[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!

"Oh, nonsense; you diplomatic fellows make mountains out of molehills; you see a storm in every cloud; you imagine the lightning's going to strike you every time it flashes!

Never had police called in yet without 'em making mountains out of molehills!

STUDIOSO, going aside, sayeth, Fair fell good Orpheus, that would rather be King of a molehill than a keisar's slave: Better it is 'mongst fiddlers to be chief, Than at [a] player's trencher beg relief.

molehill; lowlands; basement floor, ground floor; rez de chaussee [Fr.]; cellar; hold, bilge; feet, heels.

[U.S.]. minutiae, details, minor details, small fry; dust in the balance, feather in the scale, drop in the ocean, flea-bite, molehill.

Our villages are like molehills, and men as so many emmets, busy, busy still, going to and fro, in and out, and crossing one another's projects, as the lines of several sea-cards cut each other in a globe or map.

They delight to degrade human life into that dull and barren plain "in which every molehill is a mountain, and every thistle a forest-tree."

I therefore applied my self with great diligence to the Offices that were allotted me, and was generally look'd upon as the notablest Ant in the whole Molehill.

Yesterday's sea was as molehills to mountains compared with the sea to-day.... "Friday, 15th September.

Another time, walking to the top of a fresh molehill, I fell to my neck in the hole through which that animal had cast up the earth, and coined some lie, not worth remembering, to excuse myself for spoiling my clothes.

We are friends to the exposition of the weak sides of great men, inasmuch as it reads them a valuable lesson on their own infallibility, and tends to lower the molehills of conceit that are raised in the world as stumbling-blocks along every road of petty ambition.

With savoury appetite, from hedge-row briars, Then drops content on molehills' sunny side; Proving, thereby, low joys and small desires Are easiest fed, and soonest satisfied.

Disgusted and humiliated by being kept a prisoner for months when the country needed every arm in its defense, by having such a mountain made of the veriest molehill built of a kind act and boyish inexperience, he refused to put in a defense at the investigation and let it go as it would.

The only thing we could find was a molehill, so we delved our way into that.

Maurice is perfectly aware that there is a war on, and to demand rent from soldiers who are defending his molehill with their lives is the most ridiculous proposition I ever heard of.

He also erred sometimes by accident, or oversight; as when he spelled thus: "recall and miscal, inthrall and bethral, windfall and downfal, laystall and thumbstal, waterfall and overfal, molehill and dunghil, windmill and twibil, uphill and downhil."

1ST W. How many molehills such as that must first Be piled up each on each, ere you make A mountain equal to the least in Uri?

" "Now that's very wrong of you, Master Philip; you should think of all the blessings you have, and not be makin' mountains o' molehills; and those little bits o' temper Sir Bale shows, why, no one minds 'emthat is, to take 'em to heart like you do, don't ye see?" "I daresay; I suppose, Mrs. Julaper, you are right.

Dear Welsted, mark in dirty hole That painful animal a Mole: Above ground never born to go, What mighty stir it keeps below? To make a molehill all this strife!

I therefore applied my self with great diligence to the Offices that were allotted me, and was generally look'd upon as the notablest Ant in the whole Molehill.

If so, I will do it, as thou makest such a monster out of the molehill, but my judgment is not convinced that in this incidental way it is wrong to throw light on the subject.

Oh, for a hill, were it no bigger than a molehill!

A British imprecation, and a banged door, have often become floods of invective and a knock-down blow; and a molehill of a pinch has, under favourable cultivation, been developed into a mountain of ill-treatment, on the top of which a victorious wife has in the end, triumphantly planted the banner of freedom.

It may seem that this is a foolish making of a mountain out of a molehill; but she would not have felt it to be so.