"Devious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the garden, I took a pick and shovel; and thence, by devious paths among the magnolias, led my master to the entrance of the swamp. I walked first, carrying, as I was now in duty bound, the tools, and glancing continually behind me, lest we should be spied upon and followed. When we ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... perishing hope, and rather as a matter of form, upon the subject of cooking. To her surprise, and her vast delight, the King's face lighted at once! Ah, she had hunted him down at last, she thought; and she was right proud, too, of the devious shrewdness and tact ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... faithfully, who give honest measure and seek no unfair advantage. But that business is no brotherhood is an old story, and poor human nature finds itself forced by necessity and competition into ways that are devious and not strictly honest. It's the system that is at fault, for men have formed a scheme of creating and distributing values that severely tries and often ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... walls and 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 vale to vale It wanders, plucking honeyed fruits ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... hate it the most. But it will be with us as it was with those who were to be initiated into ancient religious rites. Blindfolded, they were led by a hand that grasped theirs but was not seen, through dark, narrow, devious passages, but they were led into a great company in a mighty hall. Seen from this side, the ministry of Death parts a man from dear ones, but, oh! if we could see round the turn in the corridor, we should see that the solitude ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... another stone wall into a shrubby pasture, and went across that to a pine wood, and thence, by devious windings and turnings, through field and forest, to his old woodland. It was his now; he had purchased it back from the Squire. Then he sat himself down and looked about him out of his silence and self-absorption, ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... lieutenants out of a window on the Hrad[vs]any. They happened to fall soft, on a midden, and got away unhurt. As a diplomatic action, this measure taken by the Estates lacked finesse, but it had one advantage over the usual diplomatic transactions in their devious course, that it was direct and final in its effect, namely, to precipitate a great devastating war, and to leave Bohemia hopelessly enchained ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... that dying king's three islands. From Apia he carried several relief agents and a load of trade goods to the Gilberts. He peeped in at Ontong-Java Atoll, inspected his plantations on Ysabel, and purchased lands from the salt-water chiefs of northwestern Malaita. And all along this devious way he made ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... question of religion. And so it happened that in 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 the ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... to leave the spot, when, as though his wish was gratified, a strange sound was audible in the narrow and devious passages, between tottering houses, and those even more squalid in the rear, a commingling of shuffling and stamping feet, the smiting of heavy sticks on uneven stones and the ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... 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 ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... 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 ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... but unpretentious 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 tangled undergrowth ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... 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 of the almost perpendicular sides, and grew darker and darker at every ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... turned the letter over; the seal was black. Philip sighed:—"I cannot read it now," thought he, and he rose and continued his devious way. ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... to guide Parents would endeavour, Must the father often chide, Or they'd prosper never. If I'm then a child of grace, Should I shun God ever, When He from sin's devious ways, Seeks ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt
... during which a wag in the crowd quietly picked the costermonger's pocket of the fish with a deftness born of much practice, and sent it flying over the room. It was promptly returned, and found a devious way back to its owner in a somewhat dusty and ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... rode Past guarded gates to trumpet sound, Along the devious ways that wound O'er drawbridges, through moats, and showed The vast St. Lawrence flowing, belt The Orleans Isle, and sea-ward melt; Then by old walls with cannon crowned, Down stair-like streets, to where we felt The salt winds ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... girl, she with her little hand Lashed and reined in the rapid steed she raced, Tossed the huge javelin, wrestled on the sand, And by gymnastic toils her sinews braced; Then through the devious wood and mountain-waste Tracked the struck lion to his entered den, Or in fierce wars a nobler quarry chased; And thus in fighting field and forest glen, A man to savage beasts, ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... lived the life of a Puritan, but I had neither the heart nor brain of one. None of the rigid bigotry, none of the exultant delight in morality, none of the merciless joy in trampling upon pleasure which gives him his reward. I looked round upon life and its many devious ways with eyes listless and indifferent to its vice and sympathetic to its pleasure, and back upon my own straight path with something of regret that my self-respect had been strong enough to hold me to it. And ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... 