Careful Words

knot (n.)

knot (v.)

  You are seeking a knot in a bulrush.

Plautus (254(?)-184 b c): Menaechmi. Act ii. Sc. 1, 22. (247.)

  A man is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots, whose flower and fruitage is the world.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882): Essays. First Series. History.

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 chartered libertine, is still.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Henry V. Act i. Sc. 1.