"Stinging" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of bees, jelly fish and other stinging animals are treated with a very weak solution of ammonia in water applied as a lotion. Or apply a very weak solution of carbolic acid in water, a strong solution of baking powder, a slice of crushed raw onion, a moist quid of tobacco, ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... and that there was bush where anyone could hide to within a hundred and twenty yards of his washing place. So it proved indeed, for just as Ralph had mounted his horse and was about to ride on, he felt a sharp stinging pain across his shoulders, as though someone had hit him on the back with a stick, and heard the sound of a gunshot fired from the cover of the bush, for there above the green leaves hung a cloud ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... bolt upright now, with his hands clenched and eyes staring hard at the speaker. The words had gone straight to his little heart, with terrible, stinging intensity. This man was saying what Farrington and the parson had said. It must be true. But the idea of the punishment was something new. He had never thought of ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... It is certainly a true one, for most of the plants which we call weeds grow quickly and well wherever they are allowed to remain. We shall not have far to look for the three weeds which I want to show you this morning. The first of them is the Stinging Nettle. It grows round the wood-pile in the middle of the poultry-yard, and there are great clumps of it beside the hedge which divides the poultry-yard from the ...
— Wildflowers of the Farm • Arthur Owens Cooke
... his attention was caught by the expression of vindictive concentration upon the face of a small big-eared boy in the foreground. He didn't for the moment realise what these things might import. Then he received a stinging handful of rice in the ear, and ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... acted so quickly that they were not yet prepared to protect themselves, or to put Judd wise to the intended joke. Potts tried to escape but he did not move fast enough. He was dropped where he had stood by a stinging blow behind the ear. Judd wheeled swiftly, ready for ...
— Over the Line • Harold M. Sherman
... a seemingly unquenchable craving, he dashed the running water, first with one hand and then the other, over his face. He tried feebly to wash away some of the alkali that had crusted over the wound in the front of his head and was stinging and burning in it. There was now nothing to do but to secrete himself until daylight and wait till help should reach him—it was manifestly impossible ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... characterized by evanescent whitish, pinkish or reddish elevations, or wheals, variable as to size and shape, and attended by itching, stinging or pricking sensations. ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... there seemed to be no watch kept on board the ships, and there were no lights visible. All was as still and silent as the grave. The Union was the next craft in line; she was a gunboat, and had already shewn herself capable of stinging pretty severely, but he promised himself to attend to her on the return journey, and pushed on still farther up the harbour. The ships were apparently all lying on the Janequeo's port side, so it became necessary to shift the bombs over. ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... back, both hands tightening on the hand-rail behind her, and as she comprehended the passionless reproof, a stinging flush deepened over her ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... for being miserable. Oh, I want to do more than my duty; I want to love her with all my heart, and to have her love me. If it were not for that man, who always hated me, and who, I believe in my heart, has sought her out and is pressing his attentions upon her because he sees a possibility of stinging me through her, I might hope to fill the place in her heart that I thought ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... extorted a sharp yell. Next moment his teeth were in the calf of one of the men's legs, and his right hand grasped the baggy trousers of the other. A compound kick and plunge overturned them both, and as they all fell into a heap, the cheek of one seaman received a stinging blow that was ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... toes out, to give Pen his three hours' reading at Fairoaks, met his pupil, who shot by him like the wind. Smirke's pony shied, as the other thundered past him; the gentle curate went over his head among the stinging-nettles in the hedge. Pen laughed as they met, pointed towards the Baymouth road, and was gone half a mile in that direction before poor Smirke had picked ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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; ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... difficult and trodden by men of sinful deeds. It was enveloped in thick darkness, and covered with hair and moss forming its grassy vesture. Polluted with the stench of sinners, and miry with flesh and blood, it abounded with gadflies and stinging bees and gnats and was endangered by the inroads of grisly bears. Rotting corpses lay here and there. Overspread with bones and hair, it was noisome with worms and insects. It was skirted all along ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... note; but most of the time moving on in sullen silence. Now and then it directed its eyes, and once or twice its trunk, towards the branches of the prostrate tree as if it had still some suspicion that he who sent that stinging arrow was there concealed. Indeed, it appeared by its movements to be keeping guard over that particular spot, lest its enemy should escape. It had long since extracted the arrow, by placing its great foot upon the shaft, and drawing ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... to specialized hairs or processes on the bodies of certain caterpillars, which cause a stinging or burning ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith
... head, old soldier, rappee[obs3], stogy[obs3]. V. be pungent &c. adj.; bite the tongue. render -pungent &c. adj.; season, spice, salt, pepper, pickle, brine, devil. smoke, chew, take snuff. Adj. pungent, strong; high-, full-flavored; high-tasted, high- seasoned; gamy, sharp, stinging, rough, piquant, racy; biting, mordant; spicy; seasoned &c. v.; hot, hot as pepper; peppery, vellicating[obs3], escharotic[obs3], meracious|; acrid, acrimonious, bitter; rough &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... you to get some more money, Simon," answered the old man with an ingenuousness that made the reply more stinging than ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... Virginia, as it was of those in New England, that the Indians were born white, but that they got a brown or tawny color by the use of red ointments, made of earth and the juice of roots, with which they besmear themselves either according to the custom of the country or as a defense against the stinging of mosquitoes. The women are of the same hue as the men, says Strachey; "howbeit, it is supposed neither of them naturally borne so discolored; for Captain Smith (lyving sometymes amongst them) affirmeth how they are from the womb indifferent white, but as the men, so doe the women," "dye and disguise ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the receiver and looked around the room discontentedly. A stinging twinge of his ankle added to his discomfort. He gave an angry snarl and pushed the wavering curtain aside, wishing those everlasting bells would stop ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... Her words were so stinging, and such hateful envy sat upon her face, that she betrayed the intense bitterness of her regrets ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... the wound to heal Which tenderest ties, when broken, make; 'Tis not in language to conceal The griefs which snapped affection's wake But sorrows, stinging though they be, In sympathy some sweetness find, Which may assuage, though slenderly, The grief that ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... ground in white masses, and seemed to seek shelter in the club, for in a very short time the place was flooded with the choking fumes which caused one to feel a tightness across the chest and a stinging in the eyes, and which made it impossible to ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... last sentence in rather a tragic tone, but he was somewhat offended when the girl laughed. "What an odd idea!" she observed innocently. "I should strongly object to anything so stinging as a nettle; perhaps it is because I am a woman that I should prefer the echo;" but Malcolm, who had received a douche of cold water from this feminine criticism, declined to be drawn into a discussion ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... of laws, entitled Ahiman Rezon, Or Help to a Brother, much of which was taken from the Irish Constitutions of 1751, by Pratt, and the rest from the Book of Constitutions, by Anderson—whom he did not fail to criticize with stinging satire, of which he was a master. Among other things, the office of Deacon seems to have had its origin with this body. Atholl Masons were presided over by the Masters of affiliated Lodges until 1756, when Lord Blessington, their first titled Grand Master, was induced to accept ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... thrust in the lance with all his strength. The force acting against both fish and boat drove the latter sideways a foot or more, so that the giant rose in the air not two feet from the gunwale of the boat, the spray stinging like fine rain as the wind of ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... window above, the deep palpable blue, The wan bright moon, and the sweet stinging breath of the sea; And below, in the shadows, thine eyes like stars, And Love brooding low, and the warm ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of the comedy is laid in Paris, all the characters are Swedish, which may be accounted for by the fact that the feminist movement, of which "Comrades" is a delicious, stinging satire, had been more agitated at that time in Scandinavia than elsewhere. That Paris was chosen as a background for this group of young artists and writers was probably reminiscent of the time, the early eighties, when Strindberg with his wife and children ...
— Plays: Comrades; Facing Death; Pariah; Easter • August Strindberg
... indeed, as Stephen thought, but quite stinging enough to wound him over and over again as he saw the sneers and heard the laughs with which the reading of the extract was greeted. Everybody evidently was against his brother, and, with a deep disgust and fury at his heart, he left ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... Mrs. Warren, James had poured into her eager ears the secrets of his honest soul, and Mrs. Warren had listened with a sweet and ready sympathy that had caused James quite to forget a certain stinging snubbing he had received from the selfsame lady, because once, back in the dark ages—before Nancy had opened her blue eyes on this naughty world—when he was a gawky, freckle-faced boy of sixteen, he had dared to walk home from church ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... some slight shelter. For strong though she was, and well furnished against the inclement weather in a thick coaching coat, buttoned up to her chin and down to her feet, her cloth cap tied on with a thick veil, the stinging wind and sleet were almost more than she could face. Her depression was not physical merely, but moral likewise. For over and above her personal and private sources of trouble, it was a day and place whereon evil deeds seemed unpleasantly ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... still my darling theme, is the prime of every clan, How oft the heady war in, has it chased where thousands ran. O ready, bold, and venom full, these native warriors brave, Like adders coiling on the hill, they dart with stinging glaive; Nor wants their course the speed, the force, —nor wants their gallant stature, This of the rock, that of the flock that skim along the water, Like whistle shriek the blows they strike, as the torrent of the fell, So fierce they gush—the moor flames' ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... of course, getting the stinging pain in my leg, and going down, and then it seemed to me that one of the Boers kicked me at the top of the forehead with his heavy boot, and I was trampled on. After that I fainted, and didn't come to until the firing was going on and Lennox came running ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... you, and I hear of it, by the beard of the prophet, I'll throw into Allaha such a swarm of stinging bees that all Hind shall hear of it. Now go, and may Allah watch over you, infidels though ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... discouraging in the extreme. The sky looked darker and more threatening than ever; the wind was freshening rapidly, and sweeping along in savage gusts that smote the seething wave-crests and tore them into blinding, stinging showers of salt spray, that so thickened the atmosphere as to completely veil and hide everything beyond a distance of half a mile. The sea, mountainous as it had been all through the night, had grown in steepness ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... steps rising to the ceiling, affording a gradually mounting temperature. The bather who wants to enjoy a violent sweating rests full length for a few minutes on each step, while an attendant administers several hearty strokes of a stinging besom. Sometimes a woman climbs too far, and is brought down in a faint. On the poll, also, the cupping is done. The back of the patient, with the cups in even rows, looks to me like a muffin pan. Of course I never go on the poll: I am not robust enough. ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... constitutional principle. He complained also, 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 ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... play, with the sweat raining from his brow in the sweltering heat, it was as impossible for him to conceive of ultimate failure as it was for him to realize that he should ever cease to exist. The air was stagnant, the light was bad, his stomach was empty, and he was tormented by the stinging of the gnats that circled around the flame—but he was gloriously happy with the happiness of a man who has given himself to ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... tortured by eternal thirst and hunger, in the midst of water and with declicious fruits touching his head; the daughters of Danaus at their eternal, fruitless task; beasts biting and venomous reptiles stinging; and devouring flame eternally consuming bodies ever renewed in endless agony; all these sternly impressed upon the people the terrible consequences of sin and vice, and urged them to pursue the paths ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... Hercules, and Cacus of his rival Baccio Bandanelli,—we seem to live again in those days, with which Cellini has made us so familiar:—and almost naturally regard the back of the bending figure, to note if its muscles warrant the stinging sarcasm of Cellini, which we are told at once dispelled the pride of the aspiring artist—"that ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... The passage from the stinging freshness of the night to the stale overheated atmosphere of the Haslemere Hotel had checked the preternaturally rapid working of his mind, and he was now scarcely conscious of thinking at all. His head was heavy, and he would have thrown himself on the bed had he not feared to oversleep the ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... considered, I might have done worse than decide to say no more about the plot, but to keep my own eyes wide open. (I was particularly sore with Gloria, and derived much unwise consolation from considering stinging remarks I would make to her when the actual ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... grip, although as yet there was no snow. Rancher Winston stood shivering in a little Canadian settlement in the great lonely land which runs north from the American frontier to Athabasca. There was no blink of starlight in the murky sky, and out of the great waste of grass came a stinging wind that moaned about the frame houses clustering beside the trail that led south over the limited levels to the railroad and civilization. It chilled Winston, and his furs, somewhat tattered, gave him little protection. He strode up and down, glancing expectantly ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... years ago, with a revision of the Microlepidoptera (whatever these may be) by Pawkins, in which he extinguished a new species created by Hapley. Hapley, who was always quarrelsome, replied by a stinging impeachment of the entire classification of Pawkins.[A] Pawkins in his "Rejoinder"[B] suggested that Hapley's microscope was as defective as his power of observation, and called him an "irresponsible meddler"— Hapley was not a professor at that time. Hapley in his retort,[C] ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... before them Swarms the stinging fly, the Ahmo, Swarms the bee, the honey-maker; Wheresoe'er they tread, beneath them Springs a flower unknown among us, Springs the white ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... globe of the balloon, but around and beneath us the storm seemed to gather in a blue grey mist, which quickly broadened and deepened till, almost before we could realise it, we found ourselves in the very heart of the storm, the lightning playing all around us, and the sharp hail stinging our faces. ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... strange chase and a hot one, pounding on and on, racked with the wild, lurching flight, deeper and deeper into the yellow-gray night that welcomed them with more strident blasts and more stinging particles ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... Into the stinging sleet and rain-laden winds of the March morning there emerged from the door of a physician in Harley Street a boy of seventeen. He was slightly built, with stooping shoulders, and, meagre of proportions as he was, was protected from the cruel weather by an overcoat much ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... coloured under this stinging pleasantry—whether from a good conscience affronted or from a bad one made worse; but he otherwise showed a bold front, only bending his eyes a moment on his watch. "As he's to come to you himself—and I don't ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... Mr. Gladstone listened with lowering brow and face growing ashy pale with anger. When plain, commonplace Mr. Miall resumed his seat, Mr. Gladstone leaped to his feet with torpedoic action and energy. With voice stinging with angry scorn, and with magnificent gesture of the hand, designed for the cluster of malcontents below the gangway, he besought the honourable gentleman "in Heaven's name" to take his support elsewhere. The injunction was obeyed. The Bill was thrown ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Nekhludoff, motioned him with her head to join her there. He understood her, and ran behind the bushes. But here was a ditch overgrown with nettles, whose presence was unknown to Nekhludoff. He stumbled and fell, stinging and wetting his hands in the evening dew that was now falling, but, laughing, he straightened himself and ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... to them only in the exceptional case of their being cited as authorities for an inference, or as vouchers for a fact. Universally, it may be received as a rule of unlimited application,—that when an anecdote involves a stinging repartee, or collision of ideas, fancifully and brilliantly related to each other by resemblance or contrast, then you may challenge it as false to a certainty. One illustration of which is—that pretty nearly every ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... opinion is more than I deserve," said Eve, her memory stinging her with past recollections. "If you want to see a dear, kind-hearted, unselfish girl, wait until Joan comes. I do so hope that you will take to her! I think you will, after what you've been to Jerrem and to Adam. I want you and Joan ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... 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
... that, to men in their circumstances, were almost worse than death. It will not be surprising, that the irritation of such a systematic persecution, superadded to a previous and hereditary hatred, and accompanied by the stinging consciousness of utter impotence as regarded all effectual vengeance, should gradually have inflamed the Kalmuck animosity into the wildest expression of downright madness and frenzy. Indeed, long before the frontiers of China were approached, the hostility of both sides had assumed the ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... then stopped, with a sob, shamed tears stinging her eyes. "Will you forgive me?" she begged. "I would rather have died than hurt a blind man, or—or any one who loves a blind man. Lately I've been finding out how sacred blindness is. I ought to have guessed, Madame, that ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... resembled a huge flounder, but the tail was long and tapering. They would come close in-shore, and I would spear them from the rocks with a Papuan fishing-spear. The smallest I ever caught weighed fifteen pounds, and I could never carry home more than a couple of average weight. They have the power of stinging, I believe, electrically, hence their name. At all events, I was once stung by one of these fish, and it was an experience I shall never forget. It fortunately happened at a time when some friendly blacks were at hand, otherwise ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... broke from Errington's lips as he finished reading this letter was more powerful than reverent. Stinging tears darted to his eyes—he pressed his lips ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... was evidently preparing a stinging reply, but a knock on the door interrupted him. Louada Murilla admitted three men, who marched in solemnly, one behind the other, all beaming with great cordiality. Cap'n Sproul, not yet out of the doldrums, simply glowered and grunted ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... enough. . . . But to get away from the accursed place—anywhere . . . back to Windsor even . . . what if some one found him here in this plight—and he not allowed to speak—unable to explain—dumb as that oak. . . Would the sun never move! The wound was stinging sharply, and the arm above the cord was turning black and swelling fast—the pressure must come off. He felt for his dagger; then flung out an imprecation, and tried to tear the cord asunder with his ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... the haughty merchant, pointing to a chair. "I did hope after our last interview never again to be disturbed by your presence, but it seems that, serpent-like, you will never tire of stinging the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... one could answer the leopard sprang in again at Varronius, who stepped aside and drove his spear with very well timed accuracy. Only force enough was lacking. The point slit the leopard's skin and made a stinging wound along the beast's ribs, turning him the way a spur-prick turns a horse. His snarl made Varronius step back another pace or two, neglecting his chance to attack and drive the spear-point home. The infuriated leopard watched him for a moment, ears back, tail spasmodically twitching, then shot ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... insects and great quantities of ants—a small red ant found on tree trunks, and a large black one, about an inch in length, frequently seen among the leaves on the ground. The bite of the red ant caused a stinging and burning for about fifteen minutes. One of their carriers who was bitten in the foot by a black ant suffered intense pain for a number of hours. Not only his foot, but also his leg and hip were affected. The savages were both fishermen and hunters; the fish being taken with nets, ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... Austin's eyes at the kindness of his uncle, but the stinging words of his father rang in his ears, "You could not exist a month on your own resources," and he was determined to make his own way and prove to him that ...
— The Hero of Hill House • Mable Hale
... her warm in his seaman's coat, Against the stinging blast; He cut a rope from a broken spar, And bound her to ...
— The Wreck of the Hesperus • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... from D.H.Q. at 3.30 P.M. with the afternoon post, and reached the First Brigade well up to time. Then it began to rain, at first slightly, and then very heavily indeed, with a bagful of wind. On a particularly open stretch of road—the rain was stinging sharply—the engine stopped. With a heroic effort I tugged the bicycle through some mud to the side of a shed, in the hope that when the wind changed—it did not—I might be under cover. I could not see. I could not grip—and of course I could not find ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... eruption in the skin causing a sensation like the stinging of nettles. It may be acute or chronic, frequently caused by ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... utterance having been dragged out of him by external compulsion, retains his native shyness and is alone in ignorance of his own influence. "No, no, it is Montesquieu, it is Dohm, it is my dear Lessing. Poor fellow, the Christian bigots are at him now like a plague of stinging insects. I almost wish he hadn't written Nathan der Weise. I am glad to reflect I didn't instigate him, nay, that he had written a play in favor of the Jews ere ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... 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 ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... with the hatchet slogged at his head with the back of it. Prosper tottered; it was all up with him. Another assailant slipped in under his guard with a pike, which he drove into his ribs. A second stinging blow from the hatchet dropped him. Prone on his face he fell, and never knew of the trampling he had from ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... 