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 ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... there came his way what appeared to be an absolute certainty of not only recouping all his losses but of making some real money as well, Hunter plunged, with every dollar he could manage to get hold of. But Wall Street is a lane that has many crooked and devious turnings, and Mr. Hunter's investments took a very wrong turn. And this time it was not only all his own money that had been lost. The bottom might have dropped out of ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... with her while they descended the stairs and traversed devious passages till the butler's room was gained. By that time the housemaid was convinced that Mr. Furneaux was "a very nice man." When she "did" Hilton Fenley's rooms she missed the glass, but gave no heed to its ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... 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 ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... time and when they returned to the library she begged him to play chess. She was so fond of following the devious ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... terminology the activity of a second system—which should not permit the memory occupation to advance to perception and therefrom to restrict the psychic forces, but should lead the excitement emanating from the craving stimulus by a devious path over the spontaneous motility which ultimately should so change the outer world as to allow the real perception of the object of gratification to take place. Thus far we have elaborated the plan of the psychic apparatus; these two systems are the germ of the Unc. and ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... the hunter, and he leaned against the trunk of a tree, while he revolved in his mind the reasons for this abrupt departure—for such he believed it. The trail he had followed for miles was the devious trail of hunting Indians, stealing slowly and stealthily along watching for their prey, whether it be man or beast. The trail toward the west was straight as the crow flies; the moccasin prints that indented the soil were wide apart, and to an inexperienced eye ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... and prince," said De Lacy, bending his knee to Henry, "can you hear this, and refuse your ancient servant one request?— Spare this man!—Extinguish not such a light, because it is devious and wild." ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... its warfare. The professions of love for the Scriptures and the church, which we so often meet with in the writings of the early Rationalistic divines, were soon laid aside. The demon of destruction presided over the storm. And the work of ruin was rapid, by forced marches and through devious paths,—in the true military style. When the hour of fight came there was no swerving. Men full of the spirit of a bad cause will sometimes fight as valiantly as others for a good one; but it is then that God determines the victor. The evangelical Christians ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... moonlight evening as the two stood together by the sluice of the stream, among the stillness of the woods below the village, with all fairyland about them and in their hearts. She had thrown a wrap about her head and stolen down there by devious ways, according to the appointment, meeting him, as was arranged, as he came out from dinner with all the glamour of the Great House about him, in his evening dress, buckled shoes, and knee-breeches all complete. How marvelous ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... leaf and stamen may be spanned by the modification of a line of organisms—where does the possibility of modification of organic type find its bounds? Why may not the modification of parts go on along devious lines until the remote descendants of an organism are utterly unlike that organism? Why may we not thus account for the development of various species of beings all sprung from one parent stock? That, too, is a poet's ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... extensive warehouse among the rest that needs special mention—the ship's Yeoman's storeroom. In the Neversink it was down in the ship's basement, beneath the berth-deck, and you went to it by way of the Fore-passage, a very dim, devious corridor, indeed. Entering—say at noonday—you find yourself in a gloomy apartment, lit by a solitary lamp. On one side are shelves, filled with balls of marline, ratlin-stuf, seizing-stuff, spun-yarn, and numerous ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... said, as he doffed his cap courteously, "we are fugitives, who come to ask for a night's shelter. I have my wife and children with me, and the Admiral has also his family. We have ridden across France, from Noyers, by devious roads and with many turnings and windings; have been hunted like rabid beasts, and are sorely in need ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... conversing with the gentlemen of divers matters, brought them by devious roads to his lord's estate without their being ware of it. Whom as soon as Messer Torello espied, he came forth afoot to meet them, and said with a smile:—"A hearty welcome to you, gentlemen." Now Saladin, being ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... for me, Should pleasure's siren lay E'er tempt thy child to wander far From virtue's path away; When thorns beset life's devious way, And darkling waters flow, Then, Mary, aid thy weeping ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 2 (of 4) • Anonymous
... his lovely visitor till her small and graceful figure, floating on in its devious course through the diversified grounds in almost fairy lightness, receded from his enraptured sight; when he turned away with a sigh to commune with himself, try to analyze his feelings, weigh consequences, give Reason her rightful sway, and ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... now. Many years ago, when I was studying for the gallows, I had a dear comrade, a youth who was not in my line, but still a scrupulously good fellow though devious. He was preparing to qualify for a place on the board, for there was going to be a vacancy by superannuation in about five years. This was down South, in the slavery days. It was the nature of the negro then, as now, to steal watermelons. They stole three of the melons of an adoptive brother ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... as a princess might. I brought her the long and devious journey swiftly, with as little fatigue as possible: but it was late at night when we mounted the steps of the Garrison town residence; the house ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... behavior in one important respect. I have used punishment instead of reward as the chief motive for the proper performance of the required act. Usually in experiments with mammals hunger has been the motive depended upon. The animals have been required to follow a certain devious path, to escape from a box by working a button, a bolt, a lever, or to gain entrance to a box by the use of teeth, claws, hands, or body weight and thus obtain food as a reward. There are two very serious objections to the use ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... fling it Hurtling from some sheer cliff's height, Winds will bear it up and wing it Back to thee in devious flight. Smash it against the rocks—before thee Laming fragments strew thy path. Swamp it deep—the waves restore thee What thou gav'st ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... under Provera. Weakened by this second blow, the allies fell back on the intrenched village of Dego. Their position was of a strength proportionate to its strategic importance; for its loss would completely sever all connection between their two main armies save by devious routes many miles in their rear. They therefore clung desperately to the six mamelons and redoubts which barred the valley and dominated some of the neighbouring heights. Yet such was the superiority of the French in numbers ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... macadam, less bewildered by the characteristic windings, if we recall something of the first back-breaking cart that—not so very long ago—crashed over the stony road, and toilsomely worked its way from devious lane to lane. ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... in those days of a wild fear and confusion, when every condition that maketh for reason was set wandering by a devious path, and all men sitting as in a theatre of death looked to see the curtain rise upon God knows what horrors, it was vouchsafed to many to witness sights and sounds beyond the compass of Nature, and that as if the devil and his minions had profited by the anarchy to ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... existence. Even after the secret service was built up it took many months of hard work and several thousand government men to uncover and stamp out their organizations and their ruthless plots. The slimy tracks of the German ambassador at Washington had to be followed through devious underground channels that no one had suspected. The embassy had filled the country with German poison gas, and backed the German campaign of wholesale arson. Germans living here, many of them American born, were busily counteracting public opinion ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... finely engraved plates of the late Flemish type. There is a poem of Vaughan's on Gombauld's Endimion, which might make one think it more fascinating than it really is. Though rather prolix, however, it has attractions as a somewhat devious romantic treatment of the subject. The little book is one of the first I remember in this world, and I used to dip into it again and again as a child, but never yet read it through. I still possess it. I dare say it is not easily ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... we were 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 hills ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... measure of prophecy's fulfillment within the span of a short century, the spirit, the patriotism, and the civic virtue of Americans who lived a hundred years ago, and God's overruling of the wrath of man and His devious ways for ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... 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 ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... Dicky Vanderpole in the least," Penelope said. "Since he began to tread the devious paths of diplomacy, he has brought exactness in the small things of life ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Empire, and enjoying the strenae which ought to come only to Amal kings and their nobles. This man, who was destined to cross the path of our Theodoric through many weary years, was named like him Theodoric, and was surnamed Strabo (the squinter) from his devious vision, and son of Triarius, from his parentage. He was brother-in-law, or nephew, of a certain Aspar, a successful barbarian, who had mounted high in the Imperial service and had placed two Emperors on the throne. It was doubtless through ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... of Otto and the later emperors was purely German, with scarce a pretence of extending beyond their own country and sometimes Italy. Yet here was at least one restored influence that made toward unity and, by its own devious and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... could expect—this was tunable matter, which set him singing before the larks were off the ground. He felt like a man who has earned his pleasure; and pleasure, as he understood it, he meant to have. The zest for it sparkled in his quick eyes as he rode briskly through the devious forest ways. Had Galors or any other dark-entry man met him now and chanced a combat, he would have bad it with a will, but he would have got off with a rough tumble and sting or two from the flat of the sword. The youth was too pleased with ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... 