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Swerve   /swərv/   Listen
Swerve

verb
(past & past part. swerved; pres. part. swerving)
1.
Turn sharply; change direction abruptly.  Synonyms: curve, cut, sheer, slew, slue, trend, veer.  "The motorbike veered to the right"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Swerve" Quotes from Famous Books



... Ferguson, his thoughts were whirling, and veering, in dizzying circles—bewildered rage, pity, fright, revolt,—and then back again to half-dazed fury. But each time he tried to realize exactly what had happened, something in him seemed to swerve, like a shying horse; he could not get near enough to the fact, to understand it. In a numb way he must have recognized this, because in those moments by himself in the library he deliberately shut a door upon the blasting truth. Later, of course, he would ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland

... began to snow fast, thick, and furious, and the people could not keep it off the ice. Ivan was getting tired, too, and his hands were cold. This fun of going twenty miles an hour had filled him with glee; but Olga lost her bashlyk, and he found it hard to guide his sled. Suddenly he made a swerve to the left, and, with a fearful jerk, over they went. It was a dreadful blow, and had it not been for the kindness of the people in charge, both might have been badly injured; but they were picked up and carried to the ...
— Harper's Young People, December 9, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... much to say about their-spiritual experiences and hopes of heaven. But never one who so made obedience to the strict law of right, in all its plain, common-sense interpretations, a matter of common duty. I do not believe that for anything this world could offer her, Mrs. Montgomery would swerve a hair's breadth from justice. I have been in the position to see her tempted; have, myself, been the tempter over and over again during the ten years in which I represented her claims to the Allen estate; but her ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur

... wrong, and none sublimely right. But as there are heights of which the achievement is unattempted, there are abysses to which fall is barred; neither accident nor temptation will make any of the principal personages swerve from an adopted resolution, or violate an accepted principle of honour; people are expected as a matter of course to speak with propriety on occasion, and to wait with patience when they are bid: those who do wrong, admit it; those who do right don't boast of it; everybody ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... Ashman caught the odor of the sulphurous fumes rising from the naming depth, and he could not help reflecting that if the ascending vapors should swerve toward them only for a minute or two, they would be asphyxiated before they could get away; but he could not shrink, when his lovely companion stood so boldly by his side, unmoved by ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis

... it had to be recalled in some degree. 'I said nothing of him, Hester. I call that pitch which I believe to be wrong, and if I swerve but a hair's-breadth wittingly towards what I believe to be evil, then I shall be touching pitch and then I shall be defiled. I did not say that he was pitch. Judge not and ye shall not be judged.' But if ever judgment was pronounced, and ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope

... inducement must have been great, from the number of wine-houses on the Rock: but such was the desire of these brave fellows to be avenged for the loss of the Hannibal, that they would not allow any temptation to induce them to swerve from the duty they had ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross

... Jack, or breathed them only to their God, whose ear is always open to the cry of the afflicted, and whose hand is always ready to aid them. Well, I signed the pledge, which I am sure has a great effect in restraining one when tempted to swerve; for what man of honorable feelings would wilfully violate his word and promise—and a few weeks after, having fixed my sister comfortably with a pious milliner, I went to Philadelphia, and there shipped with a temperance captain for ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society

... should make an American sick and disgusted at the literary taste of his country, and almost swerve his allegiance to his flag it is that controversy between Mark Twain and Max O'Rell, in which the Frenchman proves himself a wit and a gentleman and the American shows himself little short of a clown and an all around tough. The squabble arose apropos of Paul Bourget's new book on America, ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather

... declared that they most cheerfully complied with the royal edict which required them still to pay custom. Bristol, the second city of the island, echoed the voice of London. But nowhere was the spirit of loyalty stronger than in the two Universities. Oxford declared that she would never swerve from those religious principles which bound her to obey the King without any restrictions or limitations. Cambridge condemned, in severe terms, the violence and treachery of those turbulent men who had maliciously endeavoured ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Term and talk is done; My poor lads are reaping, Busy every one. Curates mind the parish, Sweepers mind the Court, We'll away to Snowdon For our ten days' sport, Fish the August evening Till the eve is past, Whoop like boys at pounders Fairly played and grassed. When they cease to dimple, Lunge, and swerve, and leap, Then up over Siabod Choose our nest, and sleep. Up a thousand feet, Tom, Round the lion's head, Find soft stones to leeward And make up our bed. Bat our bread and bacon, Smoke the pipe of peace, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... throws wide open the swinging screen doors, and a broad belt of light is flashed across the dusty highway just in front of a rapidly-driven carriage coming north. The mettlesome horses swerve and shy. The occupants are suddenly whirled from their reposeful attitudes, though, fortunately, not from their seats. A "top hat" goes spinning out into the roadway, and a fan flies through the midst of the glare. The driver promptly checks his team and backs them just as ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King

... decrease or increase their speed at a moment's notice. Sometimes they were nigh enough to touch each other's hands, and again they separated, one going far to the right, the other to the left, while the third kept near the middle of the stream. Then two would swerve toward shore, or perhaps it was all three, and again it was Jennie who kept the farthest from land, or perhaps a fancy led her to skim so close that some of the overhanging ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis

... brought up to the sound of the cannon by the 'Lion of the North,' Gustavus Adolphus, her father. She loves the smell of powder and brave men; but I would not serve her, because she is a Huguenot, and I have fixed principles, from which I never swerve. 'Par exemple', I swear to you by Saint Jacques to guide Monsieur through the passes of the Pyrenees to Oleron as surely as through these woods, and to defend him against the Devil, if need be, as well as your papers, which we will bring you back without blot or tear. As for recompense, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... And the calf unsafe while yet in the cow— Ye take both the egg and the hen, I vow. Contenti estote—the preacher said; Which means—be content with your army bread. But how should the slaves not from duty swerve? The mischief begins with the lord they serve, Just like the members so is the head. I should like to know who can ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... only he; ... Nor number nor example with him wrought To swerve from truth, or change his constant mind, ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

... hard face, and as she sat in the dark with closed eyes, and saw that face again and again in her mind, she knew that it was hard. It was hard—it was almost cruel. No, it was not cruel, but only recklessly resolved, with a resolution that would not swerve from cruelty, if cruelty were needed to accomplish its purpose. Thus she reasoned in the approved manner of fiction. She knew that such reasonings were demanded of heroines. A heroine must be sadly unworthy of her lofty role ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner

... included a farm, fell into the hands of a son-in-law. Now, though Bayley left his son-in-law a hotel—which sounds handsome—he left him no guests; for at about the period of the old man's death the old stage-coach died also. Apoplexy carried off one, and steam the other. Thus, by a sudden swerve in the tide of progress, the tavern at the Corners found itself high and dry, like a wreck on a sand-bank. Shortly after this event, or maybe contemporaneously, there was some attempt to build a town at Greenton; but it apparently failed, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... pause. Jonas Hapgood, with his look of heavy facetiousness, slightly tempered now with curiosity, stood lounging into his great snowy boots at the foot of the bed. Parson Fair, the consolation for the dying which he had thought to administer still in his mind, which could not swerve easily, his slender height in his black surtout inclined towards the sick man with gentle courtesy, waited. Margaret Bean peered around the bed-curtain. Madelon stood near the doctor, her face white as if she were dead, and a look of awful listening upon it. In the background David Hautville, wrathful ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... model. In spite of the grandfather's encomium of the late lord, the boys had no very great respect for their kinsman's memory. The lads and their mother were staunch Jacobites, though having every respect for his present Majesty; but right was right, and nothing could make their hearts swerve from their allegiance to the ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... as a fool from court after court, but he pushed his suit against an incredulous and ridiculing world. Rebuffed by kings, scorned by queens, he did not swerve a hair's breadth from the overmastering purpose which dominated his soul. The words "New World" were graven upon his heart; and reputation, ease, pleasure, position, life itself if need be, must be sacrificed. Threats, ridicule, ostracism, storms, leaky vessels, ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden

... satisfied with mind,— Be never stung into self-hate At crouching always in the crate Of prudent knowledge round him wrought, And so grow small as his own thought. Kings, think of the woman's body you love best How the beloved lines twin and merge, Go into rhyme and differ, swerve and kiss, Relent to hollows or like yearning pout,— Curves that come to wondrous doubt Or smooth into simplicities; Like a skill of married tunes Curdled out of the air; How it is all sung delivering magic To your pent hamper'd ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie

... alone, behold a thick darkness, and very soon wilt thou behold golden trees on the top of the hill. Do thou, therefore, hasten to achieve acts of righteousness.[1724] Very soon will those evil companions and foes of thine, (viz., the senses), dressed in the guise of friends, swerve thee from correct vision. Do thou, then, O son, strive to achieve that which is of the highest good. Do thou earn that wealth which has no fear from either kings or thieves, and which one has not to abandon even at Death. Earned by one's own acts, that wealth ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... to drop a hand to a gun standing shoulder to shoulder with gizzards pressed against the bar; no chance to swerve or duck and make a quick sling of it and a quicker shot, with the bore of that big rifle ready to cough sixteen chunks of lead in half as many seconds, any one of them hitting hard enough to drill through them, man by ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden

... fence ahead, felt herself go faint, for she had never taken a fence, and she knew that Pat never had. She must get control of herself again. And this she did. Stiffening in the stirrups, she gripped a single rein in both hands and pulled with all her strength. But she could not swerve the horse. On he plunged for the obstruction, evidently not seeing it. She ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton

... an indefatigable frame. Perhaps no man ever possessed these requisites in greater perfection than John Mitchell. Were but his figure less Tartarish and more gaunt, he would be the very 'Talus' of Spenser. Neither frown nor favour, in the course of fifteen years, have ever made him swerve from the fair performance of his duty, though the lairds with whom he has to deal have omitted no means of making him enter into their views, and to do things or leave them undone, as might suit their ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... well, but she knows him for a man who holds his honor higher than any earthly thing. If Violet St. Vincent had not come between, she might have won him, but now all the list of her fascinations cannot make him swerve. ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... below. The roar of seething waters drowns the bowman's orders. The steersman closely watches and follows every move his companion makes. Down we go, riding upon the very back of the river; for here the water forms a great ridge, rising four or five feet above the waterline on either shore. To swerve to either side means sure destruction. With terrific speed we reach the brink of a violent descent. For a moment the canoe pauses, steadies herself, then dips her head as the stern upheaves, and down we plunge among more rocks than ever. Right in our path the angry stream is waging battle ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming

... and get out the double cables. Welch is astern and will help you. I'm going to swerve the tug in close and you heave the lines aboard when we re near enough. We won't trust any ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry

... traces of the fugitive's horse swerved along the mountain top—the shoe of the right forefoot being broken in half. That swerve was a blind and the sheriff knew it, but he knew where Rufe Tolliver would go and that there would be plenty of time to get him. Moreover, he had a purpose of his own and a secret fear that it might be thwarted, so, without a word, he followed the trail till ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.

... and every other accomplishment considered necessary for the ladies of a harem. But I adhered to my resolution; every method to induce me to speak was tried in vain; even blows, torture from pinching, and other means were resorted to, but would not induce me to swerve from my resolution; at last they concluded that I was either born dumb, or had become so from fright at the time that the attack and slaughter of my family took place. I was eighteen months in the harem of Osman Ali, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat

... trace, Lost in the mazy distance of the race Till at Salara's far-off bridge descried, Like coursing butterflies, they seem to glide; Then, dwindling farther, in the lengthening course, Mere floating specks supplant both man and horse; Till, having crossed the Columbarium gray, They swerve, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... must not too readily count that all is safe for practical efficiency, when in presence of a brother's suffering this tender emotion begins to flutter about the heart. As the heart itself is deceitful, so also in turn are each of its affections; even those that in name and nature are good may swerve aside after they have sprung, and degenerate into selfishness. Probably both the priest and the Levite experienced some compassion as they looked on the pale and bleeding victim of lawless violence; perhaps they went away pleased with themselves on account ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... in fair sooth, Than sighs could fathom, or contentment reach: And coverlids gold-tinted like the peach, Or ripe October's faded marigolds, Fell sleek about him in a thousand folds— Not hiding up an Apollonian curve 400 Of neck and shoulder, nor the tenting swerve Of knee from knee, nor ankles pointing light; But rather, giving them to the filled sight Officiously. Sideway his face repos'd On one white arm, and tenderly unclos'd, By tenderest pressure, a faint damask mouth To slumbery pout; just as the morning ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats

... before the midyear examinations came a crisis in the growth of their friendship. One afternoon Lila reached the head of the stairs barely in time to make a sudden swerve out of Miss ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz

... with one voice "On you[217]." He alone was bold enough to rebuke the follies, on the one hand, of the mob, on the other, of the senate[218]. In him no storm of danger, no favouring breeze of fortune, could ever inspire either fear or hope, or cause to swerve from his own course[219]. His influence, though he be dead, will ever live among his countrymen[220]. He was not only glorious in his life, but fortunate ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... asking no pity for their humble station in the universe. All treated them with unadulterated respect, and everything made love to them because they were so tender and so easily pleased. They knew, for instance, that their splendid Earth was turning with them, for they felt the swerve of her, sharing from their roots upwards her gigantic curve through space; they knew the sun was part of them, because they felt it drawing their sweet-flavoured food up all their dainty length till it glowed in health upon their small, flushed faces; also ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood

... worth of popular applause, for few scribblers have had more of it; and if I chose to swerve into their paths, I could retain it, or resume it. But I neither love ye, nor fear ye; and though I buy with ye and sell with ye, and talk with ye, I will neither eat with ye, drink with ye, nor ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various

... his arms round Malcolm, who felt, and unconsciously manifested, a strange bliss in that embrace, even while fixed in his determination that nothing should make him swerve from his chosen path, nor render him false to his promise to Patrick and Lilias. It was a strange change, from being despised and down-trodden by fierce cousins, or only fondled, pitied, and treated with consideration by his own nearest and dearest ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... suggestion that your will is not absolutely efficient. The way to will is to will—and the very first time you are tempted to break a worthy resolution—and you will be, you may be certain of that—make your fight then and there. You cannot afford to lose that fight. You must win it—don't swerve for an instant, but keep that resolution if it kills you. It will not, but you must fight just as though life depended on the victory; and indeed your personality may actually lie in ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... well-defined, and most decided views of the ordinances of the gospel, but also of all its doctrines. His knowledge upon those solemn subjects was drawn exclusively from the sacred pages; nor dared he swerve in the slightest degree from the path of duty; still he belonged to no sect, but that of Christian, and the same freedom which had guided him in forming his principles, he cheerfully allowed to others. Hitherto, water baptism had been considered ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... as it seemed to the fugitive that the foremost horses were upon him and their riders' hands were outstretched to tear him from his saddle, the mustang made a sudden swerve and what seemed to ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn

... accelerated, while the acting stood still. From the beginning, John had taken his stand,—had wound himself up to an even tenor of stately declamation, from which no exigence of dialogue or person could make him swerve for an instant. To dream of his rising with the scene (the common trick of tragedians) was preposterous; for from the onset he had planted himself, as upon a terrace, on an eminence vastly above the audience, and he kept that sublime ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... against the desperate barrier of that thought, Mrs. Major groaned aloud as she paced the room, threw up her arms in her despair. The action caused her to swerve; with hideous violence she crashed her stockinged foot against ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson

... but he shrank from strangers. Mrs. Darcy's tender, unobtrusive motherliness, he enjoyed, but he did not dare to accept much of it. The duties of his life were marked out plainly before him, and he must not swerve from the path. It was to be a kind of neutral tint, twilight rather than sunshine; and the joys he might come to long for, he must put away with a ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... Vexed the fairy - Flew she down to Ealing. "GEORGIE, stop it! Pray you, drop it; Hark to my appealing: To this foolish Papal rule-ish Twaddle put an ending; This a swerve is From our Service ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert

... secret of the machine had been revealed to him in his recent transit, and he was silently determining to surpass himself. Precariously balanced, he descended the Square again, frowning hard, his teeth set, and actually managed to swerve into King Street. Constance, in the parlour, saw an incomprehensible winged thing fly past the window. The cousins Povey sounded an alarm and protest and ran in pursuit; for the gradient of King Street is, in the strict sense, steep. Half-way down ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... such a kind. Now this is called opinion, through our combining the recollection brought previously into action with the sensation recently produced. And when these, placed along each other, agree, a true opinion is produced; but when they swerve from each other, a false one."[538] The dixa of Plato, therefore answers to the experience, or the empirical knowledge of modern philosophy, which is concerned only with appearances (phenomena), and not with absolute realities, and can ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... is not for you to question me, but to obey me! I have not undertaken this step without mastering all its details, and I refuse to allow you to swerve me in a single one ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various

... his hand on the alert, ready to reverse his engine at even a second's warning. Then he could swerve, if it became necessary to avoid some peril ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel

... convinced that the French Government had marked out for itself a line of policy, from which, as it was founded upon a just appreciation of its own interests, it would not swerve,—that it wished the Americans success, was prepared to give them secret aid in arms and money and by a partial opening of its ports,—but that it was compelled by the obligations of the Family Compact to time its own movements in a certain measure by those of Spain, and was not prepared to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... delight, in so much, that his soul yearned within him, and his cheeks were wetted with fast-flowing tears. Nevertheless, he overcame this thaw of his fortitude, and went forward in the strength of the Lord, determined to swerve not in his duty to the Earl of Glencairn, nor in his holier fealty to a far greater Master. But the softness that he felt in his nature made him gird himself with a firm purpose to ride through the town without stopping. Scarcely, however, had he entered the port, when his horse stumbled and ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt

... carried—the Colonel explained. Black Wolf and his band were out on the war-path. A soldier coming in wounded, escaped from the massacre of the post at Devil's Hoof Gap, had reported it. With the large command known to be here camped on Sweetstream Fork, they would not come this way; they would swerve up the Gunpowder River twenty miles away, destroying the settlement and Little Fort Slade, and would sweep on, probably for a general massacre, up the Great Horn as far as Fort Doncaster. He himself, with the regiment, would try to save Fort Slade, but ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... and glide with my peering head, Or swerve at a puff of smoke, Who watcheth my wings on the wind outspread, Here—gone—with an instant stroke? Who toucheth the glory of life I feel As I buffet this great glad gale, Spire and spire to the cloud-world, wheel, Loosen my wings and sail? ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... "comprehension." She seemed to possess a large sense of brotherhood for all human and animate creatures. She spoke to him as if she had known him all her life. She talked to the grosbeak in exactly the same manner, as she laid strawberries and potato bugs on the fence for his family. She did not swerve an inch from her way when a snake slid past her, while the squirrels came down from the trees and took corn from her fingers. She might as well have been a boy, so lacking was she in any touch of feminine coquetry toward him. He studied her wonderingly. As they went along the path ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter

... Talou and the Cote du Poivre. We have followed their movements later, when, abandoning the drive in a southerly direction over the slopes of the Cote du Poivre, the German war lords caused their armies to swerve to the east to face the fort of Douaumont and to march towards it. Let us anticipate their movements by a little, and say that, having captured the fort—a mere empty and cracked vessel—they found themselves still faced by the French, who had retired only a short distance ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton

... the law of polarity,[665] growth and death. There revolve, to give bound and period to his being on all sides, the sun and moon, the great formalists in the sky: here lies stubborn matter, and will not swerve from its chemical routine. Here is a planted globe, pierced and belted with natural laws and fenced and distributed externally with civil partitions and properties which impose new restraints ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... curiously scanning the passing stream—Major Carew! He had evidently been told of the girls' destination, and had come with the express purpose of meeting them coming out. For the moment, however, they were unrecognised, and Claire gave a quick swerve to the right, hurrying out of the patch of light into the dimness beyond. The street was so full that, given a minute's start, it would surely be easy to escape. She slid her hand through Cecil's arm, ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... associations and the old affections—to the road and the cedars and the Hall as to the men and women whose blood she bore and whose likeness she carried. She loved one and all with a fidelity that did not swerve. Riding home along the open road that led to the cedars, she marked each friendly object in its turn—on one side the persimmon tree where the fruit ripened—on the other the blackened wreck of the giant oak, towering above the shining spread of life-everlasting. ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... the possible, but to the probable and ordinary course of man's experience. The former, while as a work of art it must rigidly subject itself to laws and while it sins unpardonably so far as it may swerve aside from the truth of the human heart, has fairly a right to present that truth under circumstances to a great extent of the author's own choosing or creation. If he think fit, also, he may so manage his atmospherical medium as to bring ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... in the clear heavens blow straight on, in strong and steadfast, vigorous mildness; and veer not from their mark, however the baser currents of the sea may turn and tack, and mightiest Mississipies of the land swift and swerve about, uncertain where to go at last. And by the eternal Poles! these same Trades that so directly blow my good ship on; these Trades, or something like them—something so unchangeable, and full as strong, blow my keeled soul ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various

... is not (1) moved by honours that the people confer, or the purple of empire, or civil feuds, that make (2) brothers swerve from brothers' duty; or the Dacian coming down from the Hister, his sworn (2) ally; no, nor by the great Roman State and the death-throes of ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce

... heart, she had become one by reason of some great mental cataclysm through which she had passed. I believed then, and I was to know later, that I was correct, and that nothing at present apparent could swerve her from her set purpose, or could influence her against the cause she had undertaken, and was now upholding, so valiantly. The spasms of remorse that rushed upon her at times, and such feelings of ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman

... had made her swerve. Some new alarm had come to her. She was about to reach and, as Ab supposed, pass one of the inletting paths entering almost at right angles from the left. She did not pass it. She leaped into it in evident terror and then, breaking out from the wood on the ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo

... is not an impostor. His enthusiasm is contagious because it is sincere, and his eloquence is convincing because devotion to his ideals is an absorbing passion with him. He would die for them, and, what is more rare, he would not swerve a hair's-breadth from them for any worldly advantage, or for fear of any hardship. Only this passion and this enthusiasm spring with him entirely from the head. The heart, the deep emotional power ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev

... that same spot three days after. In fact, the third day he marched upon the enemy, offering peace to the first whom he met; but an ensign having replied to him very arrogantly, he gave him a severe blow with his sword upon his arm, which made his standard swerve; those who were afar off thought that he was yielding, and that he lowered his standard in sign of submission, and they hastened to do the same. Paulinus, who wrote the life of St. Ambrose, assures us that he had these particulars from the ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... true as if set by a compass; but the longer limb of the V would curve and swerve sinuously from time to time as the weaker or less experienced members of the flock wavered in their alignment. Flat, low-lying forests, and lonely meres, and rough, isolated farms sped past below the rushing voyagers,—then a black head-land, and then a wide, shallow arm of the ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts

... after their fashion, temperate, and patient of hardship and privation beyond belief. Their sense of right and wrong is not founded on the Decalogue, as may be well imagined, yet, from such principles as they profess they rarely swerve. Though they will freely risk their lives to steal, they will not contravene the wild rule of the desert. If a wayfarer's camel sinks and dies beneath its burden, the owner draws a circle round the animal in the sand, and follows the caravan. No Arab will presume to ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous

... quaint fashion they have proceeded several leagues, when the leader, Ludwig, is seen to swerve suddenly to the left, without any direction having reached him from behind; this, too, at an ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid

... a castle wall, moat included, turrets and all, if he would only have shown her the way. The huntsman and Frank had taken the wall. The horsey man's bit of blood, knowing his own powers to an inch, had declined,—not roughly, with a sudden stop and a jerk, but with a swerve to the left which the horsey man at once understood. What the brute lacked in jumping he could make up in pace, and the horsey man was along the wall and over a broken bank at the head of it, with the loss of not more than a minute. Lucinda's horse, following ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... their discontent, But sneers can never change a strong mind's bent. He knows his purpose and he does not swerve, And with a quiet mien and steady nerve He meets dark looks where'er his steps may go, And silence that is bruising as a blow, Where late were smiles and words of ardent praise. So pass the lagging weeks of ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... at this unusual sight, felt an impulse to slow, to swerve, to test the apparition in some way; but second thought convinced him it must be ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... curse with it.' At the same time I remembered how I had been led to the discovery of this jewel—first, by Mr. Glennie's stories, second, by my finding the locket, and third, by Ratsey giving me the hint that the writing was a cipher, and so had come to the hiding-place without a swerve or stumble; and it seemed to me that I could not have reached it so straight without a leading hand, but whether good or evil, ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner

... flash of lightning would show him a solid mass of cattle hurling themselves upon him. At such times the lad would swerve his mount to the left a little and shoot ahead for a few moments, in an attempt to get sufficient lead of them to enable him to reach the right or upper end of ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin

... creature, and if she dared ill-treat the poor helpless child again, he would go to her house, slit her ears, and then tie her by the hair to the tail of his horse, and so drag her through the town. Fray Diego did not agree to so much cruelty, but the baron declared that nothing would induce him to swerve from his sinister plan of making a terrible example ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds

... sledge slip over the brow of the descent. It got larger as it came down, but it did not run as fast as the toboggan. One could see it rock and swerve, shaking off loose peats, where the ground was broken, and Grace glanced at the steep pitch Kit had ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss

... Plato, as in the New Testament, the word has also become the symbol of an imperfect good, which is almost an evil. The law sacrifices the individual to the universal, and is the tyranny of the many over the few (compare Republic). It has fixed rules which are the props of order, and will not swerve or bend in extreme cases. It is the beginning of political society, but there is something higher—an intelligent ruler, whether God or man, who is able to adapt himself to the endless varieties of circumstances. Plato is fond of picturing the advantages which would result from the union of the tyrant ...
— Statesman • Plato

... one of these two pilots who later said, "Were you ever traveling along the highway about 70 miles an hour at night, have the car that you were meeting suddenly swerve over into your lane and then cut back so that you just miss it by inches? You know the sort of sick, empty feeling you get when it's all over? That's just the ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt

... the route the old sheik, who rode in advance, kept scanning the horizon, not only ahead, but to the right and left of their course. About ten miles from their night's halting-place he was seen to swerve suddenly from his course, and advance towards something that had attracted his attention. His followers hastened after him,—all except the two women and their children, who lingered a ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid

... engine. As she possessed no speed gears, she had either to plunge ahead full speed or come to a stop; there were no compromises. Her steering was managed by a tiller instead of a wheel, so that a mere touch sufficed to swerve her ten feet from her course. As the dhow was in no respects built on such nervous lines, she did occasionally ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White

... Trying effect of ribbon, bow or band. Then she would pick up something else, and curve Her lovely neck, with cunning, bird-like grace, And watch the mirror while she put it on, With such a sweetly grave and thoughtful face; And then to view it all would sway and swerve Her lithe young body, like ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... is a splendid thing to have been three years in supreme power in Asia without allowing statue, picture, plate, napery, slave, anyone's good looks, or any offer of money—all of which are plentiful in your province—to cause you to swerve from the most absolute honesty and purity of life. What can be imagined so striking or so desirable as that a virtue, a command over the passions, a self-control such as yours, are not remaining in darkness and obscurity, but have been set in the broad daylight of Asia, ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... how all things swerve From their known course, or vanish like a dream; Another language spreads from coast to coast; Only, perchance, some melancholy stream, And some indignant hills old names preserve, When laws, and creeds, and people all are ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 179. Saturday, April 2, 1853. • Various

... from the ravine he thought that he could cut off the leader. His weariness had fallen from him, the mad drumming of hoofs fired his blood, and as he burst out of the timber at a gallop the moon came through. The fugitive seemed to hear him, for he altered his course a little—he could not swerve much without approaching Stanton—and for a few minutes Curtis shortened the distance between them. Then his horse began to flag; it looked as if Glover might escape, after all, though he must still draw nearer to the ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss

... to terror—it was the distant grumble of an automobile horn. He locked the door and sped down the bramble-walled path to the runabout. He had left it in the middle of the road, so that as he leaped in and started again it left no swerve of its wheel ruts toward the old Grigsby house. It was five miles to the nearest town, but Hicks made it in twenty minutes, and without hearing again the threatening automobile horn. The first thing he did was to ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard

... on his back, when ther wolves took arter him. They chased him right fast, and ther on'y way dad he cud 'scape ther fangs war by making a sharp turn every time they gut too clost. Yer see ther critters cudn't swerve fast enuff, an'd slide a long ways on ther ice 'cause it war so smooth. An' in that way he kept goin' till he gut nigh home; when sum o' ther neighbors, they kim out, an' knocked spots outen ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter

... its agony of grief; but William was beside her, whispered words of tenderness and hope were murmured in her ear, and how could she break the spell? how could she speak of the gathering storm? The commands of a stern father were upon her, and she knew his indomitable spirit would never swerve one inch ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna

... the benefit of their foundations that sustain and support them, and of their buttresses that comprehend and embrace them, and of their contignations that knit and unite them. The foundations suffer them not to sink, the buttresses suffer them not to swerve, and the contignation and knitting suffers them not to cleave. The body of our building is in the former part of this verse. It is this: He that is our God is the God of salvation; ad salutes, of salvations in the plural, so it is in the original; the God that ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne

... and apt to swerve; Lazy of limb, but quick of nerve. At length the water-bed took a curve, The deep river swept its bank-side bare; Waters streamed from the hill-reserve,— Waters ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti

... Dave Darrin. "Now, girls, I don't want you to think me a muff. That wind may swerve, and not come this way, although in all probability the wind will get this way and the water will be rougher. If it does get rougher on the river, and if we had taken you two out, and the boat had capsized, then by some chance we might not have been ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock

... something. Aiming her pinto across the noses of the lead-mules, she swerved them off the trail before they reached that sharp turn at the break of the rough hill. The broken rein made it impossible for the driver to swerve the leaders that way; but Wonota turned ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson

... animal, amazed, trembled stock-still, then sprang headlong. It stopped, vicious and knowing, and plunged in a rage, but could do nothing with the man, and bolted again, and away in a straight blind line over the meadow, when the rider leaned forward to his trick. The horse veered in a jagged swerve, rolled over and over with its twisted impetus, and up on its feet and on without a stop, the man still seated and upright in the saddle. How we cheered to see it! But the figure now tilted strangely, and something awful ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister

... knees ached, her arms ached, her head ached; she grew stiff; she grew first hot and then cold; but never once did she move or swerve from her original position. The great joy of her spirit supported her through the terrible ordeal. At long, long last she was really a little mother; she was saving ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade

... Albany. We cross the river by a suspension bridge, passing over Rensselaer Island and seeing ahead of us the handsome new freight houses of the D. & H.R.R., and to right and left the boats of the Hudson River Steamship lines lying against the wharves. Once over the bridge the tracks swerve to the right, and soon ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous

... distant hope, and Ireland, we repeat, must not swerve for its flashing. When the Orangemen treat the shamrock with as ready a welcome as Wexford gave the lily—when the Green is set as consort of the Orange in the lodges of the North—when the Fermanagh meeting declares that the Orangemen are Irishmen pledged to Ireland, and summons another ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis

... yelled to the man in Japanese to get to the other side of the road; instead of which he simply backed his kuruma against a wall on the lower side of the curve, with the shafts outwards. At the rate I was going, there wasn't room even to swerve; and the next minute one of the shafts of that kuruma was in my horse's shoulder. The man wasn't hurt at all. When I saw the way my horse was bleeding, I quite lost my temper, and struck the man over the head with ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn

... Nan. For a moment she paused, dubiously, watching Nan's flying, brakeless progress down the wild ribbon of a footpath, between the hill and the sea. A false swerve, a failure to turn with the path, and one would fly off the cliff's edge into space, fall down perhaps to the ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay

... is like to him I serve, What Saviour like to mine? O, never let me from thee swerve, For truly I ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... as death. She had been praying all the afternoon that the bitterness of this cup might not be pressed to her lips. She now saw that the issue was joined. She had vowed that not even her love for the man dearest to her should swerve her from her course. The abyss was under her feet, and she longed to draw back. She heard the voice of duty in the tones of Mrs. Frankland saying: "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... as they deceive most pilots, and some are so little curious, contenting themselves with ordinary experience, that they do not take the trouble of seeking for new expedients when they swerve, neither by means of the compass nor by any other trial. The first sign of approaching land was by seeing certain birds, which they knew to be of India; the second was some sedges and boughs of palm-trees; the third was snakes swimming at the surface of the water, and a ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

... Charles Carroll of Carrollton being of the number. The mission, however, was without success; for the ancient capital, although the most foreign in speech and custom of all places in British North America, remained steadfast under the temptation to swerve from her allegiance. Franklin, indeed, added nothing to his reputation by his general relations with the settlements on the St. Lawrence. For twenty-four years he had held the position of Deputy-Postmaster General for the English colonies, Quebec being regarded ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... a little startled by having a sudden pause made before them by an unknown person on a dark night. Erica thought she could exactly sympathize with a shying horse; she felt very much inclined to swerve aside. Fortunately she betrayed no fear, only a little surprise, as she lifted her head and looked the man full in the face, then moved on with quiet dignity. She felt him follow her to the very door, and purposely she took out her latch key with great deliberation, ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... many excuses for the poor old water companies, when so many of them swerve and gib at the very mention of constant water-supply, like a poor horse set to draw a load which he feels is too heavy for him—because, to keep everything in order among dirty, careless, and often drunken people, there must be officers ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... only find before him fathomless morasses. Only one leader had the courage to pursue Pugasceff even into this land—this was Michelson. Just as the Siberian wolf who has tasted the blood of the wild boar does not swerve from the track, but pursues him even amongst reeds and morasses, so the daring leader chased his opponent from plain to plain. He never had more than 1,000 men, cavalry, artillery, and gunners, all told. Every one had to carry provisions for two weeks and 100 cartridges. ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various

... most works of fiction, written by authors contemporary with the events they describe, and more especially so of that popular minstrelsy, which, emanating from a simple, uncorrupted class, is less likely to swerve from truth, than more ostentatious works of art. The long cohabitation of the Saracens with the Christians, (full evidence of which is afforded by Capmany, (Mem. de Barcelona, tom. iv. Apend. no. 11,) who quotes a document ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott

... without your assistance than with it. Don't wear spurs until you are quite sure that you won't spur at the wrong time. Never lose your temper with your horse, and never strike him with the whip when going at a fence; it is almost sure to make him swerve. Pick out the firmest ground; hold your horse together across ploughed land; if you want a pilot, choose not a scarlet and cap, but some well-mounted old farmer, who has not got a horse to sell: if he has, ten to one but he leads ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey

... better. I never can swerve or change, if I live to be a hundred and fifty. You think me presumptuous, no doubt, from what you are brought up to. And you are so young that to seek to bind you, even if you loved me, would be an unmanly thing. But now you ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore

... insect to distinguish another clearly the distance between them must not be very great. Certain gregarious birds and fish whose colouring is protective have a habit of showing their white bellies as they swerve on changing their direction. These signals help to keep the flock together. The white scut of the rabbit and of certain deer is a signal for other deer or rabbits to follow a frightened flock. It is obviously to the ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... Demanded. The door opened, and inside Max stepped. He saw a candle held in air Above the head of a gray-bearded Jew. "Simeon Isaacs, Mynheer, can I serve You?" "Yes, I think you can. Do you keep arms? I want a pistol." Quick the old man grew Livid. "Mynheer, a pistol! Let me swerve You from your purpose. Life brings often ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell

... collar as though he shrugged from the blast of a bad wind. I believe that, on the whole, Janet was pleased. I will wager that, left to herself, she would have been drawn into an answer, if not an argument. Nothing would have made her resolution swerve, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... you not instruct me, sir, before, [To HERM. Where I should place my duty? From which, if ignorance have made me swerve, I beg your ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... himself unexpectedly surrounded by active friends, once more reared his crest, and seemed disposed, for a time, to put on the air of injured innocence. The Squire, however, with all his benevolence of heart, and his lurking weakness towards the prisoner, was too conscientious to swerve from the strict path of justice. There was abundant concurring testimony that made the proof of guilt incontrovertible, and Starlight Tom's mittimus was made ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... murmur now at last? Oh that no unbelieving heart Among us may be found, That from the Lord would now depart, And coward-like give ground. For without doubt the God we serve Will still our cause defend, If we from Him do never swerve, But trust Him to the end. What if our goods by violence From us be torn, and we Of all things but our innocence Should wholly stripped be? Would this be more than did befall Good Job? Nay sure, much less: He lost estate, children and all, Yet he the Lord did bless. But did not God ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood

... excitement either of the outward or of the inward sense, it may form any combinations, or pursue any trains of ideas, which are most conducive to the purposes of philosophic inquiry; and may, while in that state, form deliberate convictions, from which no excitement will afterwards make it swerve. Might we not go even further than this? We shall not pause to ask whether it be not a misunderstanding of the nature of passionate feeling to imagine that it is inconsistent with calmness; whether they who so deem of it, do not mistake passion in the militant or ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... the lower step, permitted his gaze to swerve from the sweet, eager face of the girl above to that of ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon

... all became aware of a sudden swerve in the course of the submarine. The helmsman had, doubtless, noted the "water-mark," as Tom termed it, and as an automobilist on land might swing at the cross-roads, the steersman was changing ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton

... juncture Dale burst into the saloon, suddenly to check his impetus, to swerve aside toward the bar and halt. The door had not ceased swinging when again it was propelled inward, this time to admit Helen ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey

... to a suit, what authority must there be in his tongue who has to speak the King's words in the King's own presence? He must have knowledge of the law, wariness in speech, firmness of purpose, that neither gifts nor threats may cause him to swerve from justice. For in the interests of Equity we suffer even ourselves to be contradicted, since we too are bound to obey her. Let your learning be such that you may set forth every subject on which you have ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... 'The considerations which obliged me to surrender a post of honour which every independent and high-minded English gentleman has at all times prized above the highest rewards in the gift of the crown, "the leadership of the country gentlemen of England," will never influence me to swerve from any endeavours of which my poor abilities and bodily energies are capable in the promotion of the prosperity of all classes in the British empire at home and in the colonies, any more than they can ever make me forget the attachment, the friendship, and the enthusiastic support of those ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli

... carry. Under these circumstances his speed was greatly reduced from what he would have wished, but at that he was forced to accept grave risks. The road might end abruptly at the brink of a ravine—it might swerve perilously close to a stone quarry—or plunge headlong into a pond or river. Barney shuddered at the possibilities; but nothing of the sort happened. The street ran straight out of the town into a country road, rather heavy with sand. In the open the possibilities of speed were ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... failing he wheels half round, barely in time to save his life and mine, and then courses madly along the brink for miles, as if unable to tear himself away, keeping me in a state of continual fear, for a single slip, or an accidental swerve to the right, and we should have fallen headlong down the rocks, against ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall

... permittest the staff of justice to swerve, let it be not by the weight of a gift, but ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... to swerve an inch out of my road to oblige you, Bill Fletcher, you are almost as big a fool as you are a rascal," replied Christopher in a cool voice, as he brought his team to a halt and placed himself at the head of it with his long ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... John's brain, making the ground he stood upon swerve and seem unsteady. A wave of colour flushed his bronzed face up to the very roots of his grey-brown hair. Maryllia watched him with prettily critical interest, much as a kitten watches the rolling out of a ball of worsted on which it has just placed its little furry paw. Hurriedly he sought ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... also attached to and greatly revered my Uncle Jos; he was silent and reserved, so as to be a rather awful man; but he sometimes talked openly with me. He was the very type of an upright man, with the clearest judgment. I do not believe that any power on earth could have made him swerve an inch from what he considered the right course. I used to apply to him in my mind the well-known ode of Horace, now forgotten by me, in which the words "nec vultus ...
— The Autobiography of Charles Darwin - From The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin • Charles Darwin

... an odd mixture of admiration and discontent that the chroniclers of Perugia allude to their ascendency. Matarazzo, who certainly cannot be accused of hostility to the great house, describes the miseries of his country under their bad government in piteous terms:[1] 'As I wish not to swerve from the pure truth, I say that from the day the Oddi were expelled, our city went from bad to worse. All the young men followed the trade of arms. Their lives were disorderly; and every day divers excesses were divulged, and the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... appalling, was now not my only source of peril. Target could no more be guided nor stopped than could the forest fire. The trail grew more winding and overhung more thickly by pine branches. The horse did not swerve an inch for tree or thicket, but ran as if free, and the saving of my life began to be a matter of dodging. Once a crashing blow from a branch almost knocked me from the saddle. The wind in my ears half drowned the roar behind me. With hands twisted in Target's mane I bent ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey

... never faltered. He will convince the Germans at last that we are unfaltering, in the war, that nothing can swerve us from our goal,—the destruction of the autocracy which looks on war as good and seeks the dominion of the earth. When the Germans grasp that, then ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard

... said Mr. BALFOUR after the match, as he sipped a split sal-volatile and cinnamon, "but not so nervous as I was in the singles. But it was the first time that I ever stood up to the twin-screw service which Baron von Stosch uses so cleverly, and once or twice I was beaten by the swerve." But his partner, the famous Basque amateur, Mme. Jaureguiberry, was loud in his praises. "He played like a statesman and a diplomatist," she said. The Grand Duke MICHAEL was also greatly impressed and made a neat mot. "His fore-hand drives," he said, "were worthy of a driver of a four-in-hand." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various

... stable too fast, the sagacious Pendennis saving himself from going through a partition by a swerve which splintered a shaft of the runabout and almost threw the driver to the floor. George swore, and then swore again at the fat old darkey, Tom, for giggling at ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington

... the old soldier's angry shout, the driver drew one rein sharply, making the ponies swerve right for another far more dangerous obstacle and but for Marcus' readiness in snatching at the other rein, a ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn

... circumstance must cause us to modify or to change. Integrity knows no variation; honesty no shadow of turning. We must pursue the same course—stern and uncompromising—in the full persuasion that the path of right is like the bridge from earth to heaven, in the Mahometan creed—if we swerve but a single hair's ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... did not swerve from the truth, for Indra is truth. Indra said to him: "Know me only; that is what I deem most beneficial for man, that he should know me. I slew the three-headed son of Tvashtri; I delivered the Arunmukhas, the devotees, to the wolves; breaking many treaties, I killed the ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... seemly Aunt Jacoba beckoned me to stay. Ann likewise understood what had brought her sickly friend to her, and she whispered to me that albeit she was deeply thankful for the abundant goodness my aunt had ever shown her, yet could she never swerve from her well-considered purpose. To this I was only able to reply that on one point at least she must change her mind, for that I knew for certain that old grand-dame Pernhart loved her truly. At this she cried out gladly and thankfully: "Oh, Margery! if only ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... stretched on the sand; nor was it to be denied, that the situation of tilting with one of the handsomest women of the time was an extremely embarrassing one. Each youth was bent to withhold his charge in full volley, to cause his steed to swerve at the full shock, or in some other way to flinch from doing the utmost which was necessary to gain the victory, lest, in so gaining it, he might cause irreparable injury to the beautiful opponent he ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... swerve and sidle down. Gloria lifted her whip and struck him. Blackie snorted and obeyed her command. Some loose dirt gave way underfoot, the tired beast stumbled, a dead limb caught at his legs, tripping him, and Blackie lurched downward and fell. Through the grace of ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory

... lamentable position; but I feel that, in a state of society so diseased, we require time and management, not to lose in a day the labour and fruit of many years. To know how to proceed, and never to swerve from that path, to make a step towards the desired end whenever it can be made, and never to incur the necessity of retreat,—this course appears to me to be one of the necessities of the time in which I have arrived at power, ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... of making an addition without a swerve of imagination, because plastic figures are always ready before the calculator. The man of imagination is always constructing by means of plastic images.[169] Life possesses him, intoxicates him, so he never ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

... door, and started down the passage. For a dozen steps it was black as night; then there was a sharp swerve to the right, and a gleam of daylight in the far distance. Already they were at the barrier, and I ran forward recklessly, eager to escape into the open. The way was clear, the floor rising slightly, ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish

... in which you have on several occasions behaved towards those who have fallen into your power. I, with the sentiments I entertain, can only wish that you served a better cause, at the same time that I would not seek to induce you, as an officer bearing his Majesty's commission, to swerve from the allegiance ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston

... things off pretty easy, toward the last; but I did not swerve from my line of duty. I went through all the courses, quietly and deliberately. It was a dinner in my honor, and I did all the honor I ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton

... all the rest of it. We may sympathise with you—personally, I admire the attitude you have taken, though perhaps I shouldn't say it—but our own feelings do not matter the toss of a button. Nothing you can do or say will swerve us from what we judge to be the ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest

... me to Odin for a leader of his host, To do the deeds of the Highest, and never count the cost: And I swear, that whatso great-one shall show the day and the deed, I shall ask not why nor wherefore, but the sword's desire shall speed: And I swear to seek no quarrel, nor to swerve aside for aught, Though the right and the left be blooming, and the straight way wend to nought: And I swear to abide and hearken the prayer of any thrall, Though the war-torch be on the threshold and the foemen's feet in the hall: And I swear to sit on my throne in the guise of the kings of ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris

... don't pommel ME! No, ye've knocked me down, and I am up again; but YE have run and hidden. Come forth from behind your cotton bags! I have no long gun to reach ye. Come, Ahab's compliments to ye; come and see if ye can swerve me. Swerve me? ye cannot swerve me, else ye swerve yourselves! man has ye there. Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... for Boris. He did swerve the car, but it struck the wreck. There was a deafening crash, and then they were hurled out onto the turf by the roadside, while the motor roared and flames ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine

... crown for the sake of dogmatic opinions. True, he held to his order that the Bible should be promulgated in the English tongue, for his revolt from the hierarchy, and demand of obedience from all estates, rested on God's written word: nor did he allow himself to swerve from the legally enacted suppression of the monasteries; but he abandoned further innovations, and an altered tendency displayed itself in all his proclamations. Even during the troubles he called on the bishops to observe the usual church ceremonies: he put ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... the gigantic plane wobbled! There was a sudden swerve that ended in a nose dive, straight toward Venus seven ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell

... again; otherwise they would still retain something private, which has no place there. Being established in charity, they can never deviate therefrom by any defect, and have no will or desire save the pure will of pure love, and can swerve from it in nothing. They can neither commit sin nor ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier

... was no parry. A kingdom seemed to be passing. Canute threw his shield before him, while his spur caused his horse to swerve violently; but the blade cleft wood and iron and golden plating like parchment, and falling on the horse's neck, bit it to the bone. Rearing and plunging with pain, the animal crashed into those behind him, missed his footing and fell, entangling his rider ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... to his own ears a somewhat explosive sound. They were uttered, however, and he was glad of it. A purpose thus formulated he would not swerve from. Of that his ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing

... headed straight for the hole, the Boy had gathered himself for a clear jump to the right, but the sled's sudden swerve to the left broke his angle sharply. He was flung forward on the new impetus, spun over the smooth surface, swept across the verge and under the cloud, clutching wildly at the ragged edge of ice as he ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... swinging hencoop perched on two enormous wheels, and the young horse, after a violent swerve, started into a gallop, pitching us into the air like balls. Every fall backward on the wooden bench gave ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... quicker than he and leaped aside barely in time to avoid disaster as the car shot past and hurtled on into the dusk. He turned in his saddle and watched its unlighted shape swerve drunkenly from side to side of the road, until a further turn hid it from view. With a muttered imprecation, he gave the sure-footed pinto its head, and as it floundered out of the ditch the white, jeering face of the man ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant

... and equality to all, and not a peace which would leave our fetters unbroken. We regret that the Pope omitted to mention the Czechs in his peace offer although he mentioned the Poles. But we shall obtain our right without alien support. The Czechs will never swerve from their demand for an independent Slovak State with all the attributes of sovereignty. The Czechs are convinced that the question of Bohemia is too great to be solved in Vienna. It must be ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek

... exposed to the censure and reproach of an ignorant populice." In other moods he felt that he ought not to sacrifice what was left of his diminished army in vain conflict with hopeless obstacles. But his final resolve once taken, he would not swerve from it. His fear was that he might not be able to lead his troops in person. "I know perfectly well you cannot cure me," he said to his physician; "but pray make me so that I may be without pain for a few days, and able to do my duty: ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... the journal; but on October 3, they thought they saw among the weeds something like fruits. By the 6th, Pinzon began to urge a southwesterly course, in order to find the islands, which the signs seemed to indicate in that direction. Still the Admiral would not swerve from his purpose, and kept his course westerly. On Sunday the Nina fired a bombard and hoisted a flag as a signal that she saw land, but it proved a delusion. Observing towards evening a flock of birds flying ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various

... drives—one from the front and another from the roof—so that not an anarchist or Bolshevik could escape. The mouth of the Federal sack should be held at this cellar exit. No matter what kind of game he played offside, the raid itself must succeed absolutely. Nothing should swerve him from making these plans as perfect as it was humanly possible. He would be on hand to search Karlov himself. If the drums were not on him he would return and pick the old mansion apart, lath by lath. Gay old ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath

... to be numbered among the highest efforts of human virtue. But that integrity which, however tempting the opportunity, or however secure against detection, no selfishness nor resentment, no lust of power, place, favor, profit, or pleasure, can cause to swerve from the strict rule of right, is the perfection of man's moral nature. In this sense, the poet was right when he pronounced "an honest man's the noblest work of God." It is almost inconceivable what an erect and independent spirit this high endowment communicates to the man, and what a moral ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... by traveling at the fastest rate compatible with his own safety and that of other road-users. It was no disgrace to the Mercury car, therefore, when a dull report and a sudden effort of the steering-wheel to swerve to the right betokened the collapse of an inner tube on the off side. From the motorist's point of view it was difficult to understand the cause of the mishap. The whole four tires were new so recently as the previous Monday, and Medenham ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy

... She is proud as she was when she sat in pillared state, under gorgeous canopies, with a hundred slaves at her beck, and a devoted people within reach of her couriers. She does not tremble or swerve, though she has her head down. That head is bowed only because she is a woman, and she will not give the look of love to the man who has forced her after him. Her lip has no weakness in it. She is a lady, and knows that there is something higher than joy or pain. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... excellent view of both sides of the gorge. The water was cutting cold, but I was repaid. Below me on the left-hand side was a jutting cliff which bore the thrust of the river and caused the Aar to swerve from its direct course. From top to bottom this cliff was polished, rounded, and scooped. There was no room for doubt. The river which now runs so deeply down had once been above. It has been the delver of its own channel through the barrier of ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... sun," one of the Arabs answered; "but even without that we could find our way, and do so even on the darkest night. The horses know the way as well as we do. When they have once journeyed over a track they never forget it, and even did they swerve a little it would not matter, for they can smell water miles away, and would always, if unguided, make ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty

... swerve to the right brought them into a lighted and populous thoroughfare. Italian restaurants, German delicatessen shops, eating places of a dozen other nationalities lined the pavements on both sides of the street, and, in ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew

... guides of the church do institute any ceremonies as necessary for edification, yet ecclesia liberum habet judicium approbandi aut reprobandi eas.(157) Nay, the canon law,(158) prohibiting to depart or swerve from the rules and discipline of the Roman church, yet excepteth discretionem justitiae and so permitteth to do otherwise than the church prescribeth, if it be done cum discretione justitiae. The schoolmen also give liberty to a private man, of proving the statutes ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie

... man-made trails here, no sounds other than the murmuring waters of the Little Big Branch and the voices of nature, to which Emma Dean listened, nodded or shook her head as if she and those voices were holding converse. The laughing teasing of her companions failed to swerve Emma from her ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower

... tell to this day, for Jim never once slackened speed. He sat there with jaws set, pumping gas and still more gas into the little car. Thrice I saw death loom up ahead of us, as vehicles approached from side-streets, but with a swerve and a sickening skid, we missed them somehow. Once a street-car and a wagon seemed completely to block the road ahead, but Jim steered for the slender opening and when I opened my eyes we had skinned through, leaving a corpulent and cursing driver far behind. After ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny



Words linked to "Swerve" :   peel off, turn, turning



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