After a time, however, he began to find that fancies, almost ridiculously trivial, arrested and absorbed his attention; even as when our eyes have become accustomed to darkness, every light-coloured mote shows luminous against the void blackness of night.

So, in her gown of rosy muslin, bouffant and billowy, a pink flower in her hair, and Celia's pink-and-white cameo at her whiter throat Ailsa Paige descended the carpeted stairs and came into the mellow dimness of the front parlour, where there was much rosewood, and a French carpet, and glinting prisms on the chandeliers,and a young man, standing, dark against a bar of sunshine in which golden motes swam.

Robert was glad, then, that he was such an insignificant mote in the wilderness and had he the power he would have made himself so small that he would have become invisible, but as that was impossible he still trusted in Tayoga's Tododaho.

They were only two little black speckslike motes in the sunbeamsscarcely visible to her strained vision at first.

It was nearly noon now and a huge golden sun shone over the vast wilderness in which two little bands of men fought, mere motes in the limitless sea of green.

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.

They were only two little black speckslike motes in the sunbeamsscarcely visible to her strained vision at first.

Still, every star that glides its gladsome course, Thirstily drinks the luminous golden rain; Drinks the fresh vigour from the fiery source, As limbs imbibe life's motion from the brain; With sunny motes, the sunny motes united Harmonious lustre both receive and give, Love spheres with spheres still interchange delighted, Only through love the starry systems live.

The tiny mote on which we stand, However fair and finely planned, Is nothing but a grain of sand.