"Mote" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... no fault. That was the one principle at the centre of the universe. And the doubtful guilt or possible integrity of other people, appearances, self-evident facts, the testimony of her own senses,—even Hollingsworth's self-accusation, had he volunteered it,—would have weighed not the value of a mote of thistledown on the other side. So secure was she of his right, that she never thought of comparing it with another's wrong, but ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... fayne wolde I Affter the sentence off myne auctowre, Butte I pray yowe of thys grette labowre I mote at thys ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... to preach to Protestants about the sin of man-worship! Verily, here we have the parable of the mote and the beam in a twentieth century edition. Catholic teachers would be the last ones, we imagine, whom scrupulous Christians would choose for instructing them regarding the sin of idolatry and ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... yet the sun knows them not. They are local and only earth phenomena, yet the benefaction of the sun is as if it shone for us alone. It is as great as if this were the case, and yet the fraction of his light and heat that actually falls upon this mote of a world adrift in sidereal space is so infinitely small that it could hardly be computed by numbers. In our religion we appropriate God to ourselves in the same way, but he knows us not in this private and particular way, though we ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... that they and all who should come to the market of 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 ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... 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
... it away for a 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 a distance, a ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... 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
... 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
... with me, 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 ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... 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 which ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... 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, ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... dimly, to be sure, this mote of life and light; but before it is a vast evolution, Dane, on the pinnacle of which are to be found men and women, Hester Stebbins, my ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... 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 years, In the desert drear, in the field of clover, In the cot, and the ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... who all doth heal," She answered, "my dear Destiny, Chose me in marriage bond to seal; Unfit, He graced me regally, From your world's woe come into weal. He called me of His courtesy: 'Come hither to me, my lover leal, For mote nor spot is none in thee.' He gave me my might and great beauty; He washed my weeds in His blood so red, And crowned me, forever clean to be, And clothed me in ...
— The Pearl • Sophie Jewett
... 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 preserved. ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... that exists. We 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 ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... nothing to do with floating the new invention, Jack sold out the investments of his own little fortune (all that was left of his mother's money), putting everything at his friend's disposal. Miss Paget was disgusted with him for doing this, and when the motor wouldn't mote and the invention wouldn't float, she just said, ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... of L20 was at the same time handed to Fitz-Walter's chamberlain to defray the day's expenses. Having mounted his charger, he bids the Mayor to choose a Marshal of the host of the City of London; and this being done, the communal or "mote-bell" is set ringing, and the whole party proceed to the Priory of Holy Trinity at Aldgate. There they dismount, and entering the Priory, concert measures together for the defence of the city. There is one ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... to make us doubt whether it is not our manifest duty to endeavor at least to show our disapproval of the deed and our sympathy with those who have suffered by it. The cases must be extreme in which such a course is justifiable. There must be no effort made to remove the mote from our brother's eye if we refuse to remove the beam from our own. But in extreme cases action may be justifiable and proper. What form the action shall take must depend upon the circumstances of the case; that is, upon the degree of the atrocity and upon our power to remedy it. The cases in which ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... wherupon 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
... 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 ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... Moscow in the time the chevochic had promised. As the same horses were used for the whole journey, it would have been impossible to travel mote quickly. A Russian told me that the Empress Elizabeth had done the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... hand reached out and shoved Rip, sweeping him through space like a dust mote. He clutched his propulsion tube with both hands and fought to hold ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... arrete[26] it nought my villany, Though that I plainly speak in this mattere To tellen you her[27] 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, altho he ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... 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 (big) christened ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... passing across its surface? At first you imagine they are motes clogging the delicate blood-vessels of the retina; then you wonder if a distant host of falling meteors could have passed. Soon a larger, nearer mote appears; the moon and its craters are forgotten and with a thrill of delight you realise that they are birds—living, flying birds—of all earthly things typical of the most vital life! Migration is at its height, the chirps and twitters which come from the surrounding ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... but I do 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 ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... sorry she was for him; and how strange that she of all people should be the only one in whom he confided. What secret sorrow could it be that depressed him? Perhaps he, too, had lost his mother. Or could it be something still mote terrible? How glad she would be if only she ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... quick-closed door, The approaching steps, my pained heart's fluttering, Thy voice, then Thee! And all the storm and sting Of bygone griefs are passed forevermore, Swept from my life as the resistless wind Scatters the chaff, nor leaves a mote behind. ...
— A Woman's Love Letters • Sophie M. Almon-Hensley
... from the sky to the hills, and the sea; to every blade of grass, to every leaf, to the smallest insect, to the million waves of ocean. Yet this earth itself appears but a mote in that sunbeam by which we are conscious of one narrow streak in the abyss. A beam crosses my silent chamber from the window, and atoms are visible in it; a beam slants between the fir-trees, and particles rise and fall within, and cross ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... /[4,66] What 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 for the use ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... spring always seems to me more perceptible and more impressive in a great town than in the country. One sees less, but one feels more. I was standing near the window—through the double frames of which the morning sun was throwing its mote-flecked beams upon the floor of what seemed to me my intolerably wearisome schoolroom—and working out a long algebraical equation on the blackboard. In one hand I was holding a ragged, long-suffering "Algebra" and in the other a small piece of chalk which had already besmeared ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... objects from the eye: Take a horse-hair and double it, leaving a loop. If the object can be seen, lay the loop over it, close the eye, and the mote will come out as the hair is withdrawn. If the irritating object cannot be seen, raise the lid of the eye as high as possible and place the loop as far as you can, close the eye and roll the ball around a few times, draw out the hair, and the ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... 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
... "He knows not what to do: the outrage sore Avenged he has not, nor his pain allaid: What was a mote is now a beam; so sore It prest him; on his heart so heavy weighed. So plain is what was little known before, He fears that it will shortly be displaid. At first, he haply might have hid his woe; Which Rumour now throughout ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... approached. Endeavouring, however, to persuade herself that this strange conduct arose from a feeling of excitement or nervousness natural under the circumstances, Julia used a hundred kind words and tender gestures to reassure and support her companion. But the mote she consoled or admonished, the more agitated Virginie became, and matters stood in this condition when eleven o'clock arrived. Julia waited at her chamber window, which was not above three feet from the ground without, ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... 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 ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... 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 ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... suddenly it rose, painfully, higher, higher, seeming to acquire strength in the upper air levels. The sun flashed on its wings as it wheeled; then the distant bird swept westward into a long straight course, flying steadily until it vanished like a mote in mid-air. ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... None can remove the mote of another, so long as the beam is left in the eye, and the sin unjudged in the life, None can cleanse the stain, who is not willing to take the form of a servant, and go down with bare knees upon the floor. None is ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... owners whom he thought unconscious of its proper, value, it was fair enough for my Russian Jew to give credit to his farmers. Kelmar, if he was unconscious of the beam in his own eye, was at least silent in the matter of his brother's mote. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... as I was, You mote have let me bee, I never had come to the kings faire courte, To crave any love ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... fellow, how often must I explain to you your confusions? Orthodox sentiment and stereotyped emotion master you. And then your temperament! You are really incapable of rational judgments. Cerberus? Pshaw! A flash expiring, a mote of fading sparkle, a dim-pulsing and dying organism—pouf! a snap of the fingers, a puff of breath, what would you? A pawn in the game of life. Not even a problem. There is no problem in a stillborn babe, nor in a dead child. They never arrived. ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... be in a state of beatitude always. What is a mote of dust in another's eye, in yours is a cataract. You are mad at your blindness, and fight the air because ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... 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 moved with what thou seest abroad.' ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... individual that suffers a single adverse word immediately proceeds to abuse and slander in the extreme his opponent. In short, an angry heart knows no moderation and cannot equally repay, but must make of a splinter, even a mote, a great beam, or must fan a tiny spark into a volcano of flame, by retaliating with reviling and cursing. Yet it will not admit that it does wrong. It would, if possible, actually murder the offender, thus committing a greater wrong ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... a daye I mote thy worke renew, If to correct and eke to rubbe and scrape, And all is ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... adaptation from the New Testament." He and a charming "she" sit waiting their turn at the Hofrath's door. He is looking into her eyes and she into his. "Really I don't see the slightest mote in your eyes," says she. "No, but I can see the beams in ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... their comparisons, and formed their conclusions, with the same deference to self-esteem, and the same submission to hope, as had been apparent among their competitors. It would seem to be a law of nature that men should thus flatter themselves, and perceive the mote in the eye of their neighbour, while the beam ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... proud empire hastes to swift decay, As ocean sweeps the labored mote away; Whilst self-dependent power can time defy, As rocks resist the ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... wise Merlin, whilom wont (they say), To make his wonne low underneath the ground, In a deep delve far from the view of day, That of no living wight he mote be found, Whenso he counselled with ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... 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 if following something which sped upward. It was a rocket ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... wide. She had her empire; why must she seek out a man who had but his art and his youth, and steal those? Women are so insatiate, look you; though they held all the world, they would not rest if one mote in the air swam in sunshine, free of them! It was the first year I touched triumph that I saw her. They began for the first time to speak of me; it was the little painting of Cigarette, as a child of the army, that did it. Ah, God! ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged, and with what measure ye mete it shall be measured unto you. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me cast out the mote out of thine eye, and lo, the beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... seem to be not larger than pebbles, or even than grains of sand. Yet, insignificant as these bodies may seem, the sun does not disdain to undertake their control. Each particle, whether it be as small as the mote in a sunbeam or as mighty as the planet Jupiter, must perforce trace out its path around the sun in conformity with the ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... he is to appear a convicted fool. A man's business is to see first that he is not acting the part of a fool, and next, to help any honest people who care about the matter to take heed likewise that they be not offering to pull the mote out of their brother's eye. But there are even societies established and supported by good people for the express purpose of pulling out motes.—'The Mote-Pulling Society!'—That ought to take with a certain part ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... christened into His church as children, we and our fathers before us, for generations, of the kingdom of God. Ay, my friends, these words, that kingdom, that King, witness this day against this land of England. Not merely against popery, the mote which we are trying to take out of the foreigner's eye, but against Mammon, the beam which we are overlooking in our own. Owe no man anything save love. "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." That is the law ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... well, that's queer: it may stop a man drinking, because he can get no mote out of it. However, as you please, gentlemen; here's to drink my health, bad manners to you," said McShane, throwing the bottle over ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... admit 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 and ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... lagrimas, todas habreis visto en aquel santo lugar una tumba, una tumba humilde. Antes la componian una piedra tosca y una cruz de palo; la cruz ha desaparecido, y solo queda la piedra. En esa tumba, cuya inscripcion es el mote de mi canto, reposa en paz el ultimo baron de Fortcastell, Teobaldo de Montagut,[1] del cual voy a ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... 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, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt
... needed was a man to rule and suffer for the common weal. Arthur was not a thing "enskied and sainted;" rather a wholesome man, whose duty lay in working for men. Sir Percivale became a monk; other knights returned no mote, thus spilling the best blood of the table round. Meantime the king's enemies multiplied, and these visionaries decimated the ranks of opposition to the wrong; but come what would, King Arthur served. An appeal to him for help found answer, though treasons plotted at ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... some millions of germs up your sleeve now, or, 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 going ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... to see the beam that is in our own eye, and blind us to the mote that is in our brother's. Let us feel our offences with our hands, make them great and bright before us like the sun, make us eat them and drink them for our diet. Blind us to the offences of our beloved, cleanse them from our memories, take them out of our mouths ...
— A Lowden Sabbath Morn • Robert Louis Stevenson
... political issue was pressed temporarily into the background by the sudden demand of the railroad brotherhoods for shorter hours and mote pay, threatening a nation-wide strike if their plea was unheeded. Neither party wished to risk the labor vote by opposing the unions, and the public did not desire a strike, much as it deprecated the attitude of the labor leaders ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... defects, of which we are too conscious, but his merits, to which we are too blind. And "The Egoist" 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. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... seize, for the shadow which you could not hold fast if you were to seem to grasp it. Work on at the foundations. Insist on truth and right; put them into all your own life, taking all the beam out of your own eye before demanding—well, we will say the mote, for generosity's sake, and for the holy authority of the word—out ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... to Goddis pay, With vnitie, peace, rest and charitie. Hee that was here cladde in humanitie, That came from heauen, and styed vp with our nature, Or hee ascended, he gaue to vs cure, And left with vs peace, ageyne striffe and debate, Mote giue vs peace, so well irradicate Here in this world: ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... 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
... far off a winged vessel came, 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 and ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... distracted, Captain SHANDY," said Mrs. WADMAN, holding up her cambric handkerchief to her left eye, as she approached the door of my Uncle TOBY'S Sentry-Box—"a mote, or sand, or small fly, or something, I know not what, has got into this eye of mine. The Gardener declares it is one of those Green Flies which are the pest of this Distressful Country. I refuse to believe that. There never was, never will, never can, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 22, 1893 • Various
... it were, for then might the Sundering Flood have been laid with ice, which never betid. On the morning of Yule day, Osberne and his grandsire and grandam got under way long before daylight, that they might go to the Cloven Mote, and hear the Christmass in the church of Allhallows, which had been builded on the east side of the water to be the church of the Mote; but on the other side of the water was another church like to it in all ways, and under ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... Knighten Guild possessed is not easy to define. Besides this, the aristocracy of the City, there were already trade guilds for religious purposes and for feasting—but, as yet, with no powers. The people had their folk mote, or general gathering: their ward mote: and their weekly hustings. We must not seek to define the powers of all these bodies and corporations. They overlapped each other: the aristocratic party was continually innovating while the popular party as continually resisted. In ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... vanity, to avoid in their own case that which they condemn so harshly elsewhere. But tolerant people are just the opposite, and claim for themselves the same indulgence that they extend to others—hanc veniam damus petimusque vicissim. It is all very well for the Bible to talk about the mote in another's eye and the beam in one's own. The nature of the eye is to look not at itself but at other things; and therefore to observe and blame faults in another is a very suitable way of becoming conscious of one's own. We require a looking-glass ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... King Olaf's shrine could not be brought out to the mote-stead when we did you homage; ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... nigh-broken, my nature unmanned: He bought me a handmaid, a sweeting 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 ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... Ascending to its higher, Or the quick 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
... church is the tomb of a Flemish brewer, named Zoctmanns, calling for prayers for his soul; Iden, with a square tower and a stair turret, a village taking its name from that family of which Alexander Iden, slayer of Jack Cade, was a member, its home being at Mote, now non-existent; and Peasmarsh, whose long modest church, crowned by a squat spire, may be again seen, like the swan upon St. Mary's Lake, in the water at the foot of the churchyard. At Peasmarsh was born a poor artificial poet ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... by a Baynton, about perhaps Henry the Fifth. Here was a noble old-fashioned house, with a mote about it and drawbridge, and strong high walles embatteled. They did consist of a layer of freestone and a layer of flints, squared or headed; two towers faced the south, one the east, the other the west end. After the garrison was gonn the mote was filled up, about 1650, and the high wall ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... But everybody knew Alderman Cute was a Justice! Oh dear, so active a Justice always! Who such a mote of brightness in the public ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... imagination often produce those delusions, which Darwin calls hallucinations, and which sometimes terminate in mania. The haughtiness, the melancholy, and the aspiring genius of Leland, were tending to a disordered intellect. Incipient insanity is a mote floating in the understanding, escaping all observation, when the mind is capable of observing itself, but seems a constituent part of the mind itself when that is ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... in days of eld Gathered about his throat Such a circlet; no queen e'er held Necklace so clear of mote. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... sinews of his breast, And the long gush of his swollen arteries pause: And, nodding, wheeled, towering in all his height. Then, like a wind that hushes, gazed and saw Down, down, far down upon the untroubled green A shepherd-boy that swung a little sling. Goliath shut his lids to drive that mote, Which vexed the eastern azure of his eye, Out of his vision; and stared down again. Yet stood the youth there, ruddy in the flare Of his vast shield, nor spake, nor quailed, gazed up, As one might scan a mountain to be scaled. Then, ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... other three, The grizeliest beast that ere mote bee Her hede was greate and graye; Scho was bred in Rokebye woode, Ther war few that thither yoode, ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... by the female side. The breath of her mouth still moves in my hair, and I know that she lied, And I feel her, Bill, sir, inside me—she operates there like a drug. Were it better to live like a beetle, to wear the cast clothes of a slug, Be the louse in the locks of the hangman, the mote in the eye of the bat, Than to live and believe in a woman, who must one day grow aged and fat? You must see it's preposterous, Bill, sir. And yet, how the thought of it clings! I have lived out my time—I have prigged lots of verse—I have kissed (ah, that stings!) Lips that ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... 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 neighbour, in the smoking mass of decay. The resulting modes of mental ruin and distress are continually ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... sight in London is—London. No man understands himself as an infinitesimal until he has been a drop in that ocean, a grain of sand on that sea-margin, a mote in its sunbeam, or the fog or smoke which stands for it; in plainer phrase, a unit ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Manie thought themselues touched with his words, who hauing smelled somewhat of his secret tricks, that whereas he was a most licentious liuer, and an vnchast person of bodie and mind, vet he was so blinded, that he could not perceiue the beame in his own eies, whilest he espied a mote in another mans. Herevpon they grudged, that he should in such wise call other men to accompts for their honest demeanor of life, which could not render any good reckoning of his owne: insomuch that they watched him so narrowlie, ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (3 of 12) - Henrie I. • Raphael Holinshed
... his pupil's initiation with great alacrity, first teaching him cautiously to open the cabinet door, lest any particles of dust should be dislodged and fix upon his canvas, and advising him never to take up his pencil without sitting motionless a few minutes, till every mote casually floating in the air should be settled. Such instructions were not thrown away upon Watersouchy: he treasured them up, and refined, if possible, upon ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... Nibelungs and Volsungs, of Sigurd and of Siegfried,—whether we follow the older versions or the mote recent renderings,—there is, as it were, an ever-present but indefinable shadow of coming fate, "a low, inarticulate voice of Doom," foretelling the inevitable. This is but in consonance with the ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... laughed. Pierre had tried to keep her a good deal to himself, but she had been elusive as a golden mote dancing up and down. She seemed to understand what this sense of appropriating meant, and she did not ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... 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 ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... as pride, if I remembered at all, my acquaintances who had gone to the city to attend the oratorios. The nighthawk circled overhead in the sunny afternoons—for I sometimes made a day of it—like a mote in the eye, or in heaven's eye, falling from time to time with a swoop and a sound as if the heavens were rent, torn at last to very rags and tatters, and yet a seamless cope remained; small imps that fill the air and lay their eggs on the ground on bare sand or rocks on the top ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... least 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 ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... than they are? All's in its place, from mote to star. The thistledown that flits and flies Could drift no hair-breadth otherwise. What is, must be; with rhythmic laws All Nature chimes, Effect and Cause. The sand-grain and the sun obey — What ho! the ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... cloud, so does mirthfulness frequently proceed from a heart susceptible of the deepest melancholy. Many and true are the simple tales of Irish life which could prove this. Many a fair laughing girl who has danced in happiness, light as a mote in the sunbeam, has been suddenly left in darkness, bowed down in youth and beauty to the grave, and though the little circle of which she was the centre may have been disturbed by her untimely life, yet in brief space, except to a few yearning and stricken ...
— Lha Dhu; Or, The Dark Day - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... gravity with which Perry contemplated an orgy of indigestion. The universal scheme appeared planned to fulfil the law of a Titanic humour, and his own credulity and Connie's indiscretions showed suddenly to Adams as mere mote-like jests which circled in a general convulsion ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... the courage to confess this, he knew not, and neither the blow from her fan, nor the warning exclamation of the nurse: "Just look at the boy!" sobered him. Nay, his sparkling eyes sought hers still mote frequently ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... is a plaintive song, Sung by a suff'ring maid, Telling a tale of wrong, Telling of hope betrayed; Tuned to each changing note, Sorry when he is sad, Blind to his ev'ry mote, Merry when he is glad! Merry when he is glad! Love that no wrong can cure, Love that is always new, That is the love that's pure, That is the love that's true! Love that no wrong can cure, Love that is always ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... there came a silly auld carle, An ill death mote he die! For he's awa to Hislinton, Where the Seven Foresters ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... germs at random float, Fall on no fostering home, and die Back to mere elements; every mote Was framed for life as thou, ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... ant longe, With frount ant face feir to fonge, With murthes monie mote heo monge, That brid so breme in boure. With lossom eye grete ant gode, With browen blysfol under hode, He that reste him on the Rode, That leflych lyf honoure. ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... 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. Therefore also even this incalculable shadow from the narrowest ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... place the shepheards flocke Lay everie where, their wearie limbs to rest, On everie bush, and everie hollow rocke, 235 Where breathe on them the whistling wind mote best; The whiles the shepheard self, tending his stocke, Sate by the fountaine side, in shade to rest, Where gentle slumbring sleep oppressed him Displaid on ground, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... 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, with her handkerchief pressed frantically to her ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... privilege of all the German freemen, the right of judging one another: the lord's steward was only the register. This domestic court, which continued in full vigor for many ages, the Saxons called Hall mote, from the place in which it was held; the Normans, who adopted it, named it a Court-Baron. This court had another department, in which the power of the lord was more absolute. From the most ancient times the German nobility considered ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... be whole particles, but the smallest 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
... run through it without sticking. I can prove some facts about 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... clod. How can he cause such different powers to flow Upon the aforesaid mortals here below? And how, indeed, to this far distant ball Can he impart his energy at all?— How pierce the ether deeps profound, The sun and globes that whirl around? A mote might turn his potent ray For ever from its earthward way. Will find, it, then, in starry cope, The makers of the horoscope? The war[24] with which all Europe's now afflicted— Deserves it not by them to've been predicted? Yet heard we not a whisper of it, Before it came, ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... 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 moss, but He ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... the more welcome,' sayd Robyn, 'So ever mote I the! Fyll of the best wyne,' sayd Robyn, 'This monke shall ...
— Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Fourth Series • Frank Sidgwick
... should not be considered a fool for not speaking English. She then said that the young women had been taking a walk together, and that they were much in each other's company for the sake of conversation, and no wonder, as the poor simpletons could not speak a word of Welsh. I thought of the beam and mote mentioned in Scripture, and then cast a glance of compassion on the two poor young women. For a moment I fancied myself in the times of Owen Glendower, and that I saw two females, whom his marauders had carried off from Cheshire or Shropshire to ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... the Confederate lines too strong to be taken by assault," said he; "and while McClellan waits for reenforcements, there will be nothing to prevent the Confederates from being reenforced; so mote it be." ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... seek us out with loving eagerness, As seeks the weeping infant for the breast. And here with aliens thou didst choose to dwell, Year in, year out, in deepest sympathy; And here thou buildest thee an holy cell; And so the peaceful years went gliding by. But ah! what living thing mote yet avoid Death's dreary summons?—And thine hour did sound When all the friends on whom thine heart relied Slept on strange pillows on the mossy ground. So, while the moon lit up Kasuga's crest, O'er ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... 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 ground In seven ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... the distant smoke once more, and kept close to the western shore where they were in the shadow of the wooded heights, their canoe but a mote upon the surface of the water. In so small a vessel and almost level with its waves, they saw the lake as one cannot see it from above, its splendid expanse stretching away from north to south, until it sank under the horizon, while the Green Mountains ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... once more drooped; the 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)
... a most melodious sound, Of all that mote delight a daintie eare, Such as attonce might not on living ground, Save in this paradise, be heard elsewhere: Right hard it was for wight which did it heare, To read what manner musicke that mote bee; For all that pleasing is to ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... O heaven!—that there were a mote in yours, A grain, a dust, a gnat, a wandering hair, Any annoyance in that precious sense! Then, feeling what small things are boist'rous there, Your vile intent ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... therefore,[204] so mote I go; Is that the guise of a trusty page, To play, when he is sent on his ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... happiness had been perfect. Literally and truly there was not a cloud, not a mote in her sunshine. She had everything—the love of her husband, great wealth, extraordinary beauty, perfect health, an untroubled mind, friends, position—everything. God had been good to her, beyond all dreams and all deserving. For her had been reserved ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... 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 ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... cobweb in the roof was luminous, flinging streaks of red and violet across the tumbled farm gear in the corner, plows, harrows, hoes, rakes, sugar mills, and making every separate grain in the high bin adjacent, gleam like a mote of precious gold. They tinged the beams, the upright columns, the barricades, where clover and timothy, piled high, held toward the hot incendiary their separate straws for the funeral pile. They bathed the murderer's retreat in beautiful illumination, and while ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... 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 ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... 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 ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... aid of these numbers we may begin to gain a just appreciation of the doctrine of the human destiny of the universe—the doctrine that all things were made for man. Seen from the sun, the earth dwindles away to a mere speck, a mere dust-mote glistening in his beams. If the reader wishes a more precise valuation, let him hold a page of this book a couple of feet from his eye; then let him consider one of its dots or full stops; that dot is several hundred times larger in surface than is the ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... Good; Our message to the world is Liberty; Not the rude freedom of anarchic hordes, But reasoned kindness, whose benignant code Upon the emblazoned walls of history We carved with our good swords, And crimsoned with our blood. Last, from our eye we plucked the obscuring mote, (Not without tears expelled, and sharpest pain,) From swarthy limbs the galling chain With shock on mighty shock we smote, Whereby with clearer gaze we scan The heaven-writ message that we bear for man. Not ours to give, as erst the Genoese, Of ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... 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
... 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 ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... done. Wherefore am I now of one mind with the rest of you. Now meseemeth it were well that these things which we have spoken here, and shall speak, should not be noised abroad openly; nay, at the Folk-mote it would be well that nought be said about the day or the way of our onslaught on Silver-dale, lest the foe take warning and be on their guard. Though, sooth to say, did I deem that if they had word of our intent they of Rose-dale would join themselves to them of Silver-dale, and that we ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... sun slanted low and golden and mote-laden. Bobby suddenly felt a little tired, and more than a little hungry. He descended from the buggy with alacrity. The wetting was forgotten in the home-coming. Only when washing for dinner did he remember with certain self-felicitation that even ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... "And you think then that with envy, malice, and all uncharitableness at your heart, you are certain of Heaven? For shame! Pluck the mote ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... go, fresh from teaching Juvenal and Ovid, to declaim at Exeter Hall against poor Peter Dens's well-meaning prurience! Had we not better take the beam out of our own eye before we meddle with the mote in the Jesuit's? ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... farmer's wife had come into her heritage, not only of materials, but of the implements of manufacture. She had the small flax wheel which dwelt in the keeping room, where she could sit and spin like a lady of place and condition, and the large woolen wheel standing in the mote-laden air of the garret, through which she walked up and down ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... variation, and that variation important in the woman's 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; ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory |
