
“208. The honey is sweet, but the bee stings.”
Jacula Prudentum (1651)
"Sweet the Sting".
Songs
“208. The honey is sweet, but the bee stings.”
Jacula Prudentum (1651)
"Per Pacem ad Lucem".
A Chaplet of Verses (1862)
“Tender-handed stroke a nettle,
And it stings you for your pains”
Verses Written on a Window in Scotland.
Context: Tender-handed stroke a nettle,
And it stings you for your pains;
Grasp it like a man of mettle,
And it soft as silk remains.’Tis the same with common natures:
Use ’em kindly, they rebel;
But be rough as nutmeg-graters,
And the rogues obey you well.
“The world is a nettle; disturb it, it stings.
Grasp it firmly, it stings not.”
Part iii, canto ii. Quoted by Walt Whitman in Roaming in Thought.
Lucile (1860)
“Juno MacGuff: "Thanks a heap coyote ugly. This cactus-gram stings worse than your abandonment.”
Source: Juno: The Shooting Script
Source: Summer's Last Will and Testament http://www.elizabethanauthors.com/summ1.htm (1600), lines 161-164.
“4769. The Sting of a Reproach is the Truth of it.”
Compare Poor Richard's Almanack (1746) : The Sting of a Reproach, is the Truth of it.
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)