"Nettle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... must now be near the coast. His enterprise is full of hazard, but a hazard wisely incurred as it seems to me. I ardently hope that 'out of the nettle, danger, he will ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... in the Promised Land That flows with Freedom's honey and milk; But 'twas they won it, sword in hand, Making the nettle danger soft for us as silk. 225 We welcome back our bravest and our best:— Ah me! not all! some come not with the rest, Who went forth brave and bright as any here! I strive to mix some gladness with my strain, But the sad strings complain, 230 ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... brought) out a leathern dildo which, when she had smeared it with oil, ground pepper, and pounded nettle seed, she commenced to force, little by little, up my anus. The merciless old virago then anointed the insides of my thighs with the same decoction; finally mixing nasturtium juice with elixir of southern ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... with ash, one of which I took on board...it has much the likeness of hickory. I found several other woods, some of them light and pretty, and in particular a tree, the leaves of which sting like nettles. This acquired from us the name of Nettle Tree." ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... amid dispiritment, stupidity, and contradiction proclaims to us, Euge! Nothing ever was more ungenial than the soil this poor Teufelsdrockhish seed-corn has been thrown on here; none cries, Good speed to it; the sorriest nettle or hemlock seed, one would think, had been more welcome. For indeed our British periodical critics, and especially the public of Fraser's Magazine (which I believe I have now done with), exceed all speech; require not even contempt, ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Popiad" and "The Curliad" were rapidly huddled together and placed upon the market. Close upon the heels of these publications came "The Female Dunciad," containing beside the "Metamorphosis of P. into a Stinging Nettle" by Mr. Foxton, a novel called "Irish Artifice; or, the History of Clarina" by Mrs. Eliza Haywood. In a short introduction to the piece, Curll explained how it happened to ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... have said, a day and a night in the camp between Aora river and the deep wood of Tarradubh. The plain hummed with our little army, where now are but the nettle and the ivied tower, and the yellow bee booming through the solitude; morning and night the shrill of the piob-mhor rang cheerily to the ear of Dun-chuach; the sharp call of the chieftains and sergeants, the tramp of the brogued feet in their simple evolutions, the clatter of arms, the ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... stampede used to ensue; and it was not supposed to be good for the health of the old or young sheep to hurry up the hill-sides in such wild fashion as that in which they rushed away from Rose's attempts to intrude on their society. Nettle may come, for he is but a tiny terrier, and so fond of his mistress that he never strays a yard away from her horse's heels. Brisk, my beautiful, stupid water-spaniel, is also allowed an outing. He is perfect to look at, but not having had any ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... to him, struggling to overcome her fear. She felt that if only she could grasp that fear, like a nettle, and hold it tightly in her hand it would seem so slight and unimportant. But she could not grasp it. It was compounded of so many things, of the silence and the dulness, of the Precincts and the Cathedral, of whispering trees and steps on the stairs, of her father and ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... doubt of her father to the proof. Suppose that the account had not been carelessly overdrawn— Suppose— He never for one instant suspected the girl. As soon suspect a rosebud of foregoing its own sweet personality, and of being in reality something else, say a stinging nettle. The girl carried her patent royal of youth and innocence on her face. He made up his mind to say nothing about the check, to lose the ten dollars, and, since dollars were so far from plenty with him, to sacrifice some luxury ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... overcome"—and no sooner had he uttered these encouraging words, than he made a spring, and came 'close-legged' upon the opposite bank; unfortunately, however, he lost his balance, and fell plump upon a huge stinging nettle, which would have been a treat to any donkey in ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... of Sauve should be a trident, those of Quissac should be surmounted by an old shoe! In the former place the forked branches of the Celtis australis or nettle tree, Ulmaceae, afford a most profitable occupation. From its tripartite boughs are made yearly thousands upon thousands of the three-pronged forks used in agriculture. The wood, whilst very durable, is yielding, ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... Epicurus. Don't imagine that my success has not, thus far, amply repaid me for my toil and ingenuity. Having lived upon excitement all my days, I should starve without it. Pleasure, like safety, is the dearer for being plucked from that evergreen nettle, Danger!" ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... from a hedge when his hand was stung by a Nettle. Smarting with the pain, he ran to tell his mother, and said to her between his sobs, "I only touched it ever so lightly, mother." "That's just why you got stung, my son," she said; "if you had grasped it firmly, it wouldn't have hurt you ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... take a cold, to sleep, to drink; but I tell you, my lord fool, 'out of this nettle danger, we pluck this flower safety,'" ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... food; likewise some of the prickly pear bushes, which gave us only a few pears about the size of our small button pear; the outside has thorns, which if applied to the fingers or lips, will remain there, and cause a severe smarting similar to the nettle; the inside a spungy substance, full of juice and seeds, which are red and a little tartish—had they been there in abundance, we should not have suffered so much for water—but alas! even this substitute was not for us. On the northerly side ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... December the rainy season was ushered in with heavy rain, thunder, lightning, and hail; the thermometer falling to 66 degrees Fahrenheit. The evening of this day I was attacked with urticaria, or "nettle rash," for the third time since arriving in Africa, and I suffered a woeful sickness; and it was the forerunner of an attack of remittent fever, which lasted four days. This is the malignant type, which has proved fatal to so many African travellers ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... I feel some rather unpleasant sensations about my neck," observed Paddy. "I can't help thinking that some nettle-fish must have got hold of me in the water. I feel the stinging all over me, right down my breast. ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... requesting to be Sestius' guest 10 Read against claimant Antius a speech, Full-filled with poisonous pestilential trash. Hence a grave frigid rheum and frequent cough Shook me till fled I to thy bosom, where Repose and nettle-broth healed all my ills. 15 Wherefore recruited now best thanks I give To thee for nowise punishing my sins: Nor do I now object if noisome writs Of Sestius hear I, but that cold and cough And rheum may plague, not me, but ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... heart contains of affection he pours at my feet, like the Magdalen's cup of ointment. Believe me, a life of love is an exception to the laws of this earth; all flowers fade; great joys and emotions have a morrow of evil—if a morrow at all. Real life is a life of anguish; its image is in that nettle growing there at the foot of the wall,—no sun can reach it and it keeps green. Yet, here, as in parts of the North, there are smiles in the sky, few to be sure, but they compensate for many a grief. ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... was covered with green plants. Ugly sappy plants, it was true, mostly bur-marigolds, that look like a nettle with brown flowers, which is ugly because flowers should be white, yellow, blue or red. And there were true nettles with green blossoms, and burs, sorrel, thistles, and notch-weed; all the ugliest, burning, stinging, evil-smelling plants, which nobody likes, and which grow ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... Substance, called the Sea nettle I found in great abundance along the Strand where it has been thrown up by the waves and tide, ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... bit of ground where the kitchen garden meets the flowers, Japan has long since enlarged its bill of fare with the tuber of a cousin of our common hedge nettle, with the roots of the large burdock, commoner still. In Florida, the calla lily has use as well as beauty; it is cultivated for ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... forests of tropical vegetation cover the larger islands. Cocoanut and other palms are everywhere to be found. A species of pine, much like the kauri pine of New Zealand, grows on the larger islands. Among the forest trees are also several kinds of tree-ferns and a tree-nettle. When the pointed leaves of the latter prick the skin they sting the flesh as badly as does ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... leaves the near duty that is as cruel to grasp as a nettle, and flies to gather the far-off duty that will flaunt in men's sight like ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... sympathy. I am equally balked by antagonism and by compliance. Let him not cease an instant to be himself. The only joy I have in his being mine, is that the not mine is mine. I hate, where I looked for a manly furtherance, or at least a manly resistance, to find a mush of concession. Better be a nettle in the side of your friend, than his echo. The condition which high friendship demands is ability to do without it. That high office requires great and sublime parts. There must be very two before there can be very one. Let it be an alliance of two large formidable natures, mutually beheld, ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... bears the weedes wick' *that same Bears eke the wholesome herbes, and full oft Next to the foule nettle, rough and thick, The lily waxeth,* white, and smooth, and soft; *grows And next the valley is the hill aloft, And next the darke night is the glad morrow, And also joy is next the ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... puzzled over that exceedingly, and when he rhymed it at last, Mother Flower or one of the little girls had always to take the spider beside her, when she sat down, which was of course quite troublesome. The kettle he rhymed first with nettle, and hung a bunch of nettle over it, till all the children got dreadfully stung. Then he tried settle, and hung the kettle over the settle. But that was no place for it; they had to go without their tea, and everybody who sat on the settle bumped his head ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... from his worst intoxicant lhiamba (Cannabis sativa), a plant which grows wild on the South-West Coast and on the West for all I know, as well as the African or bowstring hemp (Sanseviera guiniensis). The plant that produces the lhiamba is a nettle-like plant growing six to ten feet high, and the natives collect the tops of the stems, with the seed on, in little bundles and dry them. It is evidently the seeds which are regarded by them as being the important part, although ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... Nettle rash is very much like erysipelas, and the same treatment is good for both. Slippery-elm bark, chipped, and let to stand in cold water till it becomes thick, is a very cooling drink. It may be filled up the second time. Barley water is also a ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... loiter behind her when returning in the evening from our labours; why the tones of her voice made my heart-strings thrill like an AEolian harp; and particularly why my pulse beat such a furious rantann when I looked and fingered over her hand to pick out the nettle-stings and thistles. Among her other love-inspiring qualifications she sang sweetly; and 'twas her favourite Scotch reel that I attempted to give an embodied vehicle to in rhyme. I was not so presumptive as to imagine I could make verses like ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... plants, or the stamens of the barberry, but to much more widely spread, and at the same time, more subtle and hidden, manifestions of vegetable contractility. You are doubtless aware that the common nettle owes its stinging property to the innumerable stiff and needle-like, though exquisitely delicate, hairs which cover its surface. Each stinging-needle tapers from a broad base to a slender summit, which, though ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... blossom from a nettle ta'en, Is in thy beauteous bosom bound, Born amid stings, it gives no pain, 'Tis sweetness ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... grow. Now, if she comes to one that is dead, that she is confident will not grow, up she pulls that, and makes to the heap of rubbish with it, where she despisingly casts it down, and valueth it no more than a nettle, or a weed, or than the dust she hath swept out of her walks. Yea, if any that see her should say, Why do you so? the answer is ready. It is dead, it is dead at root; if I had let it stand it would but have cumbered ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... pierced with a thorn; but no hail of shot revenges his tortures. The grass stiffens at nightfall (in autumn), and he must creep where he may, if possibly he may escape the frost. No one cares for the humble-bee. But down to the flowering nettle in the mossy-sided ditch, up into the tall elm, winding in and out and round the branched buttercups, along the banks of the brook, far inside the deepest wood, away he wanders and despises nothing. ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... a Nettle. He ran home and told his mother, saying: "Although it pains me so much, I did but touch it ever so gently." "That was just it," said his mother, "which caused it to sting you. The next time you touch a Nettle, grasp it boldly, and it will be soft as silk to your ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... for the same purpose; the Rhapis flabelliformis, the dried leaves of which are used for fans among the common people, and particularly by those who live in vessels; Corchorus whose bark, in India, is used as flax; but not, I believe, to any extent in China, the white nettle being here preferred. The only medicinal plants were the Rheum palmatum, Artemisia, and the Smilax or ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... I had been as much entertained as instructed (I mean instructed in the language). Every one knows a Frenchman can infuse airy elegance into a button, bestow a marketable value upon a straw, breathe esprit into a feather, and make ten dishes out of a nettle-top. So the poet can transform any incident into an attractive vaudeville. The tender situation dramatique, the humorous coup de theatre, the jeu d'esprit sparkling up into music, the elevated sentiment, the merciless exposure of vice and folly, ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... also subject to attacks of urticaria or "hives" (nettle-rash), from these and other ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... Glechoma Nephrolepis exaltata Nettle tree Nicotiana night-blooming cereus nine-bark nitrate of soda ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... who is that tall, fair-haired, somewhat parrot-faced gentleman, smiling like a schoolboy over a mess of treacle, and now kissing the tips of his five fingers as gingerly as if he were doomed to kiss a nettle? ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 24, 1841 • Various
... are evidently aimed at Nero, but his principal object is to denounce the vices of the times. Hence, indolence and prurient literature are stigmatised. He ridicules the extremes of extravagance, and of that parsimony by which it is usually accompanied. "Am I on a festive day to have a nettle dressed for me, and a smoked pig's cheek with a hole in its ear, in order that that grandson of yours may be surfeited with goose liver, and indulge in patrician amours. Am I to be a living anatomy that his pope's stomach may shake ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... citizens, it is obvious that we could put forth more strength in such an emergency, at less sacrifice, than any other people of the same numbers. And thus we should in every point of view, "out of this nettle ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... of disease in the Constitution? Not the least. The whole affair was like one of those alarms in a country-town which begin with the rumor of ten cases of confluent small-pox and end with the discovery that the doctor has been called to a case of nettle-rash at Deacon Scudder's. But sober men, who loved the Union in a quiet way, without advertising it in the newspapers, and who were willing to sacrifice everything to the Constitution but the rights it was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... glory nor of its decline, nor of what manner of folk worshipped there, nor of those who destroyed it. The roofless haunt of bats and owls, preserved from complete collapse by the ancient ivy that covered its walls, the mortar between its stones the prey of briers, its floor a nettle bed, the chapel remained a mystery. Yet over the arch of the west door the two Maries gazed heavenward as they had gazed for six hundred years. The curiosity of the few antiquarians who visited the place and speculated upon its past had kept the images clear of the ivy that ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... season suit them; or rather, I suppose that an outburst of a particular flower in a particular year shows that the previous year was a good seeding-time. This year has been remarkable for two plants so far, a sort of varnished green ground-weed, with a small white flower, and a dull crimson dead-nettle; both of them have covered the ground in places in huge patches. This is both strange and ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... or by the unhappy restlessness to which her sex are peculiarly subject at odd times, to sound Hazel as to the meaning of a certain epigram that rankled in her. And she did it in the most feminine way, that is to say, in the least direct; whereas the safest way would have been to grasp the nettle, if she could not let ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... of a very few topics, disposed in so many orders, and exhibited in so many lights, that it reminds us of those arithmetical problems about permutations, which so much astonish the unlearned. The French cook, who boasted that he could make fifteen different dishes out of a nettle-top, was not a greater master of his art. The mind of Petrarch was a kaleidoscope. At every turn it presents us with new forms, always fantastic, occasionally beautiful; and we can scarcely believe that all these varieties ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... nettle, And it stings you for your pains; Grasp it like a man of mettle, And it soft ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... — N. bane, curse; evil &c. 619; hurtfulness &c. (badness) 649[obs3]; painfulness &c. (cause of pain) 830; scourge &c. (punishment) 975; damnosa hereditas[Lat]; white elephant. sting, fang, thorn, tang, bramble, brier, nettle. poison, toxin; teratogen; leaven, virus venom; arsenic; antimony, tartar emetic; strychnine, nicotine; miasma, miasm[obs3], mephitis[obs3], malaria, azote[obs3], sewer gas; pest. [poisonous substances, examples] Albany hemp[obs3], arsenious ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... confidence so evident between him and Felix seemed to place them in the same hateful category. Worse than all, Lance had laughed at him, and Bernard was far too proud and self-important not to feel every joke like so many nettle-stings. He had expected an easy careless helper; he had found what he could not comprehend, whether boy or man, but at any rate a thing with that intolerable possession, a conscience, and a strong purpose of keeping him ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... against twenty-three torrys, who were resolute enough to appear in a good cause, being forsaken by their brethren, who were afraid to be caled favourers of Poperie. I long to hear what my uncle will say to this news. If he be well, it will nettle him in spite of resignation. Gibson writes word they are at Doway; but he does not know when my uncle will sett forwards. I do not know where to wish him: for I really don't know how he is. For in one letter Gibson writes, he tells me my uncle is as well as ever he was in his life; and at ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... true or false, which you can rake together, to blast his memory? Why is all this pains taken to expose the person of king Henry III.? Are you leaguers, or covenanters, or associators? What has the poor dead man done to nettle you? Were his rebels your friends or your relations? Were your Norman ancestors of any of those families, which were conspirators in the play? I smell a rat in this business; Henry III. is not taken thus to task for ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... Port, no need to waste On a tongue that's fur, and a palate—paste! A magnum for friends who are sound: the sick— I'll posset and cosset them, nothing loath, Henceforward with nettle-broth. [Footnote: Epilogue to the ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... the lecture before he gave it. I think I went to his lodgings—and he sketched out what he was going to say. The question was whether, in view of the Tyndall row, it was wise in him to take the line he had marked out. In the end I remember his saying,] 'Grasp your nettle, that is what I have got to do.'" [But apart from the subject, the manner of the address struck the audience as a wonderful tour de force. The man who at first disliked public speaking, and always expected to break down on the platform, now, without ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... holding open a gate for Charlotte, who was on the donkey, he came up to the sisters, and joined in the conversation. Amy saw something in the hedge—a foxglove, she believed—it would have done as well if it had been a nettle—she stopped to gather it, hoping to fall behind them, but they waited for her. She grew silent, but Guy appealed to her. She ran on to Charlotte and her donkey, but at the next gate Guy had joined company again. At last she put herself under her mother's wing, and by keeping with her did pretty ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... while his mistress was away, and he showed her the hospital garden he had made close by, in which were cabbage, nettle, and mignonette plants for the butterflies, flowering herbs for the bees, chick-weed and hemp for the birds, catnip for the pussies, and plenty of room left for whatever other patients might need. In the afternoon, while Nelly did her task at lint-picking, talking ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... which inheres in the private and particular nature,—and he does not call it any hard names at all from his scientific platform; indeed in the vocabulary of the Naturalist we are told, that these names are omitted, 'for we call a nettle but a nettle, and the faults of fools their folly,'—that exclusive good he finds both passive and active, and this also is one of those primary distinctions which 'is formed in all things,' and so too is the subdivision of passive good which ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... the child; he remained there open-mouthed. He only dropped his head a moment when a nettle, which felt like an insect, stung his leg; then he looked up again—he looked above him at the face which looked down on him. It appeared to regard him the more steadfastly because it had no eyes. It was a comprehensive glance, having an indescribable fixedness in which ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... of the farm; though I did not always know whether Jonas or Solomon worked in a particular field to-day; that was none of my business. I have watered the red huckleberry, the sand cherry and the nettle-tree, the red pine and the black ash, the white grape and the yellow violet, which might have withered else in ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... seven years becomes a bat; this after seven years, a vampire; this after other seven years, a nettle; this after seven years more, a thorn; and this again after seven years is turned into a demon. If a man does not devoutly bow during the repetition of the daily prayer which commences, "we ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... The little weaknesses of women are very precious to their object, and if the deluded one knows it not, why where's the harm? Small comfort came to me, however, for all the while conscience, like a burning nettle in the side, gave the lie to ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... plants. The Romans, during their 300 or 400 years of occupation and civilisation, must have brought more species, I believe, than I dare mention. I suspect them of having brought, not merely the common hedge elm of the south, not merely the three species of nettle, but all our red poppies, and a great number of the weeds which are common in our cornfields; and when we add to them the plants which may have been brought by returning crusaders and pilgrims; by monks from every part of Europe, by Flemings or other dealers in foreign wool; ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... other's presence unreprest, From his full eyes the tears descending flow, In a wide stream, and flood his troubled breast. 'Mid sob and groan, he tosses to and fro About his weary bed, in search of rest; And vainly shifting, harder than a rock And sharper than a nettle ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... minutes. One day, however, by merely touching my face with one of the branches, pain was instantaneously caused; it increased as usual after a few seconds, and remaining sharp for some minutes, was perceptible for half an hour afterwards. The sensation was as bad as that from a nettle, but more like that caused by the Physalia or Portuguese man-of-war. Little red spots were produced on the tender skin of the arm, which appeared as if they would have formed watery pustules, but did not. M. Quoy mentions this case of the Millepora; and ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... he says, "be blended and arranged to suit the gastric idiosyncrasies of the individual consumer. A few of them are agrimony, comfrey, dandelion, camomile, woodruff, marjoram, hyssop, sage, horehound, tansy, thyme, rosemary, stinging-nettle ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 24, 1917 • Various
... motion of protoplasm in plants was first made known by Bonaventure Corti a century ago in the Charoe plants; but this important fact was forgotten, and it had to be discovered by Treviranus in 1807. The regular motion of the protoplasm, forming a perfect current, may be seen in the hairs of the nettle, and weighty evidence exists that similar currents occur in all young vegetable cells. "If such be the case," says Huxley, "the wonderful noonday silence of a tropical forest is, after all, due only to the dullness of our hearing, ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... plucked a flower That clung with pain and stung with power, Yea, nettled me, body and mind.' ''Twas the nettle of sin, 'twas medicine; No need nor seed of it here Above; In dreams of hate true loves begin.' ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... were heard from all quarters, and the Government seemed for the first time fairly to comprehend that it had twenty millions of freemen at its back, and that forts might be taken and held by honest men as well as by knaves and traitors. The nettle had been stroked long enough; it was time to try a firm grip. Still the Administration seemed inclined to temporize, so thoroughly was it possessed by the notion of conciliating the Border States. In point of fact, the side which those States ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... Severus Cassius that he spoke best extempore, that he stood more obliged to fortune than to his own diligence; that it was an advantage to him to be interrupted in speaking, and that his adversaries were afraid to nettle him, lest his anger should redouble his eloquence. I know, experimentally, the disposition of nature so impatient of tedious and elaborate premeditation, that if it do not go frankly and gaily to work, it can perform ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... for maltreatment loyalty, be a high type of Christian ethics, the reflex influence of which, we read, are God-like; surely the Negro has virtues "not born to die," presaging an endurance that must evolve out of this nettle discomfort, justice and contentment. For, as heretofore, in the last war with Spain, putting behind him his century of oppression in slavery, and the vicious discrimination since his emancipation, forgetful of all else ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... for themselves, and in being comfortable, we should all collapse into a hideous uniformity.... In all things, a man must beware of so conforming himself as to crush his nature, and forego the purpose of his being." And Emerson might have added to that thought, "Better be a nettle in the side of your ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... had drawn back. With the gentle tact peculiar to kindly people, he avoided looking at his disarmed antagonist. But something in the older man's attitude seemed to further nettle the over-stimulated sensibility of the ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... for lang kail, Cowe the nettle, stoo the nettle: Gin ye be for lang kail, Cowe the ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... and so brought me to a desolate farmstead, slowly dropping to ruin there in the perpetual shadow of the mountain. The slates that had fallen from the roof of byre and stable lay buried already under the growth of nettle and mallow and wild parsnip; and the yard-wall was down in a dozen places. I shuffled through one of these gaps, and almost at once found myself face to face with a park-fence of split oak—in yet worse ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... stony African Karoo, where every plant is eagerly sought out for food by the scanty local fauna, there are tubers which exactly resemble the pebbles around them; and I have little doubt that our perfectly harmless English dead-nettle secures itself from the attacks of browsing animals by its close likeness to the wholly unrelated, ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... passed out from the garden, and came to a gray house; withered flowers lay about it, while briers and nettle-bushes clung to its walls; but, worse than all this, there came forth from the house angry, hateful words, and noises of a mad strife. Ruth feared to pass this place, and clung closely to the ...
— The Angel Children - or, Stories from Cloud-Land • Charlotte M. Higgins
... streets, all the shops he passed were closed, except the beer-shops and the chemists'. "The nettle and the dock!" ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... avenged of their deaths, and my brother's death; and their destroyer shall not dandle a bairn upon his knee, or kiss its cheek, while mine are all, all dead, and in a strange grave, and even wi' no one near to pull up the noxious nettle that may be waving ower their once bonny ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... half a mile before the pale glow of the night turned to utter darkness. Something that looked like a vast sea-nettle was slowly sinking down toward them from the sky. Its tentacles glowed faintly as it fell—and it must have been a hundred yards across at the top. Once more bullets, lightning bolts and sheets of flame were hurled at the descending ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... sorrow o'ertake thee—then be not faint-hearted; Life ne'er was ordained to be shadeless and bright; One morn from the other by night-time is parted; The sun always shines though we see not the light; Misfortunes in life, like the nettle, prove harmless, If grappled stout-hearted and fearlessly presst; Rich sweets, without bitters, soon cloy and grow charmless, Then press on, despair not, and ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... Nettle-seed needs no digging. The ruin of this countryside by railroads was discussed, not only at the "Weights and Scales," but in the hay-field, where the muster of working hands gave opportunities for talk such as were rarely had through ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... at him with eyes in which contentment struggled with some obscure reluctant protest, and at last turned them slowly to the black nettle ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... beautiful and good as may be; and a half-truth or a truth with a reservation may be as dangerous as falsehood. The poet who should so paint the velvety beauty of a rattlesnake as to make you long to coddle it would hardly be considered a safe character to be at large. Likewise an ode to the nettle, or to the autumn splendor of the poison-sumac, which ignored its venom would scarcely be a wise botanical guide for indiscriminate circulation among the innocents. Think, then, of a poetic eulogium on a bird of which the observant Gilbert could ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... a single glance, took her in from head to foot, and after a pang of despair determined to endure her. She determined indeed to delight in her. She mightn't be inhaled as a rose, but she might be grasped as a nettle. Madame Merle genially squeezed her into insignificance, and Isabel felt that in foreseeing this liberality she had done justice to her friend's intelligence. Henrietta's arrival had been announced by Mr. Bantling, ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... must at times have been left in strange berths and with but rude provision. I may instance the case of my father, who was storm-bound three days upon an islet, sleeping in the uncemented and unchimneyed houses of the islanders, and subsisting on a diet of nettle-soup ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... could mistake, or else have carried out his twice-repeated purpose of resignation. Everyone admits that from the outset his position was one of great difficulty, but he increased it greatly by his practical refusal to grasp the nettle. He was not ambitious of power, but, on the contrary, longed for his quiet retreat at Haddo. He was on the verge of seventy and was essentially a man of few, but scholarly tastes. There can be no doubt that considerable pressure ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... "an' so tha'rt th' new rector, art ta? I thowt as mich as another ud spring up as soon as th' owd un wur cut down. Tha parsens is a nettle as dunnot soon dee oot. Well, I'll leave thee to th' owd lass here. Hoo's a rare un fur gab when hoo' taks th' notion, an' I'm noan so mich i' th' humor t' argufy mysen today." And he took his pipe from the mantelpiece and strolled out with an imperturbable air. But ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... said the shoemaker, "that wherever there's a hurt there's a help; and when I was a boy, and stung myself with a nettle, I never had far to look for a dock-stalk with its juice. Who knows but the Prior's Well may be the cure for me? It can't straighten my back, I know, but it may make me stronger for all that, and fitter for ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... with good-naturedly mocking smiles, as a mere boy, a disdain to her mature womanhood. Of this was he thinking as he tossed on the couch in the library; he had thought of it too much since leaving Heliodora yesterday afternoon. It began to nettle him that his grief should be for her merely an amusement. Never having seen the Gothic maiden, whose beauty outshone hers as sunrise outdoes the lighting of a candle, this wanton Greek was capable of despising him in good earnest, and Basil had never been ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... Lady, 'tis your wish To nettle me, to break my breeding down, And see what natural passions I have hidden Behind the outworks of my etiquette. I neither own nor feel the want of heart With which you charge me. You are more than cruel; You rouse my nerves until they ache with life, And then ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... on the Missouri for several hundred miles. The soil too is good, for the grass and weeds reach about two feet high, being the tallest we have observed this season, though on the high plains and prairies the grass is at no season above three inches in height. Among these weeds are the sandrush, and nettle in small quantities; the plains are still infested by great numbers of the small birds already mentioned, among whom is the brown curlew. The current of the river is here extremely gentle; the buffaloe have not yet quite gone, for the hunters brought in three in ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... night-shade (Circaea alpina); a most frail and delicate thing, though it has little other beauty. Who would ever mistrust, to see it, that it would prove to be connected in any way with the flaunting willow-herb, or fire-weed? But such incongruities are not confined to the "vegetable kingdom." The wood-nettle was growing everywhere; a juicy-looking but coarse weed, resembling our common roadside nettles only in its blossoms. The cattle had found out what I never should have surmised,—having had a taste of its sting,—that ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... heads are also covered with a sort of helmet, the neck is almost the only part in which they can be wounded. They have another kind of corslet, made like the corsets of our ladies, of splinters of hard wood interlaced with nettle twine. The warrior who wears this cuirass does not use the tunic of elk-skin; he is consequently less protected, but a great deal more free; the said tunic being very heavy and ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... clear and sparkling water. Here and there along the banks stood groves of trees, such as the evergreen live-oak, the beautiful "pecan" with its oblong edible nuts, the "overcup" with its odd-looking acorns, the hackberry with its nettle-shaped leaves and sweet fruits, and the silvery cotton-wood. Along the swells could be seen large trees standing apart, and at almost equal distances, as though planted for an orchard. Their full leafy tops gave ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... as I am by the side of a young or old woman now, I try to give our conversation a ticklish turn; I forget all reserve and I try to make her talk of those jokes which nettle, those words of double meaning which excite, and to lead her up to the only subject that interests and holds me, to find out what she feels in her body as well as in her heart, on that night, when for the first time, she ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... living jellies which the flesh inflame, Fierce as a nettle, and from that the name; Some in huge masses, some that you might bring In the small compass of a lady's ring; Figured by hand divine—there's not a gem Wrought by man's art to be compared to them; Soft, brilliant, tender, through the ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... the shore. The lagoon was so shallow that at low