"Sting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in Sorrento. He was the last male arrival in a slow season; he seemed interesting and promising; evidently they had had hopes. "But," asked one of them, "how is it you are willing to register openly from such a town as that?"—and Raymond had felt the sting. "Such nerve, such bumptiousness!" he said to me in recalling that query some years later. But he did not add that he had tried to deliver any riposte. Instead he was now to make a belated return at home, where ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... advantages of belonging to such a guild were so great that the Church had to enforce labour on all who could work, as a condition of sharing in the benefits of membership. Social distinctions, such as those of rich and poor, master and slave, were not abolished, but they had lost their sting, because genuine affection, loyalty and sympathy neutralised these inequalities. Great importance was laid on truth, integrity in business, and sexual purity. A complete rupture with pagan standards of morality was insisted on from new members. The human body ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... it appears, not understood. Their posterity looked forward for a temporal king, and had no idea of an immortal existence beyond the "narrow house." Death the king of terrors, was not yet disarmed of his sting by the resurrection of our triumphant Redeemer. This truth was not yet revealed to men. Here the human family were without hope, and trembling at the darkness—the seven fold darkness of the tomb. No ray of light and joy beamed from that cheerless ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... men and women who thwart or injure them. But of duty—that dreary device to secure future reward by present suffering; of conscientiousness—that fear of present good for the sake of future punishment; of remorse—that disavowal of past pleasure for fear of the sting in its tail; of ambition—that begrudging of all honorable results that are not effected by one's self; of these, and all similar politic and arbitrary masks of self-love and pusillanimity, these ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... sting of the situation lay in the fact that it had all been so useless and unnecessary. She had wounded her friend and humiliated herself all for nothing! The rapid changes that had taken place in the newspaper office since she left, ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... Highgate Archway. I made out, after a while, that I was at the East End, and, turning westward, I tramped back to my own lodgings with a return to self-possession which was partly due to the fact that bodily fatigue had dulled the sting of resentment. ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... no sting. What was the slight of a poor powerless girl To the deep wrong of this most vile revenge? Oh, how I loved ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... out my hand and caught a grasshopper, or rather a sort of locust. The sound of their wings resembles very much that made by the rattlesnake when about to dart on its prey. I was sure that was the noise I had heard. "There may be thousands of them for what I care; they can't eat or sting me," I said to myself; and then I ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... golden hour! 'twixt love and duty, All others I to others give; But you are mine to yield to Beauty, To glean Romance, to greatly live. For in my easy-chair reclining . . . I feel the sting of ocean spray; And yonder wondrously are shining The ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... understanding? Am I the mother of your four children or not? I would like to ask. I suppose you cannot deny that, whatever else you deny which is true, and you tell me to choose my language! Da, I will choose my language, in truth! Da, I will choose out such a swarm of words as ought to sting your ears like hornets, if you had not such a leathery skin and such a soft brain inside it. But why should I? It is thrown away. There is no shame in you. You see nothing, you care for nothing, you hear no reason, you feel no argument. ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... by the war, offered them the wretched home where now we find them. Little Annie, sole blossom left upon the blasted tree, went with them. It was a miserable life which they led. The pinch of poverty is never so keenly felt as when the recollection of better days mixes with it like a perpetual sting. All the bright hopes of six years before were over, and the poor ladies could have said, "Behold, was ever sorrow like unto my sorrow!" They grieved for themselves; they grieved most of all for their beautiful little Annie, but ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... particles. They possess strange intelligence, and exquisite acuteness of sight and smell,—prodigious audacity and courage to match it, insomuch that they venture on the most hazardous attacks, and get safe off. One of them flew into my mouth, the other night, and sting me far down in my throat; but luckily I coughed him up in halves. They are bigger than American mosquitoes; and if you crush them, after one of their feasts, it makes a terrific bloodspot. It is a sort of suicide—at least, a shedding of one's own blood—to kill them; but it gratifies ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... society, less and less as she grew older that was congenial to her, and her mind preyed upon itself; and the mystery of her birth at once chagrined her and raised in her the most extravagant expectations. She was proud and she felt the sting of poverty. She could not but be conscious of her beauty also, and she was vain of that, and came to take a sort of delight in the exercise of her fascinations upon the rather loutish young men who came in her ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... car. It had been set in on the siding, and the engine, uncoupled, had disappeared, but she could see shifting lights moving near. One, the bright, green-hooded light, her eyes followed. She watched the furious snow drive and sting hornet-like at its rays as it rose or swung or circled from a long arm. Her straining eyes had watched its coming and going every moment since he left her. When his figure vanished her breath followed it, and when the green light flickered ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... the only members of the Shark family that we value as food. You can see Skates of several kinds in the fish market. They go by such names as Thorn-back Ray, Blue Skate, Spotted Ray, Starry Ray, Cuckoo Ray, Long-nosed Skate and Sting Ray. ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... wine when it was red, and found in its dregs the sting of the adder. He had participated in the maddening excitement of the gaming-table, from which remorse and horror pursued him with scorpion lash. He had entered the "chambers of death"—though avenging demons guarded its threshold. Poor, tempted ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... whose life or death was a question of mere precaution and convenience. Man is cruelly wasteful of life when his own safety is endangered and he is sheltered by impunity, and little mercy is to be expected from him when he feels the sting of the reptile and is conscious ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... woman than his Majesty's treatment of Catherine while she was still but a stranger in the land, and when he forced his notorious paramour upon her as her lady of honour. Of honour, quotha! There was sorry store of honour in his conduct. He had need feel the sting of remorse t'other day when the poor lady was thought to be on her death-bed—so gentle, so affectionate, so broken to the long-suffering of consort-queens, apologising for having lived to trouble him. Ned Hyde has given me ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... Albano lived without love or hope, in bitter self-reproach; every recollection darted into him a scorpion-sting. And to him in his agony came the tormenting news that the fickle Roquairol had deserted Rabette. He drove the false one from his presence; sister and brother, beloved and friend, were ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... thing Gett'st thou thus for to sting, Thou false and flatt'ring liar? Thy tongue doth hurt, it's seen No less than arrows keen Or hot ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... biting of Serpents, by herbs.] They are oftentimes stung with venomous Serpents, upon which sudden death follows without speedy help: But if the bite be taken in time, they can certainly cure themselves, and make nothing of it. Which they perform both by Herbs and Charms. Tho upon the sting they presently vomit blood. The knowledg of these antidotal Herbs they have learned from the Mounggoutia a kind of Ferret. This creature when the Noya and he meets always fight. If he chanceth to be bitten by the Serpent, which is very venomous, ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... reproach. All that humanity could conceive he did to suppress the cruelties of war and soothe its sorrows. He never struck a coward's blow. To him age, infancy, and helplessness were ever sacred. He tolerated no extremity unless to curb the excesses of his enemy, and he never poisoned the sting of defeat by the exultation of ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... to doubt away this ultimate passion, and it turned my doubt into its own exquisite sting, the very thrill ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... any existing fish: it was a mighty spear head, ornately carved like that of a New Zealand chief, but in a style that, when he first saw a specimen in my collection, greatly excited the admiration of Mr. Ruskin. But one of the most remarkable weapons of the period was the sting of the Pleuracanthus, another great placoid of the age of gigantic fishes. It was sharp and polished as a stiletto, but, from its rounded form and dense structure, of great strength; and along two of its ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... 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
... manly regret for his own deficiencies and a touching pathos which the boy never forgot. The next spring his father took Daniel to Exeter Academy. This was the boy's first contact with the world, and there was the usual sting which invariably accompanies that meeting. His school-mates laughed at his rustic dress and manners, and the poor little farm lad felt it bitterly. The natural and unconscious power by which he had delighted the teamsters was stifled, and the greatest orator of modern times ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... them with a courage born of national pride. Before them were the mountains with their almost impassable roads, the jungles filled with poisonous plants and the terrible prickly underbrush and pointed grass, in which skulked the land crab and various reptiles whose bite or sting was dangerous; twenty miles of this inhospitable country lay between them and Santiago, their true objective. And somewhere on the road to that city they knew they were destined to meet a well-trained foe, skilled in ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... grape in on top of your round shot, lads," I ordered, "and blaze away as fast as you can load. The Wasp has lost her wings, but her sting remains, and we'll make those scoundrels feel it yet before we have done ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... erring here, thou shalt not go Unhonored or unsung. And better thus Beneath that undiscriminating stroke, Better to fall, than to have lived to mourn, As sure thou wouldst, in misery and remorse, Thine own disastrous triumph * * * * How happier thus, in that heroic mood That takes away the sting of death, to die, By all the good and all the wise forgiven! Yea, in all ages by the wise and good To be remembered, mourned, and honored still! ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... his fall. She had never wished to wrong anyone, nor that anyone should be wronged for her sake. She would not, she thought, have married Sydney if she had known this story earlier. Why had he married her?—ah, there came in the sting of the sentence which she had overheard: "You wanted to marry a rich woman." Yes, she was rich. Sydney had not even paid her the very poor compliment of deserting another woman because he loved her best—he ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... back to see her, and before the day was out. A little bitter self-communion had not taken long to show him his childishness. The sting of loss was hard enough, but the thought, now they could be nothing to each other, that her last impressions of him should be bad, hurt almost as much, and in a way, even more. And further, putting all to the side, ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... the palace; but Marie's Italian followers were far less scrupulous, and expressed their indignation in no measured terms. The Queen, wounded in her most sacred feelings, became gradually colder to the Marquise, who, as though she had only awaited this relapse to sting her still more deeply than she had yet done, retorted the slights which she constantly received by declaring that "the Florentine," as she insolently designated her royal mistress, was not the legal or lawful wife of the King, whose written promise, still in her possession, he was, as she ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... big a man. To endanger the very natural dignity of a big man was a thing which no woman could do without a pang; the shame of it made her feel hot: he might have blushed or stammered, and the memory of that would sting her miserably for weeks as though she had insulted an ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... come rarely together, Gripping the driver's haft, And it's good to feel the jar of the steel And the spring of the hickory shaft. Why trouble or seek for the praise of a clique? A cleek here is common to all; And the lie that might sting is a very small thing When compared with the lie of ...
— Songs of Action • Arthur Conan Doyle
... are like that. The professor had seen no possible sting in his idly spoken words. But the sore, hot spot, which now seemed ever present in Desire's heart, grew sorer and hotter. To owe a car to the reminder of another woman! Naturally, Desire could do very well ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... that you will read the letter herein enclosed. Hugh de Cressi will tell you how it came to my hand, since I lack time to write all the story. If it seems good to your Grace, I pray you scotch this snake while he is in your garden, lest he should live to sting you when you walk abroad. If it please you to give your royal warrant to the bearer of this letter, and to address the same to such of your subjects in Dunwich as you may think good, I doubt not but ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... and howled past. Felipe listened, noting each change in its velocity as told by the sound of raging gusts outside, himself raging. Once he lifted a corner of the blanket and peered out—only to suffer the sting of a thousand needles. Again, he hunched his shoulders guardedly and endeavored to roll a cigarette; but the tempestuous blasts discouraged this also, and with a curse he dashed the tobacco from him. After that he remained still, listening, until he heard an agreeable change outside. ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... base calumniator! The Roman attacks you with naked weapons, but you slink in the dark, like a scorpion, and try to sting your enemy in the heel. Apelles, the painter, warns us—the grandchildren of Lagus—against folks of your kidney in the picture he painted against Antiphilus; as I look at you I am reminded of his Demon of Calumny. The same spite and malice gleam ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... enjoyed his hospitality, for they knew that it was disinterested; and admired his acquirements, for they felt that they were unobtrusive. Sometimes (as in his dialogue with the Cynic) the whim of the moment, or the sting of a sarcasm, drew from him a hint at his station, or a display of his eccentricities; but, as he was always the first soon afterwards to lead the laugh at his own outbreak, his credit as a noble suffered nothing by his infirmity as a man. Gaily and attractively he moved in ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... used as a grater. Other fishes most frequently seen are the prettily-spotted catfish, Pescada, Piranha, Acara, which carries its young in its mouth, and a long, slender needle-fish. There are ganoids in the river, but no sturgeons proper. Pickerel, perch, and trout are also wanting. The sting-ray represents the shark family. As a whole, the fishes of the Amazon have a marine character ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... sing.) Her blush of hope she strove to hide; (Joy soars aloft on painted wing.) Love press'd the Rose-bud to his breast, He felt the thorn, but well he guess'd Such "Nay" meant "Yea," 'twas fond Love's jest; ('Tis honey soothes the bee's fell sting.) ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... over the side indeed, so clear was the water that we could see vast numbers of monster fish,—not only sharks and devil-fish, but saw-fish, jew-fish, sting rays, whip rays, and other specimens of the finny tribe, of great size,—swimming below and around us in such numbers that they threatened to upset the canoe, and we actually struck them over and ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... to him in the light of a possible act of cowardice—Lettice, a girl, blinded by affection. And, equally, it was undeniably true that he did not care for her ... he did not care for her? that realization too carried a slight sting. But neither did he care for Meta Beggs; something different attracted him to the latter; she—she brought him out, that was it; she ministered to ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... said to be the creator, governor, lawgiver, and judge, and who dwells perhaps somewhere in the sky, has not, to many of them, the smallest force of intimidation from evil, at least when they are in health and daylight. One of the large sting-armed insects of the air does not alarm them less. A certain transitory fearfulness that occasionally comes upon them, points more to the Devil, and perhaps (in times now nearly gone by) to the ghosts of the dead, than to the Almighty. It may be, indeed, that this feeling is in its ultimate ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... a malicious leer, "you were not in such a tantrum last year, when I told you about the widow, you know who; but if you had taken a friend's advice, you'd never have come away from Doncaster races with a flea in your ear!" There was a secret sting in this speech, that seemed quite to disconcert Master Simon. He jerked away his hand in a pet, smacked his whip, whistled to his dogs, and intimated that it was high time to go home. The girl, however, was determined not to lose ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... this, much of truth in Buonarroti's criticism—a truth which added to the sting—that by this time Pietro's art had already begun to show old motives carelessly repeated. "Pietro," says our Vasari, "had worked so much, and had always such abundance of work in hand, that he ...
— Perugino • Selwyn Brinton
... Since all we do for fellow Men With right good Will, shall be our Gain. What if the Folk should call you Fool Care not, but act by Virtue's Rule, Contempt and Curses let them fling, God's Blessing shields you from their Sting. Grey is my Head but young my Heart; In Nuremberg, ere I depart, Children and Grandchildren, for you I write this Book, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... She'd like to stamp on me and hear me crack, like a black beetle, and she never opens her mouth but she insults me.' Lionel Berrington delivered himself of these assertions without violence, without passion or the sting of a new discovery; there was a familiar gaiety in his trivial little tone and he had the air of being so sure of what he said that he did not need to exaggerate ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... when it seemed to her that no bondage could be meaner, more repugnant, than that daily slavery in her brother's kitchen; that transcendent conceptions of love and marriage were vain details by comparison with aching feet and sleep-heavy eyes, with the sting of burns, the smart of sweat on her face, all the never-ending trifles that so irritated her. She had been spoiled in the making for so sordid an existence. Sometimes she would sit amid the array of dishes and pans and cooking food and wonder if she really were the same being whose ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... hurt you. That ability comes dangerously close to a constant of love. You mustn't think I am complaining. I haven't the slightest reason in the face of your devastating honesty. I didn't distress you and I had the necessary minimum—the fifty thousand." His manner was so even, so devoid of sting, that she could smile at the expression of her material ambitions. "I realize exactly your feeling for myself, but what puzzles me is your ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the kindly man of drugs, seeking to remove the sting whose effect Danvers only partially succeeded in concealing, as they outdistanced the drunken man. "He's ostensibly a wolfer, a man who kills wolves by scattering poisoned buffalo meat on the prairies in winter, you know," he interjected, "and then makes his rounds later to ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... childhood, and all your ingratitude and wants till you arrive at years of discretion, and then, because she wishes you to do some little thing which does not exactly meet your views, are you to turn upon her like a viper and sting her to the heart? The time was, when you was a little infant, your mother brought paleness to her own cheek, and weakness to her own frame, that she might give you support. You were sick, and in the cold winter ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott
... plagues that beset this land of Africa not the least are the biting flies. Just as every tree and bush has thorns, so every fly has a sting. Some bite by day only, some by night, and others at all times. Even the ants have wings, and drop them in our soup as they resume their plantigrade existence ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... groom to a gemman before I went to the inn at Hounslow, and flung him a horse down worth ninety guineas, by endeavouring to show off before some ladies that I met on the road. Turn your horse out to grass throughout May and the first part of June, for then the grass is sweetest, and the flies don't sting so bad as they do later in summer: afterwards merely turn him out occasionally in the swale of the morn and the evening; after September the grass is good for little, lash and sour at best: every horse should go out to grass, if not, his blood becomes full of ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... most cruel of men!-can the lost Caroline address you, and not address you in vain? Oh, deaf to the voice of compassion-deaf to the sting of truth-deaf to every tie of honour-say, in what terms may the lost Caroline address you, and ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... weakness, all might have been well; but rage had mothered them, and thus her voice was in a very bad way. This morning she was noticeably hoarse, and there was a break in the arietta. No, she did not fret over this side of the calamity. The sting of it all lay in the fact that she had been outraged in the matter of personal liberty, with no act of reprisal to ease her immediate longing ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... pushed and dragged up the steep inclines by convicts, who drew themselves up in the wagons when the trucks dashed down the slope, and acted as drags. Sylvia felt degraded at being thus drawn by human beings, and trembled when the lash cracked, and the convicts answered to the sting—like cattle. Moreover, there was among the foremost of these beasts of burden a face that had dimly haunted her girlhood, and only lately vanished from her dreams. This face looked on her—she thought—with ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... remind you of it, I only do so in the hope that I may be able to serve you," answered Victor. "I have tasted all the bitterness of poverty, Miss Brewer. Forgive me, if I ask whether you, too, have been acquainted with its sting?" ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... of the bank he encountered Jopp. The gloomy transactions just completed within had added fever to the original sting of Farfrae's sympathy that morning, which Henchard fancied might be a satire disguised so that Jopp met with anything but a bland reception. The latter was in the act of taking off his hat to wipe his forehead, and saying, "A fine hot day," ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... Heifer, Juno suspecting the Fact, obtained this Heifer of her Husband, and set Argus to watch over her. Jupiter wanting to visit his old Friend, sent Mercury to kill Argus; in revenge of which, Juno ordered a Gad-Bee to sting the poor Heifer; which thereupon growing mad, ran to Egypt, where she was again restored to the Shape of a Woman, and married to Osiris. The Feast of Isis was celebrated in Rome ten Days together by the Women, and was a time ...
— The Lovers Assistant, or, New Art of Love • Henry Fielding
... sting of so unwonted a rebuke. "I daresay you're right, Mater," he acknowledged. "I'll ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... 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? Nothing can ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... a goat may butt, and a worm may sting, And a child will sometimes stand; But a poor dead soldier of the King ...
— The Years Between • Rudyard Kipling
... Ichneumon, l. 33. Linneus describes seventy-seven species of the ichneumon fly, some of which have a sting as long and some twice as long as their bodies. Many of them insert their eggs into various caterpillars, which when they are hatched seem for a time to prey on the reservoir of silk in the backs of those animals designed for their own use to spin ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... scowling Hate turns deadly pale, —Then Passion's half-coiled adders spring, And, smitten through their leprous mail, Strike right and left in hope to sting. ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... when she reached Fred's father's house, Emily loved to sit with her boy on her lap, and indulge in passionate tears, thinking over how fond poor Fred had been, and how proud of her. There was no sting in her grief, no compunction, for she knew perfectly well how happy she had made him; and there was not the anguish, of personal loss, ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... size but great in destructive power, is a force to be reckoned with by the most powerful battle-ship. No defense has yet been devised that will ward off the deadly sting of the submarine's torpedo, delivered as it is from beneath, out of the sight and hearing of the doomed ships' crews, and exploded against a portion of the hull that cannot be ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... ganglia extending back into the abdomen in the lower part of the body. The respiratory system in part appears just above the honey stomach, and the black circular or oval spots are cross sections of connecting air tubes, which run all through the body. Also note the sting with the poison gland and sack which are pulled out with the sting; also the sucking tube for getting honey from flowers, and the structures on the legs for gathering and carrying pollen; the pollen basket is on the back side ...
— An Elementary Study of Insects • Leonard Haseman
... board; the slave-vessel herself and her stores rarely sell for much. What was called head-money has of late years been reduced to one-fourth of what it was formerly. The new prize proved to be the Asp, a fit name for a slaver, though she was now effectually deprived of her sting. As soon as she was thoroughly overhauled, and all her forthcoming papers secured, the Spanish crew were sent below, and the man-of-war's boats began towing the two schooners down the river. It was laborious work, after the ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... of the past, and now there is a page of the future I will unfold to you. Your race shall possess the heritage of my ancestors. And as the savages exterminated us, so shall you them. But, beware, you too are fostering a serpent that at last will sting, and perhaps devour you." "The arts and sciences of your race speak of them; were they like ours," I said, anxious to learn more of this strange people: "Yours," he replied with more warmth than he had exhibited, "are not unlike ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... to be hit—a giant is easy to fight," says he, "but egad, these pigmies crawl all over you and sting to death before they are ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... account for the workings of Fate or to follow the course of its agents. The track of an earth-worm destroys a dam; the parting of a wire wrecks a bridge; the breaking of a root starts an avalanche; the flaw in an axle dooms a train; the sting of a microbe depopulates a city. But none of these unseen, mysterious agencies was at work—nothing so trivial ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... get square with that old curmudgeon!" exclaimed Randy; "my ears sting yet. For half a cent I'd go back and trample down his grain or ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... Busy "B" is dead, No more we'll hear him buzz a-wing, Nor picture with a smiling dread The pungent terrors of his sting. As Io's gadfly was this "B" To Sentiment and to Pretence. Oh, Property! Ah, Liberty! Fallen in your supreme defence! Gone is the friend that in a phrase The "Common Sense" of things could settle, That ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various
... of secret things, like the silences of their first meeting, there by the same gate, long ago. This one, however, had a vibration that seemed to sting them. ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... Carlo, passing the time in a round of gaieties, careless flirtations, possibly deeper intrigues. Crowther had probably kept him straight through the winter, but she did not believe that Crowther's influence would be lasting. There was a sting in the very thought of Crowther. She was sure now that he had always known the bitter secret that Piers had kept from her. It had been the bond between them. Piers had obviously feared betrayal, but Crowther had not deemed it his business to betray him. He had suffered ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... 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 seat besides ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... the time of falling leaves, of stranded ships—icy winter comes again, and the "white bees" are swarming, and sting the traveller's face ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... maybe, in our flight to this opposite extreme. Nobody can read one line ahead in the book of fate. No child is guaranteed to become an adult. Any child may die to-morrow. How much greater for us the sting of its death if its life shall not have been made as pleasant as possible! What if its short life shall have been made as unpleasant as possible? Conceive the remorse of Mrs. Thompson here if one of her children were to die untimely—if one of them were stricken down now, before her ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... but to heighten the torments of the dying.—Husbands, cruelly lacerated, and by piece-meal deprived of life, in view of the tender partners of their bosoms, whose agonizing shrieks, increasing the anguish of torture, sharpened the sting of death. It ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... the thing had happened, but I could not bring myself to speak first. If she would ask me—But nobody asked. Nobody looked away from me. Everybody congratulated me, and my father and mother and my remotest relations. But the sting of shame smarted just the same; I could not be consoled. I had made a fool of myself: Mr. Swan had ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... road, daughter, forty-year: The ditch may be easier going, after all: Nettles don't sting ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... out no cry of pain or of fright. The wolf is kipichi-mao, as the Indians say. No hunter ever heard a trapped wolf whine for mercy at the sting of a bullet or the beat of a club. He dies with his fangs bared. Tonight it was a wolf whelp that Oohoomisew was attacking, and not a dog pup. The owl's first rush keeled Baree over, and for a moment ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... broke out on board the Chilian launch and the Blanco Encalada, and their men now turned all their attention to destroy the wasp which had just been deprived of its sting. The moment that her towed torpedo had exploded she was practically powerless for injury, and she turned her nose seaward at once, hoping, by a desperate rush, to get clear away. And so she doubtless would, ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... ever asked of a man is in reference to his income, rather than his character. How many slaves does he keep; how many acres does he own; what dishes are his table spread with?—these are the universal inquiries. Poverty, bitter though it be, has no sharper sting than this,—that it makes men ridiculous. Who was ever allowed at Borne to become a son-in-law, if his estate was inferior? What poor man's name ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... independent sections during the run from long range to torpedo-striking distance. The attacked warship is like an animal exposed to the onslaught of one of those fabled reptiles possessing a separate life and a separate sting in each of its myriad sections; so that what would be a mortal injury to a creature having its vital organs concentrated in one spot produces only the most limited effect in diminishing its strength and powers ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... the attacks of enemies and to procreate. Where there is a negative defense, such as a shell or quills, there is little need and no evidence of intelligence: where a rank odor, no need and no presence of claws or carapace; where sting or venom, no need and no possession of odor, claws, shell, extraordinary strength, or sagacity. Where the struggle is most bitter, there exist the most complex and most ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... dead, she's shouting, Borne on triumphant wing, "O grave, where is thy vict'ry, O Death, where is thy sting?" ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... here, the tale of the elders doth men a marvel to wit, That such was the shaping of Sigmund among all earthly kings, That unhurt he handled adders and other deadly things, And might drink unscathed of venom: but Sinfiotli was so wrought That no sting of creeping creatures would harm ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... is very fair, and love is sweet! The dark sky cleared, the sun shone out again, Earth seemed a heaven, with perfect bliss replete, And new-born gladness healed the sting of pain ...
— Lays from the West • M. A. Nicholl
... ships for the Negro might to some degree ameliorate the sting incident to race prohibition in that arm of government service. The query is advanced that if we can have black colonels, majors, captains and lieutenants in the army, why cannot we have black commanders, lieutenants, ensigns and such in ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... afraid of? They can't bite or sting. I can't give any reason. All I know is that when I come across one of these creatures in my path I jump to one side, and cry out,—sometimes using very improper words. The fact is, they make me crazy ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... 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 ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... motionless after the door closed behind her guest. She was conscious of the sting in those final words, the half-expressed threat, but the smile did not desert her lips. Her only thought was that the other was angry, irritated over her failure, her inability to make a report to her masters. She looked at ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... deepened As a sound deepens into silences; It was of earth and came not by the air; The earth was cooling and drew down the sky. The air was crumbling. There was no more sky. Rails of a broken bed charred in the grate, And when he touched the bars he thought the sting Came from their heat—he could not feel such cold ... She said 'O, do not sleep, Heart, heart of mine, keep near me. No, no; sleep. I will not lift his fallen, quiet eyelids, Although I know he would awaken then— He closed them thus but now of his own will. He can stay ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... no more, Thy steel no more shall sting and shine, Pass thro' the fusing fires again; And learn to prune the laughing vine. Fall sword, dread lord, with one accord, The plough and hook we'll own ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... him learn that he must be dealt with by weapons and not by warnings; and in the end he must unwillingly surrender what he was too proud at first to yield uncompelled. Wermund, shaken by deep sighs, answered that it was too insolent to sting him with these taunts upon his years; for he had passed no timorous youth, nor shrunk from battle, that age should bring him to this extreme misery. It was equally unfitting to cast in his teeth the infirmity of his blindness: for it was common ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... sides, and though Mr. ADAMSON feared that the Bill would bring Ireland not peace but a sword, and Mr. ASQUITH appealed to the Government to substitute a measure more generous to Irish aspirations, there was no sting in either of their speeches. The PRIME MINISTER, while defending his scheme as the best that could be granted in the present temper of Southern Ireland, did not bang the door against further negotiations; and Sir EDWARD CARSON said that Ulstermen ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... one thing needful; and in this they are right. But they are wrong in not expecting the influences which God is always ready to give, which change the heart, and fill it with a peace passing understanding, which make duties easy, which fill life with joy, and take the sting from death. The Orthodox believe in all these higher emotions and states of the soul, but unfortunately do not believe in obedience as the one thing needful. They think that some emotional transaction in the soul ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... p For, as the AEgyptians us'd by Bees, &c.] The AEgyptians represented their kings, (many of whose names were Ptolemy) under the hieroglyphick of a bee, dispensing honey to the good and virtuous, and having a sting for the ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... myself, a wasp darted fiercely at me and planted its sting in my neck, and for that afternoon my anticipated pleasures were dispelled. Arriving at camp I found the men grumbling; their provisions were ended, and there was no prospect for three days, at least, of procuring any. With the improvidence usual with the gluttons, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... 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 ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... Additional sting was given the enforcement laws by provision for the superintendence of federal elections, under specified conditions, by federal officials called "supervisors of election." The supervisors were given ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... paroxysms there may be less severe pain, which is then more frequently of an aching, burning or pricking character. In some, paroxysm after paroxysm succeed each other with almost lightening-like rapidity, and even in the intervals the pain is very intense. At another time there is only one sharp sting of pain, which attacks recur several times an hour or day, or may be absent for days or months. An extended freedom from all pain is rare in a patient very much affected. The first attacks in all forms of neuralgia are often comparatively light, ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... frame a reply to this back-handed compliment the unconscious B. Phelps removed the greater part of its sting ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... bees ever sting a mouse to death in that manner, mamma?" asked Alfred. "Yes, Alfred, and if you are a good boy, I will read you a long account of bees, and how they build their cells, and make their wax and honey." "But, ...
— Little Downy - The History of A Field-Mouse • Catharine Parr Traill
... victim's innocence lessens the sting of his sufferings. But Christ died innocent, according to Jer. 9:19: "I was as a meek lamb, that is carried to be a victim." Therefore it seems that the pain of Christ's Passion ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... which comes by suffering? Well, if grief Be gain, mine's double—fleeing thus the snare Of yon luxurious and unnerving down, And widowed from mine Eden. And why widowed? Because they tell me, love is of the flesh, And that's our house-bred foe, the adder in our bosoms, Which warmed to life, will sting us. They must know— I do confess mine ignorance, O Lord! Mine earnest will these painful limbs may prove. . . . . . And yet I swore to love him.—So I do No more than I have sworn. Am I to blame ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... can be useful if they will only find their appropriate sphere, which is not literature, but that circle of rough-and-tumble political life where the fine-fibred men are at a discount, where epithets find their subjects poison-proof, and the sting which would be fatal to a literary debutant only wakes the eloquence of the pachydermatous ward-room politician to a fiercer shriek ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... eye. If our reason leads us to admire with enthusiasm a multitude of inimitable contrivances in nature, this same reason tells us, though we may easily err on both sides, that some other contrivances are less perfect. Can we consider the sting of the wasp or of the bee as perfect, which, when used against many attacking animals, cannot be withdrawn, owing to the backward serratures, and so inevitably causes the death of the insect by tearing out ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... with calves were cut out, so that the youngsters might get a touch of life by feeling the sting of the hot iron with the ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... brought to pass the saying that is written; Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... o'ertook us; with such swiftness mov'd The mighty crowd. Two spirits at their head Cried weeping; "Blessed Mary sought with haste The hilly region. Caesar to subdue Ilerda, darted in Marseilles his sting, And flew to Spain."—"Oh tarry not: away;" The others shouted; "let not time be lost Through slackness of affection. Hearty zeal To serve ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... river bank. He crouched in the snow, himself unseen, and watched. After a few minutes of inaction, the frost began to bite in, and he rested the rifle across his knees and beat his hands back and forth. Then the sting in his feet became intolerable, and he stepped back from the bank and tramped heavily up and down among the trees. But he did not tramp long at a time. Every several minutes he came to the edge of the bank and ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... sounded awesome. The two clasped hands. All the sting was gone. A great resolve to be ready to dare and die made ...
— Then Marched the Brave • Harriet T. Comstock
... before, a matter as to which Mr. Western was necessarily in ignorance when he first came to her? But might it not come to pass that his pardon should be required in that the story had never been told to him? It was the sting which came from that feeling which added fierceness to her wrath. "Of course you have told him the whole, and I presume that he has pardoned that episode!" She had not told Mr. Western the whole, and had thus created ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... have the ovipositor of the female modified into a sting, which is often used for the purpose of providing food for the helpless grubs. Thus the digging wasps (Sphegidae and Pompilidae) hunt for caterpillars, spiders, and other creatures which they can paralyse with their stings, and bury them alongside ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter
... so great became the fame of her holiness that her tomb was a shrine for pilgrims for more than a century after her death. It was not until late in life, and after her autobiography terminates, that sexual desire in Soeur Jeanne (though its sting seems never to have quite disappeared) became transformed into passionate love of Jesus, and it is only in her later letters that we catch glimpses of the complete transmutation. Thus, in one of her later letters we read: "I cried with ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... spectre of all my crimes is risen to haunt me through life! I am a murderer—yet she lives, and my guilt is not the less! The stamp of eternal infamy is upon me—the finger of scorn will mark me out—the tongue of reproach will sting me like that of the serpent—the deadly touch of shame will cover me like a leper—the laws of society will crush the murderer, not the less that his wickedness in blood has miscarried: after that comes the black and terrible tribunal of the Almighty's vengeance—of His fiery indignation! Hush!—What ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various |
