“208. The honey is sweet, but the bee stings.”
George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest
Jacula Prudentum (1651)
Related quotes
Adelaide Anne Procter (1825–1864) English poet and songwriter
"Per Pacem ad Lucem".
A Chaplet of Verses (1862)
“Tender-handed stroke a nettle,
And it stings you for your pains”
Aaron Hill (writer) (1685–1750) British writer
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.”
Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton (1831–1891) English statesman and poet
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.”
Diablo Cody (1978) Screenwriter and author
Source: Juno: The Shooting Script
Thomas Nashe (1567–1601) English Elizabethan pamphleteer and poet
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.”
Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual
Compare Poor Richard's Almanack (1746) : The Sting of a Reproach, is the Truth of it.
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
“If I be waspish, best beware my sting.”
William Shakespeare The Taming of the Shrew
Source: The Taming of the Shrew