"Gordian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... furrow'd frowns, when stupid downcast eyes, The external symptoms of remorse within, Express our grief, or when in sullen dumps, With head incumbent on expanded palm, Moping we sit, in silent sorrow drown'd; Whether inveigling Hymen has trepann'd The unwary youth, and tied the gordian knot Of jangling wedlock not to be dissolv'd; Worried all day by loud Xantippe's din, Who fails not to exalt him to the stars, And fix him there among the branched crew (Taurus, and Aries, and Capricorn, The greatest monsters of the Zodiac), Or for the loss of anxious worldly pelf, Or Delia's scornful ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... explain away the fact that Mrs. Deland herself appears to have been partly overwhelmed by the storm which sweeps the parish of her story. So in her later novels which have essayed such problems as divorce, the compulsions of love, the inevitable clash of parents and children, she tugs at Gordian knots with the patient fingers of goodwill when one slash with the intelligence would cut her difficulties away. Suppose it possible, for instance, that the heroine of The Awakening of Helena Richie could have been courageous enough to go to ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... active. Their creatures have worked their way even into the cabinet and the camarilla. The guards, the captains-general, and many officers of state are long since gained over. In all cases, on King Ferdinand's death, a war is inevitable. The succession to the throne is a Gordian knot, to be cut only by the sword. The Infante will never yield his claim, or admit as valid the abrogation of the ancient Salic law.[5] And doubtless the crown would be his, were not the people and the spirit of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... so 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 ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • 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 ...
— Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler • Andrew Lang
... is the same thing over again; a woman against two children. This shows how strong she is; you can't realize what she has done—even when you see it. An heir was wanted to those estates. Love cried out for one. Hate cried out for one. Nature denied one. She has cut the Gordian knot; cut it as boldly as the lowest woman in Huntercombe would have cut it under such a ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... circumstances of the adventure, and burst into an immoderate fit of laughter; on recovering from which, he said to Mr Asterias, 'You have caught an odd fish, indeed.' Mr Toobad was highly exasperated at this unseasonable pleasantry; but Mr Hilary softened his anger, by producing a knife, and cutting the Gordian knot of his reticular envelopment. 'You see,' said Mr Toobad, 'you see, gentlemen, in my unfortunate person proof upon proof of the present dominion of the devil in the affairs of this world; and I have no doubt but that the apparition of this night was ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... westerly end of the park, fronting the sea whose perils it braved, is the sloop Gjoa in which Captain Roald Amundsen cut one of the Gordian knots of exploration and found ...
— Fascinating San Francisco • Fred Brandt and Andrew Y. Wood
... 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 ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... but he had already, on a previous 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 ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... because the 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 ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... 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 ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... method. Some people profess not to be worried by the difficulty of finding time in our elementary and secondary schools for the introduction of the newer subjects making for increased vocational efficiency. They would cut the Gordian knot with one single operation by eliminating enough of the older subjects to make room for the new. I confess that this solution does not appeal to me. Fundamentally the core of the elementary curriculum must, I believe, ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... this woman 's of my counsel: I have heard lawyers say, a contract in a chamber Per verba [de] presenti is absolute marriage. [She and ANTONIO kneel.] Bless, heaven, this sacred gordian ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... Shorncliffe) acted as No. 3, you can picture to yourself the sort of entertainment which followed. The intelligent Argentines manoeuvred round me like performing horses doing the quadrilles or an Old English Maypole dance, while with the reins we made cat's-cradles, and Gordian knots. That idiot, Mark Tapley, would indeed have envied my lot, and have been welcome to it. The row made by the firing was terrific, for pom-poms and artillery were joining in, and a fair amount of bullets came by us with the led horses. ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... Rabbinical legend. There seemed to be only one way open to him, by which he could escape the relentless fate which dogged his steps. He would write a confession of everything from the time he had first met Rosanna, and then—death. He would cut the Gordian knot of all his difficulties, and then his secret would be safe; safe? no, it could not be while Moreland lived. When he was dead Moreland would see Madge and embitter her life with the story of her father's sins—yes—he must live to protect ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... afternoon newspaper for which I was doing all-round work. I was barely on time, the last forms being locked when I got there. I had the editorial page opened and inserted at the top of the leading column a double-leaded paragraph announcing that the agony was over—that the Gordian knot was cut—that Alexander Dimitry had been selected as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... an improvement 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 to people the world, and accordingly it has been peopled. To bring this about it was necessary ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... was 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 breathed, Dissolv'd, or brighter shone, or interwreathed Their lustres with the gloomier tapestries— ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... must have been great, when these champions were immediately overthrown and killed. They did not, however, despair: substituting the two governors of Rome, Pupienus and Balbinus, and associating to them the younger Gordian, they resolved to make a stand; for the severities of Maximin had by this time manifested that it was a contest of extermination. Meantime, Maximin had broken up from Sirmium, the capital of Pannonia, and had advanced ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... course, would have put in plainer language, if he had known what he meant himself—but modern philosophers are kind enough to help him out occasionally—when the entrance of the gentleman in dust cut the Gordian knot, and saved the Stagyrite from the disgrace of having a pretty bit of esoteric abstruseness translated ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... 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 our whole people?—Deutsche Tageszeitung, ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... one's wife is no article of merchandise, that, after it has been bought, may be returned, or bartered, or changed; for it is an inseparable accident that lasts as long as life lasts; it is a noose that, once you put it round your neck, turns into a Gordian knot, which, if the scythe of Death does not cut it, there is no untying. I could say a great deal more on this subject, were I not prevented by the anxiety I feel to know if the senor licentiate has anything more to tell about the ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... it, in the most satisfactory manner possible, to all the fashionable world abroad; and we take our notions in this country implicitly from the continent. As for you, my dear Gabrielle, I know you cut the Gordian knot at once, by referring, with your favourite moralist, every principle of human nature to self-love. This does not quite accord with my ideas; there is something harsh in it that is repugnant to my sensibility; but you have a stronger mind than I have, and ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... lion ramped, and in his paw Dandled the kid; bears, tigers, ounces, pards, Gambolled before them; the unwieldy elephant, To make them mirth, used all his might, and wreathed His lithe proboscis; close the serpent sly, Insinuating, wove with Gordian twine His braided train, and of his fatal guile Gave proof unheeded; others on the grass Couched, and now filled with pasture gazing sat, Or bedward ruminating; for the sun, Declined, was hasting now with prone career To the ocean ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... continuous and obstinate quarrels between the regular curas and the bishops and civil authorities, and as if to cut the Gordian knot, the government ordered, in 1753, that all the curacies be handed over to secular priests of the country. The execution of this decree presented so many difficulties, and raised so many remonstrances that it was decided in 1757 that, until it ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... with silver drops, And Phoebus bless the orient with a blush, To chase black night to her deformed cell, But I'll repair unto my father's house, And never cease with my enticing words, To work his will to knit this Gordian knot: Till when I'll leave you to your am'rous chat. Dear friend, adieu; fair sister, too, farewell: Betake yourselves unto some secret place, Until you hear from me how things fall ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... 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 of organism and environment, ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... I'll cut the Gordian knots right down their middles! I'm not so stupid as some folks suppose; 'Twill not be easy my quick wit to pose. I fancy I shall come off with eclat; But if I fail, it does not matter, pshaw! If in this enterprise I lose my life, Present my ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... he will," said I, with more sincerity, perhaps, than the lawyer gave me credit for. For the return of John Bellingham would most effectually have cut the Gordian knot of my friend Godfrey's difficulties. "You are a good deal interested in Egyptology ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... 