"Lop" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dinner, the old butler shall pull me out by the ears. Mary, what do you say to thinning the grove yonder? We shall get a better view of the landscape beyond. No, hang it! dear old Sir Miles loved his trees better than the prospect; I won't lop a bough. But that avenue we are planting will ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the Barke, the skin of our Fruit-trees, Least being ouer-proud with Sap and Blood, With too much riches it confound it selfe? Had he done so, to great and growing men, They might haue liu'd to beare, and he to taste Their fruites of dutie. Superfluous branches We lop away, that bearing boughes may liue: Had he done so, himselfe had borne the Crowne, Which waste and idle ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Sep!" cried Bob. "Here, old Big, you're sitting all on one side and making the boat lop. Get in the middle ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... plagues poor shepherds since have known, And riddles more, which future time must own: While on his pipe young Hylas play'd, and made Music as solemn as the song and shade. But the curs'd owner from the trembling top To the firm brink did all those branches lop; And in one hour what many years had bred, The pride and beauty of the plain, lay dead. The undone swains in sad songs mourn'd their loss, While storms and cold winds did improve the cross; But nature, which—like virtue—scorns ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... dome at the lop of the nave, are five different fresco, paintings which represent different acts relative to the life of the patron of the church. One represents the consecration of Saint-Romain as bishop; in another, he overthrows the pagan temples; farther on, is the miracle of the dragon or Gargouille; ...
— Rouen, It's History and Monuments - A Guide to Strangers • Theodore Licquet
... itself was curiously built. It consisted of two storeys, and formed a main building and one wing, which gave it a peculiarly lop-sided appearance that reminded me somewhat ludicrously of Chanticleer, with a solitary, scant, and ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... boulder, where the snow is pushed away there lies a round heap of anguish, curled up, pinched nose flat on the snow and two ears laid lop to a vanquished head. It is still breathing, though the dull eyes open not at sound of the trapper, bold in his safety, who lifts his ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... Redding decidedly; "it's all very well to lop off a finger or a toe with a razor, but I don't think it's allowable for an amateur to attempt a foot except under circumstances ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne
... universal hedges. I am disappointed in the trees, so far; I have not seen one large tree as yet. Most of those I see are of very moderate dimensions, feathered all the way up their long slender trunks, with a lop-sided mop of leaves at the top, like a wig which has slipped awry. I trust that I am not finding everything couleur de rose; but I certainly do find the cheeks of children and young persons of such ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... lop-sided, won't it? I allays likes to see things samely. What'll you do with all that space of emptiness? It'll look ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... Charoen, Ang Thong, Buriram, Chachoengsao, Chai Nat, Chaiyaphum, Chanthaburi, Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Chon Buri, Chumphon, Kalasin, Kamphaeng Phet, Kanchanaburi, Khon Kaen, Krabi, Krung Thep Mahanakhon, Lampang, Lamphun, Loei, Lop Buri, Mae Hong Son, Maha Sarakham, Mukdahan, Nakhon Nayok, Nakhon Pathom, Nakhon Phanom, Nakhon Ratchasima, Nakhon Sawan, Nakhon Si Thammarat, Nan, Narathiwat, Nong Bua Lamphu, Nong Khai, Nonthaburi, Pathum Thani, Pattani, Phangnga, Phatthalung, Phayao, Phetchabun, Phetchaburi, Phichit, ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... spectator. Though very shy, and carefully keeping himself screened when you show any disposition to get a better view, he will presently, if you remain quiet, ascend a twig, or hop out on a branch in plain sight, lop his tail, droop his wings, cock his head, and become very melodramatic. In less than half a minute he darts into the bushes again, and again tunes up, no Frenchman rolling his r's so fluently. C-r-r-r-r-r— Wrrr, —that's it, —chee, —quack, ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... republics fell, the people also languished; the foreign seed produced in a short time an immense forest, the forest of the Inquisition and the fanaticism which still exists; the modern woodmen cut and lop, but they soon fall off wearied; the arms of one man can do little against a trunk that has grown for centuries. Fire, nothing but fire, can ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... way, just sufficient to exhibit its ugliness, but wavered and rolled about in the most extraordinary manner, evidently showing that it was lop-sided. It received shouts, but they were not of applause, and they were accompanied by hisses, which the Doctor, however, repressed. The kite received in this unflattering way was Blackall's boasted toy-shop production. He was highly indignant, and walked ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... labour, and by supper-time had so many trees cut down, that they determined to carry home the next day, and lay them along, to see how many more they would want. While they put the trees in the cart and took them home, Pablo contrived to lop off the boughs and prepare the poles for them to take away. As soon as they had cut down sufficient and carted them home, they then selected shorter trees for posts; and when Pablo had cleared them of the boughs, they sawed them out the proper lengths, and then carted ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... spoken almost mechanically. And yet that monosyllable must have been the fruit of all these months of inward struggle and thought. "Now I begin to understand you," Fenger went on. "You've decided to lop off all the excrescences, eh? Well, I can't say that I blame you. A woman in business is handicapped enough by the very fact of her sex." He stared at her again. "Too bad ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... "and I don't see that you or I have any call to pass judgment on it, or to lay down arbitrary lines, saying this is righteous, that is unrighteous. We may have our own thoughts about the matter—we must have, but we've no right to lop or stretch other people to fit them. Princess is a pure woman, a noble woman, better, a thousand-fold, than you or me or any other man that breathes. From her standpoint, what she does is right, and, whether we differ with her or not, we are bound to believe that ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... strong angels Stems back the waves of earthly influence That shape unsteady continents around me, And they draw off with the devouring gush Of exile billows that have found a home, Leaving me islanded on unseen points, Hanging 'twixt thee and chaos—I have seen Unholy shapes lop off my shining thoughts, And they have lent me leathern wings of fear, Of baffled pride and harrowing distrust; And Godhead, with its crown of many stars, Its pinnacles of flaming holiness, And voice of leaves in the green summer-time, Has seemed ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... rob his society of its greatest charm. A slavish accuracy in figures, an arid lack of imagination, reduces conversation to the insipidness of flat wine, and Blaze's talk was never dull. He was a keen, shrewd, practical man, but somewhere in his being there was concealed a tremendous, lop-sided sense of humor which took the form of a bewildering imagery. An attentive audience was enough for him, and, once his fancy was in full swing, there was no limit to his outrageous exaggerations. A light of credulity in a hearer's eye filled ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... got his lame leg, bekase, ye see he's niver larned fur to manage it, an' goes limpity-lop, an' though he wears a cloak, is obligated fur to show the cow's fut whenever he talks wid any wan, fur if he doesn't, begorra, the leg does fur itself, fur it's niver forgot the thrick av kicking the owld cow larned it, an' if Satan ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... could tell yer what I mean—" His face was puckered into a thousand wrinkles with the intellectual effort, and his little diamond eyes gleamed. "He could take a trumpery common thing like that there mug-faced, lop-eared hare and make it stand for the medi-what-you-call-it-forest. I've said to him, 'Come out with me on the old 'bus if you want green and loneliness and nature.' And he has said—I recollect one talk in particular—he said, 'I'd love to hear' something about ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... splendid remedy against epilepsy. One foot only of each animal possesses virtue, and the way to ascertain the valuable foot is to "knock the beast down, when he will immediately lift up that leg which is most efficacious to scratch his ear. Then you must be ready with a sharp scymitar to lop off the medicinal limb, and you shall find an infallible remedy against the falling sickness treasured up in his claws." The American Indians and mediaeval Norwegians also considered this a sure remedy. The person afflicted, however, must ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... earned,—these are the indications of true greatness. He that is unmoved in calamity, skilled in his own business, ever exerting vigilant and humble, always beholdeth prosperity. The sons of Pandu are as thy arms. Do not lop off those arms of thine. Plunge not into internal dissensions for the sake of that wealth of thy brothers. O king, be not jealous of the sons of Pandu. Thy wealth is equal unto that of thy brothers in his entirety. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... |will meet in the 36-hole finals James Standish, Jr.,| |of the Detroit Golf Club, whom he defeated for the | |same title last year at the Kent Country Club. | | | |Standish won his way into the finals by defeating | |H. P. Bingham, of the Mayfield Club, to-day in a | |lop-sided contest, the match ending on the thirtieth| |green, 7 and 6. | | | |The Evans-Sawyer duel to-day was a grueling struggle| |and from all points one of the greatest in the | |history of the Western classic. It sparkled like | |carbonated water as compared with ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... the great Arian tribe, containing in herself all future types of European women? So I slept and woke, and slept again, day after day, week after week, in the lazy bullock-waggon, among herds of grey cattle, guarded by huge lop-eared mastiffs; among shaggy white horses, heavy-horned sheep, and silky goats; among tall, bare-limbed men, with stone axes on their shoulders, and horn bows at their backs. Westward, through the boundless steppes, whither or why we knew not; but ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... undoubtedly lies in the fact that—almost literally—you cannot kill it! But that is no excuse for abusing it either, as there is all the difference in the world between a well cared for symmetrical plant and one of the semi-denuded, lop-sided, spotted leaved plants one so frequently sees, and than which, as far as ornamentation is concerned, an empty pot would be far ...
— Gardening Indoors and Under Glass • F. F. Rockwell
... quite as well as I know my own name, that the length of the year is three hundred and sixty-five days, five hours, forty-eight minutes, and forty-eight seconds, and if I find any one trying to lop off even one second of my hard-learned year, I shall look upon him as a meddler. That is one of my settled facts, and I don't care to have it disturbed. If any one comes along trying to change the length of my year, I shall ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... For thou art say'd from Henricke and from these. You heare what ecchoes Rebound from earth to heaven, from heaven to earth, Casting the name of King onely on me? This golden apple is a tempting fruit; It is within my reach; this sword can touch it, And lop the weake branch off on which it hangs. Which of you all would spurne at such a Starre, Lay it i'th the dust when 'tis let down from heaven For ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... to the bull-pen," he invited cordially. "Sorry we haven't a canteen in connection, but it's more comfortable over there. Good place to lop about, y' know; a decent place to sit, and a few books and cards and that ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Seal Cove.—This was our first day of delay since coming into the Bay. A strong north-east wind with a heavy lop, made it useless to attempt to proceed. In the afternoon all the people on shore came to our service, and I explained "the articles of our Belief, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord's Prayer." In the evening, ...
— Extracts from a Journal of a Voyage of Visitation in the "Hawk," 1859 • Edward Feild
... "What you want to lop around here for? Such a grant evening. Why don't you put on your things and run downtown, or over to Cora's ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... a bit rougher than usual for a few miles," he said; "but you know we decided we didn't like the looks of the weather at tea-time, and according to the map, which labels it 'rough but passable,' this is a short cut that will lop off about ten miles and take us back to Needley ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... consistently warlike in tone. They declare that nothing will satisfy Achaean aspirations but the annexation of Helen. The Athenian Asty declares that should King Agamemnon employ the opened floodgates of popular enthusiasm as a stepping-stone to lop off another limb from the decaying trunk of the (so-called) Trojan Empire, he will have achieved ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... shade of the nine cocos we made our camp, and old Sru and the women and children at once set to work to build a "house" to protect us in case it rained during the nights. Very quickly was the house built. The "devil" was sent up the cocos to lop off branches, which, as they fell, were woven into thatch by the deft, eager hands of the women, who were supervised by Sivi, Nalik's handsome wife, amid much chatter and laughter, each one trying to outvie the ...
— "Martin Of Nitendi"; and The River Of Dreams - 1901 • Louis Becke
... to darnce? And what right 'ad you to arst 'er to darnce, you lop-eared rabbit?" interrupted the larrikin, raising his voice as he warmed to his subject. "I brought 'er 'ere. I paid the shillin'. Now then, you take your 'ook," he went on, pointing sternly to the door, and talking as he would ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... descended I followed Holmes into the stable yard, where he opened the door of a loose-box and led out a squat, lop-eared, white-and-tan dog, something between a beagle and ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Serjeants' Inn, and Lincoln's Inn even unto the Fields are like tidal harbours at low water, where stranded proceedings, offices at anchor, idle clerks lounging on lop-sided stools that will not recover their perpendicular until the current of Term sets in, lie high and dry upon the ooze of the long vacation. Outer doors of chambers are shut up by the score, messages and parcels are to be left at the Porter's Lodge by the bushel. ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... by the heels, Viscount; we will lop those long arms, cold-blooded, desperate tyrant. He has brought two lovely ladies to misery. Now let him know misery.' Thus Saint-Pol, feeling very ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... . Chop! . . Chip! . . Chop!) There's a log to move and a branch to lop. Now to the felling! His sharp axe bites Into a tree on the forest heights, And scarce for a breath does the axeman stop— (Chip! . . Chop! . . Chip! . . Chop!) Bell-birds watch him; and in the fern Wallabies listen awhile, and turn Back through the bracken, and off they ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... distance in planting them. What is more beautiful than the quincunx, which, whatever way you look, retains the same direct position? Planting them out so will also be of service to the growth of the trees, by equally attracting the juices of the earth. I should lop off the aspiring tops of my olive; it will spread more beautifully into a round form, and will produce fruit on more branches. A horse with slender flanks is considered handsomer than one not framed in that manner, and the same quality also shows that ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... with any one who took them lightly. To her mind the social fabric was rotten beyond repair, and her purpose was frankly destructive. I remember some of her phrases: "A bold and generous policy of social amelioration"; "The development of a civic conscience"; "A strong hand to lop off decaying branches from the trunk of the State." I have no fault to find with her creed, but I objected to its practical working when it took the shape of an inhuman hostility to that devout lover, Tommy Deloraine. She had refused him, I believe, three times, with every circumstance of scorn. ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... English resembles a tufted tree planted by the hand of Nature, that throws out a thousand branches at random, and spreads unequally, but with great vigour. It dies if you attempt to force its nature, and to lop and dress it in the same manner as the trees of ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... an ancient tribe, so we may fancy these old Aryans marching westward—"the tall, bare-limbed men, with stone axes on their shoulders and horn bows at their backs, with herds of grey cattle, guarded by huge lop-eared mastiffs, with shaggy white horses, heavy-horned sheep and silky goats, moving always westward through the boundless steppes, whither or why we know not, but that the All-Father had sent them forth. And behind us [he makes them say] the rosy snow-peaks died into ghastly grey, lower ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... cap'tor meth'od fin'ish mo'ment car'rot splen'did gim'let po'tent cav'il ves'per spir'it co'gent ehap'ter west'ern tim'id do'tage chat'tel bed'lam pig'gin no'ted fath'om des'pot tin'sel stor'age gal'lon ren'der tip'pet sto'ry gal'lop ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... mind, invariably display themselves in fretful impatience. But however this may be, the disposition in question has had both a favourable and an unfavourable influence on the structure of their pieces. Favourable, in so far as it has compelled them to lop off every superfluity, to go directly to the main business, to be perspicuous, to study compression, to endeavour to turn every moment to the utmost advantage. All these are good theatrical proprieties, and have been the means of recommending the French tragedies as models of perfection to those ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... his head (only in theory, because Atkinson won't stand any practical nonsense)—bend his head to look downward, and let his neck wilt away sleepily. Now, viewed from the side, where is a more lamentable picture of maudlin intoxication? What could improve it, except, perhaps, a battered hat, worn lop-sided, and a cigar-stump? He is a drunken old camel-gander, coming home in the small hours, and having difficulties with his latch-key. Straighten Atkinson's neck, open wide his eyes, and take a three-quarter face view of him. Sober, sour, and indignant, there stands, not the inebriated Atkinson, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... some one, and here was his chance. "Son," says he, "when young ladies have the price to pay for such luxuries as the cultivation of a dramatic talent that doesn't exist, size doesn't count. I've coached a Hamlet with lop ears and a pug nose, a Lady of Lyons that had a face you could chop wood with, and I guess I'm not going to draw the line at a Juliet whose father is president of a trust, even if she is something of ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... hills to climb, nor talk of love's delights. We do not here present to you the thresher with his flail, Ne do we here present to you the milkmaid with her pail: We show not you of country toil, as hedger with his bill; We do not bring the husbandman to lop and top with skill: We play not here the gardener's part, to plant, to set and sow: You marvel, then, what stuff[139] we have to furnish out our show. Your patience yet we crave a while, till we have trimm'd our stall; Then, young and old, come and behold our wares, and buy ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... expanding life. In criticising the defects of our educational system, we have too long mistaken symptoms for causes, and believed that we were removing the latter when we were only palliating or at best excising the former. To pinch off a withered bud, to lop off a withered limb, of the diseased tree of education, to train in this or that direction a branch which is as yet unaffected, is but lost labour so long as the tree is being slowly poisoned at its roots by a fundamental misconception ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... when considered on a Sunday and in a thaw. Its hotel is likewise a dreary institution. But I have an impression that we must be in the wrong one, and buoy myself up with a devout belief in the other, over the way. The awakening to consciousness this morning on a lop-sided bedstead facing nowhere, in a room holding nothing but sour dust, was more terrible than the being afraid to go to bed last night. To keep ourselves up we played whist (double dummy) until neither of us could bear to speak to the other any more. We had previously ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... an entrance into the interior by the open side much more probable. When this was finished, they took the logs that Harry had cut and carried with so much difficulty from the wood, and began to lop off the smaller branches and twigs. One large log was placed across the opening of the trap, while the others were piled on one end of it so as to press it down with their weight. Three small pieces of stick were now prepared—two ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... as though it belonged to some one else, and as though sensations were manufactured like clothes. This seems to be one of the easier ways of deadening sorrow, as though the mind could teach itself to lop off its feelers. Sybil particularly disliked this self-inspection. In the first place she did not understand it, and in the second her mind was all feelers, and amputation was death. She could no more analyse a feeling than ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... and bigger trees. You are such a solitary tree, Umslopogaas, but the topmost branches of him whom I serve are thicker than your trunk, and beneath his shadow live many woodcutters, who go out to lop those that would grow too high. You are no match for Dingaan, though, dwelling here alone in an empty land, you have grown great in your own eyes and in the eyes of those about you. Moreover, Umslopogaas, know this: ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... how the additional expense that must come, would be met. He did not see his way clear. After the babe was born, and he saw and felt what a treasure he had obtained, he was perfectly satisfied to make the best of what he had, and try to lop off some little self-indulgences, for the sake of meeting the new demands that were to be made ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... the Lord, the Lord of Hosts shall lop the bough with terror; and the high ones of stature shall be hewn down; and ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... boyhood possessed a rabbit—of the lop-eared variety," I continued, "which overate itself and died. I remember I attempted to skin it ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... if you had. But what do you take for it?' 'I wouldn't take a dollar note for it right now,' I told him. And I wouldn't have, nuther. The old Foam Flake—maybe you remember her, Cap'n Sears—was the dumdest, lop-sidedest, crankiest old white tub of a bark that ever carried sail. When I was aboard of her she wouldn't steer fit to eat, always wanted to go to port when you tried to put her to starboard, walloped and slopped along awkward as a cow, was the slowest thing afloat, and all she was ever really ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... nest, but on returning the second week in May I saw a pair of Ospreys coming and going to and fro from the nest. I hoped the birds might return another season, as the nest looked as if it might have been used for two or three years, and was as lop-sided as a poorly made haystack. The great August storm of the same year broke the tree, and the nest fell, making quite a heap upon the ground. Among the debris were sticks of various sizes, dried reeds, two bits of bamboo fishing rod, seaweeds, some old blue mosquito ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... the bystanders spit in the Magian's face and curse him; and they did this. Then he bade cut out his tongue and on the morrow he bade cut off his ears and nose and pluck out his eyes. On the third day he bade cut off his hands and on the fourth his feet; and they ceased not to lop him limb from limb, and each member they cast into the fire, after its cutting-off, before his face, till his soul departed, after he had endured torments of all kinds and fashions. The king bade crucify his trunk on the city-wall three ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... who live in the forest, the Ilongot support life by cultivating a forest clearing or "kaingin." The great trees are girdled, men ascend their smooth clean trunks a hundred feet or more and daringly lop away their branches and stems that the life of the tree may be destroyed and the sunlight be admitted to the earth below. At Patakgao I was shown some beautiful long pieces of the rattan an inch and a half in diameter with elaborately woven loops at the ends. ...
— The Negrito and Allied Types in the Philippines and The Ilongot or Ibilao of Luzon • David P. Barrows
... was dark, the sky being overcast, the woodcutters wanted to stop their work, putting off till next day the fall of an enormous beech-tree, but the master objected to this, and insisted that even at this hour they should lop and cut down this giant, which had overshadowed ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... The clearing of a piece of ground for plantation, seemed to be a work of much labour, considering the tools they had to work with, which, though much inferior to those at the Society Isles, are of the same kind. Their method is, however, judicious, and as expeditious as it can well be. They lop off the small branches of the large trees, dig under the roots, and there burn the branches and small shrubs and plants which they root up. The soil, in some parts, is a rich black mould; in other parts, it seemed to be composed of decayed vegetables, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... placed upon the bench; and with his blade Slow at its hideous task, and blows unskilled Hacked through the flesh and brake the knotted bone: For yet man had not learned by swoop of sword Deftly to lop the neck. Achillas claimed The gory head dissevered. What! shalt thou A Roman soldier, while thy blade yet reeks From Magnus' slaughter, play the second part To this base varlet of the Pharian king? Nor bear thyself the bleeding ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... lop-sided?" cried A soul of the elected. "One ear was wax," a rogue replied, "And ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... Studies by Leopold Godowsky. The study in G sharp minor was the first one published and played in public by this young pianist Unlike the Brahms derangements, they are musical but immensely difficult. Topsy-turvied as are the figures, a Chopin, even if lop-sided, hovers about, sometimes with eye-brows uplifted, sometimes with angry, knitted forehead and not seldom amused to the point of smiling. You see his narrow shoulders, shrugged in the Polish fashion as he examines the study ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... drowsily. As she peeped among them, her glance fell upon Sassy, outlined against the small square window beyond and roosted comfortably with her beak toward the manger, all unconscious of her nearing doom. The little girl was certain that it was she, for there was no mistaking the rakish lop of the serrated comb, or the once white under-feathers ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... behind us, when the preacher was largely left to work out his own development. As a result, individuality had in those days every chance to assert itself. The tree grew much as it would, for there was no one to lop off a branch here, to bend one there, or to graft upon this stem a shoot from some other variety. Of course the growth was often very peculiar; luxuriant on the sunward side, starved on the northern aspect, disproportionate, maybe, though often on those curious branches ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... be doomed to death, while at the same time, with the most gentle self complacency, she could order the tongues of thousands to be torn out by the roots, could cut off the nostrils with red hot pincers, could lop off ears, lips and noses, and could twist the arms of her victims behind them, by dislocating them at the shoulders. There were tens of thousands of ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... sake the war Stands at the fleet of Greece. Mutual prevails The slaughter, these the dead defending, those Resolute hence to drag him to the gates Of wind-swept Ilium. But beyond them all 215 Illustrious Hector, obstinate is bent To win him, purposing to lop his head, And to exhibit it impaled on high. Thou then arise, nor longer on the ground Lie stretch'd inactive; let the thought with shame 220 Touch thee, of thy Patroclus made the sport Of Trojan dogs, whose corse, if it return Dishonored home, brings with it thy reproach. To ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... Bowata's attention to the characteristic peculiarities of the trees, as distinguishing them from others, I shinned aloft into one of them, carrying with me a small hatchet that had come from the wreck, and proceeded to lop off about a dozen suitable branches which, with an ample supply of thorns to form arrow-heads, were duly placed aboard the boat. Then, shoving off again, we proceeded by way of the North-west Channel round to Shark Bay, in North Island, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... him," said Eileen, becoming animated. "Two's company, three's none. Everything is lop-sided without a ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... himself assumed the pleasing appellation "Skull-splitter," and his classmate Frithjof Ronning was dubbed Vargr-i-Veum, which means Wolf-in-the-Temple. One Son of the Vikings was known as Ironbeard, another as Erling the Lop-Sided, a third as Thore the Hound, a fourth as Aslak Stone-Skull. But a serious difficulty, which came near disrupting the brotherhood, arose over these very names. It was felt that Hakon had taken an unfair advantage of the rest in selecting the ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... corn is not left to ripen, as formerly, but is cut when it is quite green, and the seed not much past the milk. It was formerly the practice to lop down the tops of the corn, and let it hang some time, that the brush might become straightened in one direction. Now, the tops are not lopped till the brush is ready to cut, which, as before stated, is while the corn is ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... Vahuka checked the chariot wonderingly, And answered: "Imperceptible to me Is what thou boastest, slayer of thy foes! But I to proof will put it, hewing down The tree, and, having counted, I shall know. Before thine eyes the branches twain I'll lop: How prove thee, Maharaja, otherwise, Whether this be or be not? I will count One by one—fruits and leaves—before thee, King; Varshneya, for a space, can rein the steeds." To him replied the Raja: "Time is none Now to delay." Vahuka answered quick ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... by the upper corner and swing it on that as a pivot, you will lop off the lower end of California, cut through Idaho, overlap South Dakota, touch Michigan, bisect Ohio, reach West Virginia, cut through North Carolina and South Carolina, lop off all the western side of Florida, and blanket the greater part ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... fight, till faded and grown gray, The original scene to bolder tints gave way; Then Joe had heard the foe's scared double-quick Beat on stove drum with one uncaptured stick, And, ere death came the lengthening tale to lop, Himself had fired, and seen a red-coat drop; Had Joe lived long enough, that scrambling fight Had squared more nearly to his sense of right, And vanquished Perry, to complete the tale, Had hammered stone for life in ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... thing to get a good cuffing once in a way; it sets one thinking. And, great heavens! if a man has something rotten about him, if he has gangrene in his arms or legs that is spreading all the time, isn't it better to take a hatchet and lop them off rather than die as he would ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... you the friendship of Lop-Ear, the warm lure of the Swift One, the lust and the atavism of Red-Eye? A screaming incoherence and no more. And a screaming incoherence, likewise, the doings of the Fire People and the Tree People, and the gibbering councils of the horde. For you ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... Mahmoud could not have given a better lesson to his subjects than by reforming himself. He was cruel beyond measure—if the grand seignior can ever be so called, who is taught that he may lop off a score of heads each day 'for divine inspiration.' Still if he had been as thoroughly skilled as he professed to have been, he should have shown himself a humane as well as an innovating sovereign. Those who assisted him in his reforms, he rewarded with ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Wally, perching on the broad arm of the easy-chair that swallowed her up. "Come along, Jim, or we'll be lop-sided!" ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... When most their Pride did swell, Vnder our Swords they fell, No lesse our skill is, Than when our Grandsire Great, Clayming the Regall Seate, By many a Warlike feate, Lop'd ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... with a young growth, not large enough for firewood. It was but a short distance from the house, and the boys soon reached the spot, and commenced operations. They were each provided with large jack-knives, and with these they proceeded to lop off the young and tender ends of the birches, which trees were quite abundant in that spot; for birches are very apt to spring up after a pine forest has been cleared away. Many of the trees were yet so small, that the boys did not have to climb up ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... of the ground. Thomasin stepped up into a fork of one of the bushes, as she had done under happier circumstances on many similar occasions, and with a small chopper that they had brought she began to lop off the ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... from two to fifteen feet, are common; and now and then magnificent tree ferns send off their feathery crowns twenty feet from the ground to delight the sight by their graceful elegance. Great broad-leaved heliconias, leathery melastomae, and succulent-stemmed, lop-sided leaved and flesh-coloured begonias are abundant, and typical of tropical American forests; but not less so are the cecropia trees, with their white stems and large palmated leaves standing up like great candelabra. Sometimes the ground is carpeted with large ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... no sense of any sort. I see them daily, men and women,—but women particularly,—stalking about the grounds and in and out of classes, like grotesque ghosts. They're staggering under a mental load too heavy for them, and actually it might be a physical load from its effects. They get lop-sided, I swear they do, and they acquire all sorts of miserable little personal habits that make them both pitiable and ridiculous. For my part, I believe the day will come when no woman will be permitted to try for the ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... contrasting with the dark green of the pines which crowned their summits, added both beauty and grandeur to the scene. Our two companions, Back and Hood, made accurate sketches of these falls. At this place we observed a conspicuous lop-stick, a kind of landmark which I have not hitherto noticed, notwithstanding its great use in pointing out the frequented routes. It is a pine-tree divested of its lower branches and having only a small tuft at the top remaining. ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... hydra-headed growth of selfishness, both material and spiritual, sprouting in all directions. We would seem to be here for ever enclosed as in a glass bottle with this most horrid growth. Through the glass we see all life, but always and ever in company with this voracious Self. No sooner do we lop off one shoot of it than another grows—never was such strenuous gardening as is required to keep this growth in check, and every time we lop a shoot we learn another pain. This is the long road to perfection, for the Cross is "I" with a ...
— The Romance of the Soul • Lilian Staveley
... reflected, as he pushed his punctured, lop-wheeled, disordered, and dejected bicycle along; there had been none of the ambitious business climbers at hand to add his testimony ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... tranquillity is now my summum bonum. Keep me, therefore, from the fire and faggots of Calvin and his victim Servetus. Happy in the prospect of a restoration of primitive Christianity, I must leave to younger athletes to encounter and lop off the false branches which have been engrafted into it by the mycologists of the middle and modern ages. I am not aware of the peculiar resistance to Unitarianism, which you ascribe to Pennsylvania. When I lived in Philadelphia there was a respectable congregation of that sect, with a meeting-house ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... the world to do but amuse ourselves, if we can, and never any chance of pushing along. We have got it all; there is nothing to go for. That's what I first admired about my darling old Walter. He struck out a line of his own. If he had been content just to lop over the fence into Kencote Rectory, I don't think I should ever have fallen in love with him. I don't know, though. He is the ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... go down to these meetings that are being held?" The father opened his eyes, and looked at him and said, gruffly: "I am not carried away with any of these doctrines. I am established." A few days after they were getting out a load of wood. They put it on the cart. The father and the boy got on lop of the load, and tried to get the horse to go. They used the whip, but the horse wouldn't move. They got off and tried to roll the wagon along, but they could move neither the wagon nor the horse. "I wonder what's the matter?" said the father. "He's established," replied the ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... I grow older I am more and more inclined to reduce my baggage, to lop off superfluities. I become more and more in love with simple things and simple folk—a small house, a hut in the woods, a tent on the shore. The show and splendor of great houses, elaborate furnishings, stately halls, oppress me, impose upon ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... question. Why do you venture on the field of battle, where a bullet may plow through your breast or a cannon-ball lop off your head?" ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... balance each other. Temporary causes, however, such as heavy falls of snow or rain limited to one continental area, the shifting of ice-masses, even the movements of winds, may render the globe slightly lop-sided, and thus oblige it to forsake its normal axis, and rotate on one somewhat divergent from it. This "instantaneous axis" (for it is incessantly changing) must, by mathematical theory, revolve round the axis of figure in a period of 306 days. Provided, that is ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... p. 29, 33) has highly drawn the character of Andronicus. In his view the extermination of the Byzantine factions and dissolute nobility was part of a deep-laid and splendid plan for the regeneration of the empire. It was necessary for the wise and benevolent schemes of the father of his people to lop off those limbs which were infected with irremediable pestilence— "and with necessity, The tyrant's plea, excused his devilish deeds!!"—Still the fall of Andronicus was a fatal ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... nearly all the great poets contemporary with him, in being unappreciated. Like them, he suffered from critics who were for ever shearing the wild tresses of poetry between rusty rules, who could never see a literary bough project beyond the trim level of its day but they must lop it with a crooked criticism, who kept indomitably planting in the defile of fame the "established canons" that had been spiked by poet after poet. But we decline to believe that a singer of Shelley's calibre could be seriously grieved by want of vogue. Not that we suppose him to ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... articles. The Encyclopedists, under pretence of enlightening mankind, are sapping the foundations of religion. All the different kinds of liberty are connected; the Philosophers and the Protestants tend towards republicanism, as well as the Jansenists. The Philosophers strike at the root, the others lop the branches; and their efforts, without being concerted, will one day lay the tree low. Add to these the Economists; whose object is political liberty, as that of the others is liberty of worship, and the Government may find itself, in twenty or ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 1 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... a fact tonight; Yet claims, in building, every Poet's right; To choose, embellish, lop, or add, or blend, Fiction with truth, as best may suit his end; Which, he avows, is pleasure to impart, And move the passions ...
— Andre • William Dunlap
... twisted and the axle broken, but I had not noticed what that jolting crash had done to the body of the car. The steering rod was broken and the cushions were caked with mud. One wheel sagged at a drunken angle like a lop-ear and the wind-shield was nothing but a mangled frame. One long gash ran the length of the body, as though it had scraped against a rock, and this gash ended in a jagged wound the size of a man's head. In the back were three ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... towered above her and even above Gallito. She was a colossal Venus, with a face pink and white as a may-blossom. Tremulous smiles played about her soft, babyish mouth and a joyous excitement shone in her wide, blue eyes. Upon her head was a small, lop-sided bonnet, from which depended a rusty crepe veil of which she seemed inordinately conscious, and at the throat of her black gown was a ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... For he turf, stone, and trunk, and shoot, and lop, Cast without cease into the beauteous source; Till, turbid from the bottom to the top, Never again was clear the troubled course. At length, for lack of breath, compelled to stop, (When he is bathed in sweat, and wasted force, Serves not his fury more) he ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... Alliance in Europe, and absolute Necessity obliges them to fix these perpetually in Great Britain. Upon which, as upon a Stock, they are ingrafted, spring forth, blossom and bear Fruit abundantly, and being once lop'd off from it, they would soon wither and perish; thus is it the Interest and Safety, as well as the Duty and Inclination of the Inhabitants of our Plantations, always to be subservient to the Government ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones
... but not such sinners as to merit the revenge which an outraged deity is described as planning against us. That the All-loving and All-mighty should smite us in our dearest aims or our sweetest affections just because we have not conformed to the lop-sided morality of men is revolting to our instincts. We are repulsed by the God of Fear when we are drawn, comforted, strengthened, and changed by Him who is never anything toward ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... a year or two, been cheaply repaired to render it habitable; I say cheaply, because the work had been done in a surface manner, and was already decaying as to the paint and plaster, though the colours were fresh. A lop-sided board drooped over the garden wall, announcing that it was "to let on very reasonable terms, well furnished." It was much too closely and heavily shadowed by trees, and, in particular, there were six tall ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... that soothed Woe's weary head! And quench'd the eye, the pitying tear that shed! And mute the voice, whose pleasing accents stole, Infusing balm into the rankled soul! O Death, why arm with cruelty thy power, And spare the idle weed, yet lop the flower? Why fly thy shafts in lawless error driven? Is Virtue then no more the care of Heaven? But, peace, bold thought! be still, my bursting heart! We, not Eliza, felt the fatal dart. 70 Escaped the dungeon, ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... many of the enemy as possible on the field of battle. This disabling process means, of course, and necessarily, the maiming unto death of many. Such killing is not only lawful, but obligatory. War, like the surgeon's knife, must often lop off much in order to save the whole. The best soldier is he who inflicts most damage on ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... me lop off a few," suggested Sandy, and they agreed that as the chopping would have to be done quite close to the imprisoned one, a more expert hand had better ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm - or, Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays • Laura Lee Hope
... one dry!" commented Link to the collie, after petting him and praising him for the exploit. "I'll have to learn you to drive milch cows easy an' quiet. You can't run 'em like you run sheep an' yearlin's. But apart from that, you sure done grand. You can lop off an hour a day of my work if I c'n send you reg'lar for the critters. That ought to be worth the price of your keep, by itself. Now if I c'n learn you how to milk an' maybe how to mow—well, 'twouldn't be a hull lot queerer'n the stunts ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... Coffee-house, where among other things the great talk was of the effects of this late great wind; and I heard one say that he had five great trees standing together blown down; and, beginning to lop them, one of them, as soon as the lops were cut off, did, by the weight of the root, rise again and fasten. We have letters from the forest of Deane, that above 1000 Oakes and as many beeches are blown ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... unnatural ferocity of mind, or stupor of body." But let us consider whether to talk in this manner be not allowing that we are weak, and yielding to our softness. Notwithstanding, let us be hardy enough, not only to lop off every arm of our miseries, but even to pluck up every fibre of their roots. Yet still something, perhaps, may be left behind, so deep does folly strike its roots: but whatever may be left it will be no more than is necessary. But ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... key and fitting it into the wooden bolt would have drawn it back, but it could not move because a tooth had been drawn therefrom and the while he was rattling at the bolt his wife said to him, "O my lord,'tis my desire that thou lop off his hands and his feet until he shall become marked by his maims;[FN372] and after do thou smite his neck." "A sensible speech," cried the husband and during the whole time her mate was striving to pull the bolt she kept saying to him, "Do this ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... Johanna; but whenever I look at you, I feel so stern and hard to Ascott. It seems as if there were circumstances when pity to some, to one, was wicked injustice to others: as if there were times when it is right and needful to lop off, at once and forever, a rotten branch rather than let the whole tree go to rack and ruin. I would do it! I should think myself justified ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... not ceased to love you," she replied. "Have I not just told you so? But you would find yourself miserable in the—lop-sided kind of marriage which you are contemplating. It is unwise to try to ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... him. The sheep, weather-beaten and dejected, followed the path with low heads nodding from side to side, as if they had traveled far and found little pasture. The black, lop-eared goats leaped upon the rocks, restless and ravenous, tearing down the tender branches and leaves of the dwarf oaks and wild olives. They reared up against the twisted trunks and crawled and scrambled ...
— The Sad Shepherd • Henry Van Dyke
... blowing now right, now left, then tossed aloft in the pallid sunshine. He looked about sharply for the Boy, as he had been doing this two hours. There was the Jesuit bending over the fire, bettering the precarious position of a saucepan that insisted on sitting lop-sided, looking down into the heart of coals. Nicholas was holding up ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... a horse that had known almost as much about soldiering as his young rider. Then Hannibal, the mule from Cadiz, that had served valiantly through battle and retreat, to die in a Tennessee stream bed. And now this bone-rack of a gray mule with one lop ear, a mind of his own, and a gait which could set one's teeth on edge when you pushed him into any show of speed. The animal's long, melancholy face, his habit of braying mournfully in the moonlight—until Westerners compared him unfavorably ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... it from the steamboat—"a narrow, lop-sided wooden jumble of corpulent windows heaped one upon another as you might heap as many toppling oranges, with a crazy wooden veranda impending over the water,"—a tavern of dropsical appearance, which had ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... and afterwards a large herd grazing near the stream. Farther on, we saw five old and miserably emaciated Indian women, gathering grass-seed for bread. This process is performed with two baskets, one shaped like a round shield, and the other having a basin and handle. With the shield the lop of the grass is brushed, and the seed by the motion is thrown into the deep basket held in the other hand. The five women appeared at a distance like so many mowers cutting down the grass of a meadow. These ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... miles, and then we saw a great and stately house, with many trees close around it, so close that in some places their branches dragged against the walls when the wind blew; and some hung broken down; for no one seemed to take much charge of the place;—to lop the wood, or to keep the moss-covered carriage-way in order. Only in front of the house all was clear. The great oval drive was without a weed; and neither tree nor creeper was allowed to grow over the long, many-windowed ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... him, but laboured all the more strenuously in her own sphere of esoteric science, and she even discovered that all esoteric science had a twofold element in it—masculine and feminine—and that all discoveries of occult mysteries engaged in by man alone, were, so to speak, lop-sided, and therefore valueless. So she conveyed herself secretly, by processes familiar to her, away from her husband, and took refuge in this region of Thibet in which we now dwell, and which, with all his knowledges, Sankaracharya was never able to discover, ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... improvements are to be seen in Teheran, they are found nowhere else in Persia. Coal of an inferior quality is obtained in the Elburz Mountains, near Kasveen, and brought on the backs of camels to Teheran; and enough gas is manufactured to supply two rows of lamps leading from the lop-maidan to the palace front, two rows on the east side of the palace, and a dozen more in the top-maid.an itself. The gas is of the poorest quality, and the lamps glimmer faintly through the gloom of a moonless evening until half-past ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens |