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 before you ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... the night he came— A feeding-storm of fisselling dry snow. I lay and watched flakes fleetering out of the dark In the candleshine against the wet black glass, Like moths about a lanthorn ... I lay and watched, Till the pains were on me ... And they buzzed like bees, The snowflakes in my head—hot, stinging bees ... It snowed again, the night he went.... In the smother I lost him, in a drift down Bloodysyke ... I couldn't follow further: the snow closed in— Dry flakes that stung my face like swarming bees, And blinded me ... and buzzing, till my head Was ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... the thick of a bewildering, blinding snowstorm. But it was by now just as far back to Cousin Mattie's as it was to Uncle Alec's, so we struggled on, growing more frightened at every step. We could hardly face the stinging snow, and we could not see ten feet ahead of us. It had turned bitterly cold and the tempest howled all around us in white desolation under the fast-darkening night. The narrow path we were trying to ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... From his hiding-place he heard the crash of furniture, more shots, and the loud, ribald laughter of the soldiers. And then a crackle of flame and a thick smell of smoke. And after that silence. At dusk he crawled forth from his culvert, trembling, his hands and face all mottled with stinging-nettles and scratched with thistles; he found his master's house a smouldering ruin, and a thick pall of smoke lay over the town of Senlis like a fog. Somewhere a woman shrieked and then was still. ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... them more able to bear with the infirmities of the weak, and with the passing moods, however provoking, of one another. But no. And their impatience and contempt and bad temper all came at this crisis to such a head with them that they could only be cured by the small cords and the stinging words of the Shining One. The true key to this so painful part of the parable hangs at our own girdle. We who have been born and brought up in an evangelical church are thrown from time to time into the company of men—ministers and people—who have not had ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... which each fancied to be the original. If we could imagine the shade of Swift or Shaftesbury, of Scarron or Rabelais, to walk invisibly through the world playing its bitter and fantastic tricks in the ways of men, stinging some, astounding others, and startling all, we perhaps would approach nearest to the feelings which might, now and then, have indulged the habitual scorn and stimulated ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... headlights broke upon him, passed him, and then immediately other glaring lights flared up toward him out of the sheets of water. He couldn't see because of his lost glasses and because of the stinging rain. He rushed between two cars. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... the land is full of fossils, That the waters swarm with fishes Shaped according to his wishes, That every pool is fertile In fancy kinds of turtle, New birds around him singing, New insects, never stinging, With a million novel data About the articulata, And facts that strip off all husks From the history of mollusks. And when, with loud Te Deum, He returns to his Museum, May he find the monstrous reptile That so long the land ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... distances into strange, lonely places, where there was no lover nor brother nor any chivalrous person to guard and rescue them from innumerable perils—from water and fire, mad bulls and ferocious dogs, and evil-minded tramps and drunken, dissolute men, and from all venomous, stinging, creeping, nasty, horrid things—did we not see that they were no longer the same beings we had previously known, that in their long flights in heat and cold and rain and wind and dust they had shaken off some ancient weakness that was theirs, that without loss ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... bursting its narrow bounds, carried the blue attackers back to where they came from. But they were hardly clear of that appalling slope before they reformed, presented an undaunted front once more, and then drew off with stinging resistance to the ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... the allies of slavery in the Free States, has been making 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, which have no motive political ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... when the animal was stalled with a load too heavy for his strength. Yes, and although Garry was known to have a fiery Irish tongue, he had been subdued by the arguments which Hugh hurled at him, and meekly promised to go easy with his stinging ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... stirs 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
... it was, and bitter cold; the east wind blowing bleak, and bringing with it stinging particles from marsh, and moor, and fen - from the Great Desert and Old Egypt, may be. Some of the component parts of the sharp-edged vapour that came flying up the Thames at London might be mummy-dust, ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... all a man was a fool to mope and whine when that wind from the sea was beating in his ears and the sea scents of clover and poppies and salt stinging foam were brought to his nostrils, and the trees rustled like the beating of birds' wings in the velvety ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... shelf. It had been tossed there with some violence evidently, for the paper had burst and the contents had cascaded out on the shelf and on the floor—the rich, be-raisined cookies which Camilla was to have taken to the picnic. Sylvia felt the tears stinging her eyelids, and pulled Judith out of the tragic house. They stood for a moment in the yard, beside a bed of flowering crocuses, brilliant in the sun. The forsaken house looked down severely at them from its blank windows. Judith was almost instantly relieved ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... at Velasco, surrounding him, there came suddenly a swift whizz through the air, a singing as of a hornet, and the heavy lash struck them, across the face, the eyes, the shoulders, stinging and sharp, leaving cruel welts as it struck. The driver screamed out, half blinded. The gendarmes started back. Petrokoff fell on his knees and cowered behind a bush, his fat body trembling and his hands outstretched ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... 