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 ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... busy as well as the interviewers and in all his stories they noted one curiosity: "If time and space—or any circumstances—interfere with the cutting of his Gordian knots, he commands time and space to make themselves scarce, and circumstances to be no more ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... lord hath plaid a prodigals part, 225 To break his stock for nothing, and an insolent, To cut a Gordian when he could not loose it. What violence is this, to put true fire To a false train; to blow up long crown'd peace With sudden outrage; and beleeve a man, 230 Sworne to the shame of women, 'gainst a woman Borne to their honours? ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... their quarrel and dared the world to dispossess the refractory sisterhood. Saint Dominic 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. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... or two important particulars in which he had a manifest and striking advantage over the generality of young men. Where, for instance, Herbert, Reynolds, and Van Tromp had, through indolence or hurry, passed over the Gordian knots which had occurred in the course of their studies, Sidney seems to have stopped, and sitten deliberately and patiently down, resolved not to cut but to untie them before he rose, so as not only to make himself master of the ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... 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
... in their assembly hall. Encouraged by this success, the government resolved to rid itself of the incubus of the national workshops, after a variety of schemes with this purpose in view had been brought forward in the Assembly. The government cut the Gordian knot by a violent stroke. On June 21, an edict was issued that all beneficiaries of the public workshops between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five must enlist in the army or cease to receive support from ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... 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 for as accomplished by the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... work, however, was "Lacon; or, Many Things in Few Words," published in 1820. These aphorisms want the terse brevity of Rochefoucauld, and are in many instances vapid and trivial. A passion for gaming at last swallowed up Colton's other vices, and becoming involved, he cut the Gordian knot of debt in 1828 by absconding; his living was then seized and given to another. He fled to America, and from there returned to that syren city, Paris, where he is said in two years to have won no less than L25,000. The miserable man died by his own hand at ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Granicus. In this battle nearly all of the Persian leaders were slain, and its result spread terror throughout Persia. Halicarnassus was next reduced. The march of Alexander was ever onward. In the citadel of Gordium he cut the "Gordian knot," and prophecy marked him for the lord ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... and contributed to various periodicals. In 1851 he joined the staff of Punch, to which he contributed "Essence of Parliament," and on the death of Mark Lemon (q.v.) he succeeded him as editor. He pub. a few novels, including Aspen Court and The Gordian Knot. ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... Archaeology, as of other departments of science, there has never yet been, and never will be discovered, any direct railway or royal road to the knowledge which we are anxious to gain, but which we are inevitably doomed to wait for and to work for. The different branches of science are Gordian knots, the threads of which we can only hope to unwind and evolve by cautious assiduity, and slow, patient industry. Their secrets cannot be summarily cut open and exposed by the sword of any son of Philip. But, in our daydreams, it ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... guns, while they ventured only to make war upon girls: "While the whole country has been waiting in breathless suspense for six months, each one of which has seemed an eternity to the loyal people of the North, for the 'grand forward movement' of the army, which is to cut the Gordian knot of the rebellion, and perform unspeakable prodigies, not lawful for man to utter, a backward movement has been executed on the banks of the Potomac, by the valiant commanders there stationed, for which none of us were prepared. No person, even though his imagination possessed ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... are necessary for justification. Many seek in traditions various epieicheian [mitigations] in order to heal consciences, and yet they do not find any sure grades by which to free consciences from these chains. But just as Alexander once for all solved the Gordian knot by cutting it with his sword when he could not disentangle it, so the apostles once for all free consciences from traditions, especially if they are taught to merit justification. The apostles compel us to oppose this doctrine by teaching ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... changes of systems of worlds in infinite space. Or, are the revolutions of history, like the volcanic disturbances of our planet earth, in a sort, abnormal? They seem to come, like the deus ex machina of the Roman poet, to cut the Gordian knots that perplex statesmen and bewilder nations. The affairs of men get so tangled up sometimes, that to prevent anarchy and chaos, God sends revolutions, which sweep away the effete institutions ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... 