"Swerve" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... falter, your course not alter By golden apples, till victory's won! The sword's sharp clangour, the dart's shrill anger, Swerve not ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... never taken a fence, and she knew that Pat never had. She must get control of herself again. And this she did. Stiffening in the stirrups, she gripped a single rein in both hands and pulled with all her strength. But she could not swerve the horse. On he plunged for the obstruction, evidently not seeing it. ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... walked up the path. She thought he matched his surroundings as he disappeared at a trot round the corner of the church. Then from behind her came the hoot of a motor-horn, and she glanced back to see a closed car that glittered at every angle swoop through the open gates and swerve round to the churchyard. She wanted to stop and see its occupants alight, but decorum prompted her to pass on, and she entered the church, which smelt of the mould of ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... next day, as the regiment was passing through a thick wood, and Ronald was riding with Captain Campbell behind his troop, which happened to be in the rear in the regiment, two shots were fired from among the trees. The first struck Ronald's horse in the neck, causing him to swerve sharply round, a movement which saved his rider's life, for the second shot, which was fired almost instantly after the first, grazed his body and passed between him and ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... road took a quick swerve to the right, and lo, a narrow glen leading apparently into the ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... a high trotter with slim legs, just such a horse as a cocotte would care to own, recovered from its swerve and resumed its proper place with dancing steps, graceful pawings executed on the same spot without advancing. Jansoulet let fall his portfolio, and as though he had dropped with it all his gravity, his prestige as a public man, he ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... fidelity, not only to the possible, but to the probable and ordinary course of man's experience. The former, while as a work of art it must rigidly subject itself to laws and while it sins unpardonably so far as it may swerve aside from the truth of the human heart, has fairly a right to present that truth under circumstances to a great extent of the author's own choosing or creation. If he think fit, also, he may so manage his atmospherical medium as to bring out or mellow the lights and deepen and enrich the shadows ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... not, for otherwise Grey would never have reached us alive. We cried to him to swerve, and the sound of our voices brought up that last flicker of hope which waits till the end in every man. He seemed actually to gain a yard, and now he was near enough for us to see his white face and staring eyes. Then he stumbled, and the man with the knife was almost on him. But he ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... pursuing, only a little less appalling, was now not my only source of peril. Target could no more be guided nor stopped than could the forest fire. The trail grew more winding and overhung more thickly by pine branches. The horse did not swerve an inch for tree or thicket, but ran as if free, and the saving of my life began to be a matter of dodging. Once a crashing blow from a branch almost knocked me from the saddle. The wind in my ears half drowned the roar behind me. With hands twisted in Target's mane I bent ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... teacher, this travelling. I have been quite unsphered since I have been here, in various ways, and have discovered how good every man's business is and how wide his horizon. There is a shabby Americanism which prowls proselyting through Europe, defying its spirit or its beauty or its difference to swerve it from what it calls its patriotism. Because America is contented and tolerably peaceful with a Republic, it prophesies that Europe shall see no happy days until all kings are prostrated; and belches ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... and I have found among them many whom nothing on earth could make to swerve from the truth; do what you please, you could never frighten or bribe them into a deliberate falsehood. The second are those who will not hesitate to tell a lie when they have a motive for it, and are not restrained by an oath. In taking an oath they are afraid ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... have been great, from the number of wine-houses on the Rock: but such was the desire of these brave fellows to be avenged for the loss of the Hannibal, that they would not allow any temptation to induce them to swerve from the duty they ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... and glide with my peering head, Or swerve at a puff of smoke, Who watcheth my wings on the wind outspread, Here—gone—with an instant stroke? Who toucheth the glory of life I feel As I buffet this great glad gale, Spire and spire to the cloud-world, wheel, Loosen my wings and sail? For I am the hawk, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... shifting his sapling whip so as to bring the club end of it uppermost. The next instant he aimed a furious blow at his adversary's horse. The quick eye and hand of the rider disappointed that with a sudden swerve. In another moment and Ellen hardly saw how, it was so quick John had dismounted, taken Mr. Saunders by the collar, and hurled him quite over into the gulley at the side of the road, where he lay at full length ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... was also attached to and greatly revered my Uncle Jos; he was silent and reserved, so as to be a rather awful man; but he sometimes talked openly with me. He was the very type of an upright man, with the clearest judgment. I do not believe that any power on earth could have made him swerve an inch from what he considered the right course. I used to apply to him in my mind the well-known ode of Horace, now forgotten by me, in which the words "nec vultus tyranni, etc.," ...
— The Autobiography of Charles Darwin - From The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin • Charles Darwin
... a wealth that far surpasses all The houses and stocks and gold, That ever was on the market placed, To be by a hireling sold; 'Tis the wealth of manhood, noble, free, And an independent mind That scorns to swerve from justice and truth, But faithfully ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... without coming in contact with them. There were too many to permit any such performance, but the wall was not impenetrable. Like an arrow from the bow sped the animal, and, seeing the point toward which he was aiming, the Apaches endeavored to close the gap. The equine fugitive did not swerve in the least, and it looked as if he was plunging to ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... blacksmiths and teamsters do not trip in their speech; it is a shower of bullets. It is Cambridge men who correct themselves, and begin again at every half-sentence, and, moreover, will pun, and refine too much, and swerve from the matter to the expression. Montaigne talks with shrewdness, knows the world, and books, and himself, and uses the positive degree; never shrieks, or protests, or prays; no weakness, no convulsion, no superlative; does ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... work of hands unknown of: statelier, afar and near, Rise around it the heights that bound our landward gaze from the seaboard here; Downs that swerve and aspire, in curve and change of heights that the ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... Then plunging back with sudden bound, Headed by one black mighty steed, Who seem'd the patriarch of his breed, Without a single speck or hair Of white upon his shaggy hide; They snort, they foam, neigh, swerve aside. And backward to the forest fly, By instinct, from a human eye. They left me there to my despair, Link'd to the dead and stiffening wretch, Whose lifeless limbs beneath me stretch, Believed from that unwonted weight, ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... they said: "O look, our hero, wont to ride Leading a host in perfect pride— Now Lakshman, sole of all his friends, With Sita on his steps attends. Though he has known the sweets of power, And poured his gifts in liberal shower, From duty's path he will not swerve, But, still his father's truth preserve. And she whose form so soft and fair Was veiled from spirits of the air, Now walks unsheltered from the day, Seen by the crowds who throng the way. Ah, for that gently-nurtured form! How will it fade with sun and storm! How will the rain, the cold, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... subjects his use of these romantic materials—the unusual, the improbable, and the supernatural—to only one touchstone. He is willing to avail himself of these, so long as he does not, in his own phrase, "swerve aside from the truth of the ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... windy morn; Now shaking hands with him, now him, of those That stood the nearest—now addressed to speech— Who spoke few words and pithy, such as closed Welcome, farewell, and welcome for the year To follow: a shout rose again, and made The long line of the approaching rookery swerve From the elms, and shook the branches of the deer From slope to slope through distant ferns, and rang Beyond the bourn of sunset; O, a shout More joyful than the city-roar that hails Premier or king! Why should not these ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... answered by what he has done ever since the right to vote was conferred upon him by the adoption of the war amendments to the Federal Constitution. Neither threats, fire, rope, nor bullet has been powerful enough to swerve him from pursuing the course made mandatory by his self interests. He may have pursued this course by the intricate process of reasoning employed by educated men, or of intuition employed by the unlettered. The fact remains that his attitude has been one of ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... you can swerve me from my purpose. We are best apart. Your life will pass quietly and happily in some grateful retreat, all the happier for this storm that now threatens your peace. You will have nothing to regret. The ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... will be as certain as it will be beneficient. The door of opportunity stands ajar, inviting you to enter and share the blessings that reward the industrious and reap the honors that crown the lives of those whose stewardship has been faithfully kept. May no temptation ever swerve you from loyalty to the cause which your alma mater represents. Too often the enemies of industrial freedom capture with the blandishments of vanity, the ...
— The Stewardship of the Soil - Baccalaureate Address • John Henry Worst
... once, when she was a romping child. He was thinking of her unselfishness, her sturdy sincerity, her undaunted courage. Now he repeated it, thinking of her as this letter revealed her, a white-souled vestal maiden who took the stars as a symbol of her duty, and who would not swerve a hair's-breadth from the orbit which she thought ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... I took careful aim between its eyes; my right fingers closed firmly and evenly upon the small of the stock, drawing back my trigger-finger by the muscular action of the hand. The bullet could not fail to hit its mark! I held my breath lest I swerve the muzzle a hair by my breathing. I was as steady and cool as I ever had been upon a target-range, and I had the full consciousness of a perfect hit in anticipation; I knew that I could not miss. And then, as the bear surged forward toward me, the hammer ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... enter with God peace and alliance, Promising that they would him honour, fear, and serve: All kind of people were bound in those covenants, That from his law they should never swerve; For God ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... conditions, and success will assuredly not fail you. Vaez and A. Royer will be of great assistance to you both for the translation and rearrangement of "Rienzi" and for the design of your new work. Associate and concur with them strictly for the realization of that plan from which you must not swerve:— ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... his official duties, this truly great man had the strength to resist all temptations to swerve from the path of right; if, when duty was at stake, he was as rigid as iron, in private life he was as unassuming as a child, and kind and gentle even ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... said, "Mr Simpson is a natural base-ball pitcher, he has an acquired swerve at bandy, and he is a lepidopterist of considerable charm. But he can't ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... nothing can be done to ameliorate this lamentable position; but I feel that, in a state of society so diseased, we require time and management, not to lose in a day the labour and fruit of many years. To know how to proceed, and never to swerve from that path, to make a step towards the desired end whenever it can be made, and never to incur the necessity of retreat,—this course appears to me to be one of the necessities of the time in which I have arrived ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the great retreat; to General Gallieni the undying honour of the rapid perception, the quick decision, which flung General Maunoury, with the 6th Army, on Von Kluck's flank and rear, at the first hint of the German general's swerve to the southeast; to General Maunoury himself, and his splendid troops, the credit of the battle proper, across the broad harvest fields of the Ourcq plateau. But the advance of the British troops from the south of the Marne, on the heels of Von Kluck, was in ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... such a matter?—This is the doubt that is now perplexing all men. Here is the lord of men sprung from the god of virtue, holding fast to a righteous path, strictly truthful and of a liberal heart. This son of Pritha would give up his kingdom and his pleasure but would not swerve from the righteous path, in order to thrive. How is it that Bhishma and Kripa and the Brahmana Drona and the aged king, the senior member of the house, are living happily, after having banished the sons of Pritha? Fie upon the vicious-minded ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... into what a predicament your precious advice has brought me; how much more practical my own arrangement was! The handkerchief looked inelegant, if you like, but it would have prevented me this trouble. Why did I swerve from my principles? Why was I led astray by other ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... faithless, faithful only he Among innumerable false, unmov'd, Unshaken, unseduc'd, unterrified; His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal. Nor number, nor example with him wrought To swerve from truth, or change his ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... bravery, or for decorating a guest chamber for the ceremony. But Lady Carnegie was not to be balked for trifles. Nanny Swinton stitched night and day, with salt tears from aged eyes moistening her thread; and Nelly did not swerve from her compact, but acted mechanically with the others as she was told. With a strange pallor on the olive of her cheek, and swollen, burning lids, drooping over sunk violent lines beneath the ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... soonest. The guns had done their work well. The trenches were blown to irrecognizable pits dotted with dead. The barbed wire had been cut like so much twine. Starting from the Rue Tilleloy the Lincolns and the Berkshires were off the mark first, with orders to swerve to right and left respectively as soon as they had captured the first line of trenches, in order to let the Royal Irish Rifles and the Rifle Brigade through to the village. The Germans left alive in the trenches, half demented with fright, surrounded by a welter ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... John turned the car round and drove back to the bend. The road was narrow, but there was room for two vehicles to pass, provided that both kept well to the proper side. John, however, took the middle and did not swerve much when a dazzling beam swept round the curve. He blew his horn; there was an answering shriek from an electric hooter, and then a savage shout. John, who was near the left side now, but not so close as he ought to have been, freed the clutch and used the brake, and the other car, ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... nor example with him wrought To swerve from truth or change his constant mind, Though single. From amidst them forth he passed, Long way through hostile scorn, which he sustained Superior, nor of violence feared aught: And with retorted scorn his back he turned On those proud towers to ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... sues For life renewed unto her dying lord, Admetus; and I also pray this prayer." "Then cease, for when hath Fate been moved by prayer?" "But strength and upright heart should serve with you." "I ask ye not forever to forbear, But spare a while,—a moment unto us, A lifetime unto men." "The Fates swerve not For supplications, like the pliant gods. Have they not willed a life's thread should be cut? With them the will is changeless as the deed. O men! ye have not learned in all the past, Desires are barren and tears yield no fruit. How long will ye besiege ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... to lunch before we had passed Abbeville, so, since we had breakfasted betimes, I furtively encouraged my brother-in-law to "put her along." His response was to overtake and pass a lorry upon the wrong side, drive an unsuspecting bicyclist into a ditch and swerve, like a drunken sea-gull, to avoid a dead fowl. As we were going over forty it was all over before we knew where we were, but the impression of impending death was vivid and lasting, and nearly a minute had elapsed before ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... no obstruction now, dear friends," resumed Mrs. Denison. "The long agony is over—the sad error corrected. The patience of hope, the fidelity of love, the martyr-spirit that could bear torture, yet not swerve from its integrity, are all to find their exceeding great reward. I did not look for it so soon. Far in advance of the present I saw the long road each had to travel, still stretching its weary length. But suddenly the pilgrimage has ended. ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... steps farther and suddenly a loud report was heard from the grove, a bullet sped through the air, and struck the oxen's yoke—happily without doing any damage, further than causing the usually quiet, steady-going beasts to swerve violently to one side—when fortunately a considerable heap of sand prevented the chariot's being overturned into the ditch beside the road. The sharp report and violent shock startled the sleeping travellers in the chariot, and the younger women shrieked ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... thing up the little valley, the hills echoing back its roar. The white road leaped up at them, gulping them in. A red steer, astray from some pasture, crossed the road far ahead of them, and Marion closed her eyes as the machine, with a sickening swerve, missed it by inches. The next instant she was pointing to the group of buildings squatting under the hill; and then she was out of the automobile, and running to Farrish at the door of the barn. His face confirmed ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... all-important part of the Bible; and the private life of the clergy was corrupt and odious to the Christian conscience. "What wonder that the piety of the people suffered a similar decline? Let the ministry be steadfast, and the masses will never swerve." The result in the present case was, that the latter gradually became imbued with the same impiety that they had learned, to ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... mostly between islands, and in continuous shelter. Sometimes the narrows are not wider than the Thames at Oxford; then you steam out into what seems to be a land-locked expanse of water, with precipitous mountain rocks ahead. By and by you swerve to right or left, and a totally different picture is presented. And so it is, hour after hour, and day after day. For many a league north of Bergen the mountains and island rocks are bare of vegetation—gloomy masses of grey and brown that frown upon ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... the other, and admired and respected that which was most true and noble. The purity, simplicity and high-minded honor which distinguished the younger, had its effect on the elder, even while he smiled at the inflexibility which would not swerve one hair's breadth from the line of right. The story is often told, how, when this young man's conscience stood bolt upright in the way of what was deemed a desirable arrangement, Stevens one day exclaimed: "It don't do, Pennypacker, ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... the system I had adopted, rather than deprive herself of my society, which would have been the consequence had I not been left at liberty to follow the dictates of my own sense of propriety in a course from which I was resolved that even Her Majesty's displeasure should not make me swerve. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... pale as death. She had been praying all the afternoon that the bitterness of this cup might not be pressed to her lips. She now saw that the issue was joined. She had vowed that not even her love for the man dearest to her should swerve her from her course. The abyss was under her feet, and she longed to draw back. She heard the voice of duty in the tones of Mrs. Frankland saying: "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... in real pain, in sincere compassion; for his nature, wily, deceitful, perfidious though it was, had cruelty only so far as was necessary to the unrelenting execution of his schemes. No pity could swerve him from a purpose; but he had enough of the man within him to feel pity not the less, even for his own victim! At length Maltravers lifted his head, and waved his ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the way in which you have on several occasions behaved towards those who have fallen into your power. I, with the sentiments I entertain, can only wish that you served a better cause, at the same time that I would not seek to induce you, as an officer bearing his Majesty's commission, to swerve from ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... wrong, and none sublimely right. But as there are heights of which the achievement is unattempted, there are abysses to which fall is barred; neither accident nor temptation will make any of the principal personages swerve from an adopted resolution, or violate an accepted principle of honour; people are expected as a matter of course to speak with propriety on occasion, and to wait with patience when they are bid: those who do wrong, admit it; those who do right don't boast of it; everybody knows ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... great family, performs his necessary portion of the general labour—who executes the unavoidable task assigned to him. All bodies act according to laws, inherent in their peculiar essence, without the capability to swerve, even for a single instant, from those according to which Nature herself acts. This is the central power, to which all other powers, essences, and energies, are submitted: she regulates the motions of beings, by the necessity of her own peculiar essence: she makes them concur by various ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... Ab who had made her swerve. Some new alarm had come to her. She was about to reach and, as Ab supposed, pass one of the inletting paths entering almost at right angles from the left. She did not pass it. She leaped into it in evident terror and then, breaking out from the wood on the right, came another ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... extent that the horse bends inward, must the body lean in that direction. If a horse shy at any object, and either turn completely and suddenly round, or run on one side only, the body should, if possible, keep time with his movements, and adapt itself so as to turn or swerve with him; otherwise, the balance will be lost, and the rider be in danger of falling, on the side from which the animal starts. In no case, let it be remembered, should the rider endeavour to assist herself in preserving her balance, by pulling ...
— The Young Lady's Equestrian Manual • Anonymous
... all his clear insight into this Universe, the message of Heaven through him, which he could not suppress, but was inspired and compelled to utter in this world by such methods as he had. There for him lay the first commandment; this is what it would have been the unforgivable sin to swerve from and desert: the treason of treasons for him, it were there; compared with which all ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... her toward the cut-bank, and she was edging them off and was almost past, when they came to a place where the bank bit in, and her iron-mouthed brute wouldn't swerve, but went pounding on, broke through, plunged; she couldn't spring free because of Joe, and pitched headlong over the bank, while the cattle went thundering past. I flung myself off Jingo and slid down somehow into the sand, thirty feet below. Here was Joe safe enough, but the bronco ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... taken a backward step, as if to turn in another direction. But it was too late now. Both met in the narrow path. Not to touch her, he drew up against the bank, with a side swerve like a skittish horse, looking at her in a ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... would be unnoticed if perpetrated by one of them. Nature alone did not favor them Imbecile and immoral minds fell to the lot of the aristocrat as often as to the lowly born. Nature's laws are inflexible and swerve not for any human wish. They outraged them by the admixture of kindred blood, and degeneracy was often the result. A people should always have for their chief ruler the highest and noblest intellect ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... from the strait-jacket, and with the speed of a panther had ascended the stairs. He saw the monster crashing through the last remaining barrier, and without hesitation he fired at the thing as he closed in. His one thought was to delay it or make it swerve in its course momentarily, with the hope that by some chance Eva might have time to escape. Could he only accomplish this, he thought his mission successful, regardless of the outcome as far ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... alarmed at this unusual sight, felt an impulse to slow, to swerve, to test the apparition in some way; but second thought convinced him it must ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... headed straight for the hole, the Boy had gathered himself for a clear jump to the right, but the sled's sudden swerve to the left broke his angle sharply. He was flung forward on the new impetus, spun over the smooth surface, swept across the verge and under the cloud, clutching wildly at the ragged edge of ice ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... leave of Confucius to become commandant of Hsin-yang (H), when the master said to him, 'In dealing with your subordinates, there is nothing like impartiality; and when wealth comes in your way, there is nothing like moderation. Hold fast these two things, and do not swerve from them. To conceal men's excellence is to obscure the worthy; and to proclaim people's wickedness is the part of a mean man. To speak evil of those whom you have not sought the opportunity to instruct is not the way of friendship and harmony.' Subsequently Tsze-kung was ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... sister. He would rather, if possible, have kept this back, so much did his honourable feeling recoil from what had the air of slander and mischief-making; but he regarded firmness on his uncle's part as the only chance for Guy or for his cousin, and was resolved not to let him swerve from ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... stampeded by the vivid lightning and sharp peals of thunder, come wildly charging down the mountain trail, threatening to run quite over me in their mad career. Pulling my six-shooter, I fire a couple of shots in the air to attract their attention, when they rapidly swerve to the left, and go tearing frantically over the rolling hills on their wild flight to ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... If I be false, or swerve a hair from truth, When time is old and hath forgot itself, When waterdrops have worn the stones of Troy, And blind oblivion swallow'd cities up, And mighty states characterless are grated To dusty nothing—yet let memory From false ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... the spirital also. The dede proeveth it is so, And hath do many day er this, Thurgh venym which that medled is In holy cherche of erthly thing: For Crist himself makth knowleching 860 That noman may togedre serve God and the world, bot if he swerve Froward that on and stonde unstable; And Cristes word may noght be fable. The thing so open is at ije, It nedeth noght to specefie Or speke oght more in this matiere; Bot in this wise a man mai lere Hou that the world is gon aboute, The which welnyh is ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... Hoste tho,* *then "Now such a wife I pray God keep me fro'. Lo, suche sleightes and subtilities In women be; for aye as busy as bees Are they us silly men for to deceive, And from the soothe* will they ever weive,** *truth **swerve, depart As this Merchante's tale it proveth well. But natheless, as true as any steel, I have a wife, though that she poore be; But of her tongue a labbing* shrew is she; *chattering And yet* she hath a heap of vices mo'. *moreover Thereof *no force;* let all such thinges go. *no matter* ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... shores in the disguise of promoters of peace and industry, a revolution of the disaffected among ourselves would be attempted. Many were the dissuasions resorted to for the purpose of checking the zeal of the committee, and causing the court to swerve from its patronage of so bold a measure! The court, the government, the committee, and the leading men in the mercantile interests of the metropolis and the provinces, pursued the even tenor of their way, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the river and safety was a remarkable explosion of energy. Out of the corner of his reddening eye, as he gained swift impetus after his swerve, he saw the cowpony wheel, falter, and then burst across in pursuit to close the gap. He heeled over to the left, and found a mysterious source of energy within him that enabled his speed to be increased, until, at ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... Your chance was once as mine is now, To keep this hold against your will, And then you sware you well know how, Though now you swerve, I know how ill. But thus this world his course doth pass, The priest forgets a clerk he was, And you that have cried justice still, And now have justice at your will, Wrest justice wrong ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... so compact was the column, so rigid the vigilance of the file-closers, that at the rate of forty miles an hour a car could race the length of the column and need not for a single horse or man once swerve from its course. ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... that still remained was how to swerve the headlong hunt to the true trail toward the only goal where the world's ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... in a modified degree, the action is the same, and in a swell without wind the oscillations are jerky and short, for they are not softened by the sails then merely hanging. But if a boat is staunch and strong, and the deck is tight, and she has plenty of keel, so as not to swerve round right and left, but to preserve a general average direction towards the wind, then she may lie-to in a very stiff gale and high sea with a wonderfully gentle motion. Her head then is slightly off the sea, and there is but little rolling. The sails are so set that ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... in all you write, and swerve not from it in your loftiest flight. The smoothest verse and the exactest sense displease us, if ill English give offence: a barbarous phrase no reader can approve; nor bombast, noise, or affectation love. In short, without pure language, what you write ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... cant about duty and all the rest of it. We may sympathise with you—personally, I admire the attitude you have taken, though perhaps I shouldn't say it—but our own feelings do not matter the toss of a button. Nothing you can do or say will swerve us from what we judge to be ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... conscience. He warmed the most torpid hearts by the fervor of his love, and encouraged the most hopeless by his fiery zeal and heroic faith. As a promoter of monasticism, he clashed with the interests of an enfeebled clergy and a corrupt laity. Nothing could swerve him from his course. False monks might draw terrible rebukes from him, but the conviction that the soul could be delivered from captivity to the body only by mortification remained unshaken. He induced men to break the fetters of society that they might, under the more favorable ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... irradiate o'er my brow, Wav'd its rich plumes in gleaming flow, Did not so deep a thrill impart, So soften, so dilate my heart! No praise had touch'd me, as it fell, Like his, because I saw full well, Honour and sweetness orb'd did lie Within the circlet of his eye! Integrity which could not swerve, A judgment of that purer nerve, Fearing itself, and only bound By truth and love to all around: Which dared not feign, and scorn'd to vaunt, Nor interest led, nor power could daunt; Acting as if it mov'd alone In sight ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... you see?" With a feeble dash of spirit, Jenny had attempted tactical flight. The sense of it made her feel as she had done, as a little girl, in playing touch; when, with a swerve, she had striven to elude the pursuer. So tense were her nerves on such occasions that she turned what is called "goosey" with the feel of the ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... will there quicken within our soul the sense of the infinite, which is of the life-blood of virtue. What is an act of virtue that we should expect such mighty reward? It is within ourselves that reward must be found, for the law of gravitation will not swerve. They only who know not what goodness is are ever clamouring for the wage of goodness. Above all, let us never forget that an act of goodness is of itself always an act of happiness. It is the flower of a long inner life of joy ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... miles of Alton on the opposite side of the river, the particular spot to be agreed on by you. Any preliminary details coming within the above rules you are at liberty to make at your discretion, but you are in no case to swerve from these rules or to ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... as if set by a compass; but the longer limb of the V would curve and swerve sinuously from time to time as the weaker or less experienced members of the flock wavered in their alignment. Flat, low-lying forests, and lonely meres, and rough, isolated farms sped past below the rushing voyagers,—then a black head-land, ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... advice, and that he would communicate all his designs to them in the most unreserved manner. This resolution, had he adhered to it, would have averted many years of blood and mourning. But "in very few days," says Clarendon, "he did fatally swerve from it." ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the witness in hand, but shrewd and able as they were they utterly failed to make her swerve even a hair's breadth from her evidence. She returned to her place beside Mme. de Rancogne, confident that she had done her duty and uttered not a single syllable ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... our ears, and my father, looking forth into the darkness, cries: "My son, my son, fly; they draw near. I espy the gleaming shields and the flicker of brass." At this, in my flurry and confusion, some hostile god bereft me of my senses. For while I plunge down byways, and swerve from where the familiar streets ran, Creuesa, alas! whether, torn by fate from her unhappy husband, she stood still, or did she mistake the way, or sink down outwearied? I know not; and never again was she given back to our eyes; nor did I turn to look for my lost one, or cast ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... poor lads are reaping, Busy every one. Curates mind the parish, Sweepers mind the Court, We'll away to Snowdon For our ten days' sport, Fish the August evening Till the eve is past, Whoop like boys at pounders Fairly played and grassed. When they cease to dimple, Lunge, and swerve, and leap, Then up over Siabod Choose our nest, and sleep. Up a thousand feet, Tom, Round the lion's head, Find soft stones to leeward And make up our bed. Bat our bread and bacon, Smoke the pipe of peace, And, ere we be drowsy, Give our boots a grease. Homer's ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... Peru, offered, through his aides-de camps, Colonel Paroissien and Captain Spry, honours and estates to those who would further his views. Nor do we envy those who received those estates and honours; but having rejected these inducements to swerve from our allegiance, we may fairly claim the approbation of Government for providing the squadron of Chili with provisions and stores at Callao, out of monies in our hands justly due for the capture of the Esmeralda, ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... and followed the fortunes of the Republican party, by the mandate of which he was emancipated; even though in doing so he has suffered all the evils which a hostile opponent can invent to plague and swerve him from what he considers the path ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... the Americans finally returned to the quay, close to which the Arabella was moored. As they neared the place a great military automobile came tearing along, scattering pedestrians right and left, made a sudden swerve, caught a man who was not agile enough to escape and sent him spinning along the dock until he fell headlong, a ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... vows, I believe they will not make me swerve from equity. I shall exact neither service nor affection from my spouse. The value of these, and, indeed, not only the value, but the very existence, of the latter depends upon its spontaneity. A promise to love tends rather to loosen ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... said Ginger with a gravity befitting his theme. "Rather fast, with a fairly decent swerve. But he would not learn to give the reverse ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... protested, but she was utterly unable to swerve him a hair's breadth from his determination and purpose. So she was obliged to see him start off by himself on his useless and Quixotic errand. She knew that he would return disappointed, saddened, doubly depressed, and ill both ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... those dangerous, frenzied madcaps who are born without fear. The secret of the machine had been revealed to him in his recent transit, and he was silently determining to surpass himself. Precariously balanced, he descended the Square again, frowning hard, his teeth set, and actually managed to swerve into King Street. Constance, in the parlour, saw an incomprehensible winged thing fly past the window. The cousins Povey sounded an alarm and protest and ran in pursuit; for the gradient of King Street is, in the strict sense, steep. Half-way down King Street Dick ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... always inflamed with some woman or other, and he hovers about on the edge of desperate amours, anxious to fall head over ears into the sea of love and cast out an anchor of matrimony to hold him fast where he can swerve no more. Unfortunately he cannot forget himself enough to take the fatal plunge. With all his faults there is something very lovable about Florizel, and I should like to see him knocked into shape, though it would ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... tremendous rate, and the correspondent, half-running, swung in behind with the evident intention of taking the pace. Corliss, still in the dark, lifted his head and watched them go; but when he saw the pocket-miner swerve abruptly to the right and take the trail up Adams Creek, the light dawned upon him and he ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... happiness Went Mary, feeling not the air that laid Honours of gentle dew upon her head; Nor that the sun now loved with golden stare The marvellous behaviour of her hair, Bending with finer swerve from off her brow Than water which relents before a prow; Till in the shrinking darkness many a gleam Of ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... hopeless starve, She that was noble, wise, as fair and gent, Cast how she might their harmless lives preserve, Zeal was the spring whence flowed her hardiment, From maiden shame yet was she loth to swerve: Yet had her courage ta'en so sure a hold, That boldness, shamefaced; shame had ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... reached the end of it, when it entered the head of a stray puppy dog to pause in the act of crossing and sit down in the middle and hunt for fleas. To spare the abominable mongrel, Marigold made a sudden swerve. Of course the car skidded. It skidded all over the place, as if it were drunk, and, aided by Marigold, described a series of ghastly half-circles. At last he performed various convulsive feats of jugglery, with the result that the car, which was nosing steadily for the ditch, came to a stand-still. ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... condition that you will sacrifice to the gods." Arcadius replied, "How can you propose to me such a thing? Do you not know the Christians, or do you believe that the fear of death will ever make me swerve from my duty? Jesus Christ is my life, and death is my gain. Invent what torments you please; but know that nothing shall make me a traitor to my God." The governor, in a rage, paused to devise some unheard-of torment for ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... assuring liberty and equality to all, and not a peace which would leave our fetters unbroken. We regret that the Pope omitted to mention the Czechs in his peace offer although he mentioned the Poles. But we shall obtain our right without alien support. The Czechs will never swerve from their demand for an independent Slovak State with all the attributes of sovereignty. The Czechs are convinced that the question of Bohemia is too great to be solved in Vienna. It must be decided at ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... about her morning work. Her education was that of the soldier, who must know himself no more, whom no personal pain must swerve from the slightest minutiae of duty. So she was there, at her usual hour, dressed with the same cool neatness, her brown hair parted in satin bands, and only the colorless cheek and lip differing from the Mary ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... midges dance in myriads; a silver gleam, and the line spins out, and the fly falls just in the right place. It is growing dusk, but the fellow is an adept at quick, fine casting—I wonder what fly he has on—why, he's going to try downstream now? I hurry forward, and as I near him, I swerve to the left out of the way. S-s-s-s! a sudden sting in the lobe of my ear. Hey! I cry as I find I am caught; the tail fly is fast in it. A slight, grey-clad woman holding the rod lays it carefully down and comes ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... by which she was pretended to be ruined was supported in her emperors by a far slighter foundation. And in the common experience of good architecture, there is nothing more known than that buildings stand the firmer and the longer for their own weight, nor ever swerve through any other internal cause than that their materials are corruptible; but the people never die, nor, as a political body, are subject to any other corruption than that which derives from their government. Unless a man ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... brother, I'm a Britisher, A chip of heart of oak, That wouldn't warp or swerve or stir From what I thought or spoke; And you—a blunt and honest man, Straightforward, kind, and true, I tell you, brother Jonathan, That you're a ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... but William was beside her, whispered words of tenderness and hope were murmured in her ear, and how could she break the spell? how could she speak of the gathering storm? The commands of a stern father were upon her, and she knew his indomitable spirit would never swerve ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... surrounded by active friends, once more reared his crest, and seemed disposed, for a time, to put on the air of injured innocence. The Squire, however, with all his benevolence of heart, and his lurking weakness towards the prisoner, was too conscientious to swerve from the strict path of justice. There was abundant concurring testimony that made the proof of guilt incontrovertible, and Starlight Tom's ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... a liking for the most level and least cactus-covered stretches of ground. But the cowboy took a bee-line course for the white escarpment pointed out by the Yaqui; and nothing save deep washes and impassable patches of cactus or rocks made him swerve from it. He kept the broncho at a steady walk over the rougher places and at a swinging Indian canter over the hard and level ground. The sun grew hot and the wind began to blow. Dust clouds rolled along the blue horizon. Whirling columns ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... of snow, and threw it at the steeds, making them swerve more than ever towards the side of the hill. Then one of the animals slipped and stumbled. This caused them both to slow up, and Bert, seeing this, left his sled, rolling off, and letting it ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Snow Lodge • Laura Lee Hope
... with lines that never swerve from truth the history of the primeval world, the early days of Noah and his ark. They recall to us the old story of life and suffering, of deluge and salvation; on their crescent points hangs the eternal principle of the efficacy of sacrifice. They float with the moon-ark of Astarte ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... do, I obey official instructions," announced Bart. "Please do not degrade yourself and embarrass me, Colonel Harrington, by saying anything further on this score. I will not sell my honor, nor swerve a hair's breadth from a line of duty plain and clear. The package you refer to was legally purchased by the highest bidder, I hold it temporarily in trust for him. It is as safe and sacred with me as if it was the property of the First ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... I can't," replied Hempel. He would willingly have conjured up a dozen brothers to comfort Polly; but he could not swerve from the truth, even ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... cohesion is the first and dominating condition. It must be absolutely impossible for the horses to swerve either to right or left. Accurate dressing and the maintenance of the two ranks come only in the second place. Against Infantry or Artillery, on the other hand, the essential is that every horse should ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... and that, when the guides of the church do institute any ceremonies as necessary for edification, yet ecclesia liberum habet judicium approbandi aut reprobandi eas.(157) Nay, the canon law,(158) prohibiting to depart or swerve from the rules and discipline of the Roman church, yet excepteth discretionem justitiae and so permitteth to do otherwise than the church prescribeth, if it be done cum discretione justitiae. The schoolmen also give liberty to a private man, of proving the ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... fair test," Mr. Heatherbloom replied anyhow. His thoughts were keyed to a straining-point; his glance would swerve; he strove his best to control it. She was there—there—Shrouds and stays seemed to sing the words. He would have sworn he caught the flash of a ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... shouted I; and as I saw the canoe swerve to the right I again shouted to Alcides to steer straight in order to avoid the dangerous part ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... nearly so—within two hundred yards, or less—when all at once the leader was seen to swerve suddenly to the right, and head away from the water! What could this movement mean? On looking in the new direction, several hairy objects were perceived upon the ground. They were odd-looking objects, of a reddish-brown colour, and might have passed for a number of foxes lying asleep. But they ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid |
