"Knotty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the stems of those branches grew bigger and knotty towards the middle, and the branches also as well as stems, from Cylinders grew into Plates, in a most admirable and curious order, so exceeding regular and delicate, as nothing could be more, as is visible in ab, ac, ad, ae, af, but towards the end of some of these stems, they began again ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... I've a pair of good fresh legs to stride on, Enough for me this knotty staff. What use of shortening the way! Following the valley's labyrinthine winding, Then up this rock a pathway finding, From which the spring leaps down in bubbling play, That is what spices such a walk, I say! Spring through the birch-tree's veins is ...
— Faust • Goethe
... has just returned," he muttered between his teeth. "See here, Petro: a beauty will stand before you in a moment; do whatever she commands; if not—you are lost for ever." Then he parted the thorn-bush with a knotty stick, and before him stood a tiny izba, on chicken's legs, as they say. Basavriuk smote it with his fist, and the wall trembled. A large black dog ran out to meet them, and with a whine, transforming itself into a cat, flew straight at his eyes. "Don't be angry, don't be angry, you old ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... honorable master was near! He came galloping in on a foaming horse. I looked at him and started, as if I had seen a ghost, for this thin, tall rider was the perfect resemblance of his father. The same knotty hair and bearded head, the same densely furrowed face, the same deep, calm, gray eyes. And his hair and beard were almost as ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... heave and boil, and the whole dread brood of the hellish nest was commoved. Monsters uprose on all sides, every neck at full length, every beak and claw outstretched, every mouth agape. Long-billed heads, horribly jawed faces, knotty tentacles innumerable, went out after Lilith. She lay in an agony of fear, nor dared stir a finger. Whether the hideous things even saw the children, I doubt; certainly not one of them touched a child; not one loathly member passed the live rampart of her body-guard, ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... staggered to bed. In the morning, however, the steadiness with which he adhered to his story obtained him some degree of credence; the immediate consequence of which was, that the two brothers, after wrangling a long time on the knotty question, which of them should try his fortune first, drew their swords and began fighting. The noise of the fray alarmed the neighbours, who, finding they could not pacify the combatants, sent ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... take me for?" Gore bellowed in unreasonable anger. He strode forward, the prisoners scattering before him. His large, knotty hand closed on Quirl's arm, and jerked, with the intention of whirling this reluctant prisoner across the room. But Quirl was heavier, and his arm harder, than Gore had supposed. The hand came away, and with a tearing scream, the beautiful silk garment ripped off, ruined, disclosing Quirl's white ...
— In the Orbit of Saturn • Roman Frederick Starzl
... that her friend had discovered some very knotty point in the case with Mr. Marlow, and she rejoiced, for her object was not to emulate but to entangle. Sir Philip, however, went on to put her out of all patience by saying, "How the Romans, so sublimely virtuous at one period of their history, could ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... the background of a rookery, whose cawing tenants were now on the wing: they flew over the lawn and grounds to alight in a great meadow, from which these were separated by a sunk fence, and where an array of mighty old thorn trees, strong, knotty, and broad as oaks, at once explained the etymology of the mansion's designation. Farther off were hills: not so lofty as those round Lowood, nor so craggy, nor so like barriers of separation from the living world; but yet quiet and lonely hills ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... the day drew near. Mark, before dawn, rode out to the place where he held pleas and judgment. He ordered a ditch to be dug in the earth and knotty vine-shoots and thorns to be ...
— The Romance Of Tristan And Iseult • M. Joseph Bedier
... and implicated leaves Wove twilight o'er the Poet's path, as led By love, or dream, or god, or mightier Death, He sought in Nature's dearest haunt some bank, Her cradle, and his sepulchre. More dark 430 And dark the shades accumulate. The oak, Expanding its immense and knotty arms, Embraces the light beech. The pyramids Of the tall cedar overarching frame Most solemn domes within, and far below, 435 Like clouds suspended in an emerald sky, The ash and the acacia floating hang Tremulous and pale. Like restless serpents, clothed ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... affair, it would be sheer waste of words to broach it, as De Noyan could form no clearer conception of such an issue than a babe unborn. He swung as the wind blew, and in all his pampered life had probably never dreamed of denying himself a liberty. Saint Andrew! it was a knotty problem for such a head as mine to solve. I believe I chose the better course in assuming the role of a neutral, as I sat staring at the fellow while he twisted his moustaches into their old-time curl, gazing at himself in the pocket ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... they didn't answer. The little people always had been shy. Yet without reaching a decision in so many words I knew suddenly that I had to talk to them. I'd come to the glen to work out a knotty problem, and I was up against a blank wall. Simply because I was so lonely that my mind ...
— Houlihan's Equation • Walt Sheldon
... Father Jennings had again met with several evidences of Terry's curious influence over the foreigners. Terry understood them instinctively, grasped their viewpoints and ideals, and was the only layman on the northside in whom they confided, called in to settle knotty problems and to partake of the hospitality they lavished upon appropriate occasions of weddings, christenings and the neverending procession of days of patron saints. Subtle, romantic, circumscribed by alien environment, they recognized in him a kindred spirit and opened their ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... the Second Fifteen, who should have been washing, strolled in to condole with 'Pater' Winton, whose misfortune and its consequences were common talk. No one was more sincere than the long, red-headed, knotty-knuckled 'Paddy' Vernon, but, being a careless animal, he joggled ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... property to the value of $60,000 in his hands, and by the end of July nine hundred "contrabands," men, women, and children, of all ages. What was their legal status, and how should they be disposed of? It was a knotty problem, for upon its solution might depend the sensitive public opinion and balancing, undecided loyalty and political action of the border slave States of Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri. In solving the problem, ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... road that lay between Madame Le Maitre's house and the house allotted to Caius led, winding down a hill, through a stunted fir-wood. The small firs held out gnarled and knotty branches towards the road; their needles were a dark ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... one, was said to be an anarchist; since he had no means of imparting his opinions, probably his wild gesticulations and his generally excited and rebellious manner gave rise to this supposition. He must once have been a very strong man, but now his great frame, with big, knotty joints, had a wasted look, and the skin was drawn tight over his high cheek-bones. His breathing was hoarse, and he always had ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... you not mov'd, when all the sway of earth Shakes like a thing unfirm? O Cicero, I have seen tempests, when the scolding winds 5 Have riv'd the knotty oaks, and I have seen Th' ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam, To be exalted with the threatening clouds; But never till to-night, never till now, Did I go through a tempest dropping fire. 10 Either there is a civil strife in heaven, Or else ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... it then Was neither rotten marsh nor boggy fen, It was nor overgrown with boisterous sedge, Nor grew there rudely then along the edge A bending willow, nor a prickly bush, Nor broad-leaved flag, nor reed, nor knotty rush. But here well-ordered was a grove with bowers, There grassy plots set round about with flowers. Here you might through the water see the land Appear, strowed o'er with white or yellow sand; Yon deeper was it, and the wind by whiffs Would make it rise and wash the little ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... obsolete pattern, and a checkered neckerchief with the ends hanging down. Date of costume about 1848. He was smoking a cigar, and trying to think of a word, and in pawing his hair he had rumpled his locks a good deal. He was scowling fearfully, and I judged that he was concocting a particularly knotty editorial. He told me to take the exchanges and skim through them and write up the "Spirit of the Tennessee Press," condensing into the article all of their contents that ...
— Editorial Wild Oats • Mark Twain
... behaviour of Sophia on the present occasion; which none of her sex will blame, who are capable of behaving in the same manner. And the discussion of a knotty point in the ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... La Boulaye's countenance. At last he shrugged his shoulders, after the manner of one who abandons a problem that has grown too knotty. ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... he was familiarly known in the neighborhood, Whisky Jo.—was a very important personage in those parts. He was apparently about forty years of age, a long, shock-headed fellow, with a corded face, a gnarled arm and a knotty hand like a bunch of prison-keys. He was a hairy man, with a stoop in his walk, like that of one who is about to spring upon something ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... of ways—in beautiful brass bedsteads with spring mattresses; in wooden boxes dragged out until they became a bed, the mattress being stuffed with the luikku or ruopo plant, which makes a hard and knotty couch. We slept in the bunks of ships, which for curiosity's sake we measured, and found seldom exceeded eighteen inches in width; we lay on the floor with only a rug dividing us from the wooden boards; or we reposed on a canvas deck-chair, ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... five pints, and the other of three pints. Pray show how it is possible for me to put a true pint into each of the measures." Of course, no other vessel or article is to be used, and no marking of the measures is allowed. It is a knotty little problem and a fascinating one. A good many persons to-day will find it by no means an easy task. Yet ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... knotty short man of Slavic features, a cropped mustache under his stubby nose. His shop was burning in the ruin of that tragic morning; the blame of it was Morgan's. Others whose business places had been erased in the fire were recognized ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... sent to propose it to the Commandant, who rejected it with a menace to chastise them if they did not obey in a very short time, which he prefixed. {75} The Sun reported this answer to his council, who debated the question, which was knotty. But the policy of the old men was, that they should propose to the Commandant, to be allowed to stay in their village till harvest, and till they had time to dry their corn, and shake out the grain; on condition each hut of the village ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... school's crack athlete, the president of the Sixth Form, the chairman of the Student Council, the president of the Y. M. C. A. He was the One Great Hero of the boys, and the Headmaster himself consulted him whenever he had a knotty problem of boy-nature to solve. Before Dick had been at school a week, he knew that he would rather find favor with "Colonel" Burton than see his name in gold letters in the schoolroom, or, for that matter, on the Common ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... great taloned paw. The more they kept to their village, the bolder grew the wild things that gambolled and bellowed on the grazing-grounds by the Waingunga. They had no time to patch and plaster the rear walls of the empty byres that backed on to the Jungle; the wild pig trampled them down, and the knotty-rooted vines hurried after and threw their elbows over the new-won ground, and the coarse grass bristled behind the vines like the lances of a goblin army following a retreat. The unmarried men ran away first, and carried the news far and near ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... falling leaves, or observe the various tints the autumn gave to them—At other times, the singing of a robin, or the noise of a water-mill, engaged my attention—partial attention—, for I was, at the same time perhaps discussing some knotty point, or straying from this tiny world to new systems. After these excursions, I returned to the family meals, told the children stories (they think me vastly agreeable), and my sister was amused.—Well, will you allow me to call this way ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... little trees standing in a field near the stream. The stems of these, which, considering the scarcity of trees in Iceland, may be called remarkable phenomena, were crooked and knotty, but yet six or seven feet high, and about four or five inches ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... of what was to be done with the galley-slaves and the galley. It was a knotty question to decide, for here were a hundred-and-eighty men, many of whom were no doubt criminals and desperados of the very worst type; to release whom and turn them loose upon society involved a tremendous responsibility. Yet after even ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... god. Ever and anon, a petal would drop from the flower; this was always succeeded by a shuddering tremor throughout Iridion's frame and a more forlorn expression on her pallid countenance: while Pan's jovial features assumed an expression of deeper concern as he pressed his knotty hand more resolutely against his shaggy forehead, and wrung his dexter horn with a more determined grasp, as though he had caught a ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... more about him than they do about themselves, he is got into a track where he will find nothing but briars and thorns, vexation and disappointment. I can speak a little to this point. For many years of my life I did nothing but think. I had nothing else to do but solve some knotty point, or dip in some abstruse author, or look at the sky, or wander by ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... knowledge and faith of this redemption fortifieth the Christian against temptations. We that do believe, know what it is to be assaulted by the devil, and to have knotty objections cast into our minds by him. We also know what advantage the vile sin of unbelief will get upon us, if our knowledge and faith in this redemption be in the least, below the common faith of saints, defective. If ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... instalments. My publishers agreed with me as to the necessity of dealing in some radical way with the emergency, and devoted to my service additional pages in the back of Everybody's Magazine. Here I decided to begin a department to be called "Lawson and His Critics" in which I would solve the knotty problems my correspondents presented to me, set right their misunderstandings, and reply fully to those critics who had aspersed my motives or were attempting to discredit ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... however, that though gentle rubbing afford relief to the breasts when they are hard, knotty, and over-distended, any friction is injurious if gathering has actually commenced. In all cases, therefore, it is of importance to distinguish between over-distension (which may lead to inflammation) and a condition of already established gathering of the breasts. ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... appeared to kneel. One hand held fast by the cross; in the other was a sharp knife, with which he was probably cutting out his name. He did not observe Otto. Near the man lay a box covered with green oil-cloth; and in the grass lay a knapsack, a pair of boots, and a knotty stick. It must be a wandering ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... complications. The one good thing is that Bismarck is honestly friendly, and I believe will support us in whatever we propose. Austria seems to be almost as nasty as Russia, and France naturally jealous. I suppose Bismarck can and will keep Austria in order. Please write me a real letter on these knotty points." ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... is not only the man of genius who makes use of these unseen powers. He may have readier access to his subconscious than the rest of us, but he has no monopoly. The most matter-of-fact man often says that he will "sleep over" a knotty problem. He puts it into his mind and then goes about his business, or goes to sleep while this unseen judge weighs and balances, collects related facts, looks first at one side of the question and then at the other, and finally sends up into consciousness a decision full of conviction, ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... than twenty-five—built like a bull for force and wrath. His was that colossal physique that develops in the South; his shoulders were mighty under his mean coat, and his chained wrists were square and knotty. He held his head up with a sort of truculence in its poise; it was the head, massive, sensuous- lipped, slow-eyed, of a whimsical Nero. It was weariness, perhaps, that give him his look of satiety, of appetites ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... dog;' so I obeyed orders, an' slipped back the purse while pretendin' to help the old ooman. It wos risky work, though, for a bobby twigged me, and it was only my good wind and tough pair o' shanks that saved me. Now," continued the urchin, knitting his brows as he contemplated the knotty point, "I've had my doubts whether that wos conscience, or a sort o' nat'ral weakness pecooliar to my constitootion. I've half a mind to call on the Bishop of London on the point one o' ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... the West of England) to the Archaeological Society. I was supposed to be an old gentleman, and heard myself quoted as the "venerable and respected Haslam," whose word was considered enough to settle a knotty point beyond doubt. I was invited to give a lecture on the old Perran Church, at the Royal Institution, Truro, which I did; illustrating it with sketches of the building, and exhibiting some rude remains of carving, which are now ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... the yonder bank when we set forward through a wood which was marked by no path. Not green leaves but of a dusky color, not smooth boughs but knotty and gnarled, not fruits were there but thorns with poison. Those savage beasts that hold in hate the tilled places between Cecina and Corneto have no thickets ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... for it was only separation and existence apart from each other that would, he conceived, be able to foster it. Hubert took up the steel tongs which stood near the fire-grate, and as he proceeded to break up a knotty piece of wood that would only sweal, not burn, and to rake the fire together better, he said to V——, "You see what a good-natured fellow I am, Herr Justitiarius, and that I am skilful in all domestic matters. But Wolfgang is full of the most extraordinary prejudices, and—a bit of ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... Month, before your final moon is set, Much may have happened—anything, in fact; More than in any March that I have met (Last year excepted) fearful nerves are racked; Anarchy does with Russia what it likes; Paris is put conundrums very knotty; And here in England, with its talk of strikes, Men, like your own ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156., March 5, 1919 • Various
... all happy ones. Hubert and Winifred were living in a new world of revelation, and delighted exceedingly in the help one well instructed and "apt to teach" was able to give them in the mystery of the faith. Mr. Gray, too, enjoyed his guest's presence and brought knotty questions to him daily for solution. Mrs. Gray recognized the excellent spirit that was in him, and found herself quietly wondering more than once why the other ministers she knew did not seem equally interested in the matters of their calling when off duty, so to speak, but were so much at home ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... went down and the evening chill came on, we made preparation for bed. We stirred up the hard leather letter-sacks, and the knotty canvas bags of printed matter (knotty and uneven because of projecting ends and corners of magazines, boxes and books). We stirred them up and redisposed them in such a way as to make our bed as level as possible. And we did improve it, too, though after ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... woman was not dead. She was lying on her back, on her wretched bed, her hands covered with a purple cotton counterpane, horribly thin, knotty hands, like the claws of strange animals, like crabs, half closed by rheumatism, fatigue and the work of nearly a century which ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... feculent matter deadens the sensibility of the intestine, so that great stimulation is required to provoke it to action. The contents become dry, solid, knotty, and hard, and very difficult to evacuate. If drastic, irritating physic be taken, only temporary relief is afforded, and it must be repeatedly resorted to, and the dose increased, to obtain the ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... miller whom she had rejected when he popped the question: the diabolical suitor was jailed as a punishment. Champlain relates how a pugnacious parson was dealt with by a pugnacious clergyman of a different persuasion respecting some knotty controversial points. The arguments, however irresistible they may have been, Champlain observes, were not edifying either to the savages or to the French: "J'ay veu le ministre et nostre cure s'entre battre e coup de poing sur le differend de la religion. Je ne scay pas qui estait ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... certainly not a handsome person. He was short, shorter than Mr. Polly, with long arms and lean big hands, a thin and wiry neck stuck out of his grey flannel shirt and supported a big head that had something of the snake in the convergent lines of its broad knotty brow, meanly proportioned face and pointed chin. His almost toothless mouth seemed a cavern in the twilight. Some accident had left him with one small and active and one large and expressionless reddish eye, and wisps of straight hair strayed from under ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... to-morrow I may be as bad. "'Sinking, sinking, sinking!' I feel that I am 'sinking'." My medical attendant says that it is irregular gout, with nephritic symptoms. 'Gout', in a young man of twenty-nine!! Swollen knees, and knotty fingers, a loathing stomach, and a dizzy head. Trust me, friend, I am at times an object of moral disgust to my own mind! But that this long illness has impoverished me, I should immediately go to St. Miguels, one of the Azores—the baths and the delicious ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... He decided the knotty question, promptly saying: "The gray dresses made for you both a few weeks ago will be very suitable, I think." Then he bade her help Grace and also change her own dress, because they would make an early start for the city, going very soon after ...
— Elsie at Home • Martha Finley
... had passed away since the time of Sam's youthful adventure, and the snows of many a winter had grizzled the knotty wool upon his head. He perfectly recollected the circumstances, however, for he had often been called upon to relate them, though in his version of the story he differed in many points from Peechy Prauw; as is not unfrequently the case with authentic historians. As to the ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... not altogether unknown in more civilized society, and I make no hesitation in offering to our legislators the example of my friend the Cree as tending to simplify the solution, or rather the dissolution, of that knotty point, the separation of couples who, for reasons best known to themselves, have ceased to love. Whether it was that the Cree found in Victoria a lady suitad to his fancy, or whether he had heard of a war-party ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... the reflective mind—and it is to be presumed that by that standard Mark Twain's works will ultimately be judged—there is no more significant passage in Huckleberry Finn than that in which Huck struggles with his conscience over the knotty problem of his moral responsibility for compassing Jim's emancipation. Nothing else is needed to show at once Mark Twain's preoccupation with the workings of human conscience in the unsophisticated mind and his conviction that, with the "lights that he had," Huck was justified ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... may come in," agreed the other boy, as he allowed three separate lines of wrinkles to gather across his forehead, which was always reckoned a sure sign that Thad Stevens was concentrating his brain power upon the solution of a knotty problem. "One thing sure, we can't very well up and inform him of the fact ourselves, or he'd understand the motive ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... in maidens beds, But they are lodged with your married wiues, The knotty browes, and rugged butting heds, Concerne not vs, professing single liues, To learne your horne-booke we have no deuotion Keepe monsters to your selues, ...
— The Bride • Samuel Rowlands et al
... then," Stamford said, as he bade me good-bye. "You'll find him a knotty problem, though. I'll wager he learns more about you than you about ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... offence!) Out of our way,—push, wife! Yonder their Worships be!" Ned Bratts has reached the bar, and "Hey, my Lords," roars he, "A Jury of life and death, Judges the prime of the land, Constables, javelineers,—all met, if I understand, To decide so knotty a point as whether 't was Jack or Joan Robbed the henroost, pinched the pig, hit the King's Arms with a stone, Dropped the baby down the well, left the tithesman in the lurch, Or, three whole Sundays running, not once attended church! ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... kind of smoking-cap, with the peak cocked over his left ear; then came a green shooting-jacket, and flashy silk tartan waistcoat, set off by a gold chain, hung about in innumerable festoons,—while light trousers and knotty Wellington boots completed his costume, and made the wearer look as little like a seaman as need be. It appeared, nevertheless, that the individual in question was Mr. Ebenezer Wyse, my new sailing-master; so ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... unwilling to force her reserve with their advice, nor did she seek it. She knew that it rested with her alone to make a choice, to settle the future course of her life, and she, felt like a child at school, standing on a platform before watchful eyes, bidden to find by herself the answer to some knotty question. ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... from a very late discussion at his Club, and twisted his lean shaven lips into a sort of smile. He was one of those rolling-stone Englishmen, whose early lives are spent in all parts of the world, and in all kinds of physical conflict—a man like a hickory stick, tall, thin, bolt-upright, knotty, hard as nails, with a curved fighting back to his head and a straight fighting front to his brown face. His was the type which becomes, in a generation or so, typically Colonial or American; but no one could possibly ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... murmur'st, I will rend an Oake And peg-thee in his knotty entrailes, till Thou hast howl'd away ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... higher buildings, with fronts of brown stone, cracked and blistered, cast-iron balconies and cat-haunted grass-patches behind twisted railings. These houses too had once been private, but now a cheap lunchroom filled the basement of one, while the other announced itself, above the knotty wistaria that clasped its central balcony, as the Mendoza Family Hotel. It was obvious from the chronic cluster of refuse-barrels at its area-gate and the blurred surface of its curtainless windows, that ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... trifling distance from Finsbury Square; and to be at Mr. Witherington's dinner-table at 6 P.M., with the necessity of appearing at parade every morning at 9 A.M., was a dilemma not to be got out of. Several letters were interchanged upon this knotty subject; and at last it was agreed that Mr. Templemore should sell out, and come up to Mr. Witherington with his pretty wife. He did so, and found that it was much more comfortable to turn out at nine o'clock in the morning to a good breakfast than to a martial ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... lawyers, when a knotty case was o'er, Shook hands, and were as good friends as before. "Zounds!" says the losing client, "How come you To be such friends, who were such foes just now?" "Thou fool," says one, "we lawyers, tho' so keen, Like shears, ne'er cut ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... was a momentous question to Mendel, and only his little brother's pinched and miserable countenance could have induced him to violate the law which to his conception was as sacred as life itself. While Mendel debated, Jacob solved the knotty problem by attacking the savory dishes before him, and his brother reluctantly followed ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... disclosed a round, sinewy neck, ruddy and corded like the bark of the fir. Thick, muscular arms, covered with a reddish down, protruded from the wide sleeves of his habit, while his white shirt, looped up upon one side, gave a glimpse of a huge knotty leg, scarred and torn with the scratches of brambles. With a bow to the Abbot, which had in it perhaps more pleasantry than reverence, the novice strode across to the carved prie-dieu which had been set apart for him, and stood silent and erect with his ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... very plain, the wearers of them affecting a simple and savage ferocity in the fashion of their vesture. Some tribes had painted skins—beauty, in their view, consisting, apparently, in hideousness. There was one barbarian horde who wore very little clothing of any kind. They had knotty clubs for weapons, and, in lieu of a dress, they had painted their naked bodies half white and half ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... of 'Wuthering heights,' I admit the charge, for I feel the quality. It is rustic all through. It is moorish, and wild, and knotty as a root of heath. Nor was it natural that it should be otherwise; the author being herself a native and nursling of the moors. Doubtless, had her lot been cast in a town, her writings, if she had written at all, would have possessed another character. Even ...
— Charlotte Bronte's Notes on the pseudonyms used • Charlotte Bronte
... made a splendid "find." It was two old law books. He read and re- read them, got all the sense and argument out of their dry pages, blossomed into a debater, began to dream of being a lawyer, and became so skilled in seeing through and settling knotty questions that, once again, New Salem wondered at this clerk of Offutt's, who was as long of head as of arms and legs, and declared that "Abe Lincoln could out-argue any ten ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... woods seemed without the little troop! The wind sighed in the pines, and the moonlight cast fearful shadows from the gnarled and knotty boughs. ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... section. Much critical inquiry is directed to the propriety of Arthur's jib, or the necessity of "ballasting" or pouring a little molten lead into Edward's keel. The launch of a new vessel is the event of the week. The coast-guardsman is brought in to settle knotty questions of naval architecture and equipment, and the little seamen listen to his verdicts, his yarns, the records of his voyages, with a wondering reverence. They ask knowingly about the wind and the prospects of the weather; they submit to his higher knowledge their theories as to the nature ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... towards sundown when the two young men took a car back to Islington. "Another day we'll see Newsham Park, and the country around Knotty Ash way. Then again, there is some beautiful country up the Mersey and across to Birkenhead." The visitor was ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... slopes and for a bit of the sunshine. Among these the black oaks deserve special mention, for in places they form dense groves upon the ridges. The cedars, with their rich brown bark and flat, drooping branches, are easily recognized. As these trees grow old they become gnarled and knotty and ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... candidacy, if not his support of the movement, depended upon the convention's attitude on the tariff. Indeed, not until the committee on resolutions had accepted what the editor himself dictated was the knotty point finally settled. "Recognising," said the platform, "that there are in our midst honest but irreconcilable differences of opinion with regard to the respective systems of protection and free-trade, we remit the discussion of the subject to the people in their congressional districts and to the ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... virtue themselves, might become confounded in the human mind by a like daring; and humanity sit down under every buffet of misfortune, without attempting to resist it: which, fortunately, is impossible. Plato cut this knotty point better, by regarding evil as a thing senseless and unmalignant (indeed no philosopher regards anything as malignant, or malignant for malignity's sake); out of which, or notwithstanding it, good is worked, and to be worked, perhaps, finally to the abolition of evil. ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... It was a knotty point to decide. Should the judges believe the woman's word, or the emphatic denials of the debtors that they had ever received a kreutzer? The seven looked hopelessly at each other, and then wisely retired to the seclusion of a ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... with ink, which afterwards dries and produces a thicker layer of black sediment than those elsewhere. The variations of pressure upon the pen can be easily noticed by the alternate widening and narrowing of the band between these two furrows. The tracing appears knotty and uneven when made by an untrained hand, while it appears uniformly thin, and generally tremulous or in zigzags when made by a weak ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... way, than some young scamp would rise and solemnly move the previous question, which never failed to bring down a storm of hoots at the complete mystification of the perplexed chairman, who never to his last day was able to solve this knotty point ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... ability, Lieutenant-Colonel W. Nicholson, R.E., for defence, and Lieutenant-Colonel E. Elles, R.A., for mobilisation. It was in a great measure due to Colonel Nicholson's clear-sighted judgment on the many knotty questions which came before us, and to his technical knowledge, that the schemes for the defence of the frontier, and for the ports of Bombay, Karachi, Calcutta, Rangoon and Madras, were carried out so rapidly, thoroughly ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... Patrick's enraged eyes, Eva and Isaac tore the combination of writing implements to fragments, in their endeavour to make it yield a point. Patrick darted upon the surprised Isaac like an avenging whirlwind, and drove a knotty little fist into the centre of the Fauntleroy costume. And then, quite suddenly, Isaac lifted ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... so wonderful that the eye never becomes tired of admiration. Often have I halted on my journey to ride around and admire the prodigious height and girth of these trees. Their beautiful proportions render them the more striking; there are no gnarled and knotty stems, such as we are accustomed to admire in the ancient oaks and beeches of England, but every trunk rises like a mast from the earth, perfectly free from branches for ninety or a hundred feet, straight as an arrow, each tree forming a dark pillar to support its share of the rich canopy ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... up, and they would warn one accordingly. But they often were out in their estimate, and they had always to be on the safe side. Some quite simple and apparently straightforward subject would take a perfectly unconscionable time to dispose of, while, on the other hand, an apparently extremely knotty problem might be solved within a few minutes and so throw the time-table out of gear. The result was that in the course of months one spent a good many hours, off and on, lurking in the antechamber ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... a coarse, bulky affair, composed of grasses, knotty roots mixed with mud, and lined with fine dry grass, horse hair, or sheep's wool. The eggs are light greenish or smoky blue, with irregular lines, dots and blotches distributed over the surface. The eggs average four to six, though nests have ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [December, 1897], Vol 2. No 6. • Various
... couple of years earlier with its newest plaything, Libya,—and concealed the bills. But Giolitti had prudently retired to his little Piedmont home in Cavour. All the winter he had kept out of Rome, leaving the Salandra Government to work out a solution of the knotty tangle in which he had helped to involve his country. Nobody knew precisely what Giolitti's views were, but it was generally accepted that he preserved the tradition of the Crispi statesmanship, which had made the abortion of the Triple Alliance. If he could not openly ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... canvas from a draper, stretched it on a frame, coated it over with white lead, and began painting on it with colours bought from a house-painter. But his work proved a total failure; for the canvas was rough and knotty, and the paint would not dry. In his extremity he applied to his old teacher, the barber, from whom he first learnt that prepared canvas was to be had, and that there were colours and varnishes made for the special purpose ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... when the scolding winds Have rived the knotty oaks, and I have seen The ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam, To be exalted with the threat'ning clouds. Julius Caesar, Act i. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... lapse into their native German. Mr. Spiegelberg informed me that I had been elected an honorary member of the English and French Club, which flattered my vanity enormously at the time. In the light of more mature experience I quite understand that the presence of a youth to whom knotty points in both languages could be submitted would be a considerable asset to the Club, but I then attributed my election solely to my engaging personality. These Club evenings amused me enormously, though ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... for popular effect, that of slurring over the difficulties of the subject through the desire of making it intelligible and attractive to unlearned readers. He never tampers with the truth of science, nor attempts to dodge the solution of a knotty problem behind a cloud of plausible illustrations. The numerous illustrations which accompany every chapter are of unquestionable value in the comprehension of the text, and come next to actual experiment as an aid to the reader. ...
— Publisher's Advertising (1872) • Anonymous
... was, as has been observed, in the Tower for his practices against the present order of things, he being an advocate of extreme democratic principles; and he was there instructed in knotty points of law by Judge Jenkins, to enable him to torment and baffle the party in power. It was Jenkins who said of Lilburne that "If the world were emptied of all but John Lilburne, Lilburne would quarrel with John, and John ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... would have blunted our weapons, induced me to pass it by. A little farther on, l'Encuerado spied out a liquid-amber tree, valuable on account of the balsam that oozes from its branches when cut, which is burned by the Indians as incense. He climbed the knotty trunk of this colossus, and cut off some branches, which Sumichrast split into small pieces, after I had cleared off their leaves. Our work was interrupted by the approach of night, and we made our way to our bivouac, each loaded with ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... rather reluctantly followed his wife out of the room and up stairs. He would have preferred to solve this knotty problem before retiring. He lay awake a long time thinking deeply, and the more he thought the more firmly he believed that Walter was right in his conclusions that the first narrative was the true one. Then the thought came; if this is correct, it will turn the whole world ...
— The Pastor's Son • William W. Walter
... to workmen for their pains only, when they perceiv'd the great advantage, repented of their bargain, and undertaking it themselves, were gainers above half: I wish only for the expedition of this knotty work, some effectual engine were devised; such as I have been told a worthy person of this nation made use of, by which he was able with one man, to perform more than with twelve oxen; and surely, there might be much done by fastning of iron-hooks ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... it fell, two thundering blows Upon his scull descend: From Ursine's knotty club they came, Who ran ...
— The Book of Brave Old Ballads • Unknown
... Sequoia. I have seen silver firs split into long peeled rails radiating like spokes of a wheel from a hole in the ground where the tree stood. But the Sequoia, instead of being split and shivered, usually has forty to fifty feet of its brash knotty top smashed off in short chunks, about the size of cord-wood, the rosy-red ruins covering the ground in a circle one ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... many angular, knotty protuberances denote perseverance and much vigorous, firm, harsh, oppressive, ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... the symptoms which follow according to the rules laid down in other parts of these articles.—Symptoms when it is taken into the body slowly. Headache, pain about the navel, loss of appetite and flesh, offensive breath, a blueness of the edges of the gums; the belly is tight, hard, and knotty, and the pulse slow and languid. There is also sometimes a difficulty in swallowing.—Treatment. Give five grains of calomel and half a grain of opium directly, in the form of a pill, and half an ounce of Epsom salts in two hours, and repeat this treatment until the bowels are well opened. ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... crossing the threshold of a great change. How many thoughts passed through his mind as he took those few steps! He saw his child a little black-eyed baby in his arms; she was running before him trundling her hoop; she came to him with contracted brow and half-tearful eyes, bringing a knotty sum in fractions, and insisting petulantly that they were very "vulgar" indeed; she hung on his arm, a shy girl of fifteen, blushingly conscious of the admiring eyes that followed her; she stood before him again in her first ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... pervert them. But neither Dr. Knapp nor anyone else has captured facts which would be of any significance had Borrow told us nothing himself. Some of the anecdotes lap a branch here and there; some disclose a little rotten wood or fungus; others show the might of a great limb, perhaps a knotty protuberance with a grotesque likeness, or the height of the whole; others again are like clumsy arrogant initials carved on the venerable bark. I shall use some of them, but for the most part I shall use Borrow's own brush both to portray and ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... the vain hope of transforming it to virtue. Such thoughts had not, indeed, been Annie's, when wilfully she sought her fate. She knew not the man she had chosen for her husband; she disregarded the warnings she had heard. Fatal delusion! she found, too late, the fate her will had woven was formed of knotty threads, the path that she had sought beset with thorns, from which she could not break. No children blessed her lot, and it was better thus—for they would have found but little happiness. The fate of Lord ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... had become the fashion, Arcadian nymphs and swains, beauteous goddesses and Athenian philosophers were judged the most fitting to stand before the English court. In scene after scene fair ladies talk of love, reverend sages display their readiness in solving knotty problems, lovers sigh into the air long rhapsodies over the charms of their mistresses, sharp-tongued (but rarely coarse) serving-boys lure fools into greater folly or exchange amusing badinage at the expense of their absent masters. The story does not advance much, but that ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... laid back, with a feline softness of tread. Batard breathed gently, very gently, and not till he was close at hand did he raise his head. He paused for a moment and looked at the bronzed bull throat, naked and knotty, and swelling to a deep steady pulse. The slaver dripped down his fangs and slid off his tongue at the sight, and in that moment he remembered his drooping ear, his uncounted blows and prodigious wrongs, and without a sound sprang ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... came she greeted them warmly; they had belonged to the crowd which had come in the past often for cookies and for help in long, knotty problems. Then, thinking they might not remain if she was present, she went into the next room. Through the open door she watched them. She could not help watching; she had been deprived of all her girlhood and now she wanted to ...
— The Heart of the Rose • Mabel A. McKee
... quickness of apprehension, and vivacity of understanding, which easily took in and surmounted the most subtile and knotty parts of mathematicks and metaphysicks. His wit was prompt and flowing, yet solid and piercing; his taste delicate, his head clear, and his way of expressing his thoughts perspicuous and engaging. I shall say nothing of his person, ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... could come at any conclusion on this knotty subject the door opened and Martin Rattler entered the room, followed by ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... the new plant and technology that can make our goods more competitive, is also the key to the international balance of payments problem. Laying aside all alarmist talk and panicky solutions, let us put that knotty problem in its ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... from him incidentally, they remained in the dark about it. He was known and addressed however, by the appellation of 'the Lawyer,' as their conversation with him was chiefly asking his advice on points of law too knotty for them, which he freely gave. He affected no mystery or reserve; yet there was something in his bearing, affable and unaristocratic as it was, that caused those very men—who, if the governor of the state had come among them, would have slapped him on the back, and offered him a glass ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... He thought if another fellow should look in for a talk, which was his irreverent way of describing to himself the visit of the angel, it would be highly agreeable to have her there listening, and to clear up the knotty points for her when they should be alone. He had little doubt that Eve would have an opinion of her own, very favourable to his way of stating the subject, and would not mind criticising the other fellow, with ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... authority upon it than upon others, because it is his last command, and so would be taken as most pungent and weighty. When your hearts rise up to question and dispute this matter, I pray you cut all these knotty objections with the sword of his commandment. You use to go about to loose them by particular answers and untie them at leisure with art and skill, but truly it would be a readier and wiser course to ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... China is at the present moment in the hands of Gordon more than of any other man, and if he be encouraged to act vigorously, the knotty question of Taepingdom versus 'union in the cause of law and order' will be solved before the end of May, and quiet will at length be restored to this unfortunate and sorely-tried country. Personally, Gordon's wish is to leave the force as soon as he can. Now that Soochow ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... town was known far and near as the "Wise Judge"; but never had he had such a knotty question as this brought up before him, for by this time Abdallah had found his speech, and swore with a great outcry that the money ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... the Paris law student who had distinguished himself as one of the staff of prosecuting counsel before he came to the provinces. He was accustomed to taking broad views of things; he could do rapidly what the President and Blondet could only do after much thinking, and very often solved knotty points for them. In delicate conjunctures the President and Vice-President took counsel with their junior, confided thorny questions to him, and never failed to wonder at the readiness with which he brought back a task in which old Blondet found nothing to criticise. ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... festival day arrived. Stephen, on whom, somehow, all the work had devolved, while the talking and discussion of knotty points had fallen on his two brother officers, looked quite pale and ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... morning, he affixed the bill, and went forth into the square to study the result. It seemed, to his eye, promising and unpretentious; and he returned to the drawing-room balcony, to consider, over a studious pipe, the knotty problem of how ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... all the classes, the most popular man in the corps. I could not compete with "Mac" at all in the lettering business, but I tried to follow his good example, in my own way, by helping the boys over knotty points in "math" and "phil." I had taught district school one winter before going to West Point, and hence had acquired the knack ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... who had been thwarted and exposed by him in the day would, over his cups in the evening, enjoy the poet's travesty, and long for the good old times when he could put down all impertinent criticism by the stroke of his knotty sceptre. The Homeric Agora could hardly have existed had it been so idle a form as the poets represent. But as the lower classes were carefully marshaled on the battle-field, from a full sense of ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... retarded by a waning of his own ideal in the matter, and finally got to arriving at that hour in the afternoon when Maxwell could be found revising his morning's work, or lying at his wife's feet on the rocks, and now and then irrelevantly bringing up a knotty point in the character or action for her criticism. For these excursions Godolphin had equipped himself with a gray corduroy sack and knickerbockers, and a stick which he cut from the alder thicket; he wore russet shoes of ample tread, and very thick-ribbed stockings, ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells |
