"Prop" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cried. "You may flout our beliefs,—but wouldn't you like to bolster up your report with an endorsement by the wife of a clergyman! It sounds so respectable and sane, doesn't it? No, sir! You can't prop up your wild-eyed theories against the good black of one minister's coat. Not by any means! I think myself that you have probably stumbled on the truth about Willem's mother; but that doesn't prove ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... in the shoes to protect them from treading on anything sharp, and our stockings were the dryest articles we had. We bound up our breeches as high as we could. "Now," said I, "let each one of us take a good stick in his hand in order to prop himself up against the current, and prevent his being washed away." Our guide went ahead even before I had found a stick; but when he reached the middle of the creek, he cried out, "Help, help, if you do not help me, ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... other end of the wire, where, in the nature of things, she was unable to arrest it. The gaze she fixed on her extravagant kinsman was of a kind to make him wonder how he contrived to remain, as he beautifully did, rigid. His prop was possibly the reflection that flashed on him that, if she abounded in attenuations, well, hang it all, so did he! It was simply a difference of plane. Readjust the "values," as painters ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... foolish thoughts fill thy swelled mind! It is too late our ruin to recall; Those, that have once great buildings undermined, Will prove too weak to prop them in their fall. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... the cart might have been a prop to take up as soon as he came out. On the other hand, what could she in her technical ignorance ...
— The Junkmakers • Albert R. Teichner
... indeed is the philanthropic field! It may be urged that the daily vocation of life is one thing, and the work of philanthropy quite another. I have no sympathy with this notion. The man who plans to do all his giving on Sunday is a poor prop for the institutions of ...
— Random Reminiscences of Men and Events • John D. Rockefeller
... noble brother murthered by the King, Oh what may I doe, to revenge thy death? The Kings alone, it cannot satisfie. Sweet Duke of Guise our prop to leane upon, Now thou art dead, heere is no stay for us: I am thy brother, and ile revenge thy death, And roote Valois's line from forth of France, And beate proud Burbon to his native home, That basely seekes ...
— Massacre at Paris • Christopher Marlowe
... beautiful valley, nine miles from Natchez, and near the Mississippi River. The once unshorn face of nature had given way, and the farm now blossomed with a splendid harvest. The neat cottage stood in a grove, where Lombardy poplars lift their tops almost to prop the skies, where the willow, locust, and horse-chestnut trees spread forth their branches, and flowers never ceased ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... her to a sitting posture, while Henri placed two pillows behind her to prop her up; and then, with the napkin spread before her and a plate on her ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... 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.; 1 Kings ii. 21 sqq.). Abner was indignant at ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... son, my son," cried the old man in despair, "how cruel is the fate that has robbed me of you, the only prop of my declining years! Oh, my boy, my boy, would that I had not sent you on so perilous a journey! Who now will look after my grave when ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman
... "What isn't generally realized is that it's a dangerous prop'sition to invade the rights of personal liberty. Now, take this for instance: The King of—Bavaria? I think it was Bavaria—yes, Bavaria, it was—in 1862, March, 1862, he issued a proclamation against public grazing of live-stock. The peasantry ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... filling it up with such a load of bricks and mortar that the first floor was on the point of becoming the ground one; and, having only a choice of evils, on such an emergency, we, as usual, adopted that which appeared to us to be the least, cutting down the only two fruit-trees in the garden to prop it up with. We were rather on doubtful terms with the landlord before, but this put us all square—no ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... betray his self-conceit; so that though he is surrounded by flatterers, he has no friend; no one dare tell him of his faults, but all seek to profit by his follies. I am no pretender to prophecy; I know my own house totters in this storm, and I have more need to prop and secure it than to concern myself as to what will befall my neighbours. Sir William Waverly and I have chosen two different methods of steering our barks; probably both may end in shipwreck, but my eyes are fixed on the pole-star in the heavens, ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... the wood the track became worse and worse. The rough-hewn runners constantly sank into snow-drifts and the sledge canted over, so that the poor man, trembling with fear and cold, had to prop it up with all his strength. If his twisted foot gave way, there was an end ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... present. He was not aware that Miss Mally had an orthodox corn, or bunyan, that could as little bear a touch from the royne-slippers of philosophy, as the inflamed gout of polemical controversy, which had gumfiated every mental joint and member of that zealous prop of the Relief Kirk. This was indeed the tender point of Miss Mally's character; for she was left unplucked on the stalk of single blessedness, owing entirely to a conversation on this very subject with the only lover she ever had, Mr. Dalgliesh, ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... was not in our power to overturn the bad institutions which lately afflicted our country, without shocks which have loosened the foundations of government. Now that those institutions have fallen, we must hasten to prop the edifice which it was lately our duty to batter. Henceforth it will be our wisdom to look with jealousy on schemes of innovation, and to guard from encroachment all the prerogatives with which the law has, for the public good, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to the stables, and returned in a few seconds with a clothes-prop, with which he dealt the disturber of our peace a few rapid, but vigorous, blows, breaking its spine in several places. Then the step-ladder was brought out, and Ted, seizing the reptile by the tail, uncoiled ...
— Amona; The Child; And The Beast; And Others - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... trade or property at such a crisis?" interrupted an enthusiast, in figured trowsers and a gay cravat. "Our beloved Union must and shall be preserved. The fabric that our fathers reared for us must not be allowed to crumble. We will prop it with our mangled bodies," and he brushed a speck of dust from the fine ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... Pretender, and how little influence he could obtain over the Jacobite counsels. The hopeless Rebellion of 1715, in Scotland, Bolingbroke laboured in vain to delay until there might be some chance of success. The death of Louis XIV., on the 1st of September in that year, had removed the last prop of a falling cause. ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... bad to worse it shifted.—Cephas came; He came, who was the Holy Spirit's vessel, Barefoot and lean, eating their bread, as chanc'd, At the first table. Modern Shepherd's need Those who on either hand may prop and lead them, So burly are they grown: and from behind Others to hoist them. Down the palfrey's sides Spread their broad mantles, so as both the beasts Are cover'd with one skin. O patience! thou That lookst ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... fully conscious of the evil. He recognized that the fault of the government lay in the fact that it did not govern, and he deplored that his own function, in a decadent age, was but "to prop up mouldering institutions." He was not constitutionally averse from change; and he was too clear-sighted not to see that, sooner or later, change was inevitable. But his interest was in the fascinating game of diplomacy; he was ambitious of playing the leading part on the great stage ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... miss the minute divisions, subdivisions, and definitions, the lettered and numbered headings, the variations of type, and all the other mechanical artifices on which they are accustomed to prop their minds. But my main desire has been to make them conceive, and, if possible, reproduce sympathetically in their imagination, the mental life of their pupil as the sort of active unity which he himself feels it to be. He doesn't ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... of the moorland into a lovely and fertile valley, where, quite unexpectedly, we came 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 pretension. The locality, it would seem, was well supplied ...
— 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
... Should I then boast! where lies that foot of ground Within his whole Realm, that I have not past, Fighting and conquering; Far then from me Be ostentation. I could tell the world How I have laid his Kingdom desolate By this sole Arm prop't by divinity, Stript him out of his glories, and have sent The pride of all his youth to people graves, And made his Virgins languish for their Loves, If I would brag, should I that have the power To teach the Neighbour world humility, Mix ...
— A King, and No King • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... had sat down upon the ground, the better to prop the poor lad, "his hand twitches! he lives! oh, sir, he lives! Whose boy is he?" (to the people, who came hurrying and gathering to the spot at the ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... arrived beneath the beech. "I see nothing," said Herr von S. "You must step over there, right here on this spot!" Yes, it was true; the Baron recognized his own old shoes. "God, it is John! Prop up the ladder!—so—now down—gently, gently! Don't let him fall! Good heaven, the worms are at him already! But loose the knot anyway, and his necktie!" A broad scar was visible; the Baron drew back. "Good God!" he said; he bent over the body again, examined the scar with great care, and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... been sent by Sir Colin to report what was going on in the interior of the Kaisarbagh) appeared on the roof. Once more I picked up the colour, and found that this time the staff had been broken in two. Notwithstanding, I managed to prop it up a third time on the turret, and it was not again hit, though the enemy continued to fire ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... declare that all supports must be suppressed? [A pause] Religion is a prop. It soothes—consoles. He ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... more with their toes than their fingers, and, on the whole, presented a picture of contentment and comfort. We Europeans had to use the lady elephant, as being the tamer of the two. On her back there were two little benches with sloping seats on both sides, and not the slightest prop for our backs. The wretched, undergrown youngsters seen in European circuses give no idea of the real size of this noble beast. The mahout, or driver, placed himself between the huge animal's ears whilst ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... one; Church, state, and faction wrestle in the dark, Tossed by the deluge in their common ark. Shorn of her bishops, banks, and dividends, Another Babel soars—but Britain ends. And why? to pamper the self-seeking wants, 650 And prop the hill of these agrarian ants. "Go to these ants, thou sluggard, and be wise;" Admire their patience through each sacrifice, Till taught to feel the lesson of their pride, The price of taxes and of homicide; Admire their ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... Rothenburger Krug and the Staffelstein, with their "property" students, cheeks scarred with red ink, singing "Heidelberg" (from "The Prince of Pilsen") for the edification and impression of foreign visitors, and fiercely and frequently challenging other prop. students to immediate duel. The girls, alas, in these places are not unlovely. Well do I remember the dainty Elsa of the Hopfenbluethe, she of face kissed by the Prussian dawn, and employed at sixteen marks the week to wink dramatically at the old roues and give the resort "an air." Well ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... front windows, some of them, were shattered and open, and others were boarded up. Trees and shrubbery were growing neglected, so as quite to block up the lower part. There was an aged barn near at hand, so ruinous that it had been necessary to prop it up. There were two old carts, both of which had lost a wheel. Everything was in keeping. At first I supposed that there would be no inhabitants in such a dilapidated place; but, passing on, I looked back, and saw a decrepit and infirm old ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... slender pittance on which he was doomed to subsist till Christmas. Happily that festive season was only a few weeks away now, and then how delighted he should be to send home a round half of his income, and convince himself he was after all a main prop to that dear distant ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... it 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 ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... prop during the years of agony and disaster, Lloyd George is, in the last analysis, merely an eloquent and spectacular politician with the genius of opportunism. One reason why he holds his post is that there is no one to take his place,—another ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... sect he belongs to, or what creed he believes: but I look on the man who is firmly persuaded of infinite Wisdom and Goodness superintending and directing every circumstance that can happen in his lot—I felicitate such a man for having a solid foundation for his mental enjoyment; a firm prop and sure stay, in the hour of difficulty, trouble, and distress; and a never-failing anchor of hope when he ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... desolate, and as I sat down by the toilet table, such sad eyes looked into mine from the depths of the mirror, that a curious self-pitying feeling made me prop my chin on my hands and exchange looks of silent sympathy with ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various
... he is lean and he is sick; His body, dwindled and awry, Rests upon ankles swoln and thick; 35 His legs are thin and dry. One prop he has, and only one, His wife, an aged woman, Lives with him, near the waterfall, Upon the village Common. ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... to remind him that though he might be only answerable to himself at St. Kitt's, killing became murder upon the high seas. In politics he was, as became his official position, a stout prop of the House of Hanover, and he swore in his cups that he had never met a Jacobite without pistolling him where he stood. Yet for all his vapouring and his violence he was so good a companion, with such a stream of strange anecdote and reminiscence, that Scarrow ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... land is his; the other sees himself as a merchant, with a heavy golden chain on his paunch, standing at his shop-door; the third means to cultivate black roses and incidentally become a millionaire—and this castle in the air we cherish, and care for, and prop up, and support as long as we live, and for the most part we do not in the least notice that it has long since collapsed beyond repair. I have long thought I must tell you this some time, in order that you might know it and thank ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... rings in largesse, When the fight's red rain-drops fell, Bright of face, with heart-strings hardy, Hogni's father met his fate; Then his brow with helmet shrouding, Bearing battle-shield, he spake, "I will die the prop of battle, Sooner die than yield an inch. Yes, sooner die than ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... considered it necessary, aye, had it organized by the State, as well in Greece as in Rome. What views existed on the subject during the Middle Ages has likewise been described. Even St. Augustine, who, next to St. Paul, must be looked upon as the most important prop of Christendom, and who diligently preached asceticism, could not refrain from exclaiming: "Suppress the public girls, and the violence of passion will knock everything of a heap." The provincial Council of Milan, in 1665, expressed itself in ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... be well for us all if we could have our legs stretched out and go with our heads two or three bracci foremost! It's ill standing upright with hunger to prop you." ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... to be an accident here," declared the girl aloud. "I wonder the company doesn't send out men to fix it. Although I guess they could not prop up that pole. It ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson
... 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
... passage of the savages, to the frontier of Virginia. An army of six hundred men, principally Indians, led on by Hamilton, the governor of Detroit—a man at once bold and active, yet blood-thirsty and cruel, and well known as a chief instigator of the savages to war, and as a stay and prop of tories—left Detroit and proceeded towards the theatre of Clarke's renown. With this force, he calculated on being able to effect his purpose as regarded Col. Clarke and his little band of bold and daring adventurers, and to spread devastation ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... you what I will do; I will go down and ask grandma what she thinks would be best for you. Would you like to sit up in bed? I can put something over your shoulders and prop you up with pillows, or how would you like to get into my bed? There is more room and you can look out of the window. I will bundle you up ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard
... lakes, and ponds are endowed with added beauty from the lovely names they wear—a tragic yet a charming legacy from Kanonsis and Kanonsionni, the brave and mighty people of the Long House, and those outside its walls who helped to prop or ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... not having availed himself at a crisis like the one in which he was called upon to act, rendered his conduct doubtful, and all his intended operations suspicious to both parties, whether his feelings were really inclined to prop up the fallen kingly authority, or his newly-acquired republican principles prompted him to become the head of the democratical party, for no one can see into the hearts of men; his popularity from that moment ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... that it is part of a semi-religious rite, on the analogy of the Freemasons' special handshake and the like. Nor do I altogether agree with the authorities who allege that man, when standing up, needs something as a prop or support. There is a shadow of reason, I grant, in this supposition, but after years of keen observation I am inclined to think that the umpire keeps his bat by him, firstly, in order that no unlicensed hand shall commandeer it unbeknownst, and secondly, ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... has his house, his orchard, his road-side trees, so laden with fruit, that if he did not carefully prop up, and tie together, and in many places hold the boughs together with wooden clamps, they would be torn asunder by their own weight. He has his corn-plot, his plot for mangel-wurzel or hay, for potatoes, for hemp, etc. He is his own master, and he therefore, and every branch of his family, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... KEW by Thames's glittering side; Obedient sails from realms unfurrow'd bring For her the unnam'd progeny of spring; 565 Attendant Nymphs her dulcet mandates hear, And nurse in fostering arms the tender year, Plant the young bulb, inhume the living seed, Prop the weak stem, the erring tendril lead; Or fan in glass-built fanes the stranger flowers 570 With milder gales, and steep with warmer showers. Delighted Thames through tropic umbrage glides, And flowers antarctic, bending o'er his tides; Drinks the new tints, ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... who was like iron with mob and mutiny, was pitiably helpless before such a prop of the aristocracy. He flew into a rage, and rated the landlord in Scotch and English, and I was fain to put my tongue in my cheek and turn my back that my laughter might ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... he had read the Bible touching the duties of children to their parents, instanced the fact that Paul's dear mother would probably pine away and die, and ended with a pathetic reference to losing the prop of his old age. Paul listened respectfully and held to his own opinion. In defence of the ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... 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 ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... which I had arrived concerning the books of the Bible. I conceived myself to be resting under an Indian Figtree, which is supported by certain grand stems, but also lets down to the earth many small branches, which seem to the eye to prop the tree, but in fact are supported by it. If they were cut away, the tree would not be less strong. So neither was the tree of Christianity weakened by the loss of its apparent props. I might still enjoy its shade, and eat of its fruits, and bless ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... the line shuffled restlessly; some stood rigidly quiet. One had brought a camp stool; many were seated on the steps. Beyond, where the line passed an open lot, a wooden fence afforded a convenient prop. One read a book, another a paper. Three were studying what was probably the score of the symphony or of the concerto they expected to hear ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... iron garden nails, an inch and a quarter long and 1/8 in. thick in the middle. These I weighed, and selected such as were nearly of the same weight. I then arranged matters so that by removing a prop I could cause the blunt edge of a steel chisel weighted to 4lb. 2oz., to fall from a given height upon the middle of the nail as it was supported from each end, 1-1/16 in. asunder. In order to secure the absolute fairness of the trials, the nails were taken at random, and an experiment with ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... proprietor of the famous Marble Soap. Jowett spent on advertising every year a quarter of a million, it was said. Jowett was the stay and prop of periodical literature. New papers that secured the Marble Soap advertisement lived and prospered; the new paper to which it was denied languished and died. Jowett, and how to get hold of him; Jowett, and how to get round him, formed ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... astonishment, he sprang to the side of the idol, and pushing it away from the stones against which it rested, endeavoured to make it stand upon its legs. But the divinity had lost the use of them altogether; and while Kory-Kory was trying to prop it up, placing a stick between it and the pi-pi, the monster fell clumsily to the ground, and would have infallibly have broken its neck had not Kory-Kory providentially broken its fall by receiving ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... with, and only finds itself at ease in systematic opposition. If it were not for this, the high towers and rotten places of the world would fall before the battering-ram of his hard-headed reasoning; but if he once found them tottering, he would apply his strength to prop them up, and disappoint the expectations of his followers. He cannot agree to anything established, nor to set up anything else in its stead. While it is established, he presses hard against it, because it presses upon him, at least in imagination. Let it ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... heavy, that when they galloped at each other with big clothes-prop things, and one of 'em was knocked off his horse, and lay flat on the ground, he couldn't get up again without his squires ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... Haden said emphatically. "It's t' first time as e'er I heard o' t' right man being picked out wi'out a question o' age. I know him, and I tell 'ee, he mayn't know t' best place for putting in a prop, or of timbering in loose ground, as well as us as is old enough to be his fathers; but he knows as much about t' book learning of a mine as one of the government inspector chaps. You mightn't think it pleasant for me, ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... big lights jarred finally off and the director said, "That's all, boys." Then he turned to call, "Jimmie! Hey, Jimmie! Where's that prop-rustler gone to now?" ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... while, Jack," I replied. "He might prop a little, certainly; but it's only playfulness." So I swung into the deep seat of the stolen saddle, and lightly touched the lotus-loving Memphian ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... know that it is salt; nor need a critic dissect a whole system after proving that its premises are rotten. I shall accordingly confine myself to a few of the points that captivate beginners most; and assume that if they break down, so must the system which they prop. ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... designate those in which people receive more from others than they give), who had lost them, and who wished to occupy them again. To one, two hundred rubles were indispensable, in order that he might prop up a failing business, and complete the education of his children which had been begun; another wanted a photographic outfit; a third wanted his debts paid, and respectable clothing purchased for him; a fourth needed a piano, in order to perfect himself and support his family by giving lessons. ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... than that," he was told. "And here's the very prop to slip down through that opening. I think I can reach it right now, if you stop the work ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... also, what he seems still more proud of, a lord of parliament; but I will front him in both capacities, and frankly tell him, that in the first he is a burthen to his own estate, and not a benefactor; and in the second, a peer but not a prop. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... managed to prop a sack against the small cobwebbed window, fastened the door with a rusty bolt, and brought out an electric torch he ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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, and the father was so alone in the world, without any heir and ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... had befallen the aged apple-tree in which his palace stood contributed to this depression of mind. The gale had cracked a very large bough, which, having shown signs of weakness, had for many years been supported by a prop carefully put up by the farmer. But whether the prop in course of time had decayed at the line where the air and earth exercise their corroding influence upon wood; or whether the bough had stiffened with age, and could not swing easily to the wind; or whether, as seems most likely, ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... intersections at n being composed of two compound derived shadows, forms a compound shadow and not a simple one, as happens with other intersections of compound shadows. This occurs, according to the 2nd [diagram] of this [prop.] which says:—The intersection of derived shadows when produced by the intersection of columnar shadows caused by a single light does not produce a simple shadow. And this is the corollary of the 1st [prop.] which says:—The intersection ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... Yes, and Catiline too; Though story wrong his fame; for he conspired To prop the reeling glory of his country, ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway
... letter, my dear fellow. It's less pessimistic than I expected, and gives me the impression that I may regard you as a Prop. I shall follow your advice rigidly, though I must juggle some of the details, as Caspian has taken advantage of the poor little girl's love for her father, and practically (from what I understand) blackmailed her into promising to marry him. Mrs. Winston is ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... tag; tooth; hook, hook and eye; lock, holdfast^, padlock, rivet; anchor, grappling iron, trennel^, stake, post. cement, glue, gum, paste, size, wafer, solder, lute, putty, birdlime, mortar, stucco, plaster, grout; viscum^. shackle, rein &c (means of restraint) 752; prop &c (support) 215. V. bridge over, span; connect &c ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... 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
... prop of an agricultural country such as Russia principally is, the peasant population, is pauperized, starving and is being driven under the banners of the Red Armies by lash and rifle. The numerically small class of intellectuals ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... Pteris in abundance. Hymenophyllum, Davallia atrata, Diplazium, Begonia Malabarica? Bambusa spiculis hispidis, Hypni sp. spinivenio prop. Dicranum glaucum, etc. etc. A fine ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... 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 to the spear of the enemy, they signified their ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... coat on that dresser, my man, will you?' he says. 'Now lift him gently. Don't wake him. He's set his course for the Old Country.... Now just lay me on the floor, and prop me up against ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... of human thinking. Not the practical necessity, but the internal consistency of this notion, and the original right to such a notion, was the point of inquisition. For, attend, courteous reader, and three separate propositions will set before your eyes the difficulty. First Prop., which, for the sake of greater precision, permit me to throw into Latin:—Non datur aliquid [A] quo posito ponitur aliud [B] a priori; that is, in other words, You cannot lay your hands upon that one object or phenomenon [A] in the whole circle of ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... British superiority in manufactures the Great Exhibition was a great success; but as heralding an era of universal peace it was a mournful failure. Three years later England, France, and Sardinia were fighting Russia to prop the rotten empire of the Turk. Then came the Great Mutiny; then the four years of fratricidal strife between the Northern and Southern States; then the war of Prussia and Austria; then the overthrow of France by Germany. All these events had their influence ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... delighting in it, asking nothing better than to be philandering with Laetitia, or escorting Laetitia, or gazing at Laetitia. That did make you angry enough with a man to hate a man. It was like seeing a good book—as it might be "Lombard Street"—used to prop a table leg; or a jolly dog—as the dearest Scotch terrier once brought to the boarding house—led for a walk on a leash by an old maiden mistress and wearing a lapdog's flannel coat with ribbon bows ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... staring at the open passage and prostrate door as if he saw them for the first time, then proceeded to examine the hinges. They were broken; the half of each remained fast to the door-post, the other half to the door. New hinges were necessary; in the meantime he must prop it up. This he did; and before he left the room, as it was much in want of fresh air, ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... still lay in the chamois bag against her bosom, but the additional five dollars a week on to her salary was a saving prop against the not infrequent sag of ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... live at the Red House at Christmas. After the holidays the girls went to the Blackheath High School, and we boys went to the Prop. (that means the Proprietary School). And we had to swot rather during term; but about Easter we knew the deceitfulness of riches in the vac., when there was nothing much on, like pantomimes and things. Then there was the summer term, and ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... reconciled through the blood of the everlasting covenant,—resting sweetly on the bosom, and the work of Jesus,—to Him committing thine eternal all. My soul! stay thyself on God, that so this blessed peace may be thine. Thou hast tried the world. It has deceived thee. Prop after prop of earthly scaffolding has yielded, and tottered, and fallen. Has thy God ever done so? Ah! this false and counterfeit world-peace may do well for the world's work, and the world's day of prosperity. But test it in the hour of sorrow; and what can it do for thee when most ...
— The Faithful Promiser • John Ross Macduff
... course, knocked away the chief prop which sustained the Alderman, and when the news of its passage reached Philadelphia, Tom was the most indignant man that had been seen there ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... of my little flock, the loveliest and the last, 'Tis sweet to dream what thou may'st be, when long, long years have past; To think when time hath blanched my hair, and others leave my side, Thou may'st be still my prop and stay, my blessing ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... Winter fled afar To hills that prop the polar star; And loves on deer-borne car to ride With barren darkness at his side Round the shore where loud Lofoden Whirls to death the roaring whale, Round the hall where Runic Odin Howls his war-song to the gale— ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... Dunster's remonstrances, and commendations of tea, David would reply, "Botheration, Betty, wench! Dunna tell me about thy tea and such-like pig's-wesh. It's all very well for women; but a man, Betty, a man mun ha' a sup of real stingo, lass. He mun ha' summut to prop his ribs out, lass, as he delves through th' chert and tood-stone. When tha weylds th' maundrel (the pick), and I wesh th' dishes, tha shall ha' th' drink, my wench, and I'll ha' th' tea. Till then, prithee let me aloon, and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... total eclipse, I may say. The fact is, my head is so heavy, that it rolls about on my shoulders; and I must have a stiffener down my throat to prop it up. So, Moonshine, shine out, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... are living here!... Such precision! Such practical ability!... They must appreciate you, they must understand you. If there's anything I can do, believe me ... oh, I love young people! I'm in love with young people! The younger generation are the one prop of our suffering country. Her ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... 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 ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... now very anxious to come to some amicable understanding with the Government, and, if possible, to prop up the concern. They are very angry with their more violent compeers (Grote, Leader, &c.), and Fonblanque told me last night that they would take the slightest concessions, the least thing that would satisfy ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... I am sure you would not," said Mistress Anerley, getting up a smile, yet freshening his perception of a tear as well—"you would never have the heart to destroy that poor old couple by striking the last prop from under them. By the will of the Lord they are broken down enough. They are quietly hobbling to their graves, and would you be the man to come and knock them on ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... the night, and from this usually learn that the proper treatment is rest. When it is absolutely impossible to remain in bed long enough for the swelling to disappear, the next best plan is to accept every opportunity, during the day, to sit down and prop up the feet. ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... 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; ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... "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
... which have been urged against this 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 counterparts in the circumstances of the Passion, as ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... perfect form had better be an inch and a half or even two inches in diameter; but, as a rule, they should not be of a larger size, for the reason that the amount of water that they may be expected to carry will not be sufficient to keep them prop erly freed from silt unless the flow is concentrated ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... upon an innocent creature; for what it is really doing is breathing, not drinking. Even a frog, which has nostrils opening into its throat, still has to swallow its air in gulps, as you can see by watching its throat when it is sitting quietly. And, strange as it may seem, if you prop its mouth open, it will suffocate, because it can ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... qualities check its rise, and depress it in its ascent, and render it like a weak traveller, that often sits down and then goes on again. And therefore the ivy requires something to twine about, and needs a prop; for it is not able to sustain and direct its own branches, because it wants heat, which naturally tends upward. The snow is melted by the wetness of the leaf, for water destroys it easily, passing through the thin contexture, it ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... the high contracting parties was wordy, bristled with the gesticulations of two pair of hands, and was commented on by all the guests in the "Fiore del Marinajo." The girl, said Don Urbano, was the very pride of his eye, prop of his failing years, a little mother to the children. She had had a most pious bringing-up, never missed the Rosary, knew the Little Hours of the Virgin, could do sums with notches in a stick, market like a Jew's housekeeper, ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... the lowermost and pitching him forward. He clamped his broadbrim on his head with one hand and steadied his holster with the other, straightened up with half-stifled expletive, and the next minute was swarming up the slender iron rungs of the signal-ladder. "He's got to prop it up where it belongs," said the sergeant. "Reckon he must have shot the wire that held it." And of a truth the wire was severed. But when Cullin turned back to his train with the mystery cleared, the sight and sound of new commotion blocked ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... triumphant far and near, Do make bad men to shrink with coward fear, And God's own Catholic church to fructify. In armor clad, like maddened Mars he moves; The trembling Huguenot cowers at his glance; A prop for holy church is his good lance; His eye is ever mild to those ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... strife. It must turn from that Slave Oligarchy which now 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 ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... account, we cannot fail to see the wisdom, foresight, and comparative strictness[251] with which the bishops carried out the great revolution that so depotentiated the Church as to make her capable of becoming a prop of civic society and of the state, without forcing any great changes upon them.[252] In learning to look upon the Church as a training school for salvation, provided with penalties and gifts of grace, and in giving ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... in Heaven and on earth; for, believe me, true worldly happiness and heavenly happiness are to be found on exactly the same road. Believe me: the dear God has brought you together to help each other gain Heaven, to be prop and staff to each other on the narrow, toilsome way that leads to eternal life, to level and lighten that way for each other through love, meekness, and long-suffering—for it is rough and thorny. Now when gloomy days come, when faults break out in one or the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... would gain by it. To-day I have five hundred men in my employ, who are poorly paid, but who pursue the work with an enthusiasm which possibly may be born of fear. These men enter every shade and grade of society; some even are pillars of the most exclusive social temples; others are the prop and pride of the financial world; still others, hold undisputed sway among the 'Fancy and the Talent.' I choose them at my leisure from those who reply to my advertisements. It is easy enough, they are all cowards. I could treble the number in twenty days if I wished. So you see, ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... shallow pretender to a Master in Science as this remarkable production, in which one of the most exact of observers, most cautious of reasoners, and most candid of expositors, of this or any other age, is held up to scorn as a "flighty" person, who endeavours "to prop up his utterly rotten fabric of guess and speculation," and whose "mode of dealing with nature" is reprobated as "utterly dishonourable to Natural Science." And all this high and mighty talk, which ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... progeny is considered a blessing, as being likely to prop the declining years of their parents, but in Dahomy, children are taken from their mothers at an early age, and distributed in villages remote from the places of their nativity, where they remain with but little chance of being ever seen, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... around the sun, which in turn is only one of countless suns—for every star is a sun. Now Newton wondered what held these mighty spheres in their places in space, for they appeared to move in definite and well-regulated orbits without any visible support or prop. It is alleged that the answer to the problem was suggested by the great philosopher's observation of a falling apple. The same invisible force that made the apple fall to the ground must, he is said to have reasoned, control the moon, sun, and stars. The earth ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... a chamber darkened as hers had been, he was lying now, worn out with constant anxiety and watching. When Nina left, his prop was gone, and the fever which had lain in wait for him so long, kindled within his veins a fire like to that which had burned in Edith's, but his strong, muscular frame met it fiercely, and the ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... will be fruitful rather than merely helpful. I would lecture for a school when I would not for a distressed author; and would have helped De Marvy to perfect his invention, but not—unless I had no other object—his widow after he was gone. In a word, I like to prop the falling more than to ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... would he survive his loss. Other fathers may be devoted to their sons: his devotion was something more than theirs. How should it be otherwise? In him, and in him alone, the father saw the zealous guardian of his lawless rule, the champion of his old age, the sole prop of tyranny. If grief did not kill him on the spot, despair, I knew, must do so; there could be no further joy in life for him when his protector was slain. Nature, grief, despair, foreboding, terror,—these ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... same proportions be found to hold good with respect to thin plates of a denser medium, which is, indeed, not improbable, it will be necessary to adopt the connected demonstrations of Prop. IV., but, at any rate, if a thin plate be interposed between a rarer and a denser medium, the colors by reflection and transmission may ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... the case. If the Tritons of the Solway shall proceed to pull down honest Joshua's tide-nets, I am neither Quixote enough in disposition, nor Goliath enough in person, to attempt their protection. I have no idea of attempting to prop a falling house by putting my shoulders against it. And indeed, Joshua gave me a hint that the company which he belongs to, injured in the way threatened (some of them being men who thought after the fashion of the world), would pursue the rioters at law, and recover damages, in which ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... the confusion of the wearied ones of Slade—and they of the Schools, accustomed to the culture of Colvin, whose polished scalp I with difficulty collected, ceasing to distinguish between the quick and the dead, will probably prop up our late 'Arry as professor, long to remain undetected in ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... favor," laughed the monarch. "I ever prefer sober manhood to callow youth about me. The one is a prop, stanch, tried; the other a reed that bends this way and that, or breaks when ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... the spade, has discharged a more pressing debt to the country by levelling with the dust at least one insolent and murderous Invader;—these have attested the efficacy of the passions which we have been contemplating—that the will of good men is not a vain impulse, heroic desires a delusive prop;—have proved that the condition of human affairs is not so forlorn and desperate, but that there are golden opportunities when the dictates of justice may be unrelentingly enforced, and the beauty of the inner mind substantiated in the outward act;—for ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... dust, removing the dust and inspecting them at intervals. Discovering nothing amiss, we returned to the old temple, and at its doorway met the mountaineer, Japhet, who throughout all these proceedings had been our prop and stay. Indeed, without his help and that of his authority over the Abati the mine could never have been completed, at ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... behind! He sets them sure, where'er their lordships run, Close at their elbows, as a morning dun; As if their grandeur, by contagion, wrought, And fame was, like a fever, to be caught: But after seven years' dance, from place to place, The(13) Dane is more familiar with his grace. Who'd be a crutch to prop a rotten peer; Or living pendant dangling at his ear, For ever whisp'ring secrets, which were blown For months before, by trumpets, thro' the town? Who'd be a glass, with flattering grimace, Still to reflect the temper of his face; Or happy pin to stick upon his sleeve, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... books and antiquities and rare marble fragments, in a spacious room surrounded with laden shelves, Romola was his daily companion and assistant. There was a time when he had hoped that his son, Dino, would have followed in his steps, to be the prop of his age, and to take up and continue his scholarly labours after he was dead. But Dino had failed him; Dino had given himself up to religion and entered the priesthood, and the passion of Bardo's resentment had flamed into fierce hatred towards this recreant son of his, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... Prop. In faith I am not, Publius; nor I cannot. Sick minds are like sick men that burn with fevers, Who when they drink, please but a present taste, And after bear a more impatient fit. Pray let me leave you; I offend you all, And ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... venture the rich freightage of your happiness in crazy vessels. If you do, be sure that, somewhere or other, before your life is ended, the poor frail craft will strike on some black rock rising sheer from the depths, and will grind itself to chips there. If your life twines round any prop but God your strength, be sure that, some time or other, the stay to which its tendrils cling will be plucked up, and the poor vine will be lacerated, its clusters crushed, and its sap ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... is incomprehensible. The one key to it is his persistent cultivation of Bonar Law, who in the Coalition was the great prop to the Premier. Beaverbrook hugely admires Lloyd George. He reverences Bonar Law. The Premier and himself had too many points, though not characteristics, in common to become running mates. Intimately congenial to the Unionist leader, Aitken was ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... marvelling he spake, and added furthermore: "Marcellus lo! neath Spoils of Spoils how great and glad he goes, And overtops all heroes there, the vanquisher of foes: Yea, he shall prop the Roman weal when tumult troubleth all, And ride amid the Punic ranks, and crush the rising Gaul, And hang in sire Quirinus' house ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... a sob, half a sigh, escaped the lawyer's lips. "A spirit like hers needs no other prop than her ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... The government is convinced that it depends for its salvation wholly on them, that it is sustained because they uphold it, and that the day on which they cease to support it, it will fall like a manikin that has lost its prop. They intimidate the government with an uprising of the people and the people with the forces of the government, whence originates a simple game, very much like what happens to timid persons when they visit gloomy places, ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... 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 ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... magnified. But the mournful looking trees along the coast and all about Hilo are mostly the Pandanus odoratissimus, a spreading and branching tree which grows fully twenty-five feet high, supports itself among inaccessible rocks by its prop-like roots, and is one of the first plants to appear on the newly-formed Pacific islands. {62} Its foliage is singularly dense, although it is borne in tufts of a quantity of long yucca-like leaves on the branches. The shape of the tree is usually circular. The mournful look ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... destitute of trick and artifice. He seemed come upon the stage to do the poet's message simply, and he did it with as genuine fidelity as the nuncios in Homer deliver the errands of the gods. He let the passion or the sentiment do its own work without prop or bolstering. He would have scorned to mountebank it; and betrayed none of that cleverness which is the bane of serious acting. For this reason, his Iago was the only endurable one which I remember to have seen. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... Johnson despondingly; "first one prop's taken away, and then another; and after a bit the roof'll fall in, and make an end ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... did notice them, seeing that I had to prop him up—me and Murcher between us. He was a long chap, with a red face, the lower part ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... When Judson was appointed to take charge of the thing on her little trip of six or seven thousand miles southward, his first remark as he went to look her over in dock was, "Bai Jove, that topmast wants staying forward!" The topmast was a stick about as thick as a clothes-prop, but the flat-iron was Judson's first command, and he would not have exchanged his position for second post on the "Anson" or the "Howe". He navigated her, under convoy, tenderly and lovingly to ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... to think of myself as alone." The strong lines in Scarborough's face were in evidence. "But it would disturb me if I were propped up and weren't sure I could stand alone. I'm afraid to lean on any one or anything—my prop might give way. And I don't want any friends or any associates who value me for any other reason than what I myself am. I purpose never to 'belong' to anything ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... not wish to see. In his metaphysic, will is placed above intelligence, and in his personality the character is superior to the understanding, as one might logically expect. And the consequence is, that he may prop up what is tottering, but he makes no conquests; he may help to preserve existing truths and beliefs, but he is destitute of initiative or vivifying power. He is a moralizing but not a suggestive or stimulating influence. A popularizer, apologist and orator of the greatest merit, he is a schoolman ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... which George could think only of the ghastly figure on the sofa. She sat upright, generally, against a prop of cushions, dressed in a white French tea-gown, slim enough to begin, with, but far too large now for the shrunk form—a bright spot of rouge on either pinched cheek, and the dyed "fringe" and "coils" covering all the once shapely head. ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the word which is here translated prowess, e.g. cobnet, colwed, eofned, but all of them are capable of that construction, thus "cobnet" comes from cobiaw, to thump, "colwed," from col a sting, or a prop, whilst "eofned" ...
— Y Gododin - A Poem on the Battle of Cattraeth • Aneurin
... somebody is going to introduce a new plank into the platform, and if he does, the Union must tumble down; until at last I begin to think it is such a rickety old platform that it is impossible to prop it up. But then I bring my own judgment to bear, instead of relying on witnesses, and I come to the conclusion that the Union is strong and safe—strong in its power as well as in the affections of ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... at his men. They were not disposed to second him yet. They one and all approved his personal battle with Fate, and never more admired him and felt his power; but the affair was exciting, and they were not the pillars to prop ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sah, and ebber hab been, and ebber will be. Don't t'ink, Masser Mile, I marry ole Cupid, myself, if anoder prop'r connection offer in 'e family; but I prefar him, to marry ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... in these ungovernable times, than attempt to prove its weaknesses inherent; to look obstinately at the golden side only of the double-wielded shield: instead of picking away at a soft stone in constitutional foundations, our feeble wish magnanimously prefers to prop it and plaster it, flinging away that injurious pick-axe. The title of this once-considered lucubration is far too suggestive to carping minds of more than the much that it means, to be without objection: nevertheless, I did begin, and therefore, always under shelter of a domino, and protesting ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... leaf sheath, but lets it run down the outside to the root where it is needed. As the plant gets older and taller, new roots come out from the node next above the root and sometimes from the second node above. These prop-roots are needed for support as the stalk lengthens, and they ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... some time since, Endeavour'd vainly to convince A hungry fisherman Of his unfitness for the frying-pan. The fisherman had reason good— The troutling did the best he could— Both argued for their lives. Now, if my present purpose thrives, I'll prop my former proposition By building on a small addition. A certain wolf, in point of wit The prudent fisher's opposite, A dog once finding far astray, Prepared to take him as his prey. The dog his ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... winding road that tumbles down to some Cotswold village. Let an inn parlour lie behind red curtains, and a table be drawn toward the fire. Let there be a loin of cold beef, an elbow of yellow cheese, a tankard of dog's nose. Then may we prop our Bacon's Essays against the pewter and study those mellow words: "Certainly it is heaven upon earth to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth." Haec studio, ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... three of the state elephants, with sufficient troops to form an imposing escort, and at the same time to make opposition useless. A letter couched in terms of the utmost friendliness, conferring upon the Prince the title of Prop-of-the-Kingdom, will be ready in a short time for her Highness's signature, and I shall present it with the patent of investiture and the khilat. Other khilats are being prepared in readiness for a durbar to-night, at which the Rajah will confer them upon the councillors offended ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... experiences, in welcoming what is pleasant, what feeds our vanity and self-satisfaction, what gives one, like the rich fool, the sense of false security of goods stored up for the years? We are set in life to feel insecure, or at all events to gain stability and security of soul, not to prop up our failing and timid senses upon the pillows of wealth and ease and circumstance. The man whom I entirely envy is the man who walks into the dark valley of misfortune or sickness or grief, or the shadow of death, with a curious and inexpressible zest for facing and interrogating ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the work we discern most distinctly in the constant, often—most decidedly, doubtless, in the case of the Aquitanian expedition (III. XI. The Censorship A Prop of the Nobility)— not successful, justification of every single act of war as a defensive measure which the state of things had rendered inevitable. That the adversaries of Caesar censured his attacks on the Celts and Germans above all as unprovoked, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... round the waterhole with a clothes prop, and made good time, too; but we got across and ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... ready for sleep. Then, as ever, he would prop himself up in bed, light his pipe, and lose himself in English or French history until sleep conquered. His room-mate did not approve of this habit; it interfered with his own rest, and with his fiendish tendency to mischief he found reprisal ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... resuscitated for a time. We had a powerful set of pulley tackle by which, when made fast to a neighbouring tree, they could be restored to the perpendicular, after enlarging the hole left by the roots, making the ground firm again round the tree, and placing a strong sloping prop to take the weight on the weak side; good yields would then often continue for ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... woods with me, gunning and trouting. I taught her how to skate when she was a mere baby. I often said she was all the brother I had in the world! She can remember now how I used to wrap her in shawls, and prop her up on the woodpile, while ...
— Little Prudy's Sister Susy • Sophie May
... propriety of at once fixing the Chilian Government upon a base not to be shaken by the fall of the present tyranny in Peru, of which there are not only indications, but the result is inevitable—unless, indeed, the mischievous counsels of vain and mercenary men can suffice to prop up a fabric of the most barbarous political architecture, serving as a screen from whence to dart their weapons against the heart of liberty. Thank God, my hands are free from the stain of labouring in any such work; and having finished all you gave me to do, I may now rest ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... into the obscurity of the river Yuan (in Honan), I had no appetite for the political affairs of the country. As the result of the revolution in Hsin Hai, I was by mistake elected by the people. Reluctantly I came out of my retirement and endeavoured to prop up the tottering structure. I cared for nothing, but the salvation of the country. A perusal of our history of several thousand years will reveal in vivid manner the sad fate of the descendants of ancient kings and emperors. What then could have prompted me ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... us in each shift, to drive, and, if necessary, prop the roof, with some of the natives to carry out the earth. If we have three shifts, each shift would go on twice in the twenty-four hours; that would be four hours on and ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... Louis Quinze drawing-room without having, as he would have described it, done anything but give the lady of the scene a superior chance not to betray a defeated hope—not, that is, to fail of the famous "pride" mostly supposed to prop even the most infatuated women at such junctures; by which chance, to do her justice, she had thoroughly seemed to profit. But he finally rose from his later station with a feeling of better success. ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... beloved son, he whose birth made all my happiness, whose infancy and growing years were all my occupation, whose youth was my pride and consolation, and who would, as I hoped, be the prop of my old age, no longer lives. He has been taken from us in the midst of completed happiness, and of the happiest prospects of the future, whilst each day he gained in virtue, in understanding, in wisdom, following the footsteps of his noble and excellent ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... seem that to be created does not belong to composite and subsisting things. For in the book, De Causis (prop. iv) it is said, "The first of creatures is being." But the being of a thing created is not subsisting. Therefore creation properly speaking does not belong to subsisting ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... 1: The higher a virtue is, the greater the number of things to which it extends, as stated in De Causis, prop. x, xvii. Wherefore from the very fact that wisdom as a gift is more excellent than wisdom as an intellectual virtue, since it attains to God more intimately by a kind of union of the soul with Him, it is able ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... faculty in a healthy state, and cause it to know its duties. Dante, in the fierce egotism of his passions, and the strange identification of his knowledge with all that was knowable, would fain have made his poetry both a sword against individuals, and a prop for the support of the superstition that corrupted them. This was reversing the duty of a Christian and a great man; and there happen to be existing reasons why it is salutary to chew that he had no right to do so, and must not ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... them they might force it down his throat if they could raise his head. So they used a hand lever and a prop to elevate the muzzle, and were about to try another inpour, when Buck leaped to his feet, and behaving like one who has been shamming, made at full gallop for the stable, nor stopped till safely in his stall, where at once he dropped in all the evident agony ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... some juggler whose performance had given him the idea. So," continued Jones, producing a specimen of his advertisements in the theatrical publications, "I set out to find what professional had sold a 'prop', to an amateur. I found the sale had been made at Marsfield, Ohio, late in November of last year, by a 'Slippery Sam,' termed 'The Elusive Edwardes.' On November twenty-eighth of last year Mr. Harvey M. Greene, of Richmond, Virginia, was registered at the principal, in fact the only decent hotel, ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... roof without any brackets or pillars, on a new principle! The only comfort I had was in stumbling at length on the builder, and finding him a plain practical north-countryman with a foot rule in his pocket. I took him aside, and asked him should we, or could we, prop up any weak part of the place: especially the dressing-rooms, which were under our stage, the weight of which must be heavy on a new floor, and dripping wet walls. He told me there wasn't a stronger building in the world; and that, to allay the apprehension, they had opened it, on Thursday ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... seized upon the right hand of the King, which, as he assumed his wonted posture, had been employed in dragging the covering of his couch, and gradually pulling it to her with a force which was resisted, though but faintly, she possessed herself of that arm, the prop of Christendom and the dread of Heathenesse, and imprisoning its strength in both her little fairy hands, she bent upon it her brow, and united ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott |
