Gnat Quotes

Girls blush, sometimes, because they are alive, half wishing they were dead to save the shame. The sudden blush devours them, neck and brow; They have drawn too near the fire of life, like gnats, and flare up bodily, wings and all. What then? Who's sorry for a gnat or girl? (Elizabeth Barrett Browning)

The better sort here pretend to the utmost compassion for animals of every kind. To hear them speak, a stranger would be apt to imagine they could hardly hurt the gnat that stung them: they seem so tender and so full of pity, that one would take them for the harmless friends of the whole creation; the protectors of the meanest insect or reptile that was privileged with existence. And yet, would you believe it? I have seen the very men who have thus boasted of their tenderness, at the same time devouring the flesh of six different animals toasted up in a fricassee. Strange contrariety of conduct! they pity and they eat the objects of their compassion.

Oliver Goldsmith

I think we have the attention span of a gnat. You know, with cell phones and Twitter.

Jeff Daniels

My concentration span is truly that of a gnat. Some people have this ladder, and that's all there is - the ladder. I have the ladder, too, but there's a building around it with scaffolding, and lots of windows for me to peek into. Then suddenly I'll remember, 'Oh, there's the ladder. I should be concentrating on that.'

Natascha McElhone

You could see the flames and the outer skin of the spacecraft glowing; and burning, baseball-size chunks flying off behind us. It was an eerie feeling, like being a gnat inside a blowtorch flame.

William Anders

St Thomas had lots to say about the mystical quality of createdness. For him the creature is truly a mystery, a mystical reality. Sometimes this strikes me so forcibly that I shrink from crushing a gnat or plucking a blade of grass - how dare one do such a thing, except of necessity? Nothing sentimental about this - not even compassion at having to hurt things - simply awe before their Maker. I'd never dare to tear up someone else's sketch or manuscript without first asking the author's permission - unless, of course, he had asked me to do so.

Ida Friederike Görres

By his machines man can dive and remain under water like a shark can fly like a hawk in the air can see atoms like a gnat can see the system of the universe of Uriel, the angel of the sun can carry whatever loads a ton of coal can lift can knock down cities with his fist of gunpowder can recover the history of his race by the medals which the deluge, and every creature, civil or savage or brute, has involuntarily dropped of its existence and divine the future possibility of the planet and its inhabitants by his perception of laws of nature.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

In horror, in terror, she accepted the metamorphosis - gnat, foam, ant, until death.

Simone de Beauvoir

I agree with Aristotle as regards all other living beings and à fortiori as regards plants and all the rest of earthly creatures. For I do not believe that it is through Divine Providence that a certain leaf drops, nor do I hold that when a certain spider catches a certain fly, that this is a direct result of a special decree and will of God in that moment; it is not by a particular Divine decree that the spittle of a certain person moved, fell on a certain gnat in a certain place, and killed it; nor is it by the direct will of God that a certain fish catches and swallows a certain worm on the surface of the water. In all these cases the action is... entirely due to chance, as taught by Aristotle.

Maimonides