"Devious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hole in Menzie's side door and over the wall at the back, then sat down and devoured the lump of liver, licked her chops, felt absolutely happy, and set out by devious ways to the rubbish-yard, where, in the bottom of an old cracker-box, her family was awaiting her. A plaintive mewing reached her ears. She went at speed and reached the box to see a huge Black Tom-cat calmly destroying her brood. He was twice as big as she, but she went at him with ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... to acquire this finesse. As we are now privileged to observe him, he is as easy to understand as the multiplication table, as little devious and, alas! as lacking in suavity. Yet, let us be fair to George. Mere innocence of guile, of verbal trickery, had not alone sufficed for his passionate bluntness in the present crisis. At a later stage in his career as a husband he might have been equally blunt; yet never again, ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... scientific navigation, are not able to direct their course across the sea to points on the Philippine coast where they could be safe and escape the Dutch who were lying in wait for them; but they cross from island to island, by devious routes, making their way as their partial knowledge of sailing enables them, and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various
... Trepidation talkt, and that first mov'd; And now Saint Peter at Heav'ns Wicket seems To wait them with his Keys, and now at foot Of Heav'ns ascent they lift thir Feet, when loe A violent cross wind from either Coast Blows them transverse ten thousand Leagues awry Into the devious Air; then might ye see Cowles, Hoods and Habits with thir wearers tost 490 And flutterd into Raggs, then Reliques, Beads, Indulgences, Dispenses, Pardons, Bulls, The sport of Winds: all these upwhirld ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... fightin' factor which you mightn't think from this elevation; an' m'rover, Red Fleet don't know we're 'ere. Most of us"—he glanced proudly at his boots—"didn't run to spurs, but we're disguised pretty devious, as you might say. Morgan, our signaliser, when last seen, was a Dawlish bathing-machine proprietor. Hinchcliffe was naturally a German waiter, and me you behold as a squire of low degree; while yonder Levantine dragoman on the hatch is our Mr. Moorshed. He was the second cutter's snotty—my snotty—on ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... the man Gray was incapably drunk. Macfarlane, sobered by his fury, chewed the cud of the money he had been forced to squander and the slights he had been obliged to swallow. Fettes, with various liquors singing in his head, returned home with devious footsteps and a mind entirely in abeyance. Next day Macfarlane was absent from the class, and Fettes smiled to himself as he imagined him still squiring the intolerable Gray from tavern to tavern. As soon ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... found themselves plunging into the shadows of the streets, threading their devious ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... like 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 down to ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... had started from town at daylight, darkness overtook them at the canyon and it was with fear and misgiving that Patty contemplated the devious trail up Monte's Creek. The descent of this trail by daylight had taxed the girl's knowledge of horsemanship to the limit, and now to attempt its ascent with a heavily loaded wagon in the darkness—Microby Dandeline seemed ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... Austrian police, had found a clue, a clue that soon would bring him to the trail he was seeking. He did not know yet what he could do with his clue. But this much he knew; sooner or later this scratch in the floor would lead him to the murderer. The trail might be long and devious; but he would follow it and at its end would be success. He knew that this scratch had been made after the murder was committed; this was proved by the blood that marked its beginning. And it could not have been made by any of those who entered the room during the day because by that ...
— The Case of The Pool of Blood in the Pastor's Study • Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner
... 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 great ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... promises from God. Only so far as an articulate divine word carries my faith has my faith the right to go. In the crooked alleys of Venice there is a thin thread of red stone, inlaid in the pavement or wall, which guides through all the devious turnings to the Piazza, in the centre, where the great church stands. As long as we have the red line of promise on our path, faith may follow it and will come to the Temple. Where the line stops it is presumption, and not faith, that takes up ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... 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 as lemon—were ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... truth, our tourists were not greatly reassured. Wampus could not tell where the road might lead them, for he did not know, save that it led by devious winds to Parker, on the border between Arizona and California; but what lay between them and that destination was a sealed ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... me a little space And browse about our ancient place, Lay by your wonted troubles here And have a turn of Christmas cheer. These sober walls of weathered stone Can tell a romance of their own, And these wide rooms of devious line Are kindly meant in their design. Sometimes the north wind searches through, But he shall not be rude to you. We'll light a log of generous girth For winter comfort, and the mirth Of healthy children you shall see About a sparkling Christmas tree. Eleanor, leader ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... he had once been young, and that he had grown old, and was now dead. That was all. Youth and vigour had come to that. Youth and vigour always came to that. Everything came to that. He had ill-treated her; he had abandoned her; he had been a devious rascal; but how trivial were such accusations against him! The whole of her huge and bitter grievance against him fell to pieces and crumbled. She saw him young, and proud, and strong, as for instance when he had kissed her lying on the bed in that London hotel—she ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... Through devious passages beneath the theatre, Hugh led the way, while with greater poignancy than ever before the young playwright sensed the vulgarity, the immodesty, and the dirt of the world behind and below the scenes. It was all familiar enough to him, for he had several friends among ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... those days was not distilled north of the Gila—was brought by devious route, when brought at all, from Mexico, and "Greaser" packers, who were models of temperance when only Gringo whiskey or German beer could be had, would sometimes stampede at the mere whisper of mescal. Yet here was mescal, and here were some, at least, of the Sanchez "outfit," ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... 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 ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... spirits, such as mine, become hypnotised with their bit occupations - if I may use Scotch to you - it is so far more scornful than any English idiom. Well, I can't help being a skeleton, and you are to take this devious ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the seacoast to the mountains. Each plantation was in itself a small village, with the owner's house in the centre, surrounded by outbuildings and negro cabins, and the pastures, meadows, and fields of tobacco stretching away on all sides. The rare traveler, pursuing his devious way on horseback or in a boat, would catch sight of these noble estates opening up from the road or the river, and then the forest would close in around him for several miles, until through the thinning trees he would see again the white cabins ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... was hard to conduct in this manner; he leaned heavily upon his guide, he staggered at times, and nearly fell. The night was dark and foggy; more than once Hugo almost lost his bearings and turned in a wrong direction. But he had a reason for all the devious windings and turnings which he took; he was afraid of being spied upon, followed, tracked. It was not until he came at last to a dark lane, between rows of warehouses, where not a light twinkled in the rooms, nor a solitary pedestrian loitered about the pavement, that he seemed ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... strode briskly down the deserted street. Her fine bronze eyebrows were drawn down to where they met. "Good Lord! Damn!"—Cecil swore very prettily and modernly—"What rotten taste! Not frankness, whatever it might seem outwardly; not frankness, but devious excuses! Some more of Adrian's hated past-generation stuff! And yet—no! The woman was sincere—perfectly! She had meant it—that about her husband. And she was lovely—and she was fine, too! It was impossible to deny it. But—a childless woman! About that drunken tailor's model of ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... Lenet proofs of the zeal and constancy of the Princess de Conde. She escapes from Chantilly on foot, with her son and a small band of faithful followers, traverses Paris, whence she reaches, in three days and by devious roads, Montrond, the place pointed out by Lenet as the safest retreat and the most advantageous to defend. Her letters to the Queen and ministers, to the magistrates, to her relatives, are stamped with nobility ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... 