"Prop" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... private dwellings and the foundations of the fortification walls. Then, as the lower layers of bricks became saturated and refused their support to the rows above, the wall began to crack and soon to totter to its fall. The citizens for some time tried to prop it with pieces of timber, and used other devices to avert the imminent ruin of their tower; but finding themselves overmatched by the water, and in dread lest the fall at some point or other of the circular wall (9) might deliver them captive ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... blent with eternity, and when the last sigh seems to waft the immortal spirit into a state of existence of which no adequate conception can be formed. After all was over, and the breath of life had fled, I could not believe my senses, that the prop of my affections was gone from my love and my embrace, and that all which remained on earth of my father, protector, and gentle monitor, was a lifeless wreck on the shore of time. The world appeared to my young eye and heart as a wide scene ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... to produce practical righteousness in daily living. No church is better adapted to this end than the Protestant Episcopal. (a) She seeks after the example of her Master's method to develop the permanent power of the will, rather than the unstable prop of emotionalism. This is evidenced in her majestic liturgies and dignified but helpful services. (b) In doctrine, discipline and worship the Protestant Episcopal Church is the school of mental, moral and spiritual training, that a people but ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... heaved himself into a hammock under the trees in that broad backyard wherein, as Valentine Corliss had yesterday noticed, the last iron monarch of the herd, with unabated arrogance, had entered domestic service as a clothes-prop. The young man, who was of delicate appearance and unhumanly pale, stretched himself at full length on his back, closed his eyes, moaned feebly, cursed the heat in a stricken whisper. Then, as a locust directly overhead violently shattered the silence, and seemed ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... his watch, his horse, and any sum of money they should name. They rejected his offers with indignation; and the gold that could seduce a man high in the esteem and confidence of his country, who had the remembrance of his past exploits, the motives of present reputation and future glory to prop his integrity, had no charms for three simple peasants, leaning only on their virtue, ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... he could only offer himself to satiate the mob's lust, and save these innocent ones! Lurid, condemnatory thoughts burned through his brain like molten iron. He rose hastily and rushed to the door. Rosendo and Don Jorge seized him as he was about to lift a prop. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... learning Rhetorick wit so large, Hath now the power, death's warfare to discharge, It's not my goodly state, nor bed of downs That can refresh, or ease, if Conscience frown, Nor from Alliance can I now have hope, But what I have done well that is my prop; He that in youth is Godly, wise and sage, Provides a staff then to support his Age. Mutations great, some joyful and some sad, In this short pilgrimage I oft have had; Sometimes the Heavens with plenty smiled on me, Sometime again rain'd all Adversity, ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... managed to prop a sack against the small cobwebbed window, fastened the door with a rusty bolt, and brought out an electric torch he always carried in ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Is to exchange one misery with another, And euery day that comes, comes to decay A dayes worke in him. What shalt thou expect To be depender on a thing that leanes? Who cannot be new built, nor ha's no Friends So much, as but to prop him? Thou tak'st vp Thou know'st not what: But take it for thy labour, It is a thing I made, which hath the King Fiue times redeem'd from death. I do not know What is more Cordiall. Nay, I prythee take it, It is an earnest of a farther good That I meane to thee. Tell thy Mistris how The ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... constantly kept before the public, that we do not seek to prop up woman; we only ask for her space to let her grow. Governments are not made; they grow. They are not buildings like this, with dome and pillars; they are oaks, with roots and branches, and they grow, by God's blessing, in the soil He gives to them. Now man has been allowed to grow, and when ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... lord and master, 'The humble inferior who presumes to address the prop of the true faith, the terror of infidels, and the refuge of the sinner, begs leave to lay before him, that after having encountered a thousand difficulties, he has at length succeeded in getting from the peasantry of his villages one hundred tomauns in ready money, besides the fifty kherwars, ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... centuries there flowed from the mines of Mexico and Peru, millions and millions of silver and gold, which went to fill the needy coffers of Spain, to enrich a distant and callous or careless monarch, and to prop up a moribund nation. The appalling system of the mitad and the encomenderos, by which silver and gold were extracted with indecent haste, form such pages as can never be erased from the history of metallurgy in ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... as if I had lost a stay or prop," replied Mrs. Seagrave. "So accustomed have I been to look to him for advice since we have been on this island. Had he not been thus snatched from us - had he been spared to us a few years, and had we been permitted to surround his death-bed, and ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... heart too! from his lips Have dashed joy's last poor lingering drop, and shown him, His only prop was frail as all the former! Could I but think he felt like common parents, That when he found my fault, affection died, Then I were blest! then I alone should suffer, And when his hatred broke my heart, could seek Some lone sad place, and lay me down and die! Alas! ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... with angry energy, "while we are seeking help he may— Yes; still beating. Quick! Open that door. No, no; that's the way into the street! The other door—the consulting-room. Prop it open with a chair. We must get him on to the sofa, and ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... In October Changarnier's influence decreased, and X.'s enthusiasm abated. X. then frequented the Elysee, but without giving his adherence. He promised his support to General Bedeau, who counted upon him. At daybreak on the 2d of December some one came to waken X. It was Edgar Ney. X. was a prop for the coup d'etat, but would he consent? Edgar Ney explained the affair to him, and left him only after seeing him leave the barracks of the Rue Verte at the head of the first regiment. X. took up his position at the Place de la ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... the car and laid him back on the cushions; the boys rolled up the rugs, and their coats to prop him up. Again he ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine
... care, every appetite dried up. So learning devastates the scholar, is another plague of wealth, and our goodness turns out to be a hasty mistake. Is order disorder, then? Are we fools of fate? Is there only power enough to prop up this rickety old system, to keep it running and hold our noses to the grindstone? No man believes it: the madness of Time has ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... the wondrous forms of this fish perished here in this cavernous and winding recess. Now destroyed by time thou liest patiently in this confined space with bones stripped and bare; serving as a support and prop for the ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... would not come to life before morning." Indeed, there was a general chorus of commiseration, which Burt brought to a prosaic conclusion by saying: "Crocodile tears, every one. You'll all enjoy the pot-pie to-morrow with great gusto. By the way, I'll prop up one of these little fellows at the foot of Ned's crib, and in the morning he'll think that the original 'Br'er Rabbit' has hopped out of Uncle Remus's stories to make ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... his political schemes of ambition at this particular crisis was irreparable. One after one, all the agents and tools by whom he could hope to work upon the counsels of the Klosterheim authorities had been removed. Losing their influence, he had lost every prop of his own. Nor was this all; he was reproached by the general voice of the city as the original cause of a calamity which he had since shown himself impotent to redress. He it was, and his cause, which had drawn upon the people so fatally trepanned the hostility of the mysterious Masque. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... will pick up strength like a steam engine now. Here, let me prop you against this tree. That's better. Now drink a drop of this tea; it's like nectar after that filthy water we have been drinking. Now you will feel better. Now you must try and eat a little of this chicken and rice. Oh, nonsense, you ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... played and the ware of the buffet clattered, the joyous voices of the overwhelming majority gave Senator Corson to understand that he was the idol of his people and the prop ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... Ministers on all matters of importance regarding Church or State. One thing, however, I trust I ken, and that is, my duty to my King as his loyal subject, to old Scotland as her unworthy son, and to my family as their prop, support, and breadwinner;—so I shall stick to all three (under Heaven) as long as I have a drop of blood in my precious veins. But the truth is—and I will let it out and shame the de'il—that ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... he was kind," began Polly, in a soothing tone; but Tom cried out, remorsefully, "That 's what knocks me over! Just when I ought to be a pride and a prop to him, I bring him my debts and disgrace, and he never says a word of blame. It 's no use, I can't stand it!" and Tom's head went down again with something very like a sob, that would come in spite of manful efforts to keep it back, for the poor fellow had the ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... patience As we were formerly by crimes, so we are now overburdened by law Ashamed to lay out as much thought and study upon it Assurance they give us of the certainty of their drugs At least, if they do no good, they will do no harm At the most, but patch you up, and prop you a little Attribute facility of belief to simplicity and ignorance Attribute to itself; all the happy successes that happen Authority of the number and antiquity of the witnesses Authority to be dissected ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne
... it!" And Nan settled herself more comfortably against the governess' knee quite as if that person were, in reality, her prop and stay, instead of being only some one she "sort of liked ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... my life and all, pardon not that, You take my house, when you do take the prop That doth sustaine my house: you take my life When you doe take ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... a widow! Long since the evangelical narrative has dropped the name of her husband, doubtless because Joseph was no more; but Jesus survived to console her amidst domestic misfortunes, to cheer her declining days, to prop her falling house, to pour the wine of consolation into her cup of sorrow, and the light of celestial truth into her mind. He was all goodness, all perfection, who could never forget a mother—a widowed mother, wherever "he went about doing good"—was to this awful hour her staff ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... of the opposite parties, for Joab, as next of kin to Asahel, was by the law and custom of the country the avenger of his blood. For some time afterwards the war was carried on, the advantage being invariably on the side of David. At length Ishbaal lost the main prop of his tottering cause by remonstrating with Abner for marrying Rizpah, one of Saul's concubines, an alliance which, according to Oriental notions, implied pretensions to the throne (cp. 2 Sam. xvi. 21 sqq.; ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... life to be thrown away, and Tira found it "up attic" and brought it down to him. She waited, in a sympathetic interest, to see him try it, and when he did and swung across the kitchen with an angry capability, she caught her breath, in a new fear of him. The crutch looked less a prop to his insufficiency than like a weapon. He could reach her with it. He could reach the child. And then she began to see how his helplessness had built up in her a false security. He was on the way to strength again, and ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... homogeneousness of the ecclesiastical constituency: "We cannot confine the right of chusing a minister to the male communicants alone, but we think that every baptized adult person who contributes to the maintenance, should have a vote in electing." [Footnote: History of Brattle St. Church, p. 25, Prop. 16.] ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... un'stand prop'ly. It's a inside white frock over our hearts. Nobody sees it but Jesus and the angels at the gate—and God. Our hearts are quite dirty and black till we ask Jesus to wash them and put the white dress on. Why, I had mine ...
— 'Me and Nobbles' • Amy Le Feuvre
... Britain owes (and pays you too) so much, Yet Europe doubtless owes you greatly more: You have repair'd Legitimacy's crutch, A prop not quite so certain as before: The Spanish, and the French, as well as Dutch, Have seen, and felt, how strongly you restore; And Waterloo has made the world your debtor (I wish your bards would sing it ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... column, and so saved the two passengers, who, we hope, in consideration of what he has done for their lives, have settled something hansom upon him for his life. If not, the proposition is here made, and after the prop comes ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 24, 1891 • Various
... of your son, and entice him to the ways of intemperance? Would you be pleased if he would listen to no remonstrance of yours, if he should even disregard your entreaties and your tears, and coolly see, for the love of gold, ruin coming into your family, and your prop taken from beneath you, and your gray hairs coming down with sorrow to the grave? And yet to many such a son may you sell the poison; to many a father whose children are clothed in rags; to many a man whose wife sits weeping amidst poverty and want, and dreading to hear the tread ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... also addressed him. Knowing the king, the son of Pritha, afflicted in mind, and bereft of his relatives and kinsmen slain in battle, and appearing crest-fallen like the sun darkened eclipse, or fire smothered by smoke, that prop of the Vrishni race (Krishna), comforting the son of Dharma, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... flapdoodle! Pure psychological prop-wash, started and maintained by men who are either too weak to direct and control their drives or who haven't any real work to occupy their minds. It applies to many men, of course, possibly to most. It does not, however, apply to all, and, it lacks one whole ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... my prop and safety always. Who would not have done what I did? Not Santa Felicita herself," she said, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... written consulting him about the purchase of some old furniture in London he wrote: "There is a chair (without a bottom) at a shop near the office, which I think would suit you. It cannot stand of itself, but will almost seat somebody, if you put it in a corner, and prop one leg up with two wedges and cut another leg off, The proprietor asks L20, but says he admires literature and would take L18. He is of republican principles and I think would take L17 19s. 6d. from a cousin; ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... too, for if I had been under it, I had never wanted a gravedigger. I had now a great deal of work to do over again, for I had the loose earth to carry out; and, which was of more importance, I had the ceiling to prop up, so that I might be sure no ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... controls the Republic, and refuse to be its tool. Let its power be stretched forth toward this distant Territory, not to bind, but to unbind; not for the oppression of the weak, but for the subversion of the tyrannical; not for the prop and maintenance of a revolting Usurpation, but for the ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... hoped that time and absence, from whatever excited your uneasiness, might best operate in silence: but, alas! your affliction seems only to augment,-your health declines,-your look alters!-Oh, Evelina, my aged heart bleeds to see the change!-bleeds to behold the darling it had cherished, the prop it had reared for its support, when bowed down by years and infirmities, sinking itself under the pressure of internal grief!-struggling to hide what it should seek to participate!-But go, my dear, go to your own room; we both want composure, ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... 58: ? shorewise, as shores. 'Schore, undur settynge of a ynge at wolde falle.' P. Parv. Du. Schooren, To Under-prop. Aller eschays, To shale, stradle, goe crooked, or wide betweene the feet, or ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... Bobbie found a suitable prop, the stem of a buttercup. The flower tipped a little to one side so that Maya could see him perfectly as he raised himself on his hind legs and looked up at her. She thought he had a nice, dear, friendly face—but not so very ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... Prop Corning was the best hand any of them knew of with a jackknife, and he knew all about jack-o'-lanterns; but they all had learned more by the time they had worked up four ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... unwearied Ulpius. Already tumults began to take place between the Pagans and the Christians; and even now the priest of Serapis prepared to address a protest to the new Emperor in behalf of the ancient religion of the land. At this moment it seemed probable that the heroic attempts of one man to prop the structure of superstition, whose foundations were undermined throughout, and whose walls were attacked by brigands, might actually ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... report. It wouldn't astonish me, if they should pronounce the whole apparatus of the State rotten from top to bottom, and only kept from falling to pieces by all sorts of ingenious contrivances of an external and temporary nature,—here a wheel, or pivot, or spring to be replaced,—there a prop or buttress to be set up,—here a pipe choked up,—there a boiler burst,—and so on, from one end of the works to the other. However, the machine keeps a-going, and many ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... investigators rushed to Fargo. They had wired ahead to ground the plane. They wanted to check it over before it flew again. When they arrived, only a matter of hours after the incident, they went over the airplane, from the prop spinner to the rudder trim tab, with a Geiger counter. A chart in the official report shows where every Geiger counter reading was taken. For comparison they took readings on a similar airplane that hadn't been flown ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... communication with Richmond, and swells the central forces; then the Rebels are lured from their lines and scattered on their right; the same night the intrenchments of Petersburg are stormed, Richmond falls as this prop is removed, being already hungry-hearted, and the flushed army falls upon Lee and finishes the war. Is not this work for gratulation? Glory to the army, perfect at last, and to Grant, to Sheridan, to each ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... would remind you that the precursor of every genuine forward movement is a Godward movement, and that it is worse than useless to talk about lengthening the cords unless you begin with strengthening the stakes. The little prop that holds up the bell-tent that will contain half-a- dozen soldiers will be all too weak for the great one that will cover a company. And the fault of some Christian people is that they set themselves to work upon others without remembering that the first requisite is a deepened and growing godliness ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... could be made to turn pale or red any day by a word or a look from her. Hetty's sphere of comparison was not large, but she couldn't help perceiving that Adam was "something like" a man; always knew what to say about things, could tell her uncle how to prop the hovel, and had mended the churn in no time; knew, with only looking at it, the value of the chestnut-tree that was blown down, and why the damp came in the walls, and what they must do to stop the rats; and wrote a beautiful hand that you could read off, and could do figures in his head—a ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... aversion which a mean and servile nature ever feels to one whose dealings are free from fraud or deceit. He also feared him as a rival, and it became his aim to undermine him, and to lay a plot for the chief stay and prop of the undertaking. It was naturally to be supposed that Lord George Murray's age, his high birth, his experience and influence, and his great capacity, would have given him an advantage over his dastardly rival, and have gained the first consideration ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... he will recover. Just imagine, general; he was found by the road, and brought home with a dagger in his breast, like a prop in ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... series. The sill of the doorway by which this room communicates with an adjoining one is raised about 18 inches above the floor, and is provided with a rudely mortised door in a single panel. Alongside is a small hole through which the occupant can prop the door on the inside of the communicating room. The subsequent sealing of the small hand-hole with mud effectually closes the house against intrusion. The unusual height of this door sill from the floor has necessitated the construction of a small ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... left to try to prop up a tumble-down log-hut with my own shoulder,' he laughed. 'This journey to England has been the great desire of my life, and I am very thankful to have ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dark reaches of the forest, whose trees were getting scarcer at every step. At last, after about four hours, this marvelous excursion came to an end. A wall of superb rocks rose before us, a heap of gigantic blocks, an enormous granite shore. It was the prop of the island of Crespo. ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... "Then we'll prop the canvas up to let air inside the tent, and then you'll drive me to the Hotel Pleasant as fast as you ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... pigs," she stormed at Achmed, who, reducing his fez to a pulp, raved at her as she crouched in a corner with something a-glitter in her hand. "Send in thy wife who ambles like a camel in foal, and whose ankles are thick enough to serve as prop to a falling house." ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... the rest of his earthly pilgrimage with only a leg and a half—let the added half be of what material it might. And his excitement may be better imagined than described when, one afternoon, the surgeon came in with a most wonderful object in his arms—a lovely prop of bright, black, burnished wood, set off with steel couplings and the most fascinating straps you ever saw. And the best of all was the socket, in which his soft white stump fitted as comfortably as though they had been made for one another—as, in fact, ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... when grim death draws near him, by his ain fireside, What cause has he to fear him, by his ain fireside? With a bosom-cheering hope, he takes heaven for his prop, Then calmly down does drop, by his ain fireside. Oh! may that lot be ours, by our ain fireside; Then glad will fly the hours, by our ain fireside; May virtue guard our path, till we draw our latest breath, Then we 'll smile and welcome ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the kitchen where she had been attending to the fastenings of the back door. Fortunately her light had survived the gusty attack and she was able to help her husband to his prop. ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith
... native names shows where it belongs and what it refers to. These names are three, and their significations are, "The Rain-God," "The Tree of our Life," "The God of Strength."[1] As the rains fertilize the fields and ripen the food crops, so he who sends them is indeed the prop or tree of our subsistence, and thus becomes the giver of health and strength. No other explanation is needed, or is, in ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... ungraciously as I often treat you, to-night I clearly perceived that we belong together, like a pair of eyes, and that without you I am only half myself—or, at any rate—not complete. And—as we are speaking in images—I felt like a sapling whose prop has been removed; even your Wolff can never have longed for you more ardently. My father found little time to give me. As soon as he saw me take my place in the Polish dance he went with Uncle Pfinzing to the drinking room, and I did not see him again till he came to bring me home. He had asked ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... gods! when barbarous Scythians come From their cold north to prop declining Rome. That I should see her fall, and sit secure ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... that his Lordship read in my partial defence of Kilkee, a slight attempt to prop up my own case, and felt confused and embarrassed ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... Then came upon her a feeling that at such a time any other husband and wife would have been at once in each other's arms. And at the moment she thought of all that they had lost. To her her child had been all and everything. To him he had been his heir and the prop of his house. The boy had been the only link that had still bound them together. Now he was gone, and there was no longer any link between them. He was gone, and she had nothing left to her. He was gone, ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... hope died. Then and there I had a nervous chill. I was compelled to prop my chin on my hand to keep my teeth ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... dialogue which might not be inaptly called, after the manner of my friend Mr. Albert Smith, the toilsome ascent of Miss Mary and the eruption (cutaneous) of Master Alexander. We know what it is when those children won't go to bed; we know how they prop their eyelids open with their forefingers when they will sit up; how, when they become fractious, they say aloud that they don't like us, and our nose is too long, and why don't we go? And we are perfectly acquainted with those kicking bundles which ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... some distance, and our path took us by flower-beds where some exquisite little toys were growing, and a hot-bed where new varieties were being prop—propagated. Pretty soon we came to a plantation of young trees, with rattles, and rubber balls, and ivory rings growing on the branches, and as we went past they rang and bounded about in the merriest sort of ...
— Lill's Travels in Santa Claus Land and other Stories • Ellis Towne, Sophie May and Ella Farman
... announced himself as the enemy of Greece, and the prop of the Ottoman Empire. At the subscription ball given at the Opera in Berlin, did he not walk arm-in-arm with Ghalik Bey, the Turkish Ambassador, and authorise him to telegraph to the Sultan that, under existing conditions, he might count upon his sense of justice ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... wide expand, The pride of Turkey and of Persia land! Soft quilts on quilts, on carpets carpets spread, And couches stretch'd around in seemly band, And endless pillows rise to prop the head. ... Here languid Beauty kept ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... piece of pasture unhedged, and it's odds on that not a single soul will tramp or want to tramp over it, from one year's end to another; hedge it, close it with padlocked gate, prop up the warning re trespassers and see if you don't find a wide track of footprints across it in ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... is to strike the right note in these matters," he said. "And it weren't till the third time that I struck it with your sister. Afore that I talked of being her right hand and protector and so on, and I offered to be a prop to her declining years, and all that. And I knew I'd failed almost before the words were spoken. But the third time I just went for her all ends up, as if we was boy and girl, and told her that I loved her, and wanted her for ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... upon Bylands Abbey, the rival of Rievaulx, but far more fallen into decay. It stood alone in the midst of the wide valley; no caretaker hindered our steps to its precincts and no effort had been made to prop its crumbling walls or to stay the green ruin creeping over it. The fragment of its great eastern window, still standing, was its most imposing feature and showed that it had been a church of no mean architectural ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... weeks after this as if Mrs. Darcy would follow her husband. She looked so white and wan, she was so feeble that some days she could not leave her bed. Grandmother rallied with that invincible determination not to be beaten down if her prop ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... narrative are not serious." [135:1] They have been considered so by men like Keim, Schuerer, Lipsius, and Holtzmann. The account has too much need to be propped up itself to be of much use as a prop for the Gospels. Dr. Lightfoot points out that an "idea of literal conformity to the life and Passion of Christ runs through the document," [135:2] and it is chiefly on the fact that "most of the incidents have their ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... rifles had been placed he could not resist the temptation to take one. Laying hold of that which stood nearest, and which seemed to be similar in make to the rifle they had taken from himself when he was captured, he drew it towards him. Unfortunately it formed a prop to several other rifles, which fell with a crash, and one of them exploded in ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... in vain, and old nursie had enough to do with Miss Connie's baby to heed what the young gentlemen were about, so long as explosions of noise was all the mischief. Walter, the man-servant, who had been with us ten years, and was the main prop of the establishment, looking after everything and putting his hand to everything, with an indefinite charge ranging from the nursery to the wine-cellar, and from the corn-bin to the pig-trough, and who, as we could not possibly get on without him, sat on the ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... had ever leaned on Aunt Mary or Aunt Aggie. Aunt Mary might perhaps be likened to one of those stout beams which have a tendency to push ruthlessly through the tottering outer wall which they are supposed to prop, into the inner chamber of the tenement which has the misfortune to be the ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... about that, I'd say, Jack. Listen. The High Command have laid out a scheme to knock the last prop out from under Fritz. There's a certain stronghold they're banking on as a bulwark of safety in case we do succeed in breaking through ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... hole in the middle, and mix in the white of egg so as to form a thick batter, and then add two table-spoonfuls of the best fresh yeast. Cover it, and let it stand all night. In the morning, take a hoe-iron (such as are made purposely for cakes) and prop it before the fire till, it is well heated. Then flour a tea-saucer, and filling it with batter, shake it about, and clap it to the hoe, (which must be previously greased,) and the batter will adhere, till it ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... side of the front foot, has completely disappeared. The change in the hind foot has gone still further. The hind leg in many animals evolves more rapidly than the front. The heavy work of running is always done by the hind feet, while the front feet serve rather as a prop to keep the animal from falling than as the actual means of locomotion. Hence the hind feet and the muscles of the hind quarters are almost always heavier than the front. Possibly on the front foot the little fifth toe was less of an obstruction, and persisted after the ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... tails. It is reasonable to suggest (as did Hall, 1955:134) that the long, tufted tail is an adaptation for a scansorial existence. Little observation is necessary to observe how such a tail is used in balancing. Furthermore, it is used as a prop when the mouse is climbing a vertical surface. Dalquest (1955:144) mentioned tree-climbing in P. boylii from San Luis Potosi, Mexico. It may occur in P. b. attwateri or in P. b. cansensis also, but there is no evidence ...
— Natural History of the Brush Mouse (Peromyscus boylii) in Kansas With Description of a New Subspecies • Charles A. Long
... cause could be found in the fact that Lawyer Temple had run through what little money his father and grandmother had left him; additional wise-acres were of the opinion that some out-of-town folks had bought the place and were trying to prop it up so it wouldn't tumble into the street, while one, more facetious than the others, had claimed that it was no wonder it was falling down, since the only new thing Temple had put upon it was a ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... to the savages. While this clashing of one object against another could not be called the beginning of music, and while it could not be said to originate a musical instrument, it did, nevertheless, bring into existence music's greatest prop, rhythm, an ally without which music would seem to be impossible. It is hardly necessary to go into this point in detail. Suffice it to say that the sense of rhythm is highly developed even among ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... seemed, in the opinion not only of the victors, but of the vanquished, to have given the finishing stroke to the American Revolution, Lee's force, augmented by the junction of the troops marching down to join him, was the sole prop and stay of the ...
— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake
... was called, was situated in a beautiful valley nine miles from Natchez, and near the river Mississippi. The once unshorn face of nature had given way, and now the farm blossomed with a splendid harvest, the neat cottage stood in a grove where Lombardy poplars lift their tufted tops almost to prop the skies; the willow, locust, and horse-chestnut spread their branches, and flowers never cease to blossom. This was the parson's country house, where the family spent only two months during ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... it in the low and dark and desolate places of the world, are the true saints. Nothing else will do in its place. Not Churches, nor creeds, nor rituals, nor respectabilities. Without it we are not friends of Christ, nor co-workers with God. Without it we deepen the channels of human woe, and prop the strong-holds of wickedness. Without it, whatever we may not be, we are Allies of the Tempter. The Saviour says to each of us to-day, placed amidst these antagonistic forces of Life—"He that is not with ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... ill in all around foresees,—but doubles ill. Each prop thou hast is but a sword to pierce; If Polyeucte hold their heart, the people fierce Will gather fiercer ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... treated of; but these are evidently not the audience Mr. Lowell reckons on; rather, if one may trust the manner of his setting to work, he would propound his doctrine to the class. Always to be found, of spirits instructed up to a certain height and there resting—vines that run up a prop and there tangle and grow to a knot—which want supplying with fresh poles; so the provident man brings his bundle into the grounds, and sticks them in laterally or a-top of the others, as the case requires, and all ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... whose form is so perfect, whose spirit is so noble, and whose life so pure; while I, the last of a line that is lost in the obscurity of time, the wealthiest of my land, and the chosen of my peers, am accursed with an outcast, a common brigand, a murderer, for the sole prop of my decaying house—with this Il Maledetto—this man accursed—for ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... lie the greater the truth.' Take that with you. A lie must, somewhere, have a truth to prop it. In the heart of every big successful lie you will find some reality. Of course you cannot build a house on nothing. A pyramid cannot be constructed in the air. Now a lie is nothing, the very definition ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... under his breath. He had ordered Lieutenant Tibbetts, his second-in-command, prop, stay, and aide-de-camp, to superintend the drill of some raw Kano recruits who had been ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... declared that if Miss Howe had not been a Protestant and so impervious he would have excommunicated her—and as he looked his movement imperceptibly changed to afford him a better place. He put an undecided hand upon a prop of the box that rose behind Alicia's shoulder, and so stood leaning and looking, more conspicuous in the straight lines and short shoulder-cape of the frock of his Order than he knew. Hilda, in one of those impenetrable regards which she threw straight ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... fought against Europeans; these troops, who were not allowed to marry, gave an absolute obedience. They were perhaps the finest infantry in the world—for two hundred years they formed the strongest prop of the Turkish Empire. Paulus Jovius, the historian, says that in 1531 nearly the whole corps of janissaries spoke Slav. Other young men were received into the Government offices—the Porte, until the end of the seventeenth century, used the Serbian language for its international transactions; ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... also fallen to his knees, to help his master in his plea for blessing, and he called out after the peasant girls: "Oh, princess and universal lady of El Toboso, is not your heart softened by seeing the pillar and prop of knight-errantry on his knees before your ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... hope filled her ambitious little head. Yes, father would see that he was right in trusting her; Nell would discover that there was no one so clever as Polly; Mrs. Power would cease to defy her; Alice would obey her cheerfully; in short, she would be the mainstay and prop of her family. ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... a happy one, for we children were fond of one another and all loved the father and mother who worked so hard for us. We were the first to realize that our home was insecure, upheld by a single prop, our father's labor. The breaking of his right arm might have broken up our home. We wanted to acquire property so that mother would be safe. For we knew that God was a just God. He did not ordain that one class should labor and be ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... time much reputation as a remarkably successful teacher, and her services were in constant demand. She was also a favorite in all classes of society and knew how to adjust herself to the humblest and the highest of her fellow creatures. From the time of her father's death she had been the prop of the family, the mover in all their plans and the provider of their needs. Over me she had a special charge and a sacred duty, for my father, conscious of the too gentle nature of his wife and the poverty in which he was about to leave her, ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... the colonies. For a naturally bad sailor, he was very fond of the sea; and perhaps in his heart of hearts he cherished the thought that he was performing a national work in directing promising recruits to the first line of our defence, and the main prop of this Empire. Soon his few special pupils swelled into a class, not all boarders, but of outsiders who came in to learn geography and hear the Colonel explain the Bible; and not only that, but to be told of stirring deeds beyond the sea by ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... to his heart, and was chill as a stone. And so again, again deceit; no, worse than deceit—lying and baseness... and life shattered, everything torn up by its roots utterly, and the sole thing which he could cling to, the last prop, in fragments too. In Litvinov's soul rose, like sudden gusts of wind before a storm, momentary ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... not weep from a sense of bereavement—there is no prop withdrawn, no consolation torn away, no dear companion lost—but for the wreck of talent, the ruin of promise, the untimely dreary extinction of what might have been a burning and a shining light. My brother was a year my junior. I had aspirations and ambitions ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... I presented him with this, not at all aware of the goods and chattels removed for the occasion, he said it was so very comfortable he should now write all his letters here, for at his lodgings he had such a miserable low table he had been forced to prop it up ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... of this cranky craft were gentlemen all, who, beyond running up the string-tied sail to the clothes-prop mast, or taking a trick at the wheel—another clothes-prop with a large disc of wood at the water-end, were far ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... a weasel in another: some are like a tropical habitat in which the very ferns cast a mighty shadow, and the grasses are a dry ocean in which a hunter may be submerged; others like the chilly latitudes in which your forest-tree, fit elsewhere to prop a mine, is a pretty miniature suitable for fancy potting. The eccentric man might be typified by the Australian fauna, refuting half our judicious assumptions of what nature allows. Still, whether fate commanded us to thatch our persons among the Eskimos ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... gradually changed and elaborated, and finally groomed as fact. Agents of the Russian secret police department and of the unscrupulous "Black Hundreds" then utilized this fiction as the framework for the "protocols" through which they sought to crush the Jews and prop up ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein
... reedy staccato voice, that gave polish and relief to every syllable, tried to come to her aid by questioning her affably about her family and the friends she had made in New York. But the caryatid-parent, who exists simply as a filial prop, is not a fruitful theme, and Undine, called on for the first time to view her own progenitors as a subject of conversation, was struck by their lack of points. She had never paused to consider what her father ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... own teown prop'ty somewhars, and they own all the Neck here, and lays areound on her through the summer. Why, Note's father—he 's dead neow—he and I uster stand deown on the mud flats when we was boys, a-diggin' clarms tergether, barefoot; 'tell he cruised off ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... says his prayers," said the fairy, Or else he would wither and die. "The sun says his prayers," said the fairy, "For strength to climb up through the sky. He leans on invisible angels, And Faith is his prop and his rod. The sky is his crystal cathedral. And dawn ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... clothes; but he managed his wardrobe with the greatest care, kept every thing about him clean, and required all things in ordinary life to go according to his example. He never happened to lean anywhere, or to prop his elbow on the table; he never forgot to mark his table-napkin; and the maid always had a bad time of it when the chairs were not found perfectly clean. With all this, he had nothing stiff in his exterior. He spoke cordially, with precise and dry liveliness, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... strength and salvation, and trusting entirely in the merits of Jesus Christ, he found a satisfying sense of God's saving presence and power to the very last. He would often say, 'my feet are on the Rock of Ages. I cannot sink under such a prop, as bears the world and all things up.' His affliction, water on the chest, and an enlargement of the heart brought on by his frequent plunges into the water, and exposure to wet and cold, was protracted and very severe. He found great difficulty in breathing and had ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... lodge, remain, continue, abide; support, prop, buttress, brace, uphold, strengthen; delay, obstruct, hinder, restrain, appease, withhold, forbear, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... manly tempers can the longest bear. Yet, since they will divert my native course, 'Tis time to show I am not good by force. 950 Those heap'd affronts that haughty subjects bring, Are burdens for a camel, not a king. Kings are the public pillars of the state, Born to sustain and prop the nation's weight: If my young Samson will pretend a call To shake the column, let him share the fall: But oh, that yet he would repent and live! How easy 'tis for parents to forgive! With how few tears a pardon ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... the future he expressly acknowledges. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the interest in the prediction of the future was so strong, the ancient accounts of true prognostications were the real prop of demonology. Hence demons generally play a great part in these explanations, even though in other cases the Devil fills the bill. Thus Acosta in his account of the American religions; thus Voss and numerous other writers of the seventeenth century; and it is hardly a mere accident, ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... of the mine still bear on their rocky walls the marks made by the pick of the workman who toiled to excavate them. The space between each prop in the underground galleries might be marked as a miner's grave; and who can tell what each of these graves has cost, in tears, in privations, in unspeakable wretchedness to the family who depended on the scanty wage of ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin |
