"Molehill" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... refusing to pass nearly all of them. But General MacDonough, however, squashed all that. Then one of my titles got me into trouble. My first "Colonel's" set had been waiting all the year to get something against me, and now they worked up a molehill to a mountain. I had to go constantly to the War Office, and I was talked to very severely. In fact, I was in black disgrace. My behaviour could not have been worse, according to Intelligence (F), or whatever they were ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen
... a poem of his which is little known, and which is amplified and spoiled in the latest editions of his works, has suggested to us whither the mortal vestiges of these untold millions have gone. It is entitled Lines to a Molehill in a Churchyard. ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... gloomy chamber. "More by token I wish you no worse than just to be doing as you're bid—and faith, it's but what's right!—and go your way. 'Tis a cold, damp, unchancy place you've chosen, Colonel," he continued, with a grin; "like nothing in all the wide world so much as that same molehill. Well, glory be to God, it can't be said I'm one for talking; but, if you're asking my advice, you'll be wiser acting first than last, ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... comic in their movements as the life-sized ones in Catania, not because they were better managed, but because they attempted less and because, being so small, their defects were less obvious. A small one may, and generally does, enter like a bird alighting on a molehill, but he has such a short distance to go that he is at rest before one realizes that he has not attempted to walk. Besides it is a mode of progression we are all familiar with, having practised it in dreams since childhood. A life-sized marionette, on a larger stage, has, perhaps, ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... she said, of how young girls should behave, but they were the right views, and so long as I was under her roof and in her care, she would see that I conformed to them. She went on making a mountain out of our little molehill, till even Grandfather broke in with a word; and then she snapped at him, got into her second wind and went off again. I didn't listen half the time. I just stood and watched her as you'd watch one of those weird old women in one of Dickens' books come to life. ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... scrap of paper shall not spoil a pleasant meal. It is a mere molehill in our path. Here's success to our expedition.—Hah! better vine ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... said Louis Stout, of Flugel & Stout. "When you are coming to compare Johnsonhurst mit Burgess Park it's already a molehill ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... Undulating gently on elastic springs, the vehicle cautiously descended the steep incline, and then proceeded past water-mills, rumbled over a bridge or two, and jolted easily along the rough-set road which traversed the flats. Not a molehill, not a mound jarred the spine. ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... returned Frank deprecatingly, "you're makin' a mountain out'n a molehill. I ain't done nuthin' ter speak of—not half ez much ez I would 'a' done. I wuz glad ter do w'at little I could, fer ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... us at all, when on a large scale impresses us so much? What is the secret of the impressiveness of size, bulk, height, depth, speed, and mileage? Philosophically, a mountain is no more wonderful than a molehill, yet no man is knighted for climbing a molehill. One little drop of water and one little grain of sand are essentially as wonderful as 'the mighty ocean' or 'the beauteous land' to which they contribute. A balloon is no more wonderful than an air-bubble, and were you to build an Atlantic ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... yourself, mon ami. You're going to get out of this wretched, unkempt state of melancholia at once. Tanrade has told me much. You know as well as I do, the village is a nest of gossip—that they make a mountain out of a molehill; if I were a pirate chief and had captured this vagabond port, I'd have a few of those wagging tongues taken out and ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... to the top of a fresh molehill, I fell to my neck in the hole through which that animal had cast up the earth, and coined some lie, not worth remembering, to excuse myself for spoiling my clothes. I likewise broke my right shin against the shell of a snail, which I happened to stumble over, as I was walking alone, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... that I could not stay in bed. It was the kind of sensation with which I wake when I am going to cross the Channel, only it did not make me rush to my window to see how much wind there was. Nothing I have been told is easier in this life than to make a mountain out of a molehill, but in my short experience it is the wretched little molehills which upset me and not the great big things which sweep me away with them. I would rather have to fight one mountain than two molehills any day, you get so much more sympathy after the struggle. But I must admit that ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... out of a molehill, Mary, and I won't hear any such nonsense. You heard an absurd story, as to what someone had been doing, and you naturally made a hero of him. You were hurt by my speaking slightingly of this hero of yours, and naturally thought I was jealous at hearing such praises of another from my betrothed ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... been at Honham, once ten, and once four years ago. Now he was come to abide there for good. His old aunt, Mrs. Massey, had owned a place in the village—a very small place— called Honham Cottage, or Molehill, and on those two occasions he visited her. Mrs. Massey was dead and buried. She had left him the property, and with some reluctance, he had given up his profession, in which he saw no further prospects, and come to live upon it. This was his first evening in the place, for he had arrived by ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... veteran missionary, the Rev. Robert Moffat. He may be expected, with Mrs. Moffat, about the month of June. Mr. Moffat no longer enjoys his former robust health. In his last letter he writes: 'What to me was formerly a molehill is now a mountain, and we both have for some time past begun to feel some of the labour and sorrow so frequently experienced by those who have passed their three-score years ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... remarked one evening in the dug-out after dinner, "are very easy to see if you have eyes to see them with. One is nothing; two are a coincidence; three are a moral certainty. A really trained man can see a molehill; I can see a mountain; most of you fellows couldn't see the Himalayas." With which sage remark he thoughtfully lit his pipe and relapsed into silence. And silence being his usual characteristic he came into the Battalion Head-quarters dug-out one evening and ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... had come about these three. If I took my eyes off a group for a moment they were attracted to other groups or single shapes. Some lay at ease on the sward, resting on elbow; some prone, on both elbows; some seemed asleep, their heads on molehill pillows; some sat huddling together, with their chins upon their knees; some knelt face to face and held each other fondly; some were teasing, some chasing others, winding in and out of the scattered groups. But everything was doing in ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... if you could see her as she really is, you would find she knew more about it than you did, and understood some other things beside, which were dark riddles to you. That is often a mountain to one which is only a molehill to another. And trouble is as it is taken. If there were no more troubles in this world than what we give each other in pure kindness or in simple ignorance, girls, there would ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... of mine have an errand there as well as he. But he did not go about it as a loyal man, to advance the honor of his queen, but his own honor only, dreaming that he too should be a king; and was not ashamed to tell her majesty that he had rather be sovereign of a molehill than the highest ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... road that led to the Cascades. He repented him of his suspicions. There was nothing strange in the presence of the chaplain. Sylvia had always liked the man, and an apology for his conduct had doubtless removed her anger. To make a mountain out of a molehill was the act of an idiot. It was natural that she should release Dawes—women were so tender-hearted. A few well-chosen, calmly-uttered platitudes anent the necessity for the treatment that, to those unaccustomed to the ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... making a mountain out of a molehill," said a suave voice behind them, and, turning, Quin saw the somewhat perturbed face of Harold Phipps, "If she would listen to me for ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... other, in the affections of the nations, they were infinitely severed. This I say is not the least of God's blessings which his Majesty hath brought with him unto this land: no, put all our petty grievances together, and heap them up to their height, they will appear but as a molehill compared with the mountain of this concord. And if all the historians since then have acknowledged the uniting of the Red Rose, and the White, for the greatest happiness (Christian Religion excepted), that ever this kingdom received from God, certainly the ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... am not Of stronger earth than others.—My mother bows; As if Olympus to a molehill should In supplication nod; and my young boy Hath an aspect of intercession, which, Great Nature cries: 'Deny not.' Let the Volsces Plow Rome and harrow Italy; I'll never Be such a gosling to obey instinct; but stand, As ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... not only to her but to a number of the girls as well, to have Polly, in the midst of the general disapproval, suddenly shrug her shoulders and give a characteristic laugh. "Oh, for goodness' sake, don't let us make a mountain out of a molehill!" she begged. "I was coming back to camp this afternoon and happening to pass Nan's home, she told me something that I thought it great fun for us to know. Some of our boy friends are coming out to camp to-morrow disguised as Indians and mean ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook
... too. I don't want to run away with you ... not because I don't love you ... I do love you, Paddy, very much ... but it's so absurd to run away and make a ... a mountain out of a molehill. We should be awfully miserable if we were to elope. We'd have to go to some horrid place where we shouldn't know anybody and there'd be nothing to do. Really, it's much pleasanter to go on as we are now, Paddy. You can come here and take me to lunch sometimes ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... the shadow of impending disaster lay black upon her. Medenham's only thrill came when Cynthia asked for letters or telegrams at the Green Dragon, and was told there were none. Evidently, Peter Vanrenen was not a man to create a mountain out of a molehill. Mrs. Leland might be trusted to smooth away difficulties; perhaps he meant to await her ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... constantly visible. At times a snow hillock of perhaps fifty feet high would appear a short distance away to be a mountain of considerable altitude; at others the process would be reversed and the actual mountain would be dwarfed into a molehill. These phenomena were probably due to rarefied atmosphere, and they were most ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... I wouldn't make a mountain out of a molehill," said Ruth, quietly. "If you don't like Beatrice Severn, you need not associate with her—not even if she is going to be in your grade at school. But I would not quarrel with my best friend about her. That's hardly worth while, ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... sentimentalists, indeed, might pronounce it an uninteresting view. But what I consider splendid is this: with the exception of the nearest barn, which is about three hundred yards off in a straight line, there is no shelter better than that of a molehill for one of the enemy's skirmishers. Far as a rifle-ball can range, we are monarchs of the plain below; only there is a thicket in the way yonder—a plantation, ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag |