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 ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... and virtue dear, Where man looks up, and, proud to claim His rank within the social frame, Sees a grand system round him roll, Himself its centre, sun, and soul! Far from the shocks of Europe—far From every wild, elliptic star That, shooting with a devious fire, Kindled by heaven's avenging ire, So oft hath into chaos hurled The ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... bold, but something in his look, as he blinked at his partner, might have given Flint cause for uneasiness, had the Billionaire noticed that oblique and dangerous glance. One might have read therein some shifty and devious plan of Waldron's to dominate even Flint himself, to rule the master or to wreck him, and to seize in his own hands the reins of universal power. But Flint, bending over his note-book and making careful memoranda, saw ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... When she left the office she brought "The Last Dryad" home with her, and till far into the night she read it and re-read it, comparing it and contrasting it with "Patroclus," searching diligently if perhaps there were not some minute loophole of evasion, some devious passage through which she might escape. But amid the shattered panes of her glass pavilion the block of stone persisted, inert, immovable. The stone could not be raised, the little ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... his own romance, though to the eye a most unromantic youth; and he wandered through the Guestwick woods with many thoughts of which they who knew him best knew nothing. All this he thought of now as, with devious steps, he made his way towards his old home,—with very devious steps, for he went backwards through the woods by a narrow path which led right away from the town down to a little water-course, over which stood a wooden foot-bridge ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... his office came many an art gem stolen from its owner on the Continent and smuggled over by devious ways known only to The Sparrow and his associates. And just as ingeniously the stolen property was sent across to America, so well camouflaged that the United States Customs officers were deceived. With pictures it was their usual method to coat the genuine picture with a ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... intimate with General Gouvion. She had warned him in good time, and had given notice to persons about the queen that she knew what was going on. The alarm was given at two in the morning, but that she might not be compromised it was given by devious ways. A traveller from Marseilles was roused at his lodgings by a friendly voice. He refused to get up, and went to sleep again. Some hours later the visitor returned, and prevailed with the sleeper. He came from the palace, and reported that the king ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... seen so many beautiful skies overclouded," replied the mother, "so many blossoms nipped by the frost, that I am afraid to trust you to the care of those fair days, which may be interrupted by thundering and tempestuous nights. You no doubt think as I did—life's devious ways were strewn with sweet-scented flowers, but ah! how long they have lingered around me and took their flight in the vivid hope that laughs at the drooping victims it has murdered." Elfonzo was moved at this sight. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Thus it has ever been my rule to indulge in the most preposterous peregrination, taking no account whatever of days, seasons or possible cons, hearkening only to the pros, and never so much as glancing at the calendar. Such protracted zigzaggeries have been made easy to the "devious traveller" by one unusual advantage. Just as pioneers in Australasia find Salvation Army shelters scattered throughout remotest regions, so, fortunately, have I ever been able to count upon "harbour and good company" during my thirty-five years ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... pouring the redundant stream Of light; beholds his unrelenting sway Bend the reluctant planets to absolve The fated rounds of Time. Thence, far effused, She darts her swiftness up the long career Of devious comets; through its burning signs Exulting measures the perennial wheel Of Nature, and looks back on all the stars, Whose blended light, as with a milky zone, Invests the orient. Now, amazed she views The empyreal waste, where happy ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... was in following his devious course along the lanes more and more into the country Richard Frayne did not pause to consider; all he thought was that at last, after many efforts, he was going to run his cousin down, and bring him to bay ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... Lord, who hast through devious ways Led me to know Thy Praise, And to this Wildernesse Hast brought me ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... in the end, sad and wan and bankrupt. Of a truth, many attractions and distractions are here; else he could not forget the peddling-box and the light-heeled, heavy-haunched women of Battery Park. Here are swings for the mind; toboggan-chutes for the soul; merry-go-rounds for the fancy; and many devious and alluring paths where one can lose himself for years. A sanitarium this for the hebephreniac. And like all sanitariums, you go into it with one disease and come out of it with ten. Had Shakib been forewarned of Khalid's mind, had he even seen him at the gate before he entered, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... recoiled and said: "Nay, nay, impetuous brook, I will not be your bride." So, with many murmurs and complaints, the brook crept back to its jealous banks and resumed its devious and prattling way to ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... mariners. The precipitous mountain masses which separate one valley from another rendered communication between them difficult, while they served also as lurking-places for robbers. Commerce endeavoured to follow, therefore, the sea-route in preference to the devious ways of this highwayman's region, and it accomplished its purpose the more readily because the common occupation of sea-fishing had familiarised the people with every nook and corner on the coast. The continual wash of the surge had worn away the bases ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... easily onward in the direction that I had been pressing towards with so much difficulty along the rocky mountain-side. The course of this sunken path, I soon perceived, was partly natural and partly artificial. It went on through clefts such as the one that I had fallen into, and through devious ways where the fragments of fallen rock, some of them great masses weighing many tons, had been piled upon each other in most natural confusion, so as to leave a narrow passage in their depths. And all this had been done in a long-past time, for the rocks ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... what he had heard in the King's chamber he might be doing his duty to Charles. But Charles had insulted him and his nation. Marguerite de St. Martin was his first love, the welfare of herself and her sister was at stake; he had trudged, four miles and more through the mire of steep and devious lanes to tell them; was he to leave them unwarned? Love and Duty fought their old battle, and with the old result—Love conquered and the secret was told. He had not, it is true, heard the full purport of the Secretary's grave words or of Charles' light replies: but ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... of land, is always good, or at least good enough. For, even if the weather be thick, it does not matter much to a ship having all the open sea before her bows. A Landfall may be good or bad. You encompass the earth with one particular spot of it in your eye. In all the devious tracings the course of a sailing-ship leaves upon the white paper of a chart she is always aiming for that one little spot—maybe a small island in the ocean, a single headland upon the long coast of a continent, a lighthouse on a bluff, or simply the peaked ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... as some little boys from the village were returning from a ramble through the dark and devious glen of Cappercullen, with their pockets laden with nuts and "frahans," to their amazement and even terror they saw a light streaming redly from the narrow window of one of the towers overhanging the precipice among the ivy and the lofty branches, across the glen, already ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... hours this incessant play of artillery was kept up upon the mass of the enemy. The round shot exploded tumbrils, or dashed heaps of sand into the air; the hollow shells cast their fatal contents fully before them, and devious rockets sprang aloft with fury, to fall hissing among a flood of men: but all was in vain, the Sikhs stood unappalled, and flash for flash returned, and fire ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... rocks and shoals, that it was impossible to proceed straight across, but it was needful absolutely to pass the rock and then turn back on it from the open sea. It was agonizing for the sister to watch the devious course, and she turned the glass upon the poor boys, plainly making out Adrian's scared, restless look, as he clung to the fisher-lad, and Fergus nursing his bag of specimens with his knees drawn up. By and by Gerald was wading, and with difficulty ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to gloat over 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 ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... sublimest faculty, the queen of all the arts and sciences. But this, Maternus, is no apology for you, whose conduct is so extraordinary, that, though formed by nature to reach the summit of perfection [d], you choose to wander into devious paths, and rest contented with an humble station in the ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... of the cervical spine, with anterior convexity, in the Rose position, rendering esophagoscopy and bronchoscopy difficult or impossible. The devious course of the pharynx, larynx and trachea are plainly visible. The extension is incorrectly imparted to the whole cervical spine instead of only to the occipito-atloid joint. This is the usual and very faulty conception ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... to tell. "Stay with us here, Thou ill-starred lady. Great the friendliness I have for thee. The people of our court Shall thy lost husband seek; or, it may be, He too will wander hither of himself By devious paths: yea, mournful one, thy lord Thou wilt regain, abiding with us here." And Damayanti, bowing, answered thus Unto the Queen: "I will abide with thee, O mother of illustrious sons, if so They feed me not on orts, nor seek from me To wash the feet of comers, nor that I Be set to speak with any ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... this position without interruption during three administrations would be a failure at the very outstart if he resorted to devious conduct or political duplicity. He has but one master—the people at large. To reach this position he had to have courage, be truthful, exercise sound and practical business judgment, and at the same time have a vision looking to the betterment ...
— The Progressive Democracy of James M. Cox • Charles E. Morris
... 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 part, ii. 105. Ne'er was a man with beard grown over. long, viii. 298. News ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... gaz'd with pitying eye O'er all life's devious way; Then pluming bright his golden wings, ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... dialogue has deviated from the story; but when it does so he will feel it, and the feeling will be unpleasant. Let the intending novel-writer, if he doubt this, read one of Bulwer's novels,—in which there is very much to charm,—and then ask himself whether he has not been offended by devious conversations. ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... 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 of ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... distress his mercilessness might entail. He took his profits as a Bourbon took his taxes, as if by right of birth. Somewhere, in a long-forgotten history of his brief school days, he had come across a phrase that he remembered now, by some devious and distant process of association, and when he heard of the calamities that his campaign had wrought, of the shipwrecked fortunes and careers that were sucked down by the Pit, he found it possible to say, with a short laugh, and a lift of ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... while I thanked Providence for the devious ways I had been brought to safety. After that he spoke no more, for his mind began to labour heavily with his coming speech. His lips kept muttering, his eye wandered, and I began to prepare myself for a second catastrophe. I tried to think of something ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... the country would probably have considered the devious march that they already had made arduous enough, but they had, at least for the most part, followed the valleys and crossed only a few low divides, and it was evident now that their way led close up to the eternal snow. There was a rock scarp in front of them, ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... with clouded brain From some unholy banquet reeled, —And since, our devious steps maintain His track across the ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... You go back to the West with a message from the Orient. Tell them back home there that hearts are all alike the world over. And that we all, white men, black men, yellow men and brown men, are playing the very same game for the very same stakes and that somehow, through ways devious and incomprehensible, through honesty and faith, failure and perseverance, we find at last the great content, the peace ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... conscious that in a few hours at most the rising tide would fill the subterranean passage and cut off his retreat, he pushed desperately onwards. He had descended some ninety feet, and had lost, in the devious windings of his downward path, all but the reflection of the light from the gallery, when he was rewarded by a glimpse of sunshine striking upwards. He parted two enormous masses of seaweed, whose bubble-headed fronds hung curtainwise across his path, and found himself in the very ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... 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
... Sicoris shall be spanned. Yet fearing he might rise in wrath anew, Not on the nearest marge they placed the beams, But in mid-field. Thus the presumptuous stream They tame with chastisement, parting his flood In devious channels out; and ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... activity—in our 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 ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... easy-chair on to the hearthrug, and knows not that he is lonely. If he have a difficult problem to solve, he just as naturally attacks it over a pipe. It is true that as the smoke-wreaths ring themselves above his head, his mind may wander off into devious paths of reverie, and the problem be utterly forgotten. Well, that is, at least, something for which to be grateful, for the paths of reverie are the paths of pleasantness and peace, and problems ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... devious wanderings—for he mostly went about alone—he made his way, with great trouble and perplexity, to the court in which the mother of Johnny Wickes lived; and he betrayed no shame at all in confronting the poor woman—half ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... following Louis Akers' call Mademoiselle learned of it, by the devious route of the servants' hall, and she went to Lily at once, yearning and anxious, and in her best lace collar. She needed courage, and to be dressed in her best gave ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... red houses, with their corners and barge-boards dressed off with white, and on the door-step of one a green tub that flames with a great pink hydrangea. Scattered along the way are huge ashes, sycamores, elms, in somewhat devious line; and from a pendent bough of one of these last a trio of school-boys are seeking to beat down the swaying nest of an oriole with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... 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
... and there athwart their green enclosures. Only two great roads traversed this sequestered region, running nearly parallel, at a distance of more than seventy miles from each other. In the intermediate space, there was nothing but a labyrinth of wild and devious paths, crossing each other at the extremity of almost every field—often serving, at the same time, as channels for the winter torrents, and winding so capriciously among the innumerable hillocks, and beneath the meeting ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes
... flesh and blood. They are totally unmindful of all that is concerned with the next world. Those men that are stupefied by erroneous understandings display a hatred for righteousness. The man who walks after those misguided persons that have betaken themselves to devious and wrong paths is afflicted equally with them. They however, that are contented, devoted to the scriptures, endued with high souls, and possessed of great might, betake themselves to the path of righteousness. Do thou ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... Better 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 ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various
... rattan and bamboo, whips made of the branches of the bale tree,—a tree full of sharp and strong thorns, which tear the skin and lacerate the flesh far worse than ordinary scourges. For others, exploring with a searching and inquisitive malice, stimulated by an insatiate rapacity, all the devious paths of Nature for whatever is most unfriendly to man, they made rods of a plant highly caustic and poisonous, called Bechettea, every wound of which festers and gangrenes, adds double and treble to the present torture, leaves a crust of leprous sores upon the body, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... that he 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
... Captain had pointed out that Galactic trade was a chancy thing at the best, that accident might prevent return of the Queen to Sargol. But the priests had remained adamant and saw in all such arguments only a devious attempt to raise prices. They quoted in their turn the information they had levered out of the Company men—that Traders had their code and that once pay had been given in advance the contract must be fulfilled. They, ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... slowly, tongues were loosened. An interval of impatient waiting, then the music again and the parting curtains, and Darden's Audrey,—the girl who could so paint very love, very sorrow, very death; the girl who had come strangely and by a devious path from the height and loneliness of the mountains to the level of this stage and ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... and out of sight. Whenever we came upon earth we marked it deeply with our heels; we broke twigs downwards, and laid hastily-snatched bunches of grass to help the trail we were leaving for the others to follow. This, in spite of our compass, was a very devious track. Besides, the thorn bushes were patches of spiky aloe coming into red flower, and ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... England, his friends, the scenes of his youth, the hopes of coming time, he would seek another country, and in other scenes begin life again. Having resolved on this, he became calmer. He endeavoured to guide with prudence the steeds of destiny through the devious road which he had chosen, and bent all his efforts the better to conceal what he could ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... mournfulness, Miss Verity's simple, yet devious, mind played not ungratefully. For it seemed to her to harmonize with the true inwardness of her mission, offering a sympathetic background to the news of her niece's indisposition and the signals of distress flown by her little protegee, Theresa Bilson. The note ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... joy Expands my heart to meet thee in Savoy! Doom'd o'er the world through devious paths to roam, Each clime my country, and each house my home, My soul is sooth'd, my cares have found an end: I greet ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... and her child To share the dangers of the border war; The log-built cabin from the Indian barred, Their little boy, perchance, kept watch and ward, While Father ploughed with rifle at his back, Or sought the glutted foe through many a devious track. ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas
... 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
... that it was because Agnes Merrivale was, beyond all question, the sweetest and most lovable, as well as the most charming and lovely woman it had ever been my good fortune to encounter. Nor will I attempt to describe the devious methods and the complicated stratagems by which—having arrived at this conclusion—I painfully sought to obtain some slight inkling or clue to the sweet girl's sentiments toward myself. Let it suffice to say that they were all signally, ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... up, but something impelled her to read it again; some hint of a pregnant secret to be gleaned from it, if one but held the clue. Hers was a keen and thoughtful mind. She sent it exploring through the devious tangle of the maze wherein she and Banneker, Camilla Van Arsdale and Willis Enderby had been so tragically involved, and as she patiently studied the letter as possible guide there dawned within her a glint ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... destroyed, rocks rolled down, and in one instance trees were felled along the road for nearly a mile."* (* Fremont's Report, O.R. volume 12 part 1 page 11.) Jackson's object was thus thoroughly achieved. All combination between the Federal columns, except by long and devious routes, had now been rendered impracticable; and there was little fear that in any operations down the Valley his own communications would be endangered. The M'Dowell expedition had neutralised, for the time being, Fremont's ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... so?" said 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 ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... curving lines, round the base, upward to a piece of level land, into which the north side of the hill gently declined. At the most northern part of this level, the two streets united, at a distance of a mile from the wharves, into one which thence winded a devious course two or three miles further along the Yaupaae. Above the highest roofs and steeples, towered the green summit of the hill, whose thick-growing evergreens presented, at all seasons, a coronal of verdure. One who stood on the top ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... industrial world revolves around those who resist temptation, who work 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 weakens ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... respect, for in this instance their intelligence is completely under the control of his learning. It is the judge who sums up the various arguments with which their memory has been wearied out, and who guides them through the devious course of the proceedings; he points their attention to the exact question of fact which they are called upon to solve, and he puts the answer to the question of law into their mouths. His influence upon their ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... by the cars opposite a wide door, and the machine guided by Rupert rolled through, winding a devious course toward where its owner waited. Without a word, Corrie turned and went into ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... of our patrols with new acquisitions; and this vocabulary he would handle like a master, stalking a little before me, "beard on shoulder," the plaid hanging loosely about him, the yellow staff clapped under his arm, and guiding me uphill by that devious, tactical ascent which seems peculiar to men of his trade. I might count him with the best talkers; only that talking Scots and talking English seem incomparable acts. He touched on nothing at least but he adorned it; when he narrated, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of an incomparable mystery. In the polemic microscope, an atom is enlarged to a monster, and each party was skilful to exaggerate the absurd or impious conclusions that might be extorted from the principles of their adversaries. To escape from each other, they wandered through many a dark and devious thicket, till they were astonished by the horrid phantoms of Cerinthus and Apollinaris, who guarded the opposite issues of the theological labyrinth. As soon as they beheld the twilight of sense and heresy, they started, measured back ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... American blueness and vastness, a mellow sun, and a delicate breeze did all that these things could for them, as they began the long, devious climb of the hills crowned by the ancient Etruscan city. At first they were all in the constraint of their own and one another's moods, known or imagined, and no talk began till the young clergyman turned to Imogene and asked, after a long look at the smiling ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... this problem has begun clearly to emerge as the central aim of the science. The theory of evolution made the problem a reality, for without evolution the mystery of life must for ever be insoluble, but whatever direction biological investigation has taken, it has led, often by devious paths, to the borderland between the living and the inorganic, and in that borderland the central problem ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... rather now forget to praise, Remembering only this true friend to greet, As drawing near by straight and devious ways, We lay our hearts—love's ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... were rich and influential men eager to see him, there was business to talk over, there were important letters to read: an immense correspondence, enclosed in silk envelopes—a correspondence which had nothing to do with the infidels of colonial post-offices, but came into his hands by devious, yet safe, ways. It was left for him by taciturn nakhodas of native trading craft, or was delivered with profound salaams by travel-stained and weary men who would withdraw from his presence calling upon Allah to bless ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... Empire, some of whom must have had incomes never approached at any other period in the history of medicine. The chapter gives a good picture of the stage on which Galen (practically a contemporary of Pliny) was to play so important a role. Pliny seems himself to have been rather disgusted with the devious paths of the doctors of his day, and there is no one who has touched with stronger language upon the weak points of the art of physic. In one place he says that it alone has this peculiar art and privilege, "That whosoever professeth himself ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... emerged from her hut, and the two Europeans, closely followed, as always, by their inseparable Shadows, took the winding side-path that led through the jungle by a devious way, avoiding the front of Tu-Kila-Kila's temple, to ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... the sea is Barmouth, where a 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 ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... devious as my own footsteps have been since my decision to follow Jesus Christ, I believe more than ever that this is the only real adventure of life. No step in life do I even compare with that one in permanent ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... Gulf, or in the Bengal Bay, or China Seas, or in any other waters haunted by his race. So that Monsoons, Pampas, Nor-Westers, Harmattans, Trades; any wind but the Levanter and Simoom, might blow Moby Dick into .. the devious zig-zag world-circle of the Pequod's circumnavigating wake. But granting all this; yet, regarded discreetly and coolly, seems it not but a mad idea, this; that in the broad boundless ocean, one solitary ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... 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 absence. Who would bother about a glass in a house where murder had been done? She ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... saddled for my use, stood in a thicket hard by, with two other masked horsemen, who seemed to be servants. In less than two minutes we were mounted, and rode off as fast as we could through rough and devious roads, in which one of the domestics ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... familiarity with that labyrinth of sombre streets and alleys. Selecting a devious course, stooping low beneath the black shadows of walls and fences, he yet set so swift a gait with his confounded long legs it kept me puffing to follow. But we found clear passage, seeing no one close enough to ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... 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
... and the stranger spurred to the sea by a devious course. They rode silently, the stranger's hand alert to seize his pistol. Suddenly, when only a mile or two from the harbour, a light or two being visible on the ships riding at anchor, he reined in with a jerk before a shepherd's hut which stood at the edge of a sheepfold ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... would wish her husband to know disgraceful ancestral secrets which were no fault of hers? A much older woman would not be above entombing them, if the fates were kind. But it saddened him to think that his wife should be rushed to maturity along the devious way. Poor child, he must win her confidence as quickly as his limping wits would permit and shift her ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... temperament and taste which are supposed to constitute the essence and comprise the secret of love, was yet sufficient to blind her judgment to the risks of feeling, if nothing more, which were likely to arise from their hourly-increasing intimacy; and she wandered with him into the devious woods, and they walked by moonlight among the solemn-shaded hills, and the unconscious girl had no sort of apprehension that the spells of an enslaving passion were rapidly passing over ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... her devious ratiocinations to a conclusion which he could not grasp. "What do you ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Avenue, slid smoothly over to Columbus, ran for a block or so beneath the elevated structure and swung into Seventy-seventh Street, through which it pelted eastward and into Central Park. Then for some moments it turned and twisted through the devious driveways, in a fashion so erratic that the passenger lost all grasp of her whereabouts, retaining no more than a confused impression of serpentine, tree-lined ways, chequered with lamplight and the soft, dense ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... into the devious darkness of the place before he could find any reply, before he quite realised, indeed, that they had reached her lodging. He could only utter a vague "Good-night" after her, formulating more definite statements to himself a few minutes later in ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... devious and tortuous on the water, his resort being quick turns, while the chasers gain in speed. After numerous close escapes he leaps into the water. Then if the pursuers catch and hold his boat it clogs them in following him, and if they follow him while his boat is left free, he ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... the Fairy Land must face the Phantoms. Betimes, I set myself to the task of investigating the motley world to which our progress in humanity—has attained, caring little what misrepresentation I incurred, what hostility I provoked, in searching through a devious labyrinth for ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... this devious inquiry as to my own financial standing by assuring him that I had contrived so far to make mine. "I'm not riding in my coach-and-four yet, as you see, Crump, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... last, after what far wanderings apart! They had met as if each came from the Valley of the Shadows. Out of the vastness of the unknown, over all those long and devious trails, into what now seemed to him a world still more vast, more fraught with desperate peril, he had come back to her. And she—what had been her perils? What were ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... Tho' 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 ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... allotted to him in this house was in the rear and at the top of a steep flight of stairs. As he sought it that night, he cast a quick glance through the narrow passageway opening just beyond his own door. Would it be possible for him to thread those devious ways and reach Mr. Roberts' room without rousing Mrs. Weston, who in spite of her years had the alertness of a watchdog with eye and ear ever open? To be found strolling through quarters where he had no business would be worse than being ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... said that Friedrich, who spells in the way we saw, "ASTEURE" for "A CETTE HEURE," has made shining acquisitions on the literary side. However, in the long-run it becomes clear, his intellect, roving on devious courses, or plodding along the prescribed tram-roads, had been wide awake; and busy all the while, bringing in abundant pabulum of an ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... 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 ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... his native soil, and all that Iowa could do about it was to issue a warrant for his arrest on a charge connected with the misappropriation of funds. Young Mr. Pitkin escaped over the State line westward, beating the said warrant a nose in a whipping finish, and after a devious career covering many years and many States he turned up on the Jungle Circuit, bringing with him a string of horses, a gentle, soft-spoken old negro trainer, an Irish jockey named Mulligan, and two stable hands, each as black ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... down accordingly into 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 ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... fellow-optimists to practise them with you. You will grow all the happier through ceremonious expression of a light heart. And your children and your children's children will dance 'The Chesterton' when you are no more. May be, a few of them will still be dancing it now and then, on this or that devious green, even when optimism shall have withered for ever from the land. Nor will any man mock at the survival. The dance will have lost nothing of its old grace, and will have gathered that quality of pathos which makes even unlovely relics dear to us—that piteousness which Time ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... of the child in the opposite seat which made the companions think of girls as a crying evil; the mental operations are so devious and capricious; but this child was really a girl. She was a pretty child and prettily dressed, with a little face full of a petulant and wilful charm, which might well have been too much for her weak, meek young mother. She wanted to ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... perhaps a mile, the proprietor of a certain gambling den, whom he wished to apprehend. But at the boundary line, which the Chinese had reached before him, his prey had escaped. He was off somewhere, safe in the devious lanes and burrows of the native city. Therefore he stood baffled, and finally made his way back into the Settlement, along the quais, and finally reached his rooms. He pondered somewhat over the situation. That which was permitted on Chinese ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... 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, ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... conversation had ceased and the only sounds were the low clink of bit chains and the soft rustle of horses' feet in the buffalo grass. At the end of an hour the leaders swung into an old grass-grown trail that led by devious windings into a deep, steep-sided coulee along the bottom of which ran the bed of a dried-up creek. Water from recent rains stood in brackish pools. Remnants of fence with rotted posts sagging from rusty wire paralleled their course. ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... lost his way once among the devious turns which led to Sunset Rock, and arrived there just as the party, quite satisfied with the inspection of a view they had seen a score of times before, were ready to depart, his appearance upon the scene with the telltale pocket being greatly to the discomfiture of everybody concerned ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... Journal, which professes to lead the legal craft of the Empire State in the devious ways of legal justice, has but now, thirteen months after its date, a review of Miss Anthony's celebrated trial, as conducted by Judge Ward Hunt. Having taken a year and a month to get the first principles of justice and of constitutional law through his head, the belated editor of that law journal ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... persons, that such an elevated feature of our ancient churches was merely designed in the simplicity of its first intention, to act as a guide to the place of worship, when rural roads, throughout the whole country, were devious, and rendered more obscure by thick masses of forest ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 13, No. 359, Saturday, March 7, 1829. • Various
... devious way. And full of toil and pain,— Yet love and peace kept house with them, And love and peace remain. Though youth and strength and youthful friends Were left upon the road Long since, an honest man is still The noblest work ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... said, 'devious men love women that be simple. And, for a profound, devious and guileful politician you shall find none ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford |
