"Gnat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... away (it is not proper to look on at magical arts), and then in a moment, saw the right hook on his cast; but Jaqueline was not in the boat. She had turned herself into an artificial fly (a small black gnat), and Dick might set to ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang
... permit them to be inoculated by the most venomous of 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 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... and the Grasshopper's Feasts Excited the spleen of the Birds and the Beasts: For their mirth and good cheer—of the Bee was the theme, And the Gnat blew his horn, as he danc'd in the beam. 'Twas humm'd by the Beetle, 'twas buzz'd by the Fly, And sung by the myriads that sport through the sky. The Quadrupeds listen'd with sullen displeasure, But the tenants of air were enraged beyond measure. The PEACOCK display'd his bright ...
— The Peacock 'At Home:' - A Sequel to the Butterfly's Ball • Catherine Ann Dorset
... these stories of 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 of the ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... energies, vast though they be, are not singular nor characteristic; such, and so great, have before been manifested—and it may perhaps be recorded of us with wonder rather than respect, that we pierced mountains and excavated valleys, only to emulate the activity of the gnat and the swiftness of the swallow. Our discoveries in science, however accelerated or comprehensive, are but the necessary development of the more wonderful reachings into vacancy of past centuries; and they who struck the piles of the bridge of Chaos will arrest the eyes of Futurity rather ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... "Tanner" alone; Harry Smith, being a swarthy, dark-haired fellow, was "Blacksmith;" and I, Nathaniel Herrick, was dubbed the first day "Poet"—I, who had never made a line in my life— and later on, as I was rather diminutive, the "Gnat." ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... your youth, believing that the smile of God, who gave you the power of being happy, is on your happiness; and that your heavenly Father no more grudges harmless pleasure to you, than He grudges it to the gnat which dances in the sunbeam, or the bird which sings upon the bough. For He is The Father,—and what greater delight to a father than to see his children happy, if only, while they are ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... they are willing to teach us everything but that which 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
... orders.—If, in the vegetable world, we commence with the buttercup, and trace all the various kinds and sizes of plants that exist, up to the pine (Norwegian), and down again to the hautboy (Cormack's Princesses); if, among the lower animals, we begin with a gnat and go up to an elephant, or select from the human species a Lord John Russell, and place him beside a professor Whewell, we shall see that nature provides an endless variety of all sorts of everything. Now, to render a knowledge of everything in natural history as difficult of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various
... 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 Sat—this is ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... filled with venomous 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, dreaded ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... myself mentally) "if the august Muley cannot brook an English saddle, what must he think of an English wife? Or do these Moslems, like some Christians I know, strain at a gnat and swallow a camel? Mayhap it is even so. The pigeon-prompted camel-driver, who built up his creed with plentiful blood-cement, saw fit to add a new chapter to the Koran, when he fell in love ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... little blood left, that a gnat of tolerable appetite could have made an end of me on Sunday, without more ado. But, instead of that, I had a good little Sister of Charity; and wasn't that alone worth getting a bullet through ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... went 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 ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... gnaw campaign gnash arraign paradigm feign foreign gnu benign diaphragm reign design seignior resign gnat assign gnarl consign ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins
... grown, in my dispiriting search, to expect very much; and yet at a glance I saw that my basket of glass lay in fragments at my feet. No ingots or dollars were here, to crown me the little Monte Cristo of a week. Outside, the distant horn had ceased its gnat-song, the gold was paling to primrose, and everything was lonely and still. Within, my confident little castles were tumbling down like card-houses, leaving me stripped of estate, both real and personal, and ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... 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 ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... 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 nothing is comparable to them; and these, as they play ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... of the poem can only have been the idea that the gnat could not rest in Hades, and therefore asked the shepherd whose life it had saved, for a decent burial. But this very motive, without which the whole poem loses its consistency, is wanting in the extant Culex."— Teuffel, R. ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... to my head. I am drunken with it. That great, infinitesimal question—I can't shake it out of my thoughts. That questing, eternal, ever recurring, thin little wailing voice of man is still ringing in my ears. It is like the dead-march of a gnat amid the trumpeting of elephants and the roaring of lions. It is insatiable with microscopic desire. I now I'm making a fool of myself, but the thing has obsessed me. You are—I don't know what you are—you are wonderful, that's ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... re doubt' hec'a tomb wreathe vict'uals re scind' sci'o list wreath scis'sors gneis'sose co a lesce' rhomb schot'tish be nign' ap'a thegm gnat g'no'mon cam paign' di'a phragm rogue' for'eign ar raign' psy'chic al gnaw dough'ty op pugn' sac'cha rine gnash haugh'ty re sign' rheu mat'ic gnarl chron'ic de light' rhap'so dy gnome daugh'ter ex pugn' rhet'o ric phlegm ghast'ly ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... 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 Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... her husband, and was pressed, as her lips touched his forehead, and as the pair of them, gazing at the empty road among the lilacs, saw it filled with the eruptive vision of Mountain Lad, majestic and mighty, the gnat-creature of a man upon his back absurdly small; his eyes wild and desirous, with the blue sheen that surfaces the eyes of stallions; his mouth, flecked with the froth and fret of high spirit, now brushed to burnished knees of impatience, now ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... answered the school boy; "she is a real Liliputian statue, fit for nothing but to watch the flies fly. Ah! come, Piccola, Piccolissima!" he cried to the little one, who was behind the shutter of a half-open window, absorbed in the contemplation of a gnat who was up the window, singing a little air through his nasal trumpet, "tell us, Piccola, a little of what the flies say ...
— Piccolissima • Eliza Lee Follen
... me I had through day and night * Solomon's carpet and the Chosroes' might, Both were in value less than wing of gnat, * Unless these eyne could hold ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... step into the office to inquire after my comrades. One of the whey-faced clerks said with the supercilious asperity characteristic of gnat-brained headquarters attaches: ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... children of earth and the tenants of air To an evening's amusement together repair. And there came the Beetle, so blind and so black, Who carried the Emmet, his friend, on his back; And there was the Gnat, and the Dragon-fly too, And all their relations, green, orange, and blue. And then came the Moth, with her plumage of down, And the Hornet, in jacket of yellow and brown; Who with him the Wasp, his companion, did bring, ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... with absurdity and everlasting contempt, according to the gentlemen who oppose me; but when found in the Bible the story assumes another phase entirely. It is as the Saviour said of the Pharisees, "Ye strain at a gnat and swallow a camel." My opponent strains at a gnat, when found in the Book of Mormon, but if camels are discovered in the Bible he swallows them by the herd. I cannot see why a big story, told in the Bible, should be believed ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... beggar has 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
... The men fall in and he listens to complaints and soothes the indignant. One man laid his tunic down and a mule ate a great bit out of it. Another cannot get his arm straight "after lifting thae bales." A still, small voice asserts that a man has as much chance of doing what the R.E. wants, as a gnat has of fighting a —— aeroplane. The sergeant numbers them off. There is of course one missing; but the officer, being certain that he is either a mangled corpse among the mules, or far more probably triumphantly asleep on a stack of tibbin, ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... 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 ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... because her heart was set on it. I won an eighty-guinea jacket for 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 ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... epoch from the point of view of universal history, history from the point of view of geological periods, geology from the point of view of astronomy. When the duration of a man's life or of a people's life appears to us as microscopic as that of a fly and inversely, the life of a gnat as infinite as that of a celestial body, with all its dust of nations, we feel ourselves at once very small and very great, and we are able, as it were, to survey from the height of the spheres our own existence, and the little whirlwinds ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... materialism forever, that revealed to us the ghostly unity of all existence, that reestablished all ethics upon an immutable and eternal foundation,—the mind that could expound with equal lucidity, and by the same universal formula, the history of a gnat or the history of a sun—confessed itself, before the Riddle of Existence, scarcely less helpless than the ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... controls. Except for the effect of relative proper motions, which I can't calculate yet for lack of data. I should be able to hit a gnat right in the left eye at this range—and the difference in proper motions couldn't have thrown me off more than a few hundred feet. Nope, I was too anxious—hurried too much on the settings of the slow verniers. I'll snap back and try ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... 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 his ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... "What lack I yet?" says Mark's Gospel. Yes, ran. He evidently had no suspicion as to the answer he would get. Doubtless he thought the great Master would tell him of one more hand-washing necessary before retiring, or possibly some gnat's burden which Mr. Almost had been carrying around on his sleeve on the Sabbath. Flick that off and be perfect! Mr. Almost wanted to make his perfection secure. He had all kinds of earthly securities; ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... because, as the "vicar of God," she must provide for her benefice. "Let the earth bring forth" is the eternal fiat. Nature forever heeds it, and forever obeys it. "Oh, ye blind guides, who strain at a gnat and swallow a camel, doubt it if ye will." But forget not that nature has her "compunctious visitings," and will rise up in insurrection against you. Nothing in her breast lies dormant for ages, or even for an hour. Her appointed times and seasons forbid it. If the butterfly does not ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... GNAT. Good Heav'ns! how much one man excels another! What diff'rence 'twixt a wise man and a fool! What just now happen'd proves it: coming hither I met with an old countryman, a man Of my own place and order, ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... Bull was once driven by the heat of the weather to wade up to his knees in a cool and swift-running stream. He had not been there long when a Gnat that had been disporting itself in the air pitched upon one ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... conversation for the table where he dined the day before. He is replaced with the same regularity and indifference as fresh snuff is put into a snuff-box, or fresh flowers are set out upon the epergne. Nobody misses him. The machine goes on without perceiving that the blue-bottle or the gnat has fallen ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 547, May 19, 1832 • Various
... can there be 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
... 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
... call-note, 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 ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... challenged his father's murderer; so as, if he could not do more, to have died by his hand; and he despised himself the more, for knowing that all he could have said would have been good-naturedly put down by the Prince; all he could have done would have been but like a gnat's efforts against that mighty strength. Then how despicable it was to be sensible, in spite of himself, that this atmosphere of courtly refinement was far more natural to him—the son of a Provencal noble, and of a princess mother—than the rude forest life ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... kind are esteemed 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; ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... to look upon the heart, it is the pastor's to look upon the hands and the lips; and that the foulest oaths of the thief and the street-walker are, in the ears of God, sinless as the hawk's cry, or the gnat's murmur, compared to the responses in the Church service, on the lips of the usurer and the adulterer, who have destroyed, not their own souls only, but those of the outcast ones whom they have ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... keep toiling and toiling, to build And lay in a store for himself, till he's killed With work that another might do? Come! drop your budget, and just give a spring; Jump on a grass-blade, and balance and swing; Soon you'll be light as a gnat on the wing, Gay as a ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... 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 audacity and folly. I might as well hoist myself on to a high platform, to ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... stirring, and, as it were, listened to the current of the quiet life surrounding him, to the few sounds of the country solitude. Something from behind the nettles chirps with a shrill, shrill little note; a gnat seems to answer it. Now it has ceased, but still the gnat keeps up its sharp whirr; across the pleasant, persistent, fretful buzz of the flies sounds the hum of a big bee, constantly knocking its head against ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... with Germany in 1870, yet was never known to give a sou to charity; her hands were all but the hands of a skeleton and covered with jewels, she smoked cigarettes incessantly. She was one of those old women whose energy seems to increase with age, tireless as a gnat she was always the last in bed and the first on deck, though lying in her bunk half the night reading French novels of which she had a trunkful and ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... creatures, if it were only a gnat dancing in a sunbeam, has a right to have its well-being considered as an end of God's dealings. But no creature is so isolated or great as that it has a right to have its well-being regarded as the sole end of God's dealings. That is true about all His blessings and gifts; ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... came the Beetle, so blind and so black, Who carried the Emmet, his friend, on his back. And there came the Gnat, and the Dragon-fly too, With all their relations, ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... acquainted with the peculiarities of the fleas, if with those of none of the other dwellers in every corner of the globe. Such interesting particulars, to be sure, may claim a kind of classic authority in Horace's journey to Brundusium; but perhaps a gnat or a frog that kept Horace awake may fairly assume a greater historical importance than would be granted to similar tormentors of Brown, Jones, and Robinson. Were it not for Mr. Olmsted, we should conclude the Arthur-Young ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... absolute. It is obvious that all your difficulties here remain and go with you. If the relative experience was inwardly absurd, the absolute experience is infinitely more so. Intellectualism, in short, strains off the gnat, but swallows the whole camel. But this polemic against the absolute is as odious to me as it is to you, so I will say no more about that being. It is only one of those wills of the wisp, those lights that do mislead the morn, that have so often impeded the clear progress of philosophy, ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... visionary; and as for the Ark, she'd never do—with all respect to Mr. Noah. She's just about as suitable as any other waterlogged cattle-steamer'd be, and no more—first-rate for elephants and kangaroos, but no good for cruiser-work, and so slow she wouldn't make a ripple high enough to drown a gnat going at the top of her speed. Furthermore, she's got a great big hole in her bottom, where she was stove in by running afoul of—Mount Arrus-root, I believe it was called when Captain Noah went cruising with that ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... this class of beings may appear, at first thought, yet, when we come to reflect, and carefully investigate, we shall be struck with wonder and astonishment, and shall discover, that the smallest gnat that buzzes in the meadow, is as much a subject of admiration as the largest elephant that ranges the forest, or the hugest whale which ploughs the deep; and when we consider the least creature that we can imagine, myriads of which are too small to be discovered without ...
— The History of Insects • Unknown
... tormented poor little innocent children all over the world, came from Adam's sinning six thousand years ago, and yet that it is unfair to say that one little child's fever came from his parents' keeping a filthy house a month ago? That is swallowing a camel and straining at a gnat—that God should be just in punishing all mankind for Adam's sin, and yet unjust in punishing one little child for its parents' sin. If the one is just the other must be just too, I think. If you believe the one, why not believe the other? Why? Because Adam's curse and "original" ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... detected, although the louse has been shown to be its "carrier." The same is true of yellow-fever: we have not seen with the microscope the microbe which produces it. But we know with certainty that the gnat, Stegomya fasciata, and no other, is the carrier of the unseen germ, and that we can obliterate that fever by obliterating the gnat. So, too, although we know how the infection of rabies acts, and how it ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... whimwham[obs3]; crotchet, capriccio, quirk, freak, maggot, fad, vagary, prank, fit, flimflam, escapade, boutade[Fr], wild-goose chase; capriciousness &c. adj.; kink. V. be capricious &c. adj.; have a maggot in the brain; take it into one's head, strain at a gnat and swallow a camel; blow hot and cold; play fast and loose, play fantastic tricks; tourner casaque[Fr]. Adj. capricious; erratic, eccentric, fitful, hysterical; full of whims &c. n.; maggoty; inconsistent, fanciful, fantastic, whimsical, crotchety, kinky [U. S.], particular, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... slept one day, The weather being torrid, A gnat beheld him where he lay And lit upon his forehead, And thence, like all such winged creatures, Proceeded over all ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... 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 and flutter in ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 4, 1891 • Various
... 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; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... 'tis delightsome melancholy, a friend in show, but a secret devil, a sweet poison, it will in the end be his undoing; let him go presently, task or set himself a work, get some good company. If he proceed, as a gnat flies about a candle, so long till at length he burn his bodv, so in the end he will undo himself: if it be any harsh object, ill company, let him presently go from it. If by his own default, through ill diet, bad air, want of exercise, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... 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 gravel and plants in tubs! The little furry, lonely thing was drowsily ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... 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 of my little menage in the cheeriest spirit, ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... ended parle the Senior Shade. And now, as scorning to upbraid, With curving, parabolick smile, Contemptuous, eying him the while, His Rival thus: 'Twere vain, my Lord, To wound a gnat by spear or sword[3]; If therefore I, of greater might, Would meet this thing in equal fight, 'Twere fit that I in size should be As mean, diminutive, as he; Of course, disdaining to reply, I pass the wretch unheeded by. But since your Lordship deigns to know What I in my behalf ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... companion. "By all the furies! my lord," he cried, "what gnat has bitten your highness? Why this sudden ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... art the man!" Each philosopher anticipated the other in presenting the prompt illustration that if the rays of the hydro-oxygen microscope, passed through a drop of water containing the larvae of a gnat and other objects invisible to the naked eye, rendered them not only keenly but firmly magnified to dimensions of many feet; so could the same artificial light, passed through the faintest focal object of a telescope, ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... July creature thought perhaps Our speech not worth assuming; She sat upon her parents' laps And mimicked the gnat's humming; ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... The gnat and the tadpole resemble each other in their change from natant animals with gills into aerial animals with lungs; and in their change of the element in which they live; and probably of the food, with which they are ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... contemptible assailants. Of all that they wrote against him, nothing has survived except what he has himself preserved. But the constitution of his mind resembled the constitution of those bodies in which the slightest scratch of a bramble, or the bite of a gnat, never fails to fester. Though his reputation was rather raised than lowered by the abuse of such writers as Freron and Desfontaines, though the vengeance which he took on Freron and Desfontaines was such, that scourging, branding, pillorying, would have been a trifle to it, there ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sap in trees, which Humboldt fancied to make a continuous music in the ears of the tiniest insects, the fall of pollen dust on flowers and grasses, the stealthy creeping of a spider upon his silken web, and even the piping of a pair of love-sick butterflies, or the trumpeting of a bellicose gnat, like the 'horns of elf-land ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... been provided for is estimated at seven hundred and fifty thousand species,—from the butterflies of Brazil, fourteen inches from the tip of one wing to the tip of the other, to the almost invisible gnat, that dances in the summer's beam. Ants, beetles, flies, bugs, fleas, mosquitoes, wasps, bees, moths, butterflies, spiders, scorpions, grasshoppers, locusts, myriapods, canker-worms, wriggling, crawling, creeping, flying, male ...
— The Deluge in the Light of Modern Science - A Discourse • William Denton
... caught a 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
... Nwython, and Llwyddeu the son of 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 (when he was told he had a son born he said ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... 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, and answered ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... 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
... 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
... days, but with more comfort, since either Catherine or Mary—Mary I think it must have been—made a curtain for my window, which kept out that burning eye of the western sun, and also fashioned a gnat veil to overspread my pallet, so the flies could not get at me. I knew there were others in prison, but knew not that three of them were led forth to be hung, which might have been my fate, had I been a free man, nor knew that another was released on condition that he build a bridge over Dragon's ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... some insects, such as the bees, inject poison by means of a 'sting,' others effect the same end by peculiar modifications of the mouth-parts. The gnat is a case in point: the water-bug, common in our ponds ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... curious creature, why it is as transparent as glass, now it jerks itself about, now it floats without motion in mid-water. What is it?" "I am inclined to think," said Willy, "judging from its wriggling, jerking motions that it must be the larva of some kind of gnat." Right again, my boy, it is the larva of a gnat, and one known to naturalists by the name of Corethra; you see there are eleven divisions or segments in the body; the head is of strange form, and near ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... junior of him, There are some might be found entertaining a notion, That such an entire, and exclusive devotion, To that part of science, folks style entomology, Was a positive shame, And, to such a fair dame, Really demanded some sort of apology; Ever poking his nose into this, and to that— At a gnat, or a bat, or a cat, or a rat, At great ugly things, all legs and wings, With nasty long tails, armed with nasty long stings And eternally thinking, and blinking, and winking, At grubs—when he ought ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... of the crane-fly family (Tipulidae, fig. 20) living underground and eating plant-roots, like the well-known 'leather-jacket' grubs of the large 'Daddy-long-legs' (Tipula) or burrowing into a rotting turnip or swollen fungus, like the more slender grub of a 'Winter Gnat' (Trichocera), the student notices a somewhat tough cuticle, a relatively small but distinct head, and frequently prominent finger-like processes on the tail-segment. Further examination shows a striking modification ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter
... the week, I invite them to breakfast and dine with me on the Sabbath. The proof that they are in good health is that they have grown much. Napoleon had one eye slightly inflamed yesterday from the sting of a gnat. He was not, however, on that account, less well than usual. To-day it is no longer manifest. It would not be worth mentioning, were we not in the habit of rendering you an exact account of ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... attacker appeared a feeble gnat to dance thus alone in the eye of morning. That one plane should, unaided, drive on at Nissr's huge, rushing bulk, seemed as preposterous as a mosquito trying to lance a rhinoceros. The major directed a ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... 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 few ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... on. Away from the sunny little house, the dainty, capable housewife, the security, the shelter, the heaven of home; away from peace and guiltlessness; away from a life in which the "gnat-like buzzings of little cares" had once been its heaviest burden, to a life in death of danger, of ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... 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 not ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... 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
... know," answered Jesus. "We must expect the Pharisees to criticize us. How careful they are to keep every little command of the rabbis—but justice, mercy, and kindness they forget. They would strain a gnat out of their soup and swallow a camel whole!" The disciples had to smile at the way Jesus put it. "They cannot understand what we are saying. We offend them—and when you offend men who take their religion very seriously, you must be ready ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... of finances between your father and me will not be a very desperate one. A gnat attacking a tiger. I shall scarcely interest him. I ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... 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 please tell ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... Fancy's revelers by night! Stealthy companions of the downy moth— Diana's motes, that flit in her pale light, Shunners of sunbeams in diurnal sloth;— These be the feasters on night's silver cloth;— The gnat with shrilly trump is their convener, Forth from their flowery chambers, nothing loth, With lulling tunes to charm the air serener, Or dance upon the grass ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... with 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 insects of ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... a new straw suddenly appeared in the wind, which 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
... northern part of the State I have seen men start out in the morning with an ox team and return at night, blind themselves and the oxen, too, from the sting of the buffalo gnat. The mosquitoes came in ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... 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 turned mine ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... 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
... ganto. Glow brili. Glow-worm lampiro. Glucose glikozo. Glue gluo. Glue glui. Glut sato. Glut satigi. Glutinous gluanta. Glutted satega. Glutton mangxegulo. Gluttonous mangxegema. Gluttony mangxegemo. Glycerine glicerino. Gnash grinci. Gnat kulo. Gnaw mordeti. Gnome gnomo. Go iri. Go along vojiri. Go astray erari, vagadi. Go away foriri. Go back reiri. Go before antauxiri. Go beyond trapasi, preterpasi. Go in eniri. Go out eliri. Go out (of a light) estingigxi, elbruli. Go over transiri. Go through ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... your strength consist? You can scratch with your claws and bite with your teeth an a woman in her quarrels. I repeat that I am altogether more powerful than you; and if you doubt it, let us fight and see who will conquer." The Gnat, having sounded his horn, fastened himself upon the Lion and stung him on the nostrils and the parts of the face devoid of hair. While trying to crush him, the Lion tore himself with his claws, ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... did I after that day give myself up to cruelty as to a sport; yea, thought that I did God service by destroying the creatures whom He had made; I who now dare not destroy a gnat, lest I harm a being more righteous than myself? Was I mad? If I was, how then was I all that while as prudent as I am this day? But I am not here to argue, senors, but to confess. In a word, there was no deed of blood done for the next few years in which I had not my share, if it were but within ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... habits, of the insects around the orchid, and think how the orchid has to select its own particular species of insect and cater for that, and the insect among all the flowers has to select the particular species of orchid; and how the insect, whether butterfly or bee or moth or gnat or ant, or any other of the numerous kinds of insect, and the orchid have to adapt themselves to each other—we see how marvellous the mutual adaptation of flower to insect and insect to flower must have been. We see how the particular ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... Elias, Yahy or John the Baptist, Zacharias, Job, Moses, Aaron, Jesus and Mohammed,[FN350] the peace of Allah and His blessing be on them all! Moreover, nine flying things are mentioned in the Koran, namely, the gnat, the bee, the fly, the ant, the hoopoe, the crow, the locust, the swallow and the bird of Jesus[FN351] (on whom be peace!), to wit, the bat." Q "Which is the most excellent chapter of the Koran?" "That of The Cow.[FN352]" Q "Which is the most magnificent verse?" "That of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... as bad as he had expected. The black gnat was on the water, and the water was strictly preserved. A three-quarter-pounder at the second cast set him for the campaign, and he worked down-stream, crouching behind the reed and meadowsweet; creeping between ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... the entertainment he got out of it. His careless light heart had to have somebody to nag and chaff and make fun of, the Paladin had only needed development in order to meet its requirements, consequently the development was taken in hand and diligently attended to and looked after, gnat-and-bull fashion, for years, to the neglect and damage of far more important concerns. The result was an unqualified success. Noel prized the society of the Paladin above everybody else's; the Paladin preferred anybody's to Noel's. The big fellow was often ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... and his fathers were content to bury themselves in a hole, he expects me to do the same. Why, what should I do? The place is over-doctored already. Every third person is a pet patient sending for him for a gnat-bite, gratis, taking the bread out of Wright's mouth. No wonder Henry Ward kicked! If I came here, I must practise on the lap-dogs! Here's my father, stronger than any of us, with fifteen good years' work in him at the least! He would be wretched at giving up to me a tenth part of ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he said. "Ah, yes, but is it not still harder 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 ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody |