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 extension of ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... that he was master of the situation. But was it so that there was a man whose senses could not be touched when all else failed? She was very woman, eager for the power which she had lost, and power was hard to get—by what devious ways had ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of interest to trace these heraldic devices through the intervening ages, and along the devious ways by which they have come down to the present. This task would lead one far afield in history. In the hasty glance just now given to the coins of Greece, we have found material that will help to an understanding of what is impressed upon the coins of our own country. There would be ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... wind from the fens was driving the mist before it, and bending masses of willows, bulrushes, and tall sedges all one way—and that way right against the faces of Deane and his guide, when they commenced their devious course across the marshes, within which Master Pearson's farm was situated. A dead level was before them, broken here and there only by a group of willows, or occasionally a few small trees which had taken root on patches of firmer ground ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... externals. The daily bath, pure food, fresh air, and sanitary conditions are essential but not sufficient in themselves. Clean thinking, right motives, and a high respect for the rights and interests of the future must enter into the scheme of life. There must be no devious ways, no back alleys, in the scheme, but only the broad highway of life, open always to the sunlight and to the gaze of all mankind. All this must become thoroughly enmeshed in the social consciousness and in the daily practice of every individual, before the school can ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... was nearing the end. In fact the rider had not skirted Bourg, but had boldly entered the town. There, it seemed to Roland that the man had hesitated, unless this hesitation were a last ruse to hide his tracks. But after ten minutes spent in following his devious tracks Roland was sure of his facts; it was not ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... 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 you ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... on the rugs in a frenzy of remorse over his part of the business. While our attention was occupied with Sing, Tammas was busily skinning his prey in the seclusion of the woodshed. He buttoned the pelt inside his jacket, conveyed it by a devious route through the length of this building, and concealed it under his bed where he thought ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... answered, "by devious paths, and a little wandering in the flower-gardens by the way is the lot of every one. But when the journey is over, one's taste for wandering has gone—well, Ulysses finished his days at ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... have been bestowed on the rough notes of the writer, since they were first hastily committed to paper amidst the scenes which they describe. The style is as rambling and unconnected as the incidents to which it refers; but wherever the author's devious footsteps lead us, from the jungles of Bundelcund to the holy ghats of Hurdwar, the principal figure is always that of the colonel himself, who, in the portly magnificence of twenty stone minus two pounds, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... de la Concorde, deserted at this late hour, two men, arm in arm, were taking their devious way. They were Fandor and the stranger he ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... query—which revealed his own attitude—whether the moment had not arrived when the United States might safely depart from its traditional policy and meet the proposal of the British Government. If there was one principle which ran consistently through the devious foreign policy of Jefferson and Madison, it was that of political isolation from Europe. "Our first and fundamental maxim," Jefferson wrote in reply, harking back to the old formulas, "should be never to entangle ourselves in the broils of Europe, our ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... occasionally, and the stupid are the first to go out the back door. But merely dull reviewers are as plentiful as fountain pens. The dull reviewer, like Chaucer's drunken man, knows where he wants to go but doesn't know how to get there. He (or she) has three favorite paths that lead nowhere, all equally devious. ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... devious course by which, after much burning of oil during half a dozen winters, Dan Harwood attained to a freshman's dignity at New Haven, where, arriving with his effects in a canvas telescope, he had found a scholarship awaiting him; nor need we do more ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... which one gained admittance by ways so devious and fantastic was large—exactly how large it was difficult to guess, since all its walls were screened by black silk panels upon which golden dragons writhed and crawled. A thick carpet of black covered every inch of visible ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... stood on the upper deck. It was a zone of danger. From each side of the narrowing river flashlights skimmed the surface of the water, playing round but never on the darkened ship. Red and green lights blinked signals. Their progress was a devious one through the mine-strewn channel. There was a heavy sea even there, and the small lights on the mast on the pilot boat, as it came to a stop, described great arcs that seemed, first to starboard, then to port, to touch the ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... not he took a walk first, passing out of the Frauenthor on to the quay, where he turned to left or right and made his way back through one or other of the town gates, by devious narrow streets to that which is still called the Portchaisengasse though chairs and carriers have long ceased to pass along it. Here, on the northern side of the street is an old inn, "Zum weissen Ross'l," with a broken, ill-carved head of a white horse above the door. Across the face ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... and devious journey. To Willa, who, aside from her infrequent visits to the cottage on the Parkway, had seen little of New York and its environs save in the beaten path of the conventional social round, it was a revelation. They tore through crooked teeming side-streets ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... enemy; yet every approach of the great scoundrel disgusted and humiliated her. That side of her nature which had attracted and encouraged him was sleeping, and, under the new motives which were at work within her, she hoped that it would never wake. She looked down the devious track of her past, counted over its unworthy and most unwomanly satisfactions, and wondered. She looked back to a great wrong which she had once inflicted on an innocent man, with a self-condemnation so deep that ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... authoritative keynote into which all the clashing discords seem at length to 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 before us with amazing ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... and, in the customary devious channel of her mental processes, her thoughts returned to her early life, her girlhood, so marred by sickness that the Emperor had surrendered his customary proprietary right in the daughters ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... morning I pondered over the devious lane of my life, which had led up to so fair a garden. And one thing above all kept turning and turning in my head, until I thought I should die of waiting for its fulfilment. Now was I free to ask Dorothy to marry me, to promise her ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... except for the purpose of 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 idea of purchasing ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... 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, and when these turned aside ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... window-panes, and makes a clear shadow under every vine leaf on the wall—sometimes a picnic is proposed, and a basket made ready, and a good procession formed in front of the hotel. The two trumpeters in honour go before; and as we file down the long alley, and up through devious footpaths among rocks and pine-trees, with every here and there a dark passage of shadow, and every here and there a spacious outlook over moonlit woods, these two precede us and sound many a jolly flourish as they walk. We gather ferns and dry boughs into the cavern, and soon a good blaze flutters ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Abbot knew the place, and fewer still, the devious way by which it was approached. When taken there, victims and judge were led blindfold. The walls were rude rocks, the pavement, gravestones sunken and worn. The noxious vapor, chilled into drops, fell tinkling on the floor. An antique lamp, hanging from an iron chain, gave a dim light, which ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins
... it would surely be for some definite end. These phenomena belong to neither class; my persuasion is, that they originate in some brain now far distant; that that brain had no distinct volition in anything that occurred; that what does occur reflects but its devious, motley, ever-shifting, half-formed thoughts; in short, that, it has been but the dreams of such a brain put into action and invested with a semi-substance. That this brain is of immense power, that it can set matter into movement, ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... Testament promises as rewards of virtue, are means of education, and will gradually fall into disuse: in the highest stage, the stage of purity of heart, virtue will be loved and practiced for its own sake, and no longer for the sake of heavenly rewards. Slowly but surely, along devious paths which are yet salutary, we are being led toward that great goal. It will surely come, the time of consummation, when man will do the good because it is good, this time of the new, eternal Gospel, this third age, this "Christianity of reason." ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... he gazed. Death is the grand revealer, he thought; death alone stamps upon the crumbling canvas of mortality the truth. Rhoda was dead. Yet her face was alive for the first time. He saw its truth; and he shuddered, for he also discerned the hate that had lurked a life long in its devious and smiling expressions—expressions like a set of scenery pushed on and off as the order of the play demanded. Oh, the misery of it all! He, Monross, poet, lover, egoist, husband, to be confronted ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... in this 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
... cheers the dreariness of a waste, and enriches the most crowded view; in form, in style, and in extent, may be made equal to the greatest compositions, or adapted to the least; it may spread in a calm expanse to soothe the tranquillity of a peaceful scene; or hurrying along a devious course, add splendour to a gay, and extravagance to a romantic, situation. So various are the characters which water can assume, that there is scarcely an idea in which it may not concur, or an impression which it cannot enforce; a deep stagnated ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... her tormenting factors was not to be so treated. Philemon alone made nothing of the change of season, riding the nine miles between his home and Greenwood by daylight or by moonlight, as if his feeling for the girl not merely warmed but lighted the devious path between the drifts. Yet it was not to make love he came; for he sat a silent, awkward figure when once within doors, speaking readily enough in response to the elders, but practically inarticulate whenever called upon to reply to Janice. Her bland unconsciousness was a ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... As rapidly as information can spread, it becomes known from Karachi to Rangoon, and along the chain of seaports of the Malay states, that a fishery is to be held. Divers, gem-buyers, speculators, money-lenders, petty merchants, and persons of devious occupations, make speedy arrangements for attending. Indian and Ceylon coolies flock by the thousand to the coast of the Northern province, longing to play even humble roles in the great game of chance. The "tindals" and divers provide boats and all essential gear for the work afloat; ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... Canton, China, When Japanese photographers return With their black cameras to Tokio, And Irish patriots to Donegal, And Scotch accountants back to Edinburgh, You will go back to India, whence you came. When you have reached the borders of your quest, Homesick at last, by many a devious way, Winding the wonderlands circuitous, By foot and horse will trace the long way back! Fiddling for ocean liners, while the dance Sweeps through the decks, your brown tribes all will go! Those east-bound ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... You groped your way for an hour through lanes and byways, and court-yards, and passages; and you never once emerged upon anything that might be reasonably called a street. A kind of resigned distraction came over the stranger as he trod those devious mazes, and, giving himself up for lost, went in and out and round about and quietly turned back again when he came to a dead wall or was stopped by an iron railing, and felt that the means of escape might possibly present themselves in their own good time, but that to anticipate ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... Jordan is from the north to the south, and in that direction, with very little of devious winding, it carries the shining waters of Galilee straight down into the solitudes of the Dead Sea. Speaking roughly, the river in that meridian is a boundary between the people living under roofs and the tented tribes that wander on the farther side. And so, as I went down in ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... inch of leather in a "drive," or a stiff blade of grass in a putt, and the interest is wound up to a really breathless pitch. Happy he is who does not in his excitement "top" his ball into the neighbouring brook, or "heel" it and send it devious down to the depths of ocean. Happy is he who can "hole out the last hole in four" beneath the eyes of the ladies. Striding victorious into the hospitable club, where beer awaits him, he need not envy the pheasant-slayer who has slain ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... that then would come the days of dull and devious diplomacy, of division of domain, of dragging indemnity from a people dumb and disheartened by devastation and death. At all costs to beat the breath from her body! The hour had come when this resistant something should be ours, ours, the Briton's, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... "Where tempests never beat nor billows roar": And thy loved consort[339-9] on the dangerous tide Of life long since has anchored by thy side. But me,[339-10] scarce hoping to attain the rest, Always from port withheld, always distressed,— Me[339-10] howling blasts drive devious, tempest-tossed, Sails ripped, seams opening wide, and compass lost;[339-11] And day by day some current's thwarting force Sets me more distant from a prosperous course. Yet O, the thought that thou art safe, and he!—[339-12] That ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Mr. Gladstone into relations that for many years to come deeply affected his political course. As a planet's orbit has puzzled astronomers until they discover the secret of its irregularities in the attraction of an unseen and unsuspected neighbour in the firmament, so some devious motions of this great luminary of ours were perturbations due in fact to the influence of his new constituency. As we have seen, Mr. Gladstone quitted Newark when he entered the cabinet to repeal the corn law. At ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... all his devious career, had never passed through more or quicker stages of astonishment, confusion, poise and evasion than he did in listening to those words. But at pulling his wits together, McAlpin was a wonder. By the time Kate had finished, his ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... cottonwood bottoms, banked by the barren, gravelly hills. We had been informed that there was a settlement called Ouray, some distance down the river, and we were anxious to reach it before night. But the river was sluggish, with devious and twisting channels, and it was dark when we finally landed at ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... trial, and we feel sure that our readers will not be sorry that we 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 to denounce a crime and to brand the perpetrator thereof? The facts as they stand ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Phil, drawing his gaze reluctantly from the far horizon and letting it rest dreamily on his accuser. "May I be allowed to ask what intricate and devious chain of reasoning leads you to make so unheard-of ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... which he would secure greater safety, he occupied his spare time in the lengthening nights with driving a second shaft straight inward from the chamber to a roomy natural hollow among the willow-roots, and thence in devious course, to avoid embedded stones, downward to a tiny haven in the angle of the buttress far inside the archway of the bank, where the space was so confined that the otter could not possibly follow him. Even the big trout, in his torpedo-like rush to cut off Brighteye from sure refuge, utterly failed ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... are supplied gratis to those who frequent those haunts of infamy, it was evident that some sort of inebriation attacked him; his steps were disordered and unsteady, and, as we followed him, we could perceive, by the devious track that he took, that he was somewhat ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... groups of shrubbery, groves, huts, cabins, yards, ponds of water, and every other element of rural scenery. The whole, as it first burst upon Rollo's eye, formed a most enchanting landscape, and extended farther than he could see. The walks meandered about in the most winding and devious ways. The spaces between them were enclosed by neat little fences of lattice work, and were divided into little parks, or fields, in each of which some strange and unknown animals were feeding. There ...
— Rollo in Paris • Jacob Abbott
... 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 again in later years—Louis Lambert ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... deposit whatever he felt able to give. His kindliness towards men became the foundation for many legends. Needless to say he was often imposed upon, but that seems to have made no difference to him, and he went on straightforwardly doing what he thought he ought to do, regardless of the devious ways of men, even those whom he was generously assisting. While we do not know much of his scientific medicine, we do know that he was a fine example of a practitioner of medicine on the ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh |
