"Devious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rough cobble stones, and sloped from each side toward the centre, through which ran a kennel or gutter encumbered with garbage and filth of every description, through which a foul stream of evil-smelling water wound its devious way. The street had apparently at one time been one of some pretensions, but had now fallen upon evil days and become the abode of a number of petty tradesmen, such as cobblers, sellers of fruit and cheap drinks, dealers in second-hand ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... stables, ostensibly to consult with Martin as to a re-marking of the tennis courts, she singled out from his tool bench the monkey-wrench of her choice, casually covered it with her sweater, and safely bore it away. She and Patty conveyed their booty by devious secret ways to Paradise Alley. A great many alarms were given on the passage, a great deal of muffled giggling ensued, but finally the monkey-wrench and the pie—slightly damaged as to its meringue top, but still distinctly recognizable ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... stars studded the clear spaces between ominous patches of cloud. A raw, moist wind was blowing, and on the muddy streets were evident traces of a recent shower. I had no notion that the gates of Kensington Gardens were open so early; and the sensation was novel as I threaded the devious paths in morning dawn, and saw the gas still alight along the Bayswater Road. A solitary thrush was whistling his Christmas carol as I struggled over the inundated sward; presently the sun threw a few red streaks along the East, over the Abbey Tower; ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... the country would probably have considered the devious march that they already had made arduous enough, but they had, at least for the most part, followed the valleys and crossed only a few low divides, and it was evident now that their way led close up to the eternal ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... to salute me in sleep save his shade, vii. 111. Naught garred me weep save where and when of severance spake he, viii. 63. Nears my parting fro, my love, nigher draws the severance-day, viii. 308. Need drives a man into devious roads, ii. 14. Needs must I bear the term by Fate decreed, ii. 41. Ne'er cease thy gate be Ka'abah to mankind, iv. 148. Ne'er dawn the severance-day on any wise, viii. 49. Ne'er incline thee to ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... of saturation gravity carries the water downward in devious courses until it reaches the water table. Thereafter its course is determined largely by the lowest point of escape from the water table. In other words, the water table is an irregular surface; and ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... 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 ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... darling joy! Whom chance misled the mother to destroy; Now doom'd a wakeful bird to wail the beauteous boy. So in nocturnal solitude forlorn, A sad variety of woes I mourn! My mind, reflective, in a thorny maze Devious from care to care incessant strays. Now, wavering doubt succeeds to long despair; Shall I my virgin nuptial vow revere; And, joining to my son's my menial train, Partake his counsels, and assist his reign? Or, since, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... upland heights display, Down the steep cliff I wind my devious way; Oft rousing, as the rustling path I beat, The timid hare from its accustom'd seat. And oh! how sweet this walk o'erhung with wood, That winds the margin of the solemn flood! What rural objects steal upon the sight! What rising ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... the genuineness of Bivens's feelings. Stuart knew that he felt deeply and sincerely every word that he uttered. The first rush of his anger had died away and he begun to realize the pathos of the little man's appeal. He forgot for the moment that he was a millionaire and had made his money by devious tricks with that smooth, delicately moulded hand. He only saw that Bivens, his old schoolmate, had unconsciously fallen into a trap. A word from him—the word he wished spoken, and the woman he loved would be lost. He had but to ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... she said, trying to retain in her mind the evanescent suggestiveness of his previous remark, and vexed to find herself upon nothing but a devious phosphorescent ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... beautiful. In a happier day than this it was believed that the true and the beautiful were bound together in angelic wedlock and that all art found its highest mission in giving them expression. But the drama has been led through devious paths into the charnel house, and in "Salome" we must needs listen to the echoes of its dazed and drunken footfalls. The maxim "Truth before convention" asserts its validity and demands recognition under the guise of "characteristic beauty." We may refuse to admit that ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Through devious subterranean channels Bobbie MacLaurin found that the berth of master on the Hankow was vacant, the latest incumbent having relinquished his spirit to cholera. Was he willing to assume the tremendous responsibility? ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... condemned the Three Chapters and had excommunicated Vigilius by removing his name from the diptychs, the latter confirmed the decisions of the council and joined in the condemnation of the Three Chapters. For a discussion of the whole situation, see Hefele, 272-276. The devious course followed by Vigilius has been the subject of much acrimonious debate. The facts of the case are now generally recognized. The conclusion of Cardinal Hergenroether, KG. I, 612, is the best that can be said for Vigilius: "In the question as to the faith, Vigilius was ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... he doomed to the house-hunter's inevitable disappointment. He found, in the course of his devious wanderings through all sorts of out-of-the way thoroughfares within a certain radius from Brompton Church, that the houses which came nearest to his ideal cottage in a walled garden were either too far ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... "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 ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... short distance from Coel was the fortress of Alighur, which was considered to be almost impregnable. It was defended by a triple line of walls and fortifications, so that an enemy entering it would have to advance by a devious route from one gate to another, exposed all the time to a terrible artillery fire. It was almost surrounded by a swamp, and the only approach was along a narrow strip of firm ground, leading to ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... stood, transfixed with wonder, I began to grow painfully conscious of the injuries I had received in the scuffle; skulked round among the sand-hills; and, by a devious path, regained the shelter of the wood. On the way, the old nurse passed again within several yards of me, still carrying her lantern, on the return journey to the mansion-house of Graden. This made a seventh suspicious feature in the case - Northmour and his guests, it appeared, ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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
... how critics will differ. Here is a case in point. The other night, at the CENTRAL PARK GARDEN, I sat near a table surrounded by five well-known musical critics. THEODORE THOMAS had just led his orchestra through the devious ways of the Tannhauser overture, and I naturally listened to hear the opinions which the critical five might express. This is what ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... than the tyranny of the aristocracy. But Rousseau's influence—so far stretching is the power of personal genius—does not stop with the French Revolution. It does not stop with the Commune or with any other outburst of popular indignation. It works subterraneanly in a thousand devious ways until the present hour. Wherever, under the impassioned enthusiasm of such words as Justice, Liberty, Equality, Reason, Nature, Love, self-idealising, self-worshipping, self-deceiving prophets of magnetic genius give way to their weaknesses, ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... after many devious wanderings, and turned up John Street. As he thrust his latch-key in the lock, another mortifying reflection struck him to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... being refastened for the night. After travelling for four days in this way, we saw from the top of a high hill the waters of a magnificent lake, studded with islets. It seemed quite near; but several hours passed before we reached its border—a broad morass, through which ran devious tracks. ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... Golden Circle edifies the "stranger advancing in dark, devious ways" with lessons upon the doctrine of state sovereignty, and admonishes him to "follow the straight and narrow path which is paved with gems and pearls, and bordered with perennial flowers whose perfumes all his senses will ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... perception of your internal satisfaction, which is, indeed, unmistakably reflected in your symmetrical countenance. For, O Mandarin, in spite of your honourable endeavours to turn things which are devious into a straight line, the matters upon which you engage your versatile intellect—little as you suspect the fact—are as grains of the finest Foo-chow sand in comparison with that ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... now an illustration of the devious ways by which one who feels, rather than reasons, may be led in the pursuit of beauty. Though often disillusioned, she was still waiting for that halcyon day when she would be led forth among dreams become ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... Cheat River in West Virginia, a large, clear mountain trout-brook. It crossed our path many times that day. Every mountain we crossed showed us Cheat River on the other side of it. It was flowing by a very devious course northwest toward the Ohio. We were ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... we may know how to instruct and direct those (if such we should meet with) who are being afflicted and tormented by such thoughts of the devil to tempt God, when he entices them to search the devious ways of God outside of revelation, and to grope about trying to fathom what God plans for them—whereby they are led into such doubt and despair that they know not how they will survive. Such people must be reminded of these words [Rom. 11], and be rebuked with them (as St. Paul rebukes ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... sticking as long as two years. The Plow Works had seemed a rather tedious road to a Restoration and the Barebones Parliament that sat in the inner office had seemed inexorably determined to make that road as devious and difficult as possible. He had escaped gladly. But the war had come to an end with him still in service on this side and he had at length returned with many things unsatisfied. One of these had been his idea about Mary Louise. She, ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... that stern ruler To our own familiar days Long the pathway we have trodden, Hard, and devious were its ways Till at last there came the second Mightier ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... Thee, by pitying grace Checked oft-times in a devious race. May He who halloweth the place Where Man is laid, Receive thy Spirit in the embrace For ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... the lesser part of her meaning. Even his wisdom and years failed to throw light on the devious path of Aileen's thoughts at this moment. Of the truth contained in her expression, he had ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... the blissful vision; The dear, familiar phantoms rise again, And, like an old and half-extinct tradition, First Love returns, with Friendship in his train. Renewed is Pain: with mournful repetition Life tracks his devious, labyrinthine chain, And names the Good, whose cheating fortune tore them From happy hours, and left me to ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... powers of hell to rectify the disorders of the earth. No! I would add my voice with better, and I trust, more potent charms, to draw down justice and wisdom and fortitude from heaven, for the correction of human vice, and the recalling of human error from the devious ways into which it has been betrayed. I would wish to call the impulses of individuals at once to the aid and to the control of authority. By this, which I call the true republican spirit, paradoxical as it may appear, monarchies alone can be rescued ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... in a bare and rugged Way, Through devious lonely Wilds I stray, Thy Bounty shall my Pains beguile; The barren Wilderness shall smile, With sudden Greens and Herbage crown'd, And Streams shall ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... had in fact been treading a devious way, and none of her critics could have been more alive to the fact than herself; but she had a fatalistic sense of being drawn from one wrong turning to another, without ever perceiving the right road till it was too ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... encampment. A strong south wind had arisen, but did not dissipate the fog, and for two hours we had a renewal of our past experiences, in thumping over hard ridges and ploughing through seas of snow. Our track was singularly devious, sometimes doubling directly back upon itself without any apparent cause. At last, when a faint presentiment of dawn began to glimmer through the fog, the Lapp halted and announced that he had lost ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... metamorphosis as this is possible—if the seemingly wide gap between 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 dream; but is it only ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... placid way, revolving some dark and devious plan beneath his impassive Oriental countenance. He was no ordinary personage. In fact he was astute enough to have no record. He left that to ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... probabilities. The cobbler was to be awed by the learned man; but how could he implicitly trust a learned man when his soul was at stake, and when learned men differed? To convince the ignorant or the Houssatunnuck Indian, God's voice must speak through a less devious channel. The transcendent glory of Divine things proves their Divinity intuitively; the mind does not indeed discard argument, but it does not want any 'long chain of argument; the argument is but one and the evidence direct; the mind ascends to the ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... from the river. Here, again, were the 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 ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... perceive the mistake, and believing he had adopted the right line of flight, shouted for his friend to do the same. Tim had already noticed the turn and now thundered across the prairie toward him. But the devious course, as will be readily seen, threw him slightly to the rear, seeing which, Warren drew in his animal to ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis
... remarked: "I would not like to be in McKinley's shoes. He has a man of destiny behind him." Destiny is the one artificer who can use all tools and who finds a short cut to his goal through ways mysterious and most devious. As I have before remarked, nothing commonplace could happen to Theodore Roosevelt. He emerged triumphant from the receiving-vault of the Vice-Presidency, where his enemies supposed they had laid him away for good. In ancient days, his midnight dash from Mount Marcy, and ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... 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
... answered, unabashed, 'I know that; but who'll believe you if I say you did?' Captain Thorne, dressed in full police uniform, stepped from the closet with, 'I will for one, Mary.' The girl, young as she was, had experience enough in devious ways to see that her game had escaped, and readily, although sullenly, promised to cease exacting tribute in that particular quarter. The gentleman would go no further, and to the earnest entreaties ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... not, Fancy, if I now restrain Thy wandering footsteps, now thy wings confine; Tis the decree of Fate,—it is not mine! For I would let thee free and widely stray— Would follow gladly, tend thee on thy way, And never of the devious track complain, Never thy wild and sportive flights disdain! Though reasonless those graceful moods may be, They still, alas! ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... beauty in itself nor deformity, not virtue nor vice, which engaged the author's deepest sympathy. It was the occult relation between the two. Thus while the Puritans were of all men pious, it was the instinct of Hawthorne's genius to search out and trace with terrible tenacity the dark and devious thread of sin ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... and late afternoon had found them wandering under the formal, interlaced trees in the gardens of the Petit Trianon. At Versailles they dined, falling a little silent over their meal, for neither could longer hold at bay the sense that events impended—that all paths, however devious, however touched by the enchanter's wand, lead back by an unalterable law to the ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... was riding close behind him, to cross by the lower ground on the left, and turn the stag. Wyat instantly obeyed, and plunging his spurs deeply into his horse's sides, started off at a furious pace, and was soon after seen shaping his rapid course through a devious glade. ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... billows roar."{9} And thy loved consort on the dangerous tide Of life long since has anchored by thy side. But me, scarce hoping to attain that rest, Always from port withheld, always distressed— Me howling blasts drive devious, tempest tost, Sails ripped, seams opening wide, and compass lost, And day by day some current's thwarting force, Sets me more distant from a prosperous course. Yet, oh, the thought that thou art safe, and he! That thought ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... taken by Asano along devious ways to the great gambling and business quarters where the bulk of the fortunes in the city were lost and made. It impressed him as a well-nigh interminable series of very high halls, surrounded by tiers upon tiers of galleries into which opened thousands of offices, ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... 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 from our direction to move upon its naked face with infinite ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 himself ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... graceful flitting figures in various stages of deshabille, in quest of paraphernalia feminine and maids to adjust the same. A continual chatter filled the halls, punctuated by smothered laughter and subdued but insistent appeals for aid in the devious complications ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... charioteer; and at whichsoever they should stop, to him should the chariot be given. And it was done as the angel commanded, and the saint bade the chariot to be yoked; but the horses, no man guiding them, went through irregular and devious paths, and came in the evening to the dwelling of Secundinus, and, being unyoked, were turned there to pasture. And in the morning, no man yoking them, they were yoked to the chariot, and in like manner going unto the mansion of a certain other saint, there they stayed the night. And ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... the calves who will stray to the bog over yonder. Indeed, they are wilful, whatever, for the grass down here is much sweeter. There they go again—see!" and Gethin helped her with whoop and halloo, and many devious races of circumvention to recover them. "Oh, anwl, they are like naughty children," she said, sitting down, exhausted with laughter and running, Gethin flinging himself beside her, and picking idly at the gorse blossoms which filled the air ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... All was unseen, much was unguessed; the blind fought the blind; and yet through it all was order, purpose, control. We permeated the entire organization of the Iron Heel with our agents, while our own organization was permeated with the agents of the Iron Heel. It was warfare dark and devious, replete with intrigue and conspiracy, plot and counterplot. And behind all, ever menacing, was death, violent and terrible. Men and women disappeared, our nearest and dearest comrades. We saw them to-day. To-morrow they were ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... version, told me with much secrecy of manner, the whole affair, mine, mill, and town, were parts of one majestic swindle. There had never come any silver out of any portion of the mine; there was no silver to come. At midnight trains of packhorses might have been observed winding by devious tracks about the shoulder of the mountain. They came from far away, from Amador or Placer, laden with silver in "old cigar-boxes." They discharged their load at Silverado, in the hour of sleep; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... clear that she did not burn the will; she thought she had not done so, but she would not, for the world, have taken an oath to that effect. It is not to be supposed, however, that so shrewd a man as Mr. Fielding, and a man so experienced in all the devious and sinuous windings of the human heart as Father Fabian, were without their suspicions, but the one through policy, and the other through charity, forebore to express in words what they were not prepared to prove by ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... him, but merely saying, "Good night, Joe," jumped into the road, and Joe by some devious path, through bogs and bottoms, betook himself to Mrs. Mulready's, and drowned the feeling of his ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... laboring under a pressure of bricks in his hat. On one occasion I must have seen in the course of a single afternoon several hundred reeling home in the highest possible condition of ecstasy—either that, or the streets were so badly paved, and the roads so devious and undulating, that they made people stagger to keep straight. It was on the occasion of a fair, and may perhaps have been an exception to the general rule. One thing is certain—it looked very natural, and ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... too dark, and I had my strength to husband; and stamped on my memory were the words 'the tide serves'. I judged it a wiser use of time and sinew to anticipate them at Bensersiel by the shortest road, leaving them to reach it by way of the devious Tief, to examine which was, I felt convinced, ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... 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; ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... 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
... and a devious one it must have been. After travelling in this way many miles, we came upon an Indian trail, deeply indented, running at right angles with the course we were pursuing. The snow had ceased, and, the ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... fall into it. It was he who put us on our guard against the time-bargains a man makes with poverty under the sanction of hope, by accepting precarious situations whence he fights the battle, carried along by the devious tide of Paris—that great harlot who takes you up or leaves you stranded, smiles or turns her back on you with equal readiness, wears out the strongest will in vexatious waiting, and ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac
... well that the men of the pulpit are held to be wanting in practical knowledge, and that we know but little of the dark and devious ways of this naughty world. So that, rising here, I feel as if I were but a little one among a thousand, and yet I would venture to submit that the clergy are not wholly unpractical. Nay, I sometimes am led to think that the men of my cloth are the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... bred of four years of merciless warfare, all the insatiable fury for revenge, all the racial ambitions that had been twisted and perverted by centuries of devious diplomacy—these were all gathered around the council table, clamorous in their demand to dictate ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... greatly increased. And just here it is worthy of remark that there appears to be some mysterious fatality by which strangers, greenhorns and "innocents," generally, contrive to wander by unerring though devious ways, straight into the ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... of laughter, 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 ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... what she was going to do, what he must do himself, and what results were probable or possible. He had spent his life in intrigue of one order or another. He enjoyed outwitting people and rather preferred to attain an end by devious paths. He began every acquaintance on the defensive. His argument was that you never knew how things would turn out, consequently, it was as well to conduct one's self at the outset with the discreet forethought ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... in disastrous eclipse. Could he deduce nothing from the tanner's grin? He spent the day at the Settlement without ostensible reason, and only at nightfall did he return home, and by a devious route, very different from that ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... should he turn the herds east along the bank of the Big Horn, it would be impossible to continue the march long in that direction, since the higher mountains were directly ahead, and the way through them was devious, and attended with many difficulties and dangers. On such a drive the losses to him in time and strayed sheep ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... by a strange and devious route of zigzags and back-trackings. His weary bronco he had long since sold for ten dollars at a cow town where he had sacked his saddle to be held at a livery stable until sent for. By blind baggage he had ridden a night and part of a ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... reached the Pursek. There was no sign of the city, but we could barely discern an old fortress on the lofty cliff which commands the town. A long stone bridge crossed the river, which here separates into half a dozen channels. The waters are swift and clear, and wind away in devious mazes through the broad green meadows. We hurried on, thinking we saw minarets in the distance, but they proved to be poplars. The sun sank lower and lower, and finally went down before there was any token of our ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... Saint Peter at Heav'ns Wicket seems To wait them with his Keys, and now at foot Of Heav'ns ascent they lift thir Feet, when loe A violent cross wind from either Coast Blows them transverse ten thousand Leagues awry Into the devious Air; then might ye see Cowles, Hoods and Habits with thir wearers tost 490 And flutterd into Raggs, then Reliques, Beads, Indulgences, Dispenses, Pardons, Bulls, The sport of Winds: all these upwhirld aloft Fly o're the backside ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... of medicine. The chapter gives a good picture of the stage on which Galen (practically a contemporary of Pliny) was to play so important a role. Pliny seems himself to have been rather disgusted with the devious paths of the doctors of his day, and there is no one who has touched with stronger language upon the weak points of the art of physic. In one place he says that it alone has this peculiar art and privilege, ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... distress, Fond of the fall'n, nor form'd to serve success; Partial to woes, had weigh'd their cause too light, Wept o'er misfortune,—and mis-nam'd it right: Anguish, attracting, turn'd attachment wrong, And pity's note mis-tun'd his devious song. ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... I by devious ways Have pulled some easy sprays From the down-dropping bough Which all may reach, and now I knot them, bud and leaf, Into a ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... very 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 twines of assorted sizes. In another ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... a dead man's bones, had its clue to carry it on in a straight line. Its trail was on the ground; it glided snake-like from cross to cross, in quest of dust; and, without its finger-posts to guide it, would have wandered devious. It is surely a better devotion that, instead of thus creeping over the earth to a mouldy sepulchre, can at once launch into the sky, secure of finding Him who once arose from one. In less than an hour we were descending on the Bay ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... 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. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... no sun in the sky, nor other object to guide him, he thought he could not do better than trace back the spoor; and although it led him by many a devious route, and he saw nothing more of his eland, before night he reached the pass in the cliff, and was soon after sitting under the shadow of the nwana-tree, regaling a most interested audience with the ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... be my chosen haunt—emancipate From Passion's dreams, a freeman, and alone, I rise and trace its devious course. O lead, 120 Lead me to deeper shades and lonelier glooms. Lo! stealing through the canopy of firs, How fair the sunshine spots that mossy rock, Isle of the river, whose disparted waves Dart off asunder with an angry sound, 125 How soon to re-unite! And see! they meet, Each in the other lost ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... name at once so absurd and so intimate that it would never have gone with the dignified rhythm of the hexameter. "Wobbles" had been the first name which Stella Croyle had invented for Harry Luttrell, though by what devious process she had lighted upon it, psychology could not have discovered. "Wub" was the nickname within the nickname, the cherished sign that the two of them lived apart in a little close-hedged garden of their own. Luttrell's eyes were upon her as she spoke it. And she spoke it with a curious ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... the 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, ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins
... 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 ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... buy corn needlessly, and to sell it again at a stated price. Long and difficult journeys had also been imposed upon them; for the several districts, instead of being allowed to supply the nearest winter quarters, were forced to carry their corn to remote and devious places; by which means, what was easy to be procured by all, was converted into an article of gain ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... in the doctrines of Leo Tolstoi, and especially in non-resistance, and the possessing little or no property to encumber their free souls. In the village they had become the guides of the Tahitians in the devious path ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... the run to-day?" asked Louis Belgrave, the owner of the steam-yacht Guardian-Mother, which had at this date made her way by a somewhat devious course half way round the world, and was in the act of ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... a word, the waiter going on before them to show the devious ways along by the harbour ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... to narrate the monotonous events of the tedious days that Woola and I spent ferreting our way across the labyrinth of glass, through the dark and devious ways beyond that led beneath the Valley Dor and Golden Cliffs to emerge at last upon the flank of the Otz Mountains just above the Valley of Lost Souls—that pitiful purgatory peopled by the poor unfortunates who dare not continue their abandoned pilgrimage to Dor, or return ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... devious routes were resorted to. Sugar was smuggled from London into Germany by way of Salonica, that being now almost the only neutral port open to British commerce. Thence it was borne in panniers on ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... fluctuate beneath an emotion of oblivious delight. Alas! we young, weak women, try in vain to obstruct the gurgling of the bosom; for I perceive that even I am not proof against the arrows of the god Diana. My heart has thrilled, my dearest friend, ever since you departed, yester eve, with a devious and intrinsic sensation of voluminous delight. The feelings cannot be concealed, but must be impressed in words; or, as the great Milton says, in his Bucoliks, the o'er-fraught heart would break! Love, my dear Mr. Verty, is contiguous—you cannot be near ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... without further delay. All the principal roads or trails were already in the hands of the enemy. However, there was a single, little used, winter trail leading straight back into the forest in rear of us which, with devious turns and windings, would finally bring us back to the river trail leading to Shegovari, about twenty miles further down the river. Mounted Cossacks were instantly dispatched along this trail and after several hours of hard riding returned with word that, due to the difficulty of travel ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... Mayo put her over too far. He helped the man set her on the right course. Then he signaled half speed. The devious and the narrow paths were ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... still, Though they be numberless years. It is also so wide As the surface of the earth; And it was not born, Nor was it seen. It will cause consternation Wherever God willeth. On sea, and on land, It neither sees, nor is seen. Its course is devious, And will not come when desired. On land and on sea, It is indispensible. It is without an equal, It is four-sided; It is not confined, It is incomparable; It comes from four quarters It will not be advised, It will not be without advice. ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 3 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... the full magnanimity of this advice without realizing that Orta is a place above all others to please a man's fancy, and that the fishing is exceptionally good. Miss Cassandra has taken back her caustic expressions with regard to the devious ways of fisher folk, or at least of this especial fisherman, and so, in good humor with one another and with the world in general, we set forth for Lausanne, by Domodossola and the Simplon. We shall have a Sunday in Lausanne to drink in Calvinism near ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... youths started on their devious ways through the hilly land of youth. There were bird-songs and flowers; there were bright paths, and dark ones; there were sunny by-paths, which ended in dreamy forests; there were pitfalls in unexpected places; there was often sorrow where they looked for joy, and failure where they expected ...
— Almost A Man • Mary Wood-Allen
... enough they approached the Culm houses, loitering along the moist, shining sand, over which the waves had rolled and rippled but a few hours before, and marking their devious path with straying footprints. Noll's heart began to beat somewhat faster as they neared the fishermen's houses, and he kept a keen watch upon his uncle's face in order to detect the first look of surprise and astonishment ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... devious steps of the strange being who has grown into the hero of this story. He had left his apartment at daybreak long before his servant was up, with his knapsack, and a small portmanteau, into which he had thrust—besides such additional articles of dress as ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the land to which they belonged, 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 ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... 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 Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... garden-houses of the Egyptian noblesse are situated, to Old Cairo, where a ferry-boat took the whole party across the Nile, with that noise and bawling volubility in which the Arab people seem to be so unlike the grave and silent Turks; and so took our course for some eight or ten miles over the devious tract which the still outlying waters obliged us to pursue. The Pyramids were in sight the whole way. One or two thin silvery clouds were hovering over them, and casting delicate rosy shadows upon the grand simple old piles. Along the track we saw a score of pleasant pictures of Eastern ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... done. Rogers' commands were carried out, and in cautious single file the band of Rangers crept through the forest by devious tracks known to themselves, keeping eyes and ears ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... huddled irregularity which makes all Chinese built dwellings fall naturally into pictures. Not only this, they had burrowed to a depth equal to three stories under the ground, and through this ran passages in which the Chinese transacted their dark and devious affairs—as the smuggling of opium, the traffic in slave girls and the settlement of ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... after 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 follow her dictates. After a long and deep struggle ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... 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 which had ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of his long and exciting career. A day of sinister portent this must have been, for scarcely had Coquenil left Notre-Dame when another scene was enacted there that should have been happy, but that, alas! showed only a rough and devious way stretching before two lovers. And again it was the girl who made trouble, this seller of candles, with her fine hands and her hair and her wistful dark eyes. A strange and pathetic figure she was, sitting there alone in the somber church. Quite alone now, for it was closing time, Mother Bonneton ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... execution of any crowned head; as a wily woman she wanted to make the most of both sides; and as a diplomatist she would not have open war and direct operations going down to the root of the evil if devious ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... charge of the Tenth Legion, and first heard, sounding on their bronze, the arms of Caesar. Here the river was forded; here the little men of the South went up in formation; here the barbarian broke and took his way, as the opposing General has recorded, through devious woodland paths, scattering in the pursuit; here began the ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... 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 in ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... fishing-village has of late years bloomed into a fashionable watering-place. The houses are built on a strip of sand and the precipitous hillside beyond, and the cottages are perched wherever they can conveniently hold on to the crags, the devious pathways and flights of steps leading up to them presenting a quaint aspect. The bends of the Mawddach, as it goes inland among the hills, present miles of unique scenery, the great walls of Cader Idris closing the ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... Thought! how oft in days When youthful passion fired my breast, And drove me into devious ways, Didst thou my wandering steps arrest, And, whispering gently in mine ear Thine angel-message, fraught with love, Check for the time my mad career, And melt the heart naught ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various
... 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, and it was as if he had come into ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... earliest color of dawn flickered along the heights. And though we started when the first rifle-shot gave warning, hiding our plunder and mules among the crags in charge of the Syrians, but taking Tugendheim with us, the way was so steep and devious that morning came and found us worrying lest we come too late to help our friends—even as once we had worried in ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... 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, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... collects the most beautiful flowers of nature, and he displays them with all the delicate attraction of soft and harmonious numbers. With a dexterity peculiar to himself, in whatever subject he engages, he leads his readers imperceptibly through devious paths of pleasure, of which, at the outset of the poem, they could form no conception. He seems to have often written without any previous meditation or design. Several of his elegies may be said to have neither middle nor end: yet the transitions are so natural, and the gradations ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... make a universal Balott, and then let it appear, if Collonel Lambert and half a dozen Officers, with all their seduced Partizans, make so much as a single Cypher to the Summe Total. And this shall be enough to answer those devious Principles set down in the porch of that specious Edifice; which being erected upon the Sand, will (like the rest that has been daubed with untempered mortar) sink also at the next high wind that blowes upon it. But I am glad it is at last avowed, upon what pretexts that late ...
— An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) • John Evelyn
... follow some good-looking miner to his cabin. The first time this peculiarity was discovered by her owner was on his return to the street after driving a bargain within the walls of the Temperance Hotel. Jinny was nowhere to be seen. Her devious course, however, was pleasingly indicated by vegetables that strewed the road until she was at last tracked to the veranda of the Arcade saloon, where she was found looking through the window at a game of euchre, and only deterred ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... the journalist's pen, or an odd collocation of ideas jostle each other in his brain: the writer at once stops his instructive reasoning; he goes off the main line and careers bounding down some devious side-path of entertaining nonsense. Our home papers are almost uniformly staid; they are written conscientiously, laboriously, commendably. But, after all, the French are right in trying to inject as much entertainment as possible into the ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... perceive that this gentle Old Lady so devious in her conversation has a power of self-possession, of which, very retiringly, she ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... a devious way to the ruins of the old stone mill,—down unfrequented roads, through meadow gates, and over a narrow pasture lot, then up a little hill and into a cool beech woods, where the peace of the summer reigned unbroken. Piloted by Lloyd, they ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... white fortress that same hour De Guardiola heard in silence the Admiral's message of defiance, then when he and Mexia were again alone frowned thoughtfully over a slip of paper which by devious ways had shortly before reached his hand. With all their vigilance not every hole and crevice could the English stop; Spanish was the town and Spanish the overhanging fortress, and the former was the place of many women and priests. The conquerors strove to secure the place ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... great round world with its burning mountains, buried cities, moving rivers of ice, and many other things as strange. She made raised maps in clay, so that I could feel the mountain ridges and valleys, and follow with my fingers the devious course of rivers. I liked this, too; but the division of the earth into zones and poles confused and teased my mind. The illustrative strings and the orange stick representing the poles seemed so ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... the Kaskaskia joins it, after a devious course of 400 miles. In 37 deg. north latitude, the Ohio pours in its tribute, called by the early French explorers, "La Belle Riviere," the beautiful river. A little below 34 deg., the White river enters ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... was a rambling old place, full of quaint corners, arches and odd little steps up and down leading to cupboards, mysterious recesses and devious winding ways which turned into dark narrow passages, branching right and left through the whole breadth of the house. It was along one of these that Innocent ran swiftly on leaving the kitchen, till she reached a closed door, where pausing, she ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli |
