"Gordian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... still a strange, fingering insinuation of something agreeable had begun to waken in him. The Master, not understanding it at all, or being able to analyze sensations so foreign to all his previous thought and experience, cut the Gordian knot of puzzlement by roundly cursing himself, by Allah and the Prophet's beard, as a fool. And with a vastly disturbed mind he returned along the white, gleaming corridor—that dipped and swayed with the swift rush of ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... Gordian knot of law at a stroke, by saying, "Get the grace of God in your hearts, and it is really no difference what you do, or do not do." Now this is a very old idea. The elect few who get their heads into a certain ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... and—I didn't want that either. I couldn't help feeling there'd be a tremendous fascination in being so near you, with my face hidden, you not knowing, if only the strain of it needn't last too long; and Molly just cut the Gordian knot of the scrape, as she always does. She assured me that being in the same car need commit me to no decision as to what I would do in the end. But—you remember how she drew you out, about your feeling for the Boy, how you missed him, ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... shows by the manner in which he formulates his sentences that he regards the relation of grace to free-will as a great mystery. But he does not try to solve this mystery in the manner in which Alexander the Great cut the Gordian knot. He does not declare: Grace is everything, free-will is nothing. If the power of grace destroyed the freedom of the human will, their mutual relation would be no problem.(700) Possibly St. Augustine in the heat of controversy ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... inclined[55] to cut the Gordian knot by considering the shoulder structure of the pterodactyle as independently educed, and having relation to physiology only. This conception is one which harmonizes completely with the views here advocated, and with those of Mr. Herbert Spencer, who also calls in ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... education of Plotinus. He was twenty-eight when he went up to the University of Alexandria. For eleven years he diligently attended the lectures of Ammonius. Then he went on the Emperor Gordian's expedition to the East, hoping to learn the philosophy of the Hindus. The Upanishads would have puzzled Plotinus, had he reached India; but he never did. Gordian's army was defeated in Mesopotamia, no "blessed word" to Gordian, and Plotinus hardly escaped with his life. He must ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... silver drops, And Phoebus bless the orient with a blush, To chase black night to her deformed cell, But I'll repair unto my father's house, And never cease with my enticing words, To work his will to knit this Gordian knot: Till when I'll leave you to your am'rous chat. Dear friend, adieu; fair sister, too, farewell: Betake yourselves unto some secret place, Until you hear from me how things ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... mainland. If, indeed, the arguments used by Forbes are to be trusted, it must be admitted that scarcely a single island exists which has not recently been united to some continent. This view cuts the Gordian knot of the dispersal of the same species to the most distant points, and removes many a difficulty; but to the best of my judgment we are not authorized in admitting such enormous geographical changes within the period of existing species. It seems to me that we have abundant evidence ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... Whilst Herod did usurp his royal throne, Banish'd his native country, every day, Like Moses, at the brink of death he lay. But that storm's over, and blest be that hand That gave him conduct to his peaceful land; Where this great King the Gordian knot unties, Of Heaven's, the kingdom's, and his enemies; Not with the sword, but with his grace and love, Giving to those their lives that for his strove: Never did person so much mercy breath Since our blest Saviour's and his father's death. In fine, his actions may our pattern be, His ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... which Sir Lucien Pyne presided, and which must be kept hidden from Monte Irvin; and it was not until she thus contemplated cutting herself adrift from it all that she perceived the Gordian knot which bound her to the drug coterie. How far, yet how smoothly, by all but imperceptible stages she had glided down the stream since that night when the gold box had lain upon her dressing-table! ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... I cannot lift my hand against thee: Do what thou wilt; but let not me behold it. [Goes off a little way. I'll cut this gordian knot I cannot loose: To keep his promise, Rodorick shall have her, But I'll return and rescue her by force; Then giving back what he so frankly gave, At once my honour and his love I'll ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... of the adventure, and burst into an immoderate fit of laughter; on recovering from which, he said to Mr Asterias, 'You have caught an odd fish, indeed.' Mr Toobad was highly exasperated at this unseasonable pleasantry; but Mr Hilary softened his anger, by producing a knife, and cutting the Gordian knot of his reticular envelopment. 'You see,' said Mr Toobad, 'you see, gentlemen, in my unfortunate person proof upon proof of the present dominion of the devil in the affairs of this world; and I have ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... a little magnesia salves that sore. Meantime I have had an inspiration which shows me my good angel has not left me. For these two or three days I have been at what the "Critic" calls a dead-lock[140]—all my incidents and personages ran into a gordian knot of confusion, to which I could devise no possible extrication. I had thought on the subject several days with something like the despair which seized the fair princess, commanded by her ugly step-mother to assort a whole garret full of tangled silk threads ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... reason to like my mother-in-law, but I shall always be grateful to her for the way she cut the Gordian ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... Gordian, of gut on a windy day! O bitter east wind that bloweth down stream! O the young ducks that, swimming between us and the trout, contend with him for the blue duns in their season! O the hay grass behind us that entangles the hook! O the rocky wall that breaks ...
— Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler • Andrew Lang
... the construction of the place. The Gordian knot was all very well in its way: so was the maze of Hampton Court: so is the maze at the Beulah Spa: so were the ties of stiff white neckcloths, when the difficulty of getting one on, was only to be equalled by the apparent impossibility of ever getting ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... a gold coin of the Emperor Gordian—the same who built the amphitheatre of El-Djem—which was found here, as well as some lamps and sculptured fragments of stone. Bruce speaks of cipollino columns; they are still to be seen, if you ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... soft floating movement of a dream. He was more passive than active in the affair; though, if his reason had not fully approved of the step he was tending to—if he had not believed that a second marriage was the very best way of cutting the Gordian knot of domestic difficulties, he could have made an effort without any great trouble to himself, and extricated himself without pain from the mesh of circumstances. ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... to the pinnacle of fortune and fame. Thus had I dreamed on for three years. One of my many objects of study engrossed the greater portion of my thoughts—the mysterious tie that united soul and body. Could I untie this Gordian knot—and I was vain enough to hope I might—then would I rank amongst earth's brightest ornaments, and fill a niche with Newton and Bacon. This extraordinary subject had even when at school, engaged the greater part of my ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... "'Now Gordian knots were tied to be By magistrates divided; We cut them—and the severed ends Do much as once the ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... the praktikal usefulnes ov the Fonetik Sistem ov speli[n]. Tu thoze who wish for more evidens ei rekomend a pamflet bei Mr. G. Withers, "The I[n]glish La[n]gwej Speld az Pronounst," 1874; and w[u]n bei Dr. J. W. Martin, "The Gordian Not K[u]t," 1875, hwere they wil feind the konk[u]rent testimoni ov praktikal teacherz in I[n]gland, Skotland, Eirland, and Amerika, all agreei[n] that, bo[t] az a praktikal and a lojikal traini[n], the Fonetik Sistem haz proved the ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... were watching the dancers, caused the gentleman to break off in the middle of his message. He glanced over his shoulder; then, with a shrug, turned to his vis-a-vis in white satin. "Now you see that 'twill not answer,—not in Virginia. The women—bless them!—have a way of cutting Gordian knots." ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... For a minute she held the idea in her mind till she grew familiar with it, then it was driven out by another thought that followed swiftly on its track. Frank Muller must die, and die before the morning light. By no other possible means could the Gordian knot be cut, and both Bessie and her old uncle be saved. If he were dead he could not marry Bessie, and if he died with the warrant unsigned their uncle could not be executed. That was the terrible ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... try," snapped Bristles, who was for action all the time, and liked to settle questions as Alexander is said to have cut the Gordian knot, decisive work, rather than sitting down ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... while they gnawed secretly and unseen at the hard crust of want. Thus from father to son the debts were constantly increasing, and the revenues becoming smaller and smaller. If I do not make an end of this, and sever the Gordian knot like Alexander, instead of attempting the wearisome task of untying it, I shall soon present to the court and nobility the sad spectacle of a Count Rhedern who is compelled to give up his ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... where it is chartered, unless, of course, it got charters from other States; certainly the States themselves might do so. This remedy also has never been tried, and hardly, in Congress, at least, been suggested. Yet it were a more constitutional and far safer thing to do than to cut the Gordian knot by a Federal incorporation act, which will forever securely intrench the trusts against State power. Even if New Jersey or the Island of Guam goes on with its lax corporation laws, permitting its creatures to do business all over the land without ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... should pay with our life. For that swift answer, achieved by leaving out prime factors in the problem, we should be betraying the self for whose sake alone any answer is valuable. It does not pay to cut such Gordian knots! Our task, then, is to preach transcendence again, not in terms of the old absolutist philosophy, but in terms of the perceptions, the needs, the experience of the human heart and mind and will which produced ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... an attempt to explain a passage which Aristotle, of course, would have put in plainer language, if he had known what he meant himself—but modern philosophers are kind enough to help him out occasionally—when the entrance of the gentleman in dust cut the Gordian knot, and saved the Stagyrite from the disgrace of having a pretty bit of esoteric abstruseness translated ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... so easy as that. You can't cut every difficulty with a sword, as they did the Gordian knot. One may go far in defence of a woman's honor, but there are boundaries which even a gallant man cannot pass; and, before I speak, I must see ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... hold a treasure Divine—a talisman—an amulet That must be worn at heart. Search well the measure— The words—the syllables! Do not forget The trivialest point, or you may lose your labor! And yet there is in this no Gordian knot Which one might not undo without a sabre, If one could merely comprehend the plot. Enwritten upon the leaf where now are peering Eyes scintillating soul, there lie perdus Three eloquent words ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... 240a. When the Gordian knot is ready to be cut, God sends the Alexander! Does not the Crown Prince William's confession of his belief in courage as the highest flower of the human spirit, in his book "Deutschland in Waffen," sound ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... children of nature. But now the environment in which he had spent the past year had left its traces on him, heightening his natural tendency to proceed by sap and mine rather than by direct assault, and rendering him still less ready than before to cut Gordian knots when by any conceivable expenditure of time and patience they might ultimately be undone. In other words, his Agpur training had improved his fitness for work of the same kind, but left him worse adapted than before for the rough and ready methods ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... am among women, I have evil thoughts, malice, spleen; I cannot speak or be silent; I am full of suspicions, and therefore listen to nothing; I am in a hurry to be gone.' He wonders how this trouble is to be cured. He speaks of it as a prejudice produced from 'a gordian complication of feelings, which must take time to unravel.' And then, with a good-humored, characteristic touch, he drops the subject, saying, 'After all, I do think better of women than to suppose they care whether Mister ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... arranged a time of meeting, and after introducing the men, left the "eagle eye" in the pleasant study of the minister, a pastor of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. After a few minutes of easy conversation, the minister abruptly cut all Gordian knots and said: ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... you don't. I know that mood—and a good sloshing hike in the rain is a splendid cure for it. I know what's the matter with you, too." She shot a look at the closed door and lowered her voice. "Why don't you cut the Gordian knot and be done with it?" ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... I'm afraid that acting as a go-between for three persons, I may share the usual fate of meddlers, at last get kinks from all. We ought not to be involved in politics, but for the sake of the Army we are justified in trying at least to cut this Gordian knot, which they do not appear to have any practicable plan to ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... Maximinus dying, A. D. 238, was succeeded by Gordian, during whose reign, and that of his successor Philip, the church was free from persecution for the space of more than ten years; but A. D. 249, a violent persecution broke out in Alexandria, at the instigation of a pagan priest, without ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... GORDIAN KNOT, tying up in temple the wagon of Gordius, he who could untie it being destined to be lord of Asia, it was cut by Alexander the ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... life remain tied to her by that other mysterious cord which no knife can sever. Uncles and aunts may, under certain circumstances, be regarded as sacred, and meet for occasional burnt-offerings; but beyond them I hold that the knot of blood-relationship may be regarded as Gordian, and ruthlessly cut. Cousins have no claims. Indeed, the scale of the legacy duties, like few legalities, follows the natural law. The further removed, the greater tax should our blood-relations pay for our love, or our legacy; but the ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... conquest of Lydia, Pamphylia, and Pisidia, which was effected easily, since the terror of his arms led to submission wherever he appeared. At Gordium, in Phrygia, he performed the exploit familiarly known as the cutting of the Gordian knot, which was a cord so twisted and entangled, that no one could untie it. The oracle had pronounced that to the person who should untie it, the empire of Persia was destined. Alexander, after many futile attempts to disentangle the knot, in a fit of impatience, cut it with ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... nearest convenient house, you're not responsible for your own actions. And they were both so nice and kind, it was a pleasure to be near them. So I was almost thankful for that horrid accident, which had cut the Gordian knot of my perplexity as to ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... sudden hopeful animation. Had they solved even one strand of the great tangle, that worse than Gordian knot which could ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... the dull red carpet, the antique chairs, the stairway hung with old engravings, climbing upward to the room which she was never again to enter as before. The temptation assailed her to cut once and for all the Gordian knot, and obeying its impulse, she began to walk down the flagging ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... causes leading to the tying of the major knot are more interesting than the effects traced during the process of untying it. This is the reason why the culmination is usually set well along toward the conclusion of the story. Sometimes even, when the major knot has been tied with a Gordian intricacy, the author sets it at the very end of his narrative, and suddenly cuts it instead of carefully untying it. But there is no absolutely necessary reason why it should stand at the end, or, as is more frequently the case, ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... light thoughts and grave—whether or no it was worth while to make a second journey into the study after more tobacco. Perhaps Cornelia was within call, and would thus afford a means of cutting the Gordian knot at once. No! he remembered now that she had walked over to the village for the afternoon mail, and would not be back for some time yet. And Sophie—poor child! she would not leave her room for two weeks ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... neither born nor bred for that. I drew my first breath in a little town not far off, a poor little town where the farmers and mechanics first unsheathed that Revolutionary sword which, after eight years of hewing, clove asunder the Gordian knot that bound America to the British yoke. One raw morning in spring—it will be eighty years the 19th of this month—Hancock and Adams, the Moses and Aaron of that Great Deliverance, were both at Lexington; ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... to Beaujardin. She could not but fear that the baroness intended to carry off Marguerite to some safe place, where there would be no means of communicating with Isidore; such things were not seldom done, and with a strong hand too, when it was found necessary to cut the gordian knot of a family difficulty. In this design she would be foiled, at least for the present, and with the help of M. Perigord and his friends Marguerite might be kept out of harm's way. In the meanwhile Clotilde would have an opportunity of appealing to her uncle, who, she fully believed, would ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... familiar to his eye than household words, for it was the old room he had occupied the year before he left America. He stepped quickly across the chamber to a certain beam, where he had, fifteen years before, written four initial letters, and intertwined them so curiously that the Gordian knot was easy weaving in comparison. The Gordian one was cut;—and this had been painted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... The Gordian knot was cut. Prince Yungee in reality did not care so much who should be his son-in-law as that he obtained one with a white skin and plentiful purse. Joseph or Theodore, Saxon or Italian, made no difference to the chief; and, as is the case in all Oriental lands, ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... dangerous in the greatest minds, and in the highest places; and only to be kept off by them, as by us, each in our place, by honest self-examination, diligent prayer, and the grace of God which comes thereby. Once or twice in the world's history a great ruler, like Charles the Fifth, cuts the Gordian knot, and escapes into a convent: but how few can or ought to do that? There are those who must go on ruling, or see their country ruined; for all depends on them. So had Queen Elizabeth to do; so had Dietrich ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... available man was ordered to Virginia. Here the work of organization went on with a smoothness and regularity scarcely to have been looked for. Occasionally a hitch occurred that threatened to get the threads of preparation into an ugly knot; but it was ever unraveled without the Gordian treatment. ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... Sex is made of nothing else: Thou mayst sooner untie the Gordian Knot, expound the Problems of the monstrous Sphynx, and read what is decreed in the mysterious Book of Fate, than unfold a Woman's ...
— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris
... contradiction, no consciousness; no cross, no crown; contradictions are the very small deadlocks without which there is no going; going is our sense of a succession of small impediments or deadlocks; it is a succession of cutting Gordian knots, which on a small scale please or pain as the case may be; on a larger, give an ecstasy of pleasure, or shock to the extreme of endurance; and on a still larger, kill whether they be on the right side or the wrong. Nature, as I said in "Life and Habit," hates that any principle should ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... new neighbor; but I advise friend George to have the Gordian knot tied immediately, lest you should be insnared ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... in 1820. These aphorisms want the terse brevity of Rochefoucauld, and are in many instances vapid and trivial. A passion for gaming at last swallowed up Colton's other vices, and becoming involved, he cut the Gordian knot of debt in 1828 by absconding; his living was then seized and given to another. He fled to America, and from there returned to that syren city, Paris, where he is said in two years to have won no less than ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... took to literature, and contributed to various periodicals. In 1851 he joined the staff of Punch, to which he contributed "Essence of Parliament," and on the death of Mark Lemon (q.v.) he succeeded him as editor. He pub. a few novels, including Aspen Court and The Gordian Knot. ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... we may then well apply his own remarks upon another celebrated philosopher. Descartes met the argument of the necessitarian, not by exposing its fallacy, but by repelling the conclusion of it on extraneous grounds. "This was to cut the Gordian knot," says Leibnitz, who was himself a necessitarian, "and to reply to the conclusion of one argument, not by resolving it, but by opposing to it a contrary argument; which is not conformed to the laws of philosophical controversy." The reply of Leibnitz ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... so fell out; for he was killed on the seventeenth day after he had attained unto the management of the imperial charge. The very same lot, also, with the like misluck, did betide the Emperor Gordian the younger. To Claudius Albinus, being very solicitous to understand somewhat of his future adventures, did occur this saying, which is written in the Sixth ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... of his keeping measures with me, joined to that of having once openly declared for him, would have created a point of honour by which I should have been tied down, not only from ever engaging against him, but also from making my peace at home. The Chevalier cut this gordian knot asunder at one blow. He broke the links of that chain which former engagements had fastened on me, and gave me a right to esteem myself as free from all obligations of keeping measures with him as I should have continued if I had never engaged in his interest. I took therefore, ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... I will show you a most superb emendation of Bentley's in Ampelius, and I will give you unanswerable reasons for pronouncing that Gibbon was mistaken in supposing that Quintus Curtius wrote under Gordian. ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... as well as we did was probably due to the orthodox teaching with which we had been inoculated,—to the effect that matrimony was a moral trial, a shaking-down process. But moral trials were ceasing to appeal to people, and more and more of them were refusing to be shaken down. We didn't cut the Gordian knot, but we ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... last to the necessity of self-preservation, and permitted his wife to remove his frogged overcoat, and to unwind him from a system of silk wraps to which the Gordian knot was a slip-noose. This done, he sat down before the dressing-case, and Mme. Remy, after tying a bib around his neck, proceeded to dress his hair and put brilliantine on his moustache. Her husband enlivened the operation by reading from the ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... embarrassed me. When you (most properly) insisted on my giving up some of my evenings to him, you necessarily made it impossible for me to appear on the stage. The one excuse I could make to the theater was, that I was too ill to act. It did certainly occur to me to cut the Gordian knot by owning the truth. But your father's horror, when you spoke of the newspaper review of the play, and the shame and fear you showed at your own boldness, ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... consumed, You would desire the king were made a prelate; Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs, You would say—it hath been all in all his study: List his discourse of war, and you shall hear A fearful battle rendered you in music. Turn him to any cause of policy, The Gordian knot of it he will unloose Familiar as his garter; that, when he speaks, The air, a chartered libertine, is still, And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears To steal his sweet and ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... to seek the needful instruments, while I proceeded to cut another Gordian knot.... An acquaintance of mine, hearing that I was coming to India, suggested that I should take charge of a parcel for a friend of hers, who wanted to send it to her fiance in Bombay. As all the heavy baggage was sent from London to join us at Port Said, I had not seen the "parcel," ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... idle. In 1740, he did nothing but edit an edition of select Italian Poets. This year, Crousaz, a Swiss professor of note, having attacked (we think most justly) the "Essay on Man" as a mere Pagan prolusion—a thin philosophical smile cast on the Gordian knot of the mystery of the universe, instead of a sword cutting, or trying to cut, it in sunder—Warburton, a man of much talent and learning, but of more astuteness and anxiety to exalt himself, came forward to the rescue, and, with a mixture of casuistical cunning ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... mention of knots, and in the eighth book of "Odyssey" Ulysses is represented as securing various articles of raiment by a rope fastened in a "knot closed with Circean art"; and as further proof of the prominence the ancients gave to knots the famous Gordian Knot may be mentioned. Probably no one will ever learn just how this fabulous knot was tied, and like many modern knots it was doubtless far easier for Alexander to cut it ...
— Knots, Splices and Rope Work • A. Hyatt Verrill
... length around a projecting bit of rock and defy you for perhaps five or ten minutes; and then when you do succeed in tearing him away and pull him out with the hook buried deep in his loose, pendulous, wrinkled and corduroyed throat, he instantly resolves himself into a quivering Gordian knot, winding the line in and about his coils and knotting it into such knots ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... of these continuous and obstinate quarrels between the regular curas and the bishops and civil authorities, and as if to cut the Gordian knot, the government ordered, in 1753, that all the curacies be handed over to secular priests of the country. The execution of this decree presented so many difficulties, and raised so many remonstrances that it was decided in 1757 that, until it should be ordered ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... arises to perplex the conscience in private life as this—which, in principle, is almost beyond solution. Sometimes, indeed, the coarse realities of law step in to cut that Gordian knot which no man can untie; for it is an actionable offence to give a character wilfully false. That little fact at once exorcises all aerial phantoms of the conscience. True: but this coarse machinery applies only to those cases in which the servant has been guilty in a way amenable ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... to explain, by various profound theories, the efficient causes of asserted mesmeric cures, a member of the Church of England, and popular preacher at Liverpool, the Rev. Hugh M. Neill, M.A., has cut the Gordian knot, by a sermon preached at St Jude's Church, on April 10th, 1842, and published in Nos. 599 and 600 of the Penny Pulpit, price twopence. By this sermon it appears to have occurred to the philosophic mind of the reverend ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... ever elopes with a young lady of fashion; he is not in the habit of cutting off his son with a shilling; and he is an infrequent worshipper in that Temple of Separation where Decrees Nisi sever the Gordian knots of Hymen. ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... during which Tyrrel underwent many changes of countenance, which Jekyl watched carefully, without pressing him for an answer. At length he replied, "There is much in your proposal, Captain Jekyl, which I might be tempted to accede to, as one manner of unloosing this Gordian knot, and a compromise by which Miss Mowbray's future tranquillity would be in some degree provided for. But I would rather trust a fanged adder than your friend, unless I saw him fettered by the strongest ties of interest. Besides, I am certain the unhappy ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... England, or the Revolutions of France, Senator Clay predicted that it would be "not of two or three years' duration, but a war of interminable duration, during which some Philip or Alexander, some Caesar or Napoleon, would arise and cut the Gordian knot and solve the problem of the capacity of man for self-government, and crush the liberties of both the several portions of this ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... appears to have been partly overwhelmed by the storm which sweeps the parish of her story. So in her later novels which have essayed such problems as divorce, the compulsions of love, the inevitable clash of parents and children, she tugs at Gordian knots with the patient fingers of goodwill when one slash with the intelligence would cut her difficulties away. Suppose it possible, for instance, that the heroine of The Awakening of Helena Richie could have been courageous enough to go to her lover to ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... had only once (at Shorncliffe) acted as No. 3, you can picture to yourself the sort of entertainment which followed. The intelligent Argentines manoeuvred round me like performing horses doing the quadrilles or an Old English Maypole dance, while with the reins we made cat's-cradles, and Gordian knots. That idiot, Mark Tapley, would indeed have envied my lot, and have been welcome to it. The row made by the firing was terrific, for pom-poms and artillery were joining in, and a fair amount of bullets came by us with ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... themselves out— the cul-de-sac resolving itself at the very last moment into a promising corridor toward the outer air. At every rebuff it is my happiness to be hopelessly bewildered; and I gape with admiration when the Gordian knot is untied. If the author be old-fashioned enough to apostrophize the Gentle Reader, I know he must mean me, and docilely give ear, and presently tumble head-foremost into the treacherous pit he has digged for me. In brief, I am there to be sold, and I get my money's worth. No one can thoroughly ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... the roots of strength, comes upon the moral aspects at once.—War ennobles the age.—Battle, with the sword, has cut many a Gordian knot in twain which all the wit of East and West, of Northern and Border ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... together at this inopportune moment, and as it was manifestly impossible not to say something, Cecil laid himself out to be agreeable, and Miss Arminster, who was naturally aware of the awkwardness of his position, did her best to promote conversation, while Spotts almost immediately cut the Gordian knot by excusing himself on the plea ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... pleasure; that she loved in return she felt no doubt—but alas! which? How perfectly delightful it would be could she only fall into some desperate plight, from which the really daring knight might rescue her! That would cut the Gordian knot. While laboring in this state of indecision she must have voiced her ambition in some effective manner to the parties concerned, for late one Wednesday night Moffat tramped heavily into the ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... answered," says a Catholic writer, "the modern question of holy places, which is the Gordian knot of the religious politics of the future, would have been solved long ago by the gold of the new world, or would have been cut by the sword of its discoverer. We should not have seen nations which are separated from the ...
— The Life of Christopher Columbus from his own Letters and Journals • Edward Everett Hale
... silence surveying the knot; his mind, by a not uncongenial transition, passing from its own entanglements to those of the hemp. For intricacy, such a knot he had never seen in an American ship, nor indeed any other. The old man looked like an Egyptian priest, making Gordian knots for the temple of Ammon. The knot seemed a combination of double-bowline-knot, treble-crown-knot, ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... subdued the people of Thrace, Illyria, and Greece? Had he not led his troops over the Hellespont, defeated the Persians, and conquered the countries of Asia Minor, Lycia, Cappadocia, and Phrygia, where with a blow of his sword he had severed the Gordian knot, a token of supremacy over Asia? At Issus, on the rectangular bay facing Cyprus, he had inflicted a crushing defeat on the great King of Persia, Darius Codomannus, who with the united forces of his kingdom ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... Jud, after all, who cut the Gordian knot, and made one of his welcome disappearances, which lasted until David was ready to start in college. His savings, that he had accumulated by field work in the summers and a very successful poultry business for six years, netted ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... returning from the telegraph office later in the evening, finds me endeavoring to unravel the Gordian knot of the situation through the medium of a brown-study. My geographical ruminations have already resulted in a conviction that there is no possible way to unravel it and reach India with a bicycle; my only chance of doing so is to cut it ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... a measure has since done such a ministry. A modification is the constant resource of weak, undeciding minds. To repeal by a denial of our right to tax in the preamble (and this, too, did not want advisers) would have cut, in the heroic style, the Gordian knot with a sword. Either measure would have cost no more than a day's debate. But when the total repeal was adopted, and adopted on principles of policy, of equity, and of commerce, this plan made it necessary to enter into many and difficult measures. It became necessary to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... it a copula, a bridge, a link, a word connecting sentences? That is undoubtedly its use, but what is its origin?" Mr. Tooke thought he had answered this question satisfactorily, and loosened the Gordian knot of grammarians, "familiar as his garter," when he said, "It is the common pronoun, adjective, or participle, that, with the noun, thing or proposition, implied, and the particular example following it." So he thought, and so every reader has thought since, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... daughter she seldom thought; and their letters were scarcely read, and rarely answered. Even good Miss Grizzy's elaborate epistle, in which were curiously entwined the death of her brother and the birth and christening of her grand-nephew, in a truly Gordian manner, remained disentangled. Had her Ladyship only read to the middle of the seventh page she would have learned the indisposition of her daughter, with the various opinions thereupon; but poor Miss Grizzy's labours were vain, for her letter remains ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... the light of scientific method. Some people profess not to be worried by the difficulty of finding time in our elementary and secondary schools for the introduction of the newer subjects making for increased vocational efficiency. They would cut the Gordian knot with one single operation by eliminating enough of the older subjects to make room for the new. I confess that this solution does not appeal to me. Fundamentally the core of the elementary curriculum must, I believe, always be the arts that are essential to every one who lives the ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... hidden from us) we must put to Greek credit the script of Lydia, the rock pediments of Phrygia, and the forms and decorative schemes of many vessels and small articles in clay and bronze found in the Gordian tumuli and at other points on the western plateau from Mysia to Pamphylia. The men of "Javan," who had held the Syrian sea for a century past, were known to Ezekiel as great workers in metal; and in Cyprus they had long met and mingled their culture with ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth
... in his most phlegmatic tones. "Aye, just so! And where d'ye intend to cut in, now, like? Is it a sort of Gordian knot affair that you're thinking of? Going to solve ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... arms and armour, antique furniture, stained glass, medals and coins. This region is very rich not only in Roman remains, but in druidical stones and other vestiges of the races which dwelt here before Caesar came. Marcus Aurelius, Trajan, Hadrian, Alexander Severus, Probus, Gordian, Constantine and Constantius are all represented on the coins found in and around the property of M. de Courval; but one of his most interesting acquisitions was a silver coin bearing the name of Clovis, ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... fellow-traveller is to be his companion at bed and board and in all other situations? The wife is not a commodity which, when once bought, you can exchange or return; the marriage bargain, once struck, is irrevocable. It is a noose which, once thrown about the neck, turns to a Gordian knot, and cannot be unloosed till cut asunder by the scythe ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... love as a misfortune, of his conduct as erroneous, and to be excused only by his youth, and had never appeared to surmise that Mary also might be in love as well as he. But to Beatrice the affair was a tragic difficulty, admitting of no solution; a Gordian knot, not to be cut; a misery now and for ever. She would always talk about Frank when she and Mary were alone; and, to speak the truth, Mary did not stop her as she perhaps should have done. As for a marriage between them, that was impossible; Beatrice was well sure ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... Haviland Hicks, Jr., cheerfully. "Has Ballard learned our signals, or some Bannister student sold them to a rival team, as per the usual football story? Though the notice doth not herald it, I am to be present, for my room is to be used, and the Coach gave me a special invitation to cut the Gordian knot with my ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... pli facila ol tio," li diris, "kaj nun mi ne dubas cxu mi certe regos super cxiuj regxoj de Azio." Pro tio, kion faris Aleksandro Granda, oni ankoraux nuntempe diras, kiam iu ajn superas malfacilajxon per kia ajn subita metodo, "Li trancxis la gordian ligajxon." ...
— A Complete Grammar of Esperanto • Ivy Kellerman
... it kills us; and more often than not it is but the shadow of a sword, after all; a bogie that has kept us off many an evil track—perhaps even a blessing in disguise! And in the end, down comes some other sword from somewhere else and cuts for us the Gordian knot of our brief tangled existence, and solves the riddle and ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... gordian knot, indeed," said Hazel. "What, die to shirk a few difficulties? No. I propose an amendment to that. After the words 'kneel down,' insert the words, 'and get up again, trusting in that merciful Providence which has saved us so far, but expects ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... estate and homestead, as they had a right to do, and would no more allow the Devil's religion of unreason to be preached therein, than we should permit a prize-fight in our gardens. They were narrow; in other words they had an edge to them, as men that serve in great emergencies must; for a Gordian knot is settled sooner with ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... Death to free me from this hated Spaniard. If you are his Friend inform him what I say; my Heart is given to another Youth, whom I love with the same strength of Passion that I hate this Diego; with whom, if I am forc'd to wed, my own Hand shall cut the Gordian Knot. ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre
... for they had no chance. The worms crawled round and round the canvas bag, and played at making Gordian knots with each other, while several fish came and looked at the unbaited hook which Dexter offered for their inspection, but preferred to leave the ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... a time. Twenty elephants contended, according, to Pliny, against a band of six hundred captives. Probus reserved six hundred gladiators for one of his festivals, and massacred, on another, two hundred lions, twenty leopards, and three hundred bears. Gordian let loose three hundred African hyenas and ten Indian tigers in the arena. Every corner of the earth was ransacked for these wild animals, which were so highly valued that, in the time of Theodosius, it was forbidden by law to destroy a Getulian lion. No ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... uncertainty); intricacy; entanglement; cross fire; awkwardness, delicacy, ticklish card to play, knot, Gordian knot, dignus vindice nodus, net, meshes, maze; coil, &c. ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... I was caught,—like other women who want to be caught, and who trust to chance to cut the Gordian knot of their indecision. So to Les ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... born about the year 540, and so was witness from his childhood of the intense misery and special degradation of Rome produced by the Gothic war. He was himself the son of Gordian, a man of senatorial rank, from whom he inherited great landed property. Through him he was the great grandson of that illustrious Pope Felix III., whom we have seen resist with success the insolence of Acacius ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... spiritual treasure. The Emperor Maximin was less friendly to the Church; and yet his enmity was confined chiefly to those Christian ministers who had been favourites with his predecessor; so that he cannot be said to have promoted any general persecution. Under Gordian the disciples were free from molestation; and his successor, Philip the Arabian, was so well affected to their cause that he has been sometimes, though erroneously, represented as the first Christian Emperor. [300:1] The death of this monarch in A.D. 249 was, however, soon followed ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... in all the Greek cities; and as he passed through Gordium, cut the Gordian-knot, which none should loose but the ruler of Asia. During a dangerous illness at Tarsus, brought on by bathing in the Cydnus, he received a letter insinuating that Philip, his physician, had been bribed by Darius to poison him. Alexander handed the letter to Philip, and at the same time ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... sent to Klinggraf. Their Answer is 'That they have not made an Offensive Alliance with Russia against me.' The Answer is impertinent, high and contemptuous; and of the Assurance that I required [as to This Year and next], not one word. So that the sword alone can cut this Gordian Knot. I am innocent of this War; I have done what I could to avoid it; but whatever be one's love of peace, one cannot and must not sacrifice to that, one's safety and one's honor. Such, I believe, will be your opinion too, from the sentiments I know in you. At present, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... victor who should first ask me; if one verged upon the question, the other quickly interposed some delightful circumstance about the excursion, and called upon the first to corroborate his testimony; neither, in Alexander's place, would have done anything but assure the other that the Gordian knot was very ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... Doris cut the Gordian knot by flashing through the kitchen and entering the lower end of the hall. The young man stood viewing "The Destruction of the Spanish Armada." But he turned at the sort of bird-like flutter and glanced at the ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... so as not to be easily separated, either in thought or in fact; things which are tangled or entangled mutually hold and draw upon each other. The conception of a material object is usually complex, involving form, color, size, and other elements; a clock is a complicated mechanism; the Gordian knot was intricate; the twining serpents of the Laocoon are involved. We speak of an abstruse statement, a complex conception, a confused heap, a heterogeneous mass, a tangled skein, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald |
