"Gordian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... occasion, one thousand stags, as many of the ibex, wild sheep (mouflions from Sardinia?), and other grazing animals, besides one thousand wild boars, and as many ostriches, were turned loose by the emperor Gordian.] ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... writer is even greater: he has endeavoured by manoeuvres, limited in character by certain laws of the game, to spring a surprise upon the reader by puzzling her as to the ending of the story and she, instead of "playing the game" and trying to unravel it, "cuts the Gordian knot," the most hackneyed cliche in the repertoire of the journalist. This grossly unfair treatment of novelists ought to be punished, or at least be subject to procedure in the Chancery ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... night, for I have the heartburn this morning. But a little magnesia salves that sore. Meantime I have had an inspiration which shows me my good angel has not left me. For these two or three days I have been at what the "Critic" calls a dead-lock[140]—all my incidents and personages ran into a gordian knot of confusion, to which I could devise no possible extrication. I had thought on the subject several days with something like the despair which seized the fair princess, commanded by her ugly step-mother ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... something, Cecil laid himself out to be agreeable, and Miss Arminster, who was naturally aware of the awkwardness of his position, did her best to promote conversation, while Spotts almost immediately cut the Gordian knot by excusing himself on the plea of ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... lady had owned a private pair of cherubic wings, she could not have prepared for flight with greater assurance or activity. She tightened her waist-belt, wrapped her shawl firmly round her, fastened her bonnet strings in a Gordian knot, and finally, holding out her hand to her friend, as if they had suddenly changed characters, said, "Come, are you ready?" with a tremendous show of decision. She even led the wondering Aileen along a winding path into the jungle for a considerable distance; ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... tutan ligajxon. "Nenio estas pli facila ol tio," li diris, "kaj nun mi ne dubas cxu mi certe regos super cxiuj regxoj de Azio." Pro tio, kion faris Aleksandro Granda, oni ankoraux nuntempe diras, kiam iu ajn superas malfacilajxon per kia ajn subita metodo, "Li trancxis la gordian ligajxon." ...
— A Complete Grammar of Esperanto • Ivy Kellerman
... revenues of each portion of the dissevered empire, would be created; exterminating war would follow-not a war of two or three years, but of interminable duration until some Philip or Alexander, some Csar or Napoleon, would rise to cut the Gordian Knot, and solve the problem of the capacity of man for self-government, and crush the liberties of both the dissevered portions of this Union. Can you, sir, lightly contemplate these consequences? Can you ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... 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 ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... dangerous in the greatest minds, and in the highest places; and only to be kept off by them, as by us, each in our place, by honest self-examination, diligent prayer, and the grace of God which comes thereby. Once or twice in the world's history a great ruler, like Charles the Fifth, cuts the Gordian knot, and escapes into a convent: but how few can or ought to do that? There are those who must go on ruling, or see their country ruined; for all depends on them. So had Queen Elizabeth to do; so had Dietrich of Bern likewise. After them would come ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... malice, spleen; I cannot speak or be silent; I am full of suspicions, and therefore listen to nothing; I am in a hurry to be gone.' He wonders how this trouble is to be cured. He speaks of it as a prejudice produced from 'a gordian complication of feelings, which must take time to unravel.' And then, with a good-humored, characteristic touch, he drops the subject, saying, 'After all, I do think better of women than to suppose they care whether Mister John Keats, five feet ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... their letters were scarcely read, and rarely answered. Even good Miss Grizzy's elaborate epistle, in which were curiously entwined the death of her brother and the birth and christening of her grand-nephew, in a truly Gordian manner, remained disentangled. Had her Ladyship only read to the middle of the seventh page she would have learned the indisposition of her daughter, with the various opinions thereupon; but poor Miss Grizzy's labours ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... doubt, but dull, and the boy was too hopelessly in love to be amusing. And as for you—well—you would do very nicely, no doubt, my dear Arnold, but you are too stuffed up with principles for a girl of Isobel's antecedents. So she has cut the Gordian knot herself! Well, I ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the idea in her mind till she grew familiar with it, then it was driven out by another thought that followed swiftly on its track. Frank Muller must die, and die before the morning light. By no other possible means could the Gordian knot be cut, and both Bessie and her old uncle be saved. If he were dead he could not marry Bessie, and if he died with the warrant unsigned their uncle could not be executed. That was the terrible answer ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... gorgeous coloring that fascinates children in the woods. It is the poetry of evil. Men like you ought to dwell in caves and never come out of them. You have made me live that vast life, and I have had all my share of existence; so I may very well take my head out of the Gordian knot of your policy and slip it into the ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... the gordian knot, indeed," said Hazel. "What, die to shirk a few difficulties? No. I propose an amendment to that. After the words 'kneel down,' insert the words, 'and get up again, trusting in that merciful Providence which has saved us so far, but expects ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... dagger Don Fernando plucked from out its jewelled sheath, And he struck the Moor so fiercely, as he grappled him beneath, That the good Damascus weapon sank within the folds of fat, And as dead as Julius Caesar dropped the Gordian Acrobat. ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... that rocked on a track of its own, and thus saved the yellow-and-red hotel carpet, the Honourable Dave Beckwith patiently explained the vexatious process demanded by his particular sovereign state before she should consent to cut the Gordian knot of marriage. And his state—the Honourable Dave remarked—was in the very forefront of enlightenment in this respect: practically all that she demanded was that ladies in Mrs. Spence's predicament should become, pro tempore, her citizens. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... death, and of parents who had handsome children hanging cameos round their necks to protect them from the evil consequences of a wicked eye, his Lordship said, "I remember reading somewhere that Serenus Samonicus, preceptor to a young Gordian, recommended the Abracadabra or Abrasadabra as a charm or amulet in curing agues, ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... 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, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... 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 ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... encouraging any such plans. The hour came at length for the delivery of the people of the great West, and with it the man. Fulton, aided by Watts, offered to solve the problem by unravelling rather than by cutting the "Gordian knot." It was whispered through the wilderness that a fire-ship, called the "Clermont," built by a crazy speculator named Fulton, had started from New York, and, steaming up the Hudson, had forced itself against the current one hundred and fifty miles to Albany, in thirty-six ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... 'gainst dews and nightly blasts, In breathless expectation waits to see His panting Rosa at the postern door;— While she sighs forth "My gentle cavalier!"— And then they straightway fall to kissing hands, And antic-gestures—such as lovers use,— Expressive of their wish quickly to tie The gordian knot of marriage;—Pretty creatures!— But why not earlier to have thought of this?— When he, the innocent youth, was wont to play At coscogilla; and the prattling girl, Amid her nursery companions, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various
... the dust! or write it there, So that this blot upon the page of fame Were as a serpent's path, which the light air Erases, and the flat sands close behind! 215 Ye the oracle have heard: Lift the victory-flashing sword. And cut the snaky knots of this foul gordian word, Which, weak itself as stubble, yet can bind Into a mass, irrefragably firm, 220 The axes and the rods which awe mankind; The sound has poison in it, 'tis the sperm Of what makes life foul, cankerous, and abhorred; Disdain not thou, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... worst enemy, barked furiously, and made violent efforts to break his rope and fly at me.... I hope he is tied with a gordian knot if he wishes to see ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... Gordian knot, as it seemed to him, by impounding a bicycle from a passing wheel-man, who protested vigorously but in vain. All he got for his cycle was a scrap of paper, stating that it had been requisitioned for army use. And Harry was instructed to mount this machine and ride along between ...
— Facing the German Foe • Colonel James Fiske
... contradiction, no consciousness; no cross, no crown; contradictions are the very small deadlocks without which there is no going; going is our sense of a succession of small impediments or deadlocks; it is a succession of cutting Gordian knots, which on a small scale please or pain as the case may be; on a larger, give an ecstasy of pleasure, or shock to the extreme of endurance; and on a still larger, kill whether they be on the ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... 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
... it was like the soft floating movement of a dream. He was more 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. ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... themselves out— the cul-de-sac resolving itself at the very last moment into a promising corridor toward the outer air. At every rebuff it is my happiness to be hopelessly bewildered; and I gape with admiration when the Gordian knot is untied. If the author be old-fashioned enough to apostrophize the Gentle Reader, I know he must mean me, and docilely give ear, and presently tumble head-foremost into the treacherous pit he has digged for me. In brief, I ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... 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
... with it" is so mannish! Here was my Gordian knot cut at once! However, there was no help for it,—though now, more than ever, since there was no danger of a duplicate, did I long for the fifty thousand different beautiful things the fifty dollars ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... to the education of Plotinus. He was twenty-eight when he went up to the University of Alexandria. For eleven years he diligently attended the lectures of Ammonius. Then he went on the Emperor Gordian's expedition to the East, hoping to learn the philosophy of the Hindus. The Upanishads would have puzzled Plotinus, had he reached India; but he never did. Gordian's army was defeated in Mesopotamia, no "blessed word" ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... even worse prospect, namely, that misrepresentation may goad Great Britain into a position where, with the concurrence and invitation of the other powers, she might feel obliged, even at the risk of enormous military outlay, to cut the Gordian knot. You will probably say, as I certainly say, 'where is the casus belli,' and refuse to believe it possible to imagine such a contingency. Unfortunately, you and I, who keep our heads, must ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot
... the Wars and Sports of the Mongols and Romans) in a note regarding this battle writes (p. 60): "It appears that it is an old custom in Persia, to use four elephants a-breast." The Senate decreed Gordian III. to represent him triumphing after the Persian mode, with chariots drawn with four elephants. Augustan Hist. vol. ii. p. 65. See plate, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... That was cutting the Gordian knot, and answering the conclusion of an argument not by refuting it but by opposing thereto a contrary argument. Which procedure does not conform to the laws for philosophical disputes. Notwithstanding, most of the Cartesians contented themselves with this, albeit the inward experience they ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... 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 Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... realise the deep depression into which they are now being plunged by all the inexplicable delays in carrying out the terms of the convention. From every one who comes in contact with them I gather the same impression, that unless the Gordian knot is cut and a way is quickly found out of the present impasse, the most serious results are to be apprehended, as numbers of prisoners here—and the case can be no better in other countries—are on ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... that the inmost of nature is what is called God. For this reason, although many have seen that the formation of all things is from God alone and out of his Esse, yet they have not dared to go beyond their first thought on the subject, lest their understanding should become entangled in a so-called Gordian knot, beyond the possibility of release. Such release would be impossible, because their thought of God, and of the creation of the universe by God, has been in accordance with time and space, which are properties of nature; ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... try," snapped Bristles, who was for action all the time, and liked to settle questions as Alexander is said to have cut the Gordian knot, decisive work, rather than sitting down to ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... one should ask what course Napoleon ought to pursue, it was easy to reply "that the mass of the French army being already assembled in Bavaria, it should be thrown upon the left of the Prussians by way of Grera and Hof, for the gordian knot of the campaign was in that direction, no matter what ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... France, Senator Clay predicted that it would be "not of two or three years' duration, but a war of interminable duration, during which some Philip or Alexander, some Caesar or Napoleon, would arise and cut the Gordian knot and solve the problem of the capacity of man for self-government, and crush the liberties of both the several ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... 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 and navigated ...
— Fascinating San Francisco • Fred Brandt and Andrew Y. Wood
... 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
... 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 those cases in which the servant ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... 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 frequently ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... services merit justification, or 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 and examples. They compel us to teach ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... to take her place side by side with him in the new spheres to which he was mounting—that, in short, she was a drag on his career. Being, by all accounts, a girl of remarkable force of character, she resolved to cut the Gordian knot by leaving London, and, fearing lest her affianced husband's conscientiousness should induce him to sacrifice himself to her; dreading also, perhaps, her own weakness, she made the parting absolute, and the place of her refuge a mystery. A theory has been suggested which drags an honoured ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... of 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 into ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... Thatcher, who had the next best thing to experience, the instinct that taught him to read character, and take advantage of another man's experience. "Them that wants to stop kin do so," said Bill authoritatively, cutting the Gordian knot; "them as wants to take a sledge can do so,—thar's one in the barn. Them as wants to go on with me and the relay will come on." Mr. Wiles selected the sledge and a driver, a few remained for the next stage, and ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... ductile clay to various shapes. Nor is't enough to breed; but to preserve Must be the huntsman's care. The stanch old hounds Guides of thy pack, though but in number few, Are yet of great account; shall oft untie The Gordian knot, when reason at a stand Puzzling is lost, and all thy art is vain. O'er clogging fallows, o'er dry plastered roads, O'er floated meads, o'er plains with flocks distained 170 Rank-scenting, these must lead the dubious way. As party-chiefs ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... within himself—for the mind, unless strictly watched, is apt to waver between light thoughts and grave—whether or no it was worth while to make a second journey into the study after more tobacco. Perhaps Cornelia was within call, and would thus afford a means of cutting the Gordian knot at once. No! he remembered now that she had walked over to the village for the afternoon mail, and would not be back for some time yet. And Sophie—poor child! she would not leave her room for two weeks to come, ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... depths of his heart, and he did perceive how a woman might shrink from showing tenderness to one which would grieve the other. This perception on Robert's part was a just one; it explains a situation which, in times of faith, when the sovereign pontiff had power to intervene and cut the Gordian knot of such phenomena (allied to the deepest and most impenetrable mysteries), would have found its solution. The Revolution had deepened the Catholic faith in these young hearts, and religion now ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac |
