"Stinging" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... want to. But lots of times I guess you don't care how you look," was the reply, as the busy fingers sorted out the different colored blossoms from the box, all unconscious of the stinging arrow she had just shot into the heart of her friend. "This blue one's Allee. Blue means truth, grandma says, and Allee is true blue. Red in our flag stands for valor. Cherry ain't very brave, but ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... OF WORDS.—It is necessary to one's personal happiness, to exercise control over one's words as well as acts: for there are words that strike even harder than blows; and men may "speak daggers," though they use none. The stinging repartee that rises to the lips, and which, if uttered, might cover an adversary with confusion, how difficult it is to resist saying it! "Heaven, keep us," says Miss Bremer, in her 'Home', "from the destroying power of words! ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... herself it would have been of all fates the most terrible, and thus she fancied it for him. But in Harry Musgrave's nature there was no bitterness or fierce revolt, no angry sarcasm against an unjust world or stinging remorse for fault of his own. Defeat was his destiny, and he bowed to it as the old Greek heroes bowed to the decree of the gods, and laughed sometimes at the impotence of misfortune to fetter the free flight of his thoughts. And Elizabeth was his ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... the dust came lashing and stinging him like a thousand nettles; it smothered him, and beat upon him so that he covered his face with his sleeve and fought into the storm shoulder foremost, dimly glad of its rage, scarcely conscious of it, keeping westward on his way to nowhere. West or east, south or north—it was all one to ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... indeed! If Sir Victor's life had been badgered during the past fortnight, his wife's life had been rendered nearly unendurable. Inez knew so well how to stab, and she never spared a thrust. It was wonderful, the bitterest, stinging things she could say over and over again, in her slow, legato tones. She never spared. Her tongue was a two-edged sword, and the black deriding eyes looked pitilessly on her victim's writhes and quivers. ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... puberty among the Guaranis, Chiriguanos, and Lengua Indians, 56 sq.; among the Yuracares of Bolivia, 57 sq.; among the Indians of the Gran Chaco, 58 sq.; among the Indians of Brazil, 59 sq.; among the Indians of Guiana, 60 sq.; beating the girls and stinging them with ants, 61; stinging young men with ants and wasps as an initiatory rite, 61-63; stinging men and women with ants to improve their character or health or to render them invulnerable, 63 sq.; in such cases the beating or stinging ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... to the Treasury Cluck, like chicken, Now with small beaks the ravenous Bill opposing;[212:1] With serpent-tongue now stinging, and now licking, 15 Now semi-sibilant, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... It was stinging cold. Every few minutes the girls had to stop and clap their hands together and stamp their feet to restore circulation. They pulled their wool caps well down over their ears and faced the sharp wind. They had ...
— The Merriweather Girls and the Mystery of the Queen's Fan • Lizette M. Edholm
... seat. But it was only to stand upright on her feet, fronting her— call him enemy, antagonist, victim, what you will. Gordon was grasping his head: the blow had for a moment blinded him. She gave him another stinging cut across ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... will never be written. But whatever you do, don't envy it. And I do not mean by that, that I am a disappointed, unhappy woman; far from it. But I enjoy and suffer intensely, and one insulting word about Greylock, for instance, goes on stinging and cutting me, amid forgetfulness of hundreds of kind ones. [16] Let us take our lot in life just as it comes, courageously, patiently, and faithfully, never wondering at anything the Master does. I am concerned just as you are about my interest in things of time and sense. But I have not ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... was the form of noble manhood, the courteous and self-possest tone, the flow of modulated speech, sparkling with matchless richness of illustration, with apt allusion and happy anecdote and historic parallel, with wit and pitiless invective, with melodious pathos, with stinging satire, with crackling epigram and limpid humor, like the bright ripples that play around the sure and steady prow of the resistless ship. Like an illuminated vase of odors, he glowed with concentrated and perfumed fire. ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... of charges with loud, merry laughter, which more enraged the princess than the most stinging words would ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... were dilated as though she had been running. In the center of the room stood Konrad Nirlanger, and on his oogly face was the very oogliest look that I have ever seen on a man. He glanced at us as we stood transfixed in the doorway, and laughed a short, sneering laugh that was like a stinging blow on the cheek. ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... saw very little of each other during the gale, except for a brief interval during the changes of the watch on deck. Each enjoyed his "trick" on deck, as he crouched behind the bulging storm-dodgers and faced the howling wind and the stinging spray. It was greatly to be preferred to being below, cooped up in an atmosphere which resembled that of an underground scullery on washing-day, with the odours of petrol and lubricating oil thrown ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... could be stopped he sprang up with an ear-splitting war-whoop and brought the whip down with a stinging blow over the ears of the indignant horses, who plunged forward with a frightened leap. The coach rose and rocked, narrowly missing overturning in its sudden headlong course. Jimmy clamped on the brakes, snatched the reins and brought the plunging team to a stop after narrowly missing ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... watched through the November mist the blesbok flying across the veld, a herd of quaggas taking cover with the rheebok, or a cloud of locusts sailing out of the sun to devastate the green lands. Through the smoky smell of London there came to them the scent of the wattle, the stinging odour of ten thousand cattle, the reek of a native kraal, the sharp sweetness of orange groves, the aromatic air of the karoo, laden with the breath of a thousand wild herbs. Through the drizzle of the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... breast. Not even for the babes did the snow cease or the keen wind rest; the very fire could scarcely struggle against it. Snow-rain and ice-rain; frost-formed snow-granules, driven along like shot, stinging and rattling against the tent-cloth, hissing in the fire; roar and groan of the great wind among the oaks of the forest. No kindness to man, from birth-hour to ending; neither earth, sky, nor gods care for him, innocent at the mother's breast. Nothing good to man but man. Let man, then, leave ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... dialect. She looked up wondering, and he saw that it was Evadne Zaimi. Evadne, once the idol of Adrian's affections; and who, for the sake of her present visitor, had disdained the noble youth, and then, neglected by him she loved, with crushed hopes and a stinging sense of misery, had returned to her native Greece. What revolution of fortune could have brought her to England, and housed ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... have an even sameness; the intense cold, the heartless wind which augments tenfold the chill of the temperature, the air thick and dark with stinging flakes rushing by in an endless cloud. A drifting, freezing, shifting eternity of snow, driven by a ravening gale which sweeps the desolate, bald ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... lions to be more recent (having perhaps replaced others) than their neighbours, which are obliterated to the extent of being lions or lionesses only by guesswork. These nameless feline creatures hold what appear to be portions of sheep, one of them having at its flank a curious excrescence like the stinging scorpion of the Mithra groups. The griffins, on the other hand, although every detail is rubbed out, are splendid in power and expression—great lion-bodied creatures, with gigantic eagle's beak, manifestly birds rather than beasts, with the muscular neck and probably ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... stinging irony and triumphant sarcasm, all fully prepared, froze on Chauvelin's lips. He gazed upon the prisoner, and a weird sense of something unfathomable and mysterious came over him as he gazed. He himself ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... At that instant a 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 ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... 8. The Fai, or stinging ray fish, and also the mullet were incarnations of Moso the strong in another family. If visitors or friends caught or brought with them either of these fish, a child of the family would be taken and laid down in an unheated oven, ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... until some one told him that it 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 ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... a Talleyrand, could still be the symbol for it?—Enough, and Clergy has strength, the Clergy has craft and indignation. It is a most fatal business this of the Clergy. A weltering hydra-coil, which the National Assembly has stirred up about its ears; hissing, stinging; which cannot be appeased, alive; which cannot be trampled dead! Fatal, from first to last! Scarcely after fifteen months' debating, can a Civil Constitution of the Clergy be so much as got to paper; and then for getting it into reality? Alas, such ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... him, which made him sometimes withdraw his resistance, though never submit; and Felix had some hope that it would be so in the present case, when, while speeding to church in the dark winter Monday morning, he overheard Lance say to Clement, 'I say, Clem, 'tis a jolly stinging frost. If you'll take your skates and give us a lesson, we'll be off for ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the threats Father Antoine had used, and in a moment I lost sight of the street with all its light and life and movement. I felt no longer the wholesome stinging of the wind. I tasted instead a fetid air, and saw round me a narrow cell and masked figures, and in particular a swarthy man is a leather apron leaning over a brazier, from which came lurid flames. And I was bound. I experienced ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... were again heard. The moment of suspense was stinging. The door opened and the tything men entered. The same spokesman, perhaps the gentlest ...
— Some Three Hundred Years Ago • Edith Gilman Brewster
... at every moment he would annihilate his antagonist; Disraeli, with marvellous skill and exquisite adroitness, bringing the rapier of his wit to bear upon his opponent, and again and again pinking him with some stinging epigram or smart retort that set all the Tory benches roaring with delight. It made one's young blood grow warmer to watch the struggle from the impartial height ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... succeeded in fishing him out, pulled down the shirts, and pushed up the cap, he began vigorously rubbing the bare young legs with the palm of his hand, spitting upon it, the better, as he said, to draw out the smarting and the stinging of the brier-scratches. Then setting his idol, still howling, upon his own panel of the fence, Burl began looking about him with wide-open eyes, as if in quest of something lost, wondering the while what could have become of ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... stir and murmur. Out among the pines, five hundred yards away, two mounted Indians popped suddenly into view, two others speedily following, their well-nigh exhausted ponies feebly shaking their shaggy, protesting heads, as their riders plied the stinging quirt or jabbed with cruel lance; only in painful jog trot could they zig zag through the trees. Then came two warriors, leading the pony of a crippled comrade. "Don't fire—Don't harm them! Fall back from the trail there and let them in. They'll halt the moment they see our tracks! Get ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... determined to stand. Earl Sigurd was a man of understanding, and could talk well, but certainly was not considered brave enough to take a strong resolution; and indeed the earl showed a great inclination to fly, for which he got many stinging words from his men-at-arms. As day dawned, they began on both sides to draw up their battle array. Earl Sigurd placed his men on the edge of a ridge between the river and the house, at a place at which a little stream runs into the river. Erling ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... their 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 deck, Galton ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... hand fell upon his friend's knee with a stinging slap. "You're wrong there, Jed," he declared, with emphasis. "'Twas just the way for you to talk to me. I needed it; and," with another chuckle, "I got it, ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... felt a sharp prick, and found a large cockroach sitting on his eyelid and biting the corner of his eye. They also bite all round the nails of your fingers and toes, unless they are closely covered. It must be said that insects are a great discomfort at Sarawak. Mosquitoes, and sand-flies, and stinging flies which turn your hands into the likeness of boxing-gloves, infest the banks of the rivers, and the sea-shore. Flying bugs sometimes scent the air unpleasantly, and there are hornets in the woods ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... this way!" she said, exasperated under a rush of sensations utterly incomprehensible—stinging, confused emotions that beat chaotic time to the clamour of her pulses. "Why d-do you speak of such things?" she repeated with a fierce little indrawn breath—"why do you?—when you know—when I said—explained everything?" She looked at him fearfully: "You are somehow spoiling our friendship," ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... a very heavy one, accompanied by savage gusts of stinging rain, and the old ship, with her canvas in great disorder, was every now and then thrown almost on her beam ends with its fury. After considerable trouble the officers and crew succeeded in saving ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... 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 had described; and I was casting ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it?" he snarled, slapping the helpless, half-conscious man in the face with his open hand—loud, stinging blows that almost knocked the head off the shoulders. "Will you agree to ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... what they please, and I am to do what I please." No person would have dared to publish in London satires on George the Second approaching to the atrocity of those satires on Frederic, which the booksellers at Berlin sold with impunity. One bookseller sent to the palace a copy of the most stinging lampoon that perhaps was ever written in the world, the Memoirs of Voltaire, published by Beaumarchais, and asked for his Majesty's orders. "Do not advertise it in an offensive manner," said the King, "but sell it by all means. I hope it will pay you well." Even among statesmen accustomed to ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... instead of water; but he seriously declares that a cistern at Ravenna is more valuable than a vineyard. Sidonius complains that the town is destitute of fountains and aqueducts; and ranks the want of fresh water among the local evils, such as the croaking of frogs, the stinging ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... to stand steadily, and immediately give the bees, who will collect on the edge of the comb to see what is going on, a little more smoke. This will stupify them so completely, that not above one or two will be able to fly out, and they will be so sick, that they will not dream of stinging you. Begin at one side of the hive, and cut out a comb, having first sent down a puff of smoke to make the bees go away to the middle and the other side. Proceed thus,—sweeping the bees off every comb back into the ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... Then a 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 ...
— The Book of the Cat • Mabel Humphrey and Elizabeth Fearne Bonsall
... by lifting on the point of your dissecting knife this stinging sin of mine to which you refer? The noxious brood swarm so teasingly about my ears that they deprive me of your cool, clear, philosophic discrimination. Which particular Tenthredo of the buzzing swarm around my spoiled apple ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... I happened to dine with Whistler and telling him of what had occurred called forth a most stinging gibe at Oscar's expense. Whistler's mot ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... which brought blame on her, she had accepted everything hitherto as her own fault, and believed in, and adored the image she had made of him throughout. Now it was as if her idol had turned suddenly into a viper in her bosom, not only stinging her by implied acquiescence in the slanders upon her discretion, if not upon her fair fame, but actually having betrayed her innocent sisters by means of the deadly enemy of their family—to what fate ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... this article were stolen from the printing office, and the parties implicated in this larceny attempted to induce a mob to demolish the office and the offending editor. But the pluck which originated the stinging article sufficed for the defence of the office. The effort to establish slavery in Illinois was kept up for a year or more, but the bold editor and other friends of freedom labored incessantly for the honor of the State, and succeeded at length in procuring an overwhelming ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of the josses? Do they lamp not the same with a grouch? Are you stinging these gloomy Big Bosses To a keener, ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... would burn the town and imprison the citizens if Mosby continued the attacks on his outposts. A group of citizens, taking the threat to heart, petitioned Stuart to recall Mosby, but the general sent a stinging rebuke, telling the Middleburgers that Mosby and his men were risking their lives which were worth considerably more than a ...
— Rebel Raider • H. Beam Piper
... the major portion of the American fleet was retained in home waters for the protection of American coasts and ports, a policy which aroused the stinging criticism of Admiral Sims, gradually the fleet added strength to the Allied navies in their patrol of European coasts and the bottling-up of the German high seas fleet. Destroyer bases were maintained at Queenstown, Brest, and Gibraltar, from which were ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... said the voice again, but there was something better; and as the hard, stinging tones melted, the girl's dry eyes of shame filled in an instant with tears. There was something better—the knowledge of what crimes man was yet capable of, and the will to use that knowledge. Rome was gone, and it was a lamentable shame; Rome ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... leaflets of the sensitive 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 rounded at the end, is of such microscopic fineness that it ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... honey in the comb accompanied by his bees, which must have followed him for miles. They testified their displeasure at his selling their honey by stinging him and most of ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... with his toes out, to give Pen his three hours' reading at Fairoaks, met his pupil, who shot by him like the wind. Smirke's pony shied, as the other thundered past him; the gentle curate went over his head among the stinging-nettles in the hedge. Pen laughed as they met, pointed towards the Baymouth road, and was gone half a mile in that direction before poor Smirke had ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... beggar man's ghost besets my dreams, At night to make me madder,— And my wretched conscience, within my breast, Is like a stinging adder;— I sigh when I pass the gallows' foot, And look at the ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... shall go 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 ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens
... influence of some personal trouble, be it a substantial loss of any sort, or the more unfortunate burden, cast upon us by any social stigma, then, when the whole world, learning of our misfortune extends its hand in stinging sympathy, and looks with painful enquiry of curious compassion, to see "how we take it," what a piercing spur we thrust into our pride, to drive into it that forced merriment and happy resignation, which we blindly hope will stand for indifference in the eyes of a criticising ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... his thin, sinewy throat. His legs were cased in gray lamb's-wool stockings, over which his small-clothes were fastened at the knees with small silver buckles. His face was not originally cast in such a repulsive mould, but commerce with the world, and a succession of stinging disappointments in his early manhood, had woven an ugly mask over it, from behind which glimpses of his former self, on rare occasions, shone out. Such was Mark Stillinghast at the opening of our story: old, cynical, and rich, but poor in friendship, and without ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... had come up from the supper-room, Fred Marston pulled me into a corner, and inflicted on me a volley of stinging observations about the people in the room. George, Bessie, Mrs. Pinkerton, and Miss Van were, I supposed, in one of the other rooms; I had ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... 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
... had drawn a deep breath of anxious suspense. The next minute an immense disturbance leaped out of the darkness upon the sea, kindling upon it a livid clearness of foam, and the first gust of the squall boarded the brig in a stinging flick of rain and spray. As if overwhelmed by the suddenness of the fierce onset, the vessel remained for a second upright where she floated, shaking with tremendous jerks from trucks to keel; while high up in the night the invisible canvas ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... supple to thwart him openly; with her light fluttering nature she did not attack obstacles in front. When she wished to obtain something from her husband, or drive him the way she thought best, she would buzz round him in her grasshopper fashion, stinging him on all sides, and returning to the charge a hundred times until he yielded almost unconsciously. He felt, moreover, that she was shrewder than he, and tolerated her advice fairly patiently. Felicite, more useful than the coach fly, would sometimes do all the work while ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... no more than time to turn her head when a thick swarm of bees surrounded her, angry because they had caught her stealing their honey and intent on stinging the girl as a punishment. She knew her danger and expected to be badly injured by the multitude of stinging bees, but to her surprise the little creatures were unable to fly close enough to her to stick their ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... and the satire of Hawthorne and Lowell, Holmes and Saxe, although, of course, they are not yet developed with like delicacy and brilliance. There is in these pages a vast deal of genuine, hearty fun, and of sharp, stinging sarcasm; there are also hundreds of cleverly drawn and cleanly cut illustrations. Better than these, there is a fearlessness of consequences and of persons, when a wrong is to be combated, an error to be set right. And this Touchstone has been impartial as well as sturdy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... through 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 ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in his spade. "It will never be much bigger than a stinging nettle," thought he, "for the roots of the oak have sucked every atom of heart out of this." His black soul ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... to be a very waggish air, Harry put out his tongue, and held it with his finger and thumb. It was unfortunate that he had not time to draw it in again before the hot-tempered gentleman gave him a stinging box on the ear, which brought his teeth rather sharply together on the tip of his tongue, which ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... little old man—nevertheless, the latter individual (who, the reader need scarcely be told, was no other than our eccentric friend, the Corporal,) did not tamely submit to such rough treatment; extricating himself, with much agility, from the grasp of the Jew, he dealt that worthy such a quick and stinging blow in the region of his left ear, that it laid him sprawling on the floor, at the ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... behavior; for he frequently engages in an unequal contest with his victims. The great prince treated all his political opponents in this way, and aroused deadly enemies against himself. He joked at the table, and put in circulation stinging verses and pamphlets about Madame de Pompadour in France and the Empresses Elizabeth and Maria Theresa. Similarly, he sometimes caressed, sometimes scolded and scratched his poetical ideal, Voltaire; but he also proceeded ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... and decrees. An opposition paper, the "Cosmopolita," is published twice a week; also a Spanish paper, the "Hesperia;" both (especially the last) are well written. There is also the "Mosquito," so called from its stinging sarcasms. Now and then another with a new title appears, like a shooting star, but, from want of support, or from some other motive, is ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... a stinging reproof in verse to Peppina by the new gardener, and the Little Genius read it to us, to show the poetic instinct of the discarded lover, and how well he had selected his rebuke from the store of popular verses known to ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... approached the river, 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 ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... and one that I dreaded, was pumping water for our herd. This was no light job, especially on a stinging windy morning, for the cows, having only dry fodder, required an enormous amount of liquid, and as they could only drink while the water was fresh from the well, some one must work the handle till the last calf had absorbed his fill—and this ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... cried Lionel, unheeding the interruption. "What would I not give to have and to hold it for an hour?" "Hold an eel, less slippery; a scorpion, less stinging! But—" added Vance, observing his companion's heightened colour—"but," he added seriously, and with an honest compunction, "I forgot, you are a soldier, you follow the career of arms! Never heed what is said on the subject by a querulous painter! The desire ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... rigging. Some of the hunters glanced anxiously aloft. The lee rail, where the dead man lay, was buried in the sea, and as the schooner lifted and righted the water swept across the deck wetting us above our shoe-tops. A shower of rain drove down upon us, each drop stinging like a hailstone. As it passed, Wolf Larsen began to speak, the bare-headed men swaying in unison, to the heave and lunge ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... relation it did bear to the just wrath of God. And now as to the body of a Christian under appointment to die for sin, that is, for the death of sin, the eternal death of sin. Christ having come under the power of death, hath gotten power over it, and spoiled it of its stinging virtue. He hath taken away the poisonable ingredient of the curse, that it can no more hurt them that are in him, and so it is not now vested with that piercing and wounding notion of punishment. Though it be true that ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... step on! Come, brother, we will follow them anon. Strong beer, a damsel smartly dress'd, Stinging ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... watched it work. Should it become confused or angered, it would be proof of its insufficiency and littleness. If Socrates ever came to know himself, he knew this fact: as an economic unit he was an absolute failure; but as a gadfly, stinging men into thinking for themselves, he was a success. A specialist is a deformity contrived by Nature to get the work done. Socrates was a thought-specialist, and the laziest man who ever lived in a strenuous age. The desire of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... they were safe from their pursuer, that being a rule of the game. He understood the sign, and ran behind the bush, but he did not know that there was a small ditch overgrown with nettles there. He stumbled and fell into the nettles, already wet with dew, stinging his bands, but rose immediately, ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... is it?" asked Cleo. "Ouch! I should say it was! What are they?" she cried, as she felt stinging pains on ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... acuteness of any individual sense of taste, where such testing is quite simple with regard to seeing and hearing. At the same time, it is necessary when tests are made, to depend upon general, and rarely constant impressions, since very few people mean the same thing by, stinging, prickly, metallic, and burning tastes, even though the ordinary terms sweet, sour, bitter, and salty, may be accepted as approximately constant. The least that can be done when a taste is defined as good, bad, excellent, or disgusting, ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... been so little known. He is a scarce and solitary animal, living in trees, and being good food, is never allowed to escape. He inhabits remote and gloomy forests, where snakes take up their abode, and where cruelly stinging ants and scorpions, and swamps, and innumerable thorny shrubs and bushes obstruct the steps of civilized man. We are now in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... head. Warn'd by another's fate, vain youth be wise, Those dreams were Settle's[1] once, and Ogilby's![2] The pamphlet spreads, incessant hisses rise, To some retreat the baffled writer flies, 30 Where no sour critics snarl, no sneers molest, Safe from the tart lampoon, and stinging jest; There begs of Heaven a less distinguish'd lot— Glad to be hid, and ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... make sure he is in. You commence by ringing up some half-dozen times before anybody takes any notice of you whatever. You are burning with indignation at this neglect, and have left the instrument to sit down and pen a stinging letter of complaint to the Company when the ring-back re-calls you. You seize the ear ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... 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 ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... a sharp buzz from the machine and a million stinging needles drove into his brain. There was a moment of fleeting visions; strange places he viewed, and strange creatures parading in a fantasmagoria of delirium before his aching eyes. Voices, harsh and guttural, spoke in his drumming ears; voices that were dimly understandable, though uttered in the ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... was growing faster, and the room rapidly darker and darker, and at length so dark that I could no longer see anything of it but its eyes. I felt it spring lightly on the bed. The two broad eyes approached my face, and suddenly I felt a stinging pain as if two large needles darted, an inch or two apart, deep into my breast. I waked with a scream. The room was lighted by the candle that burnt there all through the night, and I saw a female figure ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... made. Into which holes the men blow with their mouths, and the Bees presently fly out. And then they put in their hands, and pull out the Combs, which they put in Pots or Vessels, and carry away. They are not afraid of their stinging in the least, nor do they arm themselves ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... the door of it, the first thing he saw was the string of his kite, which, strange to tell, so steady had been the wind, was still up in the air—still tugging at the bedpost. Whether it was from the stinging thought that the true sky-soarer, the violin, having been devoured by the jaws of the fire-devil, there was no longer any significance in the outward and visible sign of the dragon, or from a dim feeling ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... not dwell upon my thoughts as I wandered about over that waste. The wind had risen to a storm charged with fierce showers of stinging hail, which gave a look of gray wrath to the invisible wind as it swept slanting by, and then danced and scudded along the levels. The next point in that night of pain is when I found myself standing at the iron gate of Oldcastle Hall. I had left the common, passed my own house and the church, ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... ever within himself, he became a still more ardent reader and student, devoting himself with passionate industry to examining the works of Rousseau, the poison of whose political doctrines instilled itself with fiery and grateful stinging into the thin, cold blood of the unhappy cadet. In many respects the instruction he received was admirable, and there is a traditional anecdote that he was the best mathematician in the school. But on the whole he profited little by the short continuation of his studies at Paris. ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... dirigible in the manner of a dog baiting a bear to such a degree that the dirigible would be compelled to sheer off to secure its own safety. Desperate bravery and grim determination may be magnificent physical attributes, ut they would have to be superhuman to face the stinging recurrent attacks ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... 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 respectable conventionalities current in church ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... nobility, the love of luxury of the higher clergy—but again because it includes no comment on Swift's personal or public character, it is not relevant to a discussion of the angry Letter from a Clergyman. We can therefore pass quickly from these two works to perhaps the best, in the sense of the most stinging and most comprehensive, assault on Swift at the time of the publication of his Travels, that entitled Gulliveriana (1728), by the Irish Dean of ...
— A Letter From a Clergyman to his Friend, - with an Account of the Travels of Captain Lemuel Gulliver • Anonymous
... skilfully this was done may be judged by the fact that I could not get one free without tearing the cup-like base which fastened it. The anemone assisted in the operation by keeping its tentacles expanded, whereas it withdrew them if any foreign object came near. The stinging cells of the anemone prevent fishes from attacking the hermit, and that is the reason of his care for the parasite. It is the commensalism of the struggle for existence, learned not by the individual ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... the door through which pretty soon Eva would run to take refuge from the pursuing Automaton. Then they slunk back through a rear door, with muttered taunts to Locke, who struggled in the tangle of rope as he felt the stinging fumes of the ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... extraordinary degree of enthusiasm over the precociousness of their first-born. He was not, for the time, remarkable, and parents of the day were less prone than now to spoiling children. Ab's layette had been of beech leaves, his bed had been of beech leaves, and a beech twig, supple and stinging, had already been applied to him when he misbehaved himself. As he grew older his acquaintance with it would be more familiar. Strict disciplinarians in their way, though affectionate enough after their own fashion, were ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... windy to do anything today," said Hinpoha crossly, retiring to the shelter of a wide trunk and holding her hands to her smarting face. Several stinging blows from a branch set with needles had dampened her enthusiasm ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... very vague apprehension of what he was about to do. The sharp, stinging stroke of the ruler the next moment upon her open palm, made her understand very thoroughly. It drew from her one cry of mixed pain and terror; but after that first forced exclamation Daisy covered her face with her other hand and did not speak again. ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... in his mind had rankled there for two years; in many a black reverie of those that alternated with his moods of abject self- reproach and perfect trust of her, he had confronted her and flung it out upon her in one stinging phrase. But he was now suddenly at a loss; the words would not come; his torment fell dumb before her; in her presence the cause was unspeakable. Her lips had quivered a little in making that demand, and there had been a ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... himself the famished Raja said:— "Lo! here is food; this day we shall have store;" Then lightly cast his cloth and covered them. But these, fluttering aloft, bore with them there Nala's one cloth; and, hovering overhead, Uttered sharp-stinging words, reviling him Even as he stood, naked to all the airs, Downcast and desperate: "Thou brain-sick Prince! We are the dice; we come to ravish hence Thy last poor cloth; we were not well content Thou shouldst depart owning a garment still." And when he saw the dice take wings ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... influential and trusted of the South leaders—and Samson was still a boy. His ruggedly chiseled features were kindly, but robustly resolute, and, when he was angered, few men cared to face him. For an instant, a stinging rebuke seemed to hover on his lips, then he turned with a curt ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... in the glass, she saw a bleeding Face crowned with thorns. That face is looking at you now"—here Dinah pointed to a spot close in front of Bessy—"Ah, tear off those follies! Cast them away from you, as if they were stinging adders. They ARE stinging you—they are poisoning your soul—they are dragging you down into a dark bottomless pit, where you will sink for ever, and for ever, and for ever, further ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... readily eaten by cattle, and the honey-bee gathers much pollen from it. The ox-eye daisy makes a fair quality of hay if cut before it gets ripe. The cows will eat the leaves of the burdock and the stinging nettles of the woods. But what cannot a cow's tongue stand? She will crop the poison ivy with impunity, and I think would eat thistles if she found them growing in the garden. Leeks and garlics are readily eaten by cattle in the spring, and are said to be medicinal to them. Weeds ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... deliberately rousing up Nigel's ambitions connected with labour, was deliberately stinging him to activity, deliberately prompting him to a sort of manly shame at the thought of his present life of repose. But he was doing it with an apparent carelessness that was deceptive and very subtle; he was ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... order to get just two roots which she wanted, and then she would settle down for the winter. But this once more was just once too often, for, unfortunately, the man was on the watch, and, just as Pero was coming slowly out of her burrow, she received a stinging blow on the ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... constitutional principle. He complained also, that a motion should be made for censuring ministers, without calling for papers, and without any allusion to the circumstances which had occurred in 1830 and 1831, and on which the interpretation of the treaty might in a great degree depend. After some stinging comments upon this speech, Sir Robert Peel wound up the debate in one of his most plausible parliamentary addresses. He clearly confuted the main arguments which Lord Althorp used, and produced an effect unfavourable to ministers. When the house divided, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the ring, and whose proprietor is promised a commissionership by the governor who is backing the ring, will notify its readers that the selfish office-seekers, who had contested in the primaries, have received a stinging rebuke at the hands of the voters, and their villainous attempts to destroy the party, which had so unselfishly devoted itself to the interests of the community, ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... of the floor itself. Against such a demonstration the upper house did not dare pass the Garman bill immediately. It was held over for a few days to give the public emotion a chance to die. Instead, the resentment against machine and corporate domination grew more bitter. Stinging resolutions from the back counties were wired to members who had backslidden. Committees of prominent citizens from up state and across the mountains arrived at Verden for heart-to-heart talks with the assemblymen from ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... 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 ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... 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
... thankful that you are going to your death in honorable company and in honorable fashion! It's better, this, than the guillotine, isn't it? Look at the country below, like patchwork, coming up to us. Listen to the wind rushing by. You see the trees, how they bend? You feel the rain stinging your cheeks? Sit still, man, and fix your thoughts where you will. Think of mademoiselle la danseuse, think of her kisses, think of the perfume of the violets at her bosom! You see, we arrive. Watch that corner ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... seemingly unquenchable craving, he dashed the running water, first with one hand and then the other, over his face. He tried feebly to wash away some of the alkali that had crusted over the wound in the front of his head and was stinging and burning in it. There was now nothing to do but to secrete himself until daylight and wait till help should reach him—it was manifestly impossible for him ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... one. But Betty, like many active women, was false by her crossness only; thinking it just for the moment perhaps, and rushing away with a bucket; ready to stick to it, like a clenched nail, if beaten the wrong way with argument; but melting over it, if you left her, as stinging soap, left along in a basin, spreads all ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... Sensitive to such stinging thrusts and no friend of wanton persecution, Lincoln attempted to mitigate the rigors of the law by paroling many political prisoners. The general policy, however, he defended in homely language, very different in tone and meaning from the ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... rough travelling on the road to the north next day; rain, snow, sleet and hail, driven by a stinging wind, lashed our faces during the whole of the trip. En route we called at General Headquarters and Army Headquarters to report, and arrived at noon in the little French town on the Belgian border which was the new ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... "You didn't think he was going to walk, father?" said Polly. "There's the Underground within two miles, if the Midland didn't suit," said Mr. Neefit. "Nonsense, father. Of course he'd come in a cab!" said Polly. Mrs. Neefit was not able to add the stinging remark with which her tongue was laden, as Ralph Newton was already in the house. She smoothed her apron, crossed her hands, and uttered a deep sigh. There could be no more going down into the kitchen now to see whether the salmon was boiled, or to provide for the proper dishing of the ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... arms upon the mantel-piece and dropped his head upon them. He felt a queer contraction in his throat, a stinging beneath his eyelids, such as he had not experienced since the days of childish mortifications and sorrows. But the instinctive manliness of him, held back the actual tears. He was debarred, even in solitude, from that form ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... editorial denouncing Doctor West and demanding for him such severe punishment as would make future traitors forever fear to sell their city. Article and editorial were rousing and vivid, brilliant and bitter—as mercilessly stinging as a salted whip-lash ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... painful necessity of begging, but they might as well have addressed their petitions to the stones and trees, and thereby have spared themselves the mortification of a refusal. They never experienced a more stinging sense of their own humbleness and imbecility than on such occasions, and never had they greater need of patience and lowliness of spirit. In most African towns and villages, they had been regarded as demi-gods, and treated in consequence with universal kindness, civility, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... them every bad name she could think of, and dealt them some stinging blows, she flew along the road to seek them. The road wound about pretty much, and as they were nowhere in sight, she concluded they must have gone by it. She came back furiously angry and disappointed, and continued her search till nightfall in the immediate ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... as before. The dumb show. A Crocodile sitting on a river's rank, and a little Snake stinging it. Then let both of them fall ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... suffered yourself to be robbed for his sake, hath the more united our affections to you in the bowels of Jesus Christ. Yea, it hath begotten you reverence, also, in the hearts of them who were beholders of your meekness and innocency while you suffered; and a stinging conviction, as we are persuaded, in the consciences of those who made spoil for themselves; all which will redound to the praise of God our Father, and to your comfort and everlasting consolation by Christ, in the day he shall come to take vengeance for his people, and to be glorified in ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... ground in white masses, and seemed to seek shelter in the club, for in a very short time the place was flooded with the choking fumes which caused one to feel a tightness across the chest and a stinging in the eyes, and which made it impossible to ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... In stinging it often happens that the barbed darts are thrust so far into the wound that they cannot be withdrawn. As a result, the whole apparatus is left behind, and the bee pays the penalty with ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... third discharge followed the others. Bruin had by this time apparently sighted the party from whom all these stinging cuts must have proceeded. He gave a roar of rage and lumbering awkwardly across the space started to try and climb a little tree just ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... bidden to the feast as a friend of the family, whose affections were now understood to be in course of transference from Bella to Lavinia, and whom Lavinia kept—possibly in remembrance of his bad taste in having overlooked her in the first instance—under a course of stinging discipline. ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... coming as it did, after so long a spell of what might be considered as a balmy atmosphere in that region, it found the people unbraced and little prepared for it. At no time was the thermometer lower than twenty degrees below zero; this was near morning, after a sharp and stinging night; nor was it for any succession of hours much below zero. But zero was now hard to bear, and fires, and good fires too, were absolutely necessary to keep the men from suffering, as well as from despondency. Perhaps the spectacle of Daggett, dying from the effects of ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... "Who cares, Miss Smarty?" until the right time to say it had gone by. So he said nothing. But he was in a fine rage, nevertheless. He moped into the schoolyard wishing she were a boy, and imagining how he would trounce her if she were. He presently encountered her and delivered a stinging remark as he passed. She hurled one in return, and the angry breach was complete. It seemed to Becky, in her hot resentment, that she could hardly wait for school to "take in," she was so impatient to see Tom flogged for the injured spelling-book. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... closed by the mighty impact of Dorian's fist. The blood spurted from a gashed lip, and Mr. Lamont tried to defend himself. Again Dorian's stinging blow fell upon the other's face. Lamont was lighter than Dorian, but he had some skill as a boxer which he tried to bring into service; but Dorian, mad in his desire to punish, with unskilled strength fought off all attacks. They grappled, ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... 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, ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... a sudden stinging consciousness, the thought came of all that her decision had meant to his life. The old question whether he had done right in marrying Ninitta forced itself upon him as if it were some enemy springing up from ambush. He ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... of maiden modesty and innocence. "The song breathes at the same time," says Ewald, "such deep modesty and chaste innocence of heart, such determined defiance of the over- refinement and degeneracy of the court-life, such stinging scorn of the growing corruption of life in great cities and palaces, that no clearer or stronger testimony can be found of the healthy vigor which, in this century, still characterized the nation at large, than the combination ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... favour with James, they got no answer, and Buchanan was commanded to repeat the castigation. Having found out that the friars were not to be touched with impunity, he wrote, he says, a short and ambiguous poem. But the king, who loved a joke, demanded something sharp and stinging, and Buchanan obeyed by writing, but not publishing, "The Franciscans," a long satire, compared to which the "Somnium" was bland and merciful. The storm rose. Cardinal Beaten, Buchanan says, wanted ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... sharp gesture, as of one who flings off some stinging insect. "It is not particularly good form on your part to bring another lady's name into the discussion," he said. "At least you have no responsibilities so far as Miss de Vigne ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... Unfortunately for his case, it could be shown that the pipes had not yet been connected with the well, and when he carried out his threat, he gained nothing from his suit in Chancery and his subsequent appeal, except some stinging remarks ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... in a great breath and dashed the stinging sweat from his eyes; and then, hardly seeing the barricade before him or the rifles that thrust out between the rocks, he put down his head and toiled on. Right on the rim, where the narrow trail nicked it, the gunmen had built a low wall and as ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... adj.; bite the tongue. render pungent &c adj.; season, spice, salt, pepper, pickle, brine, devil. smoke, chew, take snuff. Adj. pungent, strong; high-, full-flavored; high-tasted, high-seasoned; gamy, sharp, stinging, rough, piquant, racy; biting, mordant; spicy; seasoned &c v.; hot, hot as pepper; peppery, vellicating^, escharotic^, meracious^; acrid, acrimonious, bitter; rough &c (sour) 397; unsavory ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... line to avoid capture. While the regiments kept in motion the men walked steadily in the ranks, with their hollowed eyes staring straight ahead from their gaunt, tanned faces; but at the first halt they fell like logs upon the roadside, sleeping amid the sound of shots and the stinging cavalry. With the cry of "Forward!" they struggled to their feet again, and went stumbling on into the vast uncertainty and the approaching night. Breathless, starving, with their rags pinned together, and their mouths bleeding from three days' rations of ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... puddle, but a sweet and running stream. No man has a right to rust; he is bound to keep his tools bright by usage. No man has a right to be paralyzed; he is bound to enlarge and grow. So ideals come in to compel men to go forward. It is easier to lie down in a thorn hedge, or to sleep in a field of stinging nettles, than for a man to abide contentedly as he is while his ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... had already dropped their sombre veil upon the landscape, and the sun dipped almost out of sight behind the moorland hills. In a high dogcart, behind a fast horse, we were soon rattling across the undulating stretches of an open and bleak country, the keen air stinging our cheeks and the scents of pine and bracken strong about us. Bare hills were faintly visible against the horizon, and the coachman pointed to a bank of distant shadows on our left where he told us the sea lay. Occasional stone farmhouses, standing back from the road ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... of that drear night to be, Wild with the wind, fierce with the stinging snow, When, on yon granite point that frets the sea, The ship met ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... boat and Jayme de Marchena rested. Even while his body labored he rested. The sense of Danger in every room, walking on every road, took leave. Yet was there throughout that insistent sight of Palos beach and the gray and wild Atlantic. All the birds cried from the west; the salt, stinging wind flung itself upon me from the west. Once a voice, faint and silvery, made itself heard. "Were it not well to know those other, those mightier waters, and find the strange lands, the new lands?" I answered myself, "They are ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... of the Prince with no pleased eyes; and, anticipating that his juncture with the Minister is only a prelude to their final dispersion, they are compensating for the approaching termination of their career by unusual violence and fresh fervour, stinging like mosquitoes before a storm, conscious of their impending destruction from the clearance of the atmosphere. As for myself, I have nothing more to do with them. Liberty and philosophy are fine words; but until I find men are prepared ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield |