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 managed ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... that. I drew my first breath in a little town not far off, a poor little town where the farmers and mechanics first unsheathed that Revolutionary sword which, after eight years of hewing, clove asunder the Gordian knot that bound America to the British yoke. One raw morning in spring—it will be eighty years the 19th of this month—Hancock and Adams, the Moses and Aaron of that Great Deliverance, were both at Lexington; they also had "obstructed an officer" with brave words. British soldiers, ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... 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 down ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... side, the consideration of his keeping measures with me, joined to that of having once openly declared for him, would have created a point of honour by which I should have been tied down, not only from ever engaging against him, but also from making my peace at home. The Chevalier cut this gordian knot asunder at one blow. He broke the links of that chain which former engagements had fastened on me, and gave me a right to esteem myself as free from all obligations of keeping measures with him as I should have continued if I had never engaged in his interest. I took therefore, ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... to become the subject, the slave, of another human being! I, who have worshipped the belief in woman's independence, the hope of woman's enfranchisement, who have felt how glorious it is to live like the angels, single and self-sustained! What if I cut the Gordian knot, and here make, once for all, ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... born about A.D. 204. He studied at Alexandria, and is said to have spent eleven years under Ammonius Saccas. He accompanied the expedition of the Emperor Gordian to Persia and India, and, escaping from its disasters, opened a philosophical school in Rome. In that city he was held in the highest esteem by the Emperor Gallienus; the Empress Salonina intended to build a city, ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... up the letter thus singled forth from a miscellany of epistles, some in female handwritings, unsealed but ingeniously twisted into Gordian knots—some also in female handwritings, carefully sealed—others in ill-looking envelopes, addressed in bold, legible, clerk-like caligraphy. Taken altogether, these epistles had a character in common; they betokened ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... all the books found in the cities he had conquered should be immediately conveyed to Rome, in order to increase his collection. The library of Domitian having been consumed by lightning in the reign of Commodus, was not restored until the time of Gordian, who rebuilt the edifice, and founded a new library, adding thereto the collection of books bequeathed to him by Quintus Serenus Samonicus, the physician, and amounting, it is said, to no fewer than ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... &c. (see uncertainty); intricacy; entanglement; cross fire; awkwardness, delicacy, ticklish card to play, knot, Gordian knot, dignus vindice nodus, net, meshes, maze; coil, &c. ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... organization went on with a smoothness and regularity scarcely to have been looked for. Occasionally a hitch occurred that threatened to get the threads of preparation into an ugly knot; but it was ever unraveled without the Gordian treatment. ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... 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. ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... 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 ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... him debate of Common-wealth Affaires; You would say, it hath been all in all his study: List his discourse of Warre; and you shall heare A fearefull Battaile rendred you in Musique. Turne him to any Cause of Pollicy, The Gordian Knot of it he will vnloose, Familiar as his Garter: that when he speakes, The Ayre, a Charter'd Libertine, is still, And the mute Wonder lurketh in mens eares, To steale his sweet and honyed Sentences: So that ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... 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 rend'red 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 charter'd libertine, is still, And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears, To steal his sweet and honey'd sentences; So that ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... usurp his royal throne, Banish'd his native country, every day, Like Moses, at the brink of death he lay. But that storm's over, and blest be that hand That gave him conduct to his peaceful land; Where this great King the Gordian knot unties, Of Heaven's, the kingdom's, and his enemies; Not with the sword, but with his grace and love, Giving to those their lives that for his strove: Never did person so much mercy breath Since our blest Saviour's and his father's death. In fine, his actions may our pattern be, His godly ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... on the morrow, 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 ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... inverted prophet. In the same way 