Victory won’t come
to me unless I go
to it; a grape tendril
ties a knot in knots till
knotted thirty times,—
—Marianne Moore (1887–1972)
Perfect Scepticisme ... is a disease incurable, and a thing rather to be pitied or laughed at, then seriously opposed. For when a man is so fugitive and unsettled that he will not stand to the verdict of his own Faculties, one can no more fasten any thing upon him, than he can write in the water, or tye knots in the wind.
—Henry More (1614–1687)
Our sea-walled garden, the whole land,
Is full of weeds, her fairest flowers choked up,
Her fruit-trees all unpruned, her hedges ruined,
Her knots disordered, and her wholesome herbs
Swarming with caterpillars.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)