"Gnat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... witticisms of the week; 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... to us at Sordavala, the light of day becomes a positive nuisance, and a few green calico blinds an absolute godsend; indeed, almost as essential as the oil of cloves or lavender or the ammonia bottle for gnat bites, or the mosquito head-nets, if one sleeps with open windows. Mosquitoes have fed upon me in tropical lands, but they are gentlemen in comparison with the rough brutality of the mosquitoes of the far North; there their innings is ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... the entertainment he got out of it. His careless light heart had to have somebody to nag and chaff and make fun of, the Paladin had only needed development in order to meet its requirements, consequently the development was taken in hand and diligently attended to and looked after, gnat-and-bull fashion, for years, to the neglect and damage of far more important concerns. The result was an unqualified success. Noel prized the society of the Paladin above everybody else's; the Paladin preferred anybody's to ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... gnat's bite can drive an elephant mad. And Nature's balance is delicate; and what great happenings may follow the slightest disturbance of her infinitely sensitive, her complex, equilibrium? It might be—it ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... again. Oh! really it is a curious creature, why it is as transparent as glass, now it jerks itself about, now it floats without motion in mid-water. What is it?" "I am inclined to think," said Willy, "judging from its wriggling, jerking motions that it must be the larva of some kind of gnat." Right again, my boy, it is the larva of a gnat, and one known to naturalists by the name of Corethra; you see there are eleven divisions or segments in the body; the head is of strange form, and near the mouth ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... 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
... 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 me a tenth part ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 air, want of exercise, &c., let him now begin to reform himself. "It ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... 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 recall ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... an old man to mediate between you. I am not shortsighted in such matters—The mother of mischief is no bigger than a gnat's wing; and I have known fifty instances in my own day, when, as ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... 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, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various
... The men fall in and he listens to complaints and soothes the indignant. One man laid his tunic down and a mule ate a great bit out of it. Another cannot get his arm straight "after lifting thae bales." A still, small voice asserts that a man has as much chance of doing what the R.E. wants, as a gnat has of fighting a —— aeroplane. The sergeant numbers them off. There is of course one missing; but the officer, being certain that he is either a mangled corpse among the mules, or far more probably triumphantly asleep on a stack of tibbin, declines to search for him, and the party steps out ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... least fear you, nor are you stronger than I am. For in what does your strength consist? You can scratch with your claws and bite with your teeth an a woman in her quarrels. I repeat that I am altogether more powerful than you; and if you doubt it, let us fight and see who will conquer." The Gnat, having sounded his horn, fastened himself upon the Lion and stung him on the nostrils and the parts of the face devoid of hair. While trying to crush him, the Lion tore himself with his claws, until he punished himself severely. The Gnat thus prevailed over the Lion, ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... and 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 ...
— The History of Insects • Unknown
... gnat's proboscis, Throng not the naked beauty! Frogs and crickets in the mosses, Keep ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... shut the people out, they give, in return, shelter and protection to many other things. In the reeds there are a lot of little dams and canals with green, still water, where duckweed and pondweed run to seed; and where gnat-eggs and blackfish and worms are hatched out in uncountable masses. And all along the shores of these little dams and canals, there are many well-concealed places, where seabirds hatch their eggs, and bring up their young without being disturbed, ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... wagtails nesting in a 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 ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... existence of an art that one shall be prepared to tolerate things ludicrously unlike anything to be found in real life; and when (for instance) you have swallowed the camel of allowing the heroes and heroines to sing their woes at all, it is a little foolish to strain at the gnat of permitting them to sing in this rather than in that way, when both ways are alike preposterous. It is not, therefore, on the score of its inherent absurdity that I should throw brickbats at Italian opera, any more than with the female dress of to-day before my ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... it thus. At least I have been speaking of the works of God. And are not you, too, a work of God? The Lord shall rejoice in His works, even to the tiniest gnat that dances in the sun. Is the Lord rejoicing in you? I have said—Whither shall a man go from God's presence? Are you forgetting or remembering God's presence? And—Whither shall a man flee from God's Spirit? Are you, O man, fleeing from God's Spirit, and forgetting ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... vocation to fulfil. The snail trailing a moist streak after it as it crawls, and so using up its vitality, serves as a remedy for boils. The sting of a hornet is healed by the house-fly crushed and applied to the wound. The gnat, feeble creature, taking in food but never secreting it, is a specific against the poison of a viper, and this venomous reptile itself cures eruptions, while the lizard is the antidote to the scorpion.[191] Not only do all creatures serve man, and contribute to ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... Commonwealth forgets the beginning," it is all the same to him, his purpose being only to beguile the anguish of supposed bereavement. It has been well said that "Gonzalo is so occupied with duty, in which alone he finds pleasure, that he scarce notices the gnat-stings of wit with which his opponents pursue him; or, if he observes, firmly and ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... glikozo. Glue gluo. Glue glui. Glut sato. Glut satigi. Glutinous gluanta. Glutted satega. Glutton mangxegulo. Gluttonous mangxegema. Gluttony mangxegemo. Glycerine glicerino. Gnash grinci. Gnat kulo. Gnaw mordeti. Gnome gnomo. Go iri. Go along vojiri. Go astray erari, vagadi. Go away foriri. Go back reiri. Go before antauxiri. Go beyond trapasi, preterpasi. Go in eniri. Go out eliri. Go out (of a light) estingigxi, elbruli. Go over transiri. Go through ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... Corvus, "I sing not amiss. Phoebus," quoth he; "for all thy worthiness, For all thy beauty and all thy gentilesse, For all thy song and all thy minstrelsy, And all thy watching, bleared is thine eye; Yea, and by one no worthier than a gnat, Compared with him should boast to wear ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... largest and strongest men in the French Army, yet the average French soldier may be termed undersized when compared with the military of either England or Germany. There were several physically small men in the regiment, and one of these, like a diminutive gnat, was Samson's worst persecutor. As there was no other man in the regiment whom the gnat could bully, Samson received more than even he could be expected to bear. One day the gnat ordered Samson to bring him a pail of water from the stream, and the big man unhesitatingly obeyed. He spilled ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... bits with; then in a trice They make a feast less great than nice. But all this while his eye is served, We must not think his ear was sterved; But that there was in place to stir His spleen, the chirring grasshopper, The merry cricket, puling fly, The piping gnat for minstrelsy. And now, we must imagine first, The elves present, to quench his thirst, A pure seed-pearl of infant dew, Brought and besweeten'd in a blue And pregnant violet; which done, His kitling eyes begin to run Quite through the table, where he spies The horns ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... dese newfangled little pockets. I lak things de way I was raised. Dis pocket hangs down inside and nobody don't see it. De chilluns fusses 'bout my big pocket, but it ain't in none of deir dresses, and I'se sho gwine to wear 'em 'til dey is wore out to a gnat's heel. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... are like the Indian drugs, that sleep and kill. How is that any fault of mine? He could see the thing she was. If he will fling his soul away upon a creature lighter than thistle-down, viler than a rattlesnake's poison, poorer and quicker to pass than the breath of a gnat—whose blame is that except his own? There was a sculptor once, you know, that fell to lascivious worship of the marble image he had made; well,—poets are not even so far wise as that. They make an image out of the gossamer ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... had through day and night * Solomon's carpet and the Chosroes' might, Both were in value less than wing of gnat, * Unless these eyne could ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... and all, to have such for their support, and everybody, high and low, took to planting cactus and breeding the cochineal. The female insect is in form like a bug, but white; the male turns into something like a gnat, and soon dies. The insects are shut up in boxes to lay their eggs on bits of linen, which are pinned to the cactus plants by one of their own thorns. In six months after planting the cactus, the harvest begins. The insect, which has secreted a purple fluid, is swept off the plant on ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... eye, A gnat, a mote, a shadow thou wouldst spy. Come, follow me; she cannot be so far, But I shall ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • 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. Will nothing, I wonder, convince him that ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... contrary, I should say," Mr. Price rejoined, smiling responsively, and twitching his nose as if a gnat had tickled it; "but I allow you have got to have a good ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... it should be So rude to talk about the ——. What funny folk we are! I think we've got the jealous hump Because we see we'll never jump So skilfully and far. For, if one's nibbled by a gnat Or harvest-bugs or things like that, One seldom keeps it dark; One may enlarge upon the tale If one is gobbled by a whale Or swallowed by a shark; But if you speak about the bite Of this abandoned parasite You're very, very rash; So sure is it to raise a frown I dare not even ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... more than once. He sat by the window, 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 against the ceiling; a cock on the road began to crow, ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... oh, 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 is ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... 