"Gordian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 of ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... had just brought his friars to the dilapidated house then known as San Sisto, had caused rapid repairs to be made, and in his fervor had created round himself a nucleus of ardent reformers. The Gordian knot was referred to him, and with characteristic abruptness he promised to cut it at once. He came alone to the gates of the convent, presented no credentials from pope or cardinal, and asked an interview with the abbess. He spoke of the holiness of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... me with a triumphal laugh, 'cuts the Gordian knot.' An air of satisfaction spread over his countenance such as I had not seen for some time. 'I can dispose of this subject now without difficulty,' he added, as he turned in his chair; 'I see my way clear.'"(12) In Lincoln's distress during ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... classics. Then 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
... 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 ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... on the obverse: while the personified genius of the city is on the reverse of the former. Further, the well-known works of De Saulcy and of Ekhel would have supplied the information that, from the time of Augustus to that of Gordian, the Gadarene coinage had the same thoroughly Gentile character. Curious that a city of "Hebrews bound by the Mosaic law" should ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... had cut the Gordian knot with a blow. Neither Lockwood nor Whitney could object. The purpose of ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... dog, man's worst enemy, barked furiously, and made violent efforts to break his rope and fly at me.... I hope he is tied with a gordian knot if he wishes to see the ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... adj.; complexus[obs3]; complication, implication; intricacy, intrication[obs3]; perplexity; network, labyrinth; wilderness, jungle; involution, raveling, entanglement; coil &c. (convolution) 248; sleave[obs3], tangled skein, knot, Gordian knot, wheels within wheels; kink, gnarl, knarl[obs3]; webwork[obs3]. [complexity if a task or action] difficulty &c. 704. V. complexify[obs3], complicate. Adj. gnarled, knarled[obs3]. complex, complexed; intricate, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... priests, O Khalid, have yet a little to do with you. Such arguments about the Divine Law and the Canon Law, about alms and spiritual beggars, might cut the Gordian knot with your uncle, but—and whether it be good or bad English, we say it—they cut no ice with the Church. Yes, Mother Church, under whose wings you and your cousin were born and bred, and under whose wings you and your cousin would be married, can not take off for the ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... 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 ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... events of far-reaching consequence. The Constitution of the United States is the enduring monument to the courage, the forecast, the wisdom of the members of the Convention of 1787. It was theirs to cut the Gordian knot, to break with the past, and, regardless of the jealousies and antagonisms of individual States, to establish the more perfect union, which has been declared by an eminent British statesman "the greatest work ever struck off ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... the polite music of their time. It was the period of highest development in ecclesiastical music, and the climax of artificiality. The professional musicians to whom they turned scorned their theories and would not help them; so they fell back on their own resources. They cut the Gordian knot and invented a new style of music, which they fancied was like that used by the ancients in their stage-plays. They abolished polyphony, or contrapuntal music, in everything except their choruses, and created a sort of musical declamation, ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... stating the problem that lies before every one at the outset of his life, and you want to cut the Gordian knot with a sword. If that is the way of it, dear boy, you must be an Alexander, or to the hulks you go. For my own part, I am quite contented with the little lot I mean to make for myself somewhere in the country, when I mean to step into my father's shoes and plod along. A man's affections ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... and at the same time cheapen it to small users—that was the Gordian knot; and the man who unquestionably did most to untie it was Edward J. Hall. Mr. Hall founded the telephone business in Buffalo in 1878, and seven years afterwards became the chief of the long-distance traffic. He was then, and is to-day, one of the statesmen of the telephone. ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... knew the donors and knew them to be liberal supporters of the orphans; and he had only to explain to them the straits he was in and they would gladly consent to any appropriation of their gift that he might see best! Most men would have cut that Gordian knot of perplexity ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... of 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 ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... newly-graduated collegian. He has most abounding faith in the tricksy panoply that he has wrought out of the metal of his Classics. His Mathematics, he has not a doubt, will solve for him every complexity of life's questions; and his Logic will as certainly untie all Gordian knots, whether ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... 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
... 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
... reach of your hands, the use of which I have just restored to you. The knot is a peculiar one; an Indian taught it to me. If you set to work at once, you will get it untied before nightfall. That you may not think it the Gordian knot and treat it as such, I have put your sword where you can get it only when you have worked for it. Your familiar, my lord, may prove of use to us; therefore we will take him with us to the haunted wood. I have the honor to wish your lordship a ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... admitted a more likely solution than their conclusions. It is true, indeed, that the proofs and reasons that are founded upon experience and fact, I do not go about to untie, neither have they any end; I often cut them, as Alexander did the Gordian knot. After all, 'tis setting a man's conjectures at a very high price upon them to cause a ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... 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 direct modification to the aid ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... don't know. It all depends whether we have the nerve to cut the Gordian knot," observed ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... 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
... Francis, "with a temperament so irrepressible, of an organization so delicate, permeated through and through with the anguish of the Lord's sufferings, passionately and continually dwelling on the one circumstance of his crucifixion." But others, despairing of any rational solution, cut the Gordian knot and declare that "the kindest thing to think about Francis ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... other, will appear to the future historian in a very different light from that in which it has been presented by either the radical or democratic journals of the day. He will speak of the one as a military chieftain under the influence of worthy motives, cutting a Gordian knot which the higher and controlling diplomatic and executive superior wished should be cautiously untied. The one has acted with a view to promptly settling a great trouble within his own sphere—the other wisely comprehending that the action was premature, has ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... owing to the activity of the dogs in leaping and bounding over each other, we had the most unideal conditions possible to contend with, and we were handicapped by having to use mitted instead of ungloved fingers to untangle the snarls of knots. Unlike Alexander the Great, we dared not cut the "Gordian Knots," but ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson
... the ancient bishops of Antioch, after St. Ignatius, was St. Babylas, who succeeded Zebinus in the year 237, and governed that church with great zeal and virtue, about thirteen years, under the emperors Gordian, Philip, and Decius. Philip, an Arabian by birth, and of mean extraction, raised by the young emperor Gordian to be prefect of the praetorian guards, perfidiously murdered his master at the head of his victorious army in Persia, and caused himself to be acknowledged emperor ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... the Gordian knot of these difficulties by arranging to have dinner served at small separate tables, thus securing several places of honour, but not even by these means could he ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... 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 divine, that mesmeric marvels may be accounted ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... though to poets we allow, No matter when acquired or how, From truth unbounded deviation, Which custom calls Imagination, Yet can't they be supposed to lie One half so fast as Fame can fly; Therefore (to solve this Gordian knot, A point we almost had forgot) 510 To courteous readers be it known, That, fond of verse and falsehood grown, Whilst we in sweet digression sung, Fame check'd her flight, and held her tongue, And now pursues, with double force And double speed, her destined course, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... lines! they hold a treasure 5 Divine, a talisman, an amulet That must be worn at heart. Search well the measure— The word—the syllables. Do not forget The trivialest point, or you may lose your labor: And yet there is in this no Gordian knot 10 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 oft uttered ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... root of every virtuous action, it finisheth prosperity, easeth adversity, corrects all natural encumbrances," inconveniences, sustained by faith and hope, which with this our love make an indissoluble twist, a Gordian knot, an equilateral triangle, "and yet the greatest of them is love," 1 Cor. xiii. 13, [4606]"which inflames our souls with a divine heat, and being so inflamed, purged, and so purgeth, elevates to God, makes an atonement, and reconciles us ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Emperors." Yet those Emperors had a few months before pulled down their predecessor Aemilianus, who had pulled down his predecessor Gallus, who had climbed to power on the ruins of the house of his predecessor Decius, who had slain his predecessor Philip, who had slain his predecessor Gordian. Was it possible to believe that a saint, who had, in the short space of thirteen or fourteen years, borne true allegiance to this series of rebels and regicides, would have made a schism in the Christian body rather than acknowledge King William and Queen Mary? A hundred times ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... is his modified fatalism. He would not accept the boisterous mode of cutting the Gordian-knot proposed by the noble British Philisterwe know were free and theres an end on it! He prefers Lamarcks, The will is, in truth, never free. He believes man to be a co-ordinate term of Natures great progression; a result of the interaction ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... unexpected visit 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 ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... 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 ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... in syllogistic skill, and proves the good father superior even to Archimedes, for he can turn the world without anything to rest his lever upon. It is only surpassed by the dexterity with which the sturdy old Jesuit in another place cuts the gordian knot—"Nothing," says he, "is more easy. The inhabitants of both hemispheres are certainly the descendants of the same father. The common father of mankind received an express order from Heaven ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... 