"Gnat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... front of the table. The other things had not been moved. I believe she has never looked at the labels, but seized the first bottle that came to her hand—this dreadfully strong ammonia which you gave her for the gnat bites when she ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... following 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
... Bull to a trial of strength, all the People came to see the combat. Then {said} the Gnat: "'Tis enough that you have come to meet me in combat; for {though} little in my own idea, I am great in your judgment," {and so saying}, he took himself off on light wing through the air, and duped the multitude, and eluded ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... 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 are two hooked ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... adaptability, that does them infinite credit; and man, with all his strength, and all his majesty, and his commanding talent, is about as well off as a buffalo or a bison against a tiny, rainbow-winged gnat or mosquito, who bites, sings, and stings everywhere at once, with an infinite grace ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of this life, my friend, which often disturb a mental balance which is always poised to receive great shocks. The gnat-bites and mosquito buzzings are sometimes harder to bear than an operation with ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... 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
... multitude O'erthrow the senate, as mankind are wont To trample on the fallen. 'Tis truth I tell. The very fountains of my tears are dry, Sorrow no drop hath left, my eyes are sore Through my night watchings for the beacon light That should bring news of thee, but brought it not. A gnat's light whirring broke the dream of thee That in an hour compressed an age of woe. Now all this past, from carking sorrow free, I hail my lord, the watchdog of our fold, The ship's main stay, the pillar that upbears A lofty roof, dear as an only child, Welcome as land to seamen tossed ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... 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 ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... 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 ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... of "straining at a gnat, and swallowing a camel," is, in the Eastern states, rendered "straining at a ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... curl round and think about it; I cannot endure this state of things. How dreadful it is to be poor! I wish we had not dissipated our wealth so freely. However, there is a little left still in a secret corner. As I said, I must see about it. Here is a gnat. Gnat, will you carry a ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... and, lightly blending, sent forth offspring. Why not? All things were possible in this wonder-house of a world. Even that waltz tune, floating away, would find some melody to wed, and twine with, and produce a fresh chord that might float in turn to catch the hum of a gnat or fly, and breed again. Queer—how everything sought to entwine with something else! On one of the pinkish blooms of the hydrangea he noted a bee—of all things, in this hidden-away garden of tiles and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... by the Indians to be unclean food; as also ravens, crows, bats, buzzards and every species of owl. They believe that swallowing gnats, flies and the like, always breed sickness. To this that divine sarcasm alludes 'swallowing a camel and straining at a gnat.'" Their purifications for their Priests, and for having touched a dead body or other unclean thing, according to Mr. Adair, are quite Levitical. He acknowledges however, that they have no traces of circumcision; but he supposes that they ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... "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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various
... 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
... visions of the dead, we must not omit to mention that charming poem of Virgil's younger days, the Culex (The Gnat). Just as the first sketch of Macaulay's famous character of William III. is said to be contained in a Cambridge prize essay on the subject, so the Culex contains the first draft of some of the greatest passages in Virgil's later works—the beautiful description ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... lies," said Christian, flitting like a gnat to the open window of the schoolroom. "You sang the wrong verse! It ought to have been 'hear ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... facilities are lacking for its handling. Very little animal life is found in this brine, and none of vegetable; in fact, at every point where the water touches the shore vegetation vanishes utterly. The animal life is that of a very small gnat which, mosquito-like, lays its eggs on the surface of the water. The larvae, when driven shoreward, collect in such quantities as to cause a strong, unpleasant odor observable for miles to the leeward. Myriads of seagulls ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... which, above 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 is not peculiar to any party or to any section; ...
— What Prohibition Has Done to America • Fabian Franklin
... 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. ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... the lake had been swallowed like a gnat in the water. Within the great Iya he was looking skyward. So deep was the water in the Eater's stomach that the surface of the swallowed ...
— Old Indian Legends • Zitkala-Sa
... thrown off, something small, dark and sprawling ... like that glove which Lanyard had discarded. But this object dropped with a speed even greater than that of the Valkyr, in a brace of seconds had diminished to the proportions of a gnat, in another was engulfed in that vast sea ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... 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 or the punkies ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane
... 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
... head as to doubt from these amicable relations whether the Government of this country or its agents repudiated such abomination of abominations? If for political purposes you submit to this latter, while for commercial purposes you refuse to tolerate the former, surely you are straining at a black gnat while swallowing a beastly camel. Such, good people of the Foreign-office, is my decided view of the case; and if you profit by the hint, you will do what I believe no public body ever did yet. Perhaps, therefore, the idea of setting the fashion may possibly induce ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... the unimpeachable respectability and solvency of the said 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 ages of three and five respectively, ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... took their flight; From crag and cliff the clamorous seamews screamed, In glade and glen the cottage windows gleam'd; Larks left the cloud, for flight the grey owl sat; The founts and lakes up silver radiance steamed; Winging his twilight journey, hummed the gnat— The drowsy beetle droned, and skimmed the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various
... in about four acres of watermelons, and there seem to be lice and a small gnat or fly, and also some small green bugs and white worms on the under part of the leaves, which seem to be stopping the growth of the vines, making them wilt and die. They seem to be more in patches, although a few on all the vines. Can you ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... 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, are ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... His choice 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 ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... wolvets, for the perusal and meditation of the grand jury? If the whole corporation of Stratford had not unanimously given it against thee, still his tongue would catch thee, as the evet catcheth a gnat. Know, sirrah, the reverend Sir Silas, albeit ill appointed for riding, and not over-fond of it, goeth to every house wherein is a venison feast for thirty miles round. Not a buck's hoof on any stable-door but it awakeneth his recollections ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... 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
... his departure he had sat on the edge of his bed, the sunlight streaming through the early mist, the house-martens scratching the back of the ceiling over his head as they scrambled out from the roof for their day's gnat-chasing, the thrushes cracking snails on the garden stones outside with the noisiness of little smiths at work on little anvils. The sun, in sending its rods of yellow fire into his room, sent, as he suddenly thought, mental illumination with it. For the first time, as he sat there, it had crossed ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... could I sleep while she was within three miles of me, surrounded by ten or a dozen devils the combined virtues of whom would not fill a gnat's eye! Of course, she had lived in this situation for years, but I had not heard of it until very recently, and that makes ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... watching again from his window, he saw, in a sudden hush over the heads of the countless crowds the tiny white figure standing above the tapestries with the Papal triple cross glinting beside him like a thread, and heard the thin voice, gnat-like and clear, declare the "help of the Lord who," as the thunder of the square answered him, "hath made heaven and earth," and then invoke upon the city and the world, before the tremendous Amen, the blessing of God Almighty, ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... (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 ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang
... have broke mine eye-strings; crack'd them, but To look upon him, till the diminution Of space had pointed him sharp as my needle; Nay, follow'd him, till he had melted from The smallness of a gnat to air, and then Have turn'd mine eye and wept. But, good Pisanio, When shall ...
— Cymbeline • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... absurdities, impudence, and of madness, as of words, the Cardinal, while pretending much devotion for the King, and much submission to the Church, plainly intimated that he cared for neither. Although this was as the sting of a gnat upon an elephant, the King was horribly piqued at it. He received the letter on the 24th of May, gave it the next day to D'Aguesseau, attorney-general, and ordered him to commence a suit against Cardinal de Bouillon, as guilty of felony. At the same time the King ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... of a teacher do you think you'd make? You haven't the patience of a Jack-gnat with your own brothers and sisters, let alone with a class of children. And I thought you didn't like dirty, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... NEVER know 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
... 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 ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... Tania, the poor little Czarevitch and the rest.... Did they consider him, Peter Nichols, lumber-jack extraordinary, as a possible future claimant to the throne of Russia? Peter smiled grimly. They were "straining at a gnat while swallowing the camel." And if they feared him, why didn't they strike? The stranger had already had ample opportunity to murder him if he had been so disposed, could still do it during Peter's daily rides back and forth from the Cabin to the camp and ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... 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
... that, Although you're most unmannerly. O what a giant gnat. Here, look! It comes from marshy Tricorysus, I ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes
... our life when we long ardently for strong excitement to drown our petty griefs—times when the soul, like the lion in the fable, wearied with the continual attacks of the gnat, earnestly desires a mightier enemy and real danger. Cinq-Mars found himself in this condition of mind, which always results from a morbid sensibility in the organic constitution and a perpetual agitation of the heart. Weary of continually ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... with his bag of roots on his back, would have passed by unheeding had not a troublesome gnat crept into the fawn's nostril, causing him to sneeze. The faint sound caught the man's keen ear and, like one of the wilderness folk, he instantly became immovable, every sense alert. His glance at once sought the thicket, ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... 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 than any ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... old woman went on, "that marriage is a cast of the dice. One throws a high number, another a low one; one wins a wife who is a match for the busy bee, another gets a tiresome gnat. No doubt there is some truth in it; but I have grown grey with my eyes open and I have often seen it happen, that how the marriage turned out depended on the husband. A man like you makes a bee out of a gnat—a bee that ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... green worm, where are you? Dusky-winged moth, how fare you, When wind and rain are in the tree? Cheeryo, cheerebly, chee, Shadow and sun one are to me. Mosquito and gnat, beware you, Saucy chipmunk, how dare you Climb to my nest in the maple-tree, And dig up the corn At noon and at morn? Cheeryo, ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... with drooping jerking tail, trembling wings, and uplifted parti-colored bill, he looks unnerved and limp by the effort it has cost him. But in the next instant a gnat flies past. How quickly the bird recovers itself, and charges full-tilt at his passing dinner! The sharp click of his little bill proves that he has not missed his aim; and after careering about in the air another minute or two, looking for more game to ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... Tied in this manner, without any body or tail, the fly will alight on the water with the hook down, and looked at from beneath, against the light, only the little black spot will be noticeable. This I believe represents some of the order Coleoptera (beetles) and also the small black gnat (Empidae). I know if no other ways to tie the Black Gnat small enough to represent the natural insect, and even on the very smallest hook, the artificial is usually many times larger than the natural. The small ...
— How to Tie Flies • E. C. Gregg
... (Recovering, proceeds with suavity, completely sold to his desire) My mind has cleared with deeper thought, my lord, Discord, the ancients tell us, was at first So small a gnat did give her birth, but grew So great her feet o'erturned proud cities while Her head upset the gods in council. So this Small trouble may o'ercast your destiny— And is 't not better, sir, to pass a law, However dreaded, 'gainst the rebel ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... Fanny, turning her vain ear to spoken flattery, her vain eye to mute, danced like a golden gnat ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... must come with his gun and shoot them, for I dare say now that snake is dead the animals of all kinds will increase very much. I only wish there was a snake among the gnat tribe. Anything like the way in which I am teased by things biting me is not ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... 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
... are people who, like the Pharisees of old, strain out a gnat and swallow a camel. They educate themselves up to a strict observance of all things insignificant. They would not forget to say grace before and after meals, but would knife the neighbor's character or soil their ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... 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. ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... President downwards, may date his downfall from 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 ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... tell him that fairies are benevolent or mischievous, and tradition, borrowing from literature, will confirm it. The proposition is ridiculous. It would be as wise to say that a gnat is mischievous when it stings you, or a bee benevolent because he cannot prevent you stealing his honey. There would be less talk of benevolent bees if the gloves were off. That is the pathetic fallacy again; and that is man all over. ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... were wise; A creature he of huge, misshapen size. The elephant, though famed as beast judicious, While on his own account he had no wishes, Pronounced dame whale too big to suit his taste; Of flesh and fat she was a perfect waste. The little ant, again, pronounced the gnat too wee; To such a speck, a vast colossus she. Each censured by the rest, himself content, Back to their homes all living things were sent. Such folly liveth yet with human fools. For others lynxes, for ourselves but moles. Great blemishes in other ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... bein' so mad at the Nation for makin' such dretful hard work partakin' of a gnat, and then swallerin' down Barnum's hull circus, ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... femora, I observe build their mud nests in houses. The rarity of Lepidoptera, except perhaps some nocturnal moths, is curious; Coleoptera are more common, but inconspicuous. Ants are abundant in the mud walls. A small gnat with large noiseless wings, is very annoying, and the bite very painful and irritating. Doves, and wild pigeons are tolerably common, as also crested larks, and swifts. Abundance of lizards; a venomous snake of brown colour, having an ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... 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 claws ...
— Hebrew Literature
... rests him on the bill in the season when he that brightens the world keepeth his face least hidden from us, what time the fly yieldeth to the gnat,[1] sees many fireflies down in the valley, perhaps there where he makes his vintage and ploughs,—with as many flames all the eighth pit was resplendent, as I perceived soon as I was there where the bottom became apparent. And as he[2] who was avenged by the bears saw ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... not; I could not; I love her; I love my girl. But you need not sing to me like a gnat to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... them, and the sky ringed them in from immensity. Their forms scarcely disturbed the big outline of nature, their laughter only whispered against the silence, as ineffectual to disturb that gigantic serenity as a gnat's ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... the flattering things on painted wings, foolish as gnat-swarms near the shrivelling blaze, Flock nearer, nearer! Forms, too, quainter, queerer, frog-dupes of folly, rabbit-thralls of craze, Butterfly triflers, gay-plumed would-be riflers of golden chalices, of poisoned flowers, Flitter ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 4, 1891 • Various
... of Shahrazad, proposes to put her to death, 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— ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... lover's 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
... 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, ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... under microscopical examination and then watched it slowly develop has said that it seemed as if some hand was tracing the outlines of the tiny vertebrae, and then building up around it. Think for a moment of the development of the germ within the egg of the humming-bird, or the ant, or the gnat, or the eagle. Every second a change may be noticed. The germ cell draws to itself nourishment from the other part of the egg, and then it grows and reproduces another cell. Then both cells divide—then ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... state of great impatience. He might be said to be a lion importuned by a gnat. Porthos held him by the arm. "But what I cannot understand, what, in spite of all the efforts of my mind, and all my reflections, I cannot comprehend, and never shall comprehend, is, that instead of sending us troops, instead of sending us re-enforcements of men, munitions, and provisions, they ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... fact, I shall do everything in my power to discountenance and discourage the trapping." Lapierre cleared his throat sharply—coughed—cleared it again. Discourage trapping—north of sixty! Had he heard aright? He swallowed hard, mumbled an apology anent the inhalation of a gnat, ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... 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, either by enemies ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... the precious Bee-bread is exposed to accidents. The workers in the cells above may inadvertently drop a little mortar into the lower cells; the owner herself, when working at enlarging the jar, runs the risk of letting a speck of cement fall into the provisions. A Gnat, attracted by the smell, may come and be caught in the honey; brawls between neighbours who are getting into each other's way may send some dust flying thither. All this refuse has to disappear and that quickly, lest afterwards the larva should find coarse fare under its delicate mandibles. ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... in 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 ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... and held a mass meeting to protest; whereupon the father of all the dragon-flies, a magnificent warrior in a steel- blue armour, saw that a conspiracy was afoot, and swept into the midst with a whirr and a snap, a turn here and a flash there, that scattered the host in a twinkling of a gnat's eye. ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... This is what we have formerly eaten 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 ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... gnat, a swift messenger, and touch Zenophile, and whisper lightly into her ears: "one awaits thee waking; and thou sleepest, O oblivious of thy lovers." Up, fly, yes fly, O musical one; but speak quietly, lest arousing her bedfellow ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... balancers of a horsefly be removed, the insect at once loses its equilibrium; it cannot direct its flight, but plunges headlong to the ground. The same can be said of Chrysops niger—in fact, of the entire family of Tabanidae, of the gall gnat (Diplosis resinicola, Comstock), and of the March flies (Bibionidae). These widely differing flies constitute the material from which I have derived my data; I will venture to assert, however, without fear of contradiction, that ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... 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 hence, that ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... let them take hold of him in a Christian spirit and assist him in correcting those moral abscesses and that mental enervation which they did so awfully much to infuse into him; they should first take the elephant out of their own eyes before digging at the gnat in their neighbor's eyes. They should encourage him in his efforts at moral and religious improvement, not by standing off and clapping their hands, but by going into his churches and into his pulpits, showing him the "light and the way" not only by precept ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... 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 225, ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... 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
... [33] With gnat propriety Bunyan places the house of the Interpreter beyond the strait gate; for the knowledge of Divine things, that precedes conversion to God by faith in Christ, is very scanty, compared with the diligent ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... reptiles without deleterious or unpleasant results, and Colonel Matthews Taylor[7] knew several persons of this character in India, and who regarded the bite of the cobra or tic paloonga with nearly as much indifference as the sting of a gnat or mosquito. Again, in 1868, Mr. Drummond, a prominent magistrate of Melbourne, Australia,[8] met with untimely death under circumstances that attracted no little attention. An itinerant vender of nostrums had on exhibition a number of venomous reptiles, by which he caused himself to be successively ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... insects in anything they have once begun is shown in many ways; you cannot drive away a fly or a gnat, and if a colony of ants take up their home in the garden they will hardly move till all are destroyed. Aristotle mentions the diseases of swine, so it will not be amiss to record that in the country swine ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... suspicions; and I must be at Manneville by dawn or else be hanged. Therefore I dare stake all upon one throw; and you must either save or hang me with unwashed hands. As surely as God reigns, my future rests with you. And as I am perfectly aware, you could not live comfortably with a gnat's death upon your conscience. Eh, am I not ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... In straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel, aristocratic Virginia was far outdone by democratic Pennsylvania. Hamilton, her governor, had laid before the Assembly a circular letter from the Earl of Holdernesse directing him, in common with other governors, to call on his province for ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... microscope. Now look down into this tube, and tell me what you see. A piece of Persian carpet? No—a butterfly's wing magnified hundreds and hundreds of times. And this which looks like an aigrette of jewels? Will you believe that it is just the tiny plume which waves on the head of every little gnat that buzzes round you on ...
— Monsieur Maurice • Amelia B. Edwards
... 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
... made oration to the general gnat-bitten populace, from the gang-plank, to the effect that one William P. Joyce, trap, crap, and snap shooter was due to happen back casual most any time, and any lady or gent desirous of witnessing at first hand, a shutzenfest with live targets, could be ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... escaped, and he came to Arthur; and his knife had this peculiarity: from the time he came there no haft would ever remain on it; and owing to this a sickness came on him, and he pined away during the remainder of his life, and of this he died.) Drem the son of Dremidyd (when the gnat arose in the morning with the sun, Drem could see it from Gelli Wis in Cornwall as far off as Pen Blathaon in North Britain.) And Eidol the son of Ner, and Glwyddyn Saer (who built Ehangwen, Arthur's hall.) Henwas and Henwyneb, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... 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 innings ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... looked and admired blackee, it unfortunately happened that a mosquito flew into blackee's nostrils, which were much larger and more inviting—to a gnat—than ours. The aboriginal sneezed, and over ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... the boy; "but one ought to tell a friend as far as he can see him. The Active carries a longer and a lower gaff, than any other cutter in the navy, which is the way we all tell her from the Gnat, the ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... angrily he drew his sword and brandished it, but he only touched the air and did not hit the gnats. Then he ordered his servants to bring costly coverings and wrap him in them, that the gnats might no longer be able to reach him. The servants carried out his orders, but one single gnat had placed itself inside one of the coverings, crept into the prince's ear and stung him. The place burnt like fire, and the poison entered into his blood. Mad with pain, he tore off the coverings and his clothes ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... could guess she was now not more than two feet high, and still shrink-ing quite fast. She soon found out that the cause of this, was the fan she held and she dropped it at once, or she might have shrunk to the size of a gnat. ...
— Alice in Wonderland - Retold in Words of One Syllable • J.C. Gorham
... between tides, and has even been dredged at a depth of over a hundred feet, which transforms into a yellow mosquito-like fly (Fig. 65, with head of the female, magnified) which swarms in summer in immense numbers. I have called it provisionally Chironomus oceanicus, or Ocean gnat. The larvae of other species have been found by Mr. S. I. Smith living at great depths in our Northern lakes. These kinds of gnats are usually seen early in spring hovering ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... be a miracle of piety if she was but half so careful of her soul as she is of her body. The rising of a pimple on her face, the sting of a gnat, will make her keep her room two or three days, and she thinks they are very rash people that do not take care of things in time. This makes her so over careful of her health that she never thinks she is well enough, and so over indulgent that she never can be really well. So that it costs ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... altogether to refuse me? You are quite alive to the smaller difficulties of my position, but you seem to be quite unaware of the difficulties of your own position. You busy yourself with straining out the gnat which floats on the surface of your glass, but you do not seem to observe the ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody
... Clair, old fellow, this is your week of peace, everything has been fixed for you, so make the most of it.' And then I'd wander on. The birds would sing to me and every one of 'em would sing like a prima donna. Wherever I stepped, wild flowers would burst into bloom as I passed, and if a gnat should happen to buzz before my face I wouldn't brush him away for fear of hurting him. The universe and I would be at peace with ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... use of the English tongue;' and adds that all but 'some obscure people' are able to 'convers with a straunger' in English. The bitterness aroused by the religious question was intensified by a report which was 'blazed abroad,' as Hooker says, 'a Gnat making an Elephant, that the gentlemen were altogether bent to over-run, spoil, or destroy the people.' No one could have acted with greater loyalty and courage than the Mayor, John Blackaller, and his powers were put to a hard trial before the end of the siege. Not only was there an active and ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... 