Talk:strain at a gnat

Hmm, personally i see this idiom as very different from make a mountain out of a molehill. The molehill idiom means what it sounds like, but I think when people hear this one, they mentally complete it with the second part swallow the camel, and the passage in the Bible that it came from. That is, it's an accusation of hypocrisy .... very similar to the wooden beam metaphor. This is more true for people with a background in Christianity, to be sure, but then people who haven't heard the original story are less likely both to use and to hear this metaphor, I'd assume. —Soap— 11:18, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

If anything, this might be more like penny wise, pound foolish .... the difference I'd see is that this proverb is an accusation of hypocrisy (help yourself, hurt others), whereas the other is an accusation of foolishness (help yourself, hurt yourself). Connecting it with the molehill idiom seems even more wrong to me now than it did a few days ago. —Soap— 11:23, 3 October 2023 (UTC)