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 ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... cannot lift my hand against thee: Do what thou wilt; but let not me behold it. [Goes off a little way. I'll cut this gordian knot I cannot loose: To keep his promise, Rodorick shall have her, But I'll return and rescue her by force; Then giving back what he so frankly gave, At once my honour and his love ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... a clasp-knife from his pocket, and, advancing to a glass, applied it so vigorously to the leathern straps of his headpiece, that the gordian knot was cut, without any other damage to his face than a moderate scarification, which, added to the tumefaction of features naturally strong, and a whole week's growth of a very bushy beard, produced on the whole a most hideous caricatura. After all, there was a ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... traced during the process of untying it. This is the reason why the culmination is usually set well along toward the conclusion of the story. Sometimes even, when the major knot has been tied with a Gordian intricacy, the author sets it at the very end of his narrative, and suddenly cuts it instead of carefully untying it. But there is no absolutely necessary reason why it should stand at the end, or, as is more ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... war. And besides I doubt whether we could maintain the place with Brent besieging us in front, and the whole naval force of Virginia, under the command of such expert seamen as Gardiner and Larimore, attacking us from the river. No, no, the only way to untie the Gordian knot is to cut it, and the only way to extricate ourselves from this difficulty ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... them—your best friends—to leave you stranded, and—I didn't want that either. I couldn't help feeling there'd be a tremendous fascination in being so near you, with my face hidden, you not knowing, if only the strain of it needn't last too long; and Molly just cut the Gordian knot of the scrape, as she always does. She assured me that being in the same car need commit me to no decision as to what I would do in the end. But—you remember how she drew you out, about your feeling for the Boy, ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... the weakness in the empire caused by these civil wars, had latterly been harassing the eastern frontier; and it soon became the duty of the young Gordian to march against them in person. Hitherto the Roman armies had usually been successful; but unfortunately the Persians, or, rather, their Syrian and Arab allies, had latterly risen as much as the Romans had fallen off in courage ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... Gordian knots were tied to be By magistrates divided; We cut them—and the severed ends Do much ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... employed in the conquest of Lydia, Pamphylia, and Pisidia, which was effected easily, since the terror of his arms led to submission wherever he appeared. At Gordium, in Phrygia, he performed the exploit familiarly known as the cutting of the Gordian knot, which was a cord so twisted and entangled, that no one could untie it. The oracle had pronounced that to the person who should untie it, the empire of Persia was destined. Alexander, after many futile attempts to disentangle the ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... hold a treasure Divine—a talisman—an amulet That must be worn at heart. Search well the measure— The words—the syllables! Do not forget The trivialest point, or you may lose your labor! And yet there is in this no Gordian knot Which one might not undo without a sabre, If one could merely comprehend the plot. Enwritten upon the leaf where now are peering Eyes scintillating soul, there lie perdus Three eloquent words oft uttered in the hearing Of poets by poets—as the name is a poet's, too. Its letters, although ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... 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, his equipage, his furniture, and his servants, ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... o'th' Story. Ah, but some naturall notes about her Body, Aboue ten thousand meaner Moueables Would testifie, t' enrich mine Inuentorie. O sleepe, thou Ape of death, lye dull vpon her, And be her Sense but as a Monument, Thus in a Chappell lying. Come off, come off; As slippery as the Gordian-knot was hard. 'Tis mine, and this will witnesse outwardly, As strongly as the Conscience do's within: To'th' madding of her Lord. On her left brest A mole Cinque-spotted: Like the Crimson drops I'th' bottome of a Cowslippe. Heere's a Voucher, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... accumulated an infinity of Gordian knots, sought to cut them in the hecatomb of the World War. Never did any religion impose such a terrible sacrifice. Have the gods of ...
— Readings on Fascism and National Socialism • Various
... 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 pursues, with double force And double speed, her destined course, Nor stops till ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... me 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, my ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... that Anglicization is inevitable, why should we not cut the Gordian knot, and conduct our ministry wholly in the English language? This would greatly simplify our tasks, besides removing from ...
— The Lutherans of New York - Their Story and Their Problems • George Wenner
... to write to you, as I had intended, I mounted my pony and took a long ride to collect my thoughts. Sitting, walking, or riding is all the same. I feel as much puzzled as ever, and undetermined whether or not to cut the Gordian knot. Except my wife, there is not a friend whom I dare advise with. I have not once ventured to mention the business at all to my brother, on account of the cursed mysteries and injunctions of secrecy connected with it. I know he would blame me for ever engaging in it, for he has a very ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... poppy cultivation, it is unable to control the more distant feudal tachuns. How then, can a Government be held responsible when it is not in a position to enforce its authority? This problem meets the treaty powers at every turn. One or several must act as did Alexander the Great when he cut the Gordian knot. Who ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... passive than active in the affair; though, if his reason had not fully approved of the step he was tending to—if he had not believed that a second marriage was the very best way of cutting the Gordian knot of domestic difficulties, he could have made an effort without any great trouble to himself, and extricated himself without pain from the mesh of circumstances. It happened in ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... absolute silence, broken only by the hot shrilling of a locust in a tree hard by; then Zerubbabel Chirk, calmly unconscious of any thrill in the air, any tension of the nerves, any crisis impending, paused in his whittling, and instead of carving a whistle for Benny, cut the Gordian knot. ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... no knife can sever. Uncles and aunts may, under certain circumstances, be regarded as sacred, and meet for occasional burnt-offerings; but beyond them I hold that the knot of blood-relationship may be regarded as Gordian, and ruthlessly cut. Cousins have no claims. Indeed, the scale of the legacy duties, like few legalities, follows the natural law. The further removed, the greater tax should our blood-relations pay for our ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... 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
... 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 called Long Pete Lumley over into a deserted ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... beginning to give dinner-parties in London, and at every party the matter was discussed. It was a peculiarly interesting case because the man had thrown away so large a sum of money! People like to have a nut to crack which is 'uncrackable,'—a Gordian knot to undo which cannot even be cut. Nobody could understand the twenty thousand pounds. Would any man pay such a sum with the object of buying off false witnesses,—and do it in such a manner that all the facts must be brought to light when he was tried? ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... with our life. For that swift answer, achieved by leaving out prime factors in the problem, we should be betraying the self for whose sake alone any answer is valuable. It does not pay to cut such Gordian knots! Our task, then, is to preach transcendence again, not in terms of the old absolutist philosophy, but in terms of the perceptions, the needs, the experience of the human heart and mind and will which ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... the man who should untie this famous knot would become lord and monarch of all Asia. As may well be imagined, many ambitious men sought to perform the task, but all in vain. The Gordian knot remained tied and Asia unconquered in the year 333 B.C., when Alexander of Macedon, who the year before had invaded Asia, and so far had swept all before him, entered Gordium with his victorious army. As may be surmised, it was not long before he sought ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... did not, for they had no chance. The worms crawled round and round the canvas bag, and played at making Gordian knots with each other, while several fish came and looked at the unbaited hook which Dexter offered for their inspection, but preferred to ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... 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 ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... came forward was exactly to his taste. He would have preferred a man of title, but the peers who were not penniless were too proud; and the best baronet was an aged bankrupt, who had been twice through the courts, and enjoyed an indifferent name. It was strange that Isabel did not cut the Gordian knot, and choose for herself; but she was a dutiful daughter, and little less cautious than her father. In the midst of it all he was called away on some particular business of his own—to another world—and Isabel was left alone, past thirty, and ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... all, who cut the Gordian knot, and made one of his welcome disappearances, which lasted until David was ready to start in college. His savings, that he had accumulated by field work in the summers and a very successful poultry business for six years, netted him four ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... this yere fulm'nation two or three times, an' Peets even reads it out loud; but since the tongue of no ordinary gent is capable of ropin' an' throwin' it, to say nothin' of tyin' it down, we cuts the gordian knot in the usual way by re-christenin' him pro bono publico as Red Mike, which places him within the ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... as not to be easily separated, either in thought or in fact; things which are tangled or entangled mutually hold and draw upon each other. The conception of a material object is usually complex, involving form, color, size, and other elements; a clock is a complicated mechanism; the Gordian knot was intricate; the twining serpents of the Laocoon are involved. We speak of an abstruse statement, a complex conception, a confused heap, a heterogeneous mass, a tangled skein, an intricate problem; of composite architecture, an involved sentence; ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... 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
... where Hast thou a symbol of her golden hair? Not oat-sheaves drooping in the western sun; 610 Not—thy soft hand, fair sister! let me shun Such follying before thee—yet she had, Indeed, locks bright enough to make me mad; And they were simply gordian'd up and braided, Leaving, in naked comeliness, unshaded, Her pearl round ears, white neck, and orbed brow; The which were blended in, I know not how, With such a paradise of lips and eyes, Blush-tinted cheeks, half smiles, and faintest sighs, ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... The Gordian knot was cut. Prince Yungee in reality did not care so much who should be his son-in-law as that he obtained one with a white skin and plentiful purse. Joseph or Theodore, Saxon or Italian, made no difference to the chief; and, as is the case in ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... cannot be! I think better of Clem than to believe he, too, has made a mistake, like Quimby, and fallen in love with the wrong woman!" then starting up, she exclaimed, tragically, "Who? ah! who shall cut the Gordian knot and bring about a crisis that shall cause this 'wired love' to ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... suspicion, and comfortable. When I am among women, I have evil thoughts, malice, spleen; I cannot speak or be silent; I am full of suspicions, and therefore listen to nothing; I am in a hurry to be gone.' He wonders how this trouble is to be cured. He speaks of it as a prejudice produced from 'a gordian complication of feelings, which must take time to unravel.' And then, with a good-humored, characteristic touch, he drops the subject, saying, 'After all, I do think better of women than to suppose they care whether Mister John Keats, ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... She cut the Gordian knot, however,—a church wedding, with cards for all the friends, and a reception at home. They would take the train at six from Jersey City. Mr. Underhill was rather sorry not to have an old-fashioned festivity. But Miss Cynthia said ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... is perhaps too profuse in his number, making eight. The ascertaining the precise limits of species, and variety, in plants that have been for a great length of time objects of culture, is often attended with difficulties scarcely to be surmounted, is indeed a Gordian Knot ...
— The Botanical Magazine v 2 - or Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... cut the Gordian knot with a blow. Neither Lockwood nor Whitney could object. The purpose of the luncheon ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... N. complexity; complexness &c adj.; complexus^; complication, implication; intricacy, intrication^; perplexity; network, labyrinth; wilderness, jungle; involution, raveling, entanglement; coil &c (convolution) 248; sleave^, tangled skein, knot, Gordian knot, wheels within wheels; kink, gnarl, knarl^; webwork^. [complexity if a task or action] difficulty &c 704. V. complexify^, complicate. Adj. gnarled, knarled^. complex, complexed; intricate, complicated, perplexed, involved, raveled, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... were allied with those serious questions pertaining to State rights which gave rise, in part, to our late war. But the root of the dissensions, and the subject of most animated debates, was slavery,—that awful curse and difficult question, which was not settled until the sword finally cut that Gordian knot. But so far as compromises could settle the question, they were made in the spirit of patriotism,—not on principles of abstract justice, but of expediency and common-sense. It was evident from the first that there ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... rock. There is an inscription in Greek running up one side, but it is of a later date than the work itself. On one of the tombs there is an inscription: "To King Midas." These relics are supposed to date from the period of the Gordian Dynasty, about seven centuries ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... so ordered it. When the preliminary survey was being made, Nicholas I. learned that the officers entrusted with the task—and the Minister of Ways and Roads in the number—were being influenced more by personal than technical considerations, and he determined to cut the Gordian knot in true Imperial style. When the Minister laid before him the map with the intention of explaining the proposed route, he took a ruler, drew a straight line from the one terminus to the other, and remarked in a tone that precluded all discussion, "You will construct ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... familiar to his eye than household words, for it was the old room he had occupied the year before he left America. He stepped quickly across the chamber to a certain beam, where he had, fifteen years before, written four initial letters, and intertwined them so curiously that the Gordian knot was easy weaving in comparison. The Gordian one was cut;—and this had been ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... Banneker's editorial and personal involvements grew more complex. At what moment might a pressure from above close down on his pen, and with what demand? How should he act in the crisis thus forced, at Marrineal's slow pleasure? Take Edmonds's Gordian recourse; resign? But he was on the verge of debt. His investments had gone badly; he prided himself on the thought that it was partly through his own immovable uprightness. Now, this threat to his badly ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... 