Sting

Famous quotes containing the word sting:

    Yet there is a mystery here and it is not one that I understand: without the sting of otherness, of—even—the vicious, without the terrible energies of the underside of health, sanity, sense, then nothing works or can work. I tell you that goodness-what we in our ordinary daylight selves call goodness: the ordinary, the decent—these are nothing without the hidden powers that pour forth continually from their shadow sides. Their hidden aspects contained and tempered.
    Doris Lessing (b. 1919)

    Thou thyself hast been a libertine,
    As sensual as the brutish sting itself.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    Marriage has, for its share, usefulness, justice, honour, and constancy; a stale but more durable pleasure. Love is grounded on pleasure alone, and it is indeed more gratifying to the senses, keener and more acute; a pleasure stirred and kept alive by difficulties. There must be a sting and a smart in it. It ceases to be love if it has no shafts and no fire.
    Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)