Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Deflect   Listen
verb
Deflect  v. i.  To turn aside; to deviate from a right or a horizontal line, or from a proper position, course or direction; to swerve. "At some part of the Azores, the needle deflecteth not, but lieth in the true meridian." "To deflect from the line of truth and reason."






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 |





"Deflect" Quotes from Famous Books



... centrifugal forces, between national and local patriotism. The makers of the Constitution had tried to hold the scales justly, but in their natural jealousy of a strong central power, they had allowed the balance to deflect unduly on the side of local independence. The North, the national majority, felt, obscurely and reluctantly, that a revision of the Constitution in the matter of slavery was essential to the national ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer

... of Progress travels in a circle—and history says it does; if neither science, philosophy nor religion can deflect it from its seemingly predestined path—and the condition of their birth-place proclaims their failure so to do—where is hope? Must the human race forever go the weary round of birth and death, like Buddhist souls wandering through all that's fair and foul, until it finds ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... hard that nothing can scratch them, and of course Roeser's Rays go right through our bodies, or any ordinary substance, like a bullet through a hole in a Swiss cheese. Even those lenses wouldn't deflect them if they ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith

... inner pocket, and his pressing desire of their destruction satisfied, he telephoned to Langley to join him in his private room at a hurried luncheon. Next he sent for the afternoon papers. Not a line as yet, however; and Langley and Denning having evidently decided it to be unwise to deflect his thoughts from matters in hand, did not mention Mahr. Even when he brought up the name himself with a casual mention of the possibility of acquiring the Heim Vandyke, there was nothing said to give him an opportunity to speak and he was breathless for details, to learn if his ruse had succeeded. ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford

... beginning of the draw. The knuckle at the base of the thumb should be opposite the center of the bow, the hand set straight on the wrist. As you draw, be sure that the arrow comes up in a straight line with your mark, otherwise the bow will be twisted in the grasp and deflect the shot. Then fully drawn, set the grasp of the left hand without disturbing the position of the bow, make the left arm as rigid as an oak limb; fix the muscles of the chest; make yourself inflexible from head to toe. Keep your right ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope

... for her to the porch, where Endymion stood shaking hands and bidding adieu, Dorothea caught her first and last glimpse of this traveller, who—without knowing it, without seeing her face to remember it, or even learning her name—was to deflect the slow current of her life, and send it whirling down a strange channel, giddy, ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... is any substance that would absorb and deflect the invisible rays given off by fallout particles outside the house, and thus reduce the amount of radiation reaching the occupants of the shelter. The thicker or denser the shielding material is, the more it would protect the ...
— In Time Of Emergency - A Citizen's Handbook On Nuclear Attack, Natural Disasters (1968) • Department of Defense

... have always with us. Spectres cannot afright him, nor mundane terrors deflect him from his path. He takes nothing either in earth or heaven seriously, as is his God-given right. Some of the best examples of what he has done in the general field of mystery are presented here for the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various

... returns which he received from others, and considered himself "ill-treated by every public man whom circumstances had brought into competition with him;" they had returned his "acts of kindness and services" with "gross injustice." The reflection did not induce him to deflect his course in the least, but it was made with much bitterness of spirit. Toward the close of ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse

... clutch the cylinder firmly with the right hand, leaving the left perfectly passive, the needle in the galvanometer will move from west to south; if, in like manner, you exert the left arm, leaving the right arm passive, the needle will deflect from west to north. Hence, it is argued that the electric current is induced through the agency of the nervous system, and that, as human Will produces the muscular contraction requisite, so is it human Will that causes the deflection of the needle. I imagine that ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... front, and should be concealed by vegetation and by a curtain over the opening when they are not in use. Sheet steel plates with small peep holes are used on the parapet. They are set up with a slope to the rear to deflect bullets. ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker

... the usual literary pilgrimage. Indeed, if there is a rumor that Milton died in a neighboring town, or a treaty of consequence was signed close by, choose another path! Let neither Oliver Cromwell nor the Magna Carta deflect your course! One of my finest walks was on no better advice than the avoidance of a celebrated shrine. I was led along the swift waters of a river, through several pretty towns, and witnessed the building of ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks

... for the moment. Ballooning indeed goes on. There are two artists in the neighborhood of Paris, who seem to be advancing towards the desideratum in this business. They are able to rise and fall at will, without expending their gas, and to deflect forty-five degrees from the ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... observant, with some power of administration, studies mining engineering, moves to a mining center and expresses his individual and social powers along the lines of his work until he is sixty. The women who impinge against his life may deflect him from the mines in California to those in Australia, or from the actual work of superintendence to an office; or from an interest in Browning to Tennyson; or from Methodism to Christian Science. The girl with industrious and observant interests studies stenography ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes

... seven out of twelve members, after they had passed forty, and ended fatally within ten years. In another, hysteria, chorea, epilepsy and mania, with drunkenness, came on soon after puberty, and seemed to deflect to other disorders, or exhaust itself before middle life. This occurred in eight out of fourteen, extending over two generations. In another instance, the descendants of three generations, and many of the collateral branches, developed inebriety, mental eccentricities, ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur

... expected to yield and become curved as soon as the apex encountered an unyielding object; whereas it was the stiff growing part which became curved. Moreover, an object which yields with the greatest ease will deflect a radicle: thus, as we have seen, when the apex of the radicle of the bean encountered the polished surface of extremely thin tin-foil laid on soft sand, no impression was left on it, yet the radicle became deflected at right angles. A second explanation occurred to us, namely, that even ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin

... much is plain, that the mean state is in all things praiseworthy, and that practically we must deflect sometimes towards excess sometimes towards defect, because this will be the easiest method of hitting on the mean, that is, ...
— Ethics • Aristotle

... little creek may display on its meadow as perfect curves only a rod or so in radius. On the flood plain of either river or creek we may find examples of the successive stages in the development of the meander, from its beginning in the slight initial bend sufficient to deflect the current against the outer side. Eroding here and depositing on the inner side of the bend, it gradually reaches first the open bend whose width and length are not far from equal, and later that of the horseshoe ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton

... of some morbid affection that can be pointed out by the veterinarian:—a dentist can detect an unsound tooth:—a physician, from certain well marked symptoms, concludes that the lungs or liver of an individual are unsound:—particular doctrines are held to be unsound, because they deflect from such as are orthodox, and it is presumed there may be an unsound exposition of the law. The human mind, however, is not the subject of similar investigation; we are able to discover no virus by which it is contaminated—no spreading rottenness—no ...
— A Letter to the Right Honorable the Lord Chancellor, on the Nature and Interpretation of Unsoundness of Mind, and Imbecility of Intellect • John Haslam

... clear of the ground its whole length. A great hope came into his mind: perhaps he could work it upward, that is to say backward, far enough to lift the end and push aside the rifle; or, if that were too tightly wedged, so place the strip of board as to deflect the bullet. With this object he passed it backward inch by inch, hardly daring to breathe lest that act somehow defeat his intent, and more than ever unable to remove his eyes from the rifle, which ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce

... down so flat and so quickly that it was breath-taking. The incident reflected very vividly the jealousy with which the farmers were guarding the new movement rather than any depreciation of the Deputy Commissioner's ability; every man of them was on the alert to deflect the thinnest political wedge, imagined or otherwise, that might come along. They would trust nobody with an official connection and the appointment of John Millar, who was one of themselves, was confirmed without loss of time. There was no salary attached to any office, ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse

... question of treason, General Wood," said Mr. Sefton placidly. "None of us would wrong Captain Prescott by imputing to him such a crime. I merely suggested an unconscious motive that might have made him deflect for a moment, and for a moment only, from the straight and narrow path ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... guns above their heads. Past the veranda they raced, pouring a deadly fire into the kneeling Waziri who discharged their volley of arrows from behind their long, oval shields—shields well adapted, perhaps, to stop a hostile arrow, or deflect a spear; but futile, quite, before the leaden ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... hundred and fifty feet. The Flying Fish, therefore, skimming along at a height of ten thousand feet only, was liable to dash into either of these peaks if it so happened that she chanced to encounter an air current to deflect her to the eastward of her proper course. This, however, was exceedingly unlikely, for at the height of ten thousand feet above the earth she was in what is known as "the calm belt" of the atmosphere, where the air-currents—when such exist at all—are very sluggish. The danger of collision ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... dismisses me and goes on to more interesting topics. I dislike the idea of seeming to use my position as his editor to deflect his story in my own interest, but I am obliged to protest here against the turn he gives these occurrences. He said nothing about that gasping message on the blood-stained paper in which he told, or attempted to tell, a very different story. The dignified self-surrender ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells

... to the very end, bitterly and intensely, the stupidity of the War Office. Had he been allowed to deflect the routine indifference and suspicion of the War Office from its old ruts into the deep-cut channels of Irish feelings and sentiments, he might have carried his countrymen with him, but he jumped first ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn

... between the photographers and Bonwit, the director, relative to the light effects. Oblongs of white cloth tacked on a wood framework, which John learned were used to reflect and deflect the sun's rays, were shifted from one spot to another and back again until the camera men ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson

... constraint. It was impossible to speak with the same freedom, confronted by that substantial symbol of the accepted order, which seemed to glare down on them in massive disdain of their puny efforts to deflect the course of events: and Amherst, without reverting to her last words, asked after a moment if his wife ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... it becomes necessary for guard or patrol work to deflect any troops from the army, or ships from the navy, it is of advantage to the enemy. If a coming war found the United States lined up with the democratic as against the fascist powers and serious uprisings broke out in Mexico, it would require ...
— Secret Armies - The New Technique of Nazi Warfare • John L. Spivak

... on the floor, in a word his actions are all topsy-turvy or mere beating the air, while in every case the effect is invariably one of momentum. Habit has given the impulse: what was wanted was to check the movement or deflect it. He did nothing of the sort, but continued like a machine in the same straight line. The victim, then, of a practical joke is in a position similar to that of a runner who falls,—he is comic for the same reason. The laughable element in both cases consists of ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson

... pockets inside. He turned over the pieces. Some he rejected. A small mist of powdered rust began to rise about his busy hands. Mr. Massy knew something of the scientific basis of his clever trick. If you want to deflect the magnetic needle of a ship's compass, soft iron is the best; likewise many small pieces in the pockets of a jacket would have more effect than a few large ones, because in that way you obtain a greater amount ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad

... alive—alive! Whatever had occurred in that fateful second to deflect that murderous tomahawk, its keen edge had failed to reach me. And what had occurred? What could account for my escape; for this silence and darkness; for these dead bodies; for the flight of our ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish

... of the hand that covered his eyes and looked at Taggert through one eye. "And now you tell me that the only man who can pinpoint that time more exactly for us is of no use whatever to us. If we knew when that meteor was due to arrive, we would be able to spot and deflect it in time. It must be of pretty good size if it's going to ...
— Fifty Per Cent Prophet • Gordon Randall Garrett

... on the land for offices and for the employees of the service. The military engineers of the Commission have taken upon their shoulders the job of making the Mississippi over again —a job transcended in size by only the original job of creating it. They are building wing-dams here and there, to deflect the current; and dikes to confine it in narrower bounds; and other dikes to make it stay there; and for unnumbered miles along the Mississippi, they are felling the timber-front for fifty yards back, with the purpose of shaving the bank down to low-water mark with the slant of a house roof, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... clump eight miles or so north of the village of Mpokwa, and comes flowing down a narrow thread of water, sinuously winding amongst tall reeds and dense brakes on either side-the home of hundreds of antelopes and buffaloes. South of Mpokwa, the valley broadens, and the mountains deflect eastward and westward, and beyond this point commences the plain known as the Rikwa, which, during the Masika is inundated, but which, in the dry season, presents the same bleached aspect that plains in Africa generally do when the grass ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... decreases again, as the water is there mixed with fresher water from the South. The River La Plata sends out enormous quantities of fresh water into the ocean. Most of this goes northward, on account of the earth's rotation; the effect of this is, of course, to deflect the currents of the southern hemisphere to the left, and those of the northern hemisphere to the right. Besides the water from the River La Plata, there is a current flowing northward along the coast of Patagonia — namely, the Falkland Current. Like the Benguela Current, ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen

... means of a window-board. This is a board the edge of which rests on the edge of the window-sill, the ends being attached firmly to the window-frame. It affords a vertical surface three or four inches high and situated three or four inches in front of the window, so as to deflect the cold air upward when the window is slightly opened. The air will then reach the breathing-zone, instead of flowing on to the floor and chilling the feet, which is the usual consequence of opening a window in winter. It seems tragic to think that ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk

... nowadays taught to believe, to instant ruin, but to edifying considerations of the life and glory of St. Peter; and a pack of cards suggests, straightway, intransigent fine points of martyrology. Always this churchman's thoughts deflect to the most interesting of themes, to the relationship between God and His children, and what familiary etiquette may be necessary to preserve the relationship unstrained. These problems alone engross Coignard unfailingly, even when the philosopher has had the ill luck to fall simultaneously into ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France

... Renommee (not the ship that Trunnion took), embark on a journey in a car with winged horses—it must be an odd taste which finds things improved. In Greek verse, in Latin verse, or even in Milton's English one could stand Night, docile to the orders of Satan, condescending to deflect a hatchet which is whistling unpleasantly close to Rene's ear, not that he may be benefited, but preserved for more sufferings. In comparatively plain French prose—the qualification is intentional, as will be seen a ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... by reason. Learn therefore to obey reason and reason only. Do not permit yourself to be drawn from the true path by fear of threats, even of death, nor by grief, even for your dearest friends. Such feelings warp your reason, distract your judgment, and deflect you from the right course. When passion—feeling—comes in conflict with reason, you must drive feeling away. Your reason may not always be right; nevertheless it is the best guide you have, and you must cultivate it to act as rightly ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... strain. Cynical allusions appeared in the Press. "The only danger in making oneself liable for new schemes," wrote one captious critic, "arises from the possibility of their being proceeded with." Not even the "glorious news" of the fall of Sebastopol sufficed to deflect the local mind from the irritating habits of a dilatory directorate. After all, the Crimea was a long way off,—much further than Chirk,—to which place, the Great Western Company, on taking over the ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine

... all. You know you are clear of that kind of thing. You're like an arrow on its way to its goal. Straight and sure. Nothing can deflect you. That's ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... Callisto's course. At first it did not seem to deflect from a straight line, and they stood ready to turn on the apergetic force again, when the car very slowly began to show the effect of the moon's near pull; but not till they had so far passed it that the dark side was towards them were they heading straight for Jupiter. Then ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor

... universe as revolving about itself it sees that self as but part of the great machinery of life, planned and operating for the good of all. A man begins to deny himself as soon as he begins to love another. Even a yellow dog may act to deflect the heart from its old self-centre. The love of kin and family, of friends, and associates all serve to ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope

... behind it, each adding weight and impetus to its momentum the apprehension he had felt in less degree on the day of the first meeting, and which had almost immediately evaporated—surged up in him now. His fear was lest the charged atmosphere of the banker's presence might deflect his own hitherto clear perception of true worth. He dreaded, once in the midst of those disturbing currents, a bungling presentation of the cause which inspired him, and which he knew to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... the "little but neat cottage," attracts, indeed, with its sense of repose,—"I shall not be very sorry to see England again. I am grown old and battered to pieces, and require some repairs "—but the magnet fails to deflect the needle; not even a perceptible vibration of the ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... experience are always interfused, the smallest real datum being both a coming and a going, and even numerical distinctness being realized effectively only after a concrete interval has passed. The intervals also deflect us from the original paths of direction, and all the old identities at last give out, for the fatally continuous infiltration of otherness warps things out of every original rut. Just so, in a curve, the same direction is never followed, and the conception of it as a ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James

... remedies. During the years of war, with the brains of a maritime nation focused on the subject, there were naturally many devices suggested and tried for protecting ships from mines. The great majority of these suggestions may be classified in two groups: (1) Those which sought to deflect the mine from the pathway of the ship; and (2) those which sought to minimise the result of the explosion. One method from each of these groups was adopted with various modifications to suit different classes ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife

... release of the energy of matter!" Kendall paused for a moment. "We have won, with this. We need only make up this apparatus—and maybe make it into a weapon. You know, in the Fourth Degree, nothing in all the Universe could resist, deflect, or control it, if launched freely, and self-maintaining. I think that might be done. You see, no law affects it, for it breaks down the law. Magnetism cannot attract or repel it because magnetic fields cannot exist; ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell

... (which, as he saith, it doth in respect of the Ecliptick, not its own Orbite,) Here he observes, That from Decemb. 8/18, to Decem. 30. Jan. 9. its course was almost a great Circle: but that then it began to deflect from that Circle towards the North; so that afterwards, with a very notable and conspicuous Curvity, it directed its course towards Primam Arietis: Of which deflection, he ventures to assign the cause from the Cometical Matter, the various position and the distance of the ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various

... practice far more dependent upon the Emperor than upon the chambers. In France the inability of political parties to coalesce into two great opposing groups largely defeats the best ends of the parliamentary system. In Austria the numerous and ineradicable racial divisions deflect the system further still from the lines upon which theoretically it should operate. No political group is sufficiently powerful to rule alone, and no working affiliation can long be made to subsist. The consequence is, not only that the Government can ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg

... that in a democracy every opinion should be heard; that, just because the good sense of the majority will ever lead the country into the right paths, the minority should be accorded full and fair expression, for they cannot deflect the country's course, and because such expression acts as a healthful safety-valve. Moreover, they say there is no way of preventing the minority from speaking save that of force, which is unworthy of a majority, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... of the affair in some measure compensated James's women-folk for the ruthless negation of all their patient effort and skilled diplomacy. It was rather trying to have to deflect their enthusiasm at a moment's notice from Joan Sebastable to Rhoda Ellam; but, after all, it was James's wife who was in question, and his tastes had some claim to ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki

... or the diameter of that. As, for instance, in finishing the detent spring h, suppose we read in text books the spring should be reduced in thickness, so that a weight of one pennyweight suspended from the pipe j will deflect the detent 1/4". This is a rule well enough for people employed in a chronometer factory, but for the horological student such fixed rules (even if remembered) would be of small use. What the student requires is sound knowledge of the "whys," in order that he may be able to thoroughly ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous

... captain risked the Casco in such waters. I believe, indeed, it is almost understood that yachts are to avoid this baffling archipelago; and it required all my instances—and all Mr. Otis's private taste for adventure—to deflect our course ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... sensitive, and thus the mean standard will be kept up without any advancement. If our billiard-table were sufficiently extensive, i. e., infinite, the balls rolled from the corners would never meet, and the necessity which we have supposed to deflect them would never act. ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... suspended by a shoulder-strap; and attached, in a similar manner, was a huge crescent-shaped horn, upon which was carved many a strange souvenir. His arms consisted of a knife and pistol—both stuck in the waist-belt—and a long rifle, so straight that the line of the barrel seemed scarcely to deflect from that ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid

... God, in His providential wisdom and power, to answer the prayers of His people. It is an every-day occurrence for man to deflect the beams of the sun and make nature's laws do what they would not have done if left to themselves. We know men to be personal and to be changed by petitions to their mercy and entreaties to use their power in certain directions. We believe that ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell

... three powerful currents, which insidiously operate to deflect her from her course. Materialism, which denies or ignores the supernatural, and concentrates its heed on ameliorating the outward conditions of human life; criticism, which is clever at analysis and dissection, but cannot construct a foundation ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon

... "Christ assumed these movements, in His human soul, by an unfailing dispensation, when He willed; even as He became man when He willed." Thirdly, as regards the effect, because in us these movements, at times, do not remain in the sensitive appetite, but deflect the reason; but not so in Christ, since by His disposition the movements that are naturally becoming to human flesh so remained in the sensitive appetite that the reason was nowise hindered in doing what was right. Hence Jerome says (on Matt. 26:37) that "Our Lord, in order to prove the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... Olympian games, an ordinary shield would prove more a weakness than a strength while one that would be strong enough to prove a protection would be too heavy to carry. Only another club, deftly wielded to deflect the course of an enemy missile, is in any way effective against these formidable weapons and, too, the war club of Pal-ul-don can be thrown with accuracy a far greater distance ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... collapse and set up a current in the conductor. The energy of the ring would have been restored to the latter. The curious thing is that physically the polarized ring does not present any different appearance or ordinary properties different from those of a plain ring, and will not deflect a compass needle. Its condition is discoverable, however, by the test of self-induction to currents of different direction. As a practical consideration, we may mention in this connection that a self-inductive ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various

... sentinels and snipers have been adopted by the Germans. This mask covers the head and face with curved surfaces which deflect bullets. Small eye holes permit a clear view of the target and a small section is omitted in the lower right side to permit bringing the rifle against ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss

... established its trading stations only in the vicinity or on the coasts of that inland sea, far away from the two Canadas, from the Middle West and the vast North West. After a little reluctance and suspicion, most of the northern Amerindian tribes were persuaded to deflect their caravans from the routes leading to Hudson Bay, and to meet the British, the New Englander ("Bostonian"), and the French Canadian traders at various rendezvous on Lake Winnipeg and its tributary lakes and rivers. The principal depot and starting-point for the north-west traders ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston

... thoroughly enjoyed; so he had brought it to him thus, as on a little silver breakfast-tray, familiarly though delicately—without oppressive pomp; and he was to bend and smile and acknowledge, was to take and use and be grateful. He was not—that was the beauty of it—to be asked to deflect too much from his dignity. No wonder the old boy bloomed in this bland air of his own distillation. Strether felt for a moment as if Sarah were actually walking up and down outside. Wasn't she hanging about the porte-cochere while her friend thus summarily opened ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James

... body, but dispersed the limbs In fragments undistinguished and in blood. But as protected by the armour shield The might of Rome drew nigh beneath the wall (The front rank with their bucklers interlaced And held above their helms), the missiles fell Behind their backs, nor could the toiling Greeks Deflect their engines, throwing still the bolts Far into space; but from the rampart top Flung ponderous masses down. Long as the shields Held firm together, like to hail that falls Harmless upon a roof, so long the stones Crushed down innocuous; but ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan

... life, the parent is responsible. The moral right of the parent, which is one with that of the child in that period of life, is fundamental. It constitutes the bed-rock on which rest all other rights in matters of education. To deny that principle, to deflect it from its proper meaning, to recognize it only partially, is to blast the very foundation of human nature. No reason of common good, of citizenship, can overthrow this right; on the contrary, it presupposes ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly

... suffer, who so lov'st the shade, In Fame's full glare, whom one stride more shall set Upon the Papal seat! I stand dismayed, Familiar with thy fearful soul, and yet Half glad, perceiving modest worth repaid Even by the Christians! Could thy soul deflect? No, no, thrice ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus

... some little distance away from the shed whence it had arisen. It was impossible to drop it back again through the roof of the hangar, as the balloon was of such bulk that even a little breeze would deflect it so that it could not be accurately anchored. But Tom had it under very good control, and soon it was being held down on the ground by some of ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton

... as to political methods, somewhat careless in personal conduct, somewhat lax in personal morals; but to the one great object of his life, the destruction of slavery and the elevation of the slave, he was supremely devoted. From the pursuit of that object nothing could deflect him. Upon no phase of it would he listen to compromise. Any man who was truly anti-slavery was his friend. Whoever espoused the cause and proved faithless in never so small a degree, became his enemy, inevitably ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... to turn on. There is only one very short bearing a long way removed from the point of engagement between the pinion and internal gear, and no adequate support is given the barrel, with the result that it tends to deflect from the ideal or true position and to bind. This condition is aggravated by the fact that the ring gear was made by cutting its teeth on an angle to the axis around which it is to revolve, using only a saw of appropriate width. The teeth were then rounded-up ...
— The Auburndale Watch Company - First American Attempt Toward the Dollar Watch • Edwin A. Battison

... the sword with him, but the commander wrenched it free in time to parry the downward slash of the second guard's bronze sword. It was a narrow thing, because the bronze sword, though of softer stuff than the commander's steel, was also heavier, and thus hard to deflect. As it sang past him, the commander swung a chop at the man's neck, cutting it halfway through. He stepped quickly to one side to avoid the falling body and thrust his blade through a third man, who was aiming a blow at the neck of one ...
— Despoilers of the Golden Empire • Gordon Randall Garrett

... in the few thousand years which are necessary for the proper preparation of a golf-course, has obligingly eaten out of the high, accompanying bluffs. The river, which goes wriggling on its way as though convulsed with merriment, is garnished with luxurious elms and willows, which occasionally deflect to the difficult putting-greens the random slices ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson

... Pedant. This one, whenever Mankind will lead him, digs in his heels or lies down in his tracks; until, pricked and goaded by his playfellow, he at length gets up and scrambles after. And so these two keep ever by the side or at the heels of Mankind, whom they neither lead nor deflect from his course. ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry

... at the cruelly healed stumps of the first and second fingers of his left hand, then rubbed them softly into the indentation in the back of his skull. Quick as had been the flash of the long handled tomahawk, he had been quick enough to duck away his head and partially to deflect the stroke with his up-flung hand. Two fingers and a hasty scalp-wound had been the price he paid for his life. With one barrel of his ten- gauge shot-gun he had blown the life out of the bushman who had so nearly got him; with the other barrel he had peppered the bushmen bending over Sagawa, ...
— The Red One • Jack London

... the animated scene was Penrod's great-uncle Slocum. This elderly relative had come to call upon Mrs. Schofield, and he was well upon his way to the front door when the mutterings of war among some shrubberies near the fence caused him to deflect his course ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington

... deflect the automatic's muzzle from himself. But Rodan moved it downward purposefully, lined it up on a box marked dynamite, ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun

... this irremediable catastrophe was out of all proportion to its cause. It was monstrous that a crazy minute should ruin a whole life—two whole lives, hers and David's. It was as if a pebble should deflect a river from its course, and make it turn and overflow a landscape! It was incredible that so temporary a thing as an outbreak of temper should have eternal consequences. She gasped, with her face buried in her arms, at the realization— which comes to most of us poor human creatures sooner or ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland

... if we are so minded, any freedom of the will at all, so involving ourselves in an inevitable sequence of cause and effect as to make us also simply weather-vanes driven east or west by winds of inheritance and environment which we have no power to deflect and to which we can only choose to respond. But to deny us the freedom to sin and so to shut us up to a determinism of goodness is no more in accord with the facts than to deny us the power to be good and shut us up to a determinism ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins

... has neither stockade nor simplest defensive work. It is all it can do to stand up against a "Cheyenne zephyr," and a shot fired at one end of it would go clean through to the other without meeting anything sufficiently solid to deflect it from its course. It is a fort by courtesy, as some of our non-combatants are generals by brevet, and would be as valuable in time of defensive need. All around it, east, west, and north, sweeps the level ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King

... prejudice which is blind to the evident. "They did not believe that he had been blind." A prejudice can deflect the judgment, as subtle magnetic currents can deflect the needle. The film of an ecclesiastical prejudice can be so opaque as to make us "blind to facts." We do not "see things as they are." Our perverted eyes give us a ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett

... have completely failed to build across county line. The others give notice that if so, they will deflect road to Paducah. Tandy offers subscriptions of vast sum from counties, towns, Paducah, and his Memphis and Ohio road. What answer shall ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston

... the Bay to Sausalito and wander up through the coast counties Here, Hall had told them, they would find the true home of the redwood. But Billy, in the smoking car for a cigarette, seated himself beside a man who was destined to deflect them from their course. He was a keen-faced, dark-eyed man, undoubtedly a Jew; and Billy, remembering Saxon's admonition always to ask questions, watched his opportunity and started a conversation. It took but ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... intended it to have. It set the young lady who was called Belinda asking about ways and means of getting to Salisbury; it brought to light the distressing fact that V.V. had the beginnings of a chafed heel. Once he had set things going they moved much too quickly for the doctor to deflect their course. He found himself called upon to make personal sacrifices to facilitate the painless transport of the two ladies to Salisbury, where their luggage awaited them at the Old George Hotel. In some way too elusive to trace, ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells

... is when the obstructions are many, or of such a nature as to deflect the bow more than forty-five degrees in any direction, or when the craft has reached its destination and dropped to within a hundred yards of the ground, the mechanism brings her to a full stop, at the same time sounding a loud ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... sheet metal in which many tiny holes had been punched, so that sharp bits of torn metal stood out to make the grating surface. Lockley knew that sharp points, when charged electrically, make tiny jets of ionized air which will deflect a candle flame. Here there were thousands ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... pray cast your mind back over your own life, and tell me if you think that we really are the sports of chance. You know how often the turning down this street or that, the accepting or rejecting of an invitation, may deflect the whole current of our lives into some other channel. Are we mere leaves, fluttered hither and thither by the wind, or are we rather, with every conviction that we are free agents, carried steadily along to a definite and pre-determined end? I confess that as I advance through ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro

... friends or anyone—no matter who!—deflect you from your resolutions. "Let not thy right hand know what thy left hand does." Talk never. Let results show. The Lord has hidden himself best and His work is wonderful beyond compare! Your very friends and relatives will spit upon you for lacking any of these ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji

... arch shown (Fig. 6) in the fire-box is used to deflect the flames towards the back of the fire-box, so that the hot gases may be retarded somewhat, and their combustion rendered more perfect. It also helps to distribute the heat more evenly over the whole of the inside of the box, and prevents cold ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams

... adopted for the central tower allows a central auditorium about one hundred feet in diameter, unobstructed by columns or piers, with the nave transepts and choir opening into it. The aisles are not decreased by this central enlargement, as they deflect through the ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various

... show. And in order that thou shouldst not only possess the estate which thy father left, but also that which my fortune and abilities have gained, I have never married, so that the love of children should never deflect my mind from that gratitude which I owed to the children of thy father. Thus I leave thee a vast estate, of which I am well content, but I am deeply concerned, inasmuch as I leave it thee unsettled and insecure. Thou hast the city of Lucca on thy hands, which will never rest contented under ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli

... love experience ended. He turned to the great business of the world. Desire and Jealousy should deflect his life no more; like Fear they were to be dismissed as far as possible and subdued when they could not be altogether dismissed. Whatever stirrings of blood or imagination there were in him after that parting, whatever failures from this resolution, they left no trace on the rest of his ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... night; he drove to Kennisburg—a larger town than Lambert Corners, where an unusual letter would create no comment—and mailed the bonds to a Washington firm of brokers with whom he has had some dealings. He took the bag of coin and several unimportant papers in order to deflect suspicion, and his opening the safe the night before for the hundred dollars was merely a ruse to allow him to forget and leave it open, so that the bonds could appear to be stolen by someone else. Just what led him to commit the act I won't say; he has been in a tight place for several ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster

... you know, this is good for interplanetary flight because you can run it continuously and it has extremely high exhaust velocity. But in our situation it was no good because it has rather a low thrust. It would have taken more time than we had to deflect us enough to avoid a smash. We had ...
— Accidental Death • Peter Baily

... tracking themselves through the dust of the room. Cutting off the more refrangible fringe by a card, the rectangle is seen red: cutting off the less refrangible fringe, the rectangle is seen blue. By means of a thin glass prism (W), I deflect one portion of the colours, and leave the residual portion. On the screen are now two coloured rectangles produced in this way. These are complementary colours—colours which, by their union, produce white. Note, that by judicious management, one of these colours ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall

... to subdivide experiments into periods as short as 1 or 2 hours, it is necessary to deflect the air-current at the end of each period from one set of purifiers to the other, in order to weigh the set used and to measure the quantity of carbon dioxide and water-vapor absorbed. The conditions under which these changes from one system to ...
— Respiration Calorimeters for Studying the Respiratory Exchange and Energy Transformations of Man • Francis Gano Benedict

... ironical to let you warn that SP ship you keep thinking about. But we know your weapon now. Already our ship is equipped with a force field designed especially to deflect your ...
— Acid Bath • Vaseleos Garson

... a perceptible pause, during which Tony, while appearing to look straight before him, managed to deflect an interrogatory glance toward Polixena. Her reply was a faint negative motion, accompanied by unmistakable ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... of abeam. The impact nearly drove the vessel's stern into the hulk, but with her engines now going full speed ahead, and churning up two white lanes of foam with her paddle-wheels, she rammed her bows into the raft, and just managing to deflect its course they floated down with the stream locked together, until by a miracle they had passed clear of all the shipping, though at times only by a few feet, and the steamer with her illustrious passenger again bore up for her ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready

... demonstrated beyond a doubt. He thought it possible, given the necessary time, to rig a device which would be practically invisible. A fresh set of dummy poles, which the Indians would probably avoid in the event of a second attack, might deflect the canoes into the area of new ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy

... Castleton, with that peculiar look on his face which always appeared when he was about to deflect from the serious to the humorous. "Whilst I should not object to hearing my old friend Peters called a gorilla, I draw the line at gorilla. I should object to the appellation orang-outang, and I should resent with emphasis that of baboon. But gorilla I will ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake

... latter has been to some extent accomplished, mainly by the agency of artillery, the bayonet and other weapons for use at close quarters will once more be in the ascendant. Thin shields of hard steel will be affixed to the rifles of the attacking party, so as to deflect the bullets ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland

... plain: in the first place to deflect the beast's charge when I was in danger, and, that accomplished, to lead him past my ambush in order that I might have the opportunity ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... Nance. No considerations of expediency can deflect me now. This had to be! I admit that I had my hour of temptation—but that has gone, and thank God my integrity ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... of the chief was perhaps the most gorgeous; on it could be seen the labor of five jealous women, each more anxious than the other to propitiate her lord by some extravagance of decoration, which would deflect the sunshine of his favor on her head to the envy and exclusion of the remaining members of the family. Suspended from stakes driven into the ground near the head of his couch rested the implements of warfare; lance, shield, bow, and ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman

... that, bulk for bulk, oxygen is equally magnetic with a solution of this substance in water 'containing seventeen times the weight of the oxygen in crystallized proto-sulphate of iron, or 3.4 times its weight of metallic iron in that state of combination.' By its capability to deflect a fine glass fibre, he finds that the attraction of this bulb of oxygen, containing only 0.117 of a grain of the gas, at an average distance of more than an inch from the magnetic axis, is about equal to the gravitating force of the same amount of ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall

... prices up or down is far stronger than any man or combination of men. It would sweep any man or men aside like driftwood if they stood in its way or attempted to deflect it. ...
— The New York Stock Exchange and Public Opinion • Otto Hermann Kahn

... how they should proceed in life's battle. You, too, may have the pleasure of helping young men. But beware how you do this, saying in your heart, "I will help this young man, and when he succeeds I will reap my reward." Such a selfish thought will utterly poison your advice, deflect your moral ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge

... Shaw!" interposed Aunt Jane tremulously. "In the sand—why, I am sure that is such a helpful thought! It shows quite plainly that the chest is not buried in—in a rock, you know." She gave the effect of a person trying to deflect a thunderstorm ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon

... said afterwards, that but for the minor needs for action that intervened in this series of terrible moments she must herself have gone out of her mind. But something always happened, as in this case, to demand her full attention, and so arrest and deflect the strain almost at ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts

... showed themselves well fitted to contend with most of the guns at that time to be found upon the rivers, provided they could fight bows on. Though repeatedly struck, the flag-ship as often as thirty-one times, the armor proved sufficient to deflect or resist the impact of the projectiles. The disaster, however, that befell the Essex made fearfully apparent a class of accidents to which they were exposed, and from which more than one boat, on either side, on the Western waters subsequently suffered. The ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan

... origin connected with the Moon; and who, in consequence, ruled not merely in Cocaigne but furtively swayed the tides of life everywhere the Moon keeps any power over tides. It was the mission of Anaitis to divert and turn aside and deflect: in this the jealous Moon abetted her because sunlight makes for straightforwardness. So Anaitis and the Moon were staunch allies. These mysteries of their private relations, however, as revealed to Jurgen, are ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell

... elsewhere described. There were still other stones which, from their resemblance to animals, may have been personal fetishes. Among the unusual forms of stones found in this association is a quartz crystal. As I have shown in describing several ceremonies still observed, a quartz crystal is used to deflect a ray of sunlight into the medicine bowl, and is placed in the center of a sand picture of the sun in certain rites called Powalawu; the crystal is also used in divining, and for other purposes, and is highly prized by modern ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes

... other agents at work, which modify and disturb what we may call the legitimate flow of the wind; and these agents are diverse in different places, so that the atmosphere is turned out of a straight course, and is caused to deflect, to halt, and to turn round: sometimes sweeping low as if in haste; at other times pausing, as if in uncertainty; and often whirling round, as if in mad confusion. To the observer, who sees only the partial effects around his own person, all this ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne

... himself as a man profoundly animated by religion. He is not a Huysmanns or a Francois Coppee, a Brunetiere, a Paul Bourget, forsaking the religious teachings of his youth only to embrace them in mature life. Never for a moment did he deflect from the Catholic doctrine, though his studies led him to the consideration of the most subtle arguments raised against it. He was indeed the defender and champion of faith, having no sympathy for a mind which would lose itself in seeking the solution of the incomprehensible mysteries of ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery

... "President." It must be appreciated that, with the whole hostile squadron at her heels, the American frigate could not delay, or turn her side with its battery towards an assailant behind; for to do so enabled the others to gain on her. On the other hand, the pursuer could so deflect—yaw—at frequent intervals, and having the greater speed could continually recover the ground thus lost. This was what Captain Hope of the "Endymion" did, with sound judgment. He took a position on the off-shore quarter of the ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... the wind buffeted us might have led one to suppose that its primary objective was to deflect our steps, and turn them in the direction of the mountains. Indeed, at times its pressure was so strong that we had no choice but to halt, to turn our backs to the sea, and, with feet planted apart, to prise ourselves ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... measure within the royal prerogative. He had commanded it before quite unequivocally, but always I had stood between Escovedo and the sword. Was I to continue in that attitude? Could it humanly be expected of me in all the circumstances again to seek to deflect the royal wrath from that too daring head? I was, after all, only a man, subject to the temptations of the flesh, and there was a woman whom I loved better than my own salvation to whose peace and happiness that fellow Escovedo was ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini

... remark, to be sure, which cuts both ways! And plump, placid Mr. Richardson established warm epistolary relations with many excellent if too emotional ladies, who opened a correspondence with him concerning the conductment of this and the following novels and strove to deflect the course thereof to soothe their lacerated feelings. What novelist to-day would not appreciate an audience that would take him au grand serieux in this fashion! What higher compliment than for your correspondent—and ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... other, negotiation was in like manner then preferred, and provisional measures only taken to meet the event of rupture. With the same power negotiation is still preferred, and provisional measures only are necessary to meet the event of rupture. While, therefore, we do not deflect in the slightest degree from the course we then assumed and are still pursuing with mutual consent to restore a good understanding, we arc not to impute to them practices as irreconcilable to interest as to good faith, and changing necessarily the relations of peace and justice between us to those ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson

... head. A jerk at a lever connecting a cunningly constructed set of controls, and the false topsides on the forecastle head flopped to the deck, revealing Mike Murphy's six-inch gun. Cappy saw him deflect the gun while another man traversed it; for five seconds his eyes pressed the sight, and when the gun remained motionless Cappy knew that the hull of the submarine was looming fairly on the intersection of the cross wires in the sight. ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... we can thus form in hard iron and steel a neutrality extremely difficult to break up or destroy. We have evident proof that this neutrality consists of a closed chain, or circle, as by torsion we can partially deflect them on either side; thus from a perfect externally neutral wire, producing either polarity, by simple mechanical angular displacement of the molecules, as by right or ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various

... hard, but sliced it, and a strong westerly wind helped deflect it to the right. It sailed over the fence, and struck in a ploughed field only a few feet from a man ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams

... shot to Melvin. It was a pretty play, and nine times out of ten would have got by, but just as it had almost reached Melvin's outstretched hands, Barton, the opposing left tackle, touched it with the tips of his fingers, just enough to deflect it from its course. Ensley grabbed it, and it was ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport

... that whatever the effective possibilities of minor operations may ultimately prove to be in regard to securing command, the moral influence will be considerable, and at least at the beginning of a future war will tend to deflect and hamper the major operations and rob of their precision the lines which formerly led so frankly to ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett

... position by the electro-magnets, j j j j, placed underneath, the whole forming a pair of galvanoscopes or current detecters, one for each line. It will be understood that the varying currents from the lines are allowed to flow through the coils, i i, so as to deflect the needles, and that the deflections of the needles follow, so to speak, the variations of the currents. The electro-magnets are magnetized by a local battery; permanent magnets might, however, take their place with ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various

... whom he had approximately sixty days more of pulling and hauling, going up aloft, scrubbing, and chipping to do. I was puzzled at the steadfast, deliberate malingering of the man. The crew all hated him, too. I have seen the man at the wheel deliberately deflect the ship from its course, in order to bring the wind against the mutineer's belly, hoping to have him blown overboard while ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... points as Mr. SMILLIE when examining a duke before the Coal Commission. But he is not always to be trusted. He lacks the architectonic faculty. In between the clusters of clear-cut phrases there are too many nebulae of gaseous formation and spiral type, which deflect the orbital movement of his essentially electronic melody and impair its ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various

... had no compunctions, no prickings of the conscience, to perturb or to deflect the energy of his keen intelligence from following the line marked out for it. That he was to dispatch without quarter the flower of the youth of Florence troubled him, as I take it, no whit. He was too imperturbable, too phlegmatic for that. ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... Forster, the creator of national education, a Chartist in his youth, had become the gaoler of Parnell and the protagonist of coercion in Ireland. Joseph Chamberlain alone seemed to realise the significance of the social problem, and unhappily political events were soon to deflect his career from what then seemed to be ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease

... of exploitation. It enables people to work for a common end, but just because the few who are strategically placed must choose the concrete objectives, the symbol is also an instrument by which a few can fatten on many, deflect criticism, and seduce men into facing agony for objects they ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... Man, there is more value in the light word of Socrates affirming, than in a whole world full of evidence denying, of such maunderers as you! See here; he was the most sensible of men; balanced; keeping his head always;—a mind no mood or circumstances could deflect from rational self-control, either towards passion or ecstasy. One explanation remains—as in the case of Joan, or of H.P. Blavatsky;—he was neither deceiving nor deceived, but what he claimed to hear, he did hear; and it was the voice of One that stood behind him, and might not appear ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... with a percussion cap and a tear we may develop sufficient power to deflect a magnetic needle 3,000 miles distant, what power may not be expected of the sun, 1,250,000 times larger than the earth; the sun exercising a force ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers

... observe anything except that which goes on immediately in their neighborhood. The artilleryman fires his gun under the direction of some observer, often far away, who telephones to him to lower or elevate his piece, or deflect it to the tight or left. The infantryman advances as the barrage lifts, and rushes forward according to orders, firing or using his bayonet as the case may be, digging in when halted, and waiting for another rush forward. ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach

... saw how a single exciting word may call up its own associates prepotently, and deflect our whole train of thinking from the previous track. The fact is that every portion of the field tends to call up its own associates; but, if these associates be severally different, there is rivalry, and as soon as one or a few begin to be effective the others seem to get siphoned ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James

... at it in this way. What business has a man to think of things right in front of you, poke his head, as it were, into your light? What right has he to set up dams and tunnel out swallow-holes to deflect the current of your thoughts? Surely you may remove these obstructions, if it suits you, and put them where you will. Else all literature will presently be choked up, and the making of books come to an end. One might as ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells

... current was sent through the helix B and the galvanometer, so as to deflect the needle of the latter 30 deg. or 40 deg., and then the battery of one hundred pairs of plates connected with A; but after the first effect was over, the galvanometer-needle resumed exactly the position ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday

... to experience, whether there was a reason or not? Might it not be the nature of bodies, or of some particular bodies, to deviate toward the right? or if the supposition is preferred, toward the east, or south? It was long thought that bodies, terrestrial ones at least, had a natural tendency to deflect downward; and there is no shadow of any thing objectionable in the supposition, except that it is not true. The pretended proof of the law of motion is even more manifestly untenable than that of the law of inertia, for it is flagrantly inconsistent; it assumes that the continuance of motion in ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... was critical. The Monitor could, at her leisure, come close up to us and yet be out of our reach, owing to our inability to deflect our guns. In she came and began to sound every chink in our armor—every one but that which was actually vulnerable, ...
— The Monitor and the Merrimac - Both sides of the story • J. L. Worden et al.

... be relieved merely by goodwill on either side. When you begin to deflect the course of trade, you deflect it in all directions and for all time in both countries which are parties to the bargain. Your industries in your respective Colonies would have exposed themselves to a more severe competition from British goods in their ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill

... reaching, escaped by few, but like those which of yore astrologers imputed to the stars, they potently incline, they do not coerce. Language, pursuits, habits, geographical position, and those subtle mental traits which make up the characteristics of races and nations, all tend to deflect from a given standard the religious life of the individual and the mass. It is essential to give these due weight, and a necessary preface therefore to an analysis of the myths of the red race is an enumeration of its peculiarities, and of its chief ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... old African traveller, such as Kingozi, knew this for a blind rush in the direction toward which the animal happened to be headed. The rhinoceros, alarmed by the first intimation of danger, unable to get further news from its keener senses, had been seized by a panic. Were nothing to deflect him from the straight line, he would continue ahead on it until ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al

... progress of language from barbarism to refinement, from the assumed authority of writers, this accumulation of meanings is inevitable. However precise the primitive signification of words may have been, imagination, passion, or feeling would readily train them to deflect from their original import, under the effusions of the "poet, the lunatic, or the lover." A correct etymology would unfold the rude and simple origin of many words, that our Anglo-saxon, and Norman ancestors have bequeathed to us; although we are now but little sensible of the legacy; ...
— On the Nature of Thought - or, The act of thinking and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence • John Haslam

... frightful a crime to be committed in so sacred an edifice. All this sounds to me like perfect absurdity—simple noise. Yet, I presume that those who talk in this way are good people and believe what they say. Of course, they can give no reason why God did not deflect the ball when Lincoln was assassinated. The truth is, the pulpit first endeavors to find out the facts, and then to make a theory to fit them. Whoever believes in a special providence must, of necessity, by illogical and ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... has lost his faculty of forcing others to act. He makes a spurt but he can't stay the distance. He has met Millerand, French and Joffre in Council and allowed the searchlights of his genius to be snuffed out! That is what surprises me:—He, who once could deflect Joe Chamberlain and Milner from their orbits; who twisted stiff-necked Boers round his little finger; who bore down Asquith, Winston, Prince Louis and Beatty in Valetta Harbour—East versus West—Mediterranean versus North Sea—who, from ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton

... that this ingenuous remark so unmanned him that his eyes filled with tears, and he dashed from the room, closing the door after him in order that her appealing eyes might not cause him to deflect from his purpose. ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward

... apparently less dangerous, she must be careful to avoid. The imaginations of men are in a great measure under the control of their feelings and it was absolutely necessary for her to refrain from imparting too much information lest it might deflect from its purpose the very object she ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett

... soldiers of the British king would repay their red allies, and would defend the Indian villages if a large force from Kentucky were sent against them. The indications that such a force was moving or would move must be growing stronger. Doubtless the original turn to the eastward had been in order to deflect the attack against the settlements on the upper Ohio, most probably against Fort Henry. Now it was likely that the second plan had been abandoned for a third. What would that ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler

... upon those comets which pass close to them. Besides this, a comet, when in the inner regions of the solar system, moves with such rapidity, that the gravitational pull of the planets there situated is not powerful enough to deflect it to any extent. It must not be presumed, however, that a comet once captured should always remain a prisoner. Further disturbing causes might unsettle its newly acquired orbit, and send it out ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage

... this power shall be for good or for evil. We cannot take away power from any child—he shall move the affairs of nations—but we can direct this love of power, or crush it; strengthen it, or weaken it; turn it toward the highest help of man, or deflect it to tyranny, cruelty, ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown

... Rule, did not raise his voice either for the Agrarian Settlement or for Home Rule during all the years while he was a real power in the country. I am not however going to allow my views on these questions to deflect my judgment from the real merit of the work performed by Sir Horace and his associates in the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society, which in the teeth of considerable difficulties and obstacles succeeded in propagating through ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan

... the crack of the bat, but few saw the ball go, such was its momentum as it passed through the diamond. Hendrix, however, made a stab with his glove and managed to deflect the ball from its first course. That turned out to be a fatal involuntary movement on his part, for it made Bailey's job in knocking down the ball more difficult. The nimble shortstop managed to recover ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton

... Birkenhead side of the river, and accordingly a "Pluckington bank" unfortunately grows under the Liverpool stage. Should this tendency to silt up the gates of our docks increase, land can be reclaimed on the other side of the river between Tranmere and Rock Ferry, and an embankment made so as to deflect the water over Liverpool way, and give us a fairer proportion of the current. After passing New Brighton the water spreads out again to the left; its velocity forward diminishes; and after a few miles ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge



Words linked to "Deflect" :   preclude, disconcert, forfend, forestall, deflective, turn away, obviate, avert, confuse, deflexion, bend, stave off, prevent, deflector, fence, avoid, fend off, ward off



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com