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Devious   /dˈiviəs/   Listen
Devious

adjective
1.
Indirect in departing from the accepted or proper way; misleading.  Synonym: oblique.  "Gave oblique answers to direct questions" , "Oblique political maneuvers"
2.
Characterized by insincerity or deceit; evasive.  Synonym: shifty.  "Shifty eyes"
3.
Deviating from a straight course.  Synonyms: circuitous, roundabout.  "A long and circuitous journey by train and boat" , "A roundabout route avoided rush-hour traffic"



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"Devious" Quotes from Famous Books



... crawling doubled upon itself, and led only into the bowels of the mountain. Gnawed by hunger, and 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 ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... 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, ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier

... Supposing that I had gone direct to Zanzibar from Paris, seven or eight months afterwards, perhaps, I should have found myself at Ujiji, but Livingstone would not have been found there then; he was on the Lualaba; and I should have had to follow him on his devious tracks through the primeval forests of Manyuema, and up along the crooked course of the Lualaba for hundreds of miles. The time taken by me in travelling up the Nile, back to Jerusalem, then to Constantinople, Southern Russia, the Caucasus, and Persia, was employed by Livingstone in fruitful ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... strange and devious journey. To Willa, who, aside from her infrequent visits to the cottage on the Parkway, had seen little of New York and its environs save in the beaten path of the conventional social round, it was a revelation. They tore through crooked teeming side-streets ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant

... 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 ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells

... days ye bring 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 ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... touching, most monitory sight. Faint mournful bugle-notes are wafted fitfully on the wind, plumes and glittering weapons glance and disappear as the procession advances, now hidden by the hedge-rows, now flashing on the sight, in the autumnal sun, as it winds slowly along the devious road; louder and louder swell those short abrupt trumpet-notes as it draws near, till the whole sad array, in its affecting beauty, is presented to the eye. The life in death that pervades the melancholy ceremonial!—"Our brother is not dead, but sleepeth," seems ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various

... of the feat. He wisely crushed the desire, for he recognized the fact that he was under surveillance. Just outside the windows stretched a little lawn, with a star-shaped flower-bed in the middle. Up and down this green space, following a leisurely and devious course, journeyed a lawnmower, propelled by a long-limbed youth. His straw hat hung limply from his head, his coat flapped limply from his shoulders, and his trousers bulged limply from his big top-boots. Nevertheless, he had a certain lumbering ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith

... lean hard upon the Eternal Breast: In all earth's devious ways I sought for rest And found it not. I will be strong, said I, And lean upon myself. I will not cry And importune all heaven with my complaint. But now my strength fails, and I fall, I faint: ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... days of a wild fear and confusion, when every condition that maketh for reason was set wandering by a devious path, and all men sitting as in a theatre of death looked to see the curtain rise upon God knows what horrors, it was vouchsafed to many to witness sights and sounds beyond the compass of Nature, and that as if the devil and his minions had profited by the anarchy ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes

... divining that this was urged in justification and precedent for devious modern ways that were not meek, did not pursue this branch of ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... frank and 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 nothing ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England

... 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 ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston

... 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 wait ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... leaves and dusted with yellow pollen, for the open was ventured no more than was compulsory. They kept to the brush and trees, and invariably the man halted and peered out before crossing a dry glade or naked stretch of upland pasturage. He worked always to the north, though his way was devious, and it was from the north that he seemed most to apprehend that for which he was looking. He was no coward, but his courage was only that of the average civilized man, and he was looking to ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London

... lake. Finally, the boy asked him, point-blank, if he had ever been there. Connie knew something of Indians, and, had been quick to note that Pierre held him in regard. Had this not been so, he would never have risked the direct question, for it is only by devious and round-about methods that one obtains desired information ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx

... English. As rapidly as information can spread, it becomes known from Karachi to Rangoon, and along the chain of seaports of the Malay states, that a fishery is to be held. Divers, gem-buyers, speculators, money-lenders, petty merchants, and persons of devious occupations, make speedy arrangements for attending. Indian and Ceylon coolies flock by the thousand to the coast of the Northern province, longing to play even humble roles in the great game of chance. The "tindals" and divers provide boats and all essential ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield

... influence of truth Which we profess may ever dwell within; That we may bear the yoke now in our youth, And always flee the devious paths ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd

... 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 great ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell

... 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 of the extended position. (Illustration ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson

... 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 ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green

... god, who struck her hard-headed mind as the most sensible god of which she had ever heard. She gave money into Abel Ah Yo's collection plate, closed up the hula house, and dismissed the hula dancers to more devious ways of earning a livelihood, shed her bright colours and raiments and flower garlands, and bought ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London

... pleasant but devious trail through those columns, but I was not able to get hold of his argument and find out what it was. I was not even able to find out where it left off. It seemed to gradually dissolve and flow off into other matters. I followed it with interest, for I was anxious ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... very nearly worked himself up to an intention to call and see her face to face. On this occasion also he adopted his favourite route—by the little summer steamer from Bristol to Castle Boterel; the time saved by speed on the railway being wasted at junctions, and in following a devious course. ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... forth from ocean toiling mounts High-arched, in solid bulk, the beach rock-strewn, Burying his hoar head under echoing cliffs, And, after pause, refluent to sea returns Not all at once is stillness, countless rills Or devious winding down the steep, or borne In crystal leap from sea-shelf to sea-well, And sparry grot replying; gradual thus With lessening cadence sank that great discourse, While round him gazed Saint Patrick, now the old Regarding, now the ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere

... with me into the streets. Wrapped in dark cloaks the people will not recognise us. They would never expect the Caesar to leave his palace while his life is in danger, and well disguised thou couldst come with me through devious ways to a house I know of on the Aventine where ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... prudential points of view, because the truth about the situation could not be hidden any longer from the acute mind of Jimmy Grayson. He concealed nothing, he showed that he was the leader of the conspiracy, and he described their devious attempts, with their relative ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... the Comte de la Seine you speak to, and who tells you he will let you lead him no more through these devious ways. Who are you that you should dare to force me onward into ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn

... especially adapted to surroundings where a very devious chase may be given, with many opportunities for the runners to go out of sight, double back on their course, etc., as in ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft

... and had given it that feeling of 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

... with him another cavalier of noble mien—both were masked and armed. Their horses, with one 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 appeared ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... entertain their guests, we have stolen away in search of the absent Wayland, and bring him once more on the tapis, to give some account of his protracted wanderings, and learn what are his hopes and prospects for the future. By what devious track we shall be pleased to pursue the rover, our next ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton

... went, winding our devious way over pathless ground, now diving into shady valleys, now mounting to sunny eminences where the breeze blew free and the eye could range far and wide, but not to find aught that was human. Gradually the flowering shrubs forsook us, and dark forest trees pressed grimly ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens

... resolution that England should not be torn in the cause of either. Whatever was done, must be done quietly and in good order. Since it seemed that the Hanoverian had no need to change anything in law or State or Church, best that he should be king. As for the devious politics, the tricks, and the mystery of Harley and Bolingbroke, they were of no ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey

... crowd, and kindles as she goes. Nor yet content, she strains her malice more, And adds new ills to those contriv'd before: She flies the town, and, mixing with a throng Of madding matrons, bears the bride along, Wand'ring thro' woods and wilds, and devious ways, And with these arts the Trojan match delays. She feign'd the rites of Bacchus; cried aloud, And to the buxom god the virgin vow'd. "Evoe! O Bacchus!" thus began the song; And "Evoe!" answer'd all the female throng. "O virgin! worthy thee alone!" ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil

... you suppose he found out about the matter? He was returning home from a feast, and seeing so many Methodist lanterns (please do not smile, for the lanterns have 'Methodist Church' written on one side, and 'Gospel Hall' on the other) asked what it meant, and learned of the trouble.... Certainly the devious ways of my own countrymen never struck me so forcibly before. How much we do need the truth to shine in upon ...
— Notable Women Of Modern China • Margaret E. Burton

... of doubt and uncertainty, the agonised young woman staggered to the gate, and then, exchanging her faltering walk for a swift run, returned by the most devious and complicated route she could think of, to the domicile of ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... touch the happy sphere To liberty 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 systems of the ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... 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 ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson

... The beard would not hide him from her eyes. No, no! And he smelled at the little tan glove, that had a slight, clean, delicate perfume about it, and thrust it into his breeches-pocket, and crossed the river again, making his way back to the native town by devious native paths that snaked and twined and twisted through the tangled bush, as he himself made his ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... partly the fact that Peter was eager for new developments in his devious course, and partly a sudden recollection of the girl he had seen in his father's library, brought about a cordial invitation ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells

... manner that Patricia and Christopher arrived at the same cross roads of their lives, where the devious tracks might merge into one another, or, being thrust asunder again by some hedge of convention, continue by a lonely, painful and circuitous route towards ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant

... gathered them to the end that one day I might be able to live in plenty, and also to have something to leave to the wife and children whom, for the benefit and welfare of my country, I hoped eventually to win and maintain. That was why I gathered those kopecks. True, I worked by devious methods—that I fully admit; but what else could I do? And even devious methods I employed only when I saw that the straight road would not serve my purpose so well as a crooked. Moreover, as I toiled, the appetite for those methods grew upon me. Yet what I took I took only from the rich; ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... how, I believe—one devious step at setting out!— that must be it:—which pursued, has led me so far out of my path, that I am in a wilderness of doubt and error; and never, never, shall find my way out of it: for, although but one pace awry at first, it has led me hundreds and hundreds of miles out of my ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... devious oft, from ev'ry classic muse, The keen collector meaner paths will choose: And first the margin's breadth his soul employs, Pure, snowy, broad, the type of nobler joys. In vain might Homer roll the tide of song, Or Horace smile, or Tully charm the throng; If, crost by Pallas' ire, the trenchant ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... appropriate to the image of a path. In the moral view, it suggests how much more simple and easy a course of rectitude is than one of sin. The one goes straight and unswerving to its end; the other is crooked, devious, intricate, and wanders from the true goal. A crooked road is a long road, and an up-and-down road is a tiring road. Wisdom's way is straight, level, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... resumes her sewing. There are 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 a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... deep impression upon Teddy. He sat smoking his pipe, and gazing into the glowing embers, as if he could there trace out the devious, and thus far invisible, trail that had baffled him so long. It must be confessed that the search of the Hibernian thus far had been carried on in a manner that could hardly be expected to insure success. He had spent weeks in wandering through ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis

... whose soul is like the desert, barren of all beauty! I may have sung of love in my time, but my songs were never new,— never worthy to last one little hour! And whatsoever of faith, passion, or heart-ecstasy my fancy could with devious dreams devise, Sah-luma knows, . . and in Sah-luma's song all ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... from the war with the higher inspiration which is hallowed by deep religious feeling. The idea of devoting their powers with self-denial and sacrifice to the service of their native land had become a fixed resolution; the devious paths which so many men entered were far from their thoughts. The youth, the young generation of their native land, were alone worthy of their efforts. They meant to train them to a harmonious development of mind and body; ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... before the 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

... the harper was her father returning by devious roads from one of the many festivals at which he played in summer-time, and having frequent rests by the way, owing to the good ale he had drunk. Her bright galaxy of faery was only a drunken man. Her fate had been settled by a passing ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb

... 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 ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish

... burro and the leaky ore bag had naturally hunted for the easiest way through the hills. His devious course bothered the boys a little in keeping track of the pieces of dropped ore. The pieces lay on the ground at irregular intervals. Sometimes there would be two samples within three or four yards of each other, and then perhaps the boys would have ...
— Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail - or, The Fugitive Professor • Burt L. Standish

... fluid. In the two works now published it approaches formlessness. "Under the Autumn Star" is a mere sketch, seemingly lacking both plan and plot. Much of the time Knut Pedersen is merely thinking aloud. But out of his devious musings a purpose finally shapes itself, and gradually we find ourselves the spectator of a marital drama that becomes the dominant note in the sequel. The development of this main theme is, as I have already suggested, distinctly ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun

... wish still struggles in my breast, And paints one darling object unpossessed. How many years have whirled their rapid course Since we, sole streamlets from one honored source, In fond affection, as in blood, allied, Have wandered devious from each other's side, Allowed to catch alone some transient view, Scarce long enough to think the vision true! Oh! then, while yet some zest of life remains; While transport yet can swell the beating veins; While sweet ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... did the request appear as a timely accident, and that was to Ethelberta herself. Her honesty was always making war upon her manoeuvres, and shattering their delicate meshes, to her great inconvenience and delay. Thus there arose those devious impulses and tangential flights which spoil the works of every would-be schemer who instead of being wholly machine is half heart. One of these now was to show herself as she really was, not only to Lord Mountclere, but to his friends assembled, whom, in her ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... spirits of the Great Master of ail. Within the wall were all the things which give pleasure to the red man; the river filled with fishes disporting in their loved element, the lakes thronged with glad fowls, wheeling in their devious paths, and the woods with beautiful birds, singing their soft songs of love and joy from the flowery boughs of the tulip-tree and the Osage apple. They saw in the open space a panther, fangless and powerless, and heard in the ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... the drift, still scraping snow from inside his collar, and gave many directions about going through a certain gate into such-and-such a corral; from there into a stable; and by seeming devious ways into a ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower

... 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 crowned And streams ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams

... next morning through the stable back of the house, and then, by devious dark and winding ways, to the office. There, after a conference with Blobs, whose features fairly jerked with excitement, I double-locked the door of my private office and finished off some imperative ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... 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 and the cleared ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge

... occupied by the bees was about three feet and a half long and eight or ten inches in diameter. With an ax we cut away one side of the tree and laid bare its curiously wrought heart of honey. It was a most pleasing sight. What winding and devious ways the bees had through their palace! What great masses and blocks of snow-white comb there were! Where it was sealed up, presenting that slightly dented, uneven surface, it looked like some precious ore. When ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs

... have been making enquiries. I shall then look in upon you for an hour or two, and renew a friendship which I never think of without a thousand pleasant recollections. This moment a piece of news has reached me like a thunderbolt. I must set out now, and travel by a devious route, nearly a hundred miles, with all the dispatch I can possibly make. My perplexities multiply. I am only deterred by the compulsory reserve I practice as to my name from making a very singular request of you. My poor child has not ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... dollars—had looked magnificent in her hand bag that morning. Paper money spread itself in such a lordly manner and seemed able to buy so many separate things. But by the time the merciless taxi had bumped her through devious ways up to Fifty-Fourth Street, three of the beautiful green dollar bills were as ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson

... whose ballance weighs The 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 aloft Fly o're ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... our low desires; Extinguish passion's fires; Heal every wound; Our stubborn spirits bend; Our icy coldness end; Our devious steps ...
— The Otterbein Hymnal - For Use in Public and Social Worship • Edmund S. Lorenz

... neighbourhood. You groped your way for an hour through lanes and byways, and court-yards, and passages; and you never once emerged upon anything that might be reasonably called a street. A kind of resigned distraction came over the stranger as he trod those devious mazes, and, giving himself up for lost, went in and out and round about and quietly turned back again when he came to a dead wall or was stopped by an iron railing, and felt that the means of escape might possibly present themselves in their own good time, but that ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... branches of literature needful? By all means let us dream, on midsummer nights, of fond lovers led through devious paths to happiness by Puck; of virtuous dukes—one finds such in fairyland; of fate subdued by faith and gentleness. But may we not also, in our more serious humours, find satisfaction in thinking with Hamlet or Coriolanus? May ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome

... in Kingly Bottom—it was in April—after leaving the barrows on the summit of the Bow Hill, above the Vale, I walked by devious ways to East Marden, between banks thick with the whitest and sweetest of sweet white violets. East Marden, however, has no inn and is therefore not the best friend of the traveller; but it has the most modest and least ecclesiastical-looking church in the world, and by seeking ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... 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

... continued Glenn; "such must be the abode of angels and departed spirits, who are not permitted longer to behold the strifes of earth and its contaminations, but rove continually with noiseless tread, or on self-poised wing, through devious and delightful paths, surrounded by sedges of silver embroidery, and shielded above by mazy fretwork spangled with diamonds, or gliding without effort through the pure and buoyant air, from bower ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones

... 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 Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean

... 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

... of the lake for about six English miles, through a devious and beautifully variegated path, until we attained a sort of Highland farm, or assembly of hamlets, near the head of that fine sheet of water, called, if I mistake not, Lediart, or some such name. Here a numerous party of MacGregor's men were stationed in order to receive us. The taste as ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... luck. Hiding by day and threading devious paths by night we reached and passed the Avens and the Salarian Highway without any encounter with any human being; and indeed without near proximity to any. Our daytime hiding-places all turned out to have been well chosen and no one approached ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... now he wonders at my stay, Sees the white fogs of evening rise around, Comes out to seek me in my devious way, But turns not ...
— Poems • Matilda Betham

... retire to rest, and their sleep is sweet and long. By strange and devious ways they continue their journey on the morrow, starting at dawn. Again they pass the night at the house of one of Enan's friends, Rabbi Judah, a ripe old sage and hospitable, who welcomes them cordially, feeds them bountifully, gives them spiced dishes, wine of the grape and the ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams

... am bound to admit, a high day for the dweller in uncorrupted Berkshire when business or pleasure drew him from his home in the downs or rich pastures of the primitive northern half of the county by devious parish ways to the nearest point on the great Bath road, where he was to meet the coach which would carry him in a few hours "in amongst the tide of men." I can still vividly recall the pleasing thrill of excitement which ran through us when we caught the first faint ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various

... called to preach; For men are prone to go it blind, Along the calf-paths of the mind, And work away from sun to sun To do what other men have done. They follow in the beaten track, And out and in, and forth and back, And still their devious course pursue, To keep the path that others do. But how the wise wood-gods must laugh, Who saw the first primeval calf; Ah, many things this tale might teach— But I am not ordained ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various

... 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

... a slender trail while you and your young, strong comrades stole through the secret haunts of the wild things, and to listen to the faint footfalls of the coming deer, roused by your entrance into their secret lairs. To see the soft and devious approach of the wary thing; to see the lifted light head turned sharply back toward the evil that roused it from its bed of ferns; to feel the strong bow tightening in my hand as the thin, hard string comes back; to feel the leap of the loosened cord, the ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope

... Francisco Saenz de Urturi, the Archbishop, in his robes, purple cap and gold chain, followed by his suite. Him, General Shafter, came forward to meet, and the two shook hands under the tawdry chandelier. It was a strange enough sight. By many and devious and bloody ways had the priest and the soldier come to meet each ...
— The Surrender of Santiago - An Account of the Historic Surrender of Santiago to General - Shafter, July 17, 1898 • Frank Norris

... 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; and before the morning they were gone again with their ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... desirable thing. His love for her had been the soil in which his aspirations had grown. That love had turned to bitterness and lust, and his aspirations had led him among greeds and fears and struggles that differed from those of the wild things only in that they were covert and devious, lacking the free beauty of instinct fearlessly followed and the dignity of open battle. Of civilization he had encountered only the raw and ugly edge, which is uglier than savagery. He knew no more of the true spirit of it than a man who has camped in a farmer's back pasture knows of the true spirit ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson

... malign fate had worked to such a frightful end! What devious chain of circumstances had led my boy to my side at this one particular minute of our lives when I could strike him down and kill him, in ignorance of his identity! A benign though tardy Providence blurred my vision and my mind as I sank into ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Hence the extreme importance of Porlock. Led on by some rudimentary aspirations towards right, and encouraged by the judicious stimulation of an occasional ten-pound note sent to him by devious methods, he has once or twice given me advance information which has been of value—that highest value which anticipates and prevents rather than avenges crime. I cannot doubt that, if we had the cipher, we should find that this communication is of the nature that ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle

... 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 real that even to this day the mere mention ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller

... 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 ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson

... smoke of his neighbour's chimney; he will not cultivate 50 acres, but wants 50,000; the 'nation' wants Africa—no less. They coveted Swaziland, Zululand, Bechuanaland, Matabeleland, Mashonaland, and Tongaland, and set to work by devious methods to ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... than the people with whom we rub shoulders in the street. Dr. Conan Doyle once said to me what I thought a memorable thing about this book; To read it, he said, was 'like going through the Dark Ages with a dark lantern,' It is so, indeed. You pass along the devious route from old Sevenbergen to mediaeval Rome, and wherever the narrative leads you, the searchlight flashes on everything, and out of the darkness and the dust and death of centuries life leaps at you. And I know nothing in English prose which for ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray

... journeyed, fancy-bound, along the heights, 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 ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... of the devious and serpentine paths by which love finds the way to its ends. It had not occurred to him to approach her with those secret tones and stolen looks which speak for themselves. She answered with the straightforward directness of which he ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins

... foul vapours hung like smoke about a city. It was easy going for the bearers down the slopes, and by midday we had reached the borders of the dismal swamp. Here we halted to eat our midday meal, and then, following a winding and devious path, plunged into the morass. Presently the path, at any rate to our unaccustomed eyes, grew so faint as to be almost indistinguishable from those made by the aquatic beasts and birds, and it is ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard

... chapter detailing events which cannot, so far as I have been able to discover, be traced directly to Nazi espionage; but it shows the influence of Nazi ideology upon England's now notorious "Cliveden set," which maneuvered the betrayal of Austria, sacrificed Czechoslovakia and is working in devious ways to strengthen Hitler in Europe. The "Cliveden set" has already had so profound an effect upon the growth and influence of fascism throughout the world, that I thought it advisable to ...
— Secret Armies - The New Technique of Nazi Warfare • John L. Spivak

... 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

... his 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 ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston

... to the Autumn breeze's bugle sound, Various and vague the dry leaves dance their round; Or, from the garner-door, on ether borne, The chaff flies devious from the winnow'd corn; So vague, so devious, at the breath of heaven, From their fix'd aim are ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... in the Telephone Exchange. He went out with the Red Cross automobile, which was ostensibly full of wounded. After circulating about the city, the car went by devious ways to the Mikhailovsky yunker school, headquarters of the counter-revolution. A French officer, in the court-yard, seemed to be in command.... By this means ammunition and supplies were conveyed ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed

... golfer. Everything turns on half an inch of leather in a "drive," or a stiff blade of grass in a putt, and the interest is wound up to a really breathless pitch. Happy he is who does not in his excitement "top" his ball into the neighbouring brook, or "heel" it and send it devious down to the depths of ocean. Happy is he who can "hole out the last hole in four" beneath the eyes of the ladies. Striding victorious into the hospitable club, where beer awaits him, he need not envy the pheasant-slayer who has slain ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang

... we went, as gay as swallows, marching in a body on the famous chateau with an eagerness which would at first allow of no fatigue. When we reached the hill, whence we looked down on the house standing half-way down the slope, on the devious valley through which the river winds and sparkles between meadows in graceful curves—a beautiful landscape, one of those scenes to which the keen emotions of early youth or of love lend such a charm, that it is wise never to see them again in later years—Louis ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac

... happy and contented with his lot. And what do you suppose he found when he returned home? He had been nominated for alderman. It is too early to predict the fate of this unhappy man. And what tools Fate uses with which to carve out her devious peculiar patterns! An Apache Indian, besmeared with brilliant greases and smelling of the water that never freezes, an understudy to Cupid? Fudge! you will say, or Pshaw! or whatever slang phrase is handy and, prevalent at the ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath

... 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 ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)

... carriages, carts, vans, omnibuses, cabs, every kind of conveyance cross each other's course in every possible direction. Twisting in and out by the wheels and under the horses' heads, working a devious way, men and women of all conditions wind a path over. They fill the interstices between the carriages and blacken the surface, till the vans almost float on human beings. Now the streams slacken, and now they rush amain, but never cease; dark waves ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies

... Lord, who hast through devious ways Led me to know Thy Praise, And to this Wildernesse Hast brought me out, Thine ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford

... 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 ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... and, in the customary devious channel of her mental processes, her thoughts returned to her early life, her girlhood, so marred by sickness that the Emperor had surrendered his customary proprietary right in the ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer

... such balancing of historical 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 ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... heard the jingle of their bridles, and now and then a lonely coyote, startled by the soft drumming of the hoofs, rose with bristling fur and howled; but no cow-boy heard their passage, or saw them wind in and out through devious hollows when daylight came. Still, here and there an anxious woman stood, with hazy eyes, in the door of a lonely shanty, wondering whether the man she had sent out to strike for the home he had built her would ever ride back again. For they, too, had their part ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss

... decision her mind traveled a number of devious roads. The thought that she had been criticized did not annoy her as to the kind of criticism, but she did resent the quality of truth about it. She was right in following the rules her father had laid down ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter

... like Boston. If we of the twentieth century do not believe in baseball as much as in philosophy, we have not learned the lesson of modern science, which teaches, among other things, that the body is the nursery of the soul; the instrument of our moral development; the secret chart of our devious progress from worm to man. The great achievement of recent science, of which we are so proud, has been the deciphering of the hieroglyphic of organic nature. To worship the facts and neglect the implications of the message of ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... round the sun, Beholds him 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

... journey with a dispatch which argued the extremity of the Jew's fears, since persons at his age are seldom fond of rapid motion. The Palmer, to whom every path and outlet in the wood appeared to be familiar, led the way through the most devious paths, and more than once excited anew the suspicion of the Israelite, that he intended to betray him into some ambuscade of ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... 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 of a man in the presence of an enemy. He did not know how things would turn ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... of shops on the ground floor. The street was paved with rough cobble stones, and sloped from each side toward the centre, through which ran a kennel or gutter encumbered with garbage and filth of every description, through which a foul stream of evil-smelling water wound its devious way. The street had apparently at one time been one of some pretensions, but had now fallen upon evil days and become the abode of a number of petty tradesmen, such as cobblers, sellers of fruit and cheap drinks, dealers in second-hand goods of ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... along the path and waiting behind stack or door the better to observe her—for pussy knew perfectly well that we were eager to see her darlings, and enjoyed misleading and piquing us, we imagined, by taking devious ways. How well I recall that summer afternoon when, soft-footed and alone, I followed her to the floor of the barn. Just as she was about to spring to the mow she espied me, and, turning back, cunningly settled herself as if for a quiet nap ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow

... 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 narrative ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid

... 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

... not be surprised to learn, that, with the change of a week in the time from that with which the foregoing incidents close, we are enabled to open the scene of the present chapter in a very different quarter of the same sea. It is unnecessary to follow the "Rover" in the windings of that devious and apparently often uncertain course, during which his keel furrowed more than a thousand miles of ocean, and during which more than one cruiser of the King was skilfully eluded, and sundry less dangerous encounters avoided, as much ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper

... Prescott scorned to answer, nor did Helen or the Secretary speak. Soon a messenger galloped down the street and told the cause of the alarm. Some daring Yankee cavalrymen, a band of skirmishers or scouts, fifty or a hundred perhaps, coming by a devious way, had approached the outer defenses and fired a few shots at long range. The garrison replied, and then the reckless Yankees galloped away before they could ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... the intrenchments at mid-day, and, not being challenged, continued beyond the National camps and escaped. The accounts of the escape by boat with Floyd, on horse with Forrest, and by parties slipping out by day and by night through the forest and undergrowth and the devious ravines, fairly show that 5,000 must have escaped. There was scarcely a regiment or battery, if, indeed, there was a single regiment or battery, from which some did not escape. Eleven hundred and thirty-four wounded were sent up the river by boat the ...
— From Fort Henry to Corinth • Manning Ferguson Force

... Basis and Life Ideal. The conclusions reached in these three books are the same—they are an insistence on the need of spiritual life as a creative power in the utilisation of norms and ideals as well as in the creation of further norms and ideals. He points out the devious paths which human society has travelled over: all these, in the case of society and of the individual, are shown to lead to disaster when they depend merely upon the environment or upon the ideals of a utilitarian mode of ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones

... promontory tipped by Dungeness. Lydd has now its own branch line from Ashford, but when I first knew it the nearest point by rail on one hand was Folkestone, and on the other Appledore. Between these several points lies a devious road, sometimes picking its way through the marshes, and occasionally breaking in upon a sinking village, which it would probably be delightful to dwell in if it did not lie so low, was not so damp, and did not furnish the inhabitants ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy

... as he slowly made his way to Normandale that morning. Having plenty of time he went by devious and lonely roads and by-lanes. Eventually he came to the boundary of Normandale Park at a point far away from the Grange. There he dismounted, hid his bicycle in a coppice wherein he had often left it before, and went on towards ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher

... complacent over the whole affair. They put her up to capturing Bruce, and after she had acquired an influence over him they worked it so that she made him make love to Mrs. Parker. It's a long story, but that isn't all of it. The point was, you see, that by this devious route they hoped to worm out of Mrs. Parker some inside information about Parker's rubber schemes, which he hadn't divulged even to his partners in business. It was a deep and carefully planned plot, ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... refract (light) 420; crook; turn, round, arch, arcuate, arch over, concamerate^; bow, curl, recurve, frizzle. rotundity &c 249; convexity &c 250. Adj. curved &c v.; curviform^, curvilineal^, curvilinear; devex^, devious; recurved, recurvous^; crump^; bowed &c v.; vaulted, hooked; falciform^, falcated^; semicircular, crescentic; sinusoid [Geom.], parabolic, paraboloid; luniform^, lunular^; semilunar, conchoidal^; helical, double helical, spiral; kinky; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... up to him with confidence and listen to him with respect, for in this instance their intelligence is completely under the control of his learning. It is the judge who sums up the various arguments with which their memory has been wearied out, and who guides them through the devious course of the proceedings; he points their attention to the exact question of fact which they are called upon to solve, and he puts the answer to the question of law into their mouths. His influence upon their ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... one day a cow-path between Daker's and an old Mill at Grapevine Bridge. The long arms of oaks and beech trees reached across it, and young Absalom might have been ensnared by the locks at every rod therein. Through this devious and dangerous way, O'Ganlon used to dash, whooping, guiding his horse with marvellous dexterity, and bantering me to follow. I so far forgot myself generally, as to behave quite as irrationally, and once returned to ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... Automaton led him by devious winding paths down to the shore, and, half walking, half running, pressing close to the high cliffs, they ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey

... of the veil, as thin as cobweb, yet opaque as night, which parts the two. Awful it is; and ought to be—like that with which it grew—the life of a great nation, growing slowly to manhood, as all great nations grow, through ignorance and waywardness, often through sin and sorrow; hewing onward a devious track through unknown wildernesses; and struggling, victorious, though with bleeding feet, athwart the tangled woods and thorny brakes ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley

... of the world the one in us is threading its course towards the one in all; this is its nature and this is its joy. But by that devious path it could never reach its goal if it had not a light of its own by which it could catch the sight of what it was seeking in a flash. The vision of the Supreme One in our own soul is a direct and immediate intuition, ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore

... surrounding influence, with ideas and ideals of her own, in full sympathy with the social side of life, yet independent and self-reliant, and just beginning to choose her own path in the bewildering maze of the world's devious thoroughfare. In High School she made astonishing progress. Her fine mentality enabled her to grasp quickly the most obtuse scientific and economic problems, and her natural taste for belles lettres making languages and general literature comparatively easy, she soon distinguished ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow

... way across the Tartar plains, and probing in the Dead Sea and eating its fruits, just to know that living crustaceae could be found in one and pulpy flesh in the other, our Launfal, looking for the Sangreal in chariot-wheels, wound his devious way to the Flowery Kingdom, having tried a stroke or two at pearl-diving, and given some valuable hints, that were wasted, in Red Sea fishing and the Suez Canal. The sleepy Celestial seasons had gone flowering their way to paradise, and the opium-smuggler and her sycee silver lay safe and swallowed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various

... 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

... copies of this document had just been found in a carriage belonging to his aide-de-camp. The First Consul thought that such evident proofs would flatten and confound Bernadotte; but he was dealing with a true Gascon, as devious as they come! ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot

... gate with you," said the Irishman. "It's a winding, devious route the road takes through the trees. As the crow flies it's no more than five hundred yards, but this way it can't be less than a mile and ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon

... joyously once rode Past guarded gates to trumpet sound, Along the devious ways that wound O'er drawbridges, through moats, and showed The vast St. Lawrence flowing, belt The Orleans Isle, and sea-ward melt; Then by old walls with cannon crowned, Down stair-like streets, to where we felt The salt ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell

... "Bridges and culverts were 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 20,000 men; and Banks was now isolated, exposed to the ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... its massy columns of basaltes, again exterminates it; and once again it rises to the eastward, and pursues its devious course, forming, on the Glenarm shores, a line of coast the most fantastically ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton

... 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 ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... 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 ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad

... 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 in ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis

... 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 ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... the metal-persons of Phobos, robot B-12 held a special niche. He might not have been stronger, larger, faster than some ... but he could be devious ... and more important, he was ...
— B-12's Moon Glow • Charles A. Stearns

... design, and of securing the necessary collusion in the rebel camp, is Mrs. Winwood's. My part hitherto has been, with Sir Henry Clinton's approval, to make up a chosen body of men from all branches of the army; and my part finally shall be to lead this select troop on horseback one dark night, by a devious route, to that part of the rebel lines nearest Washington's quarters; then, with the cooeperation that this lady has obtained among the rebels, to make a swift dash upon those quarters, seize Washington while our presence is scarce yet known, ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens

... aright to guide Parents would endeavour, Must the father often chide, Or they'd prosper never. If I'm then a child of grace, Should I shun God ever, When He from sin's devious ways, Seeks me ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt

... perchance, with clouded brain From some unholy banquet reeled, —And since, our devious steps maintain His track across the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... the rule of the soldier or the rule of the citizen; the rule of fear or the rule of law. Germany stands for army rule. This was made clear when, a year ago, she passed under the yoke at Zabern. However devious her diplomacy in the past, Britain stands today for the rule of law. The British soldier is the servant of the ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... his coat of many colors and came forth to join his brethren. Then, on holiday-afternoon, free from student-care, we climbed the East or West Rock, and looked abroad over the distant city-spires, rock-ribbed hillside and sail-dotted sea; or threading the devious path to the Judges' Cave, where tradition said that in colonial times the regicides, Goffe and Whalley, lay hidden, read on the lone rock that in the winter wilderness overhung their bleak hiding-place, in an old inscription carved not without pain, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... two miles the adventurers pursued their devious course through the tropical forest, sometimes groping their way cautiously through the deep green twilight, and anon almost blinded by a sudden glare of dazzling sunshine, as they emerged into an open space caused either by fire or a windfall, and all the time Dyer kept up the ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood

... as the most foolish one of all vices: greed. Property, possessions, and riches also had finally captured him; they were no longer a game and trifles to him, had become a shackle and a burden. On a strange and devious way, Siddhartha had gotten into this final and most base of all dependencies, by means of the game of dice. It was since that time, when he had stopped being a Samana in his heart, that Siddhartha began to play the game for money ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse

... his sole concession to outraged official decorum. He accepted a cigar, and forthwith resigned himself to the exigencies of the chase, which lay not with him but with the dark and devious purposes of ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy

... are far more irregular and capricious than those of the primary sediments, as would be expected from the fact that their concentration has taken place through the agency of percolating waters from the surface, which worked along devious channels determined by a vast variety of structural and lithological conditions. The working out of the structural conditions for the different mines and districts constitutes one of the principal geologic problems ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith

... people—(for, in the music of modern Europe, what is the place of their mandolin tinkling and melodramatic posturing declamation?).—And yet Grazia belonged to this people. To join her again, whither and by what devious ways would Christophe not have gone? He would win through by shutting his eyes ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... empty goblet, fling it Hurtling from some sheer cliff's height, Winds will bear it up and wing it Back to thee in devious flight. Smash it against the rocks—before thee Laming fragments strew thy path. Swamp it deep—the waves restore thee What thou ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully

... before him—are Jansoulet and Mora, precisely the most effective personages in the book, and scarcely surpassed in the whole range of Daudet's fiction. The Nabob was Francois Bravay, who rose from poverty to wealth by devious transactions in the Orient, and came to grief in Paris, much as Jansoulet did. He survived the Empire, and his relatives are said to have been incensed at the treatment given him in the novel, an attitude ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... her devious way to the mountains to furnish Jack with the accustomed supplies. He snatched form her hand the liquor, and took a deep draught. The poison did its work. He became excited, and quarreled with his wife; and, roused ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... thrown so many things at him, And thrown them all so hard; There goes the sofa-cushion; that Missed him by half a yard. My hot tears rain; my young heart breaks To see him dodging thus; It is not right for him to be So coy—so devious. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 1, 1891 • Various

... over the hills from Bellegra, I sent my thoughts into those Abruzzi mountains, and registered a vow to revisit Scanno—if only in order to traverse once more by moonlight, for the sake of auld lang syne, the devious paths to Roccaraso, or linger in that moist nook by the lake-side where stood the Scanno of olden days (the Betifuli, if such it was, of the Pelignians), where the apples grow, where the sly dabchick plays among the reeds, and where, one evening, I listened ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... despatch was also out of the land of the Grays, but not by Westerling's consent or knowledge. By devious ways it had broken through the censorship of the frontier in cunning cipher. It told of artillery concentrations three days old; it told only what the aeroplanes had already seen; it told what the Grays had done but nothing of what they ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... benign climate. Laudonniere's lieutenant, Ottigny, ranging the neighboring forest with a party of soldiers, met a troop of Indians who invited him to their dwellings. Mounted on the back of a stout savage, who plunged with him through the deep marshes, and guided him by devious pathways through the tangled thickets, he arrived at length, and beheld a wondrous spectacle. In the lodge sat a venerable chief, who assured him that he was the father of five successive generations, and that he had lived two hundred and fifty years. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... resolved to follow the kidnappers, and so started in pursuit. Some peculiarity about the track made by their wagon, enabled him to trace them with ease, and he followed them by a devious course, from Darby, to a place near the Navy Yard, in Philadelphia, and then by inquiries, etc., tracked them to Kensington, where he found them, and, we believe, secured the ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... Indians, who dwelt about a hundred miles west of Otsego, on the banks of the Cayuga. The whole country was then a wilderness, and it was necessary to transport the bag gage of the troops by means of the riversa devious but practicable route. One brigade ascended the Mohawk until it reached the point nearest to the sources of the Susquehanna, whence it cut a lane through the forest to the head of the Otsego. The boats and baggage were carried ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper

... stone arch, stood a dismal sun-dial with hearts and spades painted between its figures; while the trees around it were trimmed into the shapes of confessionals and chess-pawns. To the right, a labyrinth of young trees, similarly clipped in the fashion of the time, led by a thousand devious turns to a mysterious valley, where one heard continually a low, sad murmur. This proceeded from a nymph in terra-cotta, from whose urn dripped, day and night, a thin rill of water into a small fishpond, bordered by grand old poplars, whose shadows ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet

... towards men became the foundation for many legends. Needless to say he was often imposed upon, but that seems to have made no difference to him, and he went on straightforwardly doing what he thought he ought to do, regardless of the devious ways of men, even those whom he was generously assisting. While we do not know much of his scientific medicine, we do know that he was a fine example of a practitioner of medicine on ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh

... saw thy pulse's maddening play, Wild send thee Pleasure's devious way, Misled by Fancy's meteor-ray, By passion driven; But yet the light that led ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... him. So when there came his way what appeared to be an absolute certainty of not only recouping all his losses but of making some real money as well, Hunter plunged, with every dollar he could manage to get hold of. But Wall Street is a lane that has many crooked and devious turnings, and Mr. Hunter's investments took a very wrong turn. And this time it was not only all his own money that had been lost. The bottom might have dropped out of things ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler



Words linked to "Devious" :   untrusty, indirect, untrustworthy



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