"Gnat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... . . . Doves of the fir-wood walling high our red roof Through the long noon coo, crooning through the coo. Loose droop the leaves, and down the sleepy roadway Sometimes pipes a chaffinch; loose droops the blue. Cows flap a show tail knee-deep in the river, Breathless, given up to sun and gnat and fly. Nowhere is she seen; and if I see her nowhere, Lighting may come, straight rains and tiger sky. . . . O the golden sheaf, the rustling treasure-armful! O the nutbrown tresses nodding interlaced! O the treasure-tresses one another over ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... 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 ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... chorus of admiring preachers, "How Providence provides for all His creatures!" "His care," the gnat said, "even the insects follows: For us He has provided ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... thou a lover's eye, A gnat, a mote, a shadow thou wouldst spy. Come, follow me; she cannot be so far, But I shall overtake ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... hour was the living reality and Michael, her lover, and her own love were the things that mattered, the woman in the hut the one brilliant vision. Life was vital, urgent. A gnat's life would be long enough if it was to be passed with the woman whom she knew, in the coming struggle, would fight with tools which she, Meg, would not dare or deign to touch. As vivid as her vision of the tomb was her memory of Millicent Mervill's beauty. She could see it illuminating ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... 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
... 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 has been ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... grandmothers.[1228] On the other 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 folk-survivals show that transmigration was not necessarily ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... 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
... why 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
... 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 ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... That 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 ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... 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 ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... 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, and ...
— His Life - A Complete Story in the Words of the Four Gospels • William E. Barton, Theodore G. Soares, Sydney Strong
... counts with his lens the number of threads to the inch; a physician, when he wishes, can, with the aid of the microscope, examine the cells in a muscle, or in a piece of fat, or in a nerve fiber. Not only is the human body composed of cells, but so also are the bodies of all animals from the tiny gnat which annoys us, and the fly which buzzes around us, to the mammoth creatures of the tropics. These cells do the work of the body, the bone cells build up the skeleton, the nail cells form the finger and toe nails, the lung cells take care ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... for even hinting a doubt as to the precise truth of the longevity attributed to the Patriarchs? Who that has swallowed the camel of Jonah's journey will be guilty of the affectation of straining at such a historical gnat—nay, midge—as the supposition that the mother of Moses was told the story of the Flood by Jacob; who had it straight from Shem; who was on friendly terms with Methuselah; ...
— The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science - Essay #6 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... 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 he dare ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... another family, and smaller, but much like the buffalo-gnat in habits, are the minute little "punkies" or "no-see-ums" which sometimes occur in great swarms in certain regions where they make life a burden to man and beast. While it has not been shown that either the buffalo-gnats ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane
... of respectability, even by those who, in 1856, forcibly and lawlessly, as Vigilance Committee members, banishement for stuffing ballot-boxes to secure merely a local advantage by the success of a ward ticket. Straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel never had more conspicuous illustration. And the burning fact remains incredible that among the members of the Executive Committee were some who had themselves obtained office by bribery and corruption, by calling into play the stuffing of ballot-boxes, and by all ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara
... in 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 ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... train, the mother sat a long time on the piazza thinking. The telephone rang at last. She sighed, went to its corner, and sat down to stop its annoying peremptoriness. For days it had reminded her of an inescapable, buzzing gnat, a thousand ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... gilded bandwagon with the poodles and the stuffed supers on the box. Aubrey owns them all except the rubies, which he rents. I'm billed as the most notorious woman in America, and the shred of reputation I have left wouldn't make a neck-tie for a gnat, whereas in reality I love marshmallows and tea much more than men. But I'm a star, at the head of my own company, and playing to sidewalk prices. Do you think it was ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... 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 ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... 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 ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... 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, ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... 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 back ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... without wings, from the spider to the scorpion, from the flea to the lobster; or with wings, from the gnat or the ant to the wasp and the dragon-fly, differ so totally from each other, and from the red-blooded classes above described, both in the forms of their bodies and in their modes of life; besides the organ of sense, which they seem to possess ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... and if "the latter end of his 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
... all else, had theretofore been left untouched by the central power, and subject to the independent jurisdiction of each individual State. The South had eagerly swallowed a camel, and when it asked the country to strain at a gnat it found nobody to listen. Our public men, and our leaders of opinion, frequently and earnestly express their concern over the decline of importance in our State governments, the lessened vigor of the State spirit. The sentiment ...
