"Knotty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an amphitheatre the crest of which was bordered by a fringe of perpendicular rocks as white as dried bones. Under this crown, which rendered it almost inaccessible, the little valley was resplendent in its wealth of evergreen trees, oaks with their knotty branches, and its fresh ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... one does at parting from a friend. But it was not the moodiness of uncertainty. He knew what he was going to do. He had simply got used to Tommy being at his elbow, to chatting with him, to knowing that some one was near with whom he could try to unravel a knotty problem or hold his peace as he chose. He missed Tommy. But he knew that although they had been partners over a hard country, had bucked a hard trail like men and grown nearer to each other in the stress of ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... entering into the true spirit of them,—which was adventure rather than mischief,—and so keeping them within safe lines. She was elected an honorary member, and became the counsellor of the gang in all its little scrapes. I can yet see her dear brow wrinkled in the study of some knotty gang problem, which we discussed when the boys had been long asleep. They did not dream of it, and the village never knew what small tragedies it escaped, nor who it was that so ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... half; but my first impression, or feel of the man, was not of this, but of his strength. And yet, while he was of massive build, with broad shoulders and deep chest, I could not characterize his strength as massive. It was what might be termed a sinewy, knotty strength, of the kind we ascribe to lean and wiry men, but which, in him, because of his heavy build, partook more of the enlarged gorilla order. Not that in appearance he seemed in the least gorilla-like. What I am striving to express is this strength itself, ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... case, however, it is generally found in the state of a hard lump or knot, varying in its size, it is loose and moveable, without pain or discolouration of the skin. It may continue in this state for many months, or even years; it then enlarges, the surface of the tumour becomes more or less knotty or uneven; it becomes hot and painful, and the pain is of a peculiar darting, piercing nature, or what the faculty technically call lancinating; and the patient's health, which had hitherto continued tolerably well, now ...
— Observations on the Causes, Symptoms, and Nature of Scrofula or King's Evil, Scurvy, and Cancer • John Kent
... devoted himself without restraint to all the excesses of the robber barons. From one of his pillaging expeditions he brought back a charming maiden called Jutta. As the delicate ivy twines itself round the rough oak and clothes its knotty stem with shimmering velvet; so in time the gentle conduct of this maiden changed the coarse baron to a noble knight who eschewed pillaging and carousing, and ultimately made the fair Jutta the ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... the Monkey, if not better, so he pushed his way into the crowd that was gathered around the Monkey, and rising on his hind legs, began to dance. But the big hulking Camel made himself very ridiculous as he kicked out his knotty legs and twisted his long clumsy neck. Besides, the animals found it hard to keep their toes ...
— The AEsop for Children - With pictures by Milo Winter • AEsop
... he might ask, are 'time' and 'space'? Are they 'ideas' or 'sensations' or qualities of the objects? or, in any case, as supplying the ultimate principle of association, do they not require investigation? Before coming to that problem, however, we have to settle other knotty points. We must clear away illusions which seem to introduce something more than association. Elements of thought not at first sight expressible simply in terms of sensations and ideas must be analysed to show that they are only disguises ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... the functions of the first mass to a coadjutor, and, breviary in hand, sought the orchard of venerable pear trees. Whether there was any occult sympathy in his reflections with the contemplation of their gnarled, twisted, gouty, and knotty limbs, still bearing gracious and goodly fruit, I know not, but it was his private retreat, and under one of the most rheumatic and misshapen trunks there was a rude seat. Here Father Pedro sank, his face toward the mountain wall ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... seen That royal porch, that high-built fair demesne; So in they hurried all, maz'd, curious and keen: Save one, who look'd thereon with eye severe, And with calm-planted steps walk'd in austere; 'Twas Apollonius: something too he laugh'd, As though some knotty problem, that had daft 160 His patient thought, had now begun to thaw, And solve and melt:—'twas just ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... impersonation of the woman's part. He thought if another fellow should look in for a talk, which was his irreverent way of describing to himself the visit of the angel, it would be highly agreeable to have her there listening, and to clear up the knotty points for her when they should be alone. He had little doubt that Eve would have an opinion of her own, very favourable to his way of stating the subject, and would not mind criticising the other fellow, with a keen eye for any little point of possible ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... castles in the air—in imagination. But now and then she wanted another opinion, there were knotty points to decide. As 'all roads,' according to the old proverb, 'lead to Rome,' so all Celestina's meditations ended in the old cry, 'If ...
— The Rectory Children • Mrs Molesworth
... although such a yarn is not in common use. When combing is dispensed with, the gills, in connection with the draught of the rollers, make the fibers straight, and produce a worsted yarn, although such a yarn has a tendency to be uneven and knotty. ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... lastly, to Smallbones, who received them with all humility. The lieutenant was about to step into the boat, when a doubt arose, and he stopped in his advance, perplexed. It was one of no small importance—was Snarleyyow to accompany him or not? That was the knotty question, and it really was a case which required some deliberation. If he left him on board after the conspiracy which had been formed against him, the dog would probably be overboard before he returned; that ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... corded like the bark of the fir. Thick, muscular arms, covered with a reddish down, protruded from the wide sleeves of his habit, while his white shirt, looped up upon one side, gave a glimpse of a huge knotty leg, scarred and torn with the scratches of brambles. With a bow to the Abbot, which had in it perhaps more pleasantry than reverence, the novice strode across to the carved prie-dieu which had ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... only helped them to clear their ideas and brains as to what they were talking and thinking about, and gave them glimpses—soon clouded over again, but most useful, nevertheless—of the truth; that there were a good many knotty questions to be solved before a man could be quite sure that he had found out the way to set the world thoroughly to rights, and heal all the ills ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... he procured some canvas from a draper, stretched it on a frame, coated it over with white lead, and began painting on it with colours bought from a house-painter. But his work proved a total failure; for the canvas was rough and knotty, and the paint would not dry. In his extremity he applied to his old teacher, the barber, from whom he first learnt that prepared canvas was to be had, and that there were colours and varnishes made for the special purpose of oil-painting. As soon therefore, as his means would allow, he bought a ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... black-walnut-tree look very much alike; but upon approaching them the superior symmetry and beauty of the former are at once discovered. The leaves of the walnut are gracefully arranged, but they admit too much light; while the tulip presents grand masses of dense foliage upheld by knotty, big-veined branches, the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... neither Dr. Knapp nor anyone else has captured facts which would be of any significance had Borrow told us nothing himself. Some of the anecdotes lap a branch here and there; some disclose a little rotten wood or fungus; others show the might of a great limb, perhaps a knotty protuberance with a grotesque likeness, or the height of the whole; others again are like clumsy arrogant initials carved on the venerable bark. I shall use some of them, but for the most part I shall use Borrow's own brush both ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... there clung the atmosphere of crime, as men said. When I saw him first, I was riding behind my brother, and he stopped us and tried to induce Ward to buy his land. He was mounted on a red roan horse, and looked like an old knotty spider. ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... of Garay paled again, and he gazed at Robert in a sort of dazed fashion. The imagination of young Lennox was alive and leaping. He had found what seemed to him a happy solution of a knotty problem, and, as usual in such cases, his speech became ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... pouring in at the rate of twenty or thirty a day, we were glad that people were hesitant to report UFO's, but when we were trying to find the answer to a really knotty sighting we always wished that more people had reported it. The old adage of having your cake and eating it, too, ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... bathed as usual in the morning, and my Turkish towel was spread outside the tent to dry. The Tarjum, who showed great interest in all our things, took a particular fancy to its knotty fabric. He sent for his child to see this wonderful material, and when he arrived the towel was placed on the youth's back as if it were a shawl. I at once offered it to him as a present if he would accept it. There were no ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... bent to their oars once again when this knotty point had been settled. They rowed on steadily for a short time, and then out of the darkness came a ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... dingy performances of Mr. Kerstall senior; very classical, and extremely uninteresting; studies from the life, grey and chalky and muscular, with here and there a knotty-looking foot or a lumpy arm, in the most unpleasant phases of foreshortening. There were a good many portraits, gentlemanly to the last degree; but poor Laura looked in vain for the face she wanted to see—the hard cold face, as she fancied it must ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... simply that he had stolen a few pounds of nails, and this fomented the demon's rage. In the manner we have described, this ferocious creature had kept his victim for more than two hours, beating him with the knotty hoops taken from lime-casks. His rage would move at intervals, like gusts of wind during a gale. Thus, while his feelings raged highest, he would vent them upon the flesh of the poor pinioned wretch; then he would stop, rest his arm, and pace the ground from wall ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... the table, the Princess on one side of him and the waiting-maid on the other; but she was so dazzled that she did not recognize the Princess in her glittering garments. Now when they had eaten and drunk, and were merry, the old King asked the waiting-maid to solve a knotty point for him. "What," said he, "should be done to a certain person who has deceived everyone?" and he proceeded to relate the whole story, ending up with, "Now what sentence should be passed?" Then the false bride answered: "She deserves to be put stark ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... after-supper exercises. The six o'clock suppers of the lawyers were no light repasts, but hearty meals of meat and bread, washed down by 'green pots' of ale and wine. When 'the horn' sounded for supper, the student was in most cases better able to see the truth of knotty points than when in compliance with etiquette he bowed to the benchers, and asked if it was their pleasure to hear a moot. It seems probable that long before 'case-puttings' and 'mootings' were altogether disused, the old benchers were ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... father, after discussing my project with me from the point of view of amazement, settled himself in the University town, a place of hopeless dulness, where the stones of the streets and the houses seemed to have got their knotty problem to brood over, and never knew holiday. A fire for acquisition possessed me, and soon an ungovernable scorn for English systems of teaching—sound enough for the producing of gentlemen, and perhaps of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Their tense manner could hardly have been assumed: they were in desperate and deadly earnest; so he thanked the stars which had brought him into active connection with an important crime, and gave his mind strictly to the business in hand. Several knotty points demanded careful if speedy decision. The chased automobile might prove to be an innocent vehicle, driven by a chauffeur above suspicion, and if its owner appeared in the guise of some highly influential person ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... numerous editions. The author was a Spanish Christian of the fifth century. Born at Tarragona and educated in Spain, he crossed over to Africa about the year 414, and received instruction from St. Augustine upon knotty questions of the origin of the soul and other matters. In Augustine's works are contained the "Consultation of Orosius with Augustine on the Error of the Priscillianists and Origenists," and a letter ...
— The Discovery of Muscovy etc. • Richard Hakluyt
... beat him again, till their arms were tired, and staggered to bed. In the morning, however, the steadiness with which he adhered to his story obtained him some degree of credence; the immediate consequence of which was, that the two brothers, after wrangling a long time on the knotty question, which of them should try his fortune first, drew their swords and began fighting. The noise of the fray alarmed the neighbours, who, finding they could not pacify the ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... lobe had a firm and condensed feel, and when divided, exhibited a mass resembling indurated blacking. The middle lobe was in part permeable to air; and there were several small cysts containing liquid carbon, connected with minute bronchial ramifications. Various indurated knotty bodies were extended throughout its substance. In the upper lobe, the carbon was confined principally to the interlobular cellular tissue, and when pressed in the hand, gave out thick, black, frothy serum. The mucous membrane of bronchial divisions, when freed ...
— An Investigation into the Nature of Black Phthisis • Archibald Makellar
... its dressing-gown. Statesmen who had just been outwitting each other at the hazard of European politics laughed good-humoredly as they laid their gold down on the color. Rivals who had lately been quarreling over the knotty points of national frontiers now only vied for a twenty-franc rosebud from the bouquetiere. Knights of the Garter and Knights of the Golden Fleece, who had hated each other to deadliest rancor with the length of the Continent between them, got friends ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... so much employment only as is necessary to keep us in breath and to defend us from the inconveniences that the other extreme of a dull and stupid laziness brings along with it. There are sterile knotty sciences, chiefly hammered out for the crowd; let such be left to them who are engaged in the world's service. I for my part care for no other books, but either such as are pleasant and easy, to amuse me, or those that comfort and instruct ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... the Master discuss these knotty points of honor and expediency together, do you, as a recreation from the Greek syntax? I should like to ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... your final moon is set Much may have happened—anything, in fact; More than in any March that I have met, (Last year excepted) fearful nerves are racked; Anarchy does with Russia what it likes; Paris is put conundrums very knotty; And here in England, with its talk of strikes, Men, like your own March ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... Richard Avenel left his nephew sadly perplexed as to the knotty question from which their talk on the future had diverged—viz., should he write to the Parson; and assure the fears of his mother? How do so without Richard's consent, when Richard had on a former occasion so imperiously declared that, if he did, it would lose his mother all that Richard intended ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... angular, knotty protuberances denote perseverance and much vigorous, firm, harsh, oppressive, ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... of the chinquapin, He looks into its knotty eyes And sees its heart; and, deep within, Its soul that ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... his double interest Unto thy kingdom thy Son gives to me; His jointure in the knotty Trinity He keeps, and gives to me his death's conquest. This Lamb, whose death with life the world hath blest, Was from the world's beginning slain, and he Hath made two wills, which, with the legacy Of his and thy kingdom, thy sons invest: Yet such are these laws, that men argue ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... Holy Bottle (The), an oracle sought for by Rabelais, to solve the knotty point "whether Panurge (2 syl.) should marry or not." The question had been put to sibyl and poet, monk and fool, philosopher and witch, but none could answer it. The oracle was ultimately found ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... you undoubtedly think that I am beside myself. You are a tough, knotty old tree, and I have only one tender shoot. You may sneer, or you may pity,—I care not one baubee for your praise or your blame. I shall take my own course. I feel my responsibility, Sir! I shall not come to you for advice! I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... like the Father that begets them, grosse as a Mountaine, open, palpable. Why thou Claybrayn'd Guts, thou Knotty-pated Foole, thou ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... constantly eating onions; he said that this was good for the digestion. This man fancied himself the hero of the day. Puffed up with pride, he stood near the engine, called it his foster-child, and stroked the rusty iron walls with his black, knotty hand, that sounded as if two graters were rubbed together. With a great show of foreign words he explained to every one who came near him the inner arrangement of the "lookmanbile," as he called his foster-child, ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... back of the tall Bianor, not used to bear[36] any other than himself; and he fixes his knees in his ribs, and holding his long hair, seized with his left hand, shatters his face, and his threatening features, and his very hard temples, with the knotty oak. With his oak, {too}, he levels Nedymnus, and Lycotas the darter, and Hippasus having his breast covered with his flowing beard, and Ripheus, who towered above the topmost woods, and Tereus, who used to carry home the bears, caught in the Haemonian ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... glance showed him a change in the knotty tree-trunk; the seeming bulge was now the well-known figure ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... one expects to hear the merry note of a horn; the moralizing Duke would come striding thoughtfully through the thicket down by the tiny pool (or shall we call it a mere?). He would sit under those two knotty old oaks and begin to pluck the burrs from his jerkin. Then would come his cheerful tanned followers, carrying the dappled burgher they had ambushed; and, last, the pensive Jacques (so very like Mr. Joseph Pennell in bearing and humour) distilling ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... triumphal stelae, on which the sailors or troops going up or down the river could spell out as they passed the praises of the king and his exploits. A few feet of shore on the northern side, covered with dry and knotty bushes, affords in winter a landing-place for tourists. At the spot where the beach ends near the point of the promontory, sit four colossi, with their feet nearly touching the water, their backs leaning against a sloping wall of rock, which ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... bridge. The bridge that would stand in England, would stand in Ceylon. If it would not, there must have occurred some change in the conditions, as the heat of the tropical sun upon the girders. A point of casuistry also, however knotty, once determined, is determined for ever and aye, for the circumstances under which it was determined. The Natural Law in this sense is absolutely immutable, no less in each particular application than in the most general principles. We must uniformly pass the same judgment ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... possibly some faint reminiscences of Shakespearian phrases. So, for instance, in The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, he seems to echo a famous speech of Macbeth, while he claims that his remedy of free divorce "hath the virtue to soften and dispel rooted and knotty sorrows, and without enchantment." But these are doubtless the memories of reading. In the Apology for Smectymnuus, when he has to reply to the charge that he "haunted playhouses" during his college days, he retorts the charge, it is true, rather than denies it. Yet the retort ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... bodice, on which the warm rays of the late sun fell with so much amorous tenderness. Poor little Lilla! A penknife would have made as much impression as her valorous blows produced on the inflexible, gnarled, knotty old stump she essayed to split in twain. Flushed and breathless with her efforts, she looked prettier than ever, and at last, baffled, she resigned her ax to Vincenzo, laughing gayly at her incapacity for wood-cutting, and daintily shaking her apron free from the chips and dust, till a call from ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... forge, at which he was working, unmindful of his callers roving among the dusty shelves. Standing there, erect and sturdy, in his shiny leather apron, hammer in hand, with the firelight upon his venerable head, strong arms bared to the elbow, and the square paper cap pushed back from a thoughtful, knotty brow, he stirs strange fancies. One half expects to see him fashioning a gorget or a sword on his anvil. But his is a more peaceful craft. Nothing more warlike is in sight than a row of brass shields, destined ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... kept his dull, lowering, bestial face turned toward the witness-box, and his bloodshot, vacant eyes staring on me. For an instant I tried to confront that look; for an instant I kept my attention fixed on him—on his blotched face—on the short, grizzled hair above it—on his knotty, murderous right hand, hanging loose over the bar in front of him, like the paw of a wild beast over the edge of its den. Then the horror of him—the double horror of confronting him, in the first place, and afterward ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... however, that though gentle rubbing afford relief to the breasts when they are hard, knotty, and over-distended, any friction is injurious if gathering has actually commenced. In all cases, therefore, it is of importance to distinguish between over-distension (which may lead to inflammation) and a condition of already established gathering of the breasts. This it is not difficult ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... the Simon of those times, such a one as OEdipus was in dissolving of riddles; doubtless he was an able instrument, as it was his commendation that his head was the mallet, for it was a very great one, and therein kept a wedge, that entered all knotty pieces that come ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... or pretending to work with their needles. Three or four of the men were helping the cooks, some were mending their shoes, others were tailoring, a few of both sexes were reading, a greater number arguing some knotty point, or smoking their pipes, and several were sitting listlessly with their hands between their knees, already wishing that the voyage was over, and that they were once more engaged in the occupations to which they had been accustomed. The ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... element of the wild brute instinct dominates them. They are worthy descendants of progenitors who had to fight and kill to live. This incident furnished me much food for reflection. I foresaw that before this trip was ended I must face some knotty problems. I hated to shoot a squirrel even when I was hungry. Probably that was because I was not hungry enough. A starving man suffers no compunctions at the spilling of blood. On the contrary he revels in it ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... stories stood higher buildings, with fronts of brown stone, cracked and blistered, cast-iron balconies and cat-haunted grass-patches behind twisted railings. These houses too had once been private, but now a cheap lunchroom filled the basement of one, while the other announced itself, above the knotty wistaria that clasped its central balcony, as the Mendoza Family Hotel. It was obvious from the chronic cluster of refuse-barrels at its area-gate and the blurred surface of its curtainless windows, that the families frequenting the Mendoza ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... swallered down dem biscuit, E't 'em faster dan a shoat. Dey wus a liddle tough an' knotty, But I chawed 'em lak ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... one, and th' accomplice of her guilt, The giant, both shall slay. And if perchance My saying, dark as Themis or as Sphinx, Fail to persuade thee, (since like them it foils The intellect with blindness) yet ere long Events shall be the Naiads, that will solve This knotty riddle, and no damage light On flock or field. Take heed; and as these words By me are utter'd, teach them even so To those who live that life, which is a race To death: and when thou writ'st them, keep in mind Not to conceal how thou hast seen the plant, That twice ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... lights were supposed to be extinguished, and everybody in bed—Slocum and I would hang a blanket over the one window of our room and continue our studies—he guiding me around scores of stumbling-blocks in Algebra and elucidating many knotty points in other branches of the course with which I was unfamiliar. On account of this association I went up before the Board in January with less uneasiness than otherwise would have been the case, and passed the examination fairly well. When it was over, a self-confidence in my capacity ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan
... be ripe. He crept upon him stealthily, head low to earth and lone ear laid back, with a feline softness of tread. Batard breathed gently, very gently, and not till he was close at hand did he raise his head. He paused for a moment and looked at the bronzed bull throat, naked and knotty, and swelling to a deep steady pulse. The slaver dripped down his fangs and slid off his tongue at the sight, and in that moment he remembered his drooping ear, his uncounted blows and prodigious wrongs, and without a sound sprang on the ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... anything about it, he refused to worry about it. James Holden turned his thoughts forward and began to plan how he was going to face the culmination of this romance next September Fifteenth. He even suspected that there would probably be a number of knotty little problems that he now knew nothing about; he resolved to allow some thinking-time to cope with ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... cast on her by a miller whom she had rejected when he popped the question: the diabolical suitor was jailed as a punishment. Champlain relates how a pugnacious parson was dealt with by a pugnacious clergyman of a different persuasion respecting some knotty controversial points. The arguments, however irresistible they may have been, Champlain observes, were not edifying either to the savages or to the French: "J'ay veu le ministre et nostre cure s'entre battre e coup de poing sur ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... blows, And with bell and voice and drum, Cities on the other hum;— Where are forests, hot as fire, Wide as England, tall as a spire, Full of apes and cocoa-nuts And the negro hunters' huts;— Where the knotty crocodile Lies and blinks in the Nile, And the red flamingo flies Hunting fish before his eyes;— Where in jungles, near and far, Man-devouring tigers are, Lying close and giving ear Lest the hunt be drawing near, Or a comer-by be seen ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the same brood. What a road it is! It beats the tracks on Exmoor. The uphill and downhill of Devonshire scorns compromise or mitigation by detour and zigzag. But here geography is on a scale so far more vast, and the roadway is so far worse metalled than with us in England—knotty masses of talc and nodes of sandstone cropping up at dangerous turnings—that only Dante's words ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... form of middle age, which in turn takes on the eccentric picturesqueness of old age. No other tree in the Sierra forest has foliage so densely massed or presents outlines so firmly drawn and so steadily subordinate to a special type. A knotty ungovernable-looking branch five to eight feet thick may be seen pushing out abruptly from the smooth trunk, as if sure to throw the regular curve into confusion, but as soon as the general outline is reached it stops short and dissolves in spreading bosses of law-abiding sprays, just ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... me, I was prevented from the discussion of the knotty point at which I had just made a full stop. All my fears and cares are of this world; if there is another, an honest man has nothing to fear from it. I hate a man that wishes to be a deist; but I fear, every fair, unprejudiced inquirer must in some degree be a sceptic. It ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... After Saratoga, what Arnold? To say nothing of Mutius Scaevola minus a hand, General Knox a thumb, and Hannibal an eye; and that old Roman grenadier, Dentatus, nothing more than a bruised and battered trunk, a knotty sort of hemlock of a warrior, hard to hack and hew into chips, though much marred in symmetry by battle-ax blows. Ah! but these warriors, like anvils, will stand a deal of hard hammering. Especially in the old knight-errant times. For ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... full of interest in her supper, and helping what they could. There was a very small squirrel on her shoulder, sitting up, as those creatures do, and turning a rocky fragment of prehistoric chestnut-cake over and over in its knotty hands, and hunting for the less indurated places, and giving its elevated bushy tail a flirt and its pointed ears a toss when it found one—signifying thankfulness and surprise—and then it filed that place off with those two slender ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... increased in La Boulaye's countenance. At last he shrugged his shoulders, after the manner of one who abandons a problem that has grown too knotty. ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... will rend an oak, And peg thee in his knotty entrails, till Thou hast howl'd away twelve winters. 1905 SHAKS.: Tempest, ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... me for?" Gore bellowed in unreasonable anger. He strode forward, the prisoners scattering before him. His large, knotty hand closed on Quirl's arm, and jerked, with the intention of whirling this reluctant prisoner across the room. But Quirl was heavier, and his arm harder, than Gore had supposed. The hand came away, and with a tearing scream, the beautiful ...
— In the Orbit of Saturn • Roman Frederick Starzl
... as has been observed, in the Tower for his practices against the present order of things, he being an advocate of extreme democratic principles; and he was there instructed in knotty points of law by Judge Jenkins, to enable him to torment and baffle the party in power. It was Jenkins who said of Lilburne that "If the world were emptied of all but John Lilburne, Lilburne would quarrel with John, and John with Lilburne." - ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... mouth is very large and broad and red: "in some countries which were on his body it was winter, and in others it was early harvest." Many broad rivers flow over his back, and he is covered with forests and hills, as is indicated in his name, which means "the rugose or knotty-backed beast." In this group of conceptions may be seen the origin of Sindbad's great fish, which lay still so long that sand and clay gradually accumulated upon its back, and at last it became covered with trees. ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... reader may himself judge of the justice of Dryden's censure, I subjoin the argument on this knotty point, as it is stated by Hippolytus and his mistress in the 5th act of the ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... Is God's willingness to shew his wrath, and to make his power known. This is one of those arguments that the holy apostle setteth against the most knotty and strong objection that ever was framed against the doctrine of eternal reprobation: 'Thou wilt say then unto me, [saith he] Why doth he yet find fault?' For if it be his will that some should be rejected, hardened, and perish, why then is he offended that any sin against him; 'for who ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... have enjoyed Job's disputatious friends. There were several knotty points in doctrine that he had gone over while lying here, and he longed to argue them with someone. The days were very long and tedious to him, for he had never been ill a ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... of glanders may be mentioned a discharge of purulent matter from one or both nostrils; one or both glands on the inside of the lower jaw bones are more or less swollen, hard and knotty. One or both nostrils are sometimes swollen and glued up by a sticky, unhealthy looking pus, sometimes streaked with blood. On opening the nostrils, pustules and ulcers are seen on the inner surface. The nose may sometimes bleed. The ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... the bill, and went forth into the square to study the result. It seemed, to his eye, promising and unpretentious; and he returned to the drawing-room balcony, to consider, over a studious pipe, the knotty problem of how much he ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... strangers, the sanctuary of hospitable Main Street, the lucrative property of Kennicott's friend, Jackson Elder. It smelled of old linen and decaying carpet and ancient tobacco smoke. The bed was rickety, with a thin knotty mattress; the sand-colored walls were scratched and gouged; in every corner, under everything, were fluffy dust and cigar ashes; on the tilted wash-stand was a nicked and squatty pitcher; the only chair was a grim straight object of spotty varnish; but there was an altogether splendid gilt ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... one of the knotty questions of the campaign. Why did not Ney occupy the cross-roads in force on the evening of the 15th? We may note first that not till the 11th had Napoleon thought fit to summon Ney to the army, so that the Marshal did not come up till the afternoon ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... thy sculptured columns, Among thy secret treasures and thine altars, Ion, the Delphic priest, who lays aside The snow-white raiment of the sacrifice And takes up the wayfarer's knotty staff. I am no ministrant, nor have I held The dreadful mystic key, nor have I touched Boldly or timidly the sacred gate That leads to Life's deep-hidden mysteries. One sinner more, O Temple, in the midst Of sinful multitudes, ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... serious power in debate than the misshapen buffoon of the Iliad. But the king who had been thwarted and exposed by him in the day would, over his cups in the evening, enjoy the poet's travesty, and long for the good old times when he could put down all impertinent criticism by the stroke of his knotty sceptre. The Homeric Agora could hardly have existed had it been so idle a form as the poets represent. But as the lower classes were carefully marshaled on the battle-field, from a full sense of the importance which the poet denies them, so they were marshaled ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... as unique in his class as Slone was rare among riders. Nagger seemed of several colors, though black predominated. His coat was shaggy, almost woolly, like that of a sheep. He was huge, raw-boned, knotty, long of body and long of leg, with the head of a war charger. His build did not suggest speed. There appeared to be something slow and ponderous about him, similar to an elephant, with the same suggestion ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... powers of general scholarship, he can easily master a knotty passage in Eschylus or Aristotle; and quote Juvenal and Horace as readily as the junior lads at Eton quote their 'As in praesenti:' moreover, he can enter, with equal ardour, into a minute discussion about the romance literature of the ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... admiration presented itself to Tommy's mind. There was a root of a prodigious oak tree, so large and heavy, that half-a-dozen horses would scarcely have been able to draw it along; besides, it was so tough and knotty, that the sharpest axe could hardly make any impression upon it. This a couple of old men were attempting to cleave in pieces, in order to make ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... referred to this Plate as a remarkable instance of the Gothic Naturalism; and, indeed, it is almost impossible for the copying of nature to be carried farther than in the fibres of the marble branches, and the careful finishing of the tendrils: note especially the peculiar expression of the knotty joints of the vine in the light branch which rises highest. Yet only half the finish of the work can be seen in the Plate: for, in several cases, the sculptor has shown the under sides of the leaves turned boldly to the light, and has literally carved every ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... for our nights of rest, or unrest, were passed in a variety of ways—in beautiful brass bedsteads with spring mattresses; in wooden boxes dragged out until they became a bed, the mattress being stuffed with the luikku or ruopo plant, which makes a hard and knotty couch. We slept in the bunks of ships, which for curiosity's sake we measured, and found seldom exceeded eighteen inches in width; we lay on the floor with only a rug dividing us from the wooden boards; or we reposed on a canvas deck-chair, which originally cost about five shillings ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... On her feet she wore heavy wooden clogs, and from her hips hung a large blue apron. Her pale face framed in a borderless cap was more wrinkled than a withered russet apple. And from the sleeves of her red jacket looked out two large hands with knotty joints, the dust of barns, the potash of washing the grease of wools had so encrusted, roughened, hardened these that they seemed dirty, although they had been rinsed in clear water; and by dint of long service they remained half open, ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... guess you've heard what a narrow squeak he had with me. You're welcome to go anywhere, just so long as you don't disturb my study down there in the boathouse. I use that because it overlooks the bay—just the place to study over knotty legal problems." ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... standing, ready to spear the turf a mile away with brawn javelins out of whose wounds shall spring trees, just as out of the Cadmus-sown dragon's teeth of old sprang armed men. The tree may be a century-old gnarled trunk, too crooked and knotty to be worthy the woodman's axe, or a verdant sprout of a score of years' standing, green and lusty—the result will be the same. When the seeding year comes the brown cones will open and the winds will bear the germs of the new growth forth, spinning ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... great orchard on the side of the hill, the peasants were gathering olives before the coming of the frost. There were scores of pickers wearing great gay-colored aprons in which they placed the olives as they gathered them from the trees. Ladders leaned against knotty tree trunks; baskets filled with the green fruit stood on the ground. Ladder and basket suggested the apple orchards of her native land, but the motley colors of kerchief and apron, yellow, magenta, ...
— Daphne, An Autumn Pastoral • Margaret Pollock Sherwood
... second nature for the other fellows to depend on their leader whenever a knotty problem arose that needed solving. And seldom did Rod disappoint their expectations. He came up smiling ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... creeping outlaw made no more noise than a snake. Nearer and nearer he came; his sweaty face shining in the sun; his eyes tigerish; his long body slipping silently over the grass. At length he was within five feet of the sailor. His knotty hands were dug into the sward as he gathered energy for ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... end of the pencil had been deeply bitten in a dozen places, a circumstance which Harrison Smith noted with satisfaction. The other pencils and pens in the tray bore no teeth marks. It was reasonable, therefore, to surmise that its owner had been engaged in some knotty and puzzling problem at ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... an old stump of a man, lean and knotty, all whose joints formed protuberances, proceeded at an easy pace down the ravine, searching at every opening through which a passage could be effected with the cautiousness of a ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... eleven feet, exactly alike, each with a huge fireplace. There was not a pantry, a closet, a clothes-press, a shelf in the house. Not a room was papered: all were covered with a coarse whitewash, smoked, fly-specked and momently falling in great scales. The floors were rough, knotty and warped; the wash-boards were rat-gnawed in every direction; all the woodwork was unpainted and gray ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... broke the silence. He had returned from business, humming and rubbing his hands, like one newly primed with a suggestion that was the key of a knotty problem. Observant Adela said: "Have you seen ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... with the gander was very old. Her entire feather outfit was ice-gray, without any dark streaks. The head was larger, the legs coarser, and the feet were more worn than any of the others. The feathers were stiff; the shoulders knotty; the neck thin. All this was due to age. It was only upon the eyes that time had had no effect. They shone brighter—as if they were ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... to go back to the sweet mysterious places, The crook in the creek-bed nobody knew but me, Where the roots in the bank thrust out strange knotty faces, Scaring the squirrels who ...
— Armour's Monthly Cook Book, Volume 2, No. 12, October 1913 - A Monthly Magazine of Household Interest • Various
... rhetorical effect. He rather makes every figure of speech to arise as it were by a natural sequence in the course of his reasoning, and few men have a greater facility for making "crooked paths straight, and rough places plain." The most abstruse and knotty points he makes so obvious and clear that his hearers are inclined to wonder why they did not think of them in that light before—giving to themselves, or to the merits of the question in hand, a credit that ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... post-mortem examinations are sometimes found to contain abscesses; they are the seat of much pain when pressure is made over the intervertebral spaces of the dorsal and lumbar vertebrae or backbone. The vesiculae seminales have been indurated and can be felt to be knotty and hard. The spinal marrow is very sensitive throughout its whole extent; the cerebellum is the seat of a dull and heavy pain, and there is a feeling of pressure upon the brain. Cerebral congestion now and then occurs. This stage of the disease is frequently accompanied by Bronchitis ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... the student when the latter is much bothered by a consideration of some knotty and perplexing philosophical subject. He bids the student relax every muscle,—take the tension from every nerve—throw aside all mental strain, and then wait a few moments. Then the student is instructed ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... chivalrous compassion can scarcely digest this knotty solution of her movements that night. As a fabrication, it does little credit ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... legislation in any other particulars be indisputable? On the other hand, if the deposition was a valid one, with what consistency could the French continue to regard Eugenius as their legitimate pastor? It was a knotty dilemma. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... circumstance had done its work only too well. By it he had been formed and hardened into the Fighting Wolf, fierce and implacable, unloving and unlovable. To accomplish the change was like a reflux of being, and this when the plasticity of youth was no longer his; when the fibre of him had become tough and knotty; when the warp and the woof of him had made of him an adamantine texture, harsh and unyielding; when the face of his spirit had become iron and all his instincts and axioms had crystallised into set rules, cautions, dislikes, ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... sent to propose it to the Commandant, who rejected it with a menace to chastise them if they did not obey in a very short time, which he prefixed. {75} The Sun reported this answer to his council, who debated the question, which was knotty. But the policy of the old men was, that they should propose to the Commandant, to be allowed to stay in their village till harvest, and till they had time to dry their corn, and shake out the grain; on condition each hut of the village should pay him in so many moons (months,) which they ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... instructs you in Marathee or Gujarathee. The Moonshee struggles to get you to disgorge the sound ghain and leads you through the enchanted mazes of the Bagh-o-Bahar; the Pundit distinguishes between the kurmunnee and the kurturree prayog, and has many knotty points of mythology to expound, in order that you may rightly understand his idioms and appreciate his proverbial sayings. Of Pundits there are three species, quite distinct from each other. The first I would recommend if your object should, ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... in some dismay to the Countess Helene. The people of the Western world, the women in particular, knew little of the bitter spirit permeating the politics of France. The United States had very knotty problems of her own ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... and has engineered many a knotty case to a successful issue, thereby covering himself with glory. This was in the past, however; in the days when he had been regularly attached to a strong ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... regular conclusion. None but a judge, a man that has from his infancy been accustomed to decide intricate cases, is equal to such a difficult task. If we even suppose the jury sufficiently enlightened to unravel those knotty points, yet there remains an insuperable objection. In State libels, their passions are frequently so much engaged, that they may be justly considered as parties ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... matter deadens the sensibility of the intestine, so that great stimulation is required to provoke it to action. The contents become dry, solid, knotty, and hard, and very difficult to evacuate. If drastic, irritating physic be taken, only temporary relief is afforded, and it must be repeatedly resorted to, and the dose increased, to obtain ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... him again, till their arms were tired, and staggered to bed. In the morning, however, the steadiness with which he adhered to his story obtained him some degree of credence; the immediate consequence of which was that the two brothers, after wrangling a long time on the knotty question, Which of them should try his fortune first, drew their swords and began fighting. The noise of the fray alarmed the neighbors, who, finding they could not pacify the ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... another, either in Points or Words, for two Acts together. Of those Passages that were absolutely doubtful, we always took the best, and that, which seem'd to us, the most probable Way and Meaning; and all such as were difficult, knotty or obscure in the Original, we made as plain and clear as we cou'd; and we presume to phansie there are very few Passages in ours, unintelligible to the meanest Capacity. In his Jests and Repartees (except they ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... across the room, and coming back to her side, "Mother," said he, "you know it is my nature to be slow in deciding any matter of importance, and this is the weightiest one that ever I had to consider. Men much older and wiser than I are finding it a knotty question to which their loyalty is due, State or General Government; where allegiance to the one ends, and ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... about old stocks and stubs of trees, Whereon nor fruit nor leaf was ever seen, Did hang upon ragged knotty knees, On which ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... hearty laugh, for the first time in many months. The knotty problem which had caused her many sleepless nights had at last ...
— Lovey Mary • Alice Hegan Rice
... while gentleness, kindness, benevolence, together with a sort of sentimental religionism, constitute his habitual frame of mind. If a man has a poetical gift, opium almost irresistibly stirs it into utterance. If his vocation be to write, it matters not how profound, how difficult, how knotty the theme to be handled, opium imparts a before unknown power of dealing with such a theme; and after completing his task a man reads his own composition with utter amazement at its depth, its grasp, its beauty, and force of expression, and wonders whence came the thoughts ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day |
