"Gnat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sadly, ignored, each unobserved or disregarded innovation of the past, is magnified into a precedent justifying anything and everything in the future. If we formerly on some occasion swallowed a gnat, why now, is it asked, strain at a camel? Truths once accepted as "self-evident," since become awkward of acceptance, were ever thus pettifogged out of the path, and fundamental principles have in this way prescriptively been tampered with. ...
— "Imperialism" and "The Tracks of Our Forefathers" • Charles Francis Adams
... the Grasshopper's Feasts Excited the spleen of the Birds and the Beasts: For their mirth and good cheer—of the Bee was the theme, And the Gnat blew his horn, as he danc'd in the beam. 'Twas humm'd by the Beetle, 'twas buzz'd by the Fly, And sung by the myriads that sport through the sky. The Quadrupeds listen'd with sullen displeasure, But the tenants of air were enraged ...
— The Peacock 'At Home:' - A Sequel to the Butterfly's Ball • Catherine Ann Dorset
... insects always appears to be more heated than it is in reality. We were horribly tormented in the day by mosquitos and the jejen (a small venomous fly), and at night by the zancudos, a large species of gnat, ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... ferry-boat. This, it is true, was seldom used, but did occasionally cross the Jumna. On such occasions the hen would continue to sit, while the cock stood on the gunwale, pouring forth his sweet song, and made, from time to time, little sallies over the water after a flying gnat. Mr. A. J. Currie found at Lahore a nest of these wagtails in a ferry-boat in daily use; so that the birds must have selected the site and built the nest while the boat was passing to and fro ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... silence. Then Otto flung up his left hand, caught a gnat that was buzzing round his head, and ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... windows till one appeared in Anne's bedroom, and she herself came forward to shut the casement, with the candle in her hand. The light shone out upon the broad and deep mill-head, illuminating to a distinct individuality every moth and gnat that entered the quivering chain of radiance stretching across the water towards him, and every bubble or atom of froth that floated into its width. She stood for some time looking out, little thinking what the darkness concealed on ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... which the majority of wives live to-day, is correctly depicted by the bourgeois-minded Gerhard von Amyntor in his "Marginal Notes to the Book of Life."[85] In the chapter entitled "Deadly Gnat-bites" he says among ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... balancers of a horsefly be removed, the insect at once loses its equilibrium; it cannot direct its flight, but plunges headlong to the ground. The same can be said of Chrysops niger—in fact, of the entire family of Tabanidae, of the gall gnat (Diplosis resinicola, Comstock), and of the March flies (Bibionidae). These widely differing flies constitute the material from which I have derived my data; I will venture to assert, however, without fear of contradiction, that what ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... June in sunshine down the slope of the year, and Eve, pursuing her pleasures, might almost have forgotten that an image-boy existed, had Luigi allowed her to forget. But he was omnipresent as a gnat. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... driven by the heat of the weather to wade up to his knees in a cool and swift-running stream. He had not been there long when a Gnat that had been disporting itself in the air pitched upon one of ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... him that fairies are benevolent or mischievous, and tradition, borrowing from literature, will confirm it. The proposition is ridiculous. It would be as wise to say that a gnat is mischievous when it stings you, or a bee benevolent because he cannot prevent you stealing his honey. There would be less talk of benevolent bees if the gloves were off. That is the pathetic fallacy again; and that is man all over. ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... manner, without any body or tail, the fly will alight on the water with the hook down, and looked at from beneath, against the light, only the little black spot will be noticeable. This I believe represents some of the order Coleoptera (beetles) and also the small black gnat (Empidae). I know if no other ways to tie the Black Gnat small enough to represent the natural insect, and even on the very smallest hook, the artificial is usually many times larger than the natural. The small black centre of the furnace saddle hackle tied in this manner seems to represent the size ...
— How to Tie Flies • E. C. Gregg
... dispiriting search, to expect very much; and yet at a glance I saw that my basket of glass lay in fragments at my feet. No ingots or dollars were here, to crown me the little Monte Cristo of a week. Outside, the distant horn had ceased its gnat-song, the gold was paling to primrose, and everything was lonely and still. Within, my confident little castles were tumbling down like card-houses, leaving me stripped of estate, both real and personal, and ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... to a gnat's heel," declared Patricia eagerly. "Food is a secondary article, anyway, when it comes to character study. I'm not so keen on cookery since I sighted this ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... had this experience, but at Dartmouth College. For mathematics, too, he had not the slightest taste. He humorously wrote to a fellow-student, soon after leaving college, that "all that he knew about conterminous arches or evanescent subtenses might be collected on the pupil of a gnat's eye without making him wink." At college, in fact, he was simply an omnivorous reader, studying only so much as to pass muster in the recitation-room. Every indication we possess of his college life, as well as his own repeated assertions, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... their constitution; and on the relative forms and stability of the substances they encounter, and that there is no more quality of Energy, though much less quality of Art, in the swiftly penetrating shot, or crushing ball, than in the deliberately contemplative and administrative puncture by a gnat's proboscis, or a ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... That ring-dove, who was cooing half a mile away, has hushed his moan; that flock of long-tailed titmice, which were twinging and pecking about the fir-cones a few minutes since, are gone: and now there is not even a gnat to quiver in the slant sun-rays. Did a spider run over these dead leaves, I almost fancy I could hear his footfall. The creaking of the saddle, the soft step of the mare upon the fir-needles, jar my ears. I seem alone in a dead world. A dead world: and yet so full of life, ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... tyrants, however much the unbelieving heathens might have abused him for answering haughtily. Of one of his 'miserable enemies' he says: 'The chief one is the water-bladder N., who defies Heaven with his high stomach, and has renounced the gospel. He would like to devour Christ, as the wolf does a gnat.' This was an unmistakable allusion to Duke George, who, in his bigoted devotion to the Church, was especially excited by the dangerous influences which threatened his country from the neighbouring ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... there were but a mote in yours, A grain, a dust, a gnat, a wand'ring hair, Any annoyance in that precious sense! Then, feeling what small things are boist'rous there, Your vile intent ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... and, having thrown back the gnat gauze, was seated upon the edge of her couch, her eyes fixed upon my face, while her fingers played with ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... that all in the universe was made for man, are much embarrassed, when we ask, how so many hurtful animals can contribute to the happiness of man? What known advantage results to the friend of the gods, from being bitten by a viper, stung by a gnat, devoured by vermin, torn in pieces by a tiger, etc.? Would not all these animals reason as justly as our theologians, should they pretend that man was ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... madness, as of words, the Cardinal, while pretending much devotion for the King, and much submission to the Church, plainly intimated that he cared for neither. Although this was as the sting of a gnat upon an elephant, the King was horribly piqued at it. He received the letter on the 24th of May, gave it the next day to D'Aguesseau, attorney-general, and ordered him to commence a suit against Cardinal de Bouillon, as guilty of felony. At the same ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... cut off in the flower of their age. Keats, coughing out his soul by the Spanish Steps; Shelley's spirit of flame snuffed out by a chance capful of wind from the hills of Carrara; Byron, stung by a fever-gnat on the very threshold of his great adventure—for all these we can feel nothing but poignant unrelieved regret. Alan Seeger, on the other hand, we can very truly envy. Youth had given him all that it had to give; ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... effect that both ends of the insect point toward the object upon which it rests. There are still other differences that clearly differentiate the malarial from the common mosquito, but the one given ordinarily serves to distinguish between them. The malarial mosquito is pre-eminently a house-gnat, being scarcely ever seen in the woods or open, but may be found—oftentimes in great numbers—in all malarial localities, lying quietly during the day in dark corners of rooms or stables. This mosquito practically never bites in the day, but will do so in a darkened room, ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... This very lack of faith in her own power of resistance caused her more distress and terror than all her other fears. Sometimes she almost fancied a spell of enchantment had been put upon her, which would render all her efforts to escape her fate as unavailing as the struggles of a gnat in a spider's web. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... deleterious or unpleasant results, and Colonel Matthews Taylor[7] knew several persons of this character in India, and who regarded the bite of the cobra or tic paloonga with nearly as much indifference as the sting of a gnat or mosquito. Again, in 1868, Mr. Drummond, a prominent magistrate of Melbourne, Australia,[8] met with untimely death under circumstances that attracted no little attention. An itinerant vender of nostrums had on exhibition a number of venomous reptiles, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... Q. is referred to in these pages my brother Nathan is meant. One of his noms de plume was Gnat Q. Hale, because G and ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... vegetable world, we commence with the buttercup, and trace all the various kinds and sizes of plants that exist, up to the pine (Norwegian), and down again to the hautboy (Cormack's Princesses); if, among the lower animals, we begin with a gnat and go up to an elephant, or select from the human species a Lord John Russell, and place him beside a professor Whewell, we shall see that nature provides an endless variety of all sorts of everything. Now, to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various
... Duke's park. A massive man with a cockade saluted me—hearteningly—from the door of the lodge. The park seemed endless. I came, at length, to a long straight avenue of elms that were almost blatantly immemorial. At the end of it was—well, I felt like a gnat going to ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... the metrical arrangements of the originals—substituting therefore a variety of forms in line and stanza that more accord with the modern and American ear. In the second place I have had the hardihood—as in "The Lion and The Gnat"—to modify the elegance of the original with phrases more appropriate to our contemporary beasts. Animal talk, I feel sure, has lost something of its stateliness since the days when our French author overheard it. The Owl is no less pedantic perhaps, but the Lion certainly has ...
— Fables in Rhyme for Little Folks - From the French of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... sees no dream whatever, he becomes one with that prna alone;—from that Self the prnas proceed, each towards its place' (Kau. Up. 111,3); 'Whatever these creatures are here, whether a lion or a wolf or a boar or a gnat or a mosquito, that they become again' (Ch. Up. VI, 9, 3).—Hence the term 'Sat' denotes the highest Brahman, the all-knowing highest Lord, the highest Person. Thus the Vrittikra also says, 'Then he becomes united with the Sat—this is proved by (all creatures) entering into it and coming ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... unity of all existence, that reestablished all ethics upon an immutable and eternal foundation,—the mind that could expound with equal lucidity, and by the same universal formula, the history of a gnat or the history of a sun—confessed itself, before the Riddle of Existence, scarcely less helpless than the ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... here very much like some fat member of the New York Ring cunningly availing himself of the more toothsome rations in the sick ward of the penitentiary. My friend pointed out to me a heron with a wooden leg. "Suppose a gnat should break his shoulder-blade," I said, "would they put ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... "according to"—which is certainly longer, but does not appear to possess any other advantage over "on." It is not easy to understand why Mr. Darwin should have strained at such a gnat as "on," though feeling no discomfort in such an ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... lay the sleeping infant. Wrinkle, choking down his amusement, took the candle from the mantelpiece and held it over the little face. "You can't see the favor so plain while its eyes are shet," he chuckled, "but when it grins an' winks it's you to a gnat's heel." ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... momentary glimpse of his real significance. "I am only a gnat, a speck in the sun, a youth facing the millions of great and wise and wealthy!" He leaped up in a frenzy. "Oh, I mustn't stay here! I must get back to my studies. Life is slipping by me, and I ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... of lady's love, So passing light, that it would move If any gnat or humming fly But beat the air in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 183, April 30, 1853 • Various
... recalling some of the things her companion of the afternoon had said about his impressions of the place; then suddenly there loomed a dark speck in the near foreground of her meditation, and, looking down annoyed, she discovered the minister like a gnat between the eye and a grand spectacle, his face turned admiringly up to her window, his hand ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... sufficient to stamp it with absurdity and everlasting contempt, according to the gentlemen who oppose me; but when found in the Bible the story assumes another phase entirely. It is as the Saviour said of the Pharisees, "Ye strain at a gnat and swallow a camel." My opponent strains at a gnat, when found in the Book of Mormon, but if camels are discovered in the Bible he swallows them by the herd. I cannot see why a big story, told in the Bible, should be believed any more readily than one found in the ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... refined women. Now, you—you've got an ostrich stomach. I've seen you quite pleased with women I'd not lay my finger on. Yet most people'd say you were more sensitive than I. Instead, you're much coarser—except about piffling, piddling, paltry non-essentials. You strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. I shouldn't be a bit surprised if Margaret had penetrated the fact that your coarseness is in-bred while mine is near surface. Women have a surprising way of getting at the bottom of things. I'm a good deal like a ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... warm their eggs: In these, in those the life is stay'd. The mantles from the golden pegs Droop sleepily: no sound is made, Not even of a gnat that sings. More like a picture seemeth all Than those old portraits of old kings, That watch the ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... there are people who, like the Pharisees of old, strain out a gnat and swallow a camel. They educate themselves up to a strict observance of all things insignificant. They would not forget to say grace before and after meals, but would knife the neighbor's character or soil their minds with all filthiness, without a scruple ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... much moment, as life goes, A thing a man with some philosophy Had idly brushed aside, as 't were a gnat That winged itself between him and the light, Had, through the crooked working of his mind, Brought Wyndham to a very grievous pass. Yet 't was a grapestone choked Anacreon And hushed his song. There is no little thing In nature: in a raindrop's compass lie A planet's ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... gushing fount of tears Is wept away; no drop is left to shed. Dim are the eyes that ever watched till dawn, Weeping, the bale-fires, piled for thy return, Night after night unkindled. If I slept, Each sound—the tiny humming of a gnat, Roused me again, again, from fitful dreams Wherein I felt thee smitten, saw thee slain, Thrice for each moment of mine hour ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... green worm, where are you? Dusky-winged moth, how fare you, When wind and rain are in the tree? Cheeryo, cheerebly, chee, Shadow and sun one are to me. Mosquito and gnat, beware you, Saucy chipmunk, how dare you Climb to my nest in the maple-tree, And dig up the corn At noon and at morn? Cheeryo, ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... dined the day before. He is replaced with the same regularity and indifference as fresh snuff is put into a snuff-box, or fresh flowers are set out upon the epergne. Nobody misses him. The machine goes on without perceiving that the blue-bottle or the gnat has fallen from ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 547, May 19, 1832 • Various
... enough of your own without hearing mine, Ivory, and anyway they are not big afflictions, heavy sorrows, like those you have to bear. Mine are just petty, nagging, sordid, cheap little miseries, like gnat-bites;—so petty and so sordid that I can hardly talk to God about them, much less to a human friend. Patty is my only outlet and I need others, yet I find it almost impossible to escape from the narrowness of my life and be of use to any one else." ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... generation which, peculiarly reckless of human life and human agony, allowed that frame which it called the image of God to be tortured, maimed, desecrated in every way while alive; and yet—straining at the gnat after having swallowed the camel—forbade it to be examined when dead, though for the purpose of alleviating the miseries ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... about four acres of watermelons, and there seem to be lice and a small gnat or fly, and also some small green bugs and white worms on the under part of the leaves, which seem to be stopping the growth of the vines, making them wilt and die. They seem to be more in patches, although ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... their own pine the twin-doves took their flight; From crag and cliff the clamorous seamews screamed, In glade and glen the cottage windows gleam'd; Larks left the cloud, for flight the grey owl sat; The founts and lakes up silver radiance steamed; Winging his twilight journey, hummed the gnat— The drowsy beetle droned, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various
... unclean food; as also ravens, crows, bats, buzzards and every species of owl. They believe that swallowing gnats, flies and the like, always breed sickness. To this that divine sarcasm alludes 'swallowing a camel and straining at a gnat.'" Their purifications for their Priests, and for having touched a dead body or other unclean thing, according to Mr. Adair, are quite Levitical. He acknowledges however, that they have no traces of circumcision; but he supposes that they lost this rite in their wanderings, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... said abruptly, "when you first discover what a gnat in a whirlpool you are. I mean that after you've done everything, played perfectly fair and followed all the rules, arranged your combinations and observed the reasonable results for so long that you begin to think you've got hold of the System—something happens, and ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... Babbalanja. "Have we mortals naught to rest on, but what we see with eyes? Is no faith to be reposed in that inner microcosm, wherein we see the charted universe in little, as the whole horizon is mirrored in the iris of a gnat? Alas! alas! my lord, is there no ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... amicable relations whether the Government of this country or its agents repudiated such abomination of abominations? If for political purposes you submit to this latter, while for commercial purposes you refuse to tolerate the former, surely you are straining at a black gnat while swallowing a beastly camel. Such, good people of the Foreign-office, is my decided view of the case; and if you profit by the hint, you will do what I believe no public body ever did yet. Perhaps, therefore, ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... on. Away from the sunny little house, the dainty, capable housewife, the security, the shelter, the heaven of home; away from peace and guiltlessness; away from a life in which the "gnat-like buzzings of little cares" had once been its heaviest burden, to a life in death of danger, of degradation, ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... struggle is a humiliation to one's manhood. The lion finds the gnat the most intolerable of his foes. The natural man feels the same. But the spiritual man must learn the lesson of gentleness and long-suffering. The inevitable is the will of God. We might have preferred something else, but it is our business to accept the lot assigned us.... One thing ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... If there drops a gnat into the ointment of the General, be sure there are ten thousand flies stinking the ointment of ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... every existing institution just bristles with difficulties—and that the difficulties are met or got over somehow. Often enough while they swallow the camel of existing abuses they strain at some gnat which they fancy they see flying in at the window of Utopia or of the Millennium. "If your reform were carried," they say in effect, "we should, doubtless, get rid of such and such flagrant evils; but the streets in November ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... birth, maturity, and age Scarce fill the circle of one summer day, Shall the poor gnat, with discontent and rage, Exclaim that Nature hastens to decay, If but a cloud obstruct the solar ray, If but a momentary shower descend? Or shall frail man Heaven's dread decree gainsay, Which bade the series of events extend Wide through unnumber'd worlds, ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... urchin, elf; atomy[obs3], dandiprat[obs3]; doll, puppet; Tom Thumb, Hop-o'-my- thumb[obs3]; manikin, mannikin; homunculus, dapperling[obs3], cock-sparrow. animalcule, monad, mite, insect, emmet[obs3], fly, midge, gnat, shrimp, minnow, worm, maggot, entozoon[obs3]; bacteria; infusoria[obs3]; microzoa[Microbiol]; phytozoaria[obs3]; microbe; grub; tit, tomtit, runt, mouse, small fry; millet seed, mustard seed; barleycorn; pebble, grain of sand; molehill, button, bubble. point; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... his fathers were content to bury themselves in a hole, he expects me to do the same. Why, what should I do? The place is over-doctored already. Every third person is a pet patient sending for him for a gnat-bite, gratis, taking the bread out of Wright's mouth. No wonder Henry Ward kicked! If I came here, I must practise on the lap-dogs! Here's my father, stronger than any of us, with fifteen good years' work in him at the least! He would be wretched at giving up to ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... contemptible this class of beings may appear, at first thought, yet, when we come to reflect, and carefully investigate, we shall be struck with wonder and astonishment, and shall discover, that the smallest gnat that buzzes in the meadow, is as much a subject of admiration as the largest elephant that ranges the forest, or the hugest whale which ploughs the deep; and when we consider the least creature that we can imagine, myriads of which are too ...
— The History of Insects • Unknown
... made no movement, and seemed to be listening to the current of tranquil life which surrounded him, to the infrequent noises of the country solitudes. Yonder, somewhere beyond the nettles, some one began to sing, in the shrillest of voices; a gnat seemed to be chiming in with the voice. Now it ceased, but the gnat still squeaked on; athwart the energetic, insistently-plaintive buzzing of the flies resounded the booming of a fat bumble-bee, which kept bumping its head ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... raging storm, And dower the world with chloroform? Or Mahomet a jehad decree 'Gainst microbe-harboring gnat and flea? ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... deities, and rival shepherds contending for bowls and lambs in alternate strophes, these niceties seem a little out of place. After swallowing such a camel of an anachronism as is contained in the following lines, it is ridiculous to pride oneself upon straining at a gnat:— ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... needle, lives between tides, and has even been dredged at a depth of over a hundred feet, which transforms into a yellow mosquito-like fly (Fig. 65, with head of the female, magnified) which swarms in summer in immense numbers. I have called it provisionally Chironomus oceanicus, or Ocean gnat. The larvae of other species have been found by Mr. S. I. Smith living at great depths in our Northern lakes. These kinds of gnats are usually seen early in spring hovering in ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... strict regard for detail; but a strong disinclination urged her against it, and yet at the time she had wondered why such a small thing should be so against the grain when others so much more important were unconsidered. It was very like the proverbial "straining at a gnat to swallow a camel." Be this as it might, she had replaced the ring where she found it and ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... its early stages in a dung-hill, and how the grubs of the big horse-flies and Tabanids live in decayed wood; how certain little flies or gnats are engendered (as he calls it) in the slime of vinegar. He relates with great care and accuracy the life-history of the common gnat, from its aquatic larva, the little red 'blood-worm' of our pools; he describes them wriggling about like tiny bits of red weed, in the water of some half-empty well; and he explains, finally, the change by which they ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... countries and have gathered learning, till I think I am the wisest man upon the Nile, at the side of one whom I loved and holding nothing at risk, except my own life which mattered no more than that of a gnat dancing in the sun. Now all is changed. I have a wife whom I love also, more than I can tell you," and he sighed, "but who still must be looked after and obeyed—yes, obeyed. Further, soon I shall have a people and a crown to wear, and councillors and affairs of state, and an ancient ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... down and wanted a breath of sea-air. When Rosie lost her German exercise-book, and when Peggy fell off her bicycle, you worked both these accidents round into an imperative demand for salt water. When John was bitten by a gnat you said the spot was bilious and things would never be right with him until he got into a more bracing climate; and when Bates tripped up in the pantry and broke a week's income in plates and dishes you said he needed tone and would get it at the sea. Seaside, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 22, 1914 • Various
... hand, some of these survivals may mean no more than that the soul itself has already an animal form, in which it would naturally be seen after death. In Celtic folk-belief the soul is seen leaving the body in sleep as a bee, butterfly, gnat, mouse, or mannikin.[1229] Such a belief is found among most savage races, and might easily be mistaken for transmigration, or also assist the formation of the idea of transmigration. Though the ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... stood, See the children of earth, and the tenants of air, To an evening's amusement together repair. And there came the Beetle, so blind and so black, Who carried the Emmet, his friend, on his back; And there came the Gnat and the Dragon-fly too, With all their relations, green, orange, and blue. And there came the Moth, with her plumage of down, And the Hornet with jacket of yellow and brown; And with him the Wasp, his companion, did bring; But they promised that evening to lay by their sting. Then the sly ...
— The Nursery Rhyme Book • Unknown
... Latin. Is it Ephraim? No; it's a fly, something like a gnat" (then at an impatient gesture from her Majesty) "disporting itself in the beams of the ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Duns are first-class flies all the season, beginning with the Blue Dun in March and April,—The Yellow Dun, little Iron Blue Dun on cold windy days,—July Dun Cut, Blue Gnat, and Willow Fly. ...
— The Teesdale Angler • R Lakeland
... When the night had passed the scholar feared it might have run away; but there it lay, curled up as before. Whenever the scholar went to bed, the dog climbed into it and bit to death any vermin it could find. Not a fly or gnat dared alight while it was around. The scholar loved it like ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... peculiarity: from the time he came there no haft would ever remain on it; and owing to this a sickness came on him, and he pined away during the remainder of his life, and of this he died.) Drem the son of Dremidyd (when the gnat arose in the morning with the sun, Drem could see it from Gelli Wis in Cornwall as far off as Pen Blathaon in North Britain.) And Eidol the son of Ner, and Glwyddyn Saer (who built Ehangwen, Arthur's hall.) Henwas and Henwyneb, (an old companion unto Arthur). ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... senors, did I after that day give myself up to cruelty as to a sport; yea, thought that I did God service by destroying the creatures whom He had made; I who now dare not destroy a gnat, lest I harm a being more righteous than myself? Was I mad? If I was, how then was I all that while as prudent as I am this day? But I am not here to argue, senors, but to confess. In a word, there was no deed of blood done for the ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... straining at this gnat, when suddenly his elbow encountered a shovel which was leaning against the wall of the gallery. It tumbled down with a clatter almost stunning. Next moment a hand came round the bend of the tunnel and fired a revolver ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... Manneville by dawn or else be hanged. Therefore I dare stake all upon one throw; and you must either save or hang me with unwashed hands. As surely as God reigns, my future rests with you. And as I am perfectly aware, you could not live comfortably with a gnat's death upon your conscience. Eh, am I ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... them back a few shillings. You have seen that he had qualms of conscience over the rights of Geoffrey's service and Alison's arms. But the ugly, awkward details gave him no trouble. He may, if you please, have swallowed a camel or so, but he never strained at a gnat. ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... described my requirements, for there was a garden adjoining the house, on which I wanted to erect a workshop. He handed the matter over to a paymaster, dry and meagre, who bore the name of Lattanzio Gorini. This flimsy little fellow, with his tiny spider's hands and small gnat's voice, moved about the business at a snail's pace; yet in an evil hour he sent me stones, sand, and lime enough to build perhaps a pigeon-house with careful management. When I saw how coldly things were going forward, I began to feel dismayed; ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... having challenged a Bull to a trial of strength, all the People came to see the combat. Then {said} the Gnat: "'Tis enough that you have come to meet me in combat; for {though} little in my own idea, I am great in your judgment," {and so saying}, he took himself off on light wing through the air, and duped the multitude, and eluded the threats of the Bull. {Now} if the ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... with a ceaseless sound like that of a bee-hive and the infinite murmur of the sea. All around Renee, and near to her, there seemed to be a great living peace, in which everything was being swayed—the gnat in the air, the leaf on the branch, the shadows on the bark of the trees, the tops of the trees against the sky, and the wild oats on each side of the paths. Then from this murmur came the sighing ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... all these people had become indifferent to him; he could no longer feel savage indignation at their little hypocrisies and malignancies. Their voices uttering calumny, and morality, and futility had become like the thin shrill angry note of a gnat on a summer evening; he had his own thoughts and his own life, and he passed on ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... indeed well-nigh mythical research, had come to the conclusion that the Pope could err. In this Mr. Gladstone entirely concurred, though he did not share the rest of his friend's theological opinions; for Lord Acton, while straining at the gnat of Infallibility, had swallowed the camel of the Roman Catholic Faith. 'Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galere?' one cannot help asking, as one watched that laborious and scrupulous scholar, that lifelong enthusiast for liberty, that ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... great, infinitesimal question—I can't shake it out of my thoughts. That questing, eternal, ever recurring, thin little wailing voice of man is still ringing in my ears. It is like the dead-march of a gnat amid the trumpeting of elephants and the roaring of lions. It is insatiable with microscopic desire. I now I'm making a fool of myself, but the thing has obsessed me. You are—I don't know what you are—you are wonderful, that's all. ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... pressed closer to her husband, and was pressed, as her lips touched his forehead, and as the pair of them, gazing at the empty road among the lilacs, saw it filled with the eruptive vision of Mountain Lad, majestic and mighty, the gnat-creature of a man upon his back absurdly small; his eyes wild and desirous, with the blue sheen that surfaces the eyes of stallions; his mouth, flecked with the froth and fret of high spirit, now brushed to burnished knees of impatience, now tossed skyward ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... and singing along when I hopped onto something firm that moved twistingly under my bare foot. I did not jump or run that time; I merely opened out my wings and flew. Corn-rows, brush-piles, fences, were as nothing. I sailed over them like a gnat till I reached the big main road. I was not interested in short cuts, after that, and I didn't cross that field again for years. I was not afraid, but I did not wish to be surprised again. I ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... is the fate of those who mix themselves up in these matters, and draw down upon their heads the wrath of such men as the cardinal. Believe me, there is such a thing as straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel. And that is what you might chance to find you had done, were you cast out from the fold of the church for a few rash acts of ill-advised rebellion and disobedience, when all the while you might have lived in peace and safety, waiting till a better time ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... causes typhus, whether a bacterium (Schizophyte) or a protozoon, has not been detected, although the louse has been shown to be its "carrier." The same is true of yellow-fever: we have not seen with the microscope the microbe which produces it. But we know with certainty that the gnat, Stegomya fasciata, and no other, is the carrier of the unseen germ, and that we can obliterate that fever by obliterating the gnat. So, too, although we know how the infection of rabies acts, and how it is ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... for the priceless treasure of a respectability which is a little higher than the tram and financially not quite equal to the cab. Then, at that magic touch of the west wind the house-fly retires to his own peculiar Inferno, wherever that may be, the mosquito and the gnat pause in their work of darkness and blood to concert fresh and more bloodthirsty deeds, and even the joyous and wicked flea tires of the war dance and lays down his weary head to snatch a hard-earned nap. July drags on, and terrible ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... periodical compotations to work these materials into something like a readable shape; and hebdomadal journals, by means of which their choice productions are issued to a wondering world. Now, though a single gnat can give you very little annoyance in the course of a summer's night, the evil becomes serious when you are surrounded with whole scores of these diminutive vermin, singing in your ears, buzzing in your hair, and lighting incessantly on your ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... at a gnat, and swallowing a camel," is, in the Eastern states, rendered "straining at a gate, and swallowing ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... as the Shulamite's calling herself comely, while seeing no breach of delicacy in her inviting her lover to come into the garden and eat his precious fruits, though admitting (214) that "the maiden yields thus her heart and her all to her lover," is surely straining at a gnat and swallowing ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... scent of the hidden paint, he felt arms that fought to grip him and fingers that clutched like talons. Under it all he went down in the grass of the slope, fighting with all his strength, but powerless as a gnat in a pond. Above the turmoil of cries and guttural yells, even while he felt himself crushed at the bottom of that boiling mass, he heard the light voice of De Courtenay ringing clear in his whimsical farewell to Maren Le Moyne. Then ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... matter?" I said. "Gnat sort of thing bit me on the side of the neck. Why, if there ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... walked out, the sky to spy, A naughty gnat flew in his eye; But Tom knew not it was a gnat— He thought, at first, it ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... themselves or shrunk from sacrifices. In the domain of Historical Science the labourers are few and far between; there research proceeds with lagging steps. No one sneers at a philosopher who travels to Iceland to investigate the habits of a gnat, or who counts it the pride of his life to have discovered a new fungus, but simpletons are pleased to make themselves merry with caricaturing any student of his country's institutions who is "always poring over musty old parchments." And ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... much o'ershot? You found his mote; the king your mote did see; But I a beam do find in each of three. O! what a scene of foolery have I seen, Of sighs, of groans, of sorrow, and of teen; O me! with what strict patience have I sat, To see a king transformed to a gnat; To see great Hercules whipping a gig, And profound Solomon to tune a jig, And Nestor play at push-pin with the boys, And critic Timon laugh at idle toys! Where lies thy grief, O! tell me, good Dumaine? And, gentle Longaville, where lies ...
— Love's Labour's Lost • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... nerves to the leading of a forlorn hope, and a gnat gets into one's eye, or a little cinder grit, and there it sticks; and there is no question of leading any forlorn hope, after all, and never will be; all that was in the imagination only: it is always gnats and cinder grits, gnats ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... thou say, I am He with whom are filled all the vast stores of this universe in its entirety? Collect thy faculties calmly in thy heart and consider thine own power; can a host of fierce world-supporting elephants enter into the belly of a gnat? ...
— The Tattva-Muktavali • Purnananda Chakravartin
... never taught that indulgences should be preached. How great then is the horror, how great the peril of a bishop, if he permits the Gospel to be kept quiet, and nothing but the noise of indulgences to be spread among his people![9] Will not Christ say to them, "straining at a gnat and swallowing ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... morning of his departure he had sat on the edge of his bed, the sunlight streaming through the early mist, the house-martens scratching the back of the ceiling over his head as they scrambled out from the roof for their day's gnat-chasing, the thrushes cracking snails on the garden stones outside with the noisiness of little smiths at work on little anvils. The sun, in sending its rods of yellow fire into his room, sent, as he suddenly thought, mental illumination with it. For the first time, as he sat there, it ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... large part of the food of fresh-water fish, while other larvae, in their turn, prey upon the spawn and even the young of their persecutors. [Footnote: I have seen the larva of the dragon-fly in an aquarium bite off the head of a young fish as long as itself.] The larvae of the mosquito and the gnat are the favorite food of the trout in the wooded regions where those insects abound. [Footnote: Insects and fish—which prey upon and feed each other—are the only forms of animal life that are numerous in the native woods, and their range ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... yours. Also I stole it from your ear as I passed you in the dark. Don't you remember that you thought a gnat had tickled you and hit up at ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... a number of gnat-like gasolene launches, gay with flags, pushed off to flutter about both cruisers until they came to anchor. From one of the quays signal guns were fired, and the brazen and inordinate bangings of his Royal salute echoed and re-echoed ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... lullaby! Slumbering let the maiden lie, Sweetest dreams shall float around her, Magic blossoms shall surround her. Fairy chains shall keep her still, Fairy wand ward off all ill, Gnat or fly shall not come nigh, Lullaby, oh, lullaby! Sleep, sweet maiden, fear no harm, Potent ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... jejen, gnat. jipijapa, very fine woven straw, used in Panama hats. jipitera, child's disease, due to ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... little blood left, that a gnat of tolerable appetite could have made an end of me on Sunday, without more ado. But, instead of that, I had a good little Sister of Charity; and wasn't that alone worth getting ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "Through to Division," says gnat-voice and clicks me off. Another voice carries on the good work. Upstairs the shells burst playfully on the parapet, and under the starlit sky a gas cloud drifts slowly across the fields, almost hiding the cattle who are grazing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various
... go to Philadelphia, Miss Effingham, you will see an instance of a most ludicrous nature—ludicrous, if there were not something painfully revolting mingled with it—of the manner in which men can strain at a gnat and swallow a camel; and which, I am sorry to say, is immediately connected with ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... how the flattering things on painted wings, foolish as gnat-swarms near the shrivelling blaze, Flock nearer, nearer! Forms, too, quainter, queerer, frog-dupes of folly, rabbit-thralls of craze, Butterfly triflers, gay-plumed would-be riflers of golden chalices, of poisoned flowers, Flitter and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 4, 1891 • Various
... hands; angrily he drew his sword and brandished it, but he only touched the air and did not hit the gnats. Then he ordered his servants to bring costly coverings and wrap him in them, that the gnats might no longer be able to reach him. The servants carried out his orders, but one single gnat had placed itself inside one of the coverings, crept into the prince's ear and stung him. The place burnt like fire, and the poison entered into his blood. Mad with pain, he tore off the coverings and his clothes too, flinging them far away, and danced about before ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... half-way to the ceiling, exclaimed, "Thou art the man!" Each philosopher anticipated the other in presenting the prompt illustration that if the rays of the hydro-oxygen microscope, passed through a drop of water containing the larvae of a gnat and other objects invisible to the naked eye, rendered them not only keenly but firmly magnified to dimensions of many feet; so could the same artificial light, passed through the faintest focal ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... far is the trunk of the mosquito-gnat, and of all the detestable troop of blood-sucking flies. It is always a tube; but this tube is no longer a simple straw, but a sheath furnished with stilettos of such exquisite delicacy and temper, that nothing is comparable to them; and these, as they play up and down, pierce the skin of the ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... geologist to a gnat mounted on an elephant, and laying down theories as to the whole internal structure of the vast animal, from the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 327, August 16, 1828 • Various
... to mention these trivialities, but that they actually influenced many lives, as trifles will in the world, where a gnat often plays a greater part than an elephant, and a mole-hill, as we know in King William's case, can upset an empire. When Tusher in his courtly way (at which Harry Esmond always chafed and spoke scornfully) vowed and protested that my lady's face was none the worse—the lad broke out ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... it long, I reckon, ma'am," said Tucker, in his pleasant manner; "and I must say it seems to me that Bill Fletcher is straining at a gnat. Why, he has near two thousand acres, hasn't he? And what under heaven does he want with that old field the sheep have nibbled bare? There's no sense ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... be a miracle of piety if she was but half so careful of her soul as she is of her body. The rising of a pimple on her face, the sting of a gnat, will make her keep her room two or three days, and she thinks they are very rash people that do not take care of things in time. This makes her so over careful of her health that she never thinks she ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... mind with fond imaginations, let him by all means avoid it; 'tis a bosom enemy, 'tis delightsome melancholy, a friend in show, but a secret devil, a sweet poison, it will in the end be his undoing; let him go presently, task or set himself a work, get some good company. If he proceed, as a gnat flies about a candle, so long till at length he burn his bodv, so in the end he will undo himself: if it be any harsh object, ill company, let him presently go from it. If by his own default, through ill diet, bad ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Her conscience smote her for the deception she was practicing on the dear white-capped woman. "But what's the use of straining at every little gnat of a falsehood," she thought, "when I'm ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... blind! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... release could not be effected, and in prison I lay for all those days, but with more comfort, since either Catherine or Mary—Mary I think it must have been—made a curtain for my window, which kept out that burning eye of the western sun, and also fashioned a gnat veil to overspread my pallet, so the flies could not get at me. I knew there were others in prison, but knew not that three of them were led forth to be hung, which might have been my fate, had I been a free man, nor knew that another was released on condition that ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... deliberate lie. He could not place himself in a situation where a falsehood would be necessary to extricate himself from a dilemma. Unhappily, like thousands of other scrupulous people, he could "strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel;" for it was just as much a lie to deceive his father by his silence as it was ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... laughing child into a weeping one. It is enough if it change the full mourning of the soul into half-mourning; it is enough if I can say to myself, "I will be content to endure the sorrow that philosophy has left me; without it, it would be greater, and the gnat's bite would be the ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... call-note, with drooping jerking tail, trembling wings, and uplifted parti-colored bill, he looks unnerved and limp by the effort it has cost him. But in the next instant a gnat flies past. How quickly the bird recovers itself, and charges full-tilt at his passing dinner! The sharp click of his little bill proves that he has not missed his aim; and after careering about in the air another minute or two, looking for more game to ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... with it. In fact, I shall do everything in my power to discountenance and discourage the trapping." Lapierre cleared his throat sharply—coughed—cleared it again. Discourage trapping—north of sixty! Had he heard aright? He swallowed hard, mumbled an apology anent the inhalation of a gnat, and answered in ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... went on, "that marriage is a cast of the dice. One throws a high number, another a low one; one wins a wife who is a match for the busy bee, another gets a tiresome gnat. No doubt there is some truth in it; but I have grown grey with my eyes open and I have often seen it happen, that how the marriage turned out depended on the husband. A man like you makes a bee out of a gnat—a bee that brings ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... must come with his gun and shoot them, for I dare say now that snake is dead the animals of all kinds will increase very much. I only wish there was a snake among the gnat tribe. Anything like the way in which I am teased by things biting me is not to ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... paltry insect, nature's meanest brat!" Thus said the royal lion to the gnat. The gnat declared immediate war. "Think you," said he, "your royal name To me worth caring for? Think you I tremble at your power or fame? The ox is bigger far than you; Yet him I drive, and all his crew." This said, as one that did no fear owe, ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... else, Madam Scold?" answered the school boy; "she is a real Liliputian statue, fit for nothing but to watch the flies fly. Ah! come, Piccola, Piccolissima!" he cried to the little one, who was behind the shutter of a half-open window, absorbed in the contemplation of a gnat who was up the window, singing a little air through his nasal trumpet, "tell us, Piccola, a little of what the flies ...
— Piccolissima • Eliza Lee Follen
... to be applied when I wish to replenish the Exchequer, and to give an impulse to trade. I will not have two weights or two measures. I will not blow hot and cold, play fast and loose, strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. Can the Government say as much? Are gentlemen opposite prepared to act in conformity with their own principle? They need not look long for opportunities. The Statute Book swarms with enactments directly opposed to the rule which they ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... your belt you can carry it on your saddle horn. I'll show you how to use it—an' how to shoot where you hold it, too. Mrs. Samuelson ain't as husky as you are, an' she can wipe a gnat's eye with a six-gun, either handed. Practice is all it ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... "if the august Muley cannot brook an English saddle, what must he think of an English wife? Or do these Moslems, like some Christians I know, strain at a gnat and swallow a camel? Mayhap it is even so. The pigeon-prompted camel-driver, who built up his creed with plentiful blood-cement, saw fit to add a new chapter to the Koran, when he fell in love ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... maintaining its full speed, would be twenty years in reaching it, it yet affects the earth by its attraction in an inappreciable instant of time?—Who would not ask for demonstration, when told that a gnat's wing, in its ordinary flight, beats many hundred times in a second? or that there exist animated and regularly organised beings, many thousands of whose bodies laid close together would not extend an inch? But what are these to the astonishing ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 471, Saturday, January 15, 1831 • Various
... not; I could not; I love her; I love my girl. But you need not sing to me like a gnat to propound that question, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... invariably broke down from sheer excess of emotion. But the American army fighting for right and freedom in France, and the Army individually tracking mud into her spotless cottage, were two very different things. Miss Mink had always regarded a man in her house much as she regarded a gnat in her eye. There was but one course to pursue in ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... fyndeth mercye and foryeouenes at the handes of god. What shuld he feare, that hath suche a protectour? Whether men? where as playnely theyr hole power may lesse do agaest God, then the bytyng of a gnat, || hurteth the Elephant. Whether death? truly that is a right passage for good men vnto all sufficient ioy and perfection accordyng too the iust reward of true religion and vertue. Whether hell? For as in that the holy prophete speaketh boldely vnto God. Although ...
— A Very Pleasaunt & Fruitful Diologe Called the Epicure • Desiderius Erasmus
... her heart was set on it. I won an eighty-guinea jacket for ten guineas. You see how ignoble my motives were, also how unworthy the results. I did worse even than that— for I will out with the truth to you, Nancy— I revenged myself still further upon that spiteful little gnat, Rosalind, and raised the price of her coveted coral to such an extent that I know by her face she is pounds in debt for it. Now, my dear, what have you to say to me? Nothing good, I know that. Let me read Aristotle for the next hour ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... out of a flock, he could look with interest, and without emotion. He saw them drift, touch and part, and each be blown its way, helpless mote in the dust of the great plain. From one to the other he turned his eyes. The Manvers gnat flew the straighter course, holding to an upper current; the Manuela wavered, but tended ever to a lower plane. The wind from the mountains of Asturias freshened and blew over him. In a singular moment of divination ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... through day and night * Solomon's carpet and the Chosroes' might, Both were in value less than wing of gnat, * Unless these eyne could hold thee ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... her head impatiently as though to brush away a troublesome gnat. "How about the Leavitts? There ought to be enough young ones ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... upon piles of manuscripts had he written upon the forms and classification of the bluebottle fly. He could tell you how many legs are flourished by the house-spider, and was thoroughly versed in the anatomy of the common gnat. This pursuit, or science as he called it, engrossed his whole attention. It was fortunate he had such an absorbing occupation, inasmuch as his general debility prevented his entering into any amusement out of doors. His wife and he seemed to ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... original motive of the poem can only have been the idea that the gnat could not rest in Hades, and therefore asked the shepherd whose life it had saved, for a decent burial. But this very motive, without which the whole poem loses its consistency, is wanting in the extant Culex."— Teuffel, R. L. ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... had it not been for a dreadful itch and pain that took me in every part, till at length I sprang up and cursed in my agony. At first I was at a loss to know what occasioned this torment, till I perceived that the air was alive with gnat-like insects which made a singing noise, and then settling on my flesh, sucked blood and spat poison into the wound at one and the same time. These dreadful insects the Spaniards name mosquitoes. Nor were they the only flies, for hundreds of other creatures, ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... his pickets hide— Unmask the shapes they take, Whether a gnat from the waterside, Or stinging fly in the brake, Or filth of the crowded street, Or a sick rat limping by, Or a smear of spittle dried in the heat— That is the work of a spy! ...
— The Years Between • Rudyard Kipling |
