to make a strong and stalwart man turn pale with sickness and horror, much less a baby-boy of three or four years old. There lay the man, all through the dreadful night, with swarms on swarms and myriads upon myriads of stinging insects, biting and sipping, and sucking his life-blood with distracting agony away. Ah! think of the hellish torture often practiced by those bloody pirates upon their victims in the West Indies! The bound man's eyes were closed, the ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... protection for themselves by growing into the counterfeit presentment of wasps or hornets, and so obtaining immunity from the attacks of birds or animals. Many of these curiously mimetic insects are banded with yellow and black in the very image of their stinging originals, and have their tails sharpened, in terrorem, into a pretended sting, to give point and verisimilitude to the deceptive resemblance. More curious still, certain South American butterflies of a perfectly inoffensive and edible family mimic in every ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... must go forth. Better face the hideous night, Better dare the unseen north, Than be still without the light! Black wind rushing round my brow, Sown with stinging points of rain! Place or time I know not now— I am here, and ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... faith. But the Convention adopted him with acclamation. Naturally such a selection did not please the little group of Anti-War Whigs—a group which was practically identical with the extreme Anti-Slavery wing of the party—and Lowell, in what is perhaps the most stinging of all his satires, turned Taylor's platform or absence of platform to ridicule in lines known to thousands of Englishmen who ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... lord of the beautiful plain of Homole, bring, I pray thee, the darling of Aratus unbidden to his arms, whosoe'er it be that he loves. If this thou dost, dear Pan, then never may the boys of Arcady flog thy sides and shoulders with stinging herbs, when scanty meats are left them on thine altar. But if thou shouldst otherwise decree, then may all thy skin be frayed and torn with thy nails, yea, and in nettles mayst thou couch! In the hills of the Edonians ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... a stinging blow on the face. Nor was he consoled by the spectacle of a wild girl darting from under the shelter of the tree, and ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... Stuffe or Praise of the Red Herring," i.e., of Great Yarmouth, he calls those who despised Homer in his life-time "dull-pated pennifathers," and says that "those grey-beard huddle-duddles and crusty cum-twangs were strooke with stinging remorse of their miserable euchonisme ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... one other mound Of sand, whereon no green thing ever grew. And once again, and wiser in no wise, I chase your colored phantom on the air, And sob and curse and fall and weep and rise And stumble pitifully on to where, Miserable and lost, with stinging eyes, Once more I ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay |
