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Mote   Listen
verb
Mote  v.  See 1st Mot. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Mote" Quotes from Famous Books



... difference and that, new to me and strange. They were in no fashion I could name, and the simple costume the man wore suggested neither period nor country. It might, I thought, be the Happy Future, or Utopia, or the Land of Simple Dreams; an errant mote of memory, Henry James's phrase and story of "The Great Good Place," twinkled across my mind, and passed ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells

... agonizing over the pitiful condition of the Armenians under Moslem rule, but has nothing to say anent her own awful record in India. It were well for John Bull to get the beam out of his own eye before making frantic swipes at the mote in the optic of the Moslem. The oppression of the children of Israel by the Egyptian Pharaohs, the Babylonian king and Roman emperors were as nothing compared to that suffered by the patient Bengalese at the hands of Great Britain. The history of every barbarous prince of the Orient, in ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... to represent the present, into a lower series of similar fractions, and the actual present which you arrest measures now but the thirty-six-millionth of an hour; and so by infinite declensions the true and very present, in which only we live and enjoy, will vanish into a mote of a mote, distinguishable only by a heavenly vision. Therefore the present, which only man possesses, offers less capacity for his footing than the slenderest film that ever spider twisted from her womb. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... stopped you might have heard a mouse Squeak, such a death-like hush sealed up the old Mote House. But when the mass of man sank meek upon his knees, While Tab, alongside, wheezed a hoarse "Do hang us, please!" Why, then the waters rose, no eye but ran with tears, Hearts heaved, heads thumped, until, paying all past arrears Of pity and sorrow, at last a regular scream outbroke ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... Doctor," said the Idiot. "I sort of like Bill and I'll bet the University Intelligence Office will get him a job in forty-eight hours. A man who is willing to mote or Edit has an adaptability that ought to ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various

... hand reached out and shoved Rip, sweeping him through space like a dust mote. He clutched his propulsion tube with both hands and ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage

... careful breathing and exploring of body sensations, Cully realized he could move. He flexed an arm; a mote of gold sand sifted upward in the dark water. It had a pleasant color, in contrast with the ominous shades of the sea. In a few moments, he had struggled to a sitting position, delighting in the curtain of glittering metal grains whirling around him ...
— Cully • Jack Egan

... whit as great when our view is contracted and bounded by near objects as when it is extended to larger and remoter. For it being impossible that one MINIMUM VISIBILE should obscure or keep out of sight mote than one other, it is a plain consequence that when my view is on all sides bounded by the walls of my study see just as many visible points as I could, in case that by the removal of the study-walls and all other obstructions, I had a full ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley

... him! Perhaps this, was one of them—letting him disgrace himself! If he could but be made ashamed of himself there would be hope! And in the meantime she must get the beam out of her own eye, that she might see to take the mote or the beam, whichever it might be, out of Corney's! Again she fell upon her knees, and prayed God to enable her. Corney was her brother, and must for ever be her brother, were he the worst thief under the sun! God would see to their honor or disgrace; what she had to do was to ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... In precisely the same spirit, England, who was grasping at all the world, protested, with the most edifying devotion to the claims of justice and humanity, against the ambitious spirit of Russia. The "beam" did not exclude the vision of the "mote." Catharine, offended by the opposition of England, retaliated by entering into a treaty of commerce with France, which deprived England of an important part of the ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... saw, and heard, and felt—even to blindness, and, also, to the receiving of his sight. He was sincere. He suffered long as a bold defender of the Christian religion, and died a martyr's death at last. Let us work on, suffer on, hope on, "hope in death," and live forever! So mote it be. ...
— The Christian Foundation, June, 1880

... everybody knew Alderman Cute was a Justice! Oh dear, so active a Justice always! Who such a mote of brightness in ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various

... more likely, on your back, and I wouldn't let you go into my hog pen for a $2000 note. I'm so well quarantined that I don't much fear contagion; but there's always danger from infected dust. The wind blows it about, and any mote may be an automobile for a whole colony of bacteria, which may decide to picnic in my piggery. This dry weather is bad for us, and if we get heavy winds from off the ridge, I'm ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter

... the world mote stonde, And hath done sithen it began, And shall while there is any man, And that ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... and your flickering planet A mote that flecks your sun, that faint white star; Yet, in my magic pools, I still can scan it; For I have ways ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes

... more welcome,' sayd Robyn, 'So ever mote I the! Fyll of the best wyne,' sayd Robyn, 'This monke shall drynke ...
— Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Fourth Series • Frank Sidgwick

... gra mote Tauro. Compare the sketches PI. CXVI-CXVIII. So long as it is im- possible to identify the situation of Calindra it is most difficult to decide with any certainty which peak of the Taurus is here meant; and I greatly regret that I had ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci

... seein' as they're more after the weemen than the money, an' nobody as I know o' carin' to cut 'em out there. It's true him I refer to hez come into the thing at the 'leventh hour, as ye may say—after 'twar all planned. But he mote a gied us trouble by stannin' apart. Tharfore, I say, let's take him in on ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid

... who shamed * A wand of the willow by Zephyr befanned: I lavisht upon her mine heritage, * And spent like a nobleman puissant and grand: Then to sell her compelled, my sorrow increased; * The parting was sore but I mote not gainstand: Now as soon as the crier had called her, there bid * A wicked old fellow, a fiery brand: So I raged with a rage that I could not restrain, * And snatched her from out of his hireling's hand; When the angry curmudgeon made ready for blows, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... any one member of it. If she had seen anything wrong in Jemima, Ruth loved her so much that she would have told her of it in private; and with many doubts, how far she was the one to pull out the mote from any one's eye, even in the most tender manner;—she would have had to conquer reluctance before she could have done even this; but there was something undefinably repugnant to her in the manner of acting which Mr Bradshaw had proposed, and she determined not to accept the invitations which ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... first the hot fermentation and unwholesome secrecy of the population crowded into large cities, each mote in the misery lighter, as an individual soul, than a dead leaf, but becoming oppressive and infectious each to his neighbor, in the smoking mass of decay. The resulting modes of mental ruin and distress are continually new; and in a certain sense, worth study in their monstrosity: they have ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... temporarily blinded by the excess of light which emanates from St. John, who proceeds to examine him in regard to Charity. His answers are greeted by the heavenly chorus with the chant "Holy, holy, holy," in which Beatrice joins, ere she clears the last mote away from Dante's eyes and thus enables him to see more plainly than ever. Our poet now perceives a fourth spirit, in whom he recognizes Adam, father of mankind, who retells the story of Eden, adding that, 4232 years after creation, Christ delivered ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... of real as opposed to 'ideal', the least speck of positive existence, even though it were but the mote in a sun beam, into the sciential 'contemplamen' or theorem, and it ceases to be science. 'Ratio desinit esse pura ratio et fit discursus, stat subter et fit [Greek: hypothetikon]:—non superstat'. The 'Nous' is bound to ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge

... time Ruth had been less than a mote in the eye of Uncle Jabez. She was merely an annoyance to the miller at that time. Since then, however, she had many and many a time proved a blessing to him. Nor did Jabez Potter refuse to ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson

... that it was an excellent compromise!" answered the lawyer soulfully. "There's something in the Bible, isn't there, about pulling the mote out of your own eye before attempting to remove the beam from ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train

... that a young slave girl was recently hanged at New Orleans for the crime of striking and abusing her mistress. The religious press of the north has not, so far as we are aware, made any comments upon this execution. It is too busy pulling the mote out of the eye of the heathen, to notice the beam in our nominal Christianity at home. Yet this case, viewed in all its aspects, is an atrocity which has (God be thanked) no parallel in heathen lands. It is a ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies

... them, that they never go out of their road. We are dapper little busybodies, and run this way and that way superserviceably; but they swerve never from their fore-ordained paths,—neither the sun, nor the moon, nor a bubble of air, nor a mote of dust. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various

... fragment, scrap, crumb; mite, ace, scintilla, particle, whit, iota, tittle, grain, atom, jot, molecule, speck, mote. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... 5 A.M. we dropped anchor in Keppel Bay, but had to wait for the tide to rise. We landed in the course of the morning in the 'Gleam,' the 'Flash,' and the 'Mote,' and made quite a large party, with dogs, monkey, and photographic apparatus. We found a convenient little landing-place, and looked over the telegraph station and post-office, which are mainly managed by the wife of the signalman, ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey

... world rolls round,—mistrust it not,— Befalls again what once befell; All things return, both sphere and mote, And I shall hear my bluebird's note, And dream ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... incongruously enough, in quite a modern fashion, rather shabbily, and I daresay rather mannishly. There were leather arm-chairs and settles, all a good deal worn, and stout tables littered with books and periodicals. The narrow windows let in thin slants of mote-filled sunshine, vortices of gold-dust; and on the faded carpet, by the door, lay a bright parallelogram, warming to life its dim old colours. The rest of the room seemed twilit. Someone had been too wise to defeat that good oak ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland

... language than this, many of the Reformers had been branded as "traitors," "disaffected," and "republicans," by the very person who now gave utterance to it. The beam in one's own eye is so much harder to perceive than the mote in ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... in the House of Lords and the much more perfect kind that is seen in the House of Commons. After a while, as cities and boroughs grew in importance, they sent representative burghers to the shire-mote. There were two presiding officers; one was the ealdorman, who was now appointed by the king; the other was the shire-reeve (i.e. "sheriff"), who was still elected by the people and generally held ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske

... Madame de la Baudraye, "London is the capital of trade and speculation and the centre of government. The aristocracy hold a 'mote' there for sixty days only; it gives and takes the passwords of the day, looks in on the legislative cookery, reviews the girls to marry, the carriages to be sold, exchanges greetings, and is away again; and is so far from amusing, that it cannot bear ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... second, at the same time planting my straw as before, a straw sticking out nearly a centimetre. (.39 inch.—Translator's Note.) What will the Bee do? Will she, who is scrupulous in ridding the home of the least mote of dust, extract this beam, which would certainly prove the larva's undoing by interfering with its growth? She could, for just now we saw her drag out and throw away, at ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre

... then, and sneer? From out your own eye pull the mote; A pretty thing for you to jeer! Haven't you, too, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various

... all the swifter will he go Through the pale, scattered asphodels, Down mote-hung dusk of olive dells, To where the ancient basins throw Fleet threads of blue and trembling zones Of gold upon ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody

... an old wife in that place, A little beside the fire, Which William had found of charity Mor-e than seven year; Up she rose, and walked full still, Evil mote she speed therefore: For she had not set no foot on ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various

... to my dear friends' door, of my hopes the goal, * Whose sight mote assuage my sorrow and woes of soul: No friends found I there, nor was there another thing * To find, save a corby-crow and an ill-omened owl. And the tongue o' the case to me seemed to say, * 'Indeed ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... were reading no ordinary book. He uses many striking expressions, such as (II Tim. ii. 4): "No man holding knighthood to God, wlappith himself with worldli nedes;" and many of the best-known phrases in our present Bible originated with him; e.g., "the beame and the mote," "the depe thingis of God," "strait is the gate and narewe is the waye," "no but a man schall be born againe," "the cuppe of blessing ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... Avynoun thexperience Therof hath yove an evidence, Of that men sen hem so divided. And yit the cause is noght decided; Bot it is seid and evere schal, Betwen tuo Stoles lyth the fal, Whan that men wenen best to sitte: In holy cherche of such a slitte Is for to rewe un to ous alle; God grante it mote wel befalle 340 Towardes him which hath the trowthe. Bot ofte is sen that mochel slowthe, Whan men ben drunken of the cuppe, Doth mochel harm, whan fyr is uppe, Bot if somwho the flamme stanche; And so to speke upon this branche, Which proud Envie hath mad to springe, Of Scisme, causeth ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower

... not as a sufficient argument for disputing papal power, but in order to show the perverted opinions of those who strain the gnats, but let elephants go through [Matt. 23:24], who behold the mote in the brother's eye and permit the beams in their own to remain [Matt. 7:3], only to the end that others may be stifled by superfluous and unnecessary things, or at least branded as heretics or by any ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther

... wapentacks, the tithings into hundreds, and the hundreds into tenths. Each division had a court subordinate to those that were superior, the highest in each shire being the shire-gemot, or folck-mote, which was held twice a year, and in which the bishop or his deputy, and the ealderman, or his viceregent, the sheriff, presided. See Seldon on the Titles of Honor; Speman's Glossary, ad. noviss. Squires on the Government of the English Saxons. ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... campaign plain, Lays open all the little worms that creep; In men, as in a rough-grown grove, remain Cave-keeping evils that obscurely sleep: Through crystal walls each little mote will peep: Though men can cover crimes with bold stern looks, Poor women's faces are their ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]

... forked hill, the boasted seat Of studious Peace and mild Philosophy, Indignant murmurs mote be heard to threat.—WEST. ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book IV • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... and even disliked the place because of them. His father was one whom a mote in his brother's eye repelled. The son suffered for this in twenty ways—one of which was that a single spot in the landscape was to him enough to destroy the loveliness of ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald

... pasture lay, And not a shadowe mote be seene, Save where full fyve good miles away The steeple tower'd from out the greene; And lo! the great bell farre and wide Was heard in all the country ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various

... paucity; fewness &c (small number) 103; meanness, insignificance (unimportance) 643; mediocrity, moderation. small quantity, modicum, trace, hint, minimum; vanishing point; material point, atom, particle, molecule, corpuscle, point, speck, dot, mote, jot, iota, ace; minutiae, details; look, thought, idea, soupcon, dab, dight^, whit, tittle, shade, shadow; spark, scintilla, gleam; touch, cast; grain, scruple, granule, globule, minim, sup, sip, sop, spice, drop, droplet, sprinkling, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... Peace—Goodfellowship—Mirth!!! These be verily the "Central Powers," which RUDINI might have referred to when he said,—"Our Alliance, firmly and sincerely maintained, will assure the Peace of Europe for a long time to come." So mote it be! Let us toast ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 11, 1891 • Various

... awful Night, Yspreaden roun ilk warrihour wight, Ye glasse of chivalrie; But nothing daunt, he kept his course, As well as mote his sorry hors, Farre to ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... simply a high-spirited and happy youth, full of energy and of apparently normal desires and intentions. He had that sort of genius which can be long asleep in the dark, while its possessor dances, like a mote, in sunshine. ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens

... the friar, "on with the cloak of the abbot of Doubleflask. I appoint thee my clerk: thou art here duly elected in full mote." ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock

... panting intellect before me brings, Sunk my weak sight before their dazzling load. Hence, whatsoe'er I spoke of her or wrote, Who, at God's right, returns me now her prayers, Is in that infinite abyss a mote: For style beyond the genius never dares; Thus, though upon the sun man fix his sight, He seeth less as ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... for any community to spend precious energy upon even a just finding of fault with another. The thing is, to trim the lamp and clean the glass of our own, that it may be a light to the world. It is just the same with communities as with individuals. The community which casts if it be but the mote out of its own eye, does the best thing it can for the beam in its neighbor's. For my part, I confess that, so far as the clergy form and represent the Church of England, it is and has for a long time been doing its best—not its worst, thank ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald

... shell struck squarely in the center of the earthwork, burst with a terrible crash, and sent steel splinters and fragments flying in every direction. A rain of dirt followed the rain of steel, and, when the colonel wiped the last mote from his eye, he said triumphantly ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler

... to greater height. Men were long in accepting the proofs of the relative insignificance of the earth; they were more quickly convinced of the comparative littleness of the solar system; and now the evidence assails their reason that what they had regarded as the universe is only one mote gleaming ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss

... circumstance. On prejudiced or unsupported judgment the Master set His disapproval. "Judge not, that ye be not judged," He admonished, for, according to one's own standard of judging others, shall he himself be judged. The man who is always ready to correct his brother's faults, to remove the mote from his neighbor's eye so that that neighbor may see things as the interested and interfering friend would have him see, was denounced as a hypocrite. What was the speck in his neighbor's vision to the obscuring ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... And every mote, on earth or air, Will speed and gleam, down later days. And like a secret pilgrim fare By ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various

... other cheek—that sentence which Celsus found so vulgar—did no one smile, then, at the idea of anybody ever dreaming of such an act (Matt. 5:39)? Nor at the picture of the kind brother taking a mote from his brother's eye, with a whole baulk of timber in his own (Matt. 7:5)? Nor at the suggestion of doing two miles of forced labour when only one was demanded (Matt. 5:41)? Nor when he suggested ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover

... not see what difference two figures on horseback against the southern sky-line could possibly make to the shimmer of purple above the plains, or the fragrance of prairie-roses lining the trail. It seems to me the lonely call of the meadow-lark high overhead—a mote in a sea of blue—or the drumming and chirruping of feathered creatures through the green, could not have sounded less musical, if I had not been a lover. But that, too, is only an opinion; for one glimpse of the forms before me brought peace ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... Ruth came to pass a hundred (31) years after Othniel's reign. Conditions in Palestine were of such a nature that if a judge said to a man, "Remove the mote from thine eye," his reply was, "Do thou remove the beam from thine own." (32) To chastise the Israelites God sent down them one of the ten seasons of famine which He had ordained, as disciplinary measures for mankind, from the creation ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... what creature mote she bee; Whether a creature or a goddesse graced With heavenly gifts from heven first enraced? But what so sure she was, she worthy was To be the fourth with those three other placed, Yet she was certes but a countrey lasse; ...
— A Biography of Edmund Spenser • John W. Hales

... don't care a straw whether we go on with or without the other newspapers. We will do justice and say what is true, regardless of popularity. We detest hypocrisy; and we have no disposition to make a mountain out of a molehill, or to see a mote in the eye of Lola Montez, and not discover a beam in the eye of Fanny Elssler, or of any of the other great dancers ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... hand to gather one of the taller branches, a mote, a bit of bark—some hateful thing—falls into Molly's right eye. Instant agony is the result. Tears stream from the offended pupil; the other eye joins in the general tribulation; and Molly, standing in the centre of the grass-plot, ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

... other folks we faults can spy, And blame the mote that dims their eye; Each little speck and blemish find: To our ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various

... shown, not his defects, of which we are too conscious, but his merits, to which we are too blind. And The Egoist[19] is a satire; so much must be allowed; but it is a satire of a singular quality, which tells you nothing of that obvious mote, which is engaged from first to last with that invisible beam. It is yourself that is hunted down; these are your own faults that are dragged into the day and numbered, with lingering relish, with cruel cunning and precision. A young friend of Mr. Meredith's (as I have the story) ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... won't laugh any mote. Come back, and you needn't climb. You can stay underneath and pick up while ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... globe, this quivering crystal world, Is slowly dying. What if, seconds hence When I am very old, yon shimmering doom Comes drawing down and down, till all things end?" Then with a wizen smirk he proudly felt No other mote of God had ever gained Such ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various

... short time before he had been censuring one of his own relations for his parsimonious temper—"Now is it not strange," continued he, "that this man would not remove the beam from his own eye, before he attempted to take the mote out of other peoples?" "Why, so I dare say he would," cried Foote, "if he were sure of selling ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various

... Swift as a swallow, subtle as a flame: I know not what it bore of freight or host, But white it was as an avenging ghost. It levelled strong Euphrates in its course; Supreme yet weightless as an idle mote It seemed to tame the waters without force Till not a murmur swelled or billow beat: Lo, as the purple shadow swept the sands, The prudent crocodile rose on his feet And shed appropriate tears ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti

... a tree. hist, hush! bowl, a vessel. hissed, did hiss. boll, a pod. paws, the feet of beasts. nose, part of the face. pause, a stop. knows, does know. faun, a sylvan god. mote, a particle. fawn, a young deer. moat, a ditch. pride, vanity. toled, allured. pried, did pry. told, did tell. wain, a wagon. tolled, did toll. wane, to decrease. rein, part of a bridle. see, to behold. rain, falling ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey

... shrewd eyes. Hume had no means of knowing how much money she possessed, but he did know that she had paid out ten thousand dollars in cash. He knew also that she was a woman. In his eyes, never clearsighted from the mote of conceit and the dust of arrogant superiority, a woman was a fool. He needed money, he wanted money, her money as well as another's. He had gone far already in the project that would make him a rich man if it succeeded; he was going further. If litigation now were to raise ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory

... something rising out of the mists at the far horizon. It was a thread of white vapor. The other rocketship was a speck, a mote, invisible because of its size and distance. This thread of vapor was already 100 miles long, and it expanded to a column of whiteness half a mile across before it seemed to dissipate. It rose and rose, as ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster

... fair Canacee, That was the learnedst lady in her days, Well seem in every science that mote be, And every secret work of nature's ways, In witty riddles, and in wise soothsays, In power of herbs and tunes of ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... 395) the account of the Balcreggan hoard which he had contributed to the Scotsman (my Report for 1913, p. 11). Mr. A. O. Curle (p. 161) records the discovery and exploration of a vitrified fort at the Mote of Mark near Dalbeattie (Kirkcudbright), and the discovery in it of two clearly Roman potsherds. The main body of the finds made here seem to belong to the ninth century; whether any of them can be earlier than has been thought, I am not competent ...
— Roman Britain in 1914 • F. Haverfield

... mind thee for many a season How we met in the high voice of Hilda. Right fain I go forth to the spear-mote Being fitted for every encounter. There Cormac's gay shield from his clutches I clave with the bane of the bucklers, For he scorned in the battle to seek me If we set not the lists of ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown

... Edgcumbes I should like and Lady Lyttelton, but Garrick does not tempt me at all. I have no taste for his perpetual buffoonery, and am sick of his endless expectation of flattery; but you who charge me with making a long visit to Lord and Lady Ossory,—you do not see the mote in your own eye; at least I am sure Lady Ailesbury does not see that in hers. I could not obtain a single day from her all last year, and with difficulty got her to give me a few hours this. There ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... body of a perfect man," said he. "In the days when our State was powerful and great, when men and not dogs ruled at Mandakan, no man might be Dakoon save him who was clear of mote or beam; of true bone and body, like a high-bred yearling got from a perfect stud. But two such are there that I have seen in Mandakan to-day, and they are thyself and mine ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... been well described as preeminently "the man of the town meeting,"—Samuel Adams. The limitations of this great man, as well as his powers, were those which belonged to him as chief among the men of English race who have swayed society through the medium of the ancient folk mote. At this time he was believed by many to be hostile to the new Constitution, and his influence in Massachusetts was still greater than that of any other man. Besides this, it was thought that the governor, John Hancock, was half-hearted in his support of the ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... in,' I rored; when suddenly there rose A magick form before my dazzled eyes: 'Or do I wake,' I asked myself 'or doze'? Or hath an angel come in mortal guise'? So wondered I; but nothing mote surmise; Only I gazed upon that lovely face, In reverence yblent with mute surprise: Sure never yet was seen such wondrous grace, Since Adam first began to run his ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling

... the shore! While Julius frown'd the bloody monster dead, Who brought the world in his great rival's head. This sever'd head and trunk shall join once more, Tho' realms now rise between, and oceans roar. The trumpet's sound each fragrant mote shall hear, Or fix'd in earth, or if afloat in air, Obey the signal wafted in the wind, And not one sleeping atom lag behind. So swarming bees, that on a summer's day In airy rings, and wild meanders play, Charm'd with the brazen sound, their ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young

... up, and turned from the charmer into the path of right! There came into her heart a longing that Ludwell Cary should see the matter truly. He should have done so that afternoon in the cedar wood; where was the black mote that kept the vision out? She was suddenly aware—and it came to her with a dizzying strangeness—that there was in her own soul that reference of matters to the bar of Cary's idea, thought, and judgment which, that day in the cedar wood, she had ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston

... spake also a parable unto them, Can the blind guide the blind? shall they not both fall into a pit? 40 The disciple is not above his teacher: but every one when he is perfected shall be as his teacher. 41 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? 42 Or how canst thou say to thy brother, Brother, let me cast out the mote that is in thine eye, when thou thyself ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman

... dislike the behavior of those persons who, when people are unfortunate, say: "I told you so—getting punished—served him right." If those I-told-you-so's got their desert they would long ago have been pitched over the battlements. The mote in their neighbor's eyes—so small that it takes a microscope to find it—gives them more trouble than the beam which obscures their own optics. With air sometimes supercilious and sometimes Pharisaical, and always ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... small, shiny nut-coal. The draughts were put on, and in five minutes the coals were red. In these five minutes the stove and the mantel were dusted, the hearth brushed up, and there was neither chip nor mote to tell the tale. It was not like an Irish fire, that reaches out into the middle of the room with its volcanic margin of ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... There's a mote in my eye or a blot on the page, And I cannot tell of the joyful greeting; You may take it for granted and I will engage, There were kisses and tears at the strange, glad meeting; For aye since the birth of the swift-winged ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon

... or faded, hung so low over his narrow forehead, that it wholly concealed it, and touched his bushy, snow-white brows. The eyes under them needed to be taken on trust, they were so well concealed, but when they peered through the narrow chink between the rows of lashes, not even a mote escaped them. Ulrich was shaping an arrow, and meantime asking the coal-burner numerous questions, and when the latter prepared to answer, the boy laughed heartily, for before Hangemarx could speak, he was obliged to straighten his crooked mouth by ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... The Eagle is king of the birds!" sang all the others; but, no! Way, way above the Eagle flew another bird, so tiny that he looked like nothing but a mote, floating in the sunlight. It was the little brown bird that sings alone in the hedges, and had no name then. He had hidden himself in the Eagle's feathers and had been carried up with him until he wanted ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey

... mote it be?—It is the knowledge of nature, and the power of its various operations; particularly the skill of reckoning, of weights and measures, of constructing buildings and dwellings of all kinds, and the true manner of forming all things ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton

... specks that I could find among well ground Vermilion and Red-lead, seem'd to be a Red mass, compounded of a multitude of less and less motes, which sticking together, compos'd a bulk, not one thousand thousandth part of the smallest visible sand or mote. ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... myself freely, and shall cheerfully grant reviewers, critics, and readers, the same privilege. I send forth this book with a pure desire that it may do good. Amen, so mote it be. ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild

... wolde I Affter the sentence off myne auctowre, Butte I pray yowe of thys grette labowre I mote at thys tyme ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos

... delectable—a most glorious season. We, who are fond of basking as a lizard, and whose inward spirit dances and exults like a very mote in the sun-beam, always hail its approach with rapture; but our anticipations of bright and serene days—of blue, cloudless, and transparent skies—of shadows the deeper from intensity of surrounding light—of yellow corn-fields, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 346, December 13, 1828 • Various

... will, of one mind,—that one mind is everywhere active.—"All things proceed out of the same spirit, and all things conspire with it." While a man seeks good ends, nature helps him; when he seeks other ends, his being shrinks, "he becomes less and less, a mote, a point, until absolute badness is absolute death."—"When he says 'I ought;' when love warms him; when he chooses, warned from on high, the good and great deed; then deep melodies wander through ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... must not be allowed to embarrass or prevent a treaty of peace. If it violated a trifling article of the Golden Bull, that was no sin against the Holy Ghost, and God could show the Protestants, for a mote like this in the eyes of their enemies, whole beams in their own. It must needs be an intolerable burden to the Elector's conscience if war were to arise in consequence,—a war which might 'well end in rending the Empire asunder and ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin

... the will, the action, is alone worth the full energy of a man. His strength is first for his own, then for his neighbour's manhood. He must first pluck out the beam out of his own eye, then the mote out of his brother's—if indeed the mote in his brother's be more than the projection of the beam in his own. To make a man happy as a lark, might be to do him grievous wrong: to make a man wake, ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald

... xuld I now rave? An old man may nevyr thryff With a yonge wyff, so God me save! Nay, nay, sere, lett bene, Xuld I now in age begynne to dote, If I here chyde she wolde clowte my cote, Blere myn ey, and pyke out a mote, And thus oftyn tymes it ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... plain, My eyes Meet yours that mean— With your cheeks and hair— Something more wise, More dark, And far different. Even so the lark Loves dust And nestles in it The minute Before he must Soar in lone flight So far, Like a black star He seems— A mote Of singing dust Afloat Above, That dreams And sheds no light. I know your ...
— Poems • Edward Thomas

... soul's vision, that love like a broad river flowing through the lands, an atmosphere bathing the worlds, the subtile essence and ether of space in which the farthest star pursues its course,—why, then, should it escape me, the mote? Oh, when the world turned from me, I sought to flee thither! I sighed for the rest there! Wretched, alone, I have wept in the dark and in the light that I might go and fling myself at the heavenly feet. But, do you see? sin has broken down the bridge between God and me. Yet why, then, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... the question. The orb we know as the sun is centre of a system of worlds of which our earth is almost the most insignificant; yet great as is the sun when compared to the little bit of matter on which we dwell and have our being, it is itself but a mote, as it were, in the beam of the Universe. Formerly this sun was thought to be fixed and immovable, but the progress of science demonstrated that while the earth moves around this luminary, the latter is moving with mighty velocity in an orbit of its own. Tis the same with all the other ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing

... principles are nearest and most habitual, coming to the elucidation of all minutest matters no less than to that of the greatest,—as those forces which hold the solar system together apply themselves, as on the same level, to a mote wandering in the air; and because to these masters first principles, through all their changes of seeming, through all their ranging by analogy up and down, are never disguised, but are always near and clear and sure, they can admit the action of all modifying principles without ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... he saw Fair Annet wex pale, And marvelit what mote bee; But when he saw her dear heart's blude, A' wood-wroth ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang

... is always applied when people, with pretence of friendship, do you an ill turn, as one licking a mote out of your eye ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop

... mights unto the working that our good Lord stirreth us to, rejoicing and thanking inwardly. And sometimes for plenteousness it breaketh out with voice and saith: Good Lord! great thanks be to Thee: blessed mote Thou be." ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... ensconced himself snugly in a corner. The sun had appeared after a grey morning, and it pleasantly flooded this big living-room whose walls were entirely lined with the mellow backs of books. Here, as host, among his treasures, Swinburne was more than ever attractive. He was as happy as was any mote in the sunshine about him; and the fluttering of his little hands, and feet too, was but as a token of so much felicity. He looked older, it is true, in the strong light. But these added years made only more notable his youngness ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm

... your courtesy, That ye ne arrettee it nought my villainy, Though that I plainly speak in this mattere, To tellen you her words, and eke her chere: Ne though I speak her words properly, For this ye knowen as well as I, Who shall tellen a tale after a man, He mote rehearse as nye as ever he can: Everich word of it been in his charge, All speke he, never so rudely, ne large. Or else he mote tellen his tale untrue, Or feine things, or find words new: He may not spare, although he were his brother, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... and quite a considerable strip of blue sky could be seen from the window, and the mote-laden sun-rays that streamed in encouraged Hulda to grow better. She was soon up and about again, but the doctor said her system was thoroughly upset and she aught to have sea air. But that, of course, was impossible now. Hulda ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... I advise thee thus faithfully maintaining thy principles and doing thy duty, I would have thee very careful of either judging or reproving others; for it takes a long time to get the beam out of our own eye, before we can see clearly to take the mote out of our brother's eye. There is for one young in years, much greater safety in preaching to others by example, than in word, or doing what is done in an upright, manly spirit, 'unto the Lord, and ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman

... a sobering and a saddening and a silencing effect upon him. Your house might be full of skeletons for anything he would ever discover or remember. The beam in his own eye is so big that he cannot see past it to speak about your small mote. 'The inward Christian,' says A Kempis, 'preferreth the care of himself before all other cares. He that diligently attendeth to himself can easily keep silence concerning other men. If thou attendest unto God and unto thyself, thou wilt be but little ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte

... road to Faerie, O there are many sights to see,— Small woodland folk may one discern Housekeeping under leaf and fern, And little tunnels in the grass Where caravans of goblins pass, And airy corsair-craft that float On wings transparent as a mote,— All sorts of curious things can be Upon the ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey

... if we admit that this is the case, from the mote that floats in the sunbeam to multiple stars revolving round each other, are we willing to carry our principles to their consequences, and recognize a like operation of law among living as among lifeless things, in the organic as well as the inorganic world? What testimony does ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... is a God at all, He must be omnipresent in space. Beyond the last Stars He must be, as He is here. There can be no mote that peoples the sunbeams, no little cell of life that the microscope discovers in the seed-sporule of a ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... boy, in going among the savages at this hour, and letting himself fall into their hands like a deer that tumbles into a pit," growled the old man, perceiving as usual the mote in his neighbor's eyes, while he overlooked the beam in his own; "if he is left to pay for his stupidity with his own flesh, he can ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... towers a study called Paradise, where was a closet in the middle of eight squares latticed; about and at the top of every square was a desk lodged to set books on, &c. The garde robe in the castle was exceeding fair, and so were the gardens within the mote and the orchards without; and in the orchards were mounts opere topiario writhen about with degrees like turnings of a cockle-shell, to come to top ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... my friend finishes his brief explanation of the conditions with the application of the whole. "Hold on"; that is the ABC, the Alpha and Omega of it. So mote it be. Still, saying it is one thing, doing it another. My steel-centred Hardy I know pretty well, and have no fear, though it is small by comparison with the full-sized greenhearts to which my attendant is accustomed, and I can see that he distrusts it. Of the line ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior

... about to say mote when SCANTLEBURY once more coveys up his ears. TENCH suddenly makes a demonstration with the minute-book. A sense of having been engaged in the unusual comes over all of them, and one by one they resume their seats. EDGAR alone remains ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... Campedene should be quit of toll, and that if any free burgess of Campedene should come into the lord's amerciament he should be quit for 12d. unless he should shed blood or do felony. Probably Earl Ralph also granted the town a portman-mote, for the account of a skirmish in 1273 between the men of the town and the county mentions a bailiff and implies the existence of some sort of municipal government. In 1605 Campedene was incorporated, but it never returned representatives to parliament. Camden ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... opinion, either in print or elsewhere. In scribbling myself, it was necessary for me to find fault, and I fixed upon the trite charge of immorality, because I could discover no other, and was so perfectly qualified in the innocence of my heart, to "pluck that mote from my neighbour's eye." ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... flew into his eye, and lodged there so firmly that all his efforts to remove it were in vain. In a little while, the eye became quite painful, and he was obliged to keep it closed. A kind-looking gentleman, who sat near him, noticed his trouble, and offered to assist him in removing the mote; but it was so small that he could not find it. He advised Oscar not to rub the inflamed organ, and told him he thought the moisture of the eye would soon wash out the intruder, if left to itself. Oscar tried to follow this advice, but the pain and irritation did not subside, ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell

... fluttering of the Storm-god's heart,— An instant's palpitation Through all its arteries of fire! One common blood runs down life's myriad veins, From Archangelic Hierarchs who float Broad-winged in the God-glory, to the mote That trembles with a braided dance In the warm sunset's vivid glance; And one great Heart that boundless flow sustains! In all the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

... to this. But she had her own thoughts. It was plain enough to her mind, that her friend had only herself to blame, for the annoyance she suffered. After witnessing one or two mote petty contentions with the domestic, Fanny went away, her friend promising, at her particular request, to come and spend a day with her ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur

... me to be too much influenced by the suspicions and calumnies thrown out by foreign journals—English, Prussian, Austrian, and others—which traduce the Emperor's motives in diplomacy, as they traduced them in the war. A prejudice in the eye is as fatal to sight as mote and beam together. And there are things abroad worse than ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... thing we note among these New Englanders was their town-meetings, derived from the ancient folk-mote, in which they elected their magistrates, and imposed upon themselves the necessary taxes for schools, highways, and officers of the law. They formed self-governed communities, who selected for rulers their ablest and fittest men, marked for their integrity and intelligence,—grave, austere, unselfish, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord

... a large Moorish arch of horse-shoe shape, the enormous white halo opening in front of them. They walked on, keeping their faces to the moon, smiling with wonder and a little rapture, until once mote the little lane curved wilfully, and they were walking north. Helena observed three cottages crouching under the hill and under trees to cover themselves from the ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence

... mocking-bird turned his head from side to side, then lifting his full throat he poured forth again his incomparable, superb, infinitely versatile melody, fixing his glittering eye on the moon, and heeding the futilely ambitious worldling no mote. ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... tree, or what are the streams to the fountain! Thy fountain is defiled; yea, a defiler, and so that which maketh thy whole self, with thy works unclean in God's sight. But Pharisee, how comes it to pass, that the poor Publican is now such a mote in thine eye, that thou canst not forbear, but must accuse him before the judgment of God: for in that thou sayest, "that thou art not even as this Publican," thou bringest in an accusation, a charge, a bill against him. What has he done? Has he concealed any of thy righteousness, or ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... brothers, if Christ to-day were to command, 'Let him who is without sin cast the first stone,' look into your own hearts and answer me, how many of you would dare to lift a hand? How many of you have taken the beam out of your own eye before attempting to pluck the mote out of your brother's? O ye pharisaical ones, who stand in the public places and thank God that you are not as other men, beware, beware. The condemnation that surely and inevitably shall fall upon you is not the judgment of Jesus Christ. It is not the sentence of the Father. It is your own self-condemnation, ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... have plucked out the eyes of this Seer; but that would have been too direct; the devil works in a more cunning way. He let him see and seek the true and the good; but while the young man was contemplating them, the evil spirit blew one mote after another into each of his eyes; and such a proceeding would be hurtful even to the best sight. Then the fiend blew upon the motes, so that they became beams; and the eyes were destroyed, and the Seer stood like a blind man in the wide world, and had no faith in it: he lost his good opinion of ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen

... to none other wight, Complain I, for ye be my lady dere; I am sorry now that ye be light, For, certes, ye now make me heavy chere; Me were as lefe be laid upon a bere, For which unto your mercy thus I crie, Be heavy againe, or els mote I die. ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... Young Betty {21} doth he flee! Light as the mote that daunceth in the beam, He liveth only in man's present e'e; His life a flash, his memory a dream, Oblivious down he drops in Lethe's stream. Yet what are they, the learned and the great? Awhile of longer wonderment the theme! Who shall presume ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith

... of no explanation. "Oh yes, quite parvarted; not a word of truth in it; there never is when England is consarned. There is no beam in an Englishman's eye; no not a smell of one; he has pulled it out long ago; that's the reason he can see the mote in other folks's so plain. Oh, of course it ain't true; it's a Yankee invention; it's a hickory ham ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... crowds of murmuring men he hied, With working lips and swinging stride, And gleaming eyes and brow bent down; Out of the great gate of the town He hastened ever and passed on, And ere the darkness came, was gone, A mote beyond the ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman

... are. They have a polarized phraseology for saying these things, but it comes to precisely that. To which it may be answered, in the first place, that we have good authority for saying that even babes and sucklings know something; and, in the second, that, if there is a mote or so to be removed from our premises, the courts and councils of the last few years have found beams enough in some other quarters to build a church that would hold all the good people in Boston and have sticks enough left to make a bonfire for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... they call the sun over here which they show occasionally, but it looks more like a boiled turnip than it does like its American namesake. Yet they cheer us with the assurance that there will be real sunshine here by-and-by. So mote it be! ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... Thou my Sun, my selfishness destroy, Thy atmosphere of Love be all my joy; Thy Presence be my sunshine ever bright, My soul the little mote that lives ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston

... excellent a subject,—seeking to be Mary before it has laboured with Martha. If our Lord will have a soul to be Mary, even on the first day, there is nothing to be afraid of; but we must not be self-invited guests, as I think I said on another occasion. [10] This little mote of want of humility, though in appearance a mere nothing, does a great deal of harm to those who ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila

... which no man could pass without hewing a way. But before it is told whereto Wildlake's Way led, it must be said that on the east side of the ghyll, where it first began just over the Portway, the hill's brow was clear of wood for a certain space, and there, overlooking all the Dale, was the Mote-stead of the Dalesmen, marked out by a great ring of stones, amidst of which was the mound for the Judges and the Altar of the Gods before it. And this was the holy place of the men of the Dale and of other folk whereof ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris

... speak'st as I would have thee speak; And mark how I unsay my words again. An honourable grave is more esteemed Than the polluted closet of a king; The greater man, the greater is the thing, Be it good or bad, that he shall undertake; An unreputed mote, flying in the sun, Presents a greater substance than it is; The freshest summer's day doth soonest taint The loathed carrion that it seems to kiss; Deep are the blows made with a mighty axe; That sin doth ten times aggravate itself That is committed in a holy place; An evil deed, ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... we had the place to ourselves. But then Feth sees few visitors at any season. Sixteen miles from a station is its salvation. True, there is Mote Abbey hard by—a fine old place with an ancient deer-park and deep, rolling woods. Ruins, too, we had heard. A roofless quire, a few grass-grown yards of cloister and the like. Only the Abbot's kitchen was at all ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates

... I would—" Maria paused. Suddenly she remembered that she had her secret, and she felt humbled before this other girl whom she was judging. She became conscious to such an extent of the beam in her own eye that she was too blinded to see the mote in that of poor Lily, who, indeed, was not to blame, being simply helpless before her own temperament and her ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... of magnifying and aggravating the faults of others; raising any small miscarriage into a heinous crime, any slender defect into an odious vice, and any common infirmity into a strange enormity; turning a small "mote in the eye" of our neighbour into a huge "beam," a little dimple in his face into a monstrous wen. This is plainly slander, at least in degree, and according to the surplusage whereby the censure doth exceed the fault. As he that, upon the score of a ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow

... myriad germs at random float, Fall on no fostering home, and die Back to mere elements; every mote Was framed for ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)

... or, in his absence, the gerefa, (sheriff,) and sometimes both the earl and the gerefa, presided at the schyre-mote (county court); the gerefa (sheriff) usually alone presided at the mote (meeting or court) of the hundred. In the cities and towns which were not within any peculiar jurisdiction, there was held, at regular stated intervals, a burgh ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner

... hovering. It shrank. It was rising in an absolutely vertical line. It dwindled to the size of a basketball and then an apple. Then to the size of a pea. And then that pea diminished until the spaceship from Krim, Walden, Cetis, Rigel and the Nearer Rim had become the size of a dust mote and then could not be seen at all. But one knew that it was going on to Lohala and Tralee and Famagusta ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster

... so fayr and bright Velut maris stella, Brighter than the day is light, Parens et puella; I crie to thee, thou see to me, Levedy, preye thi Sone for me, Tam pia, That I mote ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry

... days in spring wherein advance seems as passive as is the progress of a log down the race of a spring freshet. Then there are other days wherein it seems that every mote must feel to the full its sentient life, and its swelling towards development or fulfilment. On a day like the latter, everything and everybody bestirs. The dust motes spin in whirling columns, the gnats dance for their lives their dance of death before the wayfarer. ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... you know, who'll gang up and doon the land talkin' o' humanity. But they'll no be kind to the wife, and their weans will run and hide awa' when they come home. There's many a man has keen een for the mote in his neighbor's eye who canna see the beam in his own— that's as true to-day as when it was said first twa ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder

... him to have done, and met him on their habitual ground of frankness and reality as if he had not left it. He got to telling her all his steps with his patent-right man, who seemed to be growing mote and more slippery, and who presently developed a demand for funds. Then she gave him some very shrewd, practical advice, and told him to go right into the hotel office and telegraph to his father while she was putting on ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... stands open to a telling tu quoque by means of a selection of gems from British books and pamphlets of the type of those from which I have made my gleanings? Is it a case of the mote and the beam? I think we may be pretty confident that it is not. I doubt whether the literature of the world can show a parallel to the amazing outburst of tribal arrogance, unrestrained and unashamed, of which these pages contain but a few scattered specimens. In the extracts from ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various

... would raise a rage that mote * Make spittle choke me, sticking in my throat) His pardoner, and pardon his offense, * Fearing lest I should live ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton

... compleat Bridges to enter the City. To prevent which, the Besieged intended to have made another Ditch out of their Works, so that the Wheels falling therein, the Bridge would have fallen too short of their Breastworks into their wet Mote, and so ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various

... previous instructedness as the case calls for, would quite avail to understand him; or he may open his eyes to the fact and be trying hard to overcome it: but on which supposition is he led to confirm another in his unintelligibility? By the proverbial tenderness of the eye with the mote for the eye with the beam? If that beam were just such another mote—then one might sympathize and feel no such inconvenience—but, because I have written a 'Sordello,' do I turn to just its double, Sordello ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... travelling by a story or two. There are certain principles to be assumed,—such as these:- He who is carried by horses must deal with rogues.—To- day's dinner subtends a larger visual angle than yesterday's revolution. A mote in my eye is bigger to me than the biggest of Dr. Gould's private planets.—Every traveller is a self-taught entomologist.—Old jokes are dynamometers of mental tension; an old joke tells better among friends travelling than at home,—which shows that their minds are in a state of diminished, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... in the regions of eternal twilight, revolutions, of which history has been silent, in the mysterious depths of Asia, outpourings of human rivets along the sides of the Altai mountains, convulsions up-heaving r mote realms and unknown dynasties, shock after shock throb bing throughout the barbarian world and dying upon the edge of civilization, vast throes which shake the earth as precursory pangs to the birth of a new empire—as dying symptoms of the proud but effete realm which called ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... certainly more beautiful than I ever dreamed of a woman's being. If she continues, I do not know what perfect thing she will become. She is too exquisite for common use. I wonder her husband is not jealous of every mote in the air, of rain and wind, of every day that passes over her head,—since each must now bear some charm from her ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various

... been to me. How fathomless thy joys,—how rapturously has my soul bounded forth upon the upward paths! To him who forever renews his youth in the clear fount of Nature, how exquisite is the mere happiness TO BE! Farewell, ye lamps of heaven, and ye million tribes, the Populace of Air. Not a mote in the beam, not an herb on the mountain, not a pebble on the shore, not a seed far-blown into the wilderness, but contributed to the lore that sought in all the true principle of life, the Beautiful, the Joyous, the Immortal. To others, a land, a city, a hearth, ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... Ascapard was made a tun, And when he should therein be done, He lept out upon the brench (brink) And said, 'Churl! wilt thou me drench? The devil of hell mote fetche thee! I am too much ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... the land of Noua Zembla, toward the East out of the circle Arcticke in the mote temperate Zone, you are to haue regard: for if you finde the soyle planted with people, it is like that in time an ample vent of our warme woollen clothes may be found. [Sidenote: A good consideration.] And if there be no people at all there to be found, then you shall specially note what plentie ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt

... divided, under the presidency of an alderman. These divisions were afterwards called wards, and were analogous to the corresponding division of the shire into hundreds. In each ward was held a court-leet, or ward-mote, dating from the time of Alfred, though the actual institution of wards by that name is no later than the reign of Edward I. Civil causes, in London at least, were tried before a peculiar tribunal, the president of which was probably the ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen



Words linked to "Mote" :   stuff, material, speck, grinding, grain, molecule, atom, flyspeck



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