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. ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... Gordian knot, like Alexander, with the sword of decision. Launch out into the deep with a bold plunge, and Christ will settle for you all the questions that you are now debating, and more probably show you their insignificance, and let you see that the only ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... hear the chimes at midnight! I will not be hoodwinked by the superficiality of your cui bono, and shall make you the answer that I am willing for an exceedingly paltry honorarium to rush into the Gordian knot and write you the most superior essays on every conceivable and inconceivable subject under the sun, as per enclosed samples which I forward respectfully for your delightful and golden opinions, guaranteeing faithfully that all of your readers in every ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... 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 were ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... Prest into my confidence; in truth without her I should have made but little advance, for the fruitful idea in the whole business dropped from her friendly lips. It was she who invented the short cut, who severed the Gordian knot. It is not supposed to be the nature of women to rise as a general thing to the largest and most liberal view—I mean of a practical scheme; but it has struck me that they sometimes throw off a bold conception—such as a man would not have risen to—with singular serenity. "Simply ask ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... which enshrouds aesthetic dialectics as in a Scotch mist seems curiously factitious to the truly imaginative mind. But I shall always remember his reply, when he finally made me out, as one of the finest severings conceivable of a Gordian knot of this kind. "Oh, yes," said he; "there is, no doubt, such a ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... sailors, seen by the Staff, have been using highly coloured expletives about the mines. Sheer bad luck they swear; bad luck that would not happen once in a hundred tries. They had knocked out the Forts, they claim, and one, three-word order, "Full steam ahead," would have cut the Gordian Knot the diplomats have been fumbling at for over a hundred years by slicing their old Turkey in two. Then came the big delay owing to ships changing stations during which mines set loose from up above had time ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... which Tyrrel underwent many changes of countenance, which Jekyl watched carefully, without pressing him for an answer. At length he replied, "There is much in your proposal, Captain Jekyl, which I might be tempted to accede to, as one manner of unloosing this Gordian knot, and a compromise by which Miss Mowbray's future tranquillity would be in some degree provided for. But I would rather trust a fanged adder than your friend, unless I saw him fettered by the strongest ties of interest. Besides, I am certain the unhappy lady could never ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... found a schism or suppress a heresy, cut off a hand or mortify an appetite. But the task before us, which is to co-endure with our existence, is rather one of microscopic fineness, and the heroism required is that of patience. There is no cutting of the Gordian knots of life; each must be ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the 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
... destruction of his son and a mesalliance, every other father would have hesitated, but in this uncontrollable old man ferocity was the power which had so far solved the difficulties of life for him; he drew his sword in all cases, as the only remedy that he knew for the gordian knots of life. Under present circumstances, when the convulsion of his ideas had reached its height, the nature of the man came uppermost. Twice detected in flagrant falsehood by the being he abhorred, the son he cursed, cursing ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... "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
... finger idly some old Gordian knot, Unskilled to sunder, and too weak to cleave, And with much ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... my answer be desultory and wandering, remember the sporadic sharpshooting of the adversary! For adversary we must consider Mr. Max Muller, so long as we use different theories to different results. If I am right, if he is wrong, in our attempts to untie this old Gordian knot, he loses little indeed. That fame of his, the most steady and brilliant light of all which crown the brows of contemporary scholars, is the well-earned reward, not of mythological lore nor of cunning fence in controversy, but of wide learning ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... through the entire course of twenty-four hours and saw in succession as they passed from night into day beneath our feet the land of Chryse, the great continent of Tharsis, the curious region of intersecting canals which puzzled astronomers on the earth had named the "Gordian Knot." The continental lands of Memnonia, Amozonia and Aeolia, the mysterious center where hundreds of vast canals came together from every direction, called the Triviun Charontis; the vast circle of Elysium, a thousand miles across, ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss |
