All 18 Uses
labyrinth
in
The Garden of Forking Paths
(Auto-generated)
- The instructions to turn always to the left reminded me that such was the common procedure for discovering the central point of certain labyrinths.
*labyrinths = a maze (a complex system of paths or tunnels in which it is easy to get lost)
- I have some understanding of labyrinths: not for nothing am I the great grandson of that Ts'ui Pên who was governor of Yunnan and who renounced worldly power in order to write a novel that might be even more populous than the Hung Lu Meng and to construct a labyrinth in which all men would become lost.†
- I have some understanding of labyrinths: not for nothing am I the great grandson of that Ts'ui Pên who was governor of Yunnan and who renounced worldly power in order to write a novel that might be even more populous than the Hung Lu Meng and to construct a labyrinth in which all men would become lost.†
- Thirteen years he dedicated to these heterogeneous tasks, but the hand of a stranger murdered him—and his novel was incoherent and no one found the labyrinth.†
- Beneath English trees I meditated on that lost maze: I imagined it inviolate and perfect at the secret crest of a mountain; I imagined it erased by rice fields or beneath the water; I imagined it infinite, no longer composed of octagonal kiosks and returning paths, but of rivers and provinces and kingdoms ....I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future and in some way involve the stars.†
- Beneath English trees I meditated on that lost maze: I imagined it inviolate and perfect at the secret crest of a mountain; I imagined it erased by rice fields or beneath the water; I imagined it infinite, no longer composed of octagonal kiosks and returning paths, but of rivers and provinces and kingdoms ....I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future and in some way involve the stars.†
- Beneath English trees I meditated on that lost maze: I imagined it inviolate and perfect at the secret crest of a mountain; I imagined it erased by rice fields or beneath the water; I imagined it infinite, no longer composed of octagonal kiosks and returning paths, but of rivers and provinces and kingdoms ....I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future and in some way involve the stars.†
- As for the other undertaking of Ts'ui Pên, his labyrinth ....†
- "Here is Ts'ui Pên's labyrinth," he said, indicating a tall lacquered desk.†
- An ivory labyrinth!†
- A minimum labyrinth.†
- "A labyrinth of symbols," he corrected.†
- An invisible labyrinth of time.†
- And another time: I am withdrawing to construct a labyrinth.†
- The Pavilion of the Limpid Solitude stood in the center of a garden that was perhaps intricate; that circumstance could have suggested to the heirs a physical labyrinth.†
- Ts'ui Pên died; no one in the vast territories that were his came upon the labyrinth; the confusion of the novel suggested to me that it was the maze.†
- One: the curious legend that Ts'ui Pên had planned to create a labyrinth which would be strictly infinite.†
- Sometimes, the paths of this labyrinth converge: for example, you arrive at this house, but in one of the possible pasts you are my enemy, in another, my friend.†
Definitions:
-
(1)
(labyrinth) a maze (a complex system of paths or tunnels in which it is easy to get lost)
or (figuratively): anything so complicated that it is extremely confusingThe word "labyrinth" comes from the name of the maze of passages where, in Greek mythology, Theseus had to escape from the Minotaur. -
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) Less commonly, labyrinth can refer to a complex anatomical system of interconnecting cavities -- especially the inner ear