— What Prohibition Has Done to America • Fabian Franklin
... 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
... 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 August treads the burning streets bleaching the very ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... pygmy, pigmy[obs3], Liliputian, chit, pigwidgeon[obs3], 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; atom &c. (small quantity) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... asked charity of me, why should people be poor? You shan't be poor, Jarvis; if I was a king, nobody should be poor. Yet He is poor. And then he was so brave!—O, he was a brave little boy! And yet so merciful, he'd not have killed the gnat that stung him. ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore
... 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 a man ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... 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 ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... 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 ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... my fate was my fate, there was little use in straining at the gnat. So I set to and did upon me the garmentry of shame. They were made after the fashion of my father's, cap and hosen and shoon all of red, with a cloak of red to ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... in which it seems to rest is about noon, when the heat puts it down for a little. But this period of rest strengthens it for a renewal of war during the remainder of the day and night. In form the mosquito very much resembles the gnat, but is somewhat larger. This instrument of torture is his nose, which is quite as long as his body, and sharper than the finest needle. Being unable to rest because of the mosquitoes, Heywood resolved to ...
— Away in the Wilderness • R.M. Ballantyne
... Gotthold, 'or else stay where he is. What gnat has bitten you to-day? Do you not know that you are touching, with lay hands, the very holiest inwards of philosophy, where madness dwells? Ay, Otto, madness; for in the serene temples of the wise, the inmost shrine, which we carefully keep locked, is full of spiders' webs. All men, all, ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... undid the oil-silk package everybody held his breath, except poor Aunt Jane, who most inopportunely swallowed a gnat and choked. ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... of ascertaining the rate at which the wings of such creatures flap. The instrument being brought into unison with the sound produced by the insect, indicates, as in the case of any other musical sound, the rate of vibration. In this way it has been ascertained that the wings of a gnat flap at the rate of 15,000 times per second. The pitch of the note produced by this insect in the act of flying is, therefore, more than two octaves above the highest note of a seven-octave ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... of; and they shall be supplied with several sorts of fruit having a mutual resemblance to one another. There shall they enjoy wives subject to no impurity, and there shall they continue forever. Moreover God will not be ashamed to propound in a parable a gnat, or even a more despicable thing: for they who believe will know it to be the truth from their Lord; but the unbelievers will say, What meaneth God by this parable? he will thereby mislead many, and will direct ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... then it was decidedly a pity that he had not stayed in the church. It was ridiculous to strain at the cathedral gnat and then swallow Lady ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... 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 to rebuke the shepherd for his innocent ingratitude, and rather ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... spirit.'—I wonder 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? Two or three plain questions, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... with its excessively delicate feet on the glands of the outermost tentacles, and these were already beginning to curve inwards, though not a single gland had as yet touched the body of the insect. Had I not interfered, this minute gnat would [page 17] assuredly have been carried to the centre of the leaf and been securely clasped on all sides. We shall hereafter see what excessively small doses of certain organic fluids and saline ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... 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 the ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... 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 that wide ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... length the spider approached—touched him—and he felt the large, cold, and hairy paws of the monster encircle him. He thought himself dead, but suddenly he heard a kind of humming noise, clear and acute, and saw a little golden gnat, which had a kind of sting as fine and brilliant as a diamond needle, flying round the spider in a furious manner, and a voice (when I say voice, just imagine the voice of a gnat!)-a voice said to him, 'Poor little fly! you have saved ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... 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 ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... 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). Gwallgoyc another. (When ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... windows; therefore the sun streams in undisturbed; and when a room has four windows, as happened 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 ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... a great 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
... I'm not making an effort, Ed?" she asked slowly, again looking into the fire, where the kettle now made a gnat-like singing. ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... the Christian world arises (as I take it) from a stubborn determination to refuse the New Testament as a sufficient guide in itself, and to force the Old Testament into alliance with it—whereof comes all manner of camel-swallowing and of gnat-straining. But so to resent this miserable error, or to (by any implication) depreciate the divine goodness and beauty of the New Testament, is to commit even a worse error. And to class Jesus Christ with Mahomet is simply ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... 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 swallowing ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... One day a gnat stung S. Macarius, and he killed it. To punish himself for this, he went to the marshes of Scete, and stayed there six months. When he returned to his brethren he was so disfigured by the bites of the insects that they recognised him only by the tone of his voice. A Brahmin would have been ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... towards it, and 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 truths which modern optical inquiries have disclosed, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 471, Saturday, January 15, 1831 • Various
... own I like not Johnson's turgid style, That gives an inch the importance of a mile; Casts of manure a wagon-load around To raise a simple daisy from the ground; Uplifts the club of Hercules—for what?— To crush a butterfly or brain a gnat; Creates a whirlwind from the earth to draw A goose's feather or exalt a straw; Sets wheels on wheels in motion—such a clatter! To force up one poor nipperkin of water; Bids ocean labour with tremendous ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various
... 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 claws ...
— Hebrew Literature
... sleep 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 ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... health of our immigrants when inside the city we are all the time encouraging a high degree of receptivity towards this very disease? I should call this a very clear case of straining at the international gnat and swallowing the municipal camel. The community at present is at the mercy of its least instructed members. A most sensible suggestion is that if an outbreak of smallpox occurs in Halifax, the cost of it should be borne by the unvaccinated and ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... 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 ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... that Gulliver should be ever reconciled to the rat against whom he was obliged to draw his sword? Many animals are, to children, what the wasp and the rat were to Gulliver. Put bodily fear out of the case, it required all uncle Toby's benevolence to bear the buzzing of a gnat while he was eating his dinner. Children, even when they have no cause to be afraid of animals, are sometimes in situations to be provoked by them; and the nice casuist will find it difficult to do strict justice upon the ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... 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 ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... diminution Of space had pointed him sharp as my needle; Nay, followed him till he had melted from The smallness of a gnat to air; and then Have ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... master, there's no denying that; you must be first chop in heaven, else you won't like it much. But you're my sister's husband, and we ought to stick together; and if I know Harriet, she'll consider it your fault if we quarrel because you strain at a gnat in this way, and refuse to do Fred a good turn. And I don't mean to say I shall bear it well. I consider ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... have married—the Earl of Paulton's niece." Lady Martin paused a moment to brush away an inquisitive gnat. "It was quite a romantic affair, at first. Mr. Rose was devoted, positively devoted to her, and she is really a charming girl, handsome, accomplished, in every way a contrast to the poor ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... victory over these little cares is not for ever to have them on one's mind; or one becomes like the bread-and-butter fly in Through the Looking-Glass, whose food was weak tea with cream in it. "But supposing it cannot find any?" said Alice. "Then it dies," says the gnat, who is acting the part of interpreter. "But that must happen very often?" said Alice. "It ALWAYS happens!" says ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... mosquito, 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 ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... incredible and 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 almost hysterical reviler ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... quickly multiplied into a bundle and then a bale, and all at once the camel's back had more than it could bear. April was hardly dead before the college world was in a turmoil, by the side of which the Young affair was the mere buzzing of a gnat. ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Is it Ephraim? No; it's a fly, something like a gnat" (then at an impatient gesture from her Majesty) "disporting itself in the ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 he saw the two ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... for. He alone can quicken thee, and give thee spirit and power to fulfil thy duty in thy generation. Is not his Spirit the Lord and Giver of life—the only fount and eternal spring of life? From him life flows out unto the smallest blade of grass beneath thy feet, the smallest gnat which dances in the sun, that it may live the life which God intends for it. How much more to thee, who hast an altogether boundless power of life; whom God has made in his own likeness, that thou mayest be called his son, and live his life, and do, as Christ did, what ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... agreed in supposing it possessed nothing remarkable but dulness and obstinacy. Lucian exercised his genius on a fly; and Erasmus has dignified Folly in his Encomium Moriae, which, for the sake of the pun, he inscribed to Sir Thomas More. The subject of Michael Psellus is a Gnat; Antonius Majoragius took for his theme Clay; Julius Scaliger wrote concerning a Goose; Janus Dousa on a Shadow; and Heinsius (horresco referens) eulogized a Louse. This last animal elicited some fine moral verses ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... badgers would appear at the mouth of the "set," and, with snout uplifted in 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
... 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
... beasts whirled 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 ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... flinging Their witchery o'er me here: I hear sweet voices singing A song as soft, as clear, As (previously to stinging) A gnat sings ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... pleased equally both Maimoune and Danhasch. Maimoune then changed herself into a gnat, and leaping on the prince's neck stung him so smartly that he awoke, and put up his hand to the place; but Maimoune skipped away, and resumed her own form, which, like those of the two genies, was invisible, the better to observe what ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon
... the inch when ye've tholed the span," cried Matthew; "I'd nivver strain lang at sic a wee gnat as that." ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... and Mr. Howard Payne, and a long list of the illustrious obscure? Are these the men who in their venal good nature presumed to draw a parallel between the Reverend Mr. Milman and Lord Byron? What gnat did they strain at here, after having swallowed all those camels? Against what woman taken in adultery dares the foremost of these literary prostitutes to cast his opprobrious stone? Miserable man! you, one ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... thing has God created in vain. He created the snail as a remedy for a blister; the fly for the sting of a wasp; the gnat for the bite of a serpent; the serpent itself for healing the itch (or the scab); and the lizard (or the spider) for the sting ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... 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 ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... be applied when I wish to protect a favourite interest at 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 enactments directly opposed to the rule which they profess to respect. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... risen, 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 her girdle's ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... thousands of years past. It will continue to remain sensibly true for thousands of years to come, but it will not remain true indefinitely. It is merely a stage in this grand transformation; it may possess the attributes of permanence to our ephemeral view, just as the wings of a gnat seem at rest when illuminated by the electric spark; but when we contemplate the history with time conceptions sufficiently ample for astronomy we realise how the present condition of the earth-moon system can have no greater permanence ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... 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
... frankly, my friends, if you were to see through the microscope a few of the wonderful things which are going on round you now in every leaf, and every gnat which dances in the sunbeam; if you were to learn even the very little which is known about them, you would see wonders which would surpass your powers of reasoning, just as much as that far greater wonder of the ever-blessed Trinity; ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley
... as may be seen for instance in the Democratic donkey, I have persisted and succeeded. This rather thin-legged creature near the fence is the camel that tried to pass through the needle's eye, and the one close beside him is the one swallowed by the man who strained at a gnat. Harrington asserts that he has never been able to see how either phenomenon is possible, but the problem is only half as difficult as it appears. For it is evident that if a camel were small enough to pass through the eye of a needle, there would be comparatively little ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... 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 ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... as freakish, and wears as many shapes as Puck; a gnat, a will-o'-the-wisp, a Sister of Charity, a meek-faced child; and one does not know in which guise she pleases most. Hard the task of him who has and tries ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... 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 hence. The catkins ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... belonging to this class of birds, are few. I have observed the black and white creeping warbler, the Kentucky warbler, the worm-eating warbler, the redstart, and the gnat-catcher, breeding near ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... 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
... happy for the day. Piles 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 ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... the other side;—when the gold and diamonds shone in the clefts of the rocks, he gathered and analyzed them. The Leviathan he studied and classed. He groped and reached constantly, and, having gathered, looked at his gatherings, dissatisfied. He was ever searching out knowledge. Meanwhile, a gnat put him in a passion, and unleavened bread destroyed his peace. Though he might sleep on rose-leaves, as he could not command the wind, they came often to double under him, and annoy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... dinner, I woke from my frenzy to find all that I had was gone. I would have asked you for more, and you would have given it; but that strange, ridiculous something which we misname Southern honour, that honour which strains at a gnat and swallows a camel, withheld me, and I preferred to do worse. So I lied to you. The money from my cabinet was not stolen save by myself. I am a liar and a thief, but your eyes shall never tell ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... young masters, allow 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
... finances between your father and me will not be a very desperate one. A gnat attacking a tiger. I shall scarcely interest him. I am ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... 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 ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... when she produces her three children and all ends merrily without marriage-bells. Von Hammer prefers this version as the more dramatic, the Frenchman rejects it on account of the difficulties of the accouchements. Here he strains at the gnat— a common process. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... 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. S ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... in the room suspended action in anxiety to know how the "yearling" would take it. Would their chivalry, which strained at a gnat, be compelled to swallow such a conspicuous camel as the success of Simpson? With the attitude he had taken towards the girl, there had crept into the company an imperceptible change; deep-buried impulses sprang to the surface. ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... 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 remain ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... 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 ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... experience in two words— every one of these creatures has an easier life of it than man. Their aims, their wants, are all confined to the body: such a thing as a tax-farming horse or a litigant frog, a jackdaw sophist, a gnat confectioner, or a cock pander, is unknown; they ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... 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
... all kings;" and God said to him, "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 fed, and increased ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... 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 ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... undone." Are there not many who would think it a great fault to stay away from the church on the Sabbath or week day, and yet will not stick to swear,—to drink often? "Woe unto you, for ye strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel;" therefore are the prophets full of these expostulations. The people seemed to make conscience of ceremonies and external ordinances, but they did not order their conversation aright; they did not execute judgment, and relieve the oppressed, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... Cavorine, and he 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 and dropped ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... the other; but when he got around to the end of his circle he had to begin all over again to see if they didn't all taste better the second time. My, it was a feast that made his eyes open and his stomach swell like a toad's trying to swallow a gnat. ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... came for the war to begin, the willow-wren sent out spies to discover who was the enemy's commander-in-chief. The gnat, who was the most crafty, flew into the forest where the enemy was assembled, and hid herself beneath a leaf of the tree where the watchword was to be given. There stood the bear, and he called the fox before him and said, "Fox, thou art the ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... altogether an outcast. Little girls seem to like him. One of them, after listening to some of his tales, remarked to her mother, "Wouldn't it be lovely if what he says were true!" Here you have Woman! The charming creatures will neither strain at a camel nor swallow a gnat. Not publicly. These operations, without which the world they have such a large share in could not go on for ten minutes, are left to us—men. And then we are chided for being coarse. This is a refined objection but does not seem fair. ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... the pole under Georgiana's window several times within the last two or three days, It looks like a little dip-net, high and dry in the air; but so far as I can see with my unaided eye, it has caught nothing so large as a gnat. It has attracted no end of attention from the birds of the neighborhood, however, who never saw a goldfinch's nest swung to the end of a leafless pole and placed where it could be so exactly reached by the human hand. In particular it has fallen under the notice of a pair of wrens, which ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen
... transformed, and the maiden rose into the air as a puff of wind, and the prince sported in the breeze like a gnat. The mighty host of spirits swept over them like a tempest, and returned some time afterwards, as they could neither find the rose-bush nor anything else remarkable. But they were hardly gone before the youth and the maiden resumed their proper forms, and the maiden cried out, "Now we must make haste, ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... 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
... north until they came to the Little Colorado, near San Francisco Mountains, and there they built houses up and down the river. They also made long ditches to carry the water from the river to their gardens. After living there a long while they began to be plagued with swarms of a kind of gnat called the sand-fly, which bit the children, causing them to swell up and die. The place becoming unendurable, they were forced again to resume their travels. Before starting, one of the Rain-women, who was big with ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... 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 just to ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 22, 1914 • Various
... they are alive, Half wishing they were dead to save the shame. The sudden blush devours them, neck and brow; They have drawn too near the fire of life, like gnats, And flare up boldly, wings and all. What then? Who's sorry for a gnat ... or girl? 196 MRS. BROWNING: Aurora Leigh, Bk. ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... nature and betray your poets when they grow old. What fate befell Magnes,[67] when his hair went white? Often enough has he triumphed over his rivals; he has sung in all keys, played the lyre and fluttered wings; he turned into a Lydian and even into a gnat, daubed himself with green to become a frog.[68] All in vain! When young, you applauded him; in his old age you hooted and mocked him, because his genius for raillery had gone. Cratinus[69] again was like a torrent of glory rushing across the plain, uprooting ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... to in these pages my brother Nathan is meant. One of his noms de plume was Gnat Q. Hale, because G and Q ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... Nwython, and Gwydre the son of Llwyddeu, (Gwenabwy the daughter of [Kaw] was his mother, Hueil his uncle stabbed him, and hatred was between Hueil and Arthur because of the wound). Drem the son of Dremidyd, (when the gnat arose in the morning with the sun, he could see it from Gelli Wic in Cornwall, as far off as Pen Blathaon in North Britain). And Eidyol the son of Ner, and Glwyddyn Saer, (who constructed Ehangwen, Arthur's Hall). Kynyr Keinvarvawc, ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 2 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... his head 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 ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang
... thinness &c 203. dwarf, pygmy, pigmy^, Liliputian, chit, pigwidgeon^, urchin, elf; atomy^, dandiprat^; doll, puppet; Tom Thumb, Hop-o'-my-thumb^; manikin, mannikin; homunculus, dapperling^, cock-sparrow. animalcule, monad, mite, insect, emmet^, fly, midge, gnat, shrimp, minnow, worm, maggot, entozoon^; bacteria; infusoria^; microzoa [Micro.]; phytozoaria^; microbe; grub; tit, tomtit, runt, mouse, small fry; millet seed, mustard seed; barleycorn; pebble, grain of sand; molehill, button, bubble. point; atom &c (small quantity) 32; fragment &c (small ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... much embarrassed when we ask them in what way can so many mischievous animals which continually infest our life here, contribute to the welfare of men. What known advantage results for God's friend to be bitten by a viper, stung by a gnat, devoured by vermin, torn into pieces by a tiger? Would not all these animals reason as wisely as our theologians, if they should pretend that man was ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... atomies, Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep: Her waggon spokes made of long spinners' 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 waggoner, a small grey coated gnat, Not half so big as a round little worm, Prickt from the lazy finger of a maid. Her chariot is an empty hazel nut, Made by the joiner squirril, old grub, Time out of mind the fairies' coachmakers: And in this state she gallops night by night, Thro' lovers' ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... Episcopalians, hypocrites! for you drop your checks into the collection-plate and you pay no heed to the really important things in the Bible, which are justice and mercy and faith in goodness. You blind guides, who strain at a gnat and swallow a camel! (Laughter). Woe unto you, doctors of divinity and Anglicans, hypocrites! for you bathe yourselves and dress in immaculate clothing but within you are full of extortion and excess. You blind high churchmen, clean first your hearts, so ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair |
