"Props" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... door of the workshop a year ago, after Nicky's death, and had not opened it again until to-day. This afternoon in the orchard he had seen that the props of the old apple-tree were broken and he had thought that he would like to make new ones, and the ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... clad In Jove's own mantle, seated on his high Embroider'd chariot 'midst the dust and cry Of the large theatre, loaden with a crown, Which scarce he could support—for it would down, But that his servant props it—and close by His page, a witness to his vanity: To these his sceptre and his eagle add, His trumpets, officers, and servants clad In white and purple; with the rest that day, He hir'd to triumph, for his bread, and pay; Had he these studied, sumptuous ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... its cloisters if possible, Titus would not resort to the use of fire; but ordered his men to force the gate, with crowbars and levers. After great efforts, a few of the stones of the threshold were removed; but the gates, supported by the massive walls and the props behind, defied ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... whose grandeur mocks the woe Which props the column of unnatural state! You the plainings, faint and low, From Misery's tortured soul that flow, 40 Shall usher to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... and the sailor hoisted themselves over the palisade, leapt into the enclosure, threw down the props which supported the inner door, ran into the empty house, and soon poor Herbert was lying on Ayrton's bed. In a few moments, Harding was ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness—these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked, where is the security for property, for reputation, ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... of these basins in the heart of old Paris would have offered precious scenes and tones of color to painters. What a forest of crossbeams supported the mills with their huge sails and their wheels! What strange effects were produced by the piles or props driven into the water to project the upper floors of the houses above the stream! Unfortunately, the art of genre painting did not exist in those days, and that of engraving was in its infancy. We have therefore lost that curious spectacle, still offered, ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... knees in my back, and the pressure of his whole body on my head. A Dutch surgeon who had taken his seat upon my left shoulder, and a Topaz (a black Christian soldier) bearing on my right; all which nothing could have enabled me to support but the props and pressure equally sustaining me all around. The two latter I frequently dislodged by shifting my hold on the bars and driving my knuckles into their ribs; but my friend above stuck fast, held immovable ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that you would go at it lawyer-fashion, Evan," he said; "which means, I suppose, that you would get the evidence on us. You can do it; the Lord knows, there's plenty of it to be had. But when you pull out one set of props the whole thing will come down. We haven't any of us been careful enough about what we put in writing—not even ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... employment was on Fraser's Magazine, when Mr. Fraser's shop was in Regent Street, when Oliver Yorke was the presumed editor, and among contributors, Carlyle was one of the most notable. I imagine that the battle of life was difficult enough with him even after he had become one of the leading props of that magazine. All that he wrote was not taken, and all that was taken was not approved. In 1837-38, the History of Samuel Titmarsh and the Great Hoggarty Diamond appeared in the magazine. The Great ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... sickly smile and broken words; and Irene was prepared, by the presentiments of her own heart, for the stroke that fell—victory was to her brother—his foe was crushed—Rome was free—but the lofty house of the Colonnas had lost its stateliest props, and Adrian was gone for ever!—She did not blame him; she could not blame her brother; each had acted as became his several station. She was the poor sacrifice of events and fate—the Iphigenia to the Winds which were to bear ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... see that sufficient props were reared, and then proceed with vigor, though always with caution. Courage in such an experiment is less to be dreaded than timidity. Half the evils of life, social, personal and political, are as much the effects of moral cowardice as ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... state of salvation? He goeth, before God, as surely damned to thirty thousand basketsful of devils as a pruning-bill to the lopping of a vine-branch. To revile with opprobrious speeches the good and courageous props and pillars of the Church,—is that to be called a poetical fury? I cannot rest satisfied with him; he sinneth grossly, and blasphemeth against the true religion. I am very much offended at his scandalizing words and contumelious obloquy. I do not care a straw, quoth ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... like the morning star, full of life, and splendour and joy," but had also supped and discussed with some of the destroyers, the encyclopaedists, "the sophisters, economists and calculators." His first speech on his return to England was a warning (March 17, 1773) that the props of good government were beginning to fail under the systematic attacks of unbelievers, and that principles were being propagated that would not leave to civil society any stability. The apprehension never died out in his mind; and when he knew that the principles and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... foliage droops in Hilo, and it was it that I noticed all along the windward coast as having a most striking peculiarity of aerial roots which the branches send down to the ground, and which I now see have large cup-shaped spongioles. These air-roots seem like props, and appear to vary in length from three to twelve feet, according to the situation of the tree. There is one variety I saw to-day, the "screw pine," which is really dangerous if one approached it unguardedly. It is a whorled ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... had been one of magnificent growth, but age or accident had severed the trunk, and within its heart decay had long been revelling. It was now perfectly hollow, and afforded a free passage; two enormous props had been found necessary, to prevent its making a last resting-place of the earth it had for ages triumphantly protected. The cavity that time had created was sufficiently extensive to afford shelter during a storm to three or four persons; and it was not ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... bidding, while the spirit is in concealed rebellion. Such a government, in proportion as it severs this national soul from the body, is weak through constant liability to overthrow, from any chance failure of its material props. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... props designed to impress the dramatic critic who might drop in for one of those personal little theatrical calls to be used in next Sunday's "Chats in the Wings." They were there because Harrietta liked them and read them between acts. She ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... unchanged.] The unassuming, but for their purposes very practical houses, of boards, bamboos, and (nipa) palm leaves, are supported on account of the damp on isolated beams or props; and the space beneath, which is generally fenced in with a railing, is used as a stable or a warehouse; such was the case as early as the days of Magellan. These dwellings [45] are very lightly put together. ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... grieved also on my own account. For even now I retain the warmest affection for their dead father, as I have shown in my pleading and my books. Now but one of his three children is alive, and only one remains to support a house which a little time ago had so many props to sustain it. But my grief will be greatly relieved should Fortune preserve him at least to robust and vigorous health, and make him as good a man as his father and grandfather were before him. I am the more anxious for his health and character now that he is the ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... hobbled by, pulling a carriage, like an old man. The hunchback Kohn idly leaned against a Catholic church, thinking about existence. He said to himself: "Yet how odd existence really is. And yet one props oneself up, somewhere, somehow, without connection, irrelevant; one could just as well continue for better or for worse, anywhere. That makes me unhappy." Before him a small, silent whore's dog had stopped, had listened humbly, with ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... Indians at Utopia, and knew by the signs that the poor woman was his wife. And at the next high tide he towed the tree away back home, although it wasn't worth the trouble, and built another house, using the old tree for the foundation and props, and called it after her, "Mary's Ark!" But you may guess the next house was built above high- water mark. ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... ran, the dark wave roared loudly around the keel; but she scudded through the wave, holding on her way. But when they reached the wide armament of the Greeks, they drew up the black ship on the continent, far upon the sand, and stretched long props under it; but they dispersed themselves through their tents ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... ground and marking the intersections by slight stakes the next business is to plant the trees that are to become props to the pepper, as the Romans planted elms, and the modern Italians more commonly plant poplars and mulberries, for their grape-vines. These are cuttings of the chungkariang (Erythrina corallodendron), usually called chinkareens, put into the ground about a span deep, sufficiently early to ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... from the world—a sense of duty. To Mamie Calligan duty (a routine conformity to such theories and precepts as she had heard and worked by since her childhood) was the all-important thing, her principal source of comfort and relief; her props in a queer and uncertain world being her duty to her Church; her duty to her school; her duty to her mother; her duty to her friends, etc. Her mother often wished for Mamie's sake that she was less dutiful and more charming physically, so that the ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... course he can," said Harry, "better than I can; but a couple of old clothes-props, tied together, and put straddling over the pony, would ride better than—Oh! don't, Phil, it hurts," he continued, as Philip indulged his brother with a few thumps in the back to repay the compliment that he had given to ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... receive into their composition a great number of homogeneous, similar, and analogous particles, disposed to unite themselves with energies conspiring or tending to the same point. The primitive beings, or elements of bodies, have need of supports, of props; that is to say, of the presence of each other, for the purpose of preserving themselves; of acquiring consistence or solidity: a truth, which applies with equal uniformity to what is called physical, as ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... few days they had a shelter made with boats turned keel upwards, and placed on props, while the sides were ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... other hand, these counterbalancing considerations were adduced, which are as so many props and pillars to support his people, and to allay the difficulties of the duty of entering into covenant with God, and to make it the more light and easy. 1st, That the work is the Lord's, and he is greatly concerned in it; and, therefore, his people may ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... the leader of the soldiers, "it will be pretty tough if Props' rag baby gets scalped, that's a fact. Come on! Shack along, boys! They are looking for us now, ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope
... the earth, when all barriers were breaking down, and the steady expansion of cosmopolitan life and the organization of the Great Society, as Graham Wallas has called it, seemed destined to banish all the minor languages, dialects, and obsolescent forms of speech, the last props of an international provincialism, to the limbo of forgotten things. The competition of the world-languages was already keen; all the little and forgotten peoples of Europe—the Finns, Letts, Ukrainians, Russo-Carpathians, Slovaks, Slovenians, Croatians, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... for ourselves. Our defender, the noble William, landed three days ago at Torbay, and is now in Hampton Court. The king has taken flight, never to be restored. Therefore, God save the Prince of Orange and the Lady Mary, the props and ornaments of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... told to do the best for himself with a ground sheet. To derive shelter in such a storm with a few feet of oilcloth, no props, no light, is a task to which sweeping back the Atlantic with a toothbrush is simple ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... way through the crowds, and finally droppin' into a fairly clean-lookin' restaurant for dinner. Half way through the goulash and noodles, I had this bright thought about consultin' the 'phone book. The cashier that let me have it eyed me suspicious as I props it up against the sugar bowl and ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... and however related to that city, hamlet, or solitary house from which yesterday or to-day you slipped your cable, beyond disguise you find yourself but one wave in a total Atlantic, one plant (and a parasitical plant besides, needing alien props) ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... spout, Its life, in purple streams, had issued out. The costly flavour still to sense remain'd, And still its sides the violet colour stain'd: A sight so sweet taught wrinkled age to smile; Pleased, she imbibes the generous fumes awhile, Then, downwards turn'd, the vessel gently props, And drains with patient care the lucid drops: O balmy spirit of Etruria's vine! O fragrant flask, she said, too lately mine! If such delights, THOUGH EMPTY, thou canst yield, What wondrous raptures hadst thou given if filled!" ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... word Umbrella, as we have done regarding the thing itself. The English name is borrowed from the Italian Ombrella. The Latin term Umbella is applied by botanists to those blossoms which are clustered at the extremities of several spokes, radiating from the common stem like the metallic props of the Umbrella. The name, as is seen, does not give the slightest idea of the use of the article designated, as is often the case with words we practical folk employ; and we might well take a lesson from our cousins German or French, who have invented distinct names for the weapon ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... with burning coals and boiling oil and fat, frantic with joy at the idea of scalding the Godons.[515] The attack was repulsed; but two days later the French perceived that the outworks were undermined; the English had dug subterranean passages, to the props of which they had afterwards set fire. The outworks having become untenable in the opinion of the soldiers, they were destroyed and abandoned. It was deemed impossible to defend Les Tourelles thus dismantled. Those towers which would once ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... institutions to foster this depraved appetite. Surely there is enough of this in the political harangues of the day for those who require such aids to patriotism without its being administered to by our colleges. That patriotism is of rather a suspicious character which needs such props. I love to see my children well clad and taking a proper pride in their attire, but I should not think them well instructed if I found them everywhere boasting of their fine clothes. A true nobleman is not forever ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... were tightening Their harness on their backs, The Consul was the foremost man To take in hand an ax; And Fathers mixed with Commons Seized hatchet, bar, and crow, And smote upon the planks above, And loosed the props below. Meanwhile the Tuscan army, Right glorious to behold, Came flashing back the noonday light, Rank behind rank, like surges bright Of a ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... [Sidenote: Desperate defence of the Piraeus.] At the Piraeus scenes occurred which were afterwards repeated at the siege of Jerusalem. Archelaus undermined the earthwork and Sulla made another determined attempt to take the wall by storm. He battered down part of it, fired the props of his mine and so brought down more, and sent troops by relays to escalade the breach. But Archelaus, like the Plataeans in the Peloponnesian war, built an inner crescent-shaped wall, from which he took the assailants in front and on both flanks when they tried to ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... the comedy is over and the second act now begins.—The faction has convoked the delegates of the primary assemblies to Paris for a purpose. Like the primary assemblies, they are to serve as its instruments for governing; they are to form the props of dictatorship, and the object now is to restrict them to that task only.—Indeed, it is not certain that all will lend themselves to it. For, among the eight thousand commissioners, some, appointed by ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... proceeding so rapidly, that by this time it could probably cover the whole. Larger banyans are common in Bengal; but few are so symmetrical in shape and height. As the tree gets old, it breaks up into separate masses, the original trunk decaying, and the props becoming separate trunks of the different portions.] in diameter into a dark, cool shade. The gigantic limbs spread out about ten feet above the ground, and from neglect during Dr. Wallich's absence, there were on Dr. Falconer's arrival no more than eighty-nine descending roots or props; ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... Cleopatras and Portias (even with Portia as the very type and model of the young person intelligent and presumptuous) and to that of their Hettys and Maggies and Rosamonds and Gwendolens, suffers the abatement that these slimnesses are, when figuring as the main props of the theme, never suffered to be sole ministers of its appeal, but have their inadequacy eked out with comic relief and underplots, as the playwrights say, when not with murders and battles and the great mutations of the ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... divine plastic force which is for ever moulding human society? What if these beautiful venerable things which had fallen from him, as from thousands of his fellows, represented, in the present stage of the world's history, not the props, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... example, the pompous medical ass with a flourishing practice among the local nabobs, can be found in every provincial town in Europe. The Dice of the Gods has no plot worthy of the name, but Mr. DE ZILWA has both satire and philosophy at his command, and a flair for atmosphere. His scenery and "props" too will be new even to the most hardened novel-reader. He paints a vivid Oriental background with which the semi-Western civilization of his characters alternately blends ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 27, 1917 • Various
... rendering such an act of homage to a chit of a boy or a gross young gentleman impresses one unpleasantly. The curtsy of a lady to a prince or princess is something between kneeling and that queer genuflection one meets in the English agricultural districts: the props of the boys and girls seem momentarily to be knocked away, and they suddenly catch themselves in descending. It astonished me, I remember, at a court party, to see one patrician young woman—"divinely tall" I should describe her if her decided chin and the evidently Roman turn of her nose and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... props on which she might depend removed from under her feet. If her father and Wolf left her, she would look in vain for ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... again tonight that there is no surer way to lose freedom than to lose our resolve. Today the brave people of Afghanistan are showing that resolve. The Soviet Union says it wants a peaceful settlement in Afghanistan, yet it continues a brutal war and props up a regime whose days are clearly numbered. We are ready to support a political solution that guarantees the rapid withdrawal of all Soviet troops and genuine self-determination for ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... wedges. To avert the great danger of the mass toppling over sideways, ropes were attached to the top of the casing, at the point where the beams crossed one another, and were held taut by two parties of laborers, one on either side of the statue. Besides these, wooden forks or props were applied on either side to the second set of horizontal cross-beams, held also by men whose business it would be to resist the least inclination of the huge stone to lean to one side more than to the other. The front of the sledge on which the colossus stood was curved gently upwards, to ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... when it shot out in broad boughs laden with lustrous leaves of the deepest green. And all round the lower part of the trunk, thin, slab-like buttresses of bark, perfectly smooth, and radiating from a common centre, projected along the ground for at least two yards. From below, these natural props tapered upward until gradually blended with the trunk itself. There were signs of the wild cattle having sheltered themselves behind them. Zeke called this the canoe tree; as in old times it supplied the navies of the Kings of Tahiti. For canoe building, the woods is still used. Being extremely ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... utter astonishment, Johnny had felt himself urged forward by this Pant with the easy, steady, forward march of one who is certain of every step. Twice they had turned to avoid mine-props. They had gone back into the mine perhaps a hundred feet. Now, with not a spark of light shining out of the gloom, they had paused and his companion had uttered ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... rest. Before leaving, they had ravaged the garden, destroyed the promises of the approaching harvest, and devoured even the bark of the young trees. The cats have followed the goats. Selkirk has before his eyes a spectacle of desolation; his props, his trellises, the remains of his orchard, of his inclosure, of his shed, a part even of the roof of his cabin, strew the earth ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... will have gone round the other side of the tree. But the Creeper has one habit that will some day give you a good chance to look at him. When he wishes to remain still a moment, he spreads his tail with its stiff pointed feathers and props himself by it against the tree. This is ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... hide preparations for an attack on a wide front. Men have to be brought up, trenches have to be dug, the artillery has to prepare, and men, guns, and trenches have to be supplied with food, water, shells, sandbags, props, and revetments. When the fire on any sector increases tenfold, while the roads behind the lines are thronged with five times the normal traffic of troops and lorries, and new trenches, the attack or "jumping-off" trenches, are being dug in front of the line, a commander cannot fail to know ...
— The Old Front Line • John Masefield
... separation was brought about by differences of opinion upon this particular subject of slavery. I felt great concern, as that dispute went on, about the result. I was in hopes that the difference of opinion might be adjusted, because I looked upon that religious denomination as one of the great props of religion and morals throughout the whole country, from Maine to Georgia, and westward to our utmost western boundary. The result was against my wishes and against my hopes. I have read all their proceedings and all their arguments; but I have never yet been ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... conformable to nature, and some not: and to say that there is a certain cultivation of them, nourishing, and causing them to grow, which is the science and art of the farmer, which prunes them, cuts them in, raises them, trains them, props them, so that they may be able to extend themselves in the direction which nature points out; in such a manner that the vines themselves, if they could speak, would confess that they ought to be managed and protected in the way they are. And now indeed that which protects ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... bidding farewell to old Rouault, returned to the room before leaving, he found her standing, her forehead against the window, looking into the garden, where the bean props had been knocked down by the wind. She turned round. "Are you looking for ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... of currents or the assaults of the open sea the props cannot hold the cofferdam together, then, let a platform of the greatest possible strength be constructed, beginning on the ground itself or on a substructure; and let the platform be constructed with a level surface for less than half its extent, while ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... of the Chivalry; one of the main props; one of the fellows who are trying to bring about Secession in the hopes of being Dukes, or Marquises, or Earls—High Keepers of His Majesty Jeff. Davis's China Spittoons, or Grand Custodians of the Prince of South Carolina's Plug Tobacco, when the ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... in point of fact, and the Bourbons, by collateral reasoning, become legitimate! In any other point of view, we cannot possibly conceive how Sir Walter imagines "he has done something to revive the declining spirit of loyalty" by these novels. His loyalty is founded on would-be treason: he props the actual throne by the shadow of rebellion. Does he really think of making us enamoured of the "good old times" by the faithful and harrowing portraits he has drawn of them? Would he carry us back to the early stages of barbarism, of clanship, of the feudal system ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... from beneath and meteors from above, Portentous, unexampled, unexplained, Have kindled beacons in the skies, and the old And crazy earth has had her shaking fits More frequent, and foregone her usual rest. Is it a time to wrangle, when the props And pillars of our planet seem to fail, And nature with a dim and sickly eye To wait the close of all? But grant her end More distant, and that prophecy demands A longer respite, unaccomplished yet; Still they ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... assistance of pictures to make its meaning clear. Nor, too, is anything gained by calling colours harmonies or symphonies. Let such pictures strike their own chords and blow their own trumpets. Catalogues of all kinds are but props to artistic inefficiency. If dumb-show plays did not rely on "books of the words," pantomime would have to become a finer art. If ballets had no thread of narrative attached to them, their constructors would be driven to achieve greater intelligibility, or to give up trying for it—which ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... runnin' a craft ashore; hove him right aout, I take it, to rememberin' Johnstown an' Jacob Boiler an' such-like reminiscences. Well, consolin' Jason there held him up a piece, same's shorin' up a boat. Then, bein' weak, them props slipped an' slipped, an' he slided down the ways, an' naow he's water-borne agin. ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... at work And talks of props and stays, And what a comfort I shall be In her declining days! The very maids about the house Have set me down a nun, The sweethearts all belong to them That call ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 402, Supplementary Number (1829) • Various
... arrive at the seal and sea-lion. Of all the feet that I have looked at I know only one more utterly ridiculous than the twisted flipper on which the sea-lion props his great bulk in front, and that is the forked fly-flap which extends from the hinder parts of the same. How can it be worth any beast's while to carry such an absurd apparatus with it just for the sake of getting out into the air sometimes and pushing itself about on the ice and being eaten ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... is all the common people of this kingdome subject, as well burgh as land; which is, to judge and speak rashly of their prince, setting the commonweale vpon foure props, as wee call it; euer wearying of the present estate, and desirous of nouelties." The remedy the king suggests, "besides the execution of laws that are to be vsed against vnreuerent speakers," is so to rule, as that "the subjects may not only live in suretie ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... hardly as he props his drawn, miserable face on his hands). Home! Home!! (He drops his arms on the table and bows his head on them, but presently hears someone approaching and hastily sits bolt upright. It is Gloria, who has come up the steps alone, with her sunshade and her book in her hands. He looks ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... each heap five or six grains; in the middle of May, when the maize is the height of a finger or more, they plant in each heap three or four Turkish beans, which then grow up with and against the maize, which serves for props, for the maize grows on stalks similar to the sugar-cane. When they wish to make use of the grain for bread or porridge, which they call Sappaen, they first boil it and then beat it flat upon a stone; then they put it into a wooden ...
— Narratives of New Netherland, 1609-1664 • Various
... Firm props like reeds are waving; For trust is left no stay; Our thoughts, like whirlpool raving, No more the ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... and optimistic, might have competently served for an artist's study of "Gloom." He felt as if the props had been kicked from beneath a line on which swung all his ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... stones, when cold, serve to make their walls and vaults, as they cannot be broken or cut except with an iron instrument. The vaults which they build with these stones are so light as to require no props for supporting them[15]. On account of these great conveniences, the monks have constructed so many walls and buildings of different kinds, as is really wonderful to see. The coverings or roofs of their houses are constructed for the most part in the following manner: Having carried ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... said Pauline Stacey, loftily. "Batteries and motors and all those things are marks of the force of man—yes, Mr. Flambeau, and the force of woman, too! We shall take our turn at these great engines that devour distance and defy time. That is high and splendid—that is really science. But these nasty props and plasters the doctors sell—why, they are just badges of poltroonery. Doctors stick on legs and arms as if we were born cripples and sick slaves. But I was free-born, Mr. Flambeau! People only think they need these ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... stables behind, and the barns all made of good timber, Enter'd the garden which stretch'd far away to the walls of the borough, Walk'd across it, rejoicing to see how all things were growing, Carefully straighten'd the props, on which the apple-tree's branches, Heavily loaded, reposed, and the weighty boughs of the pear-tree, Took a few caterpillars from off the strong-sprouting cabbage; For a bustling woman is never idle one moment. In ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... there the passages and balconies graded one to another's level, all being held together by innumerable stays and props, sent down from branch to branch, and from branches to the grassy turf beneath; and one sweeping limb, coming almost to the ground in a gentle incline before twisting away and up again, made ascent ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... deforestation? The climate of Britain was not, we know, more sheltered and temperate in old days than now, so it seems necessary to suppose human agency to account for so great a change. There is one theory, ingenious but fantastic, which asserts that the whole forest was felled to provide timber props for the mine-workings of Devon and Cornwall. Whether this took place in Celtic times, when the trade with Phoenicia was at its height, or subsequently—in which case it is strange there is no historical record of so remarkable a fact—or whether those prehistoric ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... 21 years in building, and will require as many more to complete it; the interior presenting only a forest of props placed in all directions. ...
— A Journey in Russia in 1858 • Robert Heywood
... tracery. Within it, however, are low, squat, thick pillars supporting the roof, which he thinks are Saxon and upheld the roof of a former church, which, falling into decay, was rebuilt on these massive props because their strength had preserved them from the injuries of time. They support blunt Gothic arches. He writes that he remembers when the beams of the middle aisle were hung with garlands in honor of young women of the parish who died virgins. Within the chancel is his memorial ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... at all to 'ts noisy gabble. The men were Leda's twins, who knew What to a poet's praise was due, And, thanking, paid him by foretelling The downfall of the wrestler's dwelling. From which ill-fated pile, indeed, No sooner was the poet freed, Than, props and pillars failing, Which held aloft the ceiling So splendid o'er them, It downward loudly crash'd, The plates and flagons dash'd, And men who bore them; And, what was worse, Full vengeance for the man of verse, A timber broke the ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... had been taken during the bombardment to preserve the Ships. For instance, all the decks were propped up by a number of spars, by which means if a bomb fell it did no other mischief than forcing its way through and carrying all before its immediate course, whereas without the props it might have shaken the timbers and weakened the access considerably. In every ship also were 2 cartloads of earth, to throw over any inflammable substance which might have fallen on board. From this mole hill of a truth was engendered a mountainous falsehood for home consumption. I ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... conferred upon him; but one of us has been murdered, and I, the other, have scarcely escaped the hand of lawlessness.[51] What course can I now take? Unhappy that I am, to what place, rather than another, shall I betake myself? All the props of our family are extinct; my father, of necessity, has paid the debt of nature; a kinsman, whom least of all men it became, has wickedly taken the life of my brother; and as for my other relatives, and friends, and connections, various ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... to the farming and land-owning classes. Before the century is much older we shall see the same class harrassed, embarrassed, and eaten up by a rotten and immoral poor law system, about to be mended, and their prospect of high prices growing less and less, as sliding scales and all artificial props are removed out of the way of things finding their own level—down, down, down towards the present unsupportable level of prices when the consumer has as complete a monopoly of advantages as had the producer in ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... good enough. Don't make any diff to me what colour a room is. Nice and big, ain't it? Say, do you care if I chuck some of the lace props ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... their efforts to displacing the monolith. Wooden wedges were carefully driven in, and presently the huge stone was moved and slid down the props prepared to receive it. The sarcophagus having been opened, showed the first bier hermetically sealed. It was a coffer adorned with paintings and gilding, representing a sort of shrine with symmetrical designs, lozenges, quadrilles, ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... intensify and envenom. Fitzgibbon is a repulsive figure. Yet it would be unjust to single him out for criticism. Like him, the philosophers Hume and Paley believed in oligarchy, and accepted force or corruption as its two alternative props. Burke thought the same, though the Pitts thought otherwise. Fitzgibbon's brutal pessimism was only the political philosophy of Paley, Hume, and Burke pushed relentlessly in an exceptional case to its extreme logical conclusion. But we can justly criticize statesmen of the present ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... this ceremony is followed a few days afterwards by a copious supply. But it would require an entire volume to enumerate all the errors and superstitions of this description which have been propagated by the clergy in Spain, and which form the chief props ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... pull you up myself," he answered. "You're no great weight. And haven't those shafts got props and stays down ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... to Abraham's Oak, a very old tree, but not old enough for Abraham to have enjoyed its shade almost four thousand years ago. The trunk is thirty-two feet in circumference, but the tree is not tall like the American oaks. It is now in a dying condition, and some of the branches are supported by props, while the lower part of the trunk is surrounded by a stone wall, and the space inside is filled with earth. The plot of ground on which the tree stands is surrounded by a high iron fence. A little farther up the hill the Russians have a tower, from which we ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes
... One was little more than half built, the fresh wood shining against the background of dark rock. Another was newly tarred; its sides glistened with the rich shadowy brown, and filled the air with a comfortable odour. Another wore age long neglect on every plank and seam; half its props had sunk or decayed, and the huge hollow leaned low on one side, disclosing the squalid desolation of its lean ribbed and naked interior, producing all the phantasmic effect of a great swampy desert; old pools ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... relate them. For, after all, gentle reader, cities of themselves, and, in fact, empires of themselves, are nothing without an historian. It is the patient narrator who records their prosperity as they rise—who blazons forth the splendor of their noontide meridian—who props their feeble memorials as they totter to decay—who gathers together their scattered fragments as they rot—and who piously, at length, collects their ashes into the mausoleum of his work, and rears a triumphant monument ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... Life is ended, And the task of our long day is done, And the props, on which our hearts depended, All have failed or broken, one by one; Evening and our Sorrow's shadow blended Telling us that peace ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... For the downfall of his own firm! Splendid! Props up his reactionary rule by means of royal ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... Truth, should have the best of Memories; the want of which has render'd the Court Writers oftentimes inconsistent with themselves and with each other. But what else are we to expect from Champions of a Cause which has only the feeble Props of Misrepresentation and low Artifice to support it! As this Author reported according to Draper with some Confidence, he ought to have inform'd himself of a known Fact, that the question debated at half an Hour after Nine o'Clock, as he now says, or at about ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... carries with it the sense of a void, to which it is difficult to assign a limit. Three aequales I shall have lost—Badeley, H. Bowden, and Bellasis; and such losses seem to say that I have no business here myself. It is the penalty of living to lose the great props of life. What a melancholy prospect for his poor boys! When you have an opportunity, say everything kind from me to Mrs. Bellasis. I shall, I trust, say two masses a week for him. He is on our prayer lists. What a vanity is life! how ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... wooden props and firkins, and also a number of straight elm poles for holding the washing which had been cut from the choicest young trees in my grandmother's forest. I had the greatest veneration for all these things. I knew that my grandmother no longer owned the forests, nor the salt ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... And props the world most valiantly: To the now gasping Age safe heyre, Leans on the Earth's sad sepulchre, Whence, 'midst the fragments of the skye, Hee sees most clearly from on hye, How much more great those things appeare, Hee treads on, then indeed ...
— The Odes of Casimire, Translated by G. Hils • Mathias Casimire Sarbiewski
... that never rest climbing so long as they have anything to stay upon; but take away their props, and they are ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... with that degree of consideration they can procure by their abilities fairly measured with those of an opponent; they must labour for the public without hope of profit; they must reject every attempt to create a personal dependence. Candour, force, and elevation of mind, in short, are the props of democracy; and virtue is the principle of conduct required to ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... Rickie, what do you mean? If an old friend may be frank, you are talking great rubbish." And, with a few well-worn formulae, he propped up the young man's orthodoxy. The props were unnecessary. Rickie had his own equilibrium. Neither the Revivalism that assails a boy at about the age of fifteen, nor the scepticism that meets him five years later, could sway him from his allegiance to the church into which he had been born. But his equilibrium was personal, ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... beneficial to our health. It is only afterwards that we realise that this danger is the root of all drama and romance. The strongest argument for the divine grace is simply its ungraciousness. The unpopular parts of Christianity turn out when examined to be the very props of the people. The outer ring of Christianity is a rigid guard of ethical abnegations and professional priests; but inside that inhuman guard you will find the old human life dancing like children, and drinking wine like men; for Christianity is the only frame for pagan freedom. ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... But there is less color, less reflection of light than in Santa Cruz; there is less quaintness; no Spanish buildings, no canary-colored arcades. All the narrow streets are gray or neutral-tinted; the ground has a dark ashen tone. Most of the dwellings are timber, resting on brick props, or elevated upon blocks of lava rock. It seems almost as if some breath from the enormous and always clouded mountain overlooking the town had begrimed everything, darkening even the colors ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... father with which to go to college; this was all he was to have. The son returned at the end of the freshman year with extravagant habits and no money. His father refused to give him more, and told him he could not stay at home. When the youth found the props all taken out from under him, and that he must now sink or swim, he left home moneyless, returned to college, graduated at the head of his class, studied law, was elected Governor of New York, and became Lincoln's great Secretary of ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... belt on the water and it ferried her across. Not long after she reached the other side of the river, and she inquired for the house of Gimbangonan. Asindamayan answered, "You look for the house where many people are putting props under the house. That is the house of Gimbangonan. Her porch has many holes ...
— Traditions of the Tinguian: A Study in Philippine Folk-Lore • Fay-Cooper Cole |