tide one could have waded almost right across it, were it not for pot-holes here and there—ten-feet traps—and great beds of rotten coral, into which one would sink as into brushwood, to say nothing of the nettle coral that stings like a bed of nettles. There were also other dangers. Tropical shallows are full of wild surprises in the way of life ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... against a will of iron padded round with gentleness. She tried to fill the little man's soul with jealousy and alarms, but it was stockaded with insolent confidence. He left Dinah, when he went to Paris, with all the conviction of Medor in Angelique's fidelity. When she affected cold disdain, to nettle this changeling by the scorn a courtesan sometimes shows to her "protector," and which acts on him with the certainty of the screw of a winepress, Monsieur de la Baudraye gazed at his wife with fixed eyes, like those of ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... need not be discouraged, nor should husbands with nagging wives be cast down, for was it not Emerson who said, "It is better to be a nettle in the side of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... to insects, I am able to handle without any fear. My skin does not suit them. If I persuaded them to bite me, what would happen to me? Hardly anything. We have more cause to dread the sting of a nettle than the dagger which is fatal to Dragon-flies. The same virus acts differently upon this organism and that, is formidable here and quite mild there. What kills the insect may easily be harmless to us. Let us not, however, generalize too far. ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... to him to know what effect nettles have on hay, and what taste they will give to porridge; and it will give him nearly a new life if he can be got but once, in a spring time, to look well at the beautiful circlet of white nettle blossom, and work out with his schoolmaster the curves of its petals, and the way it is set on its central mast. So, the principle of chemical equivalents, beautiful as it is, matters far less to a peasant boy, and ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... dowry of every man's birth, A nettle adversity flings us; It yields to the grip of the masterful hand, When we play coward ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... loyalty, and both possessed ability, differing in kind, perhaps, which they used in the accomplishment of their own ends. France can never overestimate the great evil these two men did to the national cause. Napoleon's power and penetrating vision kept them in check only when he could grasp the nettle. Even when absent on his campaigns, they knew he was kept in close touch with what was going on. It was not until treason became entangled within treason that their evil designs had fuller scope and more disastrous results. Bourrienne, another rascal already ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... or inheritance? born to no possession of your own, but a pair of wings and a drone-pipe. Your livelihood is a universal plunder upon nature; a freebooter over fields and gardens; and, for the sake of stealing, will rob a nettle as easily as a violet. Whereas I am a domestic animal, furnished with a native stock within myself. This large castle (to show my improvements in the mathematics) is all built with my own hands, and the materials extracted altogether out ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... heraldic insignia of Sauve should be a trident, those of Quissac should be surmounted by an old shoe! In the former place the forked branches of the Celtis australis or nettle tree, Ulmace, afford a most profitable occupation. From its tripartite boughs are made yearly thousands upon thousands of the three-pronged forks used in agriculture. The wood, whilst very durable, is yielding, and ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... altogether. But we must not. We must rather say to ourselves, Now and here, if not in the past, I must play the man, and, by God's help, the wise man. I must pluck safety henceforth out of the heart of the nettle danger. Yes, I made a mistake. I did what I would not do now, and I must not be too proud to say so. I acted, I see now, precipitately, inconsiderately, imprudently. And I must not gloom and rebel and run away from the cross and the lion. I must ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... that liketh not his entertainment, namely his seat, his ground, his keeper, or the manner of his setting, comith up thick and rough in leaves, very like unto a nettle; and will be much bitten with a little black flye, who, also, will not do harme unto good hoppes, who if she leave the leaf as full of holes as a nettle, yet she seldome proceedeth to the utter destruction of the Hoppe; where the garden standeth bleake, ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... commerce is the bast or inner bark of a plant, Cannabis sativa, belonging to the nettle order. It is an annual plant having a very wide range; it occurs in pretty nearly every country of North America, Europe, and Asia. In Europe the chief countries producing it for commercial uses are Russia, France, Italy, and Hungary; in the ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... undertake is dangerous." "Why that is certain: it is dangerous to take a cold, to sleep, to drink; but I tell you, my Lord fool, out of this nettle danger, we pluck ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the domestic circle and everywhere among women, Lord Ormont was annoyed to find himself often gruffish behind the tie of his cravat. Indeed, the temper of our eminently serene will feel the strain of a doldrum-dulness that is goaded to activity by a nettle. The forbearance he carried farther than most could do was tempted to kick, under pressure of Mrs. Nargett Pagnell. Without much blaming Aminta, on whose behalf he submitted to it, and whose resolution to fix in England had brought it to this crisis, he magnanimously proposed to the Fair Enemy ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... whom, boy-like,—for he was in his seventeenth year and she a year younger,—he liked to lurk behind the rest of the hands when they returned from their labors in the evening, and who made his pulse beat furiously when he fingered over her little hand to pick out the cruel nettle-stings and thistles. She sang sweetly, and among her songs there was one which was said to be composed by a small laird's son about one of his father's maids, with whom he was in love; and Robert saw no reason why he should not rhyme as well as he, for the author had no more school-craft ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... 14. The edges are like the teeth of a saw. This is called the serrate leaf. The rose and the common nettle have ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... full the stop was she allowed herself to go down, very unnecessarily, with a flop to the ground. But she no sooner touched the ground than up she started to her feet again, with an alarmed look on her owlish face, as if she had sat down on a stinging-nettle. ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... her accustomed sagacity and spirit? She has, however, recently had to pass through an awful ordeal, principally occasioned by the brief ascendency of incompetent councils; and while expressing, in terms of transport, our conviction that, "out of this nettle danger, we have plucked the flower safety"—we cannot repress our feelings of indignation against those who precipitated us into that danger, and of gratitude towards those who, under Divine Providence, have been instrumental in extricating us from it, not only rapidly, but ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... run the hoop; an ancient marine custom. Four or more boys having their left hands tied fast to an iron hoop, and each of them a rope, called a nettle, in their right, being naked to the waist, wait the signal to begin: this being made by a stroke with a cat of nine tails, given by the boatswain to one of the boys, he strikes the boy before him, and every one does ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... my power. Indeed, there must be a change in me, or I shall lose even the foothold I have gained. I am subjected, all day long, to insult and annoyance. At times I am almost desperate and on the verge of recklessness. Every one of the coarse creatures that I am compelled to work with is a nettle that loses no chance to sting me; and there is one among them, a big, burly fellow, who is so offensive that I cannot keep my hands off him much longer if I remain my old self. You also know what a reception I must ever expect in the streets when I am recognized. The people act as if I ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... blood-stone, the Heliotropium of the ancients, from the occasional small specks or points of a blood-red color exhibited on its green surface, is even at this very day employed in many parts of England and Scotland to stop a bleeding from the nose; and nettle tea continues a popular remedy for the cure of Urticaria. It is also asserted that some substances bear the signatures of the humors, as the petals of the red rose that of the blood, and the roots of rhubarb and the flowers of saffron that ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... lives in the nettles, and, whether they like it or not, the hospitable nettles with their stings protect the caterpillar. The crawler may be grateful, but he shows it in a poor way, for he turns on the faithful nettle, and eats it up. In fact the only food he cares about is nettle-salad, and he indulges in it several times a day, yes all day long, eating, growing and bursting his skin a number of times, till he is big enough to hang himself up for the winter, probably in a nettle. ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... side to side as he spoke, and caught sight of the crushed-down herbage which grew densely at the foot of the hedge, nettle and towering dock and hemlock looking as if something had crawled through; and, rising quickly, he found somewhat of a gap through which a person might ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... season, nettle leaves and seed; beat them into powder, and make it into paste with flour, adding a little sweet olive-oil. Make this up into small crams: coop the birds up and feed them with it, giving them water in which barley has been boiled, and they will ...
— The Lady's Own Cookery Book, and New Dinner-Table Directory; • Charlotte Campbell Bury
... read books and tell her about 'em. One time he took her to Richmond for the better part of a winter, where she larned dancing and music. The neighbours allowed that turned her head. Ye couldn't please her with clothes, for she wouldn't look at the sun-bonnets and nettle-linen that other gals wore. She must have a neat little bonnet and send to town for pretty dresses.... The women couldn't abide her, for she had a high way of looking at 'em and talking at 'em as if they was jest black trash. But the men 'ud walk miles ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... Dr. Sexton exposes the conjurers, and spoils one's enjoyment of a hitherto enjoyable evening, by showing "how it's done"—how the name of one's departed relative is forged and painted early in the afternoon, instead of "coming out" on the spot—and in spots—like measles or nettle-rash (as we feel defunct relations ought to come) or walking in and out of the corded box at pleasure, and even going so far as to give the address of the clever mechanist down a by-street near Notting-hill Gate, who will make the mysterious packing case to order ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... going to," he added, cheerfully. "Then I was to stop at some cottage and ask—what was it? There was NETTLE-RASH mixed up in it, I'm sure. But never mind, I've forgotten, and it doesn't matter. Look here, we're three desperate young fellows who stick at nothing. Suppose we ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... "A nettle leaf is small. But that's not the reason why it won't ever grow into an oak. Look here! A sheaf of winter grasses, rightly arranged in clear glass, has as much of the essence of beauty as a bronze vase of the Ming dynasty. ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... to her arm. The bite showed no more than the sting of a nettle, but around it was the deep impress of his teeth. Certainly he ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... rest of the definition deserves to be closely examined. Socrates, I imagine, could have found a number of pointed questions to put to the dictionary maker. He might have begun with two of the commonest weeds, the nettle and the dandelion. Having got his opponent—and the opponents of Socrates were all of the same mental build as Sherlock Holmes's Dr Watson—eagerly to admit that the nettle was a weed, he would at once put the definition to the test. "The story goes," he would say, quoting Mrs. Clark Nuttall's admirable ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... He strove to nettle the boy in many ways, but "Dodd" bore the slings and arrows with a good deal of fortitude, and seemed to avoid a clash. The experience with his grandfather had had a very softening effect upon him, and he was slow ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith |
