"Gordian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... She had cut the Gordian knot with a blow. Neither Lockwood nor Whitney could object. The purpose of the ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... to this monotony of the journey which will last up to the frontier of Turkestan. Oasis and desert, desert and oasis. As we approach the Pamir the scenery will change a little. There are picturesque bits of landscape in that orographic knot which the Russians have had to cut as Alexander cut the gordian knot that was worth something to the Macedonian conqueror of Asia. Here is a good augury for ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... turned and twisted in a more intricate and perplexed manner than they are usually found in other Hearts; insomuch that the whole Heart was wound up together in a Gordian Knot, and must have had very irregular and unequal Motions, whilst it was ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... highest and most abrupt mountain range in Italy. To have done this in the teeth of a resisting army and beneath the walls of hostile castles would have been all but impossible. As it was, Piero cut the Gordian knot by his incredible cowardice, and for himself gained only ruin and dishonor. Charles, the foe against whom he had plotted with Alfonso and Alexander, laughed in his face and marched at once into Pisa. The Florentines, whom he had hitherto engaged in ah unpopular ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... somewhat recovered from her influence; and feeling the difficulties of reconciling his honour and his worldly prospects to further prosecution of the love, rashly expressed but not deeply felt, he had determined frankly to cut the Gordian knot he could not solve, and inform Sibyll that marriage between them was impossible. With that view he had appointed this meeting, and his conference with the king but confirmed his intention. It was in this state of mind that he was ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... elephant, and repudiated the part of showman. The vessel was therefore turned over to Captain Bullock, who acted with his usual tact and discretion in the subsequent transactions connected with her. There was a sharp struggle between rival claimants for the possession of the ship, but the Gordian knot was cut by the British Government which placed the "broad arrow" upon her. The public funds were also transferred to Captain Bullock and his receipt taken for them. Here I beg leave to affirm that I neither appropriated nor desired to appropriate any of the spoils of the perishing ship ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... case had been tried at Three Rivers, and Rathier sentenced to have his legs broken [95] with an iron bar, and afterwards to be hung. Judgment had been confirmed. An unforseen hitch arose: the official hangman was dead; how then was Rathier to be hung? The officers of justice cut the Gordian knot, by tendering to Rathier, in lieu of the halter, the position, little envied, of hangman. He accepted. Some years after, the wife and the daughter of Rathier were accused and found guilty as accomplices in a robbery; the daughter, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... 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, always be the arts that ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... husband? The companionship of 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
... seen as two. No 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 right side or the wrong. Nature, as I said in "Life and Habit," ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... 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 ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... revolutions of the whole earth, and its inhabitants—theories which are restrained by no reference to existing analogies, and in which a desire is manifested to cut, rather than patiently to untie, the Gordian knot. ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... few hundred additional soldiers the outer works might still be manned and the city saved. The officers English, Dutch, and French, listened respectfully to his remarks, but, without any suggestions on their own part, called on him as their Alexander to untie the Gordian knot. Alexander solved it, not with the sword, but with a trick which he hoped might prove sharper than a sword. He announced his intention of proposing at once to treat, and to protract the negotiations as long as possible, until the wished-for sails should be discerned in the offing, when ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Balbinus, on July 15, 238, fell victims to their own virtues at the hands of the Praetorian guard, Gordian became emperor. At the end of six years, he, too, after an innocent and virtuous reign, succumbed to the ambition of the prefect Philip, while engaged in a war with Persia, and in March 244, the Roman world recognized the sovereignty ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... knot are more interesting than the effects 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 |
