"Gnaw at" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... simile, "gnaw my inwards;" it is the perpetual symbol of worry; the poisonous mineral ever biting away the lining of the stomach; just as mice and rats gnaw at the backs of the most precious books and destroy them; aye, as they gnaw during the night-time and drive sleep away from the weary, so does suspicion gnaw with its sharp worrying teeth to the destruction ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... it appeared to me, the only thing to be done. But I had the courage to hold my tongue, to gnaw at my entrails like the Spartan boy. I wished to leave him ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... the Father of Waters where the races met, men and women were born into the world, who were to die in ancient Cuba, who were to be left fatherless in the struggle soon to come, who were to live to see new monsters rise to gnaw at the vitals of the Republic, and to hear again the cynical laugh of Europe. But they were also to see their country a power in the world, perchance the greatest power. While Europe had wrangled, the child of the West had grown into manhood and taken a seat among the highest, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... began to gnaw at our vitals. We did not speak, for darkness is the twin of silence, but our thoughts ran riot. I remember that I almost screamed when Ajax laid his hand on my shoulder, and yet I knew that he was standing ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... supplied with human flesh. On receiving a reply in the affirmative, Ghansiam Das said: 'Very well, I too am extremely partial to this form of food; here is my hand, eat it and I will eat you'; and at the same time he seized hold of the other's hand and began to gnaw at it. The Aghori on this became much alarmed and begged to be excused. He shortly afterwards left Rewah and was not heard of again, while Ghansiam Das ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... to the house, and doubts began to gnaw at him. Was he going to destroy his plans now at a whim? He felt an impulse to get into the rocket and leave without her—yet he thought of the cold emptiness of space and himself drifting through alien worlds, alone, ...
— The Odyssey of Sam Meecham • Charles E. Fritch
... had been thinking. It seemed essential to Anthony that she should muse aloud upon last night's disaster. Her silence was a method of settling the responsibility on him. For her part she saw no necessity for speech—the moment required that she should gnaw at her ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... not immoderate in their grief. The deception might have been deeper, and the loss more alarming and great. And then what was their grief at that hour, compared with the misery that must gnaw at the hearts of the deceivers, as inseparable from their guilt. What gift in the wide world would tempt them to exchange places with the wretched creatures? What a thorny road of perdition must their way of life be! How they must whiten and gasp, ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... his weariness had grown with his leaving behind the fog, so now did both hunger and thirst gnaw at Shann, all the sharper for the delay. The Terran wanted to reach that water, could picture it in his mind, putting away the possibility—the probability—that it might be sea-born and salt, and so unfit ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... fingers of a new-born heir. And when it struck him that the beautiful vision he had feasted his eyes upon last evening was, undoubtedly, the fair destroyer of his every hope, a conflict of violent feelings began to gnaw at his poor heart, making a genuine picture of woeful misery out of the laughing face of a moment before, but he battled against his moral foes, at least—he must not show his uncle that any selfishness of his could mar the sincerity ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... lizards, and frogs. Sometimes I take a stray Chicken or some other bird, but very few compared to the countless rodents I destroy. House People do not realize that those gnawers are the greatest enemies that the Wise Watchers keep in check. Day and night these vermin gnaw at the grain, the roots of things, the fruits, the tree bark, even the eggs and young of useful birds. I am their chief Harrier; by chance only, not choice, am ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... gnaw at the cabbage and, as he had very good teeth for gnawing—almost as good as Sammy Littletail's—he soon had quite a hole made. But he kept on gnawing and eating away, so fine did it taste, until, in a little while ...
— Buddy And Brighteyes Pigg - Bed Time Stories • Howard R. Garis
... I try to open it, and cannot. I beat my hands against its iron nails, and scream, and the dead man grins at me. The light streams in through the chink beneath the massive door, and fades, and comes again, and fades again, and I gnaw at the oaken lids of the iron-bound chests, for the madness of hunger ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... bring John to-day and introduce him. He had been prattling like a fool about this older brother. He wished to God now something would keep him. The pangs of jealousy had already began to gnaw at the thought of her ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... th' head, Which he behind had mangled, then began: "Thy will obeying, I call up afresh Sorrow past cure, which but to think of wrings My heart, or ere I tell on't. But if words, That I may utter, shall prove seed to bear Fruit of eternal infamy to him, The traitor whom I gnaw at, thou at once Shalt see me speak and weep. Who thou mayst be I know not, nor how here below art come: But Florentine thou seemest of a truth, When I do hear thee. Know I was on earth Count Ugolino, and th' Archbishop he Ruggieri. Why I neighbour ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... again. Thou wilt perish, and we shall perish also!"—Then said the bullock, "Look into my right ear, and pull out the brush thou dost find there, and fling it behind thee!"—So he threw it behind him, and it became a forest as thick as a brush. Then the serpent came up to the forest and began to gnaw at it; and at last he gnawed his way right through it. But the bullock went on at his old pace: every little while they went a little mile, and they jolted so that they nearly tumbled off. But when the serpent had gnawed his way through the ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... there was to catch hold of, and lifted, him clear of the ground. Then, with a deft swing he sent him crashing into a clump of tall nettles, which closed receptively round him. The victim had not been brought up in a school which teaches one to repress one's emotions—if a fox had attempted to gnaw at his vitals he would have flown to complain to the nearest hunt committee rather than have affected an attitude of stoical indifference. On this occasion the volume of sound which he produced under the stimulus of pain and rage and ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... evening he looked at the sun setting behind the Rocca and felt the black rage in him gnaw at his ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... Will, fairly launched, tossed all conscientious scruples overboard, and steered boldly out into the deep waters of wildest imagination. "You just would! Why, as I said, the river bed is solid sugar. Think how nice to be able to turn over and take a gnaw at your bed-post when you feel hungry! The pebbles are sugar plums, the bigger stones are broken sugar loaves, and the rocks, why, the rocks are made out of rock ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... watched. A dam of brush and logs and mud and stones backed the stream into a little lake. The round, rough beaver houses projected from the water. Like the rabbits, the beavers had become shy. Gradually, however, as Venters and Bess knelt low, holding the dogs, the beavers emerged to swim with logs and gnaw at cottonwoods and pat mud walls with their paddle-like tails, and, glossy and shiny in the sun, to go on with their strange, persistent industry. They were the builders. The lake was a mud-hole, and the immediate environment a scarred and dead region, ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... never did care much for this kind of a cake fried in a pan, but they were necessary to the Doctor, who had nearly lost all his teeth from the hard fare of Lunda. He had been compelled to subsist on green ears of Indian corn; there was no meat in that district; and the effort to gnaw at the corn ears had loosened all his teeth. I preferred the corn scones of Virginia, which, to my mind, were the nearest approach to palatable ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... A nameless fear began to gnaw at Wilmot's vitals. And at that moment the door swung open, and he saw, beyond the bulking head and shoulders of the legless man, a narrow iron table, white and shining, in a room ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... gnawing is not eating. Did the poor fellow eat the stick? That is just it! Many a man will gnaw at a lie all his life, and perish of want. I mean LIE, of course, the real lie—a thing which is in its nature false. He may gnaw at it, he may even swallow it, but I deny that he can believe it. There is not ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... steady gnaw, gnaw at the pit of our stomachs, we had cut down our meals to the minimum amount of food that would keep us alive; we were so weak we no longer were sure where our feet were going to when we put them down. ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... my ears. I bow my head and find a moment's relief from the anguish of soul in the hot scalding tears which stream down my fevered cheeks. O God of sure mercy, save other young men from the dark and desolate tortures which gnaw at my heart, and press down upon my weary soul! They are all, all, all the work of alcohol. Oh, how true it is—how true few can understand until their lives are a burden of distress and agony to them—that the cup which inebriates stingeth like an ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... had added to the prestige of success in politics the lustre of valiance in the lists of love, and he encountered laughing congratulations from his friends and political supporters, which served much to reassure him and to banish a vague and subtle anxiety as to public opinion that had begun to gnaw at his heart. They all seemed to think he had done a very fine thing, and that it was a very good joke, and he was soon most jauntily of their persuasion. He could not know that here and there people were saying to one another, aside, the words he had feared to hear in reproach—that the swain ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... regain my former elasticity of mind. I found cheerfulness to be like life itself—not to be created by any argument. Afterwards I learned, that the best way to manage some kinds of pain fill thoughts, is to dare them to do their worst; to let them lie and gnaw at your heart till they are tired; and you find you still have a residue of life they cannot kill. So, better and worse, I went on, till I came to a little clearing in the forest. In the middle of this clearing stood a long, low ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... longingly and bitterly Siddhartha thought of his son, nurtured his love and tenderness in his heart, allowed the pain to gnaw at him, committed all foolish acts of love. Not by itself, this flame ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... shoving, jostling crowd? Surely not! His dignity rose in revolt at the very thought of it. Did he hunger for Jimsy's supreme gift of adaptability? Why should this fierce new hunger for one friendly, honest, heart-warming smile of liking and welcome gnaw at his heart?... Why—God help him!—why was he a stranger in ...
— Jimsy - The Christmas Kid • Leona Dalrymple
... but little by his splinted leg; but having eaten he lay down and commenced to gnaw at the bandage. I was sitting some little distance away devouring shellfish, of which, by the way, I was becoming ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... this requires to be studied in relation to the particular breed. One good meal a day, served by preference in the evening, is sufficient for the adult if a dry dog-cake or a handful of rodnim be given for breakfast, and perhaps a large bone to gnaw at. Clean cold water must always be at hand in all weathers, and a drink of milk coloured with tea is nourishing. Goat's milk is particularly suitable for the dog: many owners keep goats on their premises to give a constant supply. It is a mistake to suppose, as ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... last to gnaw at Steven's vitals and to make itself imperatively felt. He looked up at the sun as if to tell the time by its location, though in reality he regulated his movements by that infallible horologue ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... not to hold you fast by the coat-tails, for I know you will scramble out again pretty quick, and then, when you are lying sick unto death, you will say, 'I got this little bit of a cold in a dream.' But I warn you that a malignant fever will gnaw at your vitals, and years will pass before you recover yourself, and are a man again. The deuce take your music if you can put it to no better use than to cozen sentimental young women out of their quiet peace of mind." "But," I began, ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... business panic is, after all, a rare phenomenon—something a man need only have to face once in a lifetime. It is the panic in the mind of the individual which is the perpetual danger. How many men are there who let this perpetual fear of financial disaster gnaw at their minds like a rat in the dark? Those who only see the mask put on in the daytime would be astonished to know the number of men who lay awake at night quaking with fear at some imagined disaster, the day of ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook |
