"Molehill" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said. "I am sure you are worrying yourself needlessly over something— are magnifying it from a molehill into a mountain." ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... and the confession or complaint had been unintentional and the result of irritation more than of anything else. The fact that he had taken it up made matters much worse. She was in that state in which such a woman will make a mountain of a molehill rather than forego the sympathy which her constitution needs in a larger measure than her ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... a motive there, certainly—a motive of gain. Still, I think you are making a mountain out of a molehill, for I am satisfied that she knows no more who committed the crime ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... darkness. Well, the devil never blesses a man better, when he purses up angels by owl-light. I ran through a hedge to take the boy, but I stuck in the ditch, and lost the boy. [Falls.] 'Swounds, a plague on that clod, that molehill, that ditch, or what the devil so e'er it were, for a man cannot see what it was! Well, I would not, for the price of my sword and buckler, anybody should see me in this taking, for it would make ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... than that wisdom leads to happiness—I mean in this world; in another, we may well indeed believe that the words are constructed of very different materials. But here we are, standing on a barren molehill that crumbles and sinks under our tread; here we are, and show me from hence, Von Kotzebue, a discoverer who has not suffered for his discovery, whether it be of a world or of a truth—whether a Columbus or a Galileo. Let us come down lower: Show me a man who has detected ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... straight-lopped poplars, the spread of tall green wheat, the blaze of rape-fields—the villages and towns, with two-towered German churches, over and over, and over again. Oh, for a hill, were it no bigger than a molehill! Oh, ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... detail," he remarked one evening in the dug-out after dinner, "are very easy to see if you have eyes to see them with. One is nothing; two are a coincidence; three are a moral certainty. A really trained man can see a molehill; I can see a mountain; most of you fellows couldn't see the Himalayas." With which sage remark he thoughtfully lit his pipe and relapsed into silence. And silence being his usual characteristic he came into the Battalion Head-quarters dug-out one evening and dropped ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... bespattered as these natures are, they are white in comparison with the blackness of the man who, looking into His face, sees nothing there that he should desire. Beside the mountain belching out its sulphurous flame the little pimple of a molehill is nought. And so, says Christ, heaven heads the count of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... experienced a sense of relief, mingled with the professional disappointment of a diplomatist who has elaborately provided for contingencies which have failed to happen. She had sent Sophia away for nothing; and no doubt her maternal affection had exaggerated a molehill into a mountain. Really, when she reflected on the past, she could not recall a single fact that would justify her theory of an attachment secretly budding between Sophia and the young man Scales! Not a single little fact! All she could bring forward was that Sophia had ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... are to shelter ourselves, and from which as it seems all authority proceeds, lies like a molehill or a tottering wall, on which there is not one gun-carriage or one piece of cannon in a suitable frame or on a good platform. From the first it has been declared that it should be repaired, laid in five angles, and put in royal condition. The commonalty's ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... of his suspicions. There was nothing strange in the presence of the chaplain. Sylvia had always liked the man, and an apology for his conduct had doubtless removed her anger. To make a mountain out of a molehill was the act of an idiot. It was natural that she should release Dawes—women were so tender-hearted. A few well-chosen, calmly-uttered platitudes anent the necessity for the treatment that, to those unaccustomed to the desperate wickedness of convicts, must appear harsh, would have served his ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... can be more abrupt because they are more invisible; they cast no shadow before, they have no atmosphere. No one ever had a mystical premonition that he was going to tumble over a hassock. William III. died by falling over a molehill; I do not suppose that with all his varied abilities he could have managed to fall over a mountain. But when all this is allowed for, I repeat that we may ask a happy man (not William III.) to put up with pure inconveniences, and even make them part of his happiness. Of positive pain or ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... excitement under a sense of some injury with which I was not yet acquainted. If I could get his feelings right in regard to other and more important things, a reform in that matter would soon follow; whereas to make a mountain of a molehill would be to put that very mountain between him and me. Nor would I ask him any questions, lest I should just happen to ask him the wrong one; for this parishioner of mine evidently wanted careful handling, if I would do him ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... blooming Atlantic, that's what," said Albert Edward; "cork it up again quickly or it'll bob up and swamp us." That done, we looked about for something that would stand digging into. The only thing we could find was a molehill, so we delved our way into that. We are residing in it now, Albert Edward, Maurice and I. We have called it "Mon Repos," and stuck up a notice saying we are inside, otherwise visitors would walk ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various
... said was that Great Britain in requiring Germany to respect the neutrality of Belgium 'was going to make war just for a word, just for a scrap of paper'—that is, that Great Britain was making a mountain out of a molehill. He now asks the American public to believe that he meant the exact opposite of what he said; that it was Great Britain who really regarded the neutrality of Belgium as a mere trifle, and that it was Germany who ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... which a molehill is like a cone, though a very rough one; and that the little heaps which the burrowing beetles make on the moor, or which the ant-lions in France make in the sand, are all something in the shape of a cone, with a hole like a crater in the middle. What the beetle and the ant-lion do ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... meadows. Undulating gently on elastic springs, the vehicle cautiously descended the steep incline, and then proceeded past water-mills, rumbled over a bridge or two, and jolted easily along the rough-set road which traversed the flats. Not a molehill, not a mound jarred the spine. The ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... proposal which they have been preaching for the last three years, and if they find nothing but a ridiculous mouse in the matter of achievement will be inclined to declare that not a mountain but a molehill has been in labour. It is a singular fact that although since the general election there have been no less than ten by-elections in Ireland, of which only two were in "safe" Unionist seats, in no single instance ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... of, but his fears had vanished, as fears sometimes do when we draw near to the object of them, and had been replaced by a curious expectancy. He saw now, or thought he saw, that he had been making a mountain out of a molehill. Probably it meant nothing at all. There was no real danger. Beatrice liked him, no doubt; possibly she had even experienced a fit of tenderness towards him. Such things come and such things go. Time is a wonderful healer of moral distempers, and few ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard |
