"Bolster up" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that would displease him? Some word would be wrongly spoken, some garment would be ill-folded, some awkward movement would tell the tale,—and then he would feel that he had done wrong to marry the Quaker's daughter. All the virtues under the sun cannot bolster up love so as to stand the battery of one touch of disgust. Tell my father that, and tell him that I have done well. Then you can tell him also, that, if God shall so choose it, I shall live a strong old maid ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... sterner work awaiting Fulke d'Arnaye, and he set about it: through seven dreary years he and Rougemont and Dunois managed, somehow, to bolster up the cause of the fat-witted King of Bourges (as the English then called him), who afterward became King Charles VII of France. But in the February of 1429—four days before the Maid of Domremy set forth from her voice-haunted Bois ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... we bolster up the answer which is but partially true until it seemed wholly true. We might make Mr. Belloc's diversity his disguise. ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... Motor Maids and Miss Campbell had no such faith to bolster up their faltering courage. During the long, lonely evenings on the mountainside when Phoebe had read aloud to her father from the New Testament, which he seemed to like best, there had grown in her mind a belief as strong ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... of all men. We must get rid of the fascination for exclusiveness. Here, in a world full of folk, men are lonely. The rich are lonely. We are all frantic for fellow-souls, yet we shut souls out and bar the ways and bolster up the fiction of the Elect and the Superior when the great mass of men is capable of producing larger and larger numbers for every human height of attainment. To be sure, there are differences between men and groups and there will ever be, but they will be differences ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... brittle—yours strong as brass. I never knew any ailment you had. You can go out at night in all weathers, sit up all hours. Well, I don't want to moralise. I only wish to say that if you are enclined to a game at Doubly Dumby, I would try and bolster up myself in a chair for a rubber or so. My days are tedious, but less so and less painful than my nights. May you never know the pain and difficulty I have in writing so much. Mary, who is most kind, joins in ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... or thesis. And if I have failed entirely, and shall come to think so, as is very likely, it will be no worse, doubtless, than my presumption deserved. You and K., who are satisfied with your spiritual instincts, would think it no better, probably, than a belt of sand to bolster up a mountain. Well, every one must help himself as he can. This meditation certainly has strengthened my own faith ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... cheeks, is as lamentable as may be. But! But with the universal use of cosmetics and the consequent secernment of soul and surface, upon which, at the risk of irritating a reader, I must again insist, all those old properties that went to bolster up the ordinary novel—the trembling lips, the flashing eyes, the determined curve of the chin, the nervous trick of biting the moustache, aye, and the hectic spot of red on either cheek—will be made spiflicate, as the puppets were spiflicated by Don Quixote. Yes, even now Demos ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... the above pathetic mood whenever I look out of my window and see the veteran Washington elm facing wind and weather, bravely waiting the end. With what care they bolster up its weary limbs, saw off its withered branches, and deluge its old roots! They spend days belting and tarring its waist, trying to destroy the perverse caterpillars; but with all this they can never give it back its fresh and green youth. It goes on ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... the past two years he had spent millions of florins out of his own pocket. His magnificent fortune and boundless credit were seriously compromised. He had found it an easier task to take Ostend and relieve Grol than to bolster up the finances of Spain. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... more readily because of the narrow way in which most professional Taxidermists bolster up their art in a secret and entirely unnecessary manner—unnecessary because amateur can, but by the severest application, possibly compete with the experience of the technical or professional worker. No pictorial artist ever pretends he has a special brush or colours ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... than themselves by the ballot, which is the mode of electing candidates, who must be introduced by two members. However, at last the funds of the society got so low, that the admission of many new members was requisite to bolster up the concern with their entrance-money and monthly contributions, and, of course, a much more indiscriminate set were admitted, than formerly used to go there, which caused one or two people to absent themselves from the assemblies for some ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... often Mrs. Toomey would admit to herself the real cause of the heartsickness which filled her as she watched her husband deteriorate, but with every excuse known to a woman who loves she tried to bolster up her waning faith in the man and his ability. With an obstinacy which was pathetic, she endeavored to keep him on the pedestal where she had placed him. She listened with a fixed smile of interest to ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... up and confronted him with her eyes blazing, but Vane continued dreamily. "There was one I heard of who was the wife of the Dissenting Minister, and did it to bolster up her husband's ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile |