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 round ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... saluted me—hearteningly—from the door of the lodge. The park seemed endless. I came, at length, to a long straight avenue of elms that were almost blatantly immemorial. At the end of it was—well, I felt like a gnat going to stay ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... scene!" said Shirley to Caroline. "What a fool I was! To revenge on poor Donne his silly spite at Yorkshire is something like crushing a gnat for attacking the hide of a rhinoceros. Had I been a gentleman, I believe I should have helped him off the premises by dint of physical force. I am glad now I only employed the moral weapon. But he must come near me ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... 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 ignorance Whose shadow ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... God's 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 ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... wet flies Twist their thighs, Thus they wipe their head and eyes; Cats, you know, Wash just so, Then their whiskers grow. Flies have hair too short to comb, So they fly bareheaded home; But the gnat Wears a hat, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... from the metrical arrangements of the originals—substituting therefore a variety of forms in line and stanza that more accord with the modern and American ear. In the second place I have had the hardihood—as in "The Lion and The Gnat"—to modify the elegance of the original with phrases more appropriate to our contemporary beasts. Animal talk, I feel sure, has lost something of its stateliness since the days when our French ...
— Fables in Rhyme for Little Folks - From the French of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... body, relieved of its effete materials, renewed its youth after one of these quiet, expurgating, internal fractional cremations. Lean, pallid students have found themselves plump and blooming, and it has happened that one whose hair was straight as gnat of an Indian has been startled to behold himself in his mirror with a fringe of hyacinthine curls ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... expect 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 offended and ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... 6. The Pear Gnat Midge (Diplosis pyrivora) may readily ruin a crop if unchecked. It is a recent importation among us. Both here and in the United States it is spreading with alarming rapidity. It is a small two-winged fly, with a black body having lines of yellow ...
— The Book of Pears and Plums • Edward Bartrum
... he is God's creature—to make him glad. God honours all cheques legitimately drawn on Him, and answers all claims, and regards Himself as occupied in a manner entirely congruous with His magnificence and His infinitude, when He stoops to put some kind of vibrating gladness into the wings of a gnat that dances for an hour in the sunshine, and into the heart of a man that lives his time for only a very ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... 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, ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... momentary glimpse of his real significance. "I am only a gnat, a speck in the sun, a youth facing the millions of great and wise and wealthy!" He leaped up in a frenzy. "Oh, I mustn't stay here! I must get back to my studies. Life is slipping by me, and I am ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... large slack line which I could not get up. Finally I caught one big fish, and altogether we got seven. All in that little bay, where the water was shallow! In other places we could not catch a fish. I had one vicious strike. The fish appeared to be feeding on a tiny black gnat, which we could not imitate. This was the most trying experience of all. We ought to have ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... 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 ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... divides itself into a lot of sects, each one built on some particular ordinance or practice and each one swallows a camel and strains at a gnat. One sect insists that baptism shall be by immersion because the disciples baptized that way. They believe in following customs literally, yet in the cities they immerse the members in a big tub under the pulpit, which practice ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... old stormy rivers of my grief are dead Now at the spring; not one tear left unshed. Mine eyes are sick with vigil, endlessly Weeping the beacon-piles that watched for thee For ever answerless. And did I dream, A gnat's thin whirr would start me, like a scream Of battle, and show me thee by terrors swept, Crowding, too many for the ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... breath; if a stealer of grain, the defect of some limb; if a stealer of clothes, leprosy; if a horse-stealer, lameness; if a stealer of a lamp, total blindness. If he steals grain in the husk, he will be born a rat; if yellow mixed metal, a gander; if money, a great stinging gnat; if fruit, an ape; if the property of a ...
— Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers, About the Heathen. • Dr. John Scudder
... you that the little martin gave plenty of trouble and anxiety in his rearing; but at last he got on so well that he was allowed to go out in the garden, and sit upon his mistress's hand, while he feasted on any spider, gnat, or fly which was caught for him. It must have been a pretty sight to see the fondness of this pet bird for the kind friend who had saved its life. He could not bear to be away from her, but would sit on her shoulder while she was at work or writing, and sometimes nestle under her chin; tiresome ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... "I am in this vile cesspool of humanity again, and I feel like a drowning gnat. I did not go to the club, as you told me to, because I thought I could live more economically if I took a room somewhere and 'ate around,' I left my bag at the station, while I went to an address given me by a young man I met on the train. He said it was plain but clean. He told me ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... down from the universe to my own gnat's buzz of an existence, I think I have told you everything that might interest you of the first six months of my venture. Towards the end of that time my little brother Paul came down—and the best of companions he is! He shares the discomforts ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... it all just as vivid to us as those cold spring days on the rolling Tay, the glowing time of lilac and Mayfly, or the serene evenings when the roach float dips sweetly at every swim. Whatever one's mood, salmon or gudgeon, spinning bait or black gnat, Middlesex or Mississippi, your pages have something to ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... Danhasch, and the fairy at once transformed herself into the shape of a gnat and settling on Camaralzaman's throat stung him so sharply that he awoke. As he did so his eyes fell on the Princess of China. Surprised at finding a lady so near him, he raised himself on one arm to look at her. The youth and beauty of the princess at once awoke a feeling to which his heart had ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... song-birds were all back again, waking at dawn, and making the hoary cypress wood merry with their carollings to the wives and younglings in the nests. Busy times. Foraging on the helpless enemy—earth-worm, gnat, grub, grasshopper, weevil, sawyer, dragon-fly—from morning till night: watching for him; scratching for him; picking, pecking, boring for him; poising, swooping, darting for him; standing upside down and peering into chinks for him; and all for the luxury—not of knowledge, ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... protection against their painful stings. The clothes commonly worn are not sufficient, for they are perforated by the long sting of the larger species, particularly of the much-dreaded huir-pasimi-sancudo (Lip-gnat). Regularly every evening at twilight fresh swarms of these ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... 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 ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... uses the terms Midge and Gnat to describe the tiny insects which we often see dancing in a ray of sunlight. There is something of everything in those aerial ballets. It is possible that the persecutrix of the Cabbage-caterpillar is there, ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... men, who endeavour to make us believe, that all in the universe was made for man, are much embarrassed, when we ask, how so many hurtful animals can contribute to the happiness of man? What known advantage results to the friend of the gods, from being bitten by a viper, stung by a gnat, devoured by vermin, torn in pieces by a tiger, etc.? Would not all these animals reason as justly as our theologians, should they pretend that man was made ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... really concerns us, and, like the Danaides, they let the water of life run through the sieve of their learning. We may apply to them truly that condemnation of our Lord's (Matt, xxiii. 24)—"Ye blind guides; ye strain at a gnat, and ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... 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 ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... inch when ye've tholed the span," cried Matthew; "I'd nivver strain lang at sic a wee gnat ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... 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 chasm, apparent, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... 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 ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... approached, he seemed to hear a thousand 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 ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... look for too much judgment in a young creature of twenty, Pathfinder, but it will come with experience. A mistake in you or me, for instance, might not be so easily overlooked; but in a girl of Mabel's years, one is not to strain at a gnat lest ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... hare had scattered coloured petals 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
... 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
... a gnat into the ointment of the General, be sure there are ten thousand flies stinking the ointment ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... lightly to and fro, with the undulations of the lily-stem against which she more perceptibly rested. It is well for Root and Collins and Plumbe that the royal daguerreotyper was laid up in a cowslip, with a broken skylight which he had received in a rough-and-tumble with a gnat, about the ownership of a particular ray of light, at ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... 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, ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... gipsy : cigano. give : doni, donaci, glacier : glaciejo. glass : vitro, "a—," glaso. "looking—," spegulo. glaze : glazuri. glorify : glori. glove : ganto. glow : ardi, brili. "-worm," lampiro. glue : gluo. glycerine : glicerino. gnat : kulo. gnaw : mordeti. goat : kapro. goblet : pokalo. goblin : koboldo. God : Dio. gold : oro. goldfinch : kardelo. golosh : galosxo. goodbye : adiaux. goose : anserino. gooseberry : groso. gospel : evangelio. gout : podagro. govern : regi. governess : guvernistino graceful : ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer |