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 ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... was stinging scorn in her tone. "You have talked it over with Foyle, and that man knows all. You are here to worm out what I know in order to betray your friend. Oh, don't trouble to lie,"—as he would have spoken,—"I can see your object. And I nearly fell ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... February and the air was stinging cold. It was one of those nights such as Lowell wrote ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... will surely have to use a barrel of it going through the changes in the hills. I cannot stand a stinging face." ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... waistcoat, his hair-brushes in the uplifted hands. Hands and brushes had been arrested midway in the shock. The calm clerical man; all the more terrible then because of his calmness; standing there with his cold stinging words, and his unhappy culprit facing him, conscious of his heinous sins—the worst sin of all: ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... up Nigel's ambitions connected with labour, was deliberately stinging him to activity, deliberately prompting him to a sort of manly shame at the thought of his present life of repose. But he was doing it with an apparent carelessness that was deceptive and very subtle; he was ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... indiscretion to write with a diamond on the window of a public inn. At Carron, where he was refused a sight of the magnificent foundry, he avenged himself in epigram. At Inverary he resented some real or imaginary neglect on the part of his Grace of Argyll, by a stinging lampoon; nor can he be said to have fairly regained his serenity of temper, till he danced his wrath away with some Highland ladies ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... he found himself in the presence of Frontenac. The French commander was clad in a brilliant uniform, and surrounded by his staff, gay in warlike finery. With courtly courtesy he asked the envoy for his letter, which, proving to be a curt summons to surrender, he answered forthwith in a stinging speech. The envoy, abashed, asked ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... helped to keep his tongue tied in the matter where Larry Hogan had continued to make himself a bugbear. He had a horror, too, of being thought capable of doing a dishonourable thing, and the shame he felt at having peeped into a letter was so stinging, that the idea of asking any one's advice in the dilemma in which he was placed made him recoil from the thought of such aid. Now, Father Phil had relieved him from the difficulties his own weakness imposed; the subject had been forced upon him; and once ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... gently rubbed her little body till it was quite dry, if not very clean, and laid her tenderly in the heart of the blankets, among the remains and eggs and grubs of the mothy creatures—they were not wild beasts, or even stinging things—and covered her up, leaving a little opening for her to breathe through. She had not cried since Clare took her; she was too feeble to cry; but, alas, there was no question about feeding her, for he had ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... elevation that commands the road. It is pointed this way, and you can never notice it there unless you have been posted. Now I can guess what they are hiding for; they expect that you may be along, and mean to rid the German army of your stinging them ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... members of the crew sought to close upon him, but he sprung back, and the tough sapling swept about him like a circle of light. It was a terrific weapon in the hands of a strong man, now possessed of almost giant strength in his rage. More than one fellow went down under its stinging cut, and heads and faces were bleeding. The younger portion of the crowd speedily took to their heels, and soon even the most stubborn fled; the farmer vigorously assisting their ignominious retreat with tremendous downward ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... headed northwestward, guided by little but the compass. Thirty miles that day they made in spite of piercing blasts and driving snow. But with the night there began a terrible storm with winds of zero chill. The air was filled with stinging, cutting snow. When they rose at daylight they were nearly buried in drifts, although their camp was in a dense, sheltered thicket. Guided wholly by the compass they travelled again, but blinded by the whirling white they stumbled and blundered into endless difficulties and made but poor headway. ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... However, it was stinging cold, and running after those expensive dogs was an occupation that palled. By-and-by, "How much is your sled ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... pulled down the shirts, and pushed up the cap, he began vigorously rubbing the bare young legs with the palm of his hand, spitting upon it, the better, as he said, to draw out the smarting and the stinging of the brier-scratches. Then setting his idol, still howling, upon his own panel of the fence, Burl began looking about him with wide-open eyes, as if in quest of something lost, wondering the while what could have become of his ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... experienced, or when we are under the painful influence of some personal trouble, be it a substantial loss of any sort, or the more unfortunate burden, cast upon us by any social stigma, then, when the whole world, learning of our misfortune extends its hand in stinging sympathy, and looks with painful enquiry of curious compassion, to see "how we take it," what a piercing spur we thrust into our pride, to drive into it that forced merriment and happy resignation, which we blindly ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... filthily), but they will eat it as they find it without any other dressing. A loathsome thing, either to the beholders or the hearers. There is no manner of creeping beast hurtful, except some spiders (which as many affirm are signs of great store of gold), and also certain stinging gnats, which bite so fiercely that the place where they bite shortly after swelleth, and ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... girl! You loved me well, and you love me still. Love can not be so quickly unlearned. It is ambition that tempted you from me—that love of gold that always cursed your weak nature!" he returned, scornfully, stinging her ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... drenched to the skin. So were the other passengers, and the stinging drops lashed the bare bodies of the paddlers. The water swiftly gathered in the boat, so that Mr. Grigsby and the captain began to bail with gourds kept handy for the purpose. But, hurrah! There, on the near ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... my experiences and 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 in the cool folds of their leaves or lifting sweetly out of the meadow-grass, ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... us, that, when it freezes, "the sea smokes like burning turf-land, and a fog or mist arises, called frost-smoke," which "cutting smoke frequently raises blisters on the face and hands, and is very pernicious to the health." But this pure stinging cold is an elixir to the lungs, and not so much a frozen mist, as a crystallized midsummer haze, refined and purified ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... stinging-lizard!" responded the other affectionately. The cigars were brought and I felt constrained ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... exposed to the marksmen at the water-hole. For no half measure would do. He must have a full view of the bottom of the next bend. There he saw two crawling figures. He fired twice and dropped down with three or four stinging whispers in his ears and a second volley overhead as he was under cover. Again he sprang up over the bank in the temptation to see the result of his aim. One of the would-be flankers lay prostrate and still, face downward. The other was disappearing ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... mouth for a stinging rejoinder, but before she could voice it there came a disturbance from a new and unexpected quarter. The bushes parted and two figures emerged—a young ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... crawl backwards. At all costs he must find the canteen. He had no thought but this: the canteen! the canteen! Three lives depended on those drops of precious liquid. Were they safe? He crawled backwards inch by inch. But he had lost all sense of direction. The stinging, stifling sand, the shrill-screaming wind, the pitch-black whirling darkness; how could a man possibly tell where he ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... Peking Gazette, the oldest journal in the world. They now have, in imitation of foreigners, some scores of dailies, in which they give foreign news, and which they print in foreign type. The highest mandarins wince under their stinging criticisms. ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... the senses an indelible and awful impression seldom equalled in the whole gamut of natural experience. The world a void, grisly, fierce and appalling. We stumble and struggle through the Stygian gloom; the merciless blast—an incubus of vengeance—stabs, buffets and freezes; the stinging drift blinds and chokes. In a ruthless grip we realize ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... gardens, where I saw figs growing against a sunny wall and tasted some of them, and got as many apples to eat as I wished. On another memorable walk in a hay-field, when we sat down to rest on one of the haycocks I heard a sharp, prickly, stinging cry, and, jumping up eagerly, called grandfather's attention to it. He said he heard only the wind, but I insisted on digging into the hay and turning it over until we discovered the source of the strange exciting sound,—a mother field mouse with half a dozen naked young hanging to her ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir |
