"Gordian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... so easy as that. You can't cut every difficulty with a sword, as they did the Gordian knot. One may go far in defence of a woman's honor, but there are boundaries which even a gallant man cannot pass; and, before I speak, I must see ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... the construction of the place. The Gordian knot was all very well in its way: so was the maze of Hampton Court: so is the maze at the Beulah Spa: so were the ties of stiff white neckcloths, when the difficulty of getting one on, was only to be equalled ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... much ceremony that the dinner threatened to be very dull, and interminable as well, from the indecision of the guests as to the dishes they should accept. It was Madame Weber's clear head and decided hand that cut this Gordian knot. She turned to her child. "Eat everything," she ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... had ceased to love her, that she was unworthy of him, unfitted by education to take her place side by side with him in the new spheres to which he was mounting—that, in short, she was a drag on his career. Being, by all accounts, a girl of remarkable force of character, she resolved to cut the Gordian knot by leaving London, and, fearing lest her affianced husband's conscientiousness should induce him to sacrifice himself to her; dreading also, perhaps, her own weakness, she made the parting absolute, and the place of her refuge a mystery. A theory ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... Gordian knot is ready to be cut, God sends the Alexander! Does not the Crown Prince William's confession of his belief in courage as the highest flower of the human spirit, in his book "Deutschland in Waffen," sound ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... 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 ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... and goodness to be the ultimate qualities of the divine Mind, but it meets the problem of sin and evil by denying them any reality at all. (Here it is in more or less accord with certain forms of mysticism.) But even as Christian Science cuts this Gordian knot it creates for itself another set of difficulties and involves itself in those contradictions which will eventually be the undoing of it as ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... brought truth in rhyme.[228] But 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 ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... enabled him to prepare such a scene of phantasmagoria as she had herself witnessed. Yet there were so many difficulties in assigning a natural explanation, that, to the day of her death, she remained in great doubt on the subject, and much disposed to cut the Gordian knot, by admitting the existence of ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... loved by each she realized with recurring thrills of pleasure; that she loved in return she felt no doubt—but alas! which? How perfectly delightful it would be could she only fall into some desperate plight, from which the really daring knight might rescue her! That would cut the Gordian knot. While laboring in this state of indecision she must have voiced her ambition in some effective manner to the parties concerned, for late one Wednesday night Moffat tramped heavily into the Miners' Retreat and ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... reduced to one." [4605]"This love causeth true and absolute virtues, the life, spirit, and 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, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... enabled him to support 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 stately rooms of a hundred ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... 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.
... unsophisticated children of nature. But now the environment in which he had spent the past year had left its traces on him, heightening his natural tendency to proceed by sap and mine rather than by direct assault, and rendering him still less ready than before to cut Gordian knots when by any conceivable expenditure of time and patience they might ultimately be undone. In other words, his Agpur training had improved his fitness for work of the same kind, but left him worse ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... "pleasant discourse passed," in which "a Puritan" was defined to be "a Protestant frightened out of his wits." The king is more particularly vivacious when he alludes to the occurrences of his own reign, or suspects the Puritans of republican notions. On one occasion, to cut the gordian-knot, the king royally decided—"I will not argue that point with you, but answer as kings in parliament, Le ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... ligajxon. "Nenio estas pli facila ol tio," li diris, "kaj nun mi ne dubas cxu mi certe regos super cxiuj regxoj de Azio." Pro tio, kion faris Aleksandro Granda, oni ankoraux nuntempe diras, kiam iu ajn superas malfacilajxon per kia ajn subita metodo, "Li trancxis la gordian ligajxon." ...
— A Complete Grammar of Esperanto • Ivy Kellerman
... Woodley cuts the Gordian knot by stepping straight to where Harkness lies, grasping the collar of his coat, and rudely arousing him out of his slumber, by a jerk that brings him erect upon his feet. Then, without waiting word of remonstrance from the astonished man, ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... religious point of view, but for that ease we should pay with our life. For that swift answer, achieved by leaving out prime factors in the problem, we should be betraying the self for whose sake alone any answer is valuable. It does not pay to cut such Gordian knots! Our task, then, is to preach transcendence again, not in terms of the old absolutist philosophy, but in terms of the perceptions, the needs, the experience of the human heart and mind and ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... hundred additional soldiers the outer works might still be manned and the city saved. The officers English, Dutch, and French, listened respectfully to his remarks, but, without any suggestions on their own part, called on him as their Alexander to untie the Gordian knot. Alexander solved it, not with the sword, but with a trick which he hoped might prove sharper than a sword. He announced his intention of proposing at once to treat, and to protract the negotiations as long as possible, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... philosophy and grammar, better make me Caesar! I was mixing my philosophy with surgery and medicine while Pertinax was sucking at his mother's breast in a Ligurian hut. Rome, my son, is sick of too much mixed philosophy. She needs a man of iron—a riser to occasion—a cutter of Gordian knots, precisely as a sick man needs a surgeon. The senate will vote, as you say, at the praetorian guard's dictation. You have been clever, my Sextus, with your stirring of faction against faction. They are mean men, all so full of mutual suspicion as to heave ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... from the telegraph office later in the evening, finds me endeavoring to unravel the Gordian knot of the situation through the medium of a brown-study. My geographical ruminations have already resulted in a conviction that there is no possible way to unravel it and reach India with a bicycle; my only chance ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... 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 ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... here, ma'am.—[Taking books from under her cloak, and from her pockets.] This is The Gordian Knot,—and this Peregrine Pickle. Here are The Tears of Sensibility, and Humphrey Clinker. This is The Memoirs of a Lady of Quality, written by herself, and here the second volume of ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... this evidens wil be be s[u]fishent az tu the praktikal usefulnes ov the Fonetik Sistem ov speli[n]. Tu thoze who wish for more evidens ei rekomend a pamflet bei Mr. G. Withers, "The I[n]glish La[n]gwej Speld az Pronounst," 1874; and w[u]n bei Dr. J. W. Martin, "The Gordian Not K[u]t," 1875, hwere they wil feind the konk[u]rent testimoni ov praktikal teacherz in I[n]gland, Skotland, Eirland, and Amerika, all agreei[n] that, bo[t] az a praktikal and a lojikal traini[n], the Fonetik Sistem haz proved ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... the twilight, was obliged to 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 ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... Basil sent forth his invitations to all of the Anician blood in Rome. The first to respond was Gordianus, whose dwelling on the Clivus Scauri stood but a few minutes' walk away. Though but a little older than Basil, Gordian had been for several years a husband and a father; he was in much esteem for his worldly qualities, and more highly regarded for the fervour of his religious faith. A tall, handsome, dignified man, he looked straight before him with frank eyes, and his lips told ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... finall causes, for which the Law was made; the knowledge of which finall causes is in the Legislator. To him therefore there can not be any knot in the Law, insoluble; either by finding out the ends, to undoe it by; or else by making what ends he will, (as Alexander did with his sword in the Gordian knot,) by the Legislative power; which no other ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... seeking for 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 |
