"Stinging" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a large square envelope from Equatoria.... With stinging cheeks, Beth resented the buoyant happiness of the first few lines. Until a clearer understanding came, it seemed that he was blessing her refusal of him. How unwarranted afterward this thought appeared! The letter lifted her ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... we help coming back? There came flying bees in countless numbers from all parts of the world, and began stinging us on all sides till ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... shrubs more tangled, and the thorns more terrible. The ground, however, was rather more level. I pitied the poor girl who led the way, and whose fat naked arms were both stung and torn. She at last stopped amidst a huge grove of nettles, doing the best she could to shelter her arms from the stinging leaves. ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... freedom of their woman's right and need of love and child-bearing may lead in the psychical sphere to a result similar to the transformation of the sex-organ of the bee; and that, giving up the power of life, they will be left the possessor of the stinging weapon of death! Some such considerations may help women to decide whether it is better to be a ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... man leaped to the next level, sending off a beam which struck the wall two feet from Rynason; he felt the stinging vibration against his body as he lay flat. Slowly he sighted the disintegrator at the top of the level under which the man had crouched for cover, and waited for his next leap. Within him he felt only a bitter cold which matched the wind ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... The stinging retort of the Irish advocate Curran is recalled. At the close of his celebrated encounter with one of the most overbearing of English judges, the latter insultingly remarked to the somewhat diminutive advocate: "I could put you in my pocket, sir." To which, ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... ill-tempered, ugly featured, and quarrelsome. Once when I visited an English line-of-battle ship, the gunner's gang were fore and aft, polishing up the batteries, which, according to the Admiral's fancy, had been painted white as snow. Fidgeting round the great thirty-two-pounders, and making stinging remarks at the sailors and each other, they reminded one of a swarm of black wasps, buzzing about rows of white headstones ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... the process of licking itself dry more fatiguing than it had expected, gave vent to a faint mew of distress. It was all that was wanting to set Martin's indignant heart into a blaze of inexpressible fury. Bob Croaker's visage instantly received a shower of sharp, stinging blows, that had the double effect of taking that youth by surprise and throwing him down upon the green sward. But Martin could not hope to do this a second time. Bob now knew the vigour of his assailant, and braced himself warily to the combat, commencing operations by giving Martin ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... go off to fish, and I have the whole day to myself, and am as happy as a child on a picnic! I roam the beach, I take off my shoes and stockings—there are no newspaper reporters snapping pictures. I dare not go far in, for there are huge black creatures with dangerous stinging tails; they rush away in a cloud of sand when I approach, but the thought of stepping upon one by accident is terrifying. However, I let the little wavelets wash round my toes, and I try to grab little fish, and I pick up lovely shells; ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... door Joan had a glimpse of Cleve stepping between the angry men. This seemed unnecessary, however, for Pearce's stinging assertion had brought Kells to himself. There were a few more words, too low for Joan's ears, and then, accompanied by Smith, the three started off, evidently for the camp. Joan left her room and watched them from the cabin door. Bate Wood sat ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... them joltingly along a lovely lane till they came to a gentle acclivity, by which time, having given vent to his exuberance, the pony settled down into a crawl. Vainly did Reginald crack his whip—vain even stinging switches on Robin's fat sides. Out of that crawl nothing could move him. The sun was gaining power with every moment, and blazing down upon the occupants of the car; but Robin cared not at all. He was an animal of tropical ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... the stinging slime, Half brute, and sought a soul, And up the starrier ways of time, Half god, ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... by the remark made by a little Irish boy, that we hired to be our hewer of wood and drawer of water, who had been an inhabitant of one of these shanties. "Ma'am" said he, "when the weather was stinging cold, we did not know how to keep ourselves warm; for while we roasted our eyes out before the fire our backs were just freezing; so first we turned one side and then the other, just as you would roast a guse on a spit. Mother spent half the money father earned at his ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... had a complete chart of the lagoon in his head, and knew all the soundings and best fishing places, the locality of the stinging coral, and the places where you could wade right across at low tide—Dick, one morning, was gathering his things together for a fishing expedition. The place he was going to lay some two and a half miles away across the island, and as ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... from Venice," he says, "and have strolled home through the moonlight, singing serenades. . . . I have been playing 'Stradella' and I am full of gondellieds, of serenades, of balconies with white arms leaning over the balustrades thereof, of gleaming waters, of lithe figures in black velvet, of stinging sweet coquetries, of diamonds, daggers, and desperadoes. . . . I cannot tell the intense delight which these lovely conceptions of Flotow gave me. The man has put Venice, lovely, romantic, wicked-sweet ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... alone in the garden walk, and we must contrive to bring him out of it. He was not willing to come forth quite at once. His cheek was stinging with the weight of Eleanor's fingers, and he fancied that everyone who looked at him would be able to see on his face the traces of what he had endured. He stood awhile, becoming redder and redder with rage. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... the amateur observer of the perforators may soon learn to distinguish between a Xylocopa and a Bombus as they work among the flowers. It is also interesting to know that the Xylocopas are not so inclined to sting as the humble bees, and the males, of course, being without stinging organs, may ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... needed a roc's egg hanging from the roof to make it complete, and he did not know where to get that, and was miserable accordingly. We build our houses, we fancy that we are satisfied; and then there comes the stinging thought that it is not all complete yet, and we go groping, groping in the dark, to find out where the lacking thing is. Shipwrecked sailors sometimes, in their desperation, drink salt water, and that makes them thirstier than ever, and brings on madness and death. Some publicans drug ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... thought; but confused memories flashed through her brain, one among them more clearly than the rest. Instead of land-locked water shimmering beneath the Western pines, she saw dim English beeches with the coppery disk of the rising moon behind, and she heard a tall man speak with stinging scorn to one who cowered before him ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... smart of that cut stinging on his flesh, the mark of it rising red and angry across his cheek, he stepped back a pace, and without a word, without a retaliatory movement, without even a change of facial expression he executed the most elaborately ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... comedy is laid in Paris, all the characters are Swedish, which may be accounted for by the fact that the feminist movement, of which "Comrades" is a delicious, stinging satire, had been more agitated at that time in Scandinavia than elsewhere. That Paris was chosen as a background for this group of young artists and writers was probably reminiscent of the time, the early eighties, when Strindberg with his wife and ...
— Plays: Comrades; Facing Death; Pariah; Easter • August Strindberg
... "It seemed hot, stinging, and made my eyes burn frightfully. I was sure it was vitriol, and the thought was too much for me I guess, for I felt myself falling and—well, that's all I remember until I woke up and found the doctor and mother there. It was a terrible experience. I could scarcely believe them, ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... soul had once stirred in the warm darkness under the first stinging of remorse, so now it pushed and struggled to be born; all his will fought against the darkness to deliver his soul. His soul knew that Anne saved it. If her will had been weaker his would not have been so strong. At this moment an unscrupulous Anne might have damned him to the sensual ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... days after the Phillips game, to be exact, on the following Wednesday, that the first and second got together for what turned out to be the warmest struggle of the season in civil combat. It was a cold, leaden day, with a stinging breeze out of the northeast, and every fellow who wore a head-guard felt as full of ginger as a young colt. The second trotted over from their gridiron at four and found the first on its toes to get at them. Things started off with a whoop. The second received ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... turning Carley became specifically acquainted with the driver's meaning of a bad day. A gust of wind, raw and penetrating, laden with dust and stinging sand, swept full in her face. It came so suddenly that she was scarcely quick enough to close her eyes. It took considerable clumsy effort on her part with a handkerchief, aided by relieving tears, to clear her sight again. Thus uncomfortably ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... lips, and had secretly spanned the baby, from chin to toe and across the back, with an industriously inquiring thumb and little finger. But a borrowed baby, it seems, is of no use whatsoever; the satisfaction is said to be temporary—nothing more—and to leave a sense of vacant arms and a stinging aggravation of envy. So what Pattie Batch wanted was a baby to keep—a baby she could call her own and cherish against meddling—a baby that should be so rosy and fat and curly, so neat and white, so scrubbed and highly polished ...
— Christmas Eve at Swamp's End • Norman Duncan
... with their proverbial fidelity to attachments once formed, had long been the closest acquaintances that the poor old gentleman had in the world. Nevertheless, he fancied the twinge a little less poignant than those of yesterday; and, moreover, after stinging him pretty smartly, it passed gradually off with a thrill, which, in its latter stages, grew to be almost agreeable. Pain is but pleasure too strongly emphasized. With cautious movements, and only a groan or two, the good Doctor transferred himself from the bed to the floor, where he stood ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... day be known to the world—at least to such extent that common inquiry shall be unnecessary. This, I know will be deemed excessive vanity—but time shall prove it prophetic." To the charge of youth he makes this stinging rejoinder, which evinces the progress he was making in the tournament of language: "The little, paltry sneers at my youth by your correspondent have long since become pointless. It is the privileged abuse of old age—the hackneyed allegation of a thousand centuries—the damning crime ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... stinging sound smote the air. The glacial side of the mountain trembled, and as the moon reappeared, on the icy slopes Ootah saw narrow black cracks zigzagging in various directions. A cataclysmic rumbling sounded deep in ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... we went to what Master Hunt told me were the Virgin islands, and here the men went ashore again to hunt; but my master, speaking no harsh words against those who were wronging him, lay in the small, stinging hot room, unable to get for himself even a cup of water, though I took good care he should not suffer from lack of ...
— Richard of Jamestown - A Story of the Virginia Colony • James Otis
... in a minute. It was in the earlier stages of the poet's illness, and Maddox had happened to put his head into Rickman's room at the moment when Flossie, compelled by Mrs. Downey, was helping to put a stinging mustard plaster on his chest. They shrieked, and Maddox ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... blocked by a freight-train that got stuck in a drift below the Flats," he explained, as we jogged off into the stinging whiteness. ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... life had Ethel Manton been so furiously angry—not because a man had been felled by a blow—she had forgotten that—but because, in demanding an explanation, in attempting to call Bill Carmody to account, she had laid herself open to his stinging rebuff. ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... same, July 28.-Reflections on loss of youth. Entrance into old age through the gate Of infirmity. A month's confinement to a sick bed a stinging ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... pound. He then humped his swag and started for Melbourne. On his way through the township, since named Beechworth, he took a drink of liquor which disabled him, and he lay down by the roadside using an ant-hill for a pillow. He awoke at daylight covered with ants, which were stinging and ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... Velasco, surrounding him, there came suddenly a swift whizz through the air, a singing as of a hornet, and the heavy lash struck them, across the face, the eyes, the shoulders, stinging and sharp, leaving cruel welts as it struck. The driver screamed out, half blinded. The gendarmes started back. Petrokoff fell on his knees and cowered behind a bush, his fat body trembling and his hands ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... was heir to an independent and considerable fortune of his own, when he should attain his majority, hastened to borrow the money and discharge all the obligations of his friend. The benefit was conferred before Audley knew of it, or could prevent. Then a new emotion, and perhaps scarce less stinging than the loss of Nora, tortured the man who had smiled at the warning of science; and the strange sensation at the heart ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... well as thousands of the best fighting men of France, were lost to the world forever. It was in this year, when Germany made use of asphyxiating gas for the first time, that Canada received its most stinging blow. The famous Princess Pats, the finest military body of the Dominion, was practically annihilated, and in the final formidable attack of the year made by the French against the Germans in September, the latter were driven back ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... breakfast, Amy Leffingwell kept, for the most part, a rapt and meditative eye on her plate. Hortense gave her now and then an impatient, half-angry glare, and had to be cut short in some stinging observations on Cope. "But it was foolish," Medora Phillips felt obliged to concede. "What in the world made ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... by what means this discovery was made. One of the seamen of the Samarang complained of a stinging sensation in his feet from having wetted them in the pool. Our assistant surgeon happening to be on shore at the time, caused the watering to be stopped, and the pool to be examined. Buried in the sand, at the bottom of the pool, and secured in wicker baskets, were found those poisonous berries, ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... Providence and play. There are two scowling faces in the cavalry escort that has been left back with the train, and Captain Hull, the commanding officer, has reprimanded Sergeants Clancy and Gower in stinging terms for their absence from the command during the night. There is little question where they spent it, and both have been "cleaned out." What makes it worse, both have lost money that belonged to other men in the command, and they are in ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... called out another voice that went home to the heart of the people,—the voice of James Russell Lowell in the "Biglow Papers." In the homely Yankee vernacular he spoke for the highest conscience of New England. The righteous wrath was winged with stinging wit and lightened with broad humor. He spoke for that sentiment of the new and nobler America which abhorred slavery and detested war, and saw in a war for the extension of slavery a crime against God and man. The politician's sophistries, ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... 2.236 and 2.237). Afterwards there are slight histological differentiations in its ectoderm, though the entoderm remains a single stratum of cells. We find the first differentiation of epithelial and stinging cells, or of muscular and neural cells, in the ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... I was lost. No one could ever hear me in that roar. And there was nothing to be seen, just a driving, blinding, stinging gray pall of flying fury that nettled the naked skin like electric-massage and took the breath out of your buffeted body. There was no land-mark, no glimpse of any building, nothing whatever to go by. And I felt so helpless in the face of that wind! It seemed to take the ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... opened as do those of one whose tongue's end holds a quick and stinging retort. Then they closed again. She walked over to the big window that faced the street. When she had stood there a moment, silent, she swung around and came back to where T. A. Buck stood, still wrapped ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... stinging sensation in his left side. He paid no attention to this however, but, dropping suddenly to the floor, turned to face his adversary. He saw in that instant the reason the German's bullet had not penetrated ...
— The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders • Clair W. Hayes
... cried Calthea, in stinging tones. "I came all the way back from Lethbury to see if anything had happened to you and that horse, and this is what I find. The top of a ladder and a child's nurse! Such a disgrace never ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... Wedmore freed southern England from the Danes. The shores of Wessex were teased now and then by after-descents, but these incursions were swept away like those of stinging hornets. In 894 a fleet of three hundred ships invaded the realm, but they met a crushing defeat. The king was given some leisure to pursue those studies to which his mind so strongly inclined, and to carry forward measures for the education ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... up: she was always watching Mr. Hardie in company, like a cat cream; and hovering about him when alone. Betty went so far as to accuse her of colloguing with him against Alfred, and of "setting her cap at master," which accusation elicited no direct reply, but stinging innuendoes hours after. ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... ahead through the stinging hailstones and watched our battery as it passed through the historic rock-hewn gateway that is the entrance to the mediaeval town of Besancon. The portal is located at a sharp turn of the river. The gateway is carved ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... the article several times and pondered over it. He understood that the stinging must be done scientifically and thoroughly. The bee, as he understood the article, was to be griped by the ears and set down upon the rheumatic joint and held there until it stung itself stingless. He had some misgivings about the matter. ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... gone, he undressed and threw himself on the bed, but there was a queer stinging sensation in his veins, and he could not sleep. Rising presently, he opened the window, and in the frosty October air stood looking through the darkness to the light that twinkled in the direction of Blake Hall. Faint stars ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... life, came into her mind, and she repeated them again and again, enjoying their bitterness. We like to meditate on death; even the libertine derives satisfaction from such meditation, and poets are remembered by their powers of expressing our great sorrow in stinging terms. "Our lives are not more intense than our dreams," Evelyn thought; "and yet our only reason for believing life to be reality is its intensity. Looked at from the outside, what is it but a little vanishing dust? Millions ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... Secondly, the atmosphere and habit of the family determine the course of teasing. Where carping criticism and unkindly ridicule abound, children cannot be blamed for like habits. Where the sense of humor lightens tense situations, where we sacrifice the pleasure of stinging criticism for the sake of encouraging those who most need it, children are quick to catch those habits too. The teasing child usually comes out of a family of similar habits. On seeing our children engaged in teasing others, our first thought ought to be as to the extent to which we may have ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... and rocked herself to and fro. A second blast of hot-stinging cold enveloped us; the moon shone out clear, and I saw her face—gaunt ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... of safely-garnered harvests, and my mind, reacting to the serenity, the peace, the opulence of it all, was at rest. The dark swamps of the Bulkley, the poisonous plants of the Skeena, the endless ice-cold marshes of the high country, the stinging insects of the tundra, and the hurtling clouds of the White Pass, all seemed events of another and ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... where his pickets hide— Unmask the shapes they take, Whether a gnat from the waterside, Or stinging fly in the brake, Or filth of the crowded street, Or a sick rat limping by, Or a smear of spittle dried in the heat— That is the work of a spy! (DRUMS)—Death is upon ...
— The Years Between • Rudyard Kipling
... by another, less humorous, but more personal and satirical, signed in the same way, but the second communication was written by two mischievous (if not malicious) girls—Mary Todd and her friend, Julia Jayne. This stinging attack made Shields wild with rage, and he demanded the name of the writer of it. Lincoln told the editor to give Shields his name as if he had written both contributions and thus protect the two young ladies. The auditor then challenged the lawyer to fight a ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... the enemy or trained the sights that had blown Spanish blockhouses to the four winds of heaven? Had it been he or his ghost who had stood behind the Nordenfeldt shields with the bullets pattering against the steel and stinging the air overhead? He or his ghost, barefoot in the sand that sopped the blood of fallen comrades, the ship shaking with the detonation of her guns, the hoarse cheering of her crew re-echoing in his half- deafened ears? A dream, yes; tragic and wonderful ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... the scorpions were forgotten, or we got used to them; and the next one that Said had a chase after, excited in me little attention. So I found, like the Moors, myself a fatalist, or at least became reconciled to the presence of these death-stinging reptiles. I found eventually, in fact, the people killed them with as much unconcern as we do spiders. The scorpion is the only creature armed with the fatal power of destroying life, which, for the present I hear of in the oases of The Sahara. The Arabs, in their hatred ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... amusing instance of "Breitmannism" was shown in the fact that an American German editor, in his ignorance of English, actually believed that the word stinging, as here given, meant stinking, and was accordingly indignant. It is needless to say that no such idea was intended to ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... from the tree; and, crowding everywhere about me, enveloping all, the willows, those endless, shaking willows. A bird uttered its morning cry, and a string of duck passed with whirring flight overhead in the twilight. The sand whirled, dry and stinging, about my ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... the morning, with increasing wind and thickening storm all day, so that my afternoon train out was delayed and dropped me at the station long after dark. The roads were blocked, the snow was knee-deep, the driving wind was horizontal, and the whirling ice particles like sharp sand, stinging, blinding as I bent ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... it is secreted. Now I present this to you, not for its own sake, but simply for the comparison, a comparison which struck the earliest microscopists. Here is the scabbard carefully rendered. One of the stings is protruded below its point, as in the act of stinging; the other is free to show its form. Now the actual length of this scabbard in nature was the one-thirtieth of an inch. I have taken the point, C, of a fine cambric sewing needle, and broken it off to slightly less than the one-thirtieth of an inch, and magnified it as the sting is magnified. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... Potts and Oole were standing not far apart, supposedly guarding Pole. Judd had acted so quickly that they were not yet prepared to protect themselves, or to put Judd wise to the intended joke. Potts tried to escape but he did not move fast enough. He was dropped where he had stood by a stinging blow behind the ear. Judd wheeled swiftly, ...
— Over the Line • Harold M. Sherman
... various waste products of the plant. Suppose one of these waste products in the ancestors of the nettle to be at first slightly pungent, by accident, as it were, then it would exercise a slightly deterrent effect upon nettle-eating animals. The more stinging it grew, the more effectual would the protection be; and as in each generation the least protected plants would get eaten down, while the more protected were spared, the tendency would be for the juice to grow more and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... people along the North Branch, as elsewhere, are aware of what has been lost. But restoration is going to be hard. In some of the deep valleys layered, stinging smog prevails through most of the year. Most of the waters are acid from far up toward their source, as we have seen, and downriver this acid is enriched with other things, a situation that has existed for so long that hardly anyone recalls when the streams were much ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... y a, mon ami?" said Calvert, touching a man on the shoulder who had been pushed close to the sleigh. The man addressed looked around. He was poorly and thinly clothed, with only a ragged muffler knotted about his throat to keep off the stinging cold. From under his great shaggy eyebrows a pair of wild, sunken eyes gleamed ferociously, but there was a smile upon ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... Reuben: your good opinion is more than I deserve," said Eve, her memory stinging her with past recollections. "If you want to see a dear, kind-hearted, unselfish girl, wait until Joan comes. I do so hope that you will take to her! I think you will, after what you've been to Jerrem and to Adam. I want you and Joan to like ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... Norfolk trotter who could trot fabulous miles an hour, to whom he, with the Norfolk farmers, raised his hat in reverence at the Norwich horse fair; and when I promised to show him a portrait of this same East Anglian mare with myself behind her in a dogcart—an East Anglian dogcart; when I praised the stinging saltness of the sea-water of Yarmouth, Lowestoft, and Cromer, the quality of which makes it the best, the most delightful of all sea-water to swim in; when I told him that the only English river in which you ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... by Hobson alone. First came the militia, then came Judah. His division had pushed up the river in steamers parallel with Morgan's course. Lieutenant John O'Neil, afterward of Fenian fame, with a troop of Indiana cavalry, kept up the touch on Morgan's right flank by a running fight, stinging it at every vulnerable point, and reporting Morgan's course to Judah in the neck-and-neck race. Aided by the local militia, O'Neil now dashed ahead and fearlessly skirmished with the enemy's flankers from every coign of vantage. ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... very afternoon as the opening of the hall door rang a bell sharply and Joe came in, the men swiftly and guiltily flung their lighted cigarettes to the floor and stepped them out or crumpled them with stinging fingers in their pockets. But Joe did not even notice the clinging cigarette smell that infected the strange printery atmosphere, that mingled with its delightful odor of the freshly printed page, damp, bitter-sweet, ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... leaned back, both hands tightening on the hand-rail behind her, and as she comprehended the passionless reproof, a stinging flush deepened over ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... turbans. Mounted gendarmes are driving civilians about, first in one direction and then in another, to try and get the streets cleared, occasionally fetching some unlucky wight in the threadbare shirt of the Galata plebe a stinging cut across the shoulders with short raw-hide whips - a glaring injustice that elicits not the slightest adverse criticism from the spectators, and nothing but silent contortions of face and body from the individual receiving the attention. I ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... insult he may pay others, there is none who dares even to shoot a shaft at him." Present at this talk of Gudrun and Thorhalla were both Bolli and the sons of Osvif. Ospak and his brothers said but little, but what there was, rather stinging for Kjartan, as was always their way. Bolli behaved as if he did not hear, as he always did when Kjartan was spoken ill of, for his wont was either to hold his peace, or ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... been prosperous, all this would have passed for the empty declamation of an excited man of letters. As it was, such declamation only described, in language as accurate as it was violent and stinging, the real position of the country. In the urgency of a present material distress, men were not over-careful that the basis of the indictment should be laid in the principles of a sound historical philosophy ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... to blister the skin, if left exposed to the influence of the sun's rays. The diversity of temperature in the seasons causes an additional expense in the provision of clothes for the winter. Musquitoes swarm on every new settlement, and annoy every one by their stinging and raising inflamed spots over the body. Rubbing strong vinegar over the parts is said to alleviate the pain. Fires of wet chips, lighted at the doors of the cabins, will prevent the ingress of these troublesome insects. When a clearance ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... him, fierce and stinging—remorse and terror! Then on their heels followed an angry denial of responsibility, mingled with alarm and revolt. Was he to be robbed of Lucy because Eleanor had misread him? No doubt she had imprinted what she pleased on Lucy's mind. Was he ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... returning them; the blood of the early martyrs still lives in their veins. Well-born women, their husbands' equals, feel the impulse to annoy them, to mark the points of their tolerance, like points at billiards, by some stinging word, partly in the spirit of diabolical malice, and to secure the upper hand or the right of turning ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... It is this falsity in thought, method and purpose which is so severely condemned. And it is the very justness of the criticism which makes it severe, which gives to a true description of these novels the nature of a stinging sarcasm. That these women are praised by the critics she justly regards as a sure indication of their incapacity, or a sign of man's chivalry towards the other sex, which does not permit him to speak the truth about what he knows to be so false and immature. She also sees that what ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... one foot was acting in a manner that was full of intelligence and guile, and when he took it away from the door the other one took its place. By a sudden manoeuvre the wily Tucker turned his back on the door, and opened it, and, at the same moment, a hand came to life again and dealt him a stinging slap on the face. ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... full days succeeded their empty days, when they were alone with the desert and the sun. Then hunger and thirst assailed them, serpents bit them, stinging flies drove men mad, the sand burnt their feet through steel and leather. They lost more this way than by Saracen ambush, and lost more hearts than men. This was a time for private grudges to awaken. Hatred feeds on such dry meat. ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... and along the southern border of California this strange flora finds its fullest expression. Here one enters a new fairy-land, a region of stinging bushes and upstanding monsters lifting ungainly arms to heaven. In 1914, to conserve one of the many rich tracts of desert flora, President Wilson created the Papago Saguaro National Monument a few miles east of Phoenix, Arizona. ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... People's Association,—that same body of young Christian workers which gave the Rev Francis E. Clark both the inspiration and practical hints for the formation of his first society of Christian Endeavor. What a fearful bitter night was that 8th of January! Through that stinging Arctic atmosphere came a goodly number with hearts on fire with the love of Jesus. The prayers that night were well aimed; and a man, who afterwards became a useful officer of the church, was converted on the spot. On the ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... Cutup, and Slashandhackaway; Prince Paramount of the Gentlemen of the Press, Lord of the Magaziners, and Regent of the Reviewers; Mallet of Whiggery, and Castigator of Cockaigne; Count Palatine of the Periodicals; Marquis of the Holy Poker; Baron of Balaam and Blarney; and Knight of the most stinging Order ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... is my first hint, taught by years of experience: If you want to learn to play quickly, if you want to get the most out of your lessons, whether in boxing or stick-play, never encourage your teacher to spare you too much. If you get a stinging cross-counter early in your career as a boxer, which lays you out senseless for thirty seconds, you will find that future antagonists have the greatest possible difficulty in getting home on that spot again. It is the same in single-stick. ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn
... garments, and they became him; but the hand he held out was lean, and hard, and brown, and, for he stood bareheaded, a paler streak showed where the wide hat had shielded a face that had been darkened by stinging alkali dust from the prairie sun. It was a quietly forceful face, with steady eyes, which had a little sparkle of pleasure in them, and were clear and brown, while something in the man's sinewy pose suggested that he would have been at home in the saddle. Indeed, it was ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... the boys crossed the old yard siding. Stumbling over the rails, partially blinded with the now stinging smoke, both suddenly ran into something, and fell in a heap. Scrambling to their feet, they found an old push-car, with ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... down from this airy space, this swift white peace, this stinging exultation; And time will close about me, and my soul stir to the rhythm of the daily round. Yet, having known, life will not press so close, and always I shall feel time ravel thin about me; For once I stood In the white ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens
... as in all things gentle, having gentle pains and gentle pleasures, and placid desires and loves not insane; whereas the intemperate life is impetuous in all things, and has violent pains and pleasures, and vehement and stinging desires, and loves utterly insane; and in the temperate life the pleasures exceed the pains, but in the intemperate life the pains exceed the pleasures in greatness and number and frequency. Hence one of the two lives is naturally and necessarily more pleasant and the other more painful, ...
— Laws • Plato
... great wonder! For the Spirit of the Old Rock, even that which was itself, turned all the dust to black flies, into the stinging and evil things which drive men and beasts mad, so that its hatred and spite might be carried out on all living creatures unto the ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... verbal acknowledgment of the public spirit shown by the U.V.F. in the first month of the war was a paltry recompense for the Government's breach of faith, as Mr. Bonar Law immediately pointed out in a stinging rejoinder. The leader of the Opposition concluded his powerful indictment by saying that such conduct by the Government could not be allowed to pass without protest, but that at such a moment of national danger debate in Parliament on this domestic ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... tumbled into his outer garments and made for the street. The taxi sputtered at the curb, but just as he dashed down the steps a limousine drew up, and Denning sprang from its opened door. His hand fell heavily upon Gard's shoulder as he stooped to enter the cab. Gard turned, his overwrought nerves stinging with the shock ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... composure which was ominous, which was almost tragic. Even the act of sitting down, which was due to her weakness, made her appear as if taking a high position, assuming an almost judicial place. She did not intend it so, but this was the effect it produced upon Warrender, stinging him more deeply still. He felt that he was judged, that his wife had thrown off the yoke which he had made so heavy, and that his chance of bringing her back to her subjection, and of forcing her into the new and sudden decision which he called for, ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... clean, dry dust, the aromatic smell of mountain plants that had been baked all day in sunlight, and the expressive silence of the night. My negro blood had carried me unhurt across that reeking and pestiferous morass; by mere good fortune, I had escaped the crawling and stinging vermin with which it was alive; and I had now before me the easier portion of my enterprise, to cross the isle and to make good my arrival at the haven and my acceptance on the English yacht. It was impossible by night to follow such a track as my father ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lay over a small range of hills, and as they got on top the cruel cold smote them more and more. The day was a cloudy one, and the wind sprang up, sending the dry snow in stinging particles into ...
— The Young Treasure Hunter - or, Fred Stanley's Trip to Alaska • Frank V. Webster
... oblivion. We therefore carried on a very pleasant and vivacious conversation, as the night was warm and we were not inclined to sleep. Suddenly the old Cure pulled off the handkerchief and said in a gruff voice, "It is the time for sleeps and not for talks." and, having uttered this stinging rebuke, re-covered his head and left us in penitent silence. We arrived at Evians-les-Bains in good time, and went to a very charming hotel with a lovely view of the Lake of Geneva in front. Unfortunately, I had hurt my foot some ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... the duty that lies in tone! But Richard was started on a voyage of self-discovery. He had begun to learn that regions he had thought wholesome, productive portions of his world, were a terra incognita of swamps and sandy hills, haunted with creeping and stinging things. When a man finds he is not what he thought, that be has been talking line things, and but imagining he belonged to their world, he is on the way to discover that he is not up to his duty in the smallest thing. When, for very despair, it seems impossible to go on, ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... stinging blow on one ear, followed immediately by a sharp slap on the side of her head from the big grey cat, sent her reeling dizzily away from the dish. She recovered herself and turned in abject terror, her one thought to escape from this uncalled ...
— The Book of the Cat • Mabel Humphrey and Elizabeth Fearne Bonsall
... you can compel me to say anything?" Mona burst forth, with stinging contempt, her patience all gone. "Let this be the last time that you ever waylay or persecute me with your attentions, for, I give you fair warning, a repetition of such conduct on your part will send me straight to Mrs. Montague with a full ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... sportsman can't 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 ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... until the fish rose at the boat and then he thrust in the lance with all his strength. The force acting against both fish and boat drove the latter sideways a foot or more, so that the giant rose in the air not two feet from the gunwale of the boat, the spray stinging like fine rain as the wind of his ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... fierce as vengeance, Sharp and shrill as swords at strife, Came the wild MacGregor's clan-call, Stinging all the air to life. But when the far-off dust cloud To plaided legions grew, Full tenderly and blithsomely The ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... could!" cried Raoul; "but no, it is too late! Besides, can I tell how long my good resolutions will last? This is not the first time that I have condemned myself pitilessly. Stinging remorse for each new fault made me swear to lead a better life, to sin no more. What was the result of these periodical repentances? At the first temptation I forgot my remorse and good resolutions. I am weak and mean-spirited, and you are not firm enough to govern my vacillating nature. While ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... a concise exposition of the tactics at Jutland and a stinging rebuke to those who accuse of having missed a glorious opportunity through over-caution and lack of ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... hour, until day gloom thickened into night, and night drifted upward to give place to gray dawn, plodding steadily north, resting now and then, fighting each mile of the way to the Red Porcupine against the stinging lashes of the Arctic wind. And through it all it was DeBar's voice that rose in encouragement to the dog limping behind him and to the man limping behind the dog—now in song, now in the wild shouting of the sledge-driver, his face thin and gaunt in its starved whiteness, but ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... sometimes is rewarded. I very nearly was asleep when the sound of a bolt being drawn on the far side of the door brought every sense to the alert with that stinging feeling that means blood spurting through your veins after a spell of lethargy. The bolt was a long time drawing, as if some one were afraid of making too much noise, and I had plenty of time to make sure that my ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... slavery in the Free States, has been making Abolitionists by the thousand. The masses of any people, however intelligent, are very little moved by abstract principles of humanity and justice, until those principles are interpreted for them by the stinging commentary of some infringement upon their own rights, and then their instincts and passions, once aroused, do indeed derive an incalculable reinforcement of impulse and intensity from those higher ideas, those sublime traditions, which have no motive political force till they are allied ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... of the dawn touched him as he plodded along. His advance was slow, for the sleeves of the fur coat impeded free use of his legs. The day was clear and cold, with a stinging wind that tossed the roaring branches of the spruce-trees. The crust held firm. Parker's constrained arms were aching and his hands were numb. He jerked and twisted at the thongs until his wrists were raw, but the knots were too strong ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... after which stinging challenge, one has no doubt, any feeling of offense was swallowed up in admiration of the speaker's ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... ass Silenus, never sated, With thick, black veins, wherethrough the must is soaking, Nods his dull forehead with deep sleep belated; His eyes are wine-inflamed, and red, and smoking: Bold Maenads goad the ass so sorely weighted, With stinging thyrsi; he sways feebly poking The mane with bloated fingers; Fauns behind him, E'en as he falls, upon ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... was stinging hot outside the little barber-shop next to the corner drug store and Penrod, undergoing a toilette preliminary to his very slowly approaching twelfth birthday, was adhesive enough to retain upon his face much hair as it fell from the shears. There is a mystery here: the tonsorial processes ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... him, but he sprung back, and the tough sapling swept about him like a circle of light. It was a terrific weapon in the hands of a strong man, now possessed of almost giant strength in his rage. More than one fellow went down under its stinging cut, and heads and faces were bleeding. The younger portion of the crowd speedily took to their heels, and soon even the most stubborn fled; the farmer vigorously assisting their ignominious retreat with ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... stripping off her glove, she thrust her warm, clinging hand into his. Her lips smiled faintly, tears stood in her eyes; then she drew her hand away and plunged into the traffic. He saw her turn the corner of her street and disappear. And with the warmth of that passionate little hand still stinging his palm, he almost ran ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... at least for several moments, for when I became aware again, through the nightmare of pain, my toes were resting lightly and securely on cold stone. The smell of burned flesh remained, and the painful stinging in my toes. Mingled with that smell was a drift of ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... unless you have the soldiers with you. You look as if your mothers didn't know you were out." And at this a yell of approval went up all along the line, while the badgered sailors growled and tried to make sharp retorts to the stinging ridicule of ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... continent of Venus is divided into four parts. No Caesar has set foot here either, nor shall one—for the dank, stinging, caustic air swallows up the lives of men and only Venus may ...
— Foundling on Venus • John de Courcy
... hats and undershirts as protection against sunburn. As Madden walked from the awning through the stinging sun rays, crimping up his naked feet from the blistering ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... retreat down the canyon slope, he had plunged into a bunch of shorthorn steers, who, far more startled than he, had rolled him on the forest floor, trampled over him in their panic, and smashed his rifle under their hoofs. Weaponless, desperate, stinging and aching from his superficial wounds and bruises, he had circled the forest slopes along deer-paths, crossed two canyons, and begun to descend the horse- trail he found ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... feud with Barker like a dark background to all his enjoyment. He even had to manoeuvre daily how to escape him, and violent scenes were of constant occurrence between them. Eric could not, and would not, brook his bullying with silence. His resentment was loud and stinging, and, Ishmaelite as Barker was, even his phlegmatic temperament took fire when Eric shouted his fierce and uncompromising retorts in the ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar |
