Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Devious   Listen
adjective
Devious  adj.  
1.
Out of a straight line; winding; varying from directness; as, a devious path or way.
2.
Going out of the right or common course; going astray; erring; wandering; as, a devious step.
Synonyms: Wandering; roving; rambling; vagrant.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Devious" Quotes from Famous Books



... south wind had arisen, but did not dissipate the fog, and for two hours we had a renewal of our past experiences, in thumping over hard ridges and ploughing through seas of snow. Our track was singularly devious, sometimes doubling directly back upon itself without any apparent cause. At last, when a faint presentiment of dawn began to glimmer through the fog, the Lapp halted and announced that he had lost the way. Bidding us remain where we were, he struck off into the snow and was soon lost to sight. ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor

... with his upon the devious waterway. The hand which held the wheel was steady and the Petrel plunged boldly on as if bent upon flinging its fragile shell upon the time-defying rocks ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton

... offered effective opposition to predatory wealth. The more successful the Forest Service has been in preventing land-grabbing and the absorption of water power by the special interests, the more ingenious, the more devious, and the more dangerous these attacks have become. A favorite one is to assert that the Forest Service, in its zeal for the public welfare, has played ducks and drakes with the Acts of Congress. The fact is, on the contrary, that the Service has had ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot

... yet a girl, she with her little hand Lashed and reined in the rapid steed she raced, Tossed the huge javelin, wrestled on the sand, And by gymnastic toils her sinews braced; Then through the devious wood and mountain-waste Tracked the struck lion to his entered den, Or in fierce wars a nobler quarry chased; And thus in fighting field and forest glen, A man to savage beasts, a savage seemed ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb

... in deplorable condition. There might be one or two broad highways, but the rest were mere alleys, devious, dark, and dirty. Often their narrowness made them impassable for wagons. In places the pedestrian waded gallantly through mud and garbage; pigs grunted ponderously as he pushed them aside; chickens ran under his feet; and occasionally ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... The keeper of the wardrobe was intimate with General Gouvion. She had warned him in good time, and had given notice to persons about the queen that she knew what was going on. The alarm was given at two in the morning, but that she might not be compromised it was given by devious ways. A traveller from Marseilles was roused at his lodgings by a friendly voice. He refused to get up, and went to sleep again. Some hours later the visitor returned, and prevailed with the sleeper. He came from ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... Avenue, slid smoothly over to Columbus, ran for a block or so beneath the elevated structure and swung into Seventy-seventh Street, through which it pelted eastward and into Central Park. Then for some moments it turned and twisted through the devious driveways, in a fashion so erratic that the passenger lost all grasp of her whereabouts, retaining no more than a confused impression of serpentine, tree-lined ways, chequered with lamplight and the soft, dense shadows of foliage, and regularly spaced ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance

... 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

... wondrous tale complete, Not sudden fell the silence; for, as when A huge wave 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 young, and flung on each In turn ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere

... because Agnes Merrivale was, beyond all question, the sweetest and most lovable, as well as the most charming and lovely woman it had ever been my good fortune to encounter. Nor will I attempt to describe the devious methods and the complicated stratagems by which—having arrived at this conclusion—I painfully sought to obtain some slight inkling or clue to the sweet girl's sentiments toward myself. Let it suffice ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood

... 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 ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones

... have had incomes never approached at any other period in the history of medicine. The chapter gives a good picture of the stage on which Galen (practically a contemporary of Pliny) was to play so important a role. Pliny seems himself to have been rather disgusted with the devious paths of the doctors of his day, and there is no one who has touched with stronger language upon the weak points of the art of physic. In one place he says that it alone has this peculiar art and privilege, "That whosoever professeth himself a physician, is straightwaies beleeved, say what he ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler

... spokes of a wheel converging streams of human life flow into this agitated pool. Horses and 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 are always ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies

... 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 Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle

... beverages that are supplied gratis to those who frequent those haunts of infamy, it was evident that some sort of inebriation attacked him; his steps were disordered and unsteady, and, as we followed him, we could perceive, by the devious track that he took, that he was somewhat uncertain of ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... fellow-officer out of 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 ...
— From Fort Henry to Corinth • Manning Ferguson Force

... By devious routes I went on to certain batteries of big guns which had played their part in hammering the Austrian left above Monfalcone across an arm of the Adriatic, and which were now under orders to shift ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells

... Harlson to learn how helpless in the great city is the man as yet unlearned in all its heartlessness and devious ways and lack of regard for strangers, and the story of Ellsworth was very ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo

... who 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

... maintain warmth, a less rapid growth, a smaller muscular development, a feebler power, a hurry of breathing on exertion, or in ascending a hill, or in going up a staircase, are all, except the sounds which the educated ear detects of the blood passing through its devious course, that tell of nature having, in this instance, ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.

... resist temptation, who work faithfully, who give honest measure and seek no unfair advantage. But that business is no brotherhood is an old story, and poor human nature finds itself forced by necessity and competition into ways that are devious and not strictly honest. It's the system that is at fault, for men have formed a scheme of creating and distributing values that severely tries and often weakens ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson

... as they approached very near, driven away by the ministering 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 thicket the ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... with the gentlemen of divers matters, brought them by devious roads to his lord's estate without their being ware of it. Whom as soon as Messer Torello espied, he came forth afoot to meet them, and said with a smile:—"A hearty welcome to you, gentlemen." Now Saladin, being very quick of apprehension, perceived that the knight had doubted, ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio

... followed her on the first day by devious ways, and until after mid-day, without losing sight of her; and had lost her at last, as Dave and myself had lost our quarry, in ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch

... theories were wrong, and that the real criminal was somebody quite other than the person she had fancied. For a novelist who was so little master of his trade as to let you see when and how things were going, Miss Penkridge had little but good-natured pity; for one who led you by all sorts of devious tracks to a startling and surprising sensation she cherished a whole-souled love; but for the creator of a plot who could keep his secret alive and burning to his last few sentences she felt the deepest thing that she could give to any human being—respect. ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher

... country would probably have considered the devious march that they already had made arduous enough, but they had, at least for the most part, followed the valleys and crossed only a few low divides, and it was evident now that their way led close up to the eternal snow. There was a rock scarp in front of them, up part of which they ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss

... half-circle, sniffing very loudly, and chopped up a grub. He paused for a fraction to nose out a beetle, and disposed of it with the same quick three or four chopping scrunches. (It sounded rather like a child eating toast-crusts.) He continued, always wandering devious, always very busy and ant-like, always snorting loudly; grabbed another beetle, and then a worm—all by scent, apparently—and reached the hedge-ditch, where, in the pitch-darkness, he could still be heard snorting and scrunching hapless insects, slugs, and worms at scarcely more than one-minute ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... the great scoundrel disgusted and humiliated her. That side of her nature which had attracted and encouraged him was sleeping, and, under the new motives which were at work within her, she hoped that it would never wake. She looked down the devious track of her past, counted over its unworthy and most unwomanly satisfactions, and wondered. She looked back to a great wrong which she had once inflicted on an innocent man, with a self-condemnation so deep that all the womanhood within ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland

... naturally to be supposed, also, at such a time, it was not long before Craig found himself entangled in the marvelous spy system of the warring European nations. These systems revealed their devious and dark ways, ramifying as they did tentacle-like even across the ocean in their efforts to gain their ends in neutral America. Not only so, but, as I shall some day endeavor to show later, when the ban of silence imposed by neutrality is raised after the war, many of the horrors ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... perceive that this gentle Old Lady so devious in her conversation has a power of self-possession, of which, very retiringly, she ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman

... lines, round the base, upward to a piece of level land, into which the north side of the hill gently declined. At the most northern part of this level, the two streets united, at a distance of a mile from the wharves, into one which thence winded a devious course two or three miles further along the Yaupaae. Above the highest roofs and steeples, towered the green summit of the hill, whose thick-growing evergreens presented, at all seasons, a coronal of verdure. One who stood on the top could see come rushing in from the east, through a narrow ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... glorious chamber, wrought For all delight that love's own thought Might dream or dwell in, Balen sought And found of all he looked for nought, For like a shining shell her bed Shone void and vacant of her: thence Through devious wonders bright and dense He passed and saw with shame-struck sense Where shame ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... roof-top, whither I am fled to snatch what cooler airs may drift into this cup of earth, I can see above the straggling tiles of gable and loggia the cupolas and belfries of many churches. I know they are all dead; for I have wound a devious way through the close inhospitable streets and met them or their ghosts at every corner. The ghost of a dead church is the worst of all disembodied sighs: he wails and chatters at you. Here I have seen churches whose towers were fallen and their tribunes laid bare to the ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett

... 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 verdict ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... of Severn! shall the song That wildly devious roves along, The charms of nature to explore, On history rest, or themes of yore? More joy the thoughts of home supply, Short be the glance at days gone by, Though gallant TEWKESBURY, clean and gay, Hath much ...
— The Banks of Wye • Robert Bloomfield

... even considered the question of taking a boat for half an hour, Ransom saying that they needed this to make their visit complete. Verena replied that she didn't see why it should be complete, and after having threaded the devious ways of the Ramble, lost themselves in the Maze, and admired all the statues and busts of great men with which the grounds are decorated, they contented themselves with resting on a sequestered bench, where, however, there was a pretty glimpse of the ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James

... ceremonious expression of a light heart. And your children and your children's children will dance 'The Chesterton' when you are no more. May be, a few of them will still be dancing it now and then, on this or that devious green, even when optimism shall have withered for ever from the land. Nor will any man mock at the survival. The dance will have lost nothing of its old grace, and will have gathered that quality of pathos which ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... have pursued far enough this study of an artist's progress through the thorny, devious ways of art criticism. We have reached the point, in fact, where the comparative uncertainties of an artist's career make way for the certainties. With one quotation more, in which we have a tribute from another critic, Mr. Comyns Carr, we may fitly close: "No painter of our ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys

... names associated with the Forest of Fontainebleau, and one which will never die, is that of Denecourt, called also the "Sylvain de la Foret," a mythological appellation which came from his abounding knowledge of its devious ways and byways. It was in 1841 that Denecourt began his original studies and catalogued its every stone and tree. He invented names and gave a historical setting to many a picturesque and romantic site which might not ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield

... course of his devious wanderings—for he mostly went about alone—he made his way, with great trouble and perplexity, to the court in which the mother of Johnny Wickes lived; and he betrayed no shame at all in confronting the poor woman—half starved, and pale, and emaciated as she was—whose ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black

... Reformers on the Continent were brought into England by a great variety of carriers and over many routes. Some of the routes were devious and are difficult to trace, but some of them, on the other hand, are obvious and easily found. One of the potent and pervasive intellectual influences for the formation of the "spiritual" type of thought in England was the Platonic influence which came to England ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... By devious turnings and breath-taking climbs, the trail finally reached the top at the only point for miles, where it was possible for a horseman to ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower

... she soars The blue profound, and, hovering 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 spirits hold Beyond this concave heaven, their calm abode; And ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... 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, and some of the conspirators were pretty deeply in the mire, I guess. I wish I'd ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... way of peace, just because it is a way of restrictions. Better to walk on the narrowest path that leads to the City than to be chartered libertines, wandering anywhere at our own bitter wills, and finding 'no end, in devious mazes lost.' Freedom consists in obeying from the heart the restriction of love; ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... scoff, she remained to pray to Abel Ah Yo's 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

... and peoples was a part of Guild training. In spite of his devious game here on Jumala, Hume was Guild educated and Rynch was willing to leave such decisions ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton

... is mighty, but devious. In a village, especially in an island village, it is as direct and violent as any "act of God" written down in a ship's insurance papers. A word carries far over the fences, and where it drops, like a swelling seed, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... Nay—know yet not?—this burden hath alway lain On the devious being of woman; yea, burdens twain, The burden of Wild Will and the burden of Pain. Through my heart once that wind of terror sped; But I, in fear confessed, Cried from the dark to Her in heavenly bliss, The Helper of Pain, the Bow-Maid ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides

... violet shuddered and recoiled and said: "Nay, nay, impetuous brook, I will not be your bride." So, with many murmurs and complaints, the brook crept back to its jealous banks and resumed its devious and prattling way ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field

... school, in whom the leisure-class ideals have suffered no disintegration; and such is the attitude of his latter-day descendant, in so far as he has fallen heir to the full complement of upper-class virtues. But the ways of heredity are devious, and not every gentleman's son is to the manor born. Especially is the transmission of the habits of thought which characterize the predatory master somewhat precarious in the case of a line of descent in which but one or two of the latest steps have lain within the leisure-class discipline. ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... and soldier, who would not bother to prove his truthfulness to his old companion and friend, was gone. He had hit his own trail in his own way, as he usually did; a long devious, difficult, lonesome trail. The clearly defined trail of the sidewalk leading to the troop room, where a few words of explanation might have straightened everything out, was not the trail for Tom Slade, scout. He would straighten things out ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... fortress that same hour De Guardiola heard in silence the Admiral's message of defiance, then when he and Mexia were again alone frowned thoughtfully over a slip of paper which by devious ways had shortly before reached his hand. With all their vigilance not every hole and crevice could the English stop; Spanish was the town and Spanish the overhanging fortress, and the former was the place of many women and priests. The conquerors strove to secure the ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston

... eighth meeting they held a long and serious consultation. Affairs were in such train that little remained to be done, but to set the day for the rising, and to send notice by many devious and underground ways to the Oliverian captains scattered throughout the Colony. Landless counseled immediate action, the firing of the fuse at once by starting the secret intelligence which would spread like wildfire from plantation to plantation. Then would the mine be sprung within ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... like a man who has hurled himself at his enemy and found him suddenly not there. This reminded him of ju-jitsu, and this in turn of the ancient Japanese—to whom, indeed, his Terranovans seemed to have many resemblances. Weaver's uneasiness increased. Savage peoples were notoriously devious—they smiled and then ...
— The Worshippers • Damon Francis Knight

... rivulet, which, after meandering for, perhaps, thirty yards, finally passed through the "depression" (already described) in the middle of the southern declivity, and tumbling down a sheer precipice of a hundred feet, made its devious and ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... quadrupled in that 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... those who are now suffering all the contempt and opprobrium which can be thrown both upon their heads and their hearts, because they have refused to follow Mr. Webster in the devious paths in which it has lately been his pleasure to walk, that they have by their constancy and firmness extorted from their Southern antagonists a tribute which is not paid to their revilers. Said Mr. Stanley, of Virginia, in his speech in the House of Representatives last March, speaking ...
— A Letter to the Hon. Samuel Eliot, Representative in Congress From the City of Boston, In Reply to His Apology For Voting For the Fugitive Slave Bill. • Hancock

... ihr Herren und lasset's Euch sagen; in other words, tell the Universe, which so often forgets that fact, what o'clock it really is. Not unfrequently the Germans have been blamed for an unprofitable diligence; as if they struck into devious courses, where nothing was to be had but the toil of a rough journey; as if, forsaking the gold-mines of finance and that political slaughter of fat oxen whereby a man himself grows fat, they were apt to run goose-hunting into regions of bilberries and crowberries, and ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... dwindled in the distance into less than the smallness of Lilliput, he could afford to smile at the occurrence. Either Frank would go, and that would be a relief - or he would continue to stay, and his host must continue to endure him. And Archie was now free - by devious paths, behind hillocks and in the hollow of burns - to make for the trysting-place where Kirstie, cried about by the curlew and the plover, waited and burned for his coming ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... oh, pray for me, Should pleasure's siren lay E'er tempt thy child to wander far From virtue's path away; When thorns beset life's devious way, And darkling waters flow, Then, Mary, aid thy weeping child, Thyself a ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 2 (of 4) • Anonymous

... 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

... been penetrated by scarcely any but hunters, fur traders, soldiers, and missionaries. It was to the peaceful settler who was seeking a home, a terra incognita, an unknown land. Those mountain peaks were veiled in clouds, those devious labyrinthine valleys were the abode of darkness. The awful majesty of nature's works, the Titanic wonder-shapes which God hath wrought, are calculated to burden the imagination and subdue the aspiring soul of man by their vastness. Those mountain heights, seen from which ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... plays a wider part, and affects the whole country. The people are drugged with the hashish of false hopes and urged to deeds of frightfulness by the goadings of manufactured panics; their higher feelings are exploited by devious channels of unctuous hypocrisy, their pockets picked under anaesthetics of flattery, their very psychology affected by a conspiracy ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore

... son of the neighbouring squire, whose house, known as the Red Farm, lay In the little valley on the other side of the Woods at the head of Beaver Pond. From the time he had been able to thread his way across the woodland by its devious paths—Tom had been at the Inn almost every day to play with Dan Frost, the landlord's son. They had played in the stables, then stocked with a score of horses, where now there were only two or three; in the ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold

... matters. He must be on the defensive until he knew what she was going to do, what he must do himself, and what results were probable or possible. He had spent his life in intrigue of one order or another. He enjoyed outwitting people and rather preferred to attain an end by devious paths. He began every acquaintance on the defensive. His argument was that you never knew how things would turn out, consequently, it was as well to conduct one's self at the outset with the discreet forethought ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... away to the south-east with moderate winds and fine weather, captured, at the end of that time, a large American ship, which had made a devious course from the French coast, in hopes of avoiding our cruisers; she was about four hundred tons, deeply laden, and bound to Laguira, with a valuable cargo. The captain sent for me, and told me that if I chose to take charge ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... merchant Wong Ts'in and of the assiduous youth Wei Chang has reached this person's ears by a devious road, and though it doubtless lost some of the subtler qualities in the telling, the ultimate tragedy had a convincing ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah

... magnanimity of this advice without realizing that Orta is a place above all others to please a man's fancy, and that the fishing is exceptionally good. Miss Cassandra has taken back her caustic expressions with regard to the devious ways of fisher folk, or at least of this especial fisherman, and so, in good humor with one another and with the world in general, we set forth for Lausanne, by Domodossola and the Simplon. We shall have a Sunday in Lausanne to drink in Calvinism near its source; ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton

... the most southerly portion of the 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 ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy

... After devious windings and ascents they came out upon a projecting ledge from which it was possible to see over the greater extent of the Giants' pit, and from which Redwood might make himself heard by the whole of their assembly. The Giants were already gathered below and about him at different ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells

... unnecessary cart, and even to follow some good-looking miner to his cabin. The first time this peculiarity was discovered by her owner was on his return to the street after driving a bargain within the walls of the Temperance Hotel. Jinny was nowhere to be seen. Her devious course, however, was pleasingly indicated by vegetables that strewed the road until she was at last tracked to the veranda of the Arcade saloon, where she was found looking through the window at a game of euchre, and only deterred by the impeding cart ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte

... uniformly heavy-browed and serious lords. Looking at those faces you cannot wonder that those old scholars had but a poor opinion of woman, the irrational and mutable element in things, or that the library had been handed down from father to son, from uncle to nephew, evading the cosmic vanity by devious lines of descent. It was a tradition in the family that its men should be scholars and ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... devious methods—and look where his devious methods had dumped him! Griswold certainly was in wrong. Charles quickly determined to adopt a course directly opposite. Griswold had shown an utter lack of confidence in Aline. Charles decided that he would give her his entire confidence, would ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis

... corruption and dishonesty trembled to its base. It was the last protest of the Old School, rising up there in denunciation of the new order of things, the statesman opposed to the politician; honesty, rectitude, uncompromising integrity, prevailing for the last time against the devious manoeuvring, the evil communications, the rotten ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... wound a devious course through the green was a little grove, and sitting here I fell to plucking ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... my shoulders with a lion's hide And yellow spoils; then, on my bending back, The welcome load of my dear father take; While on my better hand Ascanius hung, And with unequal paces tripp'd along. Creusa kept behind; by choice we stray Thro' ev'ry dark and ev'ry devious way. I, who so bold and dauntless, just before, The Grecian darts and shock of lances bore, At ev'ry shadow now am seiz'd with fear, Not for myself, but for the charge I bear; Till, near the ruin'd gate arriv'd at last, Secure, and deeming all the danger past, A frightful noise of trampling feet ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil

... Durant, and be fĂȘted and decorated; he is an artist, not by inclination, but by force. He is as a galley slave chained to the oar," says Degas. Different too are their methods of work. Manet paints his whole picture from nature, trusting his instinct to lead him aright through the devious labyrinth of selection. Nor does his instinct ever fail him, there is a vision in his eyes which he calls nature, and which he paints unconsciously as he digests his food, thinking and declaring vehemently ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... That was due to his legal training. Once a thriving solicitor, he had been struck off the rolls in consequence of some stupid trustee business which turned out all wrong and thereafter driven along devious paths known only to himself: hence his residence on ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... the story; but when it does so he will feel it, and the feeling will be unpleasant. Let the intending novel-writer, if he doubt this, read one of Bulwer's novels,—in which there is very much to charm,—and then ask himself whether he has not been offended by devious conversations. ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope

... with the utmost speed. The decompression of the atmosphere made the specific gravity of their bodies extraordinarily light, and they ran like hares and leaped like chamois. Leaving the devious windings of the footpath, they went as a crow would fly across the country. Hedges, trees, and streams were cleared at a bound, and under these conditions Ben Zoof felt that he could have overstepped Montmartre at a single stride. The earth seemed as elastic as the springboard of an acrobat; ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne

... 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 shall ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... beloved William Jaquith Has resolved henceforth to break with Devious ways; And returning to his mother Vows he will have ne'er another ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards

... that rose high above us into the misty weather, and caught here and there the sunshine on their tops. In that heavenly climate no day can long be out of humor, and at Sorrento we found ours very pleasant, and rode delightedly through the devious streets, looking up to the terraced orange-groves on one hand, and down to the terraced orange-groves on the other, until at a certain turning of the way we encountered Antonino Occhio d'Argento, whom fate had appointed to be our boatman to Capri. We had never ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells

... was the gorge, nearer and bleaker rose the mountains, steeper and more palpable became the ascent, keener and crisper grew the air, as the evening fell upon us pursuing our devious way. The valleys were not only insignificant but widely separated by tracts through which the road had with difficulty and at much expense been cut out of the mountain side without infringing on the impetuous torrent that tumbled and foamed by ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... about to leave the spot, when, as though his wish was gratified, a strange sound was audible in the narrow and devious passages, between tottering houses, and those even more squalid in the rear, a commingling of shuffling and stamping feet, the smiting of heavy sticks on uneven stones and the dragging of ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas

... her while they descended the stairs and traversed devious passages till the butler's room was gained. By that time the housemaid was convinced that Mr. Furneaux was "a very nice man." When she "did" Hilton Fenley's rooms she missed the glass, but gave no heed to its absence. Who would bother about a glass in a house where murder had been done? ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy

... that then would come the days of dull and devious diplomacy, of division of domain, of dragging indemnity from a people dumb and disheartened by devastation and death. At all costs to beat the breath from her body! The hour had come when this resistant something should be ours, ours, the Briton's, the Frenchman's, the Russian's, the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... skaters. Now there is a foot of snow upon it, through which there is a boyish excitement in making the first path. Looking back upon our track, it proves to be like all other human paths, straight in intention, but slightly devious in deed. We have gay companions on our way; for a breeze overtakes us, and a hundred little simooms of drift whirl along beside us, and whelm in miniature burial whole caravans of dry leaves. Here, too, our track ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... these we leave behind In devious college ways; We'll smoke to songs we've sung before, In ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various

... question of giving and taking quarter from persons who were more concerned to suppress doctrines they conceived to be dangerous than to examine into their truth. On the other hand, much as Huxley disliked Owen's devious ways, and although in after life there occurred many and severe differences of opinion between Huxley and Owen, Huxley had a sincere respect for much of Owen's anatomical and palaeontological work, and when, in 1894, Owen's Life was published, one of the most interesting ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell

... march of the centuries, they have been making slow efforts to rise. So the lady sat in the great hall in the castle, clad in some gorgeous gown of silk which had been brought by the patient caravans, through devious ways, from the far and mysterious East; surrounded by her privileged maidens, she spun demurely and in peace and quiet, while out in the fields the back of the peasant woman was bent in ceaseless toil. Or again, the lady of the manor would ride forth with her lord when he went to ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... he said at length, "have been of evil men and trickery and ambition. I realize that, always, when I come here—when I see you, Alice Windham. For a little time I am uplifted. Then I go back to my devious toiling ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... and prince," said De Lacy, bending his knee to Henry, "can you hear this, and refuse your ancient servant one request?— Spare this man!—Extinguish not such a light, because it is devious and wild." ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... particularly recommended a careful search at the Kaim of Dernecleugh, which was occasionally occupied under night by vagrants of different descriptions. Having thus dispersed his myrmidons in various directions, he himself hastened by devious paths through the Wood of Warroch, to his appointed interview with Hatteraick, from whom he hoped to learn at more leisure than last night's conference admitted, the circumstances attending the return of the heir of Ellangowan to ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... from the end of a long corridor. It was attired in a flowing dressing-gown of crimson silk, with magnificent Turkish slippers, and carried a hand candlestick much off the perpendicular, as it swayed up the passage in a somewhat devious course. When it caught sight of me, it extended both its arms, regardless of the melted wax with which such a manoeuvre bedaubed the wall, and prepared, with many endearing and complimentary expressions, to bar ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville

... better than Patty. On a flying visit to the stables, ostensibly to consult with Martin as to a re-marking of the tennis courts, she singled out from his tool bench the monkey-wrench of her choice, casually covered it with her sweater, and safely bore it away. She and Patty conveyed their booty by devious secret ways to Paradise Alley. A great many alarms were given on the passage, a great deal of muffled giggling ensued, but finally the monkey-wrench and the pie—slightly damaged as to its meringue top, ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster

... belonged, except for the purpose of colonization. An ingenious fraud, suggested by a combination of these two laws, forms the basis of plot for "Dead Souls." The hero, Tchitchikoff, is an official who has struggled up, cleverly but not too honestly, through the devious ways of bribe-taking, extortion, and not infrequent detection and disgrace, to a snug berth in the customs service, from which he has been ejected under conditions which render further upward flight quite out of the question. In this dilemma, he hits upon the idea of purchasing from landed proprietors ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood

... 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

... such a metamorphosis as this is possible—if the seemingly wide gap between leaf and stamen may be spanned by the modification of a line of organisms—where does the possibility of modification of organic type find its bounds? Why may not the modification of parts go on along devious lines until the remote descendants of an organism are utterly unlike that organism? Why may we not thus account for the development of various species of beings all sprung from one parent stock? That, too, is a poet's ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... great regions of which I have spoken, not far from the highest point of the table-land where they unite. Near the same spot rises another river,[4] which empties itself into the polar seas. The course of the Mississippi is at first devious: it winds several times toward the north, whence it rose; and, at length, after having been delayed in lakes and marshes, it flows slowly ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al

... has always offered to lend a helping hand; but the remonstrants have pursued devious paths and excited some of the commonalty, and by that means obtained a clandestine and secret subscription, as is to be seen by their remonstrance, designed for no other object than to render the Company—their patrons—and the officers in New Netherland odious ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various

... harm. For a number of reasons I know pretty well that the Benchers would not make themselves ridiculous by having the story of my successful entry into their citadel told in open court. I have in fact, through a devious channel, received the assurance that if I do not resume this character (of D.V.W.) nothing more will be said. What, then, have I to fear? My mother s'est bien rangee. She leads a life of the most respectable. If they challenge her, she can counter with some of the most piquant ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... Vesty travelled as a princess might. I brought her the long and devious journey swiftly, with as little fatigue as possible: but it was late at night when we mounted the steps of the Garrison town residence; the house was ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... of one. None of the rigid bigotry, none of the exultant delight in morality, none of the merciless joy in trampling upon pleasure which gives him his reward. I looked round upon life and its many devious ways with eyes listless and indifferent to its vice and sympathetic to its pleasure, and back upon my own straight path with something of regret that my self-respect had been strong enough to hold me to it. And now the temptation came to sacrifice all that I had clung to. To abolish ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross

... 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 reproduced ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson

... roaring mountain stream, abounding in trout at all seasons, and in June, July, and August filled with salmon which have come up here through the Golden Gates from the ocean to spawn. The stage-road follows almost to its source the devious course of the river, and you ride along sometimes nearly on a level with the stream, and again on a road-bed cut out of the steep mountain side a thousand or fifteen hundred feet above the river; through fine forests of sugar-pines and yellow pines many of which come almost ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff

... following his devious course along the lanes more and more into the country Richard Frayne did not pause to consider; all he thought was that at last, after many efforts, he was going to run his cousin down, and bring him to bay right away from the possibility of interruption, and where, ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn

... bruises to show for it. Thwack, thwack! No sooner had I recovered from one sound drubbing than I put myself in the way of another. "Unpractical" I was called by those who spoke mildly; "idiot"—I am sure—by many a ruder tongue. And idiot I see myself, whenever I glance back over the long, devious road. Something, obviously, I lacked from the beginning, some balancing principle granted to most men in one or another degree. I had brains, but they were no help to me in the common circumstances of life. But for the good fortune which plucked me out of my mazes and set ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing

... of the stranger deepened as he told of his business. The cowman did not blame people who took devious ways and dealt in ambiguities, for his experience in the world, which was pretty fairly complete, had told him that craft was a necessity for weak natures; nevertheless he cared not for those who ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips

... clouded brain From some unholy banquet reeled,— And since, our devious steps maintain His track ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... 300 miles long and about 20 miles wide, which included many of the sections where the negroes were most numerous, in order that their votes might have as little effect as possible. By hook or by crook, then, in simple and devious ways, the dangers of negro domination were averted. Nevertheless the provisions of the law for federal supervision of elections remained, becoming a bone of contention during a ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... between alleged incidents of military service and disability or death. Fatal apoplexy is admitted as the result of quite insignificant wounds, heart disease is attributed to chronic diarrhea, consumption to hernia, and suicide is traced to army service in a wonderfully devious and curious way. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland

... a new interest, now. He possessed a mind as crooked as his vision, and being crooked, it followed unerringly the devious paths of other minds. So, they had made a tool of him! Rodrigo and Murguia wanted the Gringo shot to help the rebel cause. And he, Tiburcio of the cunning wits, had just sworn away, not only the Gringo's life, but the possible ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... no straight roads in the wilderness; all trails are devious. So with an Indian's mind. I sat in Longuant's skin-roofed lodge and filled hours with talk of Singing Arrow. The girl was to wed Pierre at noon the next day. The marriage was to be solemnized in the chapel the next afternoon, and the whites were to attend. The affair ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... his pocket, and, hurrying out as fast as he could manage, stumped his way round to the stage door. Cerberus would fain have stopped him, but Austin flourished his card in passing, and enquired of the first civil-looking man he met where the manager was to be found. He was piloted through devious ways and under strange scaffoldings, to the foot of a steep and very dirty flight of steps—luckily there were only seven—at the top of which was dimly visible a door; and at this, having screwed his courage to the ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour

... can't be made straight, and what is wanting can't be supplied; though these things are done every day and every hour. Why any able-bodied lady of my acquaintance, even those at my own house, limited as is their experience of the world's devious ways—Jane, I mean, ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol

... allies fell back on the intrenched village of Dego. Their position was of a strength proportionate to its strategic importance; for its loss would completely sever all connection between their two main armies save by devious routes many miles in their rear. They therefore clung desperately to the six mamelons and redoubts which barred the valley and dominated some of the neighbouring heights. Yet such was the superiority of the French in numbers that these positions were speedily ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... spot in beggar-haunted Italy—stood beneath all the windows, making loud supplication, or even establishing themselves on the marble steps of the grand entrance. They ate and drank, and filled their bags, and pocketed the little money that was given them, and went forth on their devious ways, showering blessings innumerable on the mansion and its lord, and on the souls of his deceased forefathers, who had always been just such simpletons as to be compassionate to beggary. But, in spite of their favorable prayers, by which Italian philanthropists set great store, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... revolver. The first sight of a stranger caused him to use his weapon. Meanwhile, behind the screen of the lights the bank robbers were bringing in their gold by motor and hiding the sacks down in a network of underground passageways that I also discovered—and traversed. They ran, by devious ways, both to a field in Saltfleet conveniently near the factory, and by another route up to the ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew

... "Where tempests never beat nor billows roar."{9} And thy loved consort on the dangerous tide Of life long since has anchored by thy side. But me, scarce hoping to attain that rest, Always from port withheld, always distressed— Me howling blasts drive devious, tempest tost, Sails ripped, seams opening wide, and compass lost, And day by day some current's thwarting force, Sets me more distant from a prosperous course. Yet, oh, the thought that thou art safe, and he! That ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin

... He returned to the house and rolled on the rugs in a frenzy of remorse over his part of the business. While our attention was occupied with Sing, Tammas was busily skinning his prey in the seclusion of the woodshed. He buttoned the pelt inside his jacket, conveyed it by a devious route through the length of this building, and concealed it under his bed where he thought it ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster

... and Fear. He who would arrive at the Fairy Land must face the Phantoms. Betimes, I set myself to the task of investigating the motley world to which our progress in humanity—has attained, caring little what misrepresentation I incurred, what hostility I provoked, in searching through a devious labyrinth for the foot-tracks ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... marsh, over which the 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 to this day a mystery to me ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard

... naught can daunt thee nor affright, Share thou my labour, and divide the fight. Yonder AEneas, so the news hath flown, So spies report, hath sent his horsemen light To scour the fields, while o'er the mountains' crown Himself through devious ways is marching ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil

... followed her gladly, and she led them through devious paths till there was a shout from Hallin, and the most poetic corner of a famous garden revealed itself. Amid the ruins of a cloister that had once formed part of the dissolved Cistercian priory on whose confiscated lands Castle Luton had arisen, a rich medley ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... then 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, ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams

... by the cars opposite a wide door, and the machine guided by Rupert rolled through, winding a devious course toward where its owner waited. Without a word, Corrie turned and went ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram

... opportunity extremely golden. It cannot be said that Friedrich, who spells in the way we saw, "ASTEURE" for "A CETTE HEURE," has made shining acquisitions on the literary side. However, in the long-run it becomes clear, his intellect, roving on devious courses, or plodding along the prescribed tram-roads, had been wide awake; and busy all the while, bringing in abundant pabulum of ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle

... God's personal fatherhood over and love for the humblest of His creatures. During these years, often of overwork, I have considered it worth while to lay aside time and energy and strength to improve the charting and pilot directions of our devious and sometimes ...
— Out of the Fog • C. K. Ober

... amazement at his folly. But all the same he has put a slight upon her preference, shown to him, but not in any wise confessed. She has no silly sentiment, neither would she cloud her position for a prince of the blood royal, or what is saying more, for the man she could love, but society has devious turns and varying latitudes. One need not run squarely against the small fences it puts ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... the Scriptures and the church, which we so often meet with in the writings of the early Rationalistic divines, were soon laid aside. The demon of destruction presided over the storm. And the work of ruin was rapid, by forced marches and through devious paths,—in the true military style. When the hour of fight came there was no swerving. Men full of the spirit of a bad cause will sometimes fight as valiantly as others for a good one; but it is then that ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... Music are discoursed upon to listless audiences, sometimes to empty benches. But the land surveyor is like a judge; the deserted fields become his forum, crowded with eager spectators. You would fancy him a madman when you see him walking along the most devious paths. But in truth he is seeking for the traces of lost facts in rough woods and thickets[322]. He walks not as other men walk. His path is the book from which he reads; he shows what he is saying; he proves what he hath learned; by his steps ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... green wheat; from the perfume of the growing grasses waving over heavy-laden clover and laughing veronica, hiding the green finches, baffling the bee; from rose-lined hedge, woodbine, and cornflower, azure blue, where yellowing wheat stalks crowd up under the shadow of green firs. All the devious brooklets' sweetness where the iris stays the sunlight; all the wild woods hold of beauty; all the broad hills of thyme and freedom thrice a ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser

... he was pale, and ask him what was the matter, and he should answer, tremblingly, that something was following him, and was near him then! He must get rid of it first; he must walk quickly, and baffle its pursuit by turning sharp corners, and plunging into devious streets and crooked ...
— The Ghost • William. D. O'Connor



Words linked to "Devious" :   shifty, indirect, untrusty, deviousness, roundabout



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com