"Gnaw at" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and stood against the door which held them prisoners; and the heat of the place seemed to enter into them, to gnaw at their very vitals. After a time Sarka found himself almost tearing at his throat, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... He lifted one of the white mice in the palm of his hand, and spoke to it in his whimsical way. "My pretty little smooth white rascal," he said, "here is a moral lesson for you. A truly wise mouse is a truly good mouse. Mention that, if you please, to your companions, and never gnaw at the bars of your cage again as ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... gnaw at the pit of our stomachs, we had cut down our meals to the minimum amount of food that would keep us alive; we were so weak we no longer were sure where our feet were going to when we put them down. But all the fish we had to smoke was two or three. And on Friday night we ate the last ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... his cover and commenced a loud howling, fiercely bristling his hair; then he sat on his hind-legs and whined as though in great pain, again, as if driven wild by this agony, he began to scatter and gnaw at the snow. Finally at a swift pace, and crouching, he fled into the fields, to the neighbourhood of the farm near which the ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... dares gnaw At the silence dead and dumb, And the very air seems waiting For a Something ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... piercing glance on him, and seemed to read in the depths of his soul. "Is the matter settled?" he asked. "Pray, my friend, tell me the truth without circumlocution. It is better for me to know it at once than allow this incertitude longer to gnaw at my heart. Scharnhorst, I implore you, tell me the truth! Has the commander of the Silesian army ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... mar, despoil, dilapidate, waste; overrun; ravage; pillage &c 791. wound, stab, pierce, maim, lame, surbate^, cripple, hough^, hamstring, hit between wind and water, scotch, mangle, mutilate, disfigure, blemish, deface, warp. blight, rot; corrode, erode; wear away, wear out; gnaw, gnaw at the root of; sap, mine, undermine, shake, sap the foundations of, break up; disorganize, dismantle, dismast; destroy &c 162. damnify &c (aggrieve) 649 [Obs.]; do one's worst; knock down; deal a blow to; play havoc with, play ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... A nameless fear began to gnaw at Wilmot's vitals. And at that moment the door swung open, and he saw, beyond the bulking head and shoulders of the legless man, a narrow iron table, white and shining, in a room all glass ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... of his two chums, and saw by their increasing pallor that they more than shared the fears that were beginning to gnaw at his heart in connection with the safety of the genial, ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... to gnaw at Steven's vitals and to make itself imperatively felt. He looked up at the sun as if to tell the time by its location, though in reality he regulated his movements by that infallible horologue ticking ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... old Frank's stout spirit would have broken, for hope deferred makes the heart of a dog, as well as the heart of man, sick; maybe he would have ceased to gnaw at his board behind the boxes; maybe he would have yielded to the men at last, submissive in spirit as well as in act, if he had not seen the train and the ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... the boys were starving with hunger, and could have eaten anything. They even tried to gnaw at bits of leather cut out of their boots, but they were so tough and sodden from their long immersion in the sea that they could make nothing ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... sprinkling-brush; whoever prefers to die, let him call the priest—that's all! I want to live and fight! Of what use is the Bernardine? Are we schoolboys? What do I care for that Robak? Now we will all be Robaks, that is, worms, and proceed to gnaw at the Muscovites! Hem, haw! spies! to explore! Do you know what that means? Why, that you are impotent old beggars! Hey, brothers! It is a setter's work to follow a trail, a Bernardine's to gather alms, but my work is—to sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle, ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... to this statement save an imaginary one from the wind, which seemed to gnaw at the corners of the house, and the stroke of a few drops ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... neglected appearance, the grounds being weedy and littered with bleached bones and other rubbish: fences and ditches had also been destroyed and obliterated, so that the cattle were free to rub their hides on the tree trunks and gnaw at the bark. The estancia was called Canada Seca, from a sluggish muddy stream near the house which almost invariably dried up in summer; in winter after heavy rains it overflowed its low banks, and in very wet seasons lake-like ponds of water were formed ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... he replied; "they will go and live in the same kennel by-and-by, and gnaw at the ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... the night the witch began to gnaw at Lakhan's bow and he heard her gnawing and called out "What are you munching? Give me at bit," but she answered that it was only a little pulse which she had gleaned from the fields and she had finished it. ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... meddling fingers, who poke their hands into our haversacks, to the farm servants who inspect all our belongings when we are out on parade, and even now we have become accustomed to the very rats that scurry through the barn at midnight and gnaw at our equipment and devour our rations when they get hold of them. One night a rat bit a man's nose—but the tale is a long one and I will tell it ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... John to-day and introduce him. He had been prattling like a fool about this older brother. He wished to God now something would keep him. The pangs of jealousy had already began to gnaw at the thought of her ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... each other's embraces, in a little sunny valley amid the chips, now at noonday prepared to fight till the sun went down, or life went out. The smaller red champion had fastened himself like a vise to his adversary's front, and through all the tumblings on that field never for an instant ceased to gnaw at one of his feelers near the root, having already caused the other to go by the board; while the stronger black one dashed him from side to side, and, as I saw on looking nearer, had already divested him of several of his members. They fought with more pertinacity than ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... will not let you rest. As long as you live I will gnaw at you like a worm, for you deserve it for your villany. What! Haven't you committed every crime? You robbed your brother of his inheritance; you cheated your partner; you have repudiated debts, and held others to false debts. Haven't ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... highest point of the crags at the uttermost end of the island. On the side towards the sea the rock was once rent sheer away in some globe-cataclysm; it rises up a straight wall from the base where the waves gnaw at the stone below high-water mark. Any assault is made impossible by the dangerous reefs that stretch far out to sea, with the sparkling waves of the Mediterranean playing over them. So, only from the sea can you discern the square ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... a growing belief that that fate was just. Sea and air and the blue expanse of heaven are full of suggestion of that spirit-life, with its larger struggles or its universal peace, which is above the world's crowd and noise. And she determines that sorrow for what is fleeting shall not gnaw at ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr |
