"Devious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... But at five o'clock, when he started, the clouds began to break, and the sunlight suddenly streamed down through the misty air, making ways and channels of rich glory, and bright islands in the gloom. It was a pleasant and shining evening when, passing by devious back streets to avoid the barbarians (as he very rudely called the respectable inhabitants of the town), he reached the post-office; which was also ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... and malign fate had worked to such a frightful end! What devious chain of circumstances had led my boy to my side at this one particular minute of our lives when I could strike him down and kill him, in ignorance of his identity! A benign though tardy Providence blurred my vision and my mind as I sank into ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... bottom of my greatcoat pocket. Finally, the motor-cyclists, to their great relief, were told that they might go on ahead. The Grimers and I cut across a country to get away from the column. We climbed an immense hill in the mist, and proceeding by a devious route eventually bustled into Attichy, where we found a large and dirty inn containing nothing but some bread and jam. The column was scheduled to go ten miles farther, but "the situation being favourable" it was decided ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... and finally also by that vice which he had used to despise and mock the most as the most foolish one of all vices: greed. Property, possessions, and riches also had finally captured him; they were no longer a game and trifles to him, had become a shackle and a burden. On a strange and devious way, Siddhartha had gotten into this final and most base of all dependencies, by means of the game of dice. It was since that time, when he had stopped being a Samana in his heart, that Siddhartha began to play the game for money and precious things, ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... mouths of the Mississippi is a distance of ten hundred and ninety-seven miles by the stream. So devious, however, is the course of the latter that the two points are only four hundred and eighty miles apart in a due north and south line; for the river, after having inclined to the westward till it has increased its longitude by some two degrees and ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... Retracing my devious path in imagination as if it were drawn on a chart, I saw that I was recrossing the glacier a mile or two farther up stream than the course pursued in the morning, and that I was now entangled in a section I had not ...
— Stickeen • John Muir
... time of peace the ships of Spain were regarded as fair prize. When piracy wore the cloak of virtue there were many to venture; and the queen was ready to reward the buccaneer for the crimes that made him a popular hero. Cautious in her purposes, devious in her methods, too frugal and too poor to embark on great undertakings or open hostility, Elizabeth encouraged every secret enterprise and every private adventure which had for its object the enrichment of her subjects at the expense of ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... those old scholars had but a poor opinion of woman, the irrational and mutable element in things, or that the library had been handed down from father to son, from uncle to nephew, evading the cosmic vanity by devious lines of descent. It was a tradition in the family that its men should be scholars and its women ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... and, hurrying out as fast as he could manage, stumped his way round to the stage door. Cerberus would fain have stopped him, but Austin flourished his card in passing, and enquired of the first civil-looking man he met where the manager was to be found. He was piloted through devious ways and under strange scaffoldings, to the foot of a steep and very dirty flight of steps—luckily there were only seven—at the top of which was dimly visible a door; and at this, having screwed his courage to the ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... he cut short her inquiry by a similar question; for Swanhwid had also, at the same time of the night, taken to sailing about alone, and was stealthily searching out all the ways of approach and retreat through devious and dangerous windings. So she reminded her brother of the freedom he had given her long since, and went on to ask him that he should allow her full enjoyment of the husband she had taken; since, before he started on the Russian war, he had given her the boon of marrying as she would; ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... Rousseau's influence—so far stretching is the power of personal genius—does not stop with the French Revolution. It does not stop with the Commune or with any other outburst of popular indignation. It works subterraneanly in a thousand devious ways until the present hour. Wherever, under the impassioned enthusiasm of such words as Justice, Liberty, Equality, Reason, Nature, Love, self-idealising, self-worshipping, self-deceiving prophets of magnetic genius give way to their weaknesses, their ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... How long it seems!—the devious way. And full of toil and pain,— Yet love and peace kept house with them, And love and peace remain. Though youth and strength and youthful friends Were left upon the road Long since, an honest man is still The ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... him, when I asked that he should direct me to the Upper Mall, he simply insisted on going with me. Moreover, he told a needless lie and declared he was on the way there, although when we met he was headed in the other direction. By a devious walk of half a mile we reached the high iron fence of Kelmscott House. We arrived amid a florid description of the Icelandic Sagas as told by my new-found friend and interpreted by Th' Ole Man. My friend had not read the Sagas, but still he did not hesitate ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... ground floor. The street was paved with rough cobble stones, and sloped from each side toward the centre, through which ran a kennel or gutter encumbered with garbage and filth of every description, through which a foul stream of evil-smelling water wound its devious way. The street had apparently at one time been one of some pretensions, but had now fallen upon evil days and become the abode of a number of petty tradesmen, such as cobblers, sellers of fruit and cheap drinks, dealers ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... his cabin. The first time this peculiarity was discovered by her owner was on his return to the street after driving a bargain within the walls of the Temperance Hotel. Jinny was nowhere to be seen. Her devious course, however, was pleasingly indicated by vegetables that strewed the road until she was at last tracked to the veranda of the Arcade saloon, where she was found looking through the window at a game of euchre, ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... person." With all her aspirations she had never dreamed of such a future as was here promised her. To-night she was closely following that most anomalous of all guides, "Herr Teufelsdrockh." Urged on by the same "unrest," she was stumbling along dim, devious paths, while from every side whispers came to her: "Nature is one: she is your mother, and divine: she is God! The 'living garment of God.'" Through the "everlasting No," and the "everlasting Yea," she groped her way, darkly, tremblingly, waiting for the day-star of Truth to dawn; but, ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... truth, our tourists were not greatly reassured. Wampus could not tell where the road might lead them, for he did not know, save that it led by devious winds to Parker, on the border between Arizona and California; but what lay between them and that destination was a ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... committed the double error of overlooking the dissimulation of women and of over-estimating it. This fact has always served to render more difficult still the inevitably difficult course of women through the devious path of sexual behavior. Pepys, who represents so vividly and so frankly the vices and virtues of the ordinary masculine mind, tells how one day when he called to see Mrs. Martin her sister Doll went out for a bottle ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... forward neck the closing gate to press—[15] Then, while I wandered where the huddling rill Brightens with water-breaks the hollow ghyll [F] [16] 55 As by enchantment, an obscure retreat [17] Opened at once, and stayed my devious feet. While thick above the rill the branches close, In rocky basin its wild waves repose, Inverted shrubs, [G] and moss of gloomy green, 60 Cling from the rocks, with pale wood-weeds between; And its own twilight ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... all was order, purpose, control. We permeated the entire organization of the Iron Heel with our agents, while our own organization was permeated with the agents of the Iron Heel. It was warfare dark and devious, replete with intrigue and conspiracy, plot and counterplot. And behind all, ever menacing, was death, violent and terrible. Men and women disappeared, our nearest and dearest comrades. We saw them to-day. To-morrow they were gone; we never saw ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... went away from town one fall, happy and contented with his lot. And what do you suppose he found when he returned home? He had been nominated for alderman. It is too early to predict the fate of this unhappy man. And what tools Fate uses with which to carve out her devious peculiar patterns! An Apache Indian, besmeared with brilliant greases and smelling of the water that never freezes, an understudy to Cupid? Fudge! you will say, or Pshaw! or whatever slang phrase is handy and, prevalent at the moment ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... now fairly off the beaten track, but by devious ways, with lovely wooded and river scenery to the left and the wild scenery of Dartmoor to the right, we managed to reach Buckland Abbey. This abbey was founded in 1278 by the Countess of Baldwin-de Redvers, Earl of Devon, and we expected to find it in ruins, as usual. But when ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... square hunch of bread, given to us for our afternoon snack. And off we went, as gay as swallows, marching in a body on the famous chateau with an eagerness which would at first allow of no fatigue. When we reached the hill, whence we looked down on the house standing half-way down the slope, on the devious valley through which the river winds and sparkles between meadows in graceful curves—a beautiful landscape, one of those scenes to which the keen emotions of early youth or of love lend such a charm, that it is wise never to see them ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... slight upon her preference, shown to him, but not in any wise confessed. She has no silly sentiment, neither would she cloud her position for a prince of the blood royal, or what is saying more, for the man she could love, but society has devious turns and varying latitudes. One need not run squarely against the small fences it puts up, ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Utah, and crosses the Arizona line below the junction with the San Juan. It continues southward, flowing deep in what is called the Marble Canon, till it is joined by the Little Colorado, coming up from the south-east; it then turns westward in a devious line until it drops straight south, and forms the western boundary of Arizona. The centre of the district mentioned is the westwardly flowing part of the Colorado. South of the river is the Colorado ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... devious ways Have pulled some easy sprays From the down-dropping bough Which all may reach, and now I knot them, bud and leaf, Into a ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... apprehensions, he resolved to commit himself to the mercy of the hurricane, as of two evils the least, and penetrate straightforwards through some devious opening, until he should be delivered from the forest. For this purpose he turned his horse's head in a line quite contrary to the direction of the high road which he had left, on the supposition that ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... for there, crouching against the veranda rail where he had managed to overhear the last of the conversation, was that short, swarthy figure which had followed so indefatigably on his trail for three days—which had clung to him, closely but unseen, through all his devious journey of that morning. Suraci ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... a piece of driftwood beside the babbling stream; yet he has the digits and claws of the passeres, among which he is placed systematically. He is indeed an anomaly, though a very engaging one. Should he wish to go to another canyon, he will simply follow the devious stream he is on to its junction with the stream of the other valley; then up the second defile. His flight is exceedingly swift. His song is a loud, clear, cheerful strain, the very quintessence of gladness as it mingles with the ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... of level land, into which the north side of the hill gently declined. At the most northern part of this level, the two streets united, at a distance of a mile from the wharves, into one which thence winded a devious course two or three miles further along the Yaupaae. Above the highest roofs and steeples, towered the green summit of the hill, whose thick-growing evergreens presented, at all seasons, a coronal ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... back, Miss Jierdon saw that the mill was burning, and I directed her suspicion toward Renaud. She accused him, and it brought about a little quarrel between Miss Jierdon and young Houston. I had forced her, by devious ways, to pretend that she was in love with him—keeping that perjury thing hanging over her all the time and constantly harping on how, even though he was a nice young fellow, he was robbing us both of something that ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... increased. And just here it is worthy of remark that there appears to be some mysterious fatality by which strangers, greenhorns and "innocents," generally, contrive to wander by unerring though devious ways, straight into the talons of ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... fugitives could see, the ravine went in a devious course a couple of hundred yards into the eminence, but, as it proved, nearly across to the other side. It was darkened by overhanging trees and creepers, which found a hold in every ledge or crack ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... magnanimity of this advice without realizing that Orta is a place above all others to please a man's fancy, and that the fishing is exceptionally good. Miss Cassandra has taken back her caustic expressions with regard to the devious ways of fisher folk, or at least of this especial fisherman, and so, in good humor with one another and with the world in general, we set forth for Lausanne, by Domodossola and the Simplon. We shall have a Sunday in Lausanne ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... pull down the leader of the herd, and, what was more, they scented profit to themselves in trailing with him. Then, too, the enterprise promised to afford free scope for their ingenuity, their cunning, their devious business methods, and that could be nothing less than pleasing to men of ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... have left them to choose amid all the conflicting explanations of the puzzle. No consistent narrative that we might have concocted would, it seems to us, have been half as interesting to them as to allow them to follow the devious paths opened up by those who entered on the search for the heart of the mystery. Everything connected with the masked prisoner arouses the most vivid curiosity. And what end had we in view? Was it not ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... reached Cheat River in West Virginia, a large, clear mountain trout-brook. It crossed our path many times that day. Every mountain we crossed showed us Cheat River on the other side of it. It was flowing by a very devious course northwest toward the Ohio. We were working ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... trees in the gardens of the Petit Trianon. At Versailles they dined, falling a little silent over their meal, for neither could longer hold at bay the sense that events impended—that all paths, however devious, however touched by the enchanter's wand, lead back by an unalterable law to the world ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... have had incomes never approached at any other period in the history of medicine. The chapter gives a good picture of the stage on which Galen (practically a contemporary of Pliny) was to play so important a role. Pliny seems himself to have been rather disgusted with the devious paths of the doctors of his day, and there is no one who has touched with stronger language upon the weak points of the art of physic. In one place he says that it alone has this peculiar art and privilege, "That whosoever professeth himself a physician, ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... by cunning and temporizing, were incompatible with the French blood, that circulated in his veins; and the continual conflicts, that arose between his novel inclinations and his natural petulance, were incessantly rendering his words and actions at variance, and leading him into devious paths, where he could not fail, to go ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... was immediately recalled by the people, who had been taken by surprise, and remained until Piedmont took military possession of the Duchies, which it never gave up. Prince Napoleon, who commanded the 5th French Army Corps, looking out for the enemy by a devious route, in the direction of Romagna, reached the battle-field of Solferino too late to take part in the fight, but quite in time to make it available to the revolution. The Austrian troops who occupied Bologna, being threatened by the movement, made haste to recross the Po, without ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... whole of that day we worked our devious course, by great labor and at uncertain intervals, to the southward; and at night we fastened the Walrus to a floe, in waiting for the return of light. Just as the day dawned, however, I heard a tremendous grating sound against the side of the vessel; and rushing on deck, I found that we ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... between its figures; while the trees around it were trimmed into the shapes of confessionals and chess-pawns. To the right, a labyrinth of young trees, similarly clipped in the fashion of the time, led by a thousand devious turns to a mysterious valley, where one heard continually a low, sad murmur. This proceeded from a nymph in terra-cotta, from whose urn dripped, day and night, a thin rill of water into a small fishpond, bordered by grand old poplars, whose shadows threw upon its surface, even at mid-day, ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... was not properly a bridle-path, but tourists for pleasure often lost their way in the forest, and emerged upon the roads unexpectedly from such delicious, devious solitudes. Thus it befell to-day when two gentlemen on horseback overtook Bessie, where she had halted with Tom and the pony to let Jack and Willie come up. They were drying their pink toes preparatory to putting on again their shoes and stockings ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... went, winding our devious way over pathless ground, now diving into shady valleys, now mounting to sunny eminences where the breeze blew free and the eye could range far and wide, but not to find aught that was human. Gradually ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... they emerged from the shady halls of trees, to find themselves confronted by the wall of mountains. Already Van was riding up the slope, where larger pines, tall thickets of green chincopin, and ledges of rock compelled the trail to many devious windings. Once more the horseman was whistling his Toreador refrain. He did not look back at his charges. That he was watching them both, from the tail of his eye, was a fact that Beth ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... oh for Thee, by pitying grace Checked oft-times in a devious race. May He who halloweth the place Where Man is laid, Receive thy Spirit in the embrace ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... came, The flame turned cloud, the cloud returned to flame, The lifted, shifted steeps and all the way? That draws around me at last this wind-warm space, And in regenerate rapture turns my face Upon the devious coverts of dismay? ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... of tender youth, Guiding in love and truth Through devious ways; Christ, our triumphant King, We come Thy name to sing, Hither our children bring ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... devious roads, * And pathways doubtful of trend and scope: No man to a rope[FN27] will entrust his weight, * Save for cause that calleth for case ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... recovery of memories that were thought to be altogether gone. Childhood experiences that were supposed to be completely forgotten, and that could not at first be recalled at all, have sometimes been recovered after a long and devious search. Sometimes a hypnotized person remembers facts that he could not get at in the waking state. Persons in a fever have been known to speak a language heard in childhood, but so long disused as to be completely inaccessible in the normal state. Such facts have been generalized ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... then how we watched her returning steps, stealing cautiously along the path and waiting behind stack or door the better to observe her—for pussy knew perfectly well that we were eager to see her darlings, and enjoyed misleading and piquing us, we imagined, by taking devious ways. How well I recall that summer afternoon when, soft-footed and alone, I followed her to the floor of the barn. Just as she was about to spring to the mow she espied me, and, turning back, cunningly settled herself as ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... also out of the land of the Grays, but not by Westerling's consent or knowledge. By devious ways it had broken through the censorship of the frontier in cunning cipher. It told of artillery concentrations three days old; it told only what the aeroplanes had already seen; it told what the Grays had done but nothing of what they ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... found themselves plunging into the shadows of the streets, threading their devious way ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... under way. Once more we sped down that devious river, now swirling under the shadow of a steep bank, now steering around a sandspit. The scenery was hideous to me, bluffs of clay with pines peeping over their rims, willow-fringed flats, swamps of niggerhead, ugly drab ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... winds and go for me; and since there wasn't in sober truth another as had looked upon me with any serious resolves, I had to set about the matter. The Lord helps those who help themselves, but not if they be up to anything underhand or devious, as a rule, and though I might have invented a tale to hoodwink Gregory Sweet, that must have got back on my conscience, besides being a dangerous thing. Deceived, the poor man had to be—for his own good, but my story must be made to hold water and ring true, ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... white fortress that same hour De Guardiola heard in silence the Admiral's message of defiance, then when he and Mexia were again alone frowned thoughtfully over a slip of paper which by devious ways had shortly before reached his hand. With all their vigilance not every hole and crevice could the English stop; Spanish was the town and Spanish the overhanging fortress, and the former was the place of many women and priests. The conquerors strove to secure the place as with a fowler's ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... all of Tolstoi's, is by no means a perfect work of art. Its outline is irregular and ragged; its development devious. It contains many excrescences, superfluities, digressions. But it is a dictionary of life, where one may look up any passion, any emotion, any ambition, any weakness, and find its meaning. Strakov called it a complete picture ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... confidence and listen to him with respect, for in this instance their intelligence is completely under the control of his learning. It is the judge who sums up the various arguments with which their memory has been wearied out, and who guides them through the devious course of the proceedings; he points their attention to the exact question of fact which they are called upon to solve, and he puts the answer to the question of law into their mouths. His influence upon their verdict is ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... said to have a custom hereabouts of murdering the unwary traveller in these gloomy woods, whose dark and devious winding enabled those who were familiar with them to do deeds of rapine and blood undetected, or if detected, easily ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... oppressed with their weight and the mighty mass in motion. Then did Kapchack indeed feel himself every feather a king. He glanced back—he could not see the rear-guard, so far did the host extend. His heart swelled with pride and eagerness for the fight. Now quitting the plain, they wound by a devious route through the hills—the general's object being to so manage the march that none of them should appear above the ridges. The woods upon the slopes concealed their motions, and the advance was executed without the least delay, though so great was their length in this ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... huge the body may confine, And iron gates obstruct the prisoner's gaze, And massive bolts may baffle his design, And vigilant keepers watch his devious ways; But scorns the immortal mind such base control: No chains can bind it and no cell enclose. Swifter than light it flies from pole to pole, And in a flash from earth to heaven it goes. It leaps from mount to mount; from ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... the waste, and began to make our toilsome and devious travel towards the eastern verge. There were the tops of mountains all round (you are to remember) from whence we might be spied at any moment; so it behoved us to keep in the hollow parts of the moor, ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... on an elevation varying from 1000 to 1200 feet above the sea, of undulating table-land, divided by valleys, or "combes," through which the River Exe—which rises in one of its valleys—with its tributary, the Barle, forces a devious way, in the form of pleasant trout-streams, rattling over and among huge stones, and creeping through deep pools—a very angler's paradise. Like many similar districts in the Scotch Highlands, the resort of the red deer, it is called a forest, although ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... course. Still he moved on, as he supposed, in the direction of Lexington. He had mistaken the way, and a short space of time, served to convince him that he was in error. After wandering about for two hours, he came in sight of the Indian fires again. Perplexed by his devious ramble, he was more at fault than ever. The sky was still all darkness, and he had recourse to the trees in vain, to learn the points of the compass by the feeling of the moss. He remembered that at nightfall, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... merchant Wong Ts'in and of the assiduous youth Wei Chang has reached this person's ears by a devious road, and though it doubtless lost some of the subtler qualities in the telling, the ultimate tragedy had a convincing tone," ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... corridors were haunted by graceful flitting figures in various stages of deshabille, in quest of paraphernalia feminine and maids to adjust the same. A continual chatter filled the halls, punctuated by smothered laughter and subdued but insistent appeals for aid in the devious complications ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... of the East are devious. The fact that the child had been brought to us did not indicate a decision to give her to us instead of to the Temple. The woman and the man who had persuaded them to come had much to say to one another, and there was much we ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... Pretender or Hanoverian, had a solid resolution that England should not be torn in the cause of either. Whatever was done, must be done quietly and in good order. Since it seemed that the Hanoverian had no need to change anything in law or State or Church, best that he should be king. As for the devious politics, the tricks, and the mystery of Harley and Bolingbroke, they were of no account ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... how lovely, how glowing she looked as she stood there in her snowy dress. I found myself wondering impersonally what had led her to these devious paths. ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... same bull giraffe that had fled with the elephant herd and then wheeled away south from it. It was wandering devious now, feeding by itself, and the instant Felix saw the tell-tale head, he dropped flat to the ground as if he had been shot. The giraffe had not seen him, for the head, having vanished for a moment, reappeared; it was feeding, plucking ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... of words either untranslatable or to be translated only by guess work!" [234] One of their adventures—with a shaykh named Salameh—reads like a tale out of The Arabian Nights. Having led them by devious paths into an uninhabited wild, Salameh announced that, unless they made it worth his wile to do otherwise, he intended to leave them there to perish, and it took twenty-five pounds to satisfy the rogue's cupidity. Palmer, however, was of opinion that an offence ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... been treading a devious way, and none of her critics could have been more alive to the fact than herself; but she had a fatalistic sense of being drawn from one wrong turning to another, without ever perceiving the right road till it was too ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... those who are now suffering all the contempt and opprobrium which can be thrown both upon their heads and their hearts, because they have refused to follow Mr. Webster in the devious paths in which it has lately been his pleasure to walk, that they have by their constancy and firmness extorted from their Southern antagonists a tribute which is not paid to their revilers. Said Mr. Stanley, of Virginia, in his speech in ...
— A Letter to the Hon. Samuel Eliot, Representative in Congress From the City of Boston, In Reply to His Apology For Voting For the Fugitive Slave Bill. • Hancock
... pursuing, for perhaps a mile, the proprietor of a certain gambling den, whom he wished to apprehend. But at the boundary line, which the Chinese had reached before him, his prey had escaped. He was off somewhere, safe in the devious lanes and burrows of the native city. Therefore he stood baffled, and finally made his way back into the Settlement, along the quais, and finally reached his rooms. He pondered somewhat over the situation. That ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... ancient Berkshire habits and speech along our one great artery, it was always, I am bound to admit, a high day for the dweller in uncorrupted Berkshire when business or pleasure drew him from his home in the downs or rich pastures of the primitive northern half of the county by devious parish ways to the nearest point on the great Bath road, where he was to meet the coach which would carry him in a few hours "in amongst the tide of men." I can still vividly recall the pleasing thrill of excitement which ran through us when we caught the first ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... all the vagaries of the human imagination which may be comprehended under the denomination of humour, is no easy task, and as it is multiform we may stray into devious paths in pursuing it. But vast and various as the subject seems to be, there cannot be much doubt that there are some laws which govern it, and that it can be brought approximately under certain heads. It seems to be as generally admitted that there are different ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... ordained and called to preach; For men are prone to go it blind, Along the calf-paths of the mind, And work away from sun to sun To do what other men have done. They follow in the beaten track, And out and in, and forth and back, And still their devious course pursue, To keep the path that others do. But how the wise wood-gods must laugh, Who saw the first primeval calf; Ah, many things this tale might teach— But I ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... from the drift, still scraping snow from inside his collar, and gave many directions about going through a certain gate into such-and-such a corral; from there into a stable; and by seeming devious ways into ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... deep lagoon, Whose stagnant waters 'neath the moon Glimmered through bush and hanging vine, And cypress bald and ragged pine. Concealed within the spectral gloom, Of wide morass and forest tomb, His comrades there he found; By many a devious winding led, Where the pale fire-flies' torches shed A fitful gleam around, He paused at length where Huon stood, Amid his faithful band, though rude, And thus his errand told: "Where bends the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... there were rich and influential men eager to see him, there was business to talk over, there were important letters to read: an immense correspondence, enclosed in silk envelopes—a correspondence which had nothing to do with the infidels of colonial post-offices, but came into his hands by devious, yet safe, ways. It was left for him by taciturn nakhodas of native trading craft, or was delivered with profound salaams by travel-stained and weary men who would withdraw from his presence calling upon Allah to bless the generous giver of splendid rewards. And the news was always ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... at length, "have been of evil men and trickery and ambition. I realize that, always, when I come here—when I see you, Alice Windham. For a little time I am uplifted. Then I go back to my devious ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... edification: but, lo! a pun trails accidentally off the journalist's pen, or an odd collocation of ideas jostle each other in his brain: the writer at once stops his instructive reasoning; he goes off the main line and careers bounding down some devious side-path of entertaining nonsense. Our home papers are almost uniformly staid; they are written conscientiously, laboriously, commendably. But, after all, the French are right in trying to inject as much entertainment as possible into the daily ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... up quickly on your wings, Ye Clouds, and Winds; I leave all earthly things; How Devious Hills give way to mee! And the vast ayre brings under, as I fly, Kingdomes and populous states! see how The Glyst'ring Temples of the Gods doe bow; The glorious Tow'rs of Princes, and Forsaken townes, shrunke into nothing, stand: And as I downward looke, I spy Whole Nations ...
— The Odes of Casimire, Translated by G. Hils • Mathias Casimire Sarbiewski
... and in a few minutes had passed the borders of the town, and was winding its way through the devious path that led to the pass of La Nina. No words were exchanged, or only a whisper, as the horses in single file followed one another through ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... the bees was about three feet and a half long and eight or ten inches in diameter. With an ax we cut away one side of the tree and laid bare its curiously wrought heart of honey. It was a most pleasing sight. What winding and devious ways the bees had through their palace! What great masses and blocks of snow-white comb there were! Where it was sealed up, presenting that slightly dented, uneven surface, it looked like some precious ore. When we carried a large ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... this was urged in justification and precedent for devious modern ways that were not meek, did not pursue ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... smoked tobacco or drank whisky. I hardly thought any women came under that category, but if any, then it must mean those who came around selling apples and oranges. The reader will see that when once away from the shelter of home, in threading the world's devious ways, I would be crossing the roaring torrent "on the perilous footing of a spear," all but certain to fall into the ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... remorse for some child's sin, Monday riding vain-gloriously in the glaur on the road to hell, bragging of filthy amours, and inwardly gloating upon a crime anticipated. Oh, but were the human soul made on less devious plan, how my trade of Gospel messenger were easy! And valour, too, is it not in most men a fever of the moment; at another hour the call for courage might find them quailing and flying like the ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... tangled forests of South America it is no easy matter to reach any object, which you may have only seen at a distance from the top of a tree. Without a compass, the traveller soon loses his direction; and, after hours of vain exertion and devious wandering, often finds himself at the very place from which he ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... door is opened, at last, by the one who has made his way through the devious passages, there is so little to be seen that sometimes even the man himself laughs the woman to scorn and despoils her ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... style, and without any attempt at elaborate description contrives to leave clear impressions of his achievements and surroundings. His ardor and good spirits are infectious, and the reader is as little wearied as he himself appears to have been by his long and devious tramps over the hills, through the swamps, and amid the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... are affecting adversely the Negro's status as a citizen, and are contributing by their collateral pressure to force him into a sort of political and industrial blind alley of our American civilization. The Southern propaganda against the Negro is advancing apace in the North by many dark and devious ways and by many subtle and potent means. Northern capital and enterprise, which are exploiting the South industrially, assimilate very readily the Southern view of the Negro, who must be kept at the bottom of the white man's labor system ...
— The Ballotless Victim of One-Party Governments - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 16 • Archibald H. Grimke
... serve to point a moral in this direction. I had placed a lamp behind the glass in the entry to indicate to the passer-by where relief from all curable infirmities was to be sought and found. Its brilliancy attracted the attention of a devious youth, who dashed his fist through the glass and upset my modest luminary. All he got by his vivacious assault was that he left portions of integument from his knuckles upon the glass, had a lame hand, was very easily identified, and had to pay the glazier's ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... be her ways, secure her tread Along the devious lines of life, From grace to grace successive led, A noble maiden, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... trial, served as a clog to restrain the servant, and prevent him from quitting the station, in which he had been placed, or leaving the work assigned him. It cannot be the state of one sanctified throughout; of one raised above temptation, either to stray into devious paths, or be slothful in ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... By devious paths she led them through chaparral and woodland. Sometimes they followed her over hills and again into gulches. The girl "spelled" Dingwell at riding the second horse, but whether in the saddle or on foot her movements showed such swift certainty that Dave was satisfied she ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... breaking up of the ice carries four hunters into involuntary wandering, amid the vast ice-pack which in winter fills the great Gulf of St. Lawrence. Their perils, the shifts to which they are driven to procure shelter, food, fire, medicine, and other necessaries, together with their devious drift and final rescue by a sealer, are used to give interest to what is believed to be a reliable description of the ice-fields of the Gulf, the habits of the seal, and life on board ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... manner that Patricia and Christopher arrived at the same cross roads of their lives, where the devious tracks might merge into one another, or, being thrust asunder again by some hedge of convention, continue by a lonely, painful and circuitous route towards ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... this is the case with the great majority of collectors. Sometimes a chance purchase may shape the entire course of a man's collecting, sometimes he is led to the subject to which he devotes his collecting energies by devious byways. Our book-hunter has a friend who began to collect old French books on Chivalry through a touch of influenza. When convalescent his doctor ordered him a sea-voyage. An hour after the advice was given he met a shipping friend, who offered him a cabin in a ship ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... of eternity, I turn for a last look landward over the course by which I came. There are twenty years of footprints fairly distinct, the impressions of bleeding feet. They lead through poverty and pain, devious and unsure, as of one ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... preparatory blast of cowhorn, emit his Hoeret ihr Herren und lasset's Euch sagen; in other words, tell the Universe, which so often forgets that fact, what o'clock it really is. Not unfrequently the Germans have been blamed for an unprofitable diligence; as if they struck into devious courses, where nothing was to be had but the toil of a rough journey; as if, forsaking the gold-mines of finance and that political slaughter of fat oxen whereby a man himself grows fat, they were apt to run goose-hunting into ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... epigrammatic wisdom (which Dunckley had just heard from the lips of a poet who had succeeded in writing both an American and an English publishing house into bankruptcy) while the various members of the group pursued their trains of thought along the devious routes of ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... stood against the charge of the Tenth Legion, and first heard, sounding on their bronze, the arms of Caesar. Here the river was forded; here the little men of the South went up in formation; here the barbarian broke and took his way, as the opposing General has recorded, through devious woodland paths, scattering in the pursuit; here began ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... contumaciously disobedient to the Holy See, or to their lawful monarch, he being in the communion of the Church and at peace with the said Holy See. If, therefore,—to come to that point at which my incapacity, through the devious windings of my own simplicity, has been tending, but with halting steps, from the moment that your Majesty deigned ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... flower-gardens and wreathed with vines, or the elegant mansions of stone and slate, that form the homes of foreign residents; natives in filthy garb, or no garb at all, prowl about the dwellings or worm their devious way among the costly equipages of Europeans; orchards and vineyards are planted under the very shadow of forests where roam in all their savage freedom herds of wild cattle and their wilder masters; and out from the rocks and boulders of the most rugged spots rise clusters of the graceful ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... to the south-east with moderate winds and fine weather, captured, at the end of that time, a large American ship, which had made a devious course from the French coast, in hopes of avoiding our cruisers; she was about four hundred tons, deeply laden, and bound to Laguira, with a valuable cargo. The captain sent for me, and told me that if I chose to take charge of her, ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... will feel it, and the feeling will be unpleasant. Let the intending novel-writer, if he doubt this, read one of Bulwer's novels,—in which there is very much to charm,—and then ask himself whether he has not been offended by devious conversations. ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... colonization. An ingenious fraud, suggested by a combination of these two laws, forms the basis of plot for "Dead Souls." The hero, Tchitchikoff, is an official who has struggled up, cleverly but not too honestly, through the devious ways of bribe-taking, extortion, and not infrequent detection and disgrace, to a snug berth in the customs service, from which he has been ejected under conditions which render further upward flight quite out of the question. In this dilemma, he hits upon the ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... They had counted on the evacuation of the fort, and seem to have considered that they held a pledge from Seward, who was now Secretary of State, and whose conduct in the matter seems certainly to have been somewhat devious, to that effect. The Stars and Stripes waving in their own harbour in defiance of their Edict of Secession seemed to them and to all their people a daily affront. Now that the President had intimated in the clearest possible fashion that he intended it to be permanent, they and all ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... the perilous paths and the devious ways of brute consciousness toward a more or less perfect perception of that blissful state which the Illumined have sought to describe, each individual has come to his present state; and it is only by virtue ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... a long corridor. It was attired in a flowing dressing-gown of crimson silk, with magnificent Turkish slippers, and carried a hand candlestick much off the perpendicular, as it swayed up the passage in a somewhat devious course. When it caught sight of me, it extended both its arms, regardless of the melted wax with which such a manoeuvre bedaubed the wall, and prepared, with many endearing and complimentary expressions, to bar my ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... unaccustomed to the country would probably have considered the devious march that they already had made arduous enough, but they had, at least for the most part, followed the valleys and crossed only a few low divides, and it was evident now that their way led close up to the eternal snow. There was a rock scarp in front of them, up part ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... the skilful pilotage of old Doull and his companion Eagleshay, wound her devious way among the shoals and reefs which guarded the entrance to the bay. Many of the ladies were collected on deck—Edda was one of them; she eagerly watched every movement of the young commander of the ship, as he stood in the weather rigging, or sprang on to the hammock nettings that he might ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... margin of the lake for about six English miles, through a devious and beautifully variegated path, until we attained a sort of Highland farm, or assembly of hamlets, near the head of that fine sheet of water, called, if I mistake not, Lediart, or some such name. Here a numerous party of MacGregor's men were stationed in order ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... them by the hazel bush, And plait their garlands fair; Nor dream they sit upon the grave That holds the bones of Marmion brave. When thou shalt find the little hill, With thy heart commune, and be still. If ever, in temptation strong, Thou left'st the right path for the wrong; If every devious step, thus trod, Still led thee further from the road; Dread thou to speak presumptuous doom On noble Marmion's lowly tomb; But say, "He died a gallant knight, With sword in hand, for ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... which he was wise, both from the moral and prudential points of view, because the truth about the situation could not be hidden any longer from the acute mind of Jimmy Grayson. He concealed nothing, he showed that he was the leader of the conspiracy, and he described their devious attempts, with their relative ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... Scripture, as promises from God. Only so far as an articulate divine word carries my faith has my faith the right to go. In the crooked alleys of Venice there is a thin thread of red stone, inlaid in the pavement or wall, which guides through all the devious turnings to the Piazza, in the centre, where the great church stands. As long as we have the red line of promise on our path, faith may follow it and will come to the Temple. Where the line stops it is presumption, and not faith, that takes ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... refugees dispersed in small bands, taking various and devious routes back to their old station in front of Harlem. Many was the sufferer, in cattle, furniture, and person, that was created by this rout; for the dispersion of a troop of Cowboys was only ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... arms were hidden and francs-tireurs sheltered there, and they had swooped down on it and held it hard and fast. Some were told off to search the chapel; some to ransack the dwellings; some to seize such food and bring such cattle as there might be left; some to seek out the devious paths that crossed and recrossed the fields; and yet there remained in the little street hundreds of armed men, force enough to awe a citadel or ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... glamour of romance was like a golden mist over all the scene, irradiating each leaf and flower, softening the bird-calls to fairy flutings, draping the nakedness of distant rugged peaks, bearing gently the purling of the limpid brook along which the path ran in devious complacence. Often, indeed, the lovers' way led them into the shallows, through which their bare feet splashed unconcerned. The occasional prismatic flash of a leaping trout in the deeper pools caught their eyes. So, presently, the girl was moved to speak—with visible effort, ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... river bank. His absence on this Monday afternoon gave rise, therefore, to no surprise, but when his little shop remained closed on Tuesday, his neighbours began to wonder. Peter Lamb wandering by rather more drunken than on Monday, stood a while looking at the shut door, then went on his devious way, thinking of the fierce eyes and the curse. Next came Swallow for his daily shave. He knocked at the door and tried to enter. It was locked. He heard no answer to his louder knock. He at once suspected that his prey had escaped ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... below St. Louis, the Kaskaskia joins it, after a devious course of 400 miles. In 37 deg. north latitude, the Ohio pours in its tribute, called by the early French explorers, "La Belle Riviere," the beautiful river. A little below 34 deg., the White river enters after a course of more than 1,000 miles. Thirty miles below that, the Arkansas, ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... likely to cover himself with a mantle of reserve and dissimulation. If he has a longing to wander in untrodden and devious paths, he is disposed resolutely to suppress his desire and to go in the beaten track. If Smith, in a savage state, would certainly conduct himself in a wholly original manner, in a social condition he yields to an inevitable apprehension that Jones will think ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... By devious turnings and breath-taking climbs, the trail finally reached the top at the only point for miles, where it was possible for a horseman to pass ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... that through all his rebellions he has been surrounded by the power and goodness of God, who has led him through all his devious paths, and the feeling comes that the same protecting influence will surround him till doubt is ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... be resolved—the poem, in most hands, would have closed. But Browning was too ingrained a believer in the "oblique" methods of Art to acquiesce in so simple and direct a conclusion; he loved to let truth struggle through devious and unlikely channels to the heart instead of missing its aim by being formally proclaimed or announced. Hence we are hurried from the austere solitary meditation of the aged Pope to the condemned cell of Guido, and have opened ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... embarrassed and obscure paths, starting forward or checking my pace, according as my wayward meditations governed me. Shall I describe my thoughts? Impossible! It was certainly a temporary loss of reason; nothing less than madness could lead into such devious tracks, drag me down to so hopeless, helpless, panicful a depth, and drag me down so suddenly; lay waste, as at a signal, all my flourishing structures, and reduce them in a moment to a scene of confusion ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... worker—some unethical promoter willing to stoop to devious methods—might pass at any moment and grasp the possibilities, have Miss Francis signed up before I'd even got the deal straight in my mind. How could he miss, seeing this lawn? Splendid, magnificent, beautiful. No one would ever call this ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... became difficult again. Very large floes of six- months-old ice lay close together. Some of these floes presented a square mile of unbroken surface, and among them were patches of thin ice and several floes of heavy old ice. Many bergs were in sight, and the course became devious. The ship was blocked at one point by a wedge-shaped piece of floe, but we put the ice-anchor through it, towed it astern, and proceeded through the gap. Steering under these conditions required muscle as well as nerve. There was a ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... and limped on, or were carried by loyal comrades who would not leave a pal in the lurch. Others who lost their way or lay down in sheer exhaustion, cursing the Germans and not caring if they came, straggled back later—weeks later—by devious routes to Rouen or Paris, after a wandering life in French villages, where the peasants fed them and nursed them so that they were in no hurry to leave. It was the time when the temptation to desert ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... now follow the devious steps of the strange being who has grown into the hero of this story. He had left his apartment at daybreak long before his servant was up, with his knapsack, and a small portmanteau, into which he had thrust—besides such additional articles of dress as he thought he might possibly require, ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... would arrive at the Fairy Land must face the Phantoms. Betimes, I set myself to the task of investigating the motley world to which our progress in humanity—has attained, caring little what misrepresentation I incurred, what hostility I provoked, in searching through a devious labyrinth for ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Alas! we young, weak women, try in vain to obstruct the gurgling of the bosom; for I perceive that even I am not proof against the arrows of the god Diana. My heart has thrilled, my dearest friend, ever since you departed, yester eve, with a devious and intrinsic sensation of voluminous delight. The feelings cannot be concealed, but must be impressed in words; or, as the great Milton says, in his Bucoliks, the o'er-fraught heart would break! Love, my dear Mr. Verty, is contiguous—you cannot ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... Saint Peter at Heav'ns Wicket seems To wait them with his Keys, and now at foot Of Heav'ns ascent they lift thir Feet, when loe A violent cross wind from either Coast Blows them transverse ten thousand Leagues awry Into the devious Air; then might ye see Cowles, Hoods and Habits with thir wearers tost 490 And flutterd into Raggs, then Reliques, Beads, Indulgences, Dispenses, Pardons, Bulls, The sport of Winds: all these upwhirld ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... near home now, after many devious wanderings, and turned up John Street. As he thrust his latch-key in the lock, another mortifying reflection struck ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson |
