"Sting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bear is the only one of the wood folk who has learned the trick of attacking Unk Wunk without injury to himself. If, when very hungry, he finds a porcupine, he never attacks him directly,—he knows too well the deadly sting of the barbs for that,—but bothers and irritates the porcupine by flipping earth at him, until at last Unk Wunk rolls all his quills outward and lies still. Then Mooween, with immense caution, slides one paw under him and with a quick flip hurls him against the nearest tree, and knocks ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... month of life in the same house with his father, he would have been possessed by a secret joy. Not so, however, Prince Michael. Nothing in all his merciless life had hurt this man of shadows like the defection of his son. Nor did the rolling years soften the sting of loss. Rather, as, little by little, the mantle of loneliness was drawn closer and closer about him, muffling him at last even from contact with the companions of his relaxation and license, the hardness and the bitterness in him increased, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... not, after all, believe that his true nature flowed quite equably into his books, as I think it did into The Light Invisible and Richard Raynal. It was a demonstration, and he enjoyed using his skill and adroitness; he loved to present the smouldering and flashing of passions, the thrill and sting of which he had never known. Saved as he was by his temperament alike from deep suffering and tense emotion, and from any vital mingling either with the scum and foam or with the stagnancy and mire of life, the ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... by Vesey's boldness and dazed by his terrifying doctrines, reply defensively "we are slaves," the harsh retort "you deserve to remain so," was, without doubt, intended to sting if possible, their abject natures into sensibility on the subject of their wrongs, to galvanize their rotting souls back to manhood, and to make their base and sieve-like minds capable of receiving and retaining, at least, a single ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke
... reproached her, not by a look. I saw her point of view. My infernal failing, even then. Not by a look I ever reproached her. I thought I'd forgotten it, absolutely. But I haven't. It came out in that moment that I haven't. 'The life you've—taken!' I meant it to sting. Damn me, it did sting. That look she gave! As if I had struck her.—What rot! How could it sting her? How could she mind? Only if she ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... approached—touched him—and he felt the large, cold, and hairy paws of the monster encircle him. He thought himself dead, but suddenly he heard a kind of humming noise, clear and acute, and saw a little golden gnat, which had a kind of sting as fine and brilliant as a diamond needle, flying round the spider in a furious manner, and a voice (when I say voice, just imagine the voice of a gnat!)-a voice said to him, 'Poor little fly! you have saved ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... swayed a huge python, one of those reptiles that are able to crush a man's bones in their coils. A few yards away crouched a savage panther, its glaring red eyes fixed full on the helpless Claus. One of those monstrous spotted spiders whose sting is death crept stealthily toward him over the matted leaves, which shriveled and turned ...
— The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus • L. Frank Baum
... seem to think of the body only as a clog, impeding mental action—as a weight, chaining the spirit down. Were the mind, in its activity, independent of the body—were the wounded spirit unable to forget its pain—could the guilty conscience sting incessantly—then the chief human industry would come to be the erection of asylums for the insane. But by an unfathomable mystery the tireless regal spirit has been blended with the flesh and blood of its servant, the body. In heaven, where there is neither sin nor ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... means," nodded the Viscount, "if you have a taste for snakes, and spiders, and vermin of that sort, Slingsby will show you where to find him—Slingsby knows his den well enough, poor old Sling! But look to yourself, for spiders sting and snakes bite, and Jasper Gaunt ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... sorrow—they think it 15 lb. Half an hour passes, and we catch but half a dozen silvery bream and some small baby whiting, for now the sun is beating down upon our heads, and our naked feet begin to burn and sting; so we adjourn to the old house and rest awhile, leaving our big lines securely tied. But, though the breeze for which we wait comes along by two o'clock, the fish do not, and so, after disinterring our takes from the wet sand, wherein we had buried them as they were ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... not sting, but there was a large red ant, half an inch long, who was most pugnacious; he stood up on his hind legs and fought you with amazing courage, and his jaws were formidable. We made our first acquaintance with white ants while we ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... avoid the feeling as if my unbroken silence must have left a sting in your soul which would embitter ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... if prayer merits anything, this would seem to be chiefly that which is besought in prayer. Yet it does not always merit this, because even the saints' prayers are frequently not heard; thus Paul was not heard when he besought the sting of the flesh to be removed from him. Therefore prayer ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... scenes had served to put Frank's conscience to sleep again. However, it received a sting, when, on the day of leaving Annapolis, he learned that the secessionist whose turkeys had been stolen, had, in revenge for his wrongs, quitted his farm, and gone to join the ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... hoping to crush his rider under his saddle. In the instant, while he towered, poised in the air, Mose shook his right foot free of the stirrup and swung to the left and alighted on his feet, while the fallen horse, stunned by his own fall, lay for an instant, groaning and coughing. Under the sting of the quirt, he scrambled to his feet only to find his inexorable rider again on his back, with merciless spurs set deep in the quick of his quivering sides. With a despairing squeal he set off in a low, swift, sidewise gallop, and for nearly an hour ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... gone immediately. I might have got him out of that woman's hands, and made his life happy for years. There was the sting, but the crime had been long before. You know the rest. I had no health to remain, no heart to come home; and then came vagrancy indeed. I drifted wherever restlessness or impulse took me, till all my working ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to be created, of a new labor to be dared, I am not surprised that I find you sordid and material, sluggish and incredulous. That I do not despair is because I know also the forces that are driving behind you—because I know the raging lash of poverty, the sting of contempt and mastership, 'the insolence of office and the spurns.' Because I feel sure that in the crowd that has come to me tonight, no matter how many may be dull and heedless, no matter how many may have come out of idle curiosity, or in order to ridicule—there ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... caressing her cheek; not a sign of flinching in the eyes that turned round on him; not a trace of hesitation in the voice that said, with concession to a laugh in it: "Yes, she was mine before she was yours." Such skill had grown in this life of nettle-grasping!—indeed, she hardly felt the sting now. This time she was able to go on placidly, in the unconnected way of talk books know not, and life ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... There's the sting of't. That, I think, Hurts the most a thousandfold! To feel sudden, at a wink, Some dear child we used to scold, Praise, love both ways, kiss and tease, Teach and tumble as our own, All its curls about our knees, Rise up suddenly full-grown. Who could wonder such a sight Made a woman mad outright? ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... hopes of happiness. She knew that the lark might as well plead with the iron bars as she with Henry of Bolingbroke. And the penalty of her refusal was not merely poverty and homelessness. She could have borne that; indeed, the sentence about the estates passed by her, hardly noted. The bitterest sting lay in the assurance thus placidly given her, that her loving little Richard would be consigned to the keeping of a woman whom she knew to hate her fiercely—that he would be taught to hate and despise her himself. He would be brought ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... is a word used to express the sudden emotions of the speaker; as, Tahwah! pemahdezewin nelojegootoge! Alas! I fear for life! O neboowin! Ahneshekewesahgandahmoowin? O death! Where is thy sting? ...
— Sketch of Grammar of the Chippeway Languages - To Which is Added a Vocabulary of some of the Most Common Words • John Summerfield
... foretells you a speedy return home to Egypt, or a quiet bed in the black earth in Babylon, and the kind Boges wishes you a peaceful sleep. Farewell, my broken flower, my gay, bright viper, wounded by its own sting, my pretty fir-cone, fallen from ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... for him, Lord," he said, and with a sudden impulse he knelt beside the library table and prayed that God would take away all the sting of his father's grief, and give him joy instead; joy in fellowship with the ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... from that great naturalist, Dr. Isaac Watts. In common with every one who has been a child I knew that the insect in question improved each shining hour by something honey something something every something flower. I had also heard that bees could not sting you if you held your breath, a precaution which would make conversation by the herbaceous border an affair altogether too spasmodic; and, finally, that in any case the same bee could only sting you once—though, apparently, there was no similar provision ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... 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 all the arts of modern warfare, who would ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... can 'member when I was a boy in slavery. Run off too. Old master ketch me and switch me. Look like the switch would sting so. 'Member the last switchin' I got. Dr. Henderson—I think he was old master's son-in-law. Me? Well, he whipped me 'cause I'd steal his eggs. I don't reckon I would a been so bad but I was raised up a motherless child. My mother died and ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... should be repeated? And then in this letter there was so absolute an absence of all affectionate regard for her own children! She had spoken with great love of Lord Hautboy; but then Lord Hautboy was the acknowledged heir, whereas her own children were nobodies. In this there lay the sting. And then she felt herself to have been rebuked because she had hinted at the possibility of Lord Hampstead's departure for a better world. Lord Hampstead was mortal, as well as others. And why should not his death ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... like furnace," while Neaera, to the accompaniment of her lyre, sings one of Sappho's most passionate odes—whispers something in the ear of the brilliant vocalist, which visibly provokes a witty repartee, with a special sting in it for Horace himself, at which the little man winces—for have there not been certain love-passages of old between Neaera and himself? The wine circulates freely. Maecenas warms, and drops, with the deliberation of ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... where you told me to. The next second there was a sting in my right arm, then something knocked me over and I lost consciousness for a few moments. I am satisfied, also, that I was grazed by a bullet that tore my scabbard from my side. When I came to my senses, I crawled behind a ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... This is a compliment, I think; moreover, it's the reason most of all why I like you." He laughed in turn, unconsciously removing the sting from the observation following. "I can't see any other possible excuse for our being friends. We're as different as ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... But the sting of contumely or insult was not added to their misfortunes. There is a fellowship of brave men which rises above the feuds of nations, and may at last go far, we hope, to heal them. From every rock there rose a Boer—strange, grotesque ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... intending a Fable, a frail, slender thing, rhymeywinged, with a sting in its tail. But, by addings and alterings not previously planned, digressions chance-hatched, like birds' eggs in the sand, and dawdlings to suit every whimsey's demand (always freeing the bird which I ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... so clever an imitation that none of the four could mistake it. So soon as they quit the plateau, seeking a way east by south, they plunged immediately into a dreary swamp, where progress was slow and difficult. The mosquitoes beset them in swarms, plaguing even the poor animals with their lusty sting. Hour after hour, until the woods became a hideous chaos of darkness and unseemly sounds, the four panting fugitives pushed on, fainting with hunger, worn out by the incessant battle with the corded foliage, the dense ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... bedtime about the service this morning," interposed the lawyer; "the parson rattled along in grand style, and gave Miss Carmichael, and all other broken reeds of dissenters, some piping hot Durham mustard. Did it sting, Miss Carmichael?" ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... tremulous old lady. "You have drawn the sting of yours and kept only the honey," which saying astonished Charles greatly. He had no idea his mother could say things like that. She had had time to think plenty of them, indeed, but there had never been room ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... that the poem records more than a child's mere fancy; but never before have I felt its truth, have I been caught up, so to speak, into the atmosphere of the wise, simple souls who are able to rob death of the worst of its sting by refusing to let the dead die altogether, even on earth. Rosie is dead and buried. I perceive also—I perceived, while Tony and the children stood round that picture—that Rosie is still here, in this house, ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... he were forced by those assisting at the punishment to keep a strict calculation, he manoeuvred so that the tip of the lash struck the deal plank on which the culprit was lying, thus taking much of the sting out of the stroke. Accordingly, when it was Ivan's turn to be stretched upon the fatal plank and to receive the correction he was in the habit of administering, on his own account, those who momentarily played ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... myself to believe that this was really death, that which I had so often shuddered at and felt afraid of; there was nothing there dreadful or appalling, only a heavenly calm and peace. I felt it did me so much good, and was such a comfort. "Death, where is thy sting? Grave, where is thy victory?" He was a just and good man, and had a heart overflowing with love and kindness, and he has gone to his rest after a long trial which he bore with so much patience. I am not afraid of death now, and when I ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... Sales; he was rather stupid, and as a legitimate lover he would be dull, duller than Charles, who at least knew how to say things; but something coloured and exciting and dramatic had been ravished from her—by Aunt Rose. That was the sting, and she was humiliated, though she would not own it. She had been good enough for an episode, but her ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... limited; and it is possible (p. 332) that they would not have been further molested, but for the thoughtlessness of Clement's successor, Paul III. Impotent to effect anything against the King, the Pope did his best to sting Henry to fury by creating Fisher a cardinal on 20th May. He afterwards explained that he meant no harm, but the harm was done, and it involved Fisher's friend and ally, Sir Thomas More. Henry declared that he would send the new cardinal's ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... rapidly crossed her face, but her lip curved knowingly and her voice came more gently, because of the greater sting that lay ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... anything that is noxious, even though it does not hurt! I'm not alone in the world. If I allow myself to be insulted to-day—maybe I can afford to laugh at the insult, maybe it doesn't sting me at all—but, having tested his strength on me, the offender will proceed to flay some one else the next day! That's why one is compelled to discriminate between people, to keep a firm grip on one's heart, and to classify mankind—these belong ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... The sting in his voice had cured me. I never was a weeper. I sat up, my face blazing, and stared at him. He'd got me to hand over to the cop, but he hadn't ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... first weapon his hand closed over, and he did not disdain it. The instant it landed and von Staden reeled before the blow, Murphy came out of his state-room with a scuttering rush and von Staden fired as he came. The captain felt the sting of the bullet as it creased the top of his left shoulder; then his right fist came up in a blow that started at his hip and landed fairly under the supercargo's heart. Von Staden grunted once, the pistol dropped clattering to the deck and he folded up like an accordion. ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... ter Kunnel Pen'leton's stable, hawnet,' sez she, 'en sting de knees er de race hoss name' Lightnin' Bug. Be sho' en git ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... thus making his march of triumph, the American patriots were not at rest. Marion was flying about, like a wasp with a very sharp sting. Sumter was back again, cutting off strays and foragers. Other parties of patriots were afoot and active. And in the new settlements west of the Alleghanies the hardy backwoodsmen, who had been far out of the reach of war and its terrors, were growing eager to strike a ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... that you can but regard me a feelingless monster that would rend an innocent and loving heart, and God knows that I now beg your forgiveness, but in this life cruel things must be done, done that those who come after us may feel no sting of reproach cast by an exacting society. I am an old man, my dear, and shall soon be taken to the burial ground where my fathers sleep in honor. They left me a proud name and I must not soil it. ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... obedience as the 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 is the ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... his patience thrice heroic. He did not speak of himself or his services, though I knew both to be eminent; but McDowell had insulted him, as he rode disabled from the field, and Geary felt the sting of the word more than the bullet. He had ventured to say to McDowell that the Reserves were badly needed in front, and the proud "Regular" had answered the officious "Volunteer," to the effect that he knew ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... yet Love doth not live, Love, that to loss in life her folly led[249], Folly the food whereon her frailty fed, Frailty the milk that Nature's breast did give: Life, loss, and folly: frailty, food, and kind, Worm, sting, thorns, fire, and torment to the mind; Life but a breath, and folly but a flower, Frailty, clay, dust, the food that fancy scorns; Love a sweet bait to cover losses sour, Flesh breeds the fire that kindles lustful thorns; Lust, fire, bait, scorn, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... Highland robber would have been put down in as many weeks as he has flourished years. His gang, without him, is no more to be dreaded as a permanent annoyance—it will no longer exist—than a wasp without its head, which may sting once perhaps, but ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... is waspish, and puts forth his sting For bread, drink, butter, cheese; for everything That Prickles buys puts Prickles out of frame; How well his ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... away the curse and sting of all temporal plagues, yea, and of death itself, causing all to work together for good to such as love him, Rom. viii. 28. He hath killed him that had the power of death, that is, the devil, Heb. ii. 14; and through him the sting of ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... said with a certain sarcasm, of which Marthe felt the sting. But, before she had time to retort, Philippe ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... of five constellations. Towards the south, near midnight in spring, the observer in those ancient times saw the Scorpion. The figure of a man was standing upon that venomous beast, with his left foot pressed firmly down upon its head; but the scorpion's tail was curled up to sting him in the right heel. Ophiuchus, the Serpent-holder, the man treading on the Scorpion, derives his name from the Serpent which he holds in his hands and strangles; the Serpent that, as we have seen in the preceding ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... soil-stained arms as eagerly as a bride. It was good. It took all the soreness out of me. Before supper I took the boy and we went down to the public baths on the waterfront and there I dived and splashed and swam like a young whale. The sting of the cold salt water was all the further balm I needed. I came out tingling and fit right then for another nine-hour day. But when I came back I threatened our first week's savings at the supper-table. Ruth had made more ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... in bringing to an incredible number of those d——d French sharks—beg pardon, but you know the pestilent breed. Well, we shall never agree upon the subject I fear. As for me, the smart of the salt air, the sting of the salt breeze, the fighting, the danger, they have got into my blood; and even now it sometimes comes over me that life will not be perfect life to me without the dancing boards under my feet and the ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... nights were fearfully dark, so that the shape of the land could not be made out. He said that without the traitor's light they could not have found us. I am not saying by this that one should always trust to darkness; there are many other ways now of taking the sting out of torpedo attacks. It is needless to say that the steamers I sent out returned, having seen nothing. While the fleet was at Batoum, two or three more torpedo attacks were made on a smaller scale without effect; but ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... thing, that he had begun translating into it fragments of the great literatures of the world, and had planned a complete version of the Imitation of Christ. It gave him imaginative richness and yet left to him the sting and tang of reality. How vivid in his translation from Villon are those 'eyes with a big gay look out of them would bring folly from a great scholar.' More vivid surely than anything in Swinburne's version, and how noble those words ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats
... enjoyed, though sure to be undone, Soon as her curiosity is over, Would give the world she could her toy recover, So fares it with our poet; and I'm sent To tell you he already does repent: Would you were all as forward to keep Lent. Now the deed's done, the giddy thing has leisure To think o' th' sting, that's in the tail of pleasure. Methinks I hear him in consideration: What will the world say? Where's my reputation? Now that's at stake. No, fool, 'tis out o' fashion. If loss of that should follow want of wit, How many undone men were in ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... Some few politicians thought he was a crank on the subject, but the results speak for themselves. Some politicians, who wanted the old spoils system retained, were often after him like a swarm of angry hornets, but he never got out of their way, and when they tried to sting, he slapped them in a way that soon made them leave him alone. And more than that, he was very clever in the way that he presented his case to those representatives and senators who understood the real value of Civil Service reform. He made them appreciate what he and his fellow-commissioners ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer
... individual been crushed? Or has the stability of the government or that of the country been weakened? Or is one million of subjects stronger than four millions? Do you think that the benefit they have received, should be poisoned by the sting of vengeance. If you think so, you must say to them: You have demanded emancipation, and you have got it; but we abhor your persons; we are outraged at your success, and we will stigmatize by a criminal prosecution ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... raspberries, and currants, besides many other things, were there in profusion, and Mrs. Troost said every thing flourished for Mrs. Hill, while her garden was all choked up with weeds. "And you have bees, too—don't they sting the children, and give you a great deal of trouble? Along in May, I guess it was, Troost [Mrs. Troost always called her husband so] bought a hive, or, rather, he traded a calf for one—a nice, likely ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... of the irony of that remark. But it brought a flush of shame to Dodd's cheek, for the sorrow and sting and ignominy of that part which he had played had not departed from his soul nor did even the fervor of his passion for her help him forgive himself; he stared at her guiltily as the thief gloats over his loot and is conscious of his degradation ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... miseries for African collectors. 'Wait-a-bit' thorns tear clothes and skin. Tree-snakes turn the Kru-boys not pale but the colour of boiled liver; their 'bowels fail them,' as the natives say. Each tree has its ant, big or small, black or red; and all sting more or less. We see their armies marching up the trunks, and the brush of a bough brings down a little shower. Monstrous mangrove-flies and small brown-coloured 'huri,' most spiteful biters, and ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... hymenee! why do you tantalize me thus? O why sting me for a swift moment only? Why can you not continue? O why do you now cease? Is it because if you continued beyond the swift moment you would soon certainly ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... and don't any of you throw stones or yell!" he said, in a guarded undertone; "for if them hornets find out what is up, they'll come swarming out by the million and sting us all to death." ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... big enough 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 visible ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... climbing down and down over the rough, sharp rocks, toward the caverns of the dwarfs, while the little tongues of flame shoot out at them from the fissures, as if they were trying to catch and burn and sting them, just as they shoot out from between the black, charred sticks ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... injustice, Murphy. In the first place, I do not possess the nature of an Indian, and am not out for revenge. Your slashing at me down in Glencaid has n't left so much as a sting behind. It's completely blotted out, forgotten. I haven't the slightest desire to kill you, man; but I do want to clear my name of the stain of that crime. I want you to tell the whole truth about that night's work ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... upon it, even though it be the chief of sinners. So amid the ruins of this earthly tabernacle may the triumphant song ascend above the snapping of cords, the breaking of golden bowls and pitchers, the very crash of nature's citadel: "Oh, death, where is thy sting? Oh, grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God that giveth us the victory through our Lord ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... veneration to him, and imparteth no small efficacy to his wholesome suggestions. Such a reprehension, while it forceth a smile without, doth work remorse within; while it seemeth to tickle the ear, doth sting the heart. In fine, many whose foreheads are brazed and hearts steeled against all blame, are yet not of proof against derision; divers, who never will be reasoned, may be rallied in better order: in which cases raillery, as an instrument of so important ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... a devil now," observed Bill Spurey; "for what's a devil without a tail? A devil is like a sarpent, whose sting is in ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of little raised red papules closely resembling lesions caused by the sting of a mosquito, may make their appearance upon the skin of the child, remain a few hours, and then disappear. Hives are usually due to digestive disturbances and may be caused by such foods as strawberries, nuts, pastries, pineapple, certain sea foods, mushrooms, etc. ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... bleeds for you," said Grandma Elsie in low, tender tones. "'The sting of death is sin and the strength of sin is the law.' But 'Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth.' He fulfilled its conditions, he bore the penalty God's justice required against those who had broken it; and now salvation ...
— Elsie at Home • Martha Finley
... prostrate form. "Both hands! Both hands!" he yelled as again his blanket whirled in air; and so, by dint of desperate work, the inner line of flame at last was stayed, but every man of the gallant little squad of fire fighters had paid the penalty of his devotion and felt the sting of hissing lead—Field the last of all. Westward now, well nigh an hundred yards in width, a broad, black, smoking patch stretched across the pathway of the swift-coming wall of smoke and flame, a safeguard to the beleaguered command worth all the soldier sacrifice it cost. In grand and ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... said Jim, impressively. "Or if he did there would be a snake sting ready for you, all the same. I know Dud Fielding. He'll get even with you if he dies ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... brought to pass the saying that is written; Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the window, and heard the musical hum quite distinctly. A great longing to see them came upon me, and I opened the window and crept in. The little box had a door like a closet. I opened it—the tiniest crack—when out came the light with such a sting that I closed it again in terror—not, however, before three bees had shot out into the room, where they darted about like flashes of lightning. Terribly frightened, I tried to get out of the window again, but ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... husband dead when Christiana began to accuse herself of having killed him. To take her own bitter words for it, the most agonising and remorseful thoughts about her conduct to her husband stung her heart like so many wasps. Ah yes! A wasp's sting is but a blade of innocent grass compared with the thoughts that have stung us all as we recalled what we said and did to those who are now no more. There are graves in the churchyard we dare not go near. "I have sinned away your father!" ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... subjected; yet he replied, firmly, "You have availed yourself, I see, of your opportunities; from your teachers you have brought away much knowledge and many graces. You talk with the ease of a master, yet your speech carries a sting. My Messala, when he went away, had no poison in his nature; not for the world would he have hurt ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... after MacNeff's scalp," replied Ken. "And I put the ball over for Prince to hit. What else could I do? Why, that little chunky cuss has an eye, and he can sting the ball—he's almost as good as Reddy. But, Worry, you mustn't give me the credit. Reddy won the ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... Convention and initiated the use of poison gas there was much discussion as to the ethics of reprisals and G.K. used against reprisals two arguments one of which was a rare example of a fallacy in his arguments. If a wasp stings you, he said, you do not sting back. No, we might reply, but you squash it—you have as a man an advantage over a wasp and so do not need to use its ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... there was the Gnat, and the Dragon-fly too, With all their Relations, Green, Orange, and Blue. And there came the Moth, with his plumage of down, And the Hornet, in Jacket of Yellow and Brown; Who with him the Wasp, his Companion, did bring, But they promised that Evening to lay by their Sting. And the sly little Dormouse crept out of his hole, And brought to the Feast his blind Brother, the Mole. And the Snail, with his Horns peeping out of his Shell, Came from a great distance, the Length of an Ell. A Mushroom their Table, and on it was laid A Water-dock ...
— The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair • Catherine Ann Dorset
... mere color, however, for in it lies the secret of a powerful and direct expression of sentiment) and by a vivid realization of movement. Proud by nature, delicate in health, his life was far from happy; he never ceased to feel the sting of adverse criticism. "For more than thirty years I have been given over to the wild beasts," he said once. He had warm friends, who have left many records of his sweetness of disposition when the outer barrier of haughty reserve was broken through; but they were few in number. He ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... such moment as this as one of exultation in the satisfaction of all her wishes. She took up a book of apothegms that lay on the table, and opened by chance to this, "Unhappy are they whose desires are all ratified." It was like a sting. Why should she think at this moment of her girlhood; of the ideals indulged in during that quiet time; of her aunt's cheerful, tender, lonely life; of her rejection of Mr. Lyon? She did not love Mr. Lyon; she was not ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... without wincing whatever, as between a masterful relative and an exposed frivolity, might have been the sting of it. "That you must ask Edward. I ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... glowing with exercise and the sting of the cold, for he had tramped two miles through drifts from three to five feet deep, battling with them every step of the way, and carrying with him on the return ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... crowded as the passages to the opera; he has but to print his prophetic sermons and bind them in lilac and gold, and they will adorn the drawing-room table of all evangelical ladies, who will regard as a sort of pious "light reading" the demonstration that the prophecy of the locusts whose sting is in their tail, is fulfilled in the fact of the Turkish commander's having taken a horse's tail for his standard, and that the French are the very frogs predicted in ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... different thing the letter would be if it had been written by a Frenchwoman. There would have been some hints, nothing definite you understand, but a suggestion, a delicate, provoking suggestion of herself, like a perfume to sting one into a desire for a nearer acquaintance. She would delicately and without any appearance of intention have permitted me to know her colour, perhaps her height, perhaps even to catch an elusive glimpse of her face. Very likely a silk thread of hair would have been left inadvertently ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... comes the sting. On leaving school last Christmas, my mother, for the first time, told me the extent of my obligations to this benefactor, and informed me that he wished to know my own choice as to a profession,—that if I preferred Church or Bar, he would ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the Master of Ravenswood, for there were but two chairs in the cedar-parlour,—one with but three legs, the other without a bottom; so they were fain to stand. But Mervyn could smile without bitterness and his desolation had not the sting of actual poverty, as he begged the rector to excuse his dreary welcome, and hoped that he would find things ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... and spurs on it, that once fast, seem determined never to let go again; the stalk being as tenacious and tough as wire, and binding the scrub trees together so as to render advance impossible without first cutting a way. The other, a tree with broad leaves, the sting produced by touching which is so painful that horses, who on first being stung have plunged about and been stung all over, have died from the fever ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... probed to the heart of his mood. To the loss of his claim was attributed all his pyrotechnics, and no one, unless it was Rickart, was aware of the old proverbial "woman in the case," who had planted the sting that stung. ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... sting Pegasus. The noble horse reared. He thought his master had struck him and was furious with pain and anger. Bellerophon lost his seat and ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... the real cause of the sting of inequality and of the keeping of men apart; until this is eradicated and replaced by the master passion of love—employer for employee and employee for employer—no agreements and no legislation, between ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell
... Eston did: he found all this land to be onely Ilands, with a Sea on the East, a Sea on the West, and a Sea on the North. [Sidenote: Great heat.] In this place wee found it very hot and wee were very much troubled with a flie which is called Muskyto, for they did sting grieuiously. The people of this place at our first comming in caught a Seale and with bladders fast tied to him sent him vnto vs with the floud, so as hee came right with our shippes, which we took as a friendly ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... lovely wife, as she was wandering with the nymphs, unwittingly trod upon a serpent in the grass. Surely, if Orpheus had been with her, playing upon his lyre, no creature could have harmed her. But Orpheus came too late. She died of the sting, and was lost ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... Neither was Lady Gould likely to be pacified by her son-in-law's remark that she was now "in an advanced age"; while his suggestion that his "noble" family would be of far more advantage to his children than that of the respectable Goulds would have the added sting ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... evidence about things in general by making her believe various absurd stories which she hastens to repeat.[49] The final paragraph of one of the variants of this time-honored jest is quaint, concluding as it does, by way of sting, with a highly popular Russian saw. The wife has gone to the seigneur of the village and accused her husband of having found a treasure and kept it for his own use. The charge is true, but the wife ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... sprang from the parasites of the courts, the gloomy brood of public accusers which is hatched by a rotten system, feeds on the impurities of a diseased judicature, and terrifies the commonwealth by the peril that lurks in its poisonous sting. This speech was to be studied by eager students for years to come as a master work in the art of declamatory argument.[1214] But its momentary efficacy seems to have been as great as its permanent value. Caepio's bill was acclaimed ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge |
