Quotes about knot
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“Doctrine tied itself into infinite knots over the realities of sex.”

Barbara W. Tuchman book A Distant Mirror

Source: A Distant Mirror (1978), p. 213

“When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

The earliest citation yet found does not attribute this to Roosevelt, but presents it as a piece of anonymous piece folk-wisdom: "When one reaches the end of his rope, he should tie a knot in it and hang on" ( LIFE magazine (3 April 1919), p. 585 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/wu.89063018576?urlappend=%3Bseq=65). Misattributed Variant: When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.

Motivational, Deep, Success, Inspirational

“Let opening roses knotted oaks adorn,
And liquid amber drop from every thorn.”

Alexander Pope Pastorals

Autumn, line 36.
Pastorals (1709)

“The part which is nearest to the earth… is without knots and is "clear." But the upper part, on account of the great heat in it throws up branches into the air through the knots and this… is called "knotwood" because of its hardness and knottiness. The lowest part, after the tree is cut down and the sapwood of the same thrown away, is split up into four pieces and prepared for joiner's work, and so is called clearstock.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter IX, Sec. 7

Tree, Parting

“The London office of the International Council for University Development was in Queen Street. Edwin hesitated outside, adjusting his cap, tightening the knot of his tie, smoothing his pyjama collar. The portals, a naked sculptural group above them emblematic of the Tutorial System, were designed to intimidate. The doors were all glass and hence appeared to be ever-open; this again must be emblematic of something.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Doctor is Sick (1960)

Universe, Appearance

“I wonder, among all the tangles of this mortal coil, which one contains tighter knots to undo, & consequently suggests more tugging, & pain, & diversified elements of misery, than the marriage tie.”

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American novelist, short story writer, designer

Letter to John Hugh Smith (12 February 1909), published in The Letters of Edith Wharton (1988)

Pain, Marriage

“Science takes its coherence, its intellectual and imaginative strength together, from the concepts at which its laws cross, like knots in a mesh.”

Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974) Polish-born British mathematician

Part 3: "The Sense of Human Dignity", §1 (p. 52)
Science and Human Values (1956, 1965)
Context: No fact in the world is instant, infinitesimal and ultimate, a single mark. There are, I hold, no atomic facts. In the language of science, every fact is a field — a crisscross of implications, those that lead to it and those that lead from it. … We condense the laws around concepts. Science takes its coherence, its intellectual and imaginative strength together, from the concepts at which its laws cross, like knots in a mesh.

Law, Imagination, Science

“Strongest of Oak is the gallows
Tighest of knots is the noose”

Hoyt Axton (1938–1999) American country singer

"Strongest of Oak" (1965) · Performance on Bonanza http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OXY6rsAIDk Context: Strongest of Oak is the gallows Tighest of knots is the noose Why oh why did I kill that man Now I'll never get loose

“God huddles in a knot in every cell of flesh.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Saviors of God

The Saviors of God (1923)
Context: God huddles in a knot in every cell of flesh.
When I break a fruit open, this is how every seed is revealed to me. When I speak to men, this what I discern in their thick and muddy brains.
God struggles in every thing, his hands flung upward toward the light. What light? Beyond and above every thing!

God