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 John Keats, five feet ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... of Alexander's boyhood is that of the "Gordian knot," which it was said could only be untied by the person who was destined to conquer Asia. After striving in vain to loosen this famous knot, it is said Alexander impatiently drew his sword and cut it—thus prefiguring what that ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 25, April 29, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... is a dream; but it is not all a dream. No, I verily believe you have there the Gordian knot of slavery untied; you have there the solution of the problem; you have there the curtain up, and the last scene in the last act of the great drama ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... showed his gratitude by dedicating his wagon to the deity of the oracle and tying it up in its place with the wiliest knot that his simple wisdom knew, pulled as tight as his brawny arms and strong rough hands could pull. Nor could anyone untie the famous Gordian knot, and therefore become, as the oracle promised, lord of all Asia, until centuries had passed, and Alexander the Great came to Phrygia and sliced through the knot with ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... of the little country of Macedonia, and 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 had come to meet him. At Damascus he captured ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... I. and Accession of Sapor I. War of Sapor with Manizen. His first War with Rome. Invasion of Mesopotamia, A.D. 241. Occupation of Antioch. Expedition of Gordian to the East. Recovery by Rome of her lost Territory. Peace made between Rome and Persia. Obscure Interval. Second War with Rome. Mesopotamia again invaded, A.D. 258. Valerian takes the Command in the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... all-admiring, with an inward wish 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
... doubt, but dull, and the boy was too hopelessly in love to be amusing. And as for you—well—you would do very nicely, no doubt, my dear Arnold, but you are too stuffed up with principles for a girl of Isobel's antecedents. So she has cut the Gordian knot herself! ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... The Gordian knot, which Alexander great Did whilom, cut with his all-conquering sword, Was nothing like thy busk-point, pretty peat,[221] Nor could so fair an ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... properly felt by the French Zouaves, who were compelled to work at the trenches, to dig, to plant, etc., while the Mussulmans utterly refused to take part in this, to their mind, degrading toil. The Gordian knot was cut, and all difficulty done away, by making the regiment, in effect, exclusively European. Thus reorganized and reinforced, the regiment, on receiving the standard sent it by the king, immediately separated,—one battalion marching for Oran, one for Constantine, while the other ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... the afternoon Jim had a wretched time. To be beaten after such a race by a foot, and to be beaten by a foot when victory would have cut the Gordian knot of his difficulties once and for all, was enough to embitter anybody's existence. He found it hard to accept the well-meant condolences of casual acquaintances, and still harder to do the right thing and congratulate Drake on his victory, ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... not been comfortably certain whether we ought not to march into the restaurant arm in arm, but the penniless goddess (who had perhaps been brought to Europe as a subtle combination of etiquette-mistress and ladies'-maid) cut the Gordian knot with a quick glance, to our intense relief; and we filed in anyhow, places being indicated to Terry and me on ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... hame on the horse afore me." When, on leaving, he mounted, and the ham was put into a sack, but some difficulty was experienced in getting it to lie properly. His inventive genius soon cut the Gordian-knot. "I think, mistress, a cheese in the ither en' wad mak' a gran' balance." The hint was immediately acted on, and, like another John Gilpin, he moved away with ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... 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 ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... 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 no doubt but that the apparition of this night was Apollyon himself in disguise, sent ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... foredeck and hind deck of all our opposites' probations do resolve and rest finally into the authority of a law, and authority they use as a sharp knife to cut every Gordian knot which they cannot unloose, and as a dreadful peal to sound so loud in all ears that reason cannot be heard, therefore we certiorate you with Calvin, that a acquievistis imperio, pessimo laqueo vos in duistis—If you have acquiesced ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... the open door of her father's house, imprinting every detail upon her memory: 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 ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... quite 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 ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... lose his splendour, the pale moon drop from her orb, the sea forget to ebb and flow, and all things change their course, than Sabra prove inconstant to Saint George of England. Let, then, the priest of Hymen knit that gordian knot, the knot of wedlock, which death ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... constantly 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 ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... the doom of all speculative men of talent?' said she. 'Do they not all sit rapt as you now are, cutting imaginary silken cords with their fine edges, while those not so highly tempered sever the every-day Gordian knots of the world's struggle, and win wealth and renown? Steel too highly polished, edges too sharp, do not do for this world's work, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... Besides, I did not wish to surprise you. You have told me that you would make any sacrifice to promote my happiness—and, even in your last unkind letter, you talk of the ties which bind you to me and my child. Tell me that you wish it, and I will cut this Gordian knot. ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... occasion, said all that was to be said about that matter. Ware sincerely mourned Daisy, for in a way he had been fond of her. Still, he could not but confess that a marriage between them would have been a mistake, and that drastic as was the cutting of the Gordian knot, it relieved him from an impossible position. His love for Anne would always have stood between himself and the unfortunate girl, and her jealousy would have ruined both their lives. Certainly he saw no chance of making Anne his wife, seeing ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... life," the damsel said, "Rather than you lay down your liberty. But this" — with that she pointed to the blade Which she had girt — "is your security, I will all tangles in such manner loose, As Alexander did the Gordian noose. ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... 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 like an answer to the longing that thrills through ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... along with them myself, that, in all cases of a tale or story moving through the regular stages of a plot, the writer, by the act of publishing the introductory parts, pledges himself to unweave the whole tissue to the last. The knot that he has tied, though it should prove a very Gordian knot, he is bound to untie. And, if he fails to do so, I doubt whether a reader has not a right of action against him for having wantonly irritated a curiosity that was never meant to be gratified—for having trifled with his feelings—and, possibly, for having ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... tangles, more than 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 it, the boughs that catch it; ...
— Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler • Andrew Lang
... himself—for the mind, unless strictly watched, is apt to waver between 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
... whose ballads are unmatched in German literature for spirit and fire. Strachwitz despised the democratic agitation of the revolutionists, and sang with fine enthusiasm the coming of the strong man, who, after all the intrigues of the demagogues, like another Alexander should cut the Gordian knot with ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... The celibacy of the clergy should, in like manner, be forthwith granted. There was, however, in his view, one point that bristled with difficulties. How to remove them Melanchthon confessed himself unable to suggest. The question of the popish mass was the Gordian knot which must be reserved for the future council of the church ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... between the civil and military establishments; and, on the other, to create a friendly feeling between the Proconsul and the local magistracy. Thus, not long before the date of this history, we read of Gordian, the Proconsul, enjoying a remarkable popularity in his African province; and when the people rose against the exactions of the imperial Procurator, as referred to in a former page, they chose and supported Gordian against him. But however this might be in general, so it was at this time ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... providence of God, there is a time for all things; a time when the sword may cut the Gordian knot, and set free the principles of right and justice, bound up in the meshes of hatred, revenge, and tyranny, that the pens of mighty men like Clay, Webster, Crittenden, and Lincoln ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... breach and claiming damages for the non-performance. The miners listened to the long discussions on these points impatiently, and compared the courts unfavorably with the miners' courts, which unloosed all such Gordian ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... wish them good even, after having obtained a solemn repetition of their promise to meet him at the appointed time and place, and then retreated to his apartment, where he spent the whole night in various conjectures on the subject of the letter, the Gordian knot of which he could by no means untie. One while he imagined that some wag had played a trick on his messenger, in consequence of which Emilia had received a supposititious letter; but, upon farther reflection, he could not conceive the practicability of any such deceit. Then ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... "Ay—the Gordian knot. Had she lived and had my father smoked the affair—Gad! he would ha' broke me; he would so!" he repeated, and emptied ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... Sparks flew from my diamond fender on the dressing-table. Well—well—I—I wish I had seen Sir Antony again. Just now he sent me a present. It is a knife for my chatelaine, the hilt studded with diamonds, and there is a note which says that there is still time to cut the Gordian knot. ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... fortresses to hold them in check, and marched through their territory when he turned north from Pamphylia into the interior. The point of concentration for next year's campaign had been fixed at Gordium, a meeting-place of roads in Northern Phrygia. The story of Alexander's cutting the fatal "Gordian knot'' on the chariot of the ancient Phrygian king Gordius is connected with his stay in this ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... 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 ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... immediate experience."[262] "Man must die to solve the problem of Deity's existence."[263] "The existence of God is a problem to which the mathematics of human intelligence seems to me to furnish no solution,"[264] "a problem without a solution, a hieroglyphic without an interpretation, a gordian knot still untied, a question unanswered, a thread still unravelled, a labyrinth untrod."[265] That there is here a strong expression of Skeptical Atheism is evident; but is there not something more? Does ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... now on historic ground. To our right, on the Owas, a tributary of the Sakaria, was the little village of Istanas, where stood the ancient seat of Midas, the Phrygian king, and where Alexander the Great cut with his sword the Gordian knot to prove his right to the rulership of the world. On the plain, over which we were now skimming, the great Tatar, Timur, fought the memorable battle with Bajazet I., which resulted in the capture of the Ottoman conqueror. Since the time that the ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... with some 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 ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... 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 care to look for them, split up, since his time, to mend ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... to the 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 have ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... hesitated to surrender. Something further he wished to say; but the President was eager and did not perceive it, and took and hastily opened the letter. 'This,' said he, looking toward me with a triumphant air, 'cuts the Gordian Knot. I can now dispose of this subject without difficulty, I see my way clear.' Chase sat by Stanton, fronting the fire; the President beside the fire, his face toward them, Stanton nearest him. I was on the sofa, near the east window. 'Mr. President,' said ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... the face of it, there was no question of possession. The man being weaker than the woman would have been only too glad to elope, and thus cut the Gordian knot of the unhappy situation. But the woman, having acted from a high sense of duty, which Chaldea could not rise to, evidently was determined to continue to be a martyr. The question was, could she keep up that pose in the face of the undeniable ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... if Karine was really in the drawing-room she would come forth, and the Gordian knot of the dilemma would ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... Gordian knot, which nothing but the sword could loose. War was provoked as before by the rashness of a viceroy. The peace-loving governor did not choose to swallow the affront to his country, nor did the occupant of the Dragon Throne deign to interfere; looking on the ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... of a spectacle by the younger Gordian of "twenty zebras, ten elks, ten giraffes, thirty African hyenas, ten Indian tigers, a rhinoceros, an ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... 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 ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... 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 of Bern likewise. ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... The younger Gordian, in his triumphal games, astonished the Romans by the strangeness of the animals displayed, in search of which the whole known world was ransacked. The curious mob now beheld the graceful forms of twenty zebras, and the remarkable stature of ten giraffes, brought from remote African plains. ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... was that such a worthless bit of humanity should hold so much power! She was within reach of his hands. A quick clutch, a stifled squawk, a brief struggle, and she would be dead. And how much that was to come might be averted! He laughed a little at such a method of cutting the Gordian knot. ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... Macedonian[1] got, For having rudely cut the Gordian knot, What glory's due to him that could divide Such ravell'd interests; has the knot untied, 80 And without stroke so smooth a passage made, Where craft and ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... 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 peculiarly tied, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... an even worse prospect, namely, that misrepresentation may goad Great Britain into a position where, with the concurrence and invitation of the other powers, she might feel obliged, even at the risk of enormous military outlay, to cut the Gordian knot. You will probably say, as I certainly say, 'where is the casus belli,' and refuse to believe it possible to imagine such a contingency. Unfortunately, you and I, who keep our heads, must not ignore the fact that an immense number ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot
... "'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
... 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! Kazmah's drug store in Bond Street had few secrets for her; or so she ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... of being "done with it" is so mannish! Here was my Gordian knot cut at once! However, there was no help for it,—though now, more than ever, since there was no danger of a duplicate, did I long for the fifty thousand different beautiful things the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... many such questions as that—if you would render my task the easier by interrupting my revelations thus, Porthos, you will not help me at all. So far, on the contrary, that is the very Gordian knot. But, my friend, with a man like you, good, generous, and devoted, the confession must be bravely made. I have deceived you, ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... it may be said that a teacher of law is an inverted moralist (viz., a teacher of the duties of justice), or that politics are inverted ethics, if we exclude the thought that ethics also teaches the duty of benevolence, magnanimity, love, and so on. The State is the Gordian knot that is cut instead of being untied; it is Columbus' egg which is made to stand by being broken instead of balanced, as though the business in question were to make it stand rather than to balance it. In this respect the State ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... a gordian shape of dazzling hue, Vermilion-spotted, golden, green, and blue; Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard, Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson barr'd; 50 And full of silver moons, that, as she ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... canon-like valley where, among a few scattering vineyards and jujube-trees, nestles Ayash, a place which disputes with the neighboring village of Istanos the honor of being the theatre of Alexander the Great's celebrated exploit of cutting the Gordian knot that disentangled the harness of the Phrygian king. Ayash is to be congratulated upon having its historical reminiscence to recommend it to the notice of the outer world, since it has little to attract attention nowadays; it is merely the shapeless ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... Union Army, while others wished to go with the State. Much discussion took place at this time among the members as to which side they would join, but Captain Kemper, with a great display of coolness and courage, cut the Gordian knot by taking those with him of Southern sentiment, like himself, and on one dark night he pulled out from Alexandria with his cannon and horses and made his way South to join the Southern Army. That was the last time any of that gallant band ever saw their native city for more ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... which he wrote from London, detailing his adventures in the great metropolis, was read in my presence to a circle of admiring friends with expressions of wonder and surprise. This little circumstance made it clear to me that the easiest way out of my difficulty was to out the Gordian knot, run away from Dr. Foshay, and join my father ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... depression into which they are now being plunged by all the inexplicable delays in carrying out the terms of the convention. From every one who comes in contact with them I gather the same impression, that unless the Gordian knot is cut and a way is quickly found out of the present impasse, the most serious results are to be apprehended, as numbers of prisoners here—and the case can be no better in other countries—are on ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... 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 statesmen could ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... innocent fashion had Audrey Ross solved the Gordian knot of family difficulty, leaving her mother and sister eyeing each other with the aghast looks of defeated conspirators; and it must be owned that many a tangled skein, that would have been patiently and laboriously unravelled by the skilled fingers ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... somewhat painful care intricacies formed by loops and snares of bewildering supple-jacks, that living study of Gordian entanglement, nature-woven, for patient ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... its position at the entrance to the greatest commercial port in the world, that it has given its name, as a generic appellation, to all other structures of the kind—any light-house being now called a Pharos, just as any serious difficulty is called a Gordian knot. The Pharos was a lofty tower—the accounts say that it was five hundred feet in height, which would be an enormous elevation for such a structure—and in a lantern at the top a brilliant light was kept constantly burning, which could be seen over the ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott
... survival of large fragments of the records of the Brotherhood, dating from shortly after the battle of Actium, show that it continued to work and to flourish down to the reign of Gordian (A.D. 241), and from other sources we know that it was still in existence in the fourth century.[919] These records have been found on the site of the sacred grove, at the fifth milestone on the via Campana ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... the dignity of his birth, and in the enjoyment of it, he displayed an elegant taste and beneficent disposition. The palace in Rome, formerly inhabited by the great Pompey, had been, during several generations, in the possession of Gordian's family. [15] It was distinguished by ancient trophies of naval victories, and decorated with the works of modern painting. His villa on the road to Praeneste was celebrated for baths of singular beauty and extent, for three ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... Wrestling with sorrows in a land unknown, 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 ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... placed in such hands, the breech-sights naturally bother the eye which is not accustomed to recognize any sight; and while the person is vainly endeavouring to get the sight correctly on a moving object, the animal is increasing his distance. By way of cutting the Gordian knot, he therefore knocks his sight out, and accordingly spoils the shooting ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... religion and revelation, as we are dealing with facts and phenomena in the natural life of man, rather than with creeds and dogmas that undertake to cut the "Gordian Knot," these questions stare everyone in the face, and in every age man has tried to solve ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... thoughts and can be seen as two. No 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 ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... war has not very materially hindered the increase of cacao production in the tropics, the shortage of shipping has prevented the amount exported from maintaining a steady rise. The table below, taken mainly from the "Gordian," illustrates this: ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp |
