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Mite   Listen
noun
Mite  n.  
1.
(Zool.) A minute arachnid, of the order Acarina, of which there are many species; as, the dust mite, cheese mite, sugar mite, harvest mite, three-toed spider mite, etc. See Acarina.
2.
A small coin formerly circulated in England, rated at about a third of a farthing. The name is also applied to a small coin used in Palestine in the time of Christ. "Two mites, which make a farthing."
3.
A small weight; one twentieth of a grain.
4.
Anything very small; a minute object; a very little quantity or particle. "For in effect they be not worth a myte."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Mite" Quotes from Famous Books



... Texas side. I wanted to eat dinner with Blocker's man, just to see how they fed. Might want to work for him some time, you see. I pretended that I'd help him over if he wanted to cross, but he said his dogies could never breast that water. I remarked to him at dinner, 'You're feeding a mite better this year, ain't you?' 'Not that I can notice,' he replied, as the cook handed him a tin plate heaping with navy beans, 'and I'm eating rather regular with the wagon, too.' I killed time around for a while, and then we rode down to the river together. ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams

... been seriously asked from what motive I published my Calm Address to the American Colonies? I seriously answer, Not to get money; not to get preferment; not to please any man living; least of all to inflame any; just the contrary. I contributed my mite towards putting out the flame that rages. This I have more opportunity to see than any man in England. I see with pain to what a height this already rises, in every part of the nation. And I see ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... How many thousand times I have reckoned the boards of that bridge, which resounded beneath my feet! How many copper coins I have thrown, as I passed and repassed, into the tin cup of the poor blind man, who was seated through rain or snow on the parapet of that bridge! I prayed that my mite which rung in the heart of the poor, and from thence in the ear of God, might purchase for me in return a long and secure evening, and the departure of some intruder who delayed ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine

... in. This was Charlie the Infidel. Pattie Batch rose on her cold little toes the better to observe. The frost exploded like pistol shots under her feet. She started. Really, the little mite began to feel—and rather exquisitely—like a thief in the night. There was another explosion of frost as she crept nearer her peek-hole in the glowing window. Whew! How deliciously mysterious it was! Nothing much, however, happened in Pale ...
— Christmas Eve at Swamp's End • Norman Duncan

... man (could pride that blessing find) Is not to act or think beyond mankind; No powers of body or of soul to share, But what his nature and his state can bear. Why has not man a microscopic eye? For this plain reason, man is not a fly. Say what the use, were finer optics given, T' inspect a mite, not comprehend the heaven? Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er, To smart and agonize at every pore? Or quick effluvia darting through the brain, Die of a rose in aromatic pain? If nature thundered in his opening ears, And stunned him with ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... influences for duty, and plead for acceptation: so he depends upon him for both, as knowing he can never otherways hear nor have it said unto him, "well done thou good and faithful servant." It may be he can do little, he hath but a mite to offer; but he puts it in the Mediator's hand to be presented to God. He hath not gold, nor silver, nor purple to bring; he can do no great things; he hath but goats' hair or rams' skins, but he gives them the right tincture, he makes them red in the blood of Christ, and ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)

... North—that's the one time we can loaf. For we don't pick it or ship it. That's done for us on contract. It's our lazy time. But every other step is a fight. For instance, there's the woolly white fly and there's the rust mite and there's the purple scale. and there are a million other pests just as bad. And we have to battle with them. all the time. And when we spray with the pumping engine. the sand is certain to get into the engine and ruin it. And ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune

... then go on into town and get the liquor. But don't ye stop to drink in Dunhaven, Danny. If ye do, ye'll be sure to git inter a fight, and ye might do some talkin' too. Hustle in, and hustle back, and ye'll find ye can trust me to hold outer to-night's pickings safe for ye. Don't ye worry a mite on the way to town or back, ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham

... the hospital to lunch. At 3.15 came a sort of evensong with hymns, and then we went to the civil hospital, where there was a Christmas-tree for all the Belgian refugee children. Anything more touching I never saw, and to be with them made one blind with tears. One tiny mite, with her head in bandages, and a little black shawl on, was introduced to me as "une blessee, madame." Another little boy in the hospital is always spoken ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan

... to leave to succeeding painters not only all he had inherited, but a goodly legacy besides—the legacy of a pure life, a glowing, natural, vigorous art. It seems to me that right here is a lesson for us. May we not add our mite, tiny though it be, to the ever-growing volume of truth? I like this quotation in this connection, and I hope you may see its beauty too—"The vases of truth are passed on from hand to hand, and the golden dust must be gathered into them, grain by ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor

... ill, poor mite, and tired too; but she's not ugly," another voice said decidedly. "She might not make a nice picture, but she looks pleasant enough curled up there. Come on away; don't let ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... Allen, "I'm going to hold you up so you can peep over into the pig-pen. There, do you see that little mite of a white piggy?" ...
— Little Prudy • Sophie May

... are dead, and the air reasonably free from noxious vapors. It is a much worse word to hold a revival with, but much better for every day use. It will hardly take the place of the old word when people step on tacks, put up stoves, or sit on pins; but for use at church fairs and mite societies it will do about as well. We do not need revision; excision is what we want. The barbarism should be taken out of the Bible. Passages upholding polygamy, wars of extermination, slavery, and religious persecution should not be attributed to a perfect God. The good that is in the Bible ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... our Hermann might meet them and give them refreshment and clothing! Loath should I be to behold them: the looking on suffering pains me. Touched by the earliest tidings of their so cruel afflictions, Hastily sent we a mite from out of our super-abundance, Only that some might be strengthened, and we might ourselves be made easy. But let us now no longer renew these sorrowful pictures Knowing how readily fear steals into the heart of us mortals, And anxiety, worse to me than the actual evil. Come with ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... gave them'—a pound apiece! If you and I, Christian men and women, were true to the Master's legacy, and believed that we have in it more wealth than the treasures of wisdom and knowledge or force which the world has laid up, we should find that our mite was more than they all ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... bowed to my husband as if she knew him. I ran after her on pretext of getting her to receipt the bill, and said: 'You didn't ask him so much for Madame de Fischtaminel's kerchief!' 'I assure you, madame, it's the same price, the gentleman did not beat me down a mite.' I returned to my room where I found my husband looking as ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac

... all other checks are removed. The boy did everything right, but yelled as if he was being murdered every time the keel rushed over him in the channel. I thought the hide was being peeled from his back, but he wasn't hurt a mite. ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams

... the door swung back upon so much sunshine and color that the little man blinked in amazement. A mite of a girl with a halo of sun-red hair smiled at him ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott

... surer remedy against them is to spray the plants with weak tobacco water made by soaking tobacco or snuff in water, or to fumigate them with tobacco smoke. Sometimes the under side of the leaf becomes infested with a very small mite called red spider because it spins a web. These mites injure the leaf by sucking sap from it. They can be kept in check by frequent spraying for they do not like water. If, then, we are careful to frequently spray the leaves of our house plants we ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich

... loving, into a society and a mise-en-scene which we suspect can exist and which we know does not. Every man at some turn or term of his life has longed for supernatural powers and a glimpse of Wonderland. Here he is in the midst of it. Here he sees mighty spirits summoned to work the human mite's will, however whimsical, who can transport him in an eye- twinkling whithersoever he wishes; who can ruin cities and build palaces of gold and silver, gems and jacinths; who can serve up delicate viands and delicious ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... was sure something in it. I was away that day, but when I got back and heard about his hellish attempt to bribe old Pete I told the boys they sure had the chance of a lifetime. I said if there was a mite of financial prowess in the bunch they would start the price on them runt mules at one hundred dollars flat, because it was certain that Safety ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson

... later she ran after them, and found them seated upon the lowest step of an out-of-the-way stairway; the haggard, worried young father vainly attempting to console the sobbing mite ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris

... is probably due to the depluming mite. Dust well with buhach through the feathered portion of the bird and apply carbolated vaseline to the bare skin and the edges of the feathers where the insects work. Do this daily as long as needed. When vaseline is not on hand, a mixture of coal ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson

... a mite sorry for the boy and his make-believe pony. But I wish I could help you with your boat, for I know you haven't any loose money to throw around ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock

... tiny figure became visible, so small that Toinette had to kneel and stoop her head to see it plainly. The figure was that of an odd little man. He wore a garb of green bright and glancing as the scales of a beetle. In his mite of a hand was a cap, out of which stuck a long pointed feather. Two specks of tears stood on his cheeks and he fixed on Toinette a glance so sharp and so sad that it made her feel sorry and frightened and ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various

... was somewhat embarrassing to be calmly challenged in this way at his own table, poor man, by a mite of a creature like this! He relieved his feelings by a glance at his wife and ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth

... Julian's Bridge, Wimborne Cranborne Manor St. Martin's, Wareham The Frome at Wareham Plan of Corfe Castle Corfe Village St. Aldhelm's Old Swanage Tilly Whim The Ballard Cliffs Arish Mel Lulworth Cove from above Stair Hole Durdle Door Puddletown Dorchester Napper's Mite Maiden Castle Wyke Regis Old Weymouth Portland On the way to Church Ope Bow and Arrow Castle Portesham St. Catherine's Chapel Beaminster Eggardon Hill Bridport Puncknoll Chideock Charmouth Lyme from the Charmouth Footpath Lyme Bay Axmouth from the Railway ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes

... anticipating a trip to distant Burmah for the same purpose. Rupees 8,000—about $2,300.00—lie in the treasury as the first year's response, much of it given in contributions of a few cents each from women in deep poverty, to whom such gifts are literally the "widow's mite." ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren

... at Westminster, A Gnatty little Thing, It bites at Night This mighty Mite, But no ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... friendship for Moore and his literary turn, as well as his ambition to serve his country like a true Russell, was at this date wooing and wedding the fair young widow, Lady Ribblesdale, his devotion to whom had drawn from the wags a profane pun. They called the gifted little lord "the widow's mite." When the marriage ceremony was being performed between him and Lady Ribblesdale the wedding-ring fell from the bride's finger—an evil omen soon fulfilled for the marriage tie was speedily broken by her early death. "Plain John Campbell" was a very ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler

... right, stick to the moccasins. Gee! That coat is sure wrinkled, an' it fits you a mite too swift. Just peck around at your vittles. If you eat hearty you'll bust through. An' if them women folks gets to droppin' handkerchiefs, just let 'em lay. Don't do any pickin' ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... saying to Lady Williams, only this morning, we must bring home to less thoughtful persons a sense of its beneficence. Now it occurs to me: why go on subscribing to these great public Nursing Funds, in which our mite is a mere drop in the ocean, when by sending up a nurse from our own town—she would, of course, be a member of the League—not only should we have the satisfaction of knowing that our help is effective, but ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... owes happiness to all his creatures. The unhappiness of a single being would suffice to annihilate unbounded goodness. Under an infinitely good and powerful God, is it possible to conceive that a single man should suffer? One animal, or mite, that suffers, furnishes invincible arguments against divine providence ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach

... should be sure to quarrel, cooped up in such a mite of a place. No; give me Vizard Court, and plenty of money, and ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... over old times a mite, Amelia. Mebbe that's what I come on for, though I thought 'twas to see how you was fixed. I thought mebbe I should find you livin' kinder near the wind, an' mebbe you'd let me look out for ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown

... asked the man. "Why, it's all over town by now. Farry Pierce murdered old Gabe Hostetter not more'n twenty minutes after we seen him comin' out of the bank. Shot him. Killed him first shot. Yes, sir! Killed him instantly with a little mite of a pistol with about as much carry as a pea-shooter. Must have hit him in ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler

... times couldn't be had to home as well as anywhere! Why, I reckon that Miss Buell has more fuss and trouble in fitting out those girls every spring of her life than I've had with Cannie since her mother died. She never makes one mite of difficulty, or bothers with objections. She just puts on whatever I see fit to get her; and she likes it, and ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge

... lying deep in their tiny florets. Eager stamens reached out far beyond the blossoms to brush the bees' backs with precious freights of pollen to be transported to the stigmas of older flowers. Playing each its part in the plan of the universe, flower and insect added its mite to the life and the loveliness of the summer. From the sunshine and the soil-water the long leaves manufactured food for the growth of the plant. Prettily notched, daintily tapering, and arranged in star-like whorls about the stem, they enhanced the beauty of the flowers above ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell

... rude boy, Nell, come away," quoth Jemmy to me, taking my hand, and boy-like leading me on. And as we went we met a mite of a boy of about Jemmy's age, with a small bundle of corn on his shoulder, ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various

... close to the troubled mite and untying the rope, gently lifted it to her arms, softly stroking it and speaking in a low, cooing voice. Both touch and glance proved magnetic, and soon it had curled down in the shelter of her arms ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... organizing the facts upon which the science of character analysis is based has been going on from the very dawn of civilization. Many investigators, students and scholars, in many branches of knowledge, have labored, added their little mite to the sum total, and passed on. The net result of all their work, all their thousands of years of research, investigation, study and thought, can now be gathered together and presented in so simple a form that it can be learned by anyone of intelligence in a few months. It took humanity untold ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb

... Parsons, I don't see a single mite, nor I don't know a particle, an' I ain't agreein' the least bit," snapped the widow, pounding the creases out ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks

... an infinitesimal drop any one individual can contribute to hasten a saner industrialism. Yet some of us would so fain contribute our mite! Where the greatest need of all lies is that the human beings in industry, the employer and the employees, shall better understand one another, and society at large better understand both. My own amateur and humble experiences here recorded have added much ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... are in my mother's handwriting: and I suppose she loved very much the curly treasure she then put away. Some of the other things, quite funny, I will show you the next time you come over. How I wish that vanished mite had mixed some of her play-hours with yours:—you only six miles away all the time: had one but known!—Now grown very old ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous

... will not add a mite to its value, Miss Parker. Checks by Andre Loustalot on the First National Bank of El Toro aren't going to be honored for some little time. Why? I'll tell you. Because Little Mike the Hustler is going to attach his ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... and glazed, covered the walls of the parsonage parlor. Her zeal in this good work was untiring, and she levied tribute to her favorite charities upon all classes and conditions of her neighbors with strict impartiality. The poorest widow was not suffered to withhold her mite, and, wherever she went, the pouting children of the household were forced to open their money-boxes and tin savings-banks, and bring forth the hoarded pence with which they had hoped to purchase ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... to Gunni Busck that he was now ready to commence the long deferred attempt to renew the hymnody of his church. Busck received the information joyfully and at once sent him a thousand dollars to support him during his work. Others contributed their mite, making Grundtvig richer financially than he had been for many years. He rented a small home on the shores of the Sound and began to prepare himself for the work before him by an extensive study of Christian hymnody, ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg

... I'll tell you just how it is. There ain't one of them that don't think I'm a sinner of the worst kind—gospel hardened. They've about given me up, I know they have. Well now, let alone the talk, I don't believe there's a mite of difference, between me, and the most of them, and the Lord knows I'm bad enough. And so you see, I've about come to the conclusion, that if there is such a thing as religion, I haven't never come across ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson

... bank, dived into the water, and in three minutes was back with the dripping mass in his arms. He gave it into Margery's hands, saying kindly while he shook himself like a large spaniel; "There! it isn't hurt a mite!" ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... i hope it may be right i promorst to rite to hear Please rite to me sune and let me know ef you do sen it on write wit you did with that ma a bught the cappet Bage do not fergit to rite tal John he mite rite to Me. I am doing as well is i can at this time but i get no wagges But my Bord but is satfid at that thes hard time and glad that i am Hear and in good helth. Northing More ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... OF LONDON,—Freedom and Peace desired,—{6}Thou City of London, I am one of thy sons by freedom, and I do truly love thy peace. While I had an estate in thee, I was free to offer my Mite into thy Public Treasury, Guildhall, for a preservation to thee and to the whole Land. But by thy cheating sons in the thieving art of buying and selling, and by the burdens of and for the soldiery in the beginning ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens

... his face. "I calc'late," he said to himself, "that this here dicker'll keep Crane and Keith gropin' and wonderin' and scrutinizin' more or less—when it gits to their ears. Shouldn't be s'prised if it come to worry 'em a mite." ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland

... let us get out of this. The place must be swarming with troops, and those yelling cowards will arouse every soldier within a mite of us. It may not be so easy to chase the next lot. Over into the churchyard again, and then, Moylin, we must trust to you. You know the country, or you ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham

... them. Where you find an overseer endeavoring in every way to overreach the apprentices, taking away the privileges which they enjoyed during slavery, and exacting from them the utmost minute and mite of labor, there you will find abundant complaints both against the master and the apprentice. And the reverse. The cruel overseers are complaining of idleness, insubordination, and ruin, while the kind master is moving on ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... that thou shed no drop of bloud Nor yet the man confound For if thou do, like murderer Thou here shall hanged be; Likewise of flesh see that thou cut No more than longs to thee; For if thou take either more or lesse To the value of a mite Thou shall be hanged presently As is both ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various

... through his mind now. Who was this little abandoned mite? Who were her father and her mother, and where were they? How had she come to be with the Eskimo woman and Blake? Blake was not her father; the Eskimo woman was not her mother. What tragedy had placed ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood

... "A mite like that, I've nothing to say about, but the idea of a big fellow like you crying! It's idiotic; you looked ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... her, rather awed. Lately he was beginning to feel a mite awed in Tess Kenway's company, anyway. She had always been a thoughtful child. Aunt Sarah Maltby declared she was uncanny and gave her the fidgets. Of late even the boy who desired to be a pirate found ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill

... don't; because she doesn't need it! I wish she'd give me ten cents, for I do need it; I haven't but a tinty, tonty mite." ...
— Dotty Dimple's Flyaway • Sophie May

... a grizzled veteran of the criminal bar to me long years ago, after our jury had gone out, "there's lots of things in this game you ain't got on to yet. Do you think I care what this jury does? Not one mite. I got a nice little error into the case the very first day—and I've set back ever since. S'pose we are convicted? I'll get Jim here [the prisoner] out on a certificate and it'll be two years before the Court of Appeals will get around to the case. Meantime Jim'll ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train

... and then as they appeared after a merely rudimental education, in the costumes and profiles of our own civilization. I never would have supposed that education could do so much in so short a time; and I gladly gave my mite for their further development in classic beauty and a final elegance. My mite was taken up in a hat, which, passed round among the audience, is a common means of collecting the spectators' expressions of appreciation. Other entertainments, of a prouder ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... equipages in Paris. She pays as much for one horse as her husband gains by his music in a year, and as for the poor prodigal prince, who is overrun with debts, he would be thankful to have even a widowed papa's mite of her vast wealth. Another lady, whose virtue is some one else's reward, has a magnificent and much- talked-of hotel in the Champs Elysees, where there is a staircase worth a million francs, made of real alabaster. Prosper Merimee said: "C'est par ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone

... which are never sung, save as a quavering lullaby to some mite who will never remember the tune, and fragments of nocturnes or simple melodies, which awaken the past as surely as the lost shell brings to the traveller inland the surge and thunder ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed

... judge. I didn't think a mite of a fairy girl like you could be so cruel. Some day I'll exact full penance for all you've made me suffer but just now we'll waive that and go over to the Plaza and have a high tea and talk. But first I'm going to kiss ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper

... Bloom, "to meaeke that square, You teaeke up me, then, if you can." "I come at call," the man did nod. "What then?" cried Bloom, "I han't a-rod, An' can't in thik there hodmadod." "Girt lump," the drever cried; "Small stump," good Bloom replied; "A little mite, to meaeke so light, ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes

... demand, that every one in the Dering household had become used to, likewise, to the speaker, a mite of humanity, with wicked big blue eyes, a pug nose, and a ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving

... don't say it to discourage you," she confessed. "Going around like a faded lily isn't going to help you a mite—and so I have already ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson

... slightly disappointed at her apathy; and perhaps it is to be deplored that he forgot it afterward, when Miss Belinda had bestowed her mite, and the case was dismissed for the time being. He really did forget it, and was beguiled into making a very long call, and enjoying himself as he had never enjoyed ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... mother's eyes; for a tender word was always touchin' to her, and seein' on 'em my father would make haste to say, pattin' of her cheek, that, although some o' the airly roses was gone, she wa' n't a mite less purty than she used to be! and then she'd wipe her eyes and smile agin, and arter a little smoothin' up of her hair, or carefuller pinnin' of her handkerchief, light his pipe for him, and fetch the big chair out of the corner; and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various

... a logical regret; but, as I said, life with them is in no wise logical. They even applaud one another for their charities, which they measure by the amount given, rather than by the love that goes with the giving. The widow's mite has little credit with them, but the rich man's million has an acclaim that reverberates through their newspapers long after his gift is made. It is only the poor in America who do charity as we do, by giving help where it is needed; the Americans are mostly too busy, if they are at all prosperous, ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells

... centralizing in one place, and putting out at interest on its own responsibility, the daily savings of many millions of the working classes. Thus the State draws to itself the wealth of the rich by loans, and has the poor man's mite at its disposal in the savings banks. The wealth of the country is perpetually flowing around the government and passing through its hands; the accumulation increases in the same proportion as the equality of conditions; for in a democratic country the State alone inspires private ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... one thousand pounds for this purpose; and, proper architects being employed, a contract was entered into for L1037, and was duly accepted. How well it would be if this amount could be refunded to this loyal and moral people from England! What a mite it would take from the ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... clothing leading. Of the thirty millions and more of population, not quite half are women; and of these nearly half are wage-earners, the majority in unrecorded forms of labor,—chiefly household service or the care of their own homes, with some petty industry adding its mite to the yearly income. But industrial training has but begun for Italy. The wage is pitiably low, the conditions of living hard and full of privation; nor can these facts alter till better education and organization have been brought about. The latest Italian census is not yet published; ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell

... gemman wid de gold specs dat dey do say is so mighty great, ain't eat nuffin yet but soup an' a li'l mite o' 'tater," he said to Aunt Hannah on one of his trips to the kitchen as dinner went on. "He let dat tar'pin an' dem ducks go by him same as dey was pizen. But I lay he knows 'bout dat ole yaller sherry," and Malachi ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... and they don't sing," said Rap; "they gabble and squawk and swim in the water, but they can fly as quick as Swallows, for all they look so heavy." "I wish he would begin with this little mite of a thing, that isn't much bigger than a bee," said Nat, showing ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues

... the wife whose fond heart he had broke; The children abandon'd to sorrow and shame, Their deepest misfortune the brand of his name. Oh, dire was the curse he invoked on his soul, Then gave his last mite for ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... on Mrs. Behn prefixed to her lover's watch; among the rest, Mr. Charles Cotton, author of Virgil Travesty, throws in his mite in her praise; though the lines are but poorly writ. But of all her admirers, Mr. Charles Gildon, who was intimately acquainted with our poetess, speaks of her ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber

... give to man; It is the first perfection of our nature; It is the brightest attribute of heav'n: Without it man should rank beneath the brute; And with it—he is little lower than angel. The generous mite of penury is pity; Nay, ev'n a look.— Not so the heartless pittance of the affluent, That is hypocrisy. If you pity, Your heart is liberal to forgive, Your memory to forget— Your purse is open, and your hands are ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 376, Saturday, June 20, 1829. • Various

... irresistibly funny to hear this small mite talk like a woman, for she was very small of her age; and Alice and ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt

... time of morning!' the woman occasionally exclaimed down the stairs. 'But folks show no mercy upon their flesh and blood—not one bit or mite.' ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... the jail comes old Doc again in about a week. I was flea-bitten, a mite sarcastic, ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry

... him; lest haply he drag thee unto the judge, and the judge shall deliver thee to the officer, and the officer shall cast thee into prison. 59 I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou have paid the very last mite. ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman

... exclusiveness is so well known that those in the humbler walks of life never dream of entering its doors. They feel they would be unwelcomed, that nine tenths of the congregation would consider them unfit to address their prayers to the Great White Throne from so exclusive a place. The widow's mite would cause the warden's face to glimmer with a well-bred smile of contemptuous amazement, if laid in the midst of the crisp bank bills of the collection; and Lazarus would lay a long time at the doors of these churches, unless the police should ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin

... garret-window usually is. Close under this window, kneeling on the bare boards with his face to the door, there appeared, of all the creatures in the world to see alone at such a place and at such a time, a mere mite of a child—a little, lonely, wizen, strangely-clad boy, who could not at the most, have been more than five years old. He had a greasy old blue shawl crossed over his breast, and rolled up, to keep the ends from the ground, into ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens

... heat that filled the snug little commoosie, while the smoke found its way out of the hole in the roof which Noel had left for that purpose. Later the stub burned through to its hollow center, and then they had a famous chimney, which soon grew hot and glowing inside, and added its mite to the ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long

... the spirit of Jesus than to estimate the {169} excellence of an action by the magnitude or the utility of its effects rather than the intrinsic good of its motive. Otherwise He would not have ranked the widow's mite above the gifts of vanity, nor esteemed the tribute of the penitent, not so much for the costliness of her offering, as for the sincerity of affection it revealed. Christ looked upon the heart alone, and the worth ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander

... faded, sleep-dazed eyes taking in Buck's bag. "Train come in? Reckon I must of been dozin' a mite." ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames

... she did live and got well, though she never grew a mite from that time. A little wizened-up thing she was, always; but I tell you folks 'round here thought a nawful lot of Aunt Debby! And Eddie, if you'll believe it, never took the sickness at all. They say, ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield

... ain't your father's," David drawled. "He ain't got anything but wheeled vehicles in the barn, and not one of 'em will be a mite of use till April. I borrowed this turnout of the McMasters', who live a piece down the road; the foreman, you know. It was either this or a straight sledge, and we happened to be using the sledges ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett

... by one with great patience, as though they had been pearls. And those who had anything extraordinary were surrounded by eight or ten, who stood staring at the baskets with bent heads, as though they were looking at the moon in a well. There were twenty congregated round a mite of a fellow who had a paper horn of sugar, and they were going through all sorts of ceremonies with him for the privilege of dipping their bread in it, and he accorded it to some, while to others, after many prayers, he only granted ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis

... said, "Luncheon-time." The old gentlemen, who have excellent appetites, dispersed at once, one of them politely asking us if we would not stop and have a bit of bread and a little mite of cheese. ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various

... I did not possess even a florin! It was a misery, a wretchedness without parallel to be so impoverished. What humiliation, too; what disgrace! I began again to think about the poor widow's last mite, that I would have stolen a schoolboy's cap or handkerchief, or a beggar's wallet, that I would have brought to a rag-dealer without more ado, and caroused with ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun

... portam S. Mariae. Et quoniam in anno Domini 1588. id nobis tunc muneris assignatum erat a sereniss. nostra Regina domina mea, vt contra vos, vestrasque copias, Ego solus pro eo tempore Generalis essem constitutus: Idcirco non opinamur vobis ignotum esse, quam mite quoddam, et humanum bellandi genus, tum hic iam in hoc ipso tempore, aduersus huius loci populum atque incolas vsurpauerimus: tum etiam saepius antehac quam humaniter, benigneque eos omnes tractauerimus, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt

... make my blood boil. But there, I must go. Well, it is understood, I count upon you for Tuesday; he will preach upon authority, a magnificent subject, and we may expect allusions—Ah! I forgot to tell you; I am collecting and I expect your mite, dear. I take as low a sum as a denier (the twelfth of a penny). I have an idea of collecting with my little girl on my praying-stool. Madame de K. collected on Sunday at St. Thomas's and her baby held the alms-bag. The little Jesus ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... the investment was a good one and Segouin had managed to give the impression that it was by a favour of friendship the mite of Irish money was to be included in the capital of the concern. Jimmy had a respect for his father's shrewdness in business matters and in this case it had been his father who had first suggested the investment; money to be made in the motor business, pots of ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce

... to inquire concerning the death of a very little mite of a child. It was the old miserable story. Whether the mother had committed the minor offence of concealing the birth, or whether she had committed the major offence of killing the child, was the question on which we were wanted. We must commit ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... in a small, mean little cabin on our coast some time ago while a trained nurse from New York washed a sick baby and taught the mother how to save the poor little mite's life. It was that gentlewoman's ministry for Jesus Christ. For the privilege she was paying her own expenses and receiving no salary. If ever I realized the Master standing by in my life it was then and there in the semi-darkness of that ...
— What the Church Means to Me - A Frank Confession and a Friendly Estimate by an Insider • Wilfred T. Grenfell

... the irony, yet he persisted, holding his temper well in control. "But all this presupposes, you see, that you marry me. . . . Ruth, you confess that you were wrong, for the child's sake. He is dead; and, on the whole, so much the better, poor mite! But for ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... dorcas and mite societies of the several churches in Sardis had been merged into one consolidated Lint-Scraping and Bandage-Making Union, in whose enlarged confines the waves of gossip flowed with as much more force and volume as other waves gain ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy

... isn't a mite ob certainty 'bout his 'tentions. He jist as like to go off wid a lot ob soldiers as any of de boys, only he's so mighty keerful ob you, Miss Phill; and den he's 'spectin' a letter; for de last words he say to me was, ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr

... suggested in turn a cat and a dog. Our word is corrupted by folk-etymology from Old Fr. chatepeleuse, "a corne-devouring mite, or weevell" (Cotgrave). This probably means "woolly cat," just as a common species is popularly called woolly bear, but it was understood as being connected with the French verb peler, "to pill, pare, barke, unrinde, unskin" (Cotgrave). The modern French ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley

... stately colonnades and terraces, yet looking, somehow, as light as if it were built of the sea's foam. This is one of the palaces—the summer palace—of the Counts of Sampaolo. It seems to float on the water, but it really occupies a tiny mite of an islet, called Isola Nobile; and connected with Isola Nobile by marble bridges are two other tiny Islets, laid out in gardens, Isola Fratello and Isola Sorella. The Counts of Sampaolo are one of the most ancient and ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland

... long the prop of the family of Beersheba, was gathered to her fathers; and Rebecca, the careful spouse of our friend Davie Deans, wa's also summoned from her plans of matrimonial and domestic economy. The morning after her death, Reuben Butler went to offer his mite of consolation to his old friend and benefactor. He witnessed, on this occasion, a remarkable struggle betwixt the force of natural affection and the religious stoicism which the sufferer thought it was incumbent upon him to maintain under each earthly ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... well-clothed, and somewhat proud withal, that his life is one of comparative ease. In virtue of all he does for you and your children's children, while plenty is on your right and on your left hand, rank him far above the hireling in its corrupted sense. He does much for the mite given him in return, and never murmurs at the task. At early dawn he rises, slings his knapsack, fills his canteen from the brook, and, with a scant ration in his haversack, marches a long Texan summer's day, recounting to his comrade some adventure ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... utter void of intergalactic space sped a tiny shell, a wee mite of a ship. Scarcely twenty feet long, it was one single power plant. The man who sat alone in it, as it tore through the void at the maximum speed that even its tiny mass was capable of, when every last twist possible had been given to the distorted time fields, ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell

... shot over the earth, and with the gunners she looked up to see a Gray dirigible. Already it was turning homeward; already it had gained its object as a scout. On the fragile platform of the gondola was a man, seemingly a human mite aiming a tiny toy gun. His target was one of the ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... not see much harm in the dwarf," laughed Dick; "the best fun I ever had in my life was seeing you pushing on one side of the gate, and the little chap pushing on the other. Alphabet was too hard for you, Lubin, my boy, though he is such a mite ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker

... just take another try at it and see if we can't keep our eyes right front next time. Good-by. I hope you'll not feel shook up, afterward, as mother did the day she fell down-stairs. Didn't appear to hurt her a mite, then, but she was all trembling and queer-headed for a week afterward. Come on, Tows! I didn't have but fifteen minutes for play, to begin with, and a lot of that's been ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond

... to buy some trees," answered Tom, laughing. "The Squire's up to all sorts of improvements. Shouldn't wonder a mite if he should take down yonder mountain to give him a view ...
— Bertie and the Gardeners - or, The Way to be Happy • Madeline Leslie



Words linked to "Mite" :   acarine, Acarina, touch, acarus, speck, mite box, small indefinite amount, small indefinite quantity, jot, pinch, hint, trombiculid, spider mite, tinge, itch mite



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