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 stay in ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... elaborate inquiry into the principles of every man whose barns had been burned during the rebellion. When responsible government was conceded, it was admitted that even the rebels had not been wholly wrong. It would have been straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel to say "we will give you these free institutions for the sake of which you rebelled, but we will not pay you the small sum of money necessary to recompense you for losses arising out of ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... beautiful brown beetle with golden wings and green eyes! Surely there is not in all the world a more delicious morsel than a brown beetle! Or, if you but say the word, I will fetch you a tender little fly, or a young gnat,—see, I am willing to undergo all toils and dangers ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... their viaticum, and commodities for traffic. It is not the bigness of anything in this kind that can hinder its motion if the motive faculty be answerable "hereunto. We see that; great ship swims as well as a small cork, and an eagle flies in the air as well as a little gnat. This engine may be contrived from the same principles by which Archytas made a wooden dove, and Regiomontanus a wooden eagle. I conceive it were no difficult matter (if a man had leisure) to show more particularly the means of composing it. The perfecting of such an invention would be of such ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... see in the air swarms of small, gnat-like insects. They belong to this order and live beneath the bark of freshly fallen beech and other logs. On warm, sunny days they go forth in numbers for a sort of rhythmical courtship; their movements while in the air ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... whose 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 ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... re doubt' hec'a tomb wreathe vict'uals re scind' sci'o list wreath scis'sors gneis'sose co a lesce' rhomb schot'tish be nign' ap'a thegm gnat g'no'mon cam paign' di'a phragm rogue' for'eign ar raign' psy'chic al gnaw dough'ty op pugn' sac'cha rine gnash haugh'ty re sign' rheu mat'ic gnarl chron'ic de light' rhap'so dy gnome daugh'ter ex pugn' rhet'o ric phlegm ghast'ly af ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... 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
... would 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 ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... winged creatures, which filled the air 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 sound of a deep respiration, ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... "By all the furies! my lord," he cried, "what gnat has bitten your highness? Why this sudden ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... suffereth it not if a gnat wanteth to buzz, or even two of them; also the lanes maketh he lonesome, so that the moonlight is ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... 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
... 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
... known to give a sou to charity; her hands were all but the hands of a skeleton and covered with jewels, she smoked cigarettes incessantly. She was one of those old women whose energy seems to increase with age, tireless as a gnat she was always the last in bed and the first on deck, though lying in her bunk half the night reading French novels of which she had a trunkful and smoking ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... 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 dominated by ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... 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 ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... your frankness, and with that queer morality of the Camp which, if it swallows a camel now and again, never strains at a gnat, how healthy and wholesome, and even pure, are your romances! You never gloat over sin, nor dabble with an ugly curiosity in the corruptions of sense. The passions in your tales are honourable and brave, the motives are clearly human. Honour, Love, Friendship make the threefold ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... or gnat, or other pest in the woods, the cool nights having already cut them off. The trout were sufficiently abundant, and afforded us a few hours' sport daily to supply our wants. The only drawback was, that they were out of season, and only palatable to a woodman's keen appetite. What ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... 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; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... grit, or sand, or dust, or particle of coal, or gnat, or a hair, or an eye-lash in the eye, it ought to be tenderly removed by a small tightly-folded paper spill, holding down the lower lid with the fore-finger of the left hand the while; and the eye, if inflamed, should be frequently ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... 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
... 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 thy pain? ...
— Love's Labour's Lost • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... the fables where the lion plays a part, usually the chief part, the child pretends to be the lion, and when he has to preside over some distribution of good things, he takes care to keep everything for himself; but when the lion is overthrown by the gnat, the child is the gnat. He learns how to sting to death those whom ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... variety of this insect in Ceylon, from the large black species, the size of the hornet down to the minute tinsel-green fly, no bigger than a gnat; but every one of these different species wages perpetual war against the arch enemy ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... the archway of the tree-roots, would stay as motionless, but for the restless twitching of the alert nostrils, as were the trees and the stones around his home, while I, not even daring to flick an irritating gnat from my forehead or neck, would wait and long for the philosopher in grey to make up ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... away (it is not proper to look on at magical arts), and then in a moment, saw the right hook on his cast; but Jaqueline was not in the boat. She had turned herself into an artificial fly (a small black gnat), and Dick might set to his ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang
... "How shall I punish him?" and the prophet answered, "To thee armies are as nothing, and the strength and power of men likewise. Before the smallest of thy creatures will they perish." And God was pleased at the faith of his servant, and he sent a gnat that vexed Nimrod day and night, so that he built himself a room of glass in that palace that he might dwell therein and shut out the insect. But the gnat entered also, and passed by his ear into his brain, upon which it ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... Jesus. "We must expect the Pharisees to criticize us. How careful they are to keep every little command of the rabbis—but justice, mercy, and kindness they forget. They would strain a gnat out of their soup and swallow a camel whole!" The disciples had to smile at the way Jesus put it. "They cannot understand what we are saying. We offend them—and when you offend men who take their religion very seriously, you must be ready for ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... so," Phoebe agreed. 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, ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... 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 a few on all the vines. Can ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... 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 ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... when the sun least veils His face that lightens all, what time the fly Gives way to the shrill gnat, the peasant then Upon some cliff reclin'd, beneath him sees Fire-flies innumerous spangling o'er the vale, Vineyard or tilth, where his day-labour lies: With flames so numberless throughout its space Shone the eighth ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... creatures, if it were only a gnat dancing in a sunbeam, has a right to have its well-being considered as an end of God's dealings. But no creature is so isolated or great as that it has a right to have its well-being regarded as the sole end of God's dealings. That is true about all His blessings ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... into a larva and pupa, finally producing Bee or Butterfly. In these cases, therefore, the egg, larva, pupa, and perfect Insect, are regarded as stages in the life of a single individual. In certain gnats, however, the larva itself produces young larvae, each of which develops into a gnat, so that the egg produces not one ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... these controls. Except for the effect of relative proper motions, which I can't calculate yet for lack of data. I should be able to hit a gnat right in the left eye at this range—and the difference in proper motions couldn't have thrown me off more than a few hundred feet. Nope, I was too anxious—hurried too much on the settings of the slow verniers. I'll snap ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... victualling-operations are in full swing. Seated on a low chair in the sun, with my back bent and my arms upon my knees, I watch, without moving, until dinner-time. What attracts me is a parasite, a trumpery Gnat, the bold despoiler of ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... 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 am ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... 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
... round and round, like roulette-balls, the black-back always on the outside, always doing the attacking, dancing as if on air, light as a gnat. Once he got right in, and the foe sprang at his throat. He was not there when the enemy's teeth closed, but his fangs were, and fang closed on fang, and the resulting tussle was not pretty ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... know that. The slight repulse of a lady's finger—a touch that would not crush a gnat—will sometimes kill a strong man like a sword-stroke. I have known such things to ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... good an imitation as I could of a gnat's hum, and kept up the tickling till he made two or three vicious lounges out at where I stood in the darkness, and this time he ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... body; When you came to the Simorg, Three therein appeared to you, And, had fifty of you come, So had you seen yourselves as many. Him has none of us yet seen. Ants see not the Pleiades. Can the gnat grasp with his teeth The body of the elephant? What you see is He not; What you hear is He not. The valleys which you traverse, The actions which you perform, They lie under our treatment And among our properties You as three ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... ones are best dealt with by being 'spread before the Lord.' Whatever is important enough to disturb me is important enough for me to speak to God about it. Whether the poison inflaming our blood be from a gnat's bite, or a cobra's sting, the best antidote ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... Man is right: is he not the only beast who gets drunk at all seasons? But, to accede to his request, as an honest prince, I ought to be able to give the Serpent something preferable, or at least equal, to his favourite prey. Therefore hear my decision: Let the Gnat—the smallest of animals—find out in what creature circulates the most exquisite blood in the world; and that creature shall belong to you, O Serpent. And I summon you all to appear here, without fail, on this day twelvemonths ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... legs: The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers; The traces, of the smallest spider's web; The collars of the moonshine's watery beams; Her whip of cricket's bone, the lash, of film; Her wagoner, a small grey-coated gnat, Not half so big as a round little worm, Pricked from the lazy finger of a maid: Her chariot is an empty hazel nut, Made by the joiner squirrel, or old grub, Time out of mind the fairies' coachmakers. And in this state she gallops night by night, Through lovers' ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... forgot to go to her music-lesson you said the poor child was evidently run 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, seaside, seaside! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 22, 1914 • Various
... but we must remember the gnat and the camel and try to be consistent. A single portiere, especially if it be of the rag-carpet style, has a greater dust-collecting capacity than a whole houseful of wooden floors, ceilings and wainscots, even when they are moulded and ornamentally wrought. Surely they will not be troublesome ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... would be 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 ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... the gnat arose in the morning with the sun, Drem could see it from Gelli Wic in Cornwall, as far off as ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... mentally) "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 with ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... that moment; for any printed lie that any notorious villain pens, although it militate directly against the character and conduct of a life, appeals at once to your distrust, and is believed. You will strain at a gnat in the way of trustfulness and confidence, however fairly won and well deserved; but you will swallow a whole caravan of camels, if they be laden with unworthy doubts and mean suspicions. Is this well, think you, or likely to elevate the character of ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... 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
... an early moth fluttered slowly over the flower-beds, a thousand little creatures buzzed and hummed, all busy working out their tiny destinies, as she, too, was working out hers, and each doubtless looking upon their own as the central point of the universe. A few months for the gnat, a few years for the girl, but each was happy now in the heavy summer air. A beetle scuttled out upon the gravel path and bored onwards, its six legs all working hard, butting up against stones, upsetting itself on ridges, but still ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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 ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... more than any man in needs; Dreaming, with open eye, of days when men Have fallen cloven through steel and bone and flesh At single strokes of this — of that big arm Once wielded aught a mortal arm might wield, Waking a prey to any foolish gnat That wills to conquer my defenceless brow And sit thereon in triumph; hounded ever By small necessities of barest use Which, since I cannot compass them alone, Do snarl my helplessness into mine ear, Howling behind me that I have ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... who, it must be confessed, looked 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
... near water, and before going to bed. Shut the windows early, and destroy all that settle upon them. Put your candle outside the door, which should be left partially open, while undressing, and shut the door quickly when you take in the candle. Ammonia cures the irritation of gnat and ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various
... Procter smiled too. In generosity of spirit, she forbore to point out to her husband the fact that Raymond Cunningham was known from one end of the town to the other as one who would "skin a gnat for ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... grander scale than on the earth. Celestial mechanics do not differ from terrestrial mechanics, however tremendous and imposing the result of their activities. But in the humblest living thing—in a spear of grass by the roadside, in a gnat, in a flea—there lurks a greater mystery. In an animate body, however small, there abides something of which we get no trace in the vast reaches of astronomy, a kind of activity that is incalculable, indeterminate, and super-mechanical, not lawless, but making its ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... evolution toward their ideals just as nations and men are. Doubtless when Jack's mechanism is perfected, his guilt will disappear. A little way above the florets the club enlarges abruptly, forming a projecting ledge that effectually closes the avenue of escape for many a guileless victim. A fungous gnat, enticed perhaps by the striped house of refuge from cold spring winds, and with a prospect of food below, enters and slides down the inside walls or the slippery, colored column: in either case descent is very easy; it is the return that is ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... a gnat into the ointment of the General, be sure there are ten thousand flies stinking ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... vampires which infest our wooded lands. The "punkeys" and "midgets" can outstrip them for voracity and the painful character of the wound which they inflict. The "punkey," or "black-fly," as it is called, is a small, black gnat, about the size of a garden ant, and the bite of the insect often results very seriously. The midget is a minute little creature, and is the most everlastingly sticky and exasperating pest in the catalogue of human torments. They ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... on farther, and lo! the gnat was marching with his host, and so vast was it that no eye could take it all in. Then the lieutenant-general of the gnats came flying up and said, "Oh, Ivan Golik! let my host drink of thy blood. If thou dost consent, 'twill be to thy profit; but if thou dost not consent, thou shalt not ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... Jesus of by the moral jabberwocks; Breckinridge, an infinitely better and brainier man, 'fessed up—and couldn't go to Congress from the studhorse district of Kentucky. When society goes hunting for scapegoats it usually manages to get a gnat lodged in its esophagus while relegating a mangy dromedary to its ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... 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. ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... 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
... across the Kinchinjhow glacier, along the bank of the lake, and thence westward up a very steep spur, on which was much glacial ice and snow, but few plants above 16,000 feet. At nearly 17,000 feet I passed two small lakes, on the banks of one of which I found bees, a May-fly (Ephemera) and gnat; the two latter bred on stones in the water, which (the day being fine) had a temperature of 53 degrees, while that of the large lake at the glacier, 1000 feet lower, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... to the beach, to assist in landing our tents, and the ammunition, artillery, and stores, the artillerymen laughing at us, and hoping that we had passed a pleasant time on shore. By the night we got our tents pitched, and hoped to have a quiet rest, but the little gnat-like Cossacks were again buzzing about us, and were off before we could get a shot at them. The next four days were passed in landing stores, while the commissariat officers were collecting provisions from ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... common air is more perturbed in the year 1918 by the passing of a single gnat than by the memory of Toussaint L'Ouverture. On Sunday I walked along a quiet hill road within thirty miles of London, and it seemed for an hour or two as though one were as remote from the war as a man living a century ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... 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 object ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... 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
... "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 peacefully there in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various
... right, and must do it at all risks in the face of a 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 ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... sunken prime! You to reviewers are as ball to bat. They shadow you with Homer, knock you flat With Shakespeare: bludgeons brainingly sublime On you the excommunicates of Rhyme, Because you sing not in the living Fat. The wiry whizz of an intrusive gnat Is verse that shuns their self-producing time. Sound them their clocks, with loud alarum trump, Or watches ticking temporal at their fobs, You win their pleased attention. But, bright God O' the lyre, what bully-drawlers they applaud! ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Dun, the early bright Brown, the whitish Dun, the Thorn-tree fly, the blue Dun, the little black Gnat, ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... the lights in the different 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 other side of ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... point of view of universal history, history from the point of view of geological periods, geology from the point of view of astronomy. When the duration of a man's life or of a people's life appears to us as microscopic as that of a fly and inversely, the life of a gnat as infinite as that of a celestial body, with all its dust of nations, we feel ourselves at once very small and very great, and we are able, as it were, to survey from the height of the spheres our own existence, and the little whirlwinds which ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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 ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... if it would be very reasonable for a moth that flits about the light, or a gnat that dances its hour in the sunbeam, to be proud because it had longer wings, or prettier markings on them, than some of its fellows? Is it much more reasonable for us to plume ourselves on, and set much store by, anything that we are or have done? ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... we see before us on the Thames, are the just resemblance of his Wit. You may observe how near the water they stoop! how many proffers they make to dip, and yet how seldom they touch it! and when they do, 'tis but the surface! they skim over it, but to catch a gnat, and then mount in the air ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... as bad as he had expected. The black gnat was on the water, and the water was strictly preserved. A three-quarter-pounder at the second cast set him for the campaign, and he worked down-stream, crouching behind the reed and meadowsweet; creeping between a hornbeam hedge and a foot-wide strip of bank, where ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... "Little Tanner," or "Tanner" alone; Harry Smith, being a swarthy, dark-haired fellow, was "Blacksmith;" and I, Nathaniel Herrick, was dubbed the first day "Poet"—I, who had never made a line in my life— and later on, as I was rather diminutive, the "Gnat." ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... such a rage!—I could tear her to pieces!—the little!—the gnat! Oh, I'll be revenged! Stop till the will is read, and then I'll turn her out into the streets to starve. Yes! yes! the will!—the will! (Pauses and pants for breath.) Now, I recollect the old fellow called for his mixture. I must go and ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... Division, Sir," he says curtly, and clicks before I can answer. A faint far gnat-voice says, "Is that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various
... man need not pride himself upon his honesty above his fellow-men. Oftenest he is to be found paying lithe of mint, anise, and cumin, and neglecting the weightier matters of the law—justice, mercy, and truth. He strains at a gnat and swallows a camel. He is not more trustworthy than the man whose conversation is embellished with hyperbole, because he at least has the wit to discriminate, and the ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... goes out one morning with his flocks to the woodland glades whose charms the poet describes at length in a rather imitative rhapsody. The shepherd then falls asleep; a serpent approaches and is about to strike him when a gnat, seeing the danger, stings him in time to save him. But—such is the fatalism of cynical fable-lore—the shepherd, still in a stupor, crushes the gnat that has saved his life. At night the gnat's ghost returns ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... confused, imperceptible sounds, coming no doubt from the nocturnal universe which wakes while the other sleeps. Nature permits no suspension of life, even for repose. She created her nocturnal world, even as she created her daily world, from the gnat which buzzes about the sleeper's pillow to the lion prowling around ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... hypocrites! for ye tithe mint and anise and cummin, and have left undone the weightier matters of the law, justice, and mercy, and faith: but these ye ought to have done, and not to have left the other undone. Ye blind guides that strain out the gnat, ...
— His Life - A Complete Story in the Words of the Four Gospels • William E. Barton, Theodore G. Soares, Sydney Strong
... Sprinkle out of flower bells Mortal sense entrapping spells; Make no sound On the ground; Strew and lap and lay around. Gnat nor snail Here assail, Beetle, slug, nor spider here, Now descend, Nor depend, Off from any ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... entreated God to know who this stranger was; and learning by revelation that he was the great Macarius, embraced him, thanked him for his edifying visit, and desired him to return to his desert, and there offer up his prayers for them.[3] Our saint happened one day inadvertently to kill a gnat that was biting him in his cell; reflecting that he had lost the opportunity of suffering that mortification, he hastened from his cell for the marshes of Scete, which abound with great flies, whose stings pierce even boars. There he continued six months exposed to those ravaging ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... good deal, bein' so mad at the Nation for makin' such dretful hard work partakin' of a gnat, and then swallerin' down Barnum's hull ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... identically the type of structure of the absolute. It is obvious that all your difficulties here remain and go with you. If the relative experience was inwardly absurd, the absolute experience is infinitely more so. Intellectualism, in short, strains off the gnat, but swallows the whole camel. But this polemic against the absolute is as odious to me as it is to you, so I will say no more about that being. It is only one of those wills of the wisp, those lights that do mislead the morn, that have so often impeded the clear progress of philosophy, ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... to step into the office to inquire after my comrades. One of the whey-faced clerks said with the supercilious asperity characteristic of gnat-brained headquarters attaches: ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... because he knew that Trenchard was a fool and that he himself was not, was vexed, as a bull is vexed by a red flag. These things made him think a great deal about Trenchard. I have seen him watching him with angry and puzzled gaze as though he would satisfy himself why this gnat of ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... supposed to have occurred before the rise of the curtain; always provided that the consequences deduced from them within the limits of the play were logical, plausible, and entertaining. The public will swallow a camel, he would maintain, in the past, though they will strain at a gnat in the present. A classical example of this principle is (once more) the Oedipus Rex, in which several of the initial postulates are wildly improbable: for instance, that Oedipus should never have inquired into the circumstances of the death of Laius, and that, having been warned ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... the public cost; and another 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 ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... world to tell, Higher as the Deluge flow'd, How the frog and how the toad, With the lizard and the eft, All their holes and coverts left, And assembled on the height; Soon I ween appeared in sight All that's wings beneath the sky, Bat and swallow, wasp and fly, Gnat and sparrow, and behind Comes the crow of carrion kind; Dove and pigeon are descried, And the raven fiery-eyed, With the beetle and the crane Flying on the hurricane: See they find no resting-place, ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... scruples. But a liberal construction, justified by the object, may go far, and an amendment of the constitution, the whole length necessary. The separation of infants from their mothers, too, would produce some scruples of humanity. But this would be straining at a gnat, and swallowing a camel. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... thing: Ladybird, nor butterfly, Nor moth with dusty wing, Nor cricket chirping cheerily, Nor grasshopper so light of leap, Nor dancing gnat, nor beetle fat, ...
— An Elementary Study of Insects • Leonard Haseman
... one element in the sum of things. It is the element that man knows best. The lives of the gnat and the tiger he scarcely more than guesses at. Other possible existences than his own there may be, even within this mundane sphere, of which he knows nothing. Of humanity he knows something, and he sees that it is moved toward ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... attention. His black plumage looks as though it were made of rich velvet. On his head he wears a cap as white as snow. His tail, rump, and abdomen are bright chestnut red, so that, as he leaps into the air after the circling gnat, he looks almost as if he ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... the fouler aspect of things with an unhealthy pruriency; he stung right and left with a malignant venom. But nobler qualities rose out of this morbid undergrowth of faults. If Pope was quickly moved to anger, he was as quickly moved to tears; though every literary gnat could sting him to passion, he could never read the lament of Priam over Hector without weeping. His sympathies lay indeed within a narrow range, but within that range they were vivid and intense; he clung passionately to the few he loved; he took their ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... anything seems to me to be more believable than to suppose that the nature which is capable of these elevating emotions and aspirations of confidence and hope, which can know God and yearn after Him, and can love Him, is to be wiped out like a gnat by the finger of Death. The material has nothing to do with these feelings, and if I know myself, in however feeble and imperfect a degree, to be the son of God, I carry in the conviction the very pledge and seal of eternal life. That is a thought 'whose very sweetness ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... instead of torn white copy-books. Each searcher followed the sign of his or her own favourite flower; like a Jack-in-the-Box each one bobbed up and down, smelling, panting, darting hither and thither as in the mazes of some gnat—or animal-dance, till knees and hands were stained with sweet brown earth, and lips and noses gleamed with the ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... continue, you must soon have the relief of some one with whom to share the secret,—some one towards whom you could be yourself occasionally. And when I found you had been writing to him here, sending the letter to be posted in Cairo (how like a woman, to strain at a gnat, after swallowing such a camel!), awaiting its return day after day, then obliged to read it to him yourself, and take down his dictated answer, which I gathered from your faces when I entered was his refusal of your request ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... 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 render a knowledge of everything in natural ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various
... so 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
... establishment as a lever towards the realisation of his own far-reaching ambitions. He brought with him from the United States, in addition to his elegant wife, two dry, pale children, whose contours were less Raphaelesque than gnat-like, and the acuteness of whose critical faculty was very much more in evidence than that of their affections. These bright little results of modernity and applied science—in the shape of the incubator—took their place in the social movement, at the ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... not numerous, there was neither gnat nor musquito, nor any other species that was either hurtful or troublesome, which perhaps is more than can be said of any other uncleared country. During the snow-blasts, which happened every day while we were here, they hide themselves; and the moment it is fair they appear again, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... would have strength enough to move them: to support the megatherium, we must have a humerus a foot in diameter, though perhaps not more than two feet long, and that in a vertical position under him, while the gnat can hang on the window frame, and poise himself to sting, in the middle of crooked stilts like threads; stretched out to ten times the breadth of his body on each side. Increase the size of the megatherium ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... action weak; Both pitiful and pitiless, and both As men are—bound upon this wheel of change, Knowing the former and the after lives. For so our scriptures truly seem to teach, That—once, and wheresoe'er, and whence begun— Life runs its rounds of living, climbing up From mote, and gnat, and worm, reptile, and fish, Bird and shagged beast, man, demon, Deva, God, To clod and mote again; so are we kin To all that is; and thus, if one might save Man from his curse, the whole wide world should share The lightened horror of this ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... would be made an F.R.S., and his portrait given away as a scientific worthy with Nature, and things like that. And that was all he saw! He would have dropped this bombshell into the world as though he had discovered a new species of gnat, if it had not happened that I had come along. And there it would have lain and fizzled, like one or two other little things these scientific people have lit ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... thousand priests slain none was left but Joshua the son of Jozedek, of whom it is written, "Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?" (Zech. iii. 2). Of Titus it is said that he was unclean in the Temple, and with a blow of his sword rent the veil, which flowed with blood. To punish him a gnat was sent into his brain, which grew as large as a dove. When his skull was opened, the gnat was found to have a mouth of copper, and ...
— Hebrew Literature |
