"Gadfly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his efforts if he wished him to succeed; then he threw some gold in the fire, and went out to bespeak the favour of the hidden powers. During his absence Brock diligently plied the bellows, while Loki, hoping to make him pause, changed himself into a gadfly and cruelly stung his hand. In spite of the pain, the dwarf kept on blowing, and when Sindri returned, he drew out of the fire an enormous wild boar, called Gullin-bursti, because of its golden bristles, which ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... the lake that they had to wait for some hours ere a deer was to be seen. The principal reason why the deer spend so much time in the water seems to be to get rid of a number of troublesome flies that very much annoy them. Some species of gadfly have the power not only to sting them, but to insert their eggs under the skin, which soon develops into a large grub. Some of the skins of the reindeer are so perforated by these pests that they are ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... gadfly, as big as a bat, and sent it to buzz in the white cow's ears, and to bite her and sting her so that she could have no rest all day long. Poor Io ran from place to place to get out of its way; but it buzzed ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin
... in one course and call it applied deviltry. They don't put it down in the catalogue and they encourage you to cut classes in it. But, honestly, I wouldn't trade what I learned under Professor Petey Simmons, warm boy and official gadfly to the Faculty, for all the Lat. and Greek and Analit. and Diffy. Cal., and the other studies—whatever they were—that I took in good ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... a gadfly of conscience that buzzed in her ears the counsel to tell the police. Sometimes on her way to a tryst with Easton a spirit in her feet led her toward a police station, but another spirit carried her past, for she would visualize the sure consequences of such an exposure. If her suspicions ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... there rushed into them the passionate or tender feeling that was in truth the heart of the man. The mouth and chin were rather prominent, and, when at rest, severe. He was a man in whom conscience was a gadfly, remorseless and tormenting. He was himself overstrained and his influence sometimes produced in others a tension on which they looked back with resentment. But he was a saint; open, pure, and loving as a child; yet often tempest-driven with new ideas, ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... But I'll pick my men, please," remarked Sir John, with a pleasant smile. "Perry's got a conscience, and Kilshaw—well, Kilshaw's got a gadfly that does instead, and of course, Coxon, I add you ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... living inside the horse for about ten months, quits its hold and is expelled with the feces. Having concealed itself near the surface of the ground it becomes changed into a chrysalis from which the gadfly issues after an inactive existence of from thirty to forty days. The female fly becomes impregnated, lays her eggs on those parts of the horse from which they can be most easily licked off, and thus ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... "B" is dead, No more we'll hear him buzz a-wing, Nor picture with a smiling dread The pungent terrors of his sting. As Io's gadfly was this "B" To Sentiment and to Pretence. Oh, Property! Ah, Liberty! Fallen in your supreme defence! Gone is the friend that in a phrase The "Common Sense" of things could settle, That with a stroke ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various
... Tregarthen or Tregarthen's language. Some gadfly must have stung the man. A few acres of the barrenest land in the whole archipelago—and the fellow talked as though he were being dispossessed of an Eden! Yes, and as though that were not enough, he had used the flattest disrespect. The Lord Proprietor was not ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... razed to the very stones, dishonored even to the timber,—these were so many poignant griefs for D'Artagnan, and every time that one of these griefs struck him, he bounded like a horse at the sting of a gadfly beneath the vaults of foliage where he has sought shady shelter from the burning sun. Never was the man of spirit subjected to ennui, if his body was exposed to fatigue; never did the man of healthy body ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... load their murmuring voices full of amorous desire stung me like a gadfly. I hurried off toward ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... the throngs that come to wait upon him. Some will have it that my Lord Carnal hath fled the kingdom to escape the Tower; others, that the King hath sent him on a mission to the King of Spain about this detested Spanish match; others, that the gadfly hath stung him and he is gone to America,—to search for Raleigh's gold mine, maybe. This last most improbable; but if 't is so, and he should touch at Virginia, receive him with all honor. If indeed he is not out ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... that it is done in hostility or in a masked confederacy? If the former, how am I to estimate the man who comes in? If the latter, what judgement can I form of the man who goes out?"[630] Slander also was busy in the guise of that gadfly, Nicholls, who proposed to thank the King for dismissing him. By way of retort Pitt's friends triumphantly carried a motion of thanks to Pitt for his great services, against a carping minority of fifty-two; but members were heard to mutter ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... name, Then would she change it for Egyptian sounds More sweet, and seem to taste them on her lips, Then loathe them—Gebir, Gebir still returned. Who would repine, of reason not bereft! For soon the sunny stream of youth runs down, And not a gadfly streaks the lake beyond. Lone in the gardens, on her gathered vest How gently would her languid arm recline! How often have I seen her kiss a flower, And on cool mosses press her glowing cheek! Nor was the stranger free from pangs himself. Whether by spell imperfect, ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... do you fasten yourself on to me like a gadfly? Have I not trouble enough already? [Beating his hands together.] How could you let him escape? You are ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... off, without being thrown off, was more easily said than done. The horse was now plunging as if Juno had sent her gadfly to him; and Philip, interested and excited, came nearer and nearer, till he stood by the side of the horse-dealers. The other ostlers ran to the help of their comrade, who at last, with white lips and shaking knees, found himself ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... horses who will go at the top of their pace until they drop. Such women are dreadfully unmanageable. It is as hard reasoning with them as it would have been reasoning with Io, when she was flying over land and sea, driven by the sting of the never-sleeping gadfly. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... his mind since Sandy's orphans came to the house. On the one hand, his wife had had her way—how was he to prevent it? On the other, his religious sense had kept pricking and tormenting—like the gadfly that ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... please, robed in leather coats and leather helmets and gauntlets, and with goggles, waiting at the entrance of a hangar while the mechanics bring out the gadfly. They have already looked the creature over with great care. The pale yellow wings glitter against the violet horizon. The sun is shining, but it's freezing hard. Eric climbs in, and then I do. I sit behind ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... clover. Clavers, gossip, nonsense. Claw, a scratch, a blow. Claw, to scratch, to strike. Clay-cauld, clay-cold. Claymore, a two-handed Highland sword. Cleckin, a brood. Cleed, to clothe. Cleek, to snatch. Cleekit, linked arms. Cleg, gadfly. Clink, a sharp stroke; jingle. Clink, money, coin. Clink, to chink. Clink, to rhyme. Clinkin, with a smart motion. Clinkum, clinkumbell, the beadle, the bellman. Clips, shears. Clish-ma-claver, gossip, taletelling; ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... Fell Oestrus buries, l. 29. The gadfly, bot-fly, or sheep-fly: the larva lives in the bodies of cattle throughout the whole winter; it is extracted from their backs by an African bird called Buphaga. Adhering to the anus it artfully introduces itself into the intestines of horses, ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... writhed in his bonds; a violent contraction of surprise and pain distorted the muscles of his face, but he uttered not a single sigh. He merely turned his head backward, to the right, then to the left, balancing it as a bull does who has been stung in the flanks by a gadfly. ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... again, still disguised as a gadfly, and lighted on Brock's neck and stung him so that the blood flowed. But though the dwarf yelled with pain he did ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... brought Into the light their secret thought. Therefore the TARTUFFE-throng who say "Couvrez ce sein," and look that way,— Therefore the Priests of Sentiment Rose on him with their garments rent. Therefore the gadfly swarm whose sting Plies ever round some generous thing, Buzzed of old bills and tavern-scores, Old "might-have-beens" and "heretofores";— Then, from that garbled record-list, Made him his ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... For all the care and contrivance bestowed on the view, far away to the left the back courts of an alley could be seen; and as though some gadfly had planted in him its small poisonous sting, he moved back from the sight at once. 'Confusion!' he thought. 'Are we never to get rid of these ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... place where he had left the Alevide, he found that both his friend and the money had disappeared. Presently the water-demon came up, and asked him jestingly whether he had burnt himself, or whether he had been stung by a gadfly, that he ran away like that, instead of helping him to carry the heavy money-bags. He then proposed that they should look for a good place where they might wrestle. He thought he could easily overcome the boy by strength, if not by craft, and ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... betrayal of her pace and direction, driven in a kind of flight, and then understood, for herself, why the act of sitting still had become impossible to either of them. There came to her, confusedly, some echo of an ancient fable—some vision of Io goaded by the gadfly or of Ariadne roaming the lone sea-strand. It brought with it all the sense of her own intention and desire; she too might have been, for the hour, some far-off harassed heroine—only with a part to play for which she knew, exactly, no inspiring precedent. ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... because taken separately they were two, and taken together they were one, and one and two made up three. 'He was like a man running a race with his own shadow, and making a noise in order to drown the echo. He was a clever gadfly, that was all. What was the ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... country life, all these things make motherhood a different ordeal for our women than our grandmothers. Where our grandfathers took their share of the care and guidance of children, and the children came up in a wholesome country fashion, our men to-day are so driven by the money gadfly that they can only whirl around and around and attend "to business," and all the care of the children falls upon the mother, or else upon the nurses and governesses, who in turn are a care and a worry ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... at his inaction and his impatience harried him like a gadfly. Would no one step into ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... main issue," broke in Mr. Squires, the gadfly. "The point is, Anderson, are you going to let Vicious Lucius beat his family to death, or are you going up to ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... All unrest involves loss, and thus leads to search. It matters not if the search be unsuccessful; though the gadfly sting as sharply the next moment as it did the last, still so must continue her wanderings. Therefore that Jew, whose mythic fate it is to wait forever upon the earth, the victim of an everlasting sorrow, is also an everlasting wanderer. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... 1. 392, Dark of the sea.—The Dark-Blue of the Symplegades is meant. Sometimes it is only the Argo that has ever passed through them; here it is only Io, daughter of Inachus, loved by Zeus and hunted by the gadfly, who fled outcast through the East. Her story is told in Aeschylus' Prometheus and in a magnificent chorus of his Suppliant Women. (See Rise of the Greek ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides |
