Literary notes about Mote (AI summary)
The word mote has long been a versatile literary device, serving both as a literal description of a tiny speck and as a metaphor for minor faults or imperfections. In moral and religious texts, it is famously employed to warn against hypocrisy—urging one to remove the beam from one’s own eye before criticizing the mote in another’s ([1], [2], [3]). At the same time, poets and dramatists such as Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare have exploited its imagery to portray insubstantial particles juxtaposed against grander forces or to underscore the minuteness of human error ([4], [5], [6]). Even in modern narratives, a mote can embody both the physical reality of a minuscule object and the symbolic weight of a neglected flaw, reinforcing its enduring appeal as a tool for both visual and metaphorical expression ([7], [8]).
- It would be far better for each man to look for the beam in his own eyes before he troubles himself about the mote in his neighbor's.
— from A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention For Proposing Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, Held at Washington, D.C., in February, A.D. 1861 by L. E. (Lucius Eugene) Chittenden - Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thy own eye, and then shalt thou see to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.
— from The Bible, Douay-Rheims, Complete - Brother, let me pull the mote out of thy eye, when thou thyself seest not the beam in thy own eye?
— from The Bible, Douay-Rheims, Complete - `And I your borow, ne never shal, for me, This thing be told to yow, as mote I thryve!'
— from Troilus and Criseyde by Geoffrey Chaucer - O how, said he, mote I that well out find, 385 That may restore you to your wonted well?
— from Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I by Edmund Spenser - You found his mote; the King your mote did see; But I a beam do find in each of three.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare - In a few minutes the streets were packed with people, gazing with hardly an uttered word, at the one brilliant mote in the brooding world of darkness.
— from Roughing It by Mark Twain - Man is a pris’ner, but the prison walls Are very vast; so vast the universe Lies, like a mote, within their mighty scope.
— from The Angel in the Cloud by Edwin W. (Edwin Wiley) Fuller
