Literary notes about sting (AI summary)
In literature, “sting” operates as a multifaceted image that conveys both palpable physical pain and the sharper, metaphorical pangs of emotion. Authors employ it literally, as when a child’s terror of bee stings evokes nature’s harm ([1], [2]), and more figuratively, to encapsulate the discomfort of regret, defeat, or moral alertness—expressions of conscience or sorrow that wound deeply, like in the sting of remorse or existential guilt ([3], [4], [5]). This duality allows writers from Shakespeare to Byron to modern narrators to use “sting” as a potent symbol, whether it signifies the hurt delivered by actions, the relentless bite of nature, or the cutting edge of human introspection ([6], [7]).
- And the child is afraid of bees and declares that bees exist to sting people.
— from War and Peace by graf Leo Tolstoy - And the boy screamed loudly on account of the pain caused by the sting.
— from The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 - With regard to Lucie I felt the sting of remorse, but at the thought of M. d’O—— I hated myself.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova - It would have been ever so much sweeter to her if he had felt the sting of his defeat.
— from Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery - But to suffer for one’s own faults—ah!—there is the sting of life.
— from Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde - Hide not thy poison with such sug'red words; Lay not thy hands on me; forbear, I say, Their touch affrights me as a serpent's sting.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare - "The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law."
— from The City of God, Volume I by Bishop of Hippo Saint Augustine
