"Knot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had dined, up stairs I went, and locked myself into my little room. There I tricked myself up as well as I could in my new garb, and put on my round-eared ordinary cap; but with a green knot, however, and my homespun gown and petticoat, and plain leather shoes; but yet they are what they call Spanish leather; and my ordinary hose, ordinary I mean to what I have been lately used to; though I shall think good yarn may do very well for every ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... guns paired in four turrets—the triple-turret system having been abandoned—twenty six-inch and twenty-two fourteen-pr. guns, their speed being 25 knots. Besides these ten, or practically twelve, completed battleships, Italy has ten armored cruisers in commission and three twenty-eight knot light cruisers, but no fastgoing battle cruisers corresponding to those in the British and German Navies. She has also twenty-seven completed destroyers and thirteen thirty-two knot destroyers laid ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... you how, after years of devotion to Marian, John Gilman let Eileen make a perfect rag of him and tie him into any kind of knot she chose. Peter, when Marian left here she had lost everything on earth but a little dab of money. She had lost a father who was fine enough to be my father's best friend. She had lost a mother who was fine enough to rear Marian to what she is. She had lost them in a horrible way ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... much what she wore, she so managed that suggestions and hints—no more—of brilliant amber or [Transcriber's Note: The original text reads 'promegranate'] pomegranate scarlet should appear just where they imparted brilliancy to her deep coloring, and abstract the yellow from her skin. A knot of old gold satin under the rim of her bonnet, another at her throat, and others in among the lace at her wrists, brightened up the otherwise subdued tinting of her costume, so that it always looked as though it had been designed expressly for her by some great colorist. Here ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... the child, to carry him across the heath, a little tumbling-boy emerges in soiled tights. He is half asleep. His father scrapes the fiddle. The boy shortens his red belt, kisses his fingers to us, and ties himself into a knot among the glasses on ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... father's room after dinner she found, not Mr. Carlisle, but her mother with him. "Waiting for me"—thought Eleanor. The air of Mrs. Powle said so. The squire was gathered up into a kind of hard knot, hanging his head over his knees. When he spoke, and was answered by his daughter, the contrast of the two voices was striking, and in character; one gruff, the other ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... if to defend him against me, were two young women, who looked at me with bold eyes. In their petticoats and morning wrappers, with bare arms, with coal black hair twisted in a knot on the nape of their neck, with embroidered, Oriental slippers, which showed their ankles and silk stockings, they looked like the figures in some symbolical painting, by the side of the dying man. Between ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... was beside what might be called a serpentine curve or series of loops in the river. This was at the centre of what is known as the Double Bow Knot, three rounded loops, very symmetrical in form, with an almost circular formation of flat-topped rock, a mile or more in diameter in the centre of each loop. A narrow neck of rock connects these ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... Rhodomontado they have, (for in this they are perfect Spaniards) that neither Romans, Carthaginians, Vandals, Goths, or Moors, ever totally subdued them. And yet any Man that has ever seen their Country, might cut this Knot without a Hatchet, by saying truly, that neither Roman, Carthaginian, nor any victorious People, thought it worth while to make a Conquest of a Country, so mountainous ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... the Nihilism of Socialism, and thus calls on them to abandon their religious, metaphysical, and dualistic habits of thought, to cast aside their conventional class morality, to cease vaporing about that impossible monstrosity, "the Socialist State," attempt to cut the Gordian knot by denying the Materialist Conception of History, while clinging to their socialist ideal. They thus repeat in inverted form the curious feat in intellectual acrobatics performed by Professor Seligman, who believes in historical materialism, ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte
... face appeared under the wan light of the air-hole like the ashes at the bottom of a tomb. His eyes were closed, his hair was plastered down on his temples like a painter's brushes dried in red wash; his hands hung limp and dead. A clot of blood had collected in the knot of his cravat; his limbs were cold, and blood was clotted at the corners of his mouth; his shirt had thrust itself into his wounds, the cloth of his coat was chafing the yawning gashes in the living ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... before him, or ignorant of its nature. In describing himself to Buonagiunta da Lucca in Purgatory, he says, "I am one who, when Love breathes, mark, and according as he dictates within, I report"; to which the poet of Lucca replies, "O brother, now I see the knot which kept the Notary and Guittone and me back from that sweet new style which now I hear. I see well how your pens have followed close on the dictator, which truly was not the case with ours."[9] As Love was the common theme of the verses from which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... than linen because greater strength is obtained with the same thickness. Always dry a line every time it is used, or it will soon rot and be worthless. The back of a chair is excellent for this purpose. Never tie a knot in a line that you expect to use with rod and reel. The knot will always catch in one of the guides just at the time when you are ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... is sure—that among the knot of loungers at the church-gate such sentences as the following passed from mouth ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of his body within his hide. His feet and his shins and his knees slid so that they came behind him. His heels and his calves and his hams shifted so that they passed to the front. The muscles of his calves moved so that they came to the front of his shins, so that each huge knot was the size of a soldier's balled fist. He stretched the sinews of his head so that they stood out on the nape of his neck, and as large as the head of a month-old child was each of the hill-like lumps, huge, incalculable, ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... fine," Erick said to him. He glanced at Mara. Her black hair was tied in a knot, looped through a hollowed-out yuke bone. Her face was dark, too, dark and lined with colored ceremonial pigment, green and orange stripes across her cheeks. Earrings were strung through her ears. On ...
— The Crystal Crypt • Philip Kindred Dick
... gentlemen walking and enjoying the delightful day. All was full of life, buoyant and rejoicing;—all but Haley's gang, who were stored, with other freight, on the lower deck, and who, somehow, did not seem to appreciate their various privileges, as they sat in a knot, talking to ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... cords, as if the mere physical exertion of pulling hard at something were a relief to him at that moment. "I'll open it again and look it over in a day or two, when I'm away from the old place here," he resumed, jerking sharply at the last knot—"when I'm away from the old place, and have got to be ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... 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 ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... to look at the lines—possibly while Sherman's horse was being saddled —there were many questions asked about the late campaign, about which the North had been so imperfectly informed. There was a little knot around Sherman and another around me, and I heard Sherman repeating, in the most animated manner, what he had said to me when we first looked down from Walnut Hills upon the land below on the 18th of May, adding: "Grant is entitled ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... shall be able to trace the many-lined figures, each to its simple apex,—one little point containing the essence and secret of the whole. Once or twice in the course of a lifetime are a few men permitted to catch a glimpse of these awful Beginnings,—to touch for a minute the knot where all the tangled threads ravel themselves out smoothly. I had found such a place,—had had such an ineffable vision,—and, overwhelmed with tremendous awe, I sank on my knees, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... Pitt did not display his usual tactfulness. Excusably enough in so young a man, he allowed himself to be swayed by personal feeling, and his feeling was ungenerous. With the exception of a small knot of friends like Dundas, he kept himself aloof from his supporters and was ignorant of the annoyance with which they regarded this attempt to deal harshly with a defeated foe.[190] A bill passed that session ordered that polls were not to last more than fifteen ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... have conspired to make this Irish question a Gordian-knot which no man can untie, and but few would dare to cut. The past extravagance of the landlords, absenteeism, rack-renting, injustice of all kinds; the past jealousy of England and her over-shadowing all native industries and productions; difference of religion, racial temperament, and the irreconcilable ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton
... eyes followed the movement of a beautiful girl surrounded by a cluster of men, immaculately dressed, bronzed—and, for the most part, wholesome-looking. She was dark, almost Eastern in her type of features. Her hair was black with the blackness of the raven's wing, and coiled in an ample knot low upon her neck. Her features, although Eastern, had scarcely the regularity one expects in such a type, whilst her eyes quashed without mercy any idea of such extraction for her nationality. They were gray, deeply ringed at the ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... as lamps in them days. Jus' used pine knots. When we quilted, we jus' got a good knot and lighted it. And when that one was nearly burnt out, we would light another one ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... said Kim, 'the night that my lama and I lay next thy place in the Kashmir Seral. The door was left unlocked, which I think is not thy custom, Mahbub. He came in as one assured that thou wouldst not soon return. My eye was against a knot-hole in the plank. He searched as it were for something—not a rug, not stirrups, nor a bridle, nor brass pots—something little and most carefully hid. Else why did he prick with an iron between the soles ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... the common, then diverging; Not a few suddenly emerging From the common's self thro' the paling-gaps —They house in the gravel-pits perhaps, Where the road stops short with its safeguard border Of lamps, as tired of such disorder;— But the most turned in yet more abruptly From a certain squalid knot of alleys, Where the town's bad blood once slept corruptly, Which now the little chapel rallies And leads into day again,—its priestliness Lending itself to hide their beastliness So cleverly (thanks in part to the mason), And putting so cheery a whitewashed face on Those neophytes ...
— Christmas Eve • Robert Browning
... place for it, with two rows of running-stitches, two or three threads apart. Put in your needle at the back of the slit, and take up about three threads, bring the working thread round, from right to left under the point of the needle, and draw the needle out through the loop, so that the little knot comes at the edge of the slit, and so on to the end, working from the lower left-hand corner to the right. Then make a bar of button-hole stitching across each end, the knotted edge towards ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... growled the scout, shoving his knife back in his girdle. "I don't love yer 'any more than I love the devil, and I felt happy to think that I had got a chance at last to git square with yer; but when I lift the top-knot of Lone Wolf and slide him under, he's got to have the same chance that I have. I don't believe you'd act that way toward me; but, then, you're a redskin, and that makes the difference. Lone Wolf, we'll adjourn the fight ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... (date 1534)," says Mr. Timbs, "is of pure gold, composed of a series of links, each formed of a letter S, a united York and Lancaster (or Henry VII.) rose, and a massive knot. The ends of the chain are joined by the portcullis, from the points of which, suspended by a ring of diamonds, hangs the jewel. The entire collar contains twenty-eight SS, fourteen roses, thirteen knots, and measures sixty-four inches. The jewel contains in the centre ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Highlander, the graceful mien and manly looks which a certain popular Scots' song has attributed to that character. "When receiving Dr. Johnson in after-years, Kingsburgh appeared in true Highland costume, with his plaid thrown about him, a large blue bonnet with a knot of black ribbon like a cockade, a brown short coat of a kind of duffil, a tartan waistcoat with gold buttons and gold button-holes, a bluish philibeg, and tartan hose. He had jet hair tied behind; and was a large stately man, with a steady sensible countenance."[309] Such was the man to whom, after ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... damask roses which grew by the kitchen door, while her wavy hair was brown, like the chestnuts they used to gather from the trees, in the rocky pasture land. It was wavy still, and soft and luxurient, but it was iron grey, and she wore it plain, in a knot at the back of her head, and only a few short hairs, which would curl about her forehead in spite of her, softened the severity of her face. Just when the change began in his sister. Burton could not remember, ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... offence. Well, if you will not consent to be an abbess, perhaps you will consent to follow this young Zingaro, and to co-operate with him and us. I am a priest, madam, and can join you both in an instant, connubio stabili, as I suppose the knot has not been ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... pockets, remained where he was. Under his continued inspection, the fingers of Bangs grew clumsy. He fumbled with the knot, and, having unfastened it, prolonged to the utmost the process of lacing his shoes. He knew what must come as soon as he settled back in his chair. It had been coming for days. He was in for an unpleasant ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... the end, then, placing it around both my thighs, made a slip knot and clung to the rope above. This took me some minutes. Then, when all was ready, I gave ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... the ship was quiet, but it was not tranquil. Calhoun worked calmly enough, but there were times when his inwards seemed to knot and cramp him, which was not the result of any infection or contagion or demoniac possession, but was reaction to thoughts of the imprisoned para in the laboratory. That man had gobbled the unspeakable because he could not help himself, but he was mad with ...
— The Hate Disease • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... the men hung their heads, as if ashamed of the business they were about to perform. In the rest of the line the men exchanged a few words with each other, now and then, quietly, but the company referred to, spoke not a word. to each other. Their officers stood in a little knot by themselves, and evidently felt sad at heart when they remembered the business before them, for their comrade condemned to die had been a ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... long before the ball that beat him, All ends up, went down to meet him, Tie him up in a knot, defeat him Once and for ever, He told his mates that he wished, when hoary Time put an end to his famous story, To trudge with his old brown bag to Glory, ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... horizon grew and overspread the heavens in a pall that became ever more black and threatening. For a few days yet it seemed that perhaps even now the cataclysm might be averted, but gradually, in spite of all the efforts of diplomacy to loosen the knot, it became clear that the ends of the cord were held in hands that did not mean to release their hold till it was pulled tight. Servia yielded to such demands as it was possible for her to grant as an independent State; but the inflexible ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... dealt with in the Assembly and the Convention, as the American Colonel Swan discovered, in 1791, that the tobacco question was dealt with—'by a knot of men who disposed of all things as they liked, and ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... superhuman valour, lust, and cruelty like some of his later dramas, and hymns intoxicated with the passion for Power, like the splendid Ode in which the City of the Seven Hills is prophetically seen once more the mistress of the world, loosing the knot of all the problems of humanity. His poetic autobiography, the first Laude (1901)—counterpart of Wordsworth's Prelude and its very antipodes—culminates in a prayer 900 lines long to Hermes, god of the energy which precipitates itself on life and makes it pregnant ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... illustrate. She draws the killingest pictures. There was one of the fifth dormitory at 6 a.m. You saw all the girls asleep, and their heads were killing. Amy had a top-knot that had fallen on one side, Phyllis a pigtail about two inches long, and as thin as a string. You know her miserable little wisp of hair. Mary was lying on her back with her mouth wide open. It was the image of her. She's nearly as good as Hilda Cowham. We might call her 'Hilda ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Jessamine the fair woman. He would have me sing him Ballads, he would hang Entranc'd upon the Spinet when I play'd. Now would he fetch me a flower for my hair, placing of it himself. And now 't was a knot of ribband for my dress, and himself fetch'd home broach and ear-rings for my Birthday Gift, saying in my ear no fairer woman's face had gladded his eyes since he left home. And by the clipt Hedge on a May night he kiss'd me. Alas, oh blind ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... the thrifty habit of storing away nuts in the knot-holes of trees, between cracks in the bark, or in decayed fence rails—too often a convenient storehouse at which the squirrels may help themselves. But it is the black snake that enters the nest and eats the young family, and ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... top-knot and a thingumbob, like every one else; and how ever shall I know her? Too bad of Fan to make me come alone!" thought Tom, as he stood watching the crowd stream through the depot, and feeling rather daunted at the array of young ladies who passed. As none of them seemed looking for ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... repeated more heavily on the capital of a pillar in the nave. The screen must have been glorious in gold and vermilion, and gold lines cross each other, making a sort of lattice-work, with ornaments at the points of intersection—a large double rose, a little shield with the Bouchier knot, or the Stafford knot, or a very naturally carved spray of oak-leaves. Below, the panels are painted with saints and angels and bishops. The King, Prince, and Cardinal appear in a representation of the Adoration of the Three Kings, each one bringing his offering ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... my Lords, let's now to court, Where we may finish up the joyfullest day That ever hapt to a distressed King. Were but thy Father, the Valencia Lord, Present in view of this combining knot. ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... 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
... there the knot in the end of the short six feet of double line showed at the surface. I pumped and I reeled ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... administration; and they care nothing for the credit of it, unless it be the administration of their own political party. In England, all people, of whatever party, are anxious for the credit of their rulers. Our government, as a knot of persons, changes so entirely every four years, that the institution has come to be considered a ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... before our very doors." And crippled soldiers painfully lifted up their wounded arms and cried, "That is Falieri who beat the Morbassan[10]—the valiant captain whose victorious banners waved in the Black Sea." Wherever a knot of people gathered, there was one amongst them telling of Falieri's heroic deeds; and, as though Doria were already defeated, the air rang with wild shouts of triumph. An additional reason for this was that Nicolo ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... Outwardly they maintained the pomp suitable to their standing, while they gnawed secretly and unseen at the hard crust of want. Thus from father to son the debts were constantly increasing, and the revenues becoming smaller and smaller. If I do not make an end of this, and sever the Gordian knot like Alexander, instead of attempting the wearisome task of untying it, I shall soon present to the court and nobility the sad spectacle of a Count Rhedern who is compelled to give up his hotel, ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... It never could have been a beautiful face Robert and I agree, but noble and expressive it has been and is. The complexion is olive, quite without colour; the hair, black and glossy, divided with evident care and twisted back into a knot behind the head, and she wore no covering to it. Some of the portraits represent her in ringlets, and ringlets would be much more becoming to the style of face, I fancy, for the cheeks are rather over-full. She was dressed in a sort of woollen grey gown, with a jacket of the same material (according ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... white tie when he dines with friends, And tie it neat in a bow with ends, or a KNOT, The Akond ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... well made and tall: they wear for their entire clothing what they call a maro; it is a piece of figured or white tapa, two yards long and a foot wide, which they pass round the loins and between the legs, tying the ends in a knot over the left hip. At first sight I thought they were painted red, but soon perceived that it was the natural color of their skin. The women wear a petticoat of the same stuff as the maro, but wider and longer, without, however, reaching below the knees. They have sufficiently ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... cannot injure anybody. In the principal parks of Indian cities, at almost any time in the morning, you can see a dozen or twenty men being oiled and rubbed down by barbers or by friends, and a great deal of oil is used in the hair. After a man is grown he allows his hair to grow long and wears it in a knot at the back of his head. Some Hindus have an abundance of hair, of which they are very proud, and upon which they spend considerable ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... more brilliant, as the conductor, for twenty-seven years, of the celebrated Edinburgh Review. Another was Henry Cockburn, who has now become the biographer of his great associate. It was verily a remarkable knot of men in many respects, but we think in none more than a heroic probity towards their principles, which were, after all, of no extravagant character, as was testified by their being permitted to triumph harmlessly in 1831-2. These men anticipated by forty years changes which were ultimately ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... one—as foreseen by everybody, by the ill-starred victim, in most instances the woman, herself,—and either party decides to separate, then, State and Church,—who never first inquire whether real love and natural, moral impulses, or only naked, obscene egotism tie the knot—now raise the greatest difficulties. At present, moral repulsion is but rarely recognized a sufficient ground for separation; at present, only palpable proofs, proofs that always dishonor or lower one of the parties in public esteem, are, as a rule, demanded; separation ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... that!" groaned Phil. "Hold up your side of him, Milt! He's getting darned heavy!... Here we've sacrificed ourselves to save this guy's nerves ... and then, in this last five minutes, we get all upset ourselves! My stomach's tied up in such a knot that I couldn't even digest a ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... "Star-Spangled Banner," the crowd took up the chorus, and rendered it with a heartfelt enthusiasm more significant than any music; for it was almost election-day, and the old query of "How will Pennsylvania go?" had all day been urged among every knot of men who gathered to talk of the country's prospects. Then came the good old "John Brown Song," and the "Marseillaise," which should be snatched from its Rebel appropriators, on the same principle by which Doctor Byles adapted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... piracy on the high seas; and they shall swing, every man Jack of them, as high as Haman! What think ye? They signal me to lie to—me that has the mails and a hundred thousand pounds in specie aboard; they fire a shot across my bows, and when I signal that I'll see them in hell before I bate a knot, why—you watched it yourselves—they struck me in the fo'castle, and there's two of my dead men below now; but they shall swing"—and he brought his fist upon the table with a mighty thud—"they shall swing, if there's only one ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... What a revelation was here, from lips so innocent and evidently so truthful! And how the whole story tallied with what she had heard in her ambush and conjectured from other circumstances! She was on the right scent, beyond a question—but here came her difficulty,—how to cut this knot of villainy, even now that it lay plainly before her! This was the question that labored through the young girl's brain and bent down her head on her hand. And yet it must be done, whatever the difficulty. Courage, Joseph Harris!—there never was a difficult thing, either in ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... piper's son, He learned to play when he was young, But all the tunes that he could play, Was "Over the hills and far away"; Over the hills, and a great way off, And the wind will blow my top-knot off. ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... fact of so many treacherous ledges and reefs to be navigated safely in a four-knot tide that was agitating the half-dozen "guests" at Mis' Shannon's boarding-house. It need hardly be said that Mis' Shannon was a widow, but her distinction lay in being ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... candidates for the office of society Haruspex, whose ghoulish business it is to find omens and prophecies in the entrails of his victims. In that respect, at any rate, both society and the press in Germany are as is the salon to the scullery, compared with ours. As for that little knot of illustrated weekly papers in England, with their nauseating letter-press for snobs inside, and their advertisements of patent complexion remedies and corsets outside, there is nothing like them in Germany ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... regard to the number of concomitant circumstances necessary to throw the peril of conduct otherwise indifferent on the actor. As the circumstances become more numerous and complex, the tendency to cut the knot with the jury becomes greater. It will be useful to follow a line of cases up from the simple to the more complicated, by way of illustration. The difficulty of distinguishing rules based on other grounds of policy from ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... fine lady on her throne to the red-coat on his cock-horse and the school-boy on his forrum (as our Irish brethren call it), I have heard but one word, and that is, that it is the jolliest book they ever read. Among a knot of red-coats at the cover-side, some very fast fellow said, 'If I had had such a book in my boyhood, I should have been a better man now!' and more than one capped his sentiment frankly. Now isn't it a comfort to your old bones to have ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... ready, the room crowded full, and the Board of Trustees not yet arrived. There sat their three big arm-chairs on the raised platform, empty,—a depressing and perplexing sight to Little Bel, who, in her short blue merino gown, with a knot of pink ribbon at her throat, and a roll of white paper (her schedule of exercises) in her hand, stood on the left hand of the piano, her eyes fixed expectantly on the doors. The minutes lengthened out into quarter of an hour, half an hour. Anxiously Bel consulted ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... dollars, drawn to his own order and signed by him with the firm's name, and in response to my inquiry as to the meaning of it, he told me it was a little matter he was putting through by a friend for his own accommodation, I cut the knot and insisted on a ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... the fisherman forced his stringer between the large gills and out through the gaping mouth, and tied it in a secure double knot that there might be no danger of an escape. As the rebellious captive was lowered into the water, and the throng about the spot began to thin, the ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... taken for the bride yourself. All in white, except your beautiful hair! Wait, that won't do; let me try if I can't improve things a little—do you mind?—Just let me see how this will look." Diana submitted patiently, and Mrs. Brandt officiously fastened a knot of blue ribband in her bright hair. She was greatly pleased with the effect, which Diana could not see. However, when they had reached the house they were going to, and leaving the dressing-room Diana took her husband's arm to go down to the company, he detained her to let Mr. and Mrs. Brandt pass ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... if he was to have an answer, the reply was No; and the boy took his way home over the cliff, for some one was coming after him up on the road, he said. Oyvind opened the note with some difficulty, for it was folded in a strip, then tied in a knot, then sealed and stamped; ...
— A Happy Boy • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... of the stewardess, while she graciously received the gratuitous services of all who were well enough to render her their homage. She was evidently the great lady of the cabin; and round her couch a knot of gossips had collected, when Flora, followed by Hannah carrying the baby, entered upon ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... shapely stone, By foliaged tracery combined; Thou would'st have thought some fairy's hand, Twixt poplars straight, the osier wand, In many a freakish knot, had twined; Then framed a spell, when the work was done, And changed ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... of his Missy clinging to the pole brought the old man to his senses, but it took David and the doctor to drag Courant away. For a moment they were a knot of struggling bodies, from which oaths and sobbing breaths broke. Upright he shook them off and backed toward the bank, leaving them looking at him, all expectant. He growled a few broken words, his face ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... moment as the guests descended from their cars and swept across the sidewalk. The lantern which swung low from the arched entrance showed a spot of rosy color—the velvet wrap of a girl whose knot of dark curls shone above the ermine collar. A Spanish comb, encrusted with diamonds, was stuck at right ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... make bread. I thought their dress particularly awkward and inconvenient. The sleeves of their shirts were so wide that they stuck out half a yard from the arms; the sleeves of the kaftan were still larger. Whenever they do any work, they are obliged to wind them round their arms, or tie them in a knot behind. Of course they are always coming undone, and causing delay and stoppage of their work. In addition to this, the good folks are not much addicted to cleanliness, and make use of their sleeves for blowing their ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... clearly visible, now only loomed up occasionally and dimly through the driving snowy dust. The wind came from the left, insistently blowing over to one side the mane on Mukhorty's sleek neck and carrying aside even his fluffy tail, which was tied in a simple knot. Nikita's wide coat-collar, as he sat on the windy side, pressed close ...
— Master and Man • Leo Tolstoy
... was not destined to remain wholly uninterrupted. As the other travellers descended from the carriage and formed a little knot upon the platform, the Comtesse de Boistelle, now occupied with a betufted poodle frisking at the end of a leash, strolled by him. As she passed Paul she dropped a jewelled reticule, which he promptly recovered ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... solves. They were Roman colonies to which only Roman citizens were eligible, and yet the Roman populace opposed the law. The Italians, on the contrary, carried it by violence. Some have cut the knot by supposing that, though the colonies were Roman, Italians were to be admitted to them. But there is another possible explanation. It is certain that many Italians passed as citizens at Rome. In 187 B.C. 12,000 ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... as she came through the field and Sarah heard her. She stood up and shouted and, because the wind had died down and it was very quiet and still, Rosemary, too, heard. Kneeling down, Sarah could see her sister through a knot hole in the platform. ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... girls generally talk about, when a knot of them get together? Not, I believe, about the sources of the Nile, or the precession of the equinoxes, or the nature of the human understanding, or Dante, or Shakespeare, or Milton, although they have learned all about them in school; but upon a theme much nearer and dearer,—the ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... in a big bed, he lay quiet enough, Massa, neber fear.' 'Well, then,' says I, 'bend down that 'ere ash saplin' softly, you old Snowball, and make no noise. The saplin' was no sooner bent than secured to the ground by a notched peg and a noose, and a slip-knot was suspended from the tree, jist over the track that led from the pathway to the house. 'Why, my Gor, massa, that's a—' 'Hold your mug, you old nigger,' says I, 'or I'll send your tongue a-sarchin' arter your teeth; keep quiet, and ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... others, from a pile at their side, in position. On either side of the path we continually passed pieces of rubber vine cut into lengths of some two feet or so, and on the top one or two leaves plaited together, or a piece of bush rope tied into a knot, which indicated ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... not mean to kill a chicken, and he did not really think he would be able to hit one. But often we do things more easily when we are not trying very hard, than when we are too anxious. So it happened with Andy. He tried his luck on the speckled top-knot, which everybody considered the handsomest chick that had been hatched that summer. He drew his bow, let go the string, and the speckled top-knot keeled over. He ran up to it, very proud, at first, of his good ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... was in liquor at the time. But the spirit of the act was not the less kind on that account. On the other hand, the conduct of the bookseller on whom Johnson once called to solicit employment, and who, regarding his athletic but uncouth person, told him he had better "go buy a porter's knot and carry trunks," in howsoever bland tones the advice might have been communicated, ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... said Tim, knocking the slabs off from the outside of the block. "This heart's goin' to be tough, though; got a knot in it," and tough it proved, ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... to the eastwards, under boom-foresail and one little jib, with her mainmast broken short off where the bolts of the halliard blocks had traversed it, and Dampier realised that because of that every knot she made then could not by any means be recovered that season. He wondered, with a little uneasiness, what Wyllard would say when he came to himself again. In the meanwhile he said nothing, but lay like a log in his bunk, only that there was now a ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... I had like to have said, more wanton. She preaches nothing but feasting and jollity; a melancholic anxious look shows that she does not inhabit there. Demetrius the grammarian finding in the temple of Delphos a knot of philosophers set chatting together, said to them,—[Plutarch, Treatise on Oracles which have ceased]—"Either I am much deceived, or by your cheerful and pleasant countenances, you are engaged in no, very deep discourse." To which ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... Erik like a fairy princess. Instead of the national costume, the only one which he had ever seen worn by a child of that age, she had on a dress of deep blue velvet, over which her yellow hair was allowed to fall loosely. She wore black stockings and satin shoes; a knot of cherry-colored ribbon was poised in her hair like a butterfly, and gave a little color to her pale cheeks, while her large eyes ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... against it—a man that was raised in squatter country behind a barb-wire fence, who has to gentle his horses before he can sit up on one, who has hitched a gun on his belt because he thinks it's the thing to do, and has stowed it in a place where he'd have to tie himself in a knot—or undress—to reach it. And then you talk of pulling the Three Bar out of a hole! Why, there are twenty men within fifty miles of here that would kill you the ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... I quickly learnt all the names of the ropes and their various uses from Mr Mackay; while Tim Rooney showed me how to make a "reef knot," a "clove hitch," a "running bowline," and a "sheep-shank," explaining the difference between these and their respective advantages over the common "granny's knot" of landsmen—my friend the boatswain judiciously discriminating ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... aboue About thy necke so neatly set That Art it cannot counterfet, 210 Which still shall looke so Fresh and new, As if vpon their Roots they grew: And for thy head Ile haue a Tyer Of netting, made of Strawbery wyer, And in each knot that doth compose A Mesh, shall stick a halfe blowne Rose, Red, damaske, white, in order set About the sides, shall run a Fret Of Primroses, the Tyer throughout With Thrift and Dayses frindgd about; 220 All this faire Nimph Ile doe for thee, So thou'lt leaue ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... remember as if it were yesterday, that, as we passed slowly through the village of Hampton, we saw two boys fighting behind a red barn. There was also a shaggy yellow dog, who looked as if he had commenced to unravel, barking himself all up into a knot with excitement. We had only a hurried glimpse of the battle—long enough, however, to see that the combatants were equally matched and very much in earnest. I am ashamed to say how many times since I have speculated as to which boy got licked. Maybe both the small ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... was a chair with a broken back. On the floor lay the gipsy's wallet, and his abarcas, which he had taken off to avoid noise during his clandestine entrance into the house. The gipsy himself was busy tying slip-knot at the end of a stout rope about seven or eight yards long. Another piece of cord, of similar length and thickness, lay beside him, having much the appearance of a halter, owing to the noose already made at one of its extremities. The tiles and rafters ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... retained their full senses, and could distinguish friend from foe, were three brothers of tall stature and mighty strength, and these three, taking momentary counsel together, resolved to fling themselves upon the little knot surrounding the person of the Prince, and slay at all cost the youthful leader who appeared to exercise so great a power over the rest of ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... halter which is prefered by them. the halter of whatever it may be composed is always of great length and is never taken from the neck of the horse which they commonly use at any time. it is first attatched at one end about the neck of the horse with a knot that will not slip, it is then brought down to his under jaw and being passed through the mouth imbaces the under jaw and tonge in a simple noose formed by crossing the rope inderneath the jaw of the horse. this when mounted he draws up on the near side of the horse's neck and ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... house, and wrote your name and mine in my work-box, and drew a true lovers' knot under them. Then, some devil—no, I ought to say some good angel—whispered to me, 'Go and look in the glass.' The glass told me—never mind what. I was too foolish to take the warning. I went on getting fonder and fonder of you, just as if I was a lady in your own rank ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... away as soon as it was daylight, and carried me so high that I could not discern the earth; she afterward descended with so much rapidity that I lost my senses. But when I found myself on the ground, I speedily untied the knot, and had scarcely done so, when the roc, having taken up a serpent of a monstrous length in her bill, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... prosperity to the "happy pair"; and after some few more circuits of the enlivening liquor had been performed, the women retired to the dwelling-house, whose sanded parlour was put in immediate readiness for the celebration of the nuptial knot between ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... which I want to bring before you is now branched, and worse than branched, reticulated, in so many directions, that I hardly know which shoot of it to trace, or which knot to lay hold ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... coalesced with him, and these men, abetted by others, so disgusted their Presbyterian confederates, that the latter seceded altogether from the confederacy. The doctrines taught by the party which remained became increasingly bold, and it was soon apparent that the league was a knot of conspirators, whose object was to transfer the property of the Protestant landlords of Ireland to the hands of their Roman Catholic tenants, the former having a sort of rentcharge upon their ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... more undisputed and vigorous than it is now easy to understand. The younger men who inclined to Liberalism were naturally prepared to welcome an organ for the expression of their views. Accordingly a knot of clever lads (Smith was 31, Jeffrey 29, Brown 24, Horner 24, and Brougham 23) met in the third (not, as Smith afterwards said, the 'eighth or ninth') story of a house in Edinburgh and started the journal by acclamation. The first number appeared in October 1802, ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... and hauing cut the neather ends of them round and smoth without raysing of the barke, you shall then with a sharp knife, made in the proportion of a great pen-knife slice downe each side of the grafts, from the seame or knot which parts the olde woode from the new, euen to the neather end, making it flat and thinne, cheifely in the lowest part, hauing onely a regardfull eye vnto the pith of the graft, which you may by no meanes cut or touch, and when you haue thus trimmed a couple of grafts, for moe I ...
— The English Husbandman • Gervase Markham
... twice, thrice pass'd, repass'd—the thing of air, Or earth beneath, or heaven, or t' other place; And Juan gazed upon it with a stare, Yet could not speak or move; but, on its base As stands a statue, stood: he felt his hair Twine like a knot of snakes around his face; He tax'd his tongue for words, which were not granted, To ask the ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... colonies to republican government' (March, 1776, American Archives, Vol. V., p. 472). Here are the words of another popular leader: 'Notwithstanding the Act of Parliament for seizing our property, there is a strange reluctance in the minds of many to cut the knot which ties us to Great Britain'" (Letter of Reed to Washington, March 3rd, 1776).—Ib., pp. ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... by two or three French officials attended by an escort of Annamese policemen. These latter had a decidedly ladylike, genteel air with their hair smoothly brushed and twisted in a low knot at the back of the neck, the whole bound round with a black kerchief laid in neat folds. Their uniform was of dark blue woollen set off by putties of a lighter blue, and their appearance was decidedly shipshape. I talked with one of the Frenchmen returning from an official ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... seeming smallness of its results, issuing merely (as far as Scripture tells us, and therefore as far as we need know, or have a right to imagine) in the giving of a transitory and unnecessary physical pleasure. In short, by the very absence of that Dignus deo vindice nodus, that knot which only a God could untie, which heathens demanded ere a god was allowed to interfere in the plot of a tragedy; which too many who call themselves Christians demand before the living God is allowed ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley |
