"Stop-gap" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... months ago. Vanamee and Company's—the neat vice-president talking to Oliver—"a young hustler has every chance in the world of getting ahead here, Mr. Crowe. You speak French? Well, we have been thinking for some time of establishing branch-offices in Europe." The chance of a stop-gap job in St. Louis for Nancy, where she could be with her family for a while—she really ought to be with them a couple of months at least, if she and Oliver were to be married so soon. The hopeful parting in the Grand Central—"But, Nancy, you're sure you wouldn't ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... is a father now, Will truck his daughter for a foreign venture, Make her the stop-gap to some canker'd feud, Or fling her o'er, like Jonah, to the fishes, To appease ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... sat next to Charley Wimpole. He came in late, after everybody had finished, and I attacked him while he was eating his supper. He said he had been rehearsing 'Caste' after the performance; that they've put it on as a stop-gap on account of the failure of the 'Triflers,' and that he knew revivals were of no use; that he would give any sum for a good modern comedy. That was my cue, and I told him I knew of a better comedy than any he had produced at his theatre in five years, and that it ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... linger over the history of the next few months, for in a political sense they were barren and unfruitful. The first Derby Administration possessed no elements of strength, and quickly proved a mere stop-gap Cabinet. Its tenure of power was not only brief but inglorious. The new Ministers took office in February, and they left it in December. Lord Palmerston may be said to have given them their chance, and Mr. Gladstone gave them their coup de grace. The Derby Administration was summoned into existence ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... think that if opportunity be allowed him he can win a woman even in spite of herself. But if it were fated that he should not succeed with Henrietta, then,—so he felt assured,—no marriage would now be possible to him. In that case he must look out for an heir, and could regard himself simply as a stop-gap among the Carburys. In that case he could never enjoy the luxury of doing the best he could with the property in order that a son of his own might ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... his books can almost always account for the bad patches in Dickens by collating the novels with the letters and diary. Much of the totally nauseating gush of the Brothers Cheeryble must have been turned out only by way of stop-gap; and there are passages in "Little Dorrit" which may have been done speedily enough by the author, but which no one of my acquaintance can reckon as bearable. Dickens saw the danger of exhausting himself before he reached fifty-four years of age, and tried to repair damages ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... passed away, and the Corinthian still played the old game—still went the old rounds—the dinner and ball invitations gradually dwindled away, till he became a mere stop-gap at the one, and a ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... came on the scene, he introduced a welcome element of science into the sport. As witness the following. Mr Strudwick, the regular master of the form, happened on one occasion to be away for a couple of days, and a stop-gap was put in in his place. The name of the stop-gap was Mr Somerville Smith. He and Farnie exchanged an unspoken declaration of war almost immediately. The first round went in Mr Smith's favour. He contrived to catch Farnie in the act of performing some ingenious breach of the peace, and, ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... When we read in English story-books about the pantomimes in London, which somehow cropped up in them so often, those were the only things that didn't make us yearn; so much we felt we were masters of the type, and so almost sufficiently was that a stop-gap for London constantly deferred. We hadn't the transformation-scene, it was true, though what this really seemed to come to was clown and harlequin taking liberties with policemen—these last evidently a sharp note in a picturesqueness that we lacked, our own slouchy "officers" saying nothing to ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... his teacher Sue had a lodging. The arrangement had been concluded very quickly. A pupil-teacher who was to have been transferred to Mr. Phillotson's school had failed him, and Sue had been taken as stop-gap. All such provisional arrangements as these could only last till the next annual visit of H.M. Inspector, whose approval was necessary to make them permanent. Having taught for some two years in London, though she had abandoned that vocation of late, Miss Bridehead was ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... As the stone which has been kicked by generations of clowns may come by curious little links of effect under the eyes of a scholar, through whose labors it may at last fix the date of invasions and unlock religions, so a bit of ink and paper which has long been an innocent wrapping or stop-gap may at last be laid open under the one pair of eyes which have knowledge enough to turn it into the opening of a catastrophe. To Uriel watching the progress of planetary history from the sun, the one result would be just as much of a ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... offices. The new Cabinet decided to grant only occasional relief and a "compassionate allowance" to the Irish priests.[596] In several other matters its policy differed from that of Pitt; and Addington soon made it apparent that he was no stop-gap. ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... from his cattle-brand. While the excellent fresh beef and bread and the vile coffee, dried peaches and molasses were being consumed, he of the horseshoe remarked, in tones which percolated through a huge stop-gap of bread: ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... led by jackasses. On the following day Ollivier and his colleagues resigned office. Their position had become untenable, though little if any responsibility attached to them respecting the military operations. The Minister of War, General Dejean, had been merely a stop-gap, appointed to carry out the measures agreed upon before his predecessor, Marshal Le Boeuf, had gone to the front as ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... cared little for it, and ate but once a day. Louis had, rightly or wrongly, an idea that he was an independent monarch, to whose volitions some regard was due, and the legitimate sovereign of one of the greatest kingdoms in Europe; Talleyrand saw in him only a political stop-gap and glutton, to whose wishes little deference was owing, and whose intellect he despised: but he took care not to refuse the bounties or the honors bestowed upon him by his royal master—nor can we repress a smile when we find such a man gravely rebuking ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various |
