"Buttress" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... column. India-rubber is modern, but the yellow animal substance which is elastic like that, and serves the same purpose in the animal economy which that serves in our mechanical contrivances, is as old as the mammalia. The dome, the round and the Gothic arch, the groined roof, the flying buttress, are all familiar to those who have studied the bony frame of man. All forms of the lever and all the principal kinds of hinges are to be met with in our own frames. The valvular arrangements of the blood-vessels are unapproached by any ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... landed at the Passeggiata Aretusa, a promenade that runs under shady trees between the Great Harbour and the cliff on which the city is built. It leads south to a garden, and further progress appears to be blocked by a buttress of the cliff; but the buttress is pierced by a tunnel, through which a path leads to another garden lying in an enclosure protected from the harbour by a wall which encircles it; the wall slopes down and on the top of it ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... the King's Chamber at Montauban, is a window, at a great height from the ground, a very deep ravine, which is one of the main defences of the city, lying below it. In the adjoining ante-chamber is a similar window, and between the two is a projecting buttress, and outside the sill of each is a stone ledge a foot wide, which runs round the buttress. I do not know who first thought of it, but one day when the King was absent and we pages were lounging in the room—which ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... flesh was likely to confront my trespassings. But the last of the daylight was now upon me, and I thought best to postpone my enterprise till the morrow. As I betook myself back toward humanity and lodgings, I felt that eye piercing me till I rounded the buttress of the wall; but I denied my folly permission to ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... those that are the meanest and most unpromising are the best, as they leave the greatest scope for the unbounded stores of thought and fancy in the writer's own mind. Poetry had with them "neither buttress nor coigne of vantage to make its pendant bed and procreant cradle." It was not "born so high: its aiery buildeth in the cedar's top, and dallies with the wind, and scorns the sun." It grew like a mushroom out of the ground; or was hidden in it like a truffle, ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... writ in three days, and the penalties incurred by those who should neglect or refuse to make the due return, or to comply with any other clause of this regulation. The commons seemed hearty in rearing up this additional buttress to the liberty of their fellow-subjects, and passed the bill with the most laudable alacrity; but in the house of lords such a great number of objections were started, that it sunk at the second reading, and the judges were ordered to prepare a bill for the same purpose, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... by the Puerta de Rochapea which gives exit to the city on the northern side. It had been sunny since morning, and the snow had melted from the roads, but the hills across the plain were still white and great drifts were piled against the ramparts, forming a natural buttress from the summit of the steep river bank almost to the ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... darkness, and at the nearest point, the passing blurrs would have suggested two riders on bush hacks leading a third with an empty saddle on its back—a lady's or "side-saddle", if one could have distinguished the horns. They may have struck a soft track or level, or rounded the buttress of the hill higher up, but before they had time to reach or round the foot of the spur, blurs, whispers, stumble and clatter of hoofs, jingle of bridle rings, and the occasional clank together of stirrup irons, seemed shut off as suddenly and completely as though ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... summer, The temple-haunting martlet, does approve, By his loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze, Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle; Where they most breed and haunt, I have ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... pale moonlight; For the gay beams of lightsome day Gild but to flout the ruins gray. When the broken arches are dark in night, And each shafted oriel glimmers white; When the cold light's uncertain shower Streams on the ruin'd central tower; When buttress and buttress, alternately, Seem framed of ebon and ivory; Wnen silver edges the imagery, And the scrolls that teach thee to live and die; When distant Tweed is heard to rave, And the howlet to hoot o'er ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 543, Saturday, April 21, 1832. • Various
... Booth, is Perpendicular, and somewhat resembles, though it is later in date, the porch in the centre of the west front at Peterborough. The front entrance archway has highly enriched spandrels and two lateral octagonal staircase buttress turrets at the angles. These have glazed windows in the upper portions, forming a picturesque lantern to each. This outer porch consists of two stories, the lower of which is formed by three wide, open arches, springing from four piers at the extreme angles, two ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Hereford, A Description - Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • A. Hugh Fisher
... livelihood by selling sparrows, small eels, carp, and tortoises, which the worshipper sets free in honour of the deity, within whose territory cocks and hens and doves, tame and unharmed, perch on every jutty, frieze, buttress, ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... ratlings^. staff, stick, crutch, alpenstock, baton, staddle^; bourdon^, cowlstaff^, lathi^, mahlstick^. post, pillar, shaft, thill^, column, pilaster; pediment, pedicle; pedestal; plinth, shank, leg, socle^, zocle^; buttress, jamb, mullion, abutment; baluster, banister, stanchion; balustrade; headstone; upright; door post, jamb, door jamb. frame, framework; scaffold, skeleton, beam, rafter, girder, lintel, joist, travis^, trave^, corner stone, summer, transom; rung, round, step, sill; angle rafter, hip rafter; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... take the thrust of a vaulted stone roof must have required consummate capacity and skill. At Eton, where, however, the stone roof was never built, the buttresses planned to carry it appear so enormous that the building seems to be all buttress, but here such an impression could never for a moment be gained, for the chapel filling each bay completely masks the widest portion of the adjoining buttresses. The upper portions are so admirably ...
— Beautiful Britain—Cambridge • Gordon Home
... strengthened according to the most orthodox arctic rules, until, instead of presenting the appearances of a body intended for progress through the water, they resembled nothing so much as very ungainly snuff-boxes; and their bows formed a buttress which rather pushed the water before it than passed through it. The remark made by an old seaman who had grown gray amongst the ice was often recalled to my mind, as with an aching heart for many ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... my ears, Struck quivering in the sod; There, like the prophet's rod, Put leaves out, took firm root, And bore me instant fruit. My foes were all astounded, Dumbstricken and confounded, Gaping in a long row; They dared not thrust nor throw. Thus, then, I climbed a steep Buttress and won the keep, And laughed and proudly blew My horn, "Stand to! Stand to! Wake up, sir! Here's a new ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... and dusk was already falling, when half frantic with fear, I at length made out a crevice which appeared to offer a possible means of saving my life. It ran diagonally across the rock at a steep angle upwards, going out of my sight around a big buttress that overhung me, and I could not tell whether it reached to the actual top or not. But it was my only chance, and with my heart in my mouth I made my way towards it. I could just reach it, and setting my teeth ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... hearing grows so quick in the Bushland!—steps, though as light as ever brushed the dew from the harebell! I crept under the shadow of the huge buttress mantled with ivy. A form comes from the little door at an angle in the ruins,—a woman's form. Is it my mother? It is too tall, and the step is more bounding. It winds round the building, it turns to look back, and a sweet voice—a ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... taking aim, wounded Alcmaon, son of Thestor, with his spear, and extracted the spear; but he. following the weapon, fell prone, and his armour, variously decked with brass, resounded upon him. Sarpedon then seizing the buttress with his sturdy hands, pulled, and it all followed entirely; but the wall was stripped away from above, and he formed a way for many. Then Ajax and Teucer aiming at him together, the one smote him with an ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... of attraction for the Celtic inhabitants, and the rocks piled up around it stand there as witnesses of a civilization and architecture certainly more primitive than the civilization and architecture of Roman, Saxon, or Norman settlers. We need not look beyond. How long that granite buttress of England has stood there, defying the fury of the Atlantic, the geologist alone, who is not awed by ages, would dare to tell us. But the historian is satisfied with antiquities of a more humble and homely character; and in bespeaking the interest, and, it may be, the active ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... slice of toast without butter." "And for thy drink"—("What?" gasped Brother John)—"one dessert-spoonful of whisky, with a pint of the water of Apollinaris at luncheon and dinner. No more!" At this Brother John fainted, falling like a great buttress of a hill, such as ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... acquisition and reckless extravagance—she nevertheless contrived to do terrible mischief, by giving her husband no advice in general, and bad advice whenever she gave it in particular. His ivy-like nature wanted a strong buttress upon which to lean; and Eleonore of Provence was neither stronger nor more stable than himself. Her one idea of life was to enjoy herself to the utmost. When she wanted a new dress, she had not the slightest ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... own, is more remarkable for its verdure, and for a general appearance of civilisation, than for its natural beauties. The chalky cliffs may seem bold and noble to the American, though compared to the granite piles that buttress the Mediterranean they are but mole-hills; and the travelled eye seeks beauties instead, in the retiring vales, the leafy hedges, and the clustering towns that dot the teeming island. Neither is Portsmouth a very favourable specimen of a British port, considered solely in reference to the ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... few words to the people near him before going down the last steps into the launch, and it in the meantime gently and perseveringly smoked the ticket-holders on the buttress of the pier opposite us; and we ticket-holders and G. P. on our buttress smiled at their pained expressions—our time was to come. It stopped smoking, held its breath as it were, and came slowly under us, and Lady Curzon looked up from under the awning in the stern with a charming ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... some relentless monster rushing from its lair. But the Cheddar gorge, though majestic and awe-inspiring, is not of great extent. Soon the valley widened, the road took longer sweeps to round each frowning buttress, and at last emerged, with a quality of inanimate breathlessness, on to the bleak and desolate ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... his wife's. Lady Cumnor's character was perhaps a little too ponderous for him in reality, but he was always full of admiration for all her words and deeds, and used to boast of her wisdom, her benevolence, her power and dignity, in her absence, as if by this means he could buttress up his ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... gifts;—such the overflowing heart feels it a blessedness to solace itself by giving. St. Edmund's Shrine glitters now with diamond flowerages, with a plating of wrought gold. The wooden chapel, as we say, has become a stone temple. Stately masonries, long-drawn arches, cloisters, sounding aisles buttress it, begirdle it far and wide. Regimented companies of men, of whom our Jocelin is one, devote themselves, in every generation, to meditate here on man's Nobleness and Awfulness, and celebrate and ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... breathing winy breaths into her false hair was welcome to her choice. I was at least in the battle of life—and life is a battle which scars you more when you try to keep out of it than when you wade into it. I was a mother and a home-maker and the hope and buttress of the future. And all I wanted was a good night's sleep and some candid friend to tell me not to be a feather-headed idiot, but a sensible woman with a sensible perspective ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... and pinnet high, Blazed every rose-carved buttress fair— So still they blaze, when fate is nigh The lordly line of high ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... of them, however, had emotions calculated to swallow up surprise. Brakespeare College was one of the few that retained real traces of Gothic ornament, and just beneath Dr. Eames's balcony there ran out what had perhaps been a flying buttress, still shapelessly shaped into gray beasts and devils, but blinded with mosses and washed out with rains. With an ungainly and most courageous leap, Eames sprang out on this antique bridge, as the only possible mode of escape from the maniac. He sat astride of ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... smaller. To Ta-kwan-hsien a few natural obstacles occur, although the road is always high up on the hill-sides. I crossed a miserable suspension bridge of two spans. The southern span is about thirty feet, the northern span eighty feet; the center is supported by a buttress of splendid blocks of squared stone, resting on the rock in the bed of the river, one side being considerably worn away by the action of the water. The longer span was hung very slack, the woodwork forming ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... he shouted. "We are over the worse now and shall soon be in calmer water. Get your feet well out in front of you, if you can, and dig your heels into the mud, then you will act as a buttress to me and help me to keep ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... in the dirt without her riding-hood." Dr. Lloyd offered to go and accost her. "Not for your life," replied Jobson; "she never would forgive me for letting you catch her thus out of sorts. Stop behind that buttress, and I'll go and tell her there is some company coming, and when she has put on her pinners and facings, she will be very ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... the slender grace of the Giralda, it does not look a thing of bricks and mortar, it is so straight and light that it reminds one vaguely of some beautiful human thing. The great height is astonishing, there is no buttress or projection to break the very long straight line as it rises, with a kind of breathless speed, to the belfry platform. And then the renaissance building begins, ascending still more, a sort of filigree work, excessively rich, and elegant ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... deep roar Of distant waves, or the tumultuous rush Of multitudes: the lichen creeps along Each yawning crevice, and the wild-flower hangs Its long festoons around each crumbling stone. The window's arch and massive buttress glow With time's deep tints, whilst cypress shadows wave On high, and spread a melancholy gloom. Silent forever is the voice Of Tragedy and Eloquence. In climes Far distant, and beneath a cloudy ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... is a little party of six Englishmen with six Oberland guides, who left the inn at 3 A.M. on July 20, 1862, were not, perhaps, in a specially poetical mood. Yet as the sun rose while we were climbing the huge buttress of the Moench, the dullest of us—I refer, of course, to myself—felt something of the spirit of the scenery. The day was cloudless, and a vast inverted cone of dazzling rays suddenly struck upward into the sky through the gap between ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... slipped toward the little caravan and engulfed it. Through the front opening Susan watched the road. There was a time when each dust ridge showed a side of bright blue. To half-shut eyes they were like painted stripes weaving toward the distance. Following them to where the trail bent round a buttress, her glance brought up on Courant's mounted figure. He seemed the vanishing point of these converging stripes, the object they were striving toward, the end they aimed for. Reaching him they ceased as though they had accomplished their purpose, led the woman's eyes to him as to a symbolical figure ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... it. Under slow but resistless pressure the strata of the Appalachian trough were thrust against the rigid land, and slowly, steadily bent into long folds whose axes ran northeast-southwest parallel to the ancient coast line. It was on the eastern side next the buttress of the land that the deformation was the greatest, and the folds most steep and close. In central Pennsylvania and West Virginia the folds were for the most part open. South of these states the folds were more closely appressed, the strata were much broken, and the great thrust ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... battle really was fought, is a ford upon the river Derwent, at the distance of about seven miles from York, and situated in that large and opulent county. A long wooden bridge over the Derwent, the site of which, with one remaining buttress, is still shown to the curious traveller, was furiously contested. One Norwegian long defended it by his single arm, and was at length pierced with a spear thrust through the planks of the bridge from a ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... so that it is not only unencumbered by the soil that gave it birth, but is wholly detached and relieved, and set off against the clear blue of his imagination. His thought is not like a rock propped up but still sod-bound, but is like a rock held aloft, or built into a buttress, with definite shape ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... saw him, dressed in the white uniform of a Russian, standing by a buttress of the wall. His uniform had a faint yellowish colour, as if it had been laid away for many years against this evening's dance; the light caught his knees and long boots, but the shadow of the ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... Projecting above the roof of the building were three domes, two of which, on either loggia, were spherical in form, being 44 feet in diameter, while the apex of the central dome attained a height of 135 feet. The dome was octagonal in shape, having at each corner an exterior buttress, adorned with a large statue at its top. Encircling the same was a gallery from which could be viewed the greater part of the exposition grounds and the surrounding country. Above the cornice of the building was a balustrade decorated with shields, showing the coats of arms of the twenty-one ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... collectively a tremendous bump. "Hey, look out! Out of the way!" cries a man, by way of apology, who is being assisted by several others to push a cart towards the wagons. The work is hard, for the ground slopes up, and so soon as they cease to buttress themselves against the cart and adhere to the wheels, it slips back. The sullen men crush themselves against it in the depth of the gloom, grinding their teeth and growling, as though they fell ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... reduction of the forts was not of immediate importance, though it was immediately and successfully achieved. For the German business was not here, as at Liege, to grasp a railway within the zone of the fortifications, but to destroy the buttress upon which the French depended for their defensive position, and to prevent the French from holding the crossings over the two rivers Sambre and Meuse at ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... boots (gum, high) and a goat's skin, flung himself on the east wing, and became an animated buttress. Albert Edward climbed aloft and sat on the tin lid, which was opening and shutting at every pore. Mactavish put his shoulder to the south wall to keep it from working round to the north. I clung to the pantry, which was coming adrift from its parent ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, Feb. 7, 1917 • Various
... a pleasant seat; the air Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself Unto our gentle senses. This guest of summer, The temple-haunting martlet, does approve By his loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze, buttress, Nor coin of vantage, but this bird hath made His pendent bed, and procreant cradle: where they Most breed and haunt, I have observed, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 195, July 23, 1853 • Various
... light of the declining sun. I was reading the inscription upon an old headstone, for I thought everybody was gone; when I heard a door open, and shut again before I could turn. I saw at once that it must have been a little door in the tower, almost concealed from where I stood by a deep buttress. I had never seen the door open, and I had never inquired anything about it, supposing it led merely ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... sound the reveille from the turret. Telramund conceals himself behind a buttress of the minster. The business of the day is gradually taken up in the citadel court. The porter unlocks the tower-gate that lets out on to the city-road; servants come and go about their work, drawing water, ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... but the swirls of mist-color, listen to disembodied voices from it, was disconcerting. Part of the stage dressing, he decided, for building their prestige with the other races with whom they dealt. Three women alone would have to buttress their authority ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... the Maharaja of the Punjaub, should attempt the recovery of his throne without any stiffening of British bayonets at his back. Then it was urged, and the representation was indeed accepted, that the Shah would need the buttress afforded by English troops, and that a couple of regiments only would suffice to afford this prestige. But Sir Harry Fane, the Commander-in-Chief, judiciously interposed his veto on the despatch of a handful of British soldiers on so distant ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... approached the opening in the brambles I became conscious of a certain relief. At a little distance the cataract had seemed to actually wash in its descent the edge of the platform. Now I found it to be further away than I had imagined, the ground dropping in a sharp slope to a sort of rocky buttress which lay obliquely on the slant of the ravine, and was the true margin of the torrent. Before I essayed the descent, I glanced back at my companion. He was kneeling where I had left him, his hands pressed to his face, his features ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... glory. And for the rest of our watery journey we were conscious only of that lighting. Behind the Mont, lay a vast sea of saffron. But it was in the sky; against it the great rock was as black as if the night were upon it. Here and there, through the curve of a flying buttress, or the apertures of a pierced parapet, gay bits of this yellow world were caught and framed. The sea lay beneath like a quiet carpet; and over this carpet ships and sloops swam with easy gliding motion, ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... the course which the Plutocrats have traversed. They have destroyed individual liberty; they have entrenched themselves in our halls of legislature by bribery; our executives are their puppets; our courts are their final buttress. To reclaim the rights of the people we must reach the powers in control; the actual men who engineer the scheme of public loot. These men have sacrificed human lives to attain their ascendency. We must demand, ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... the main supports of our dam, being detached from the cliff as Lumley had surmised, had been undermined by the unusual floods of the previous week. Even in that condition it might have remained fast, so strong was our artificial buttress, but as the foundation wore away the rock heeled over to one side a little; this deranged the direct action of the buttresses, and in an instant they flew aside. The rock was hurled over, and the whole of our dam was dashed ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... sign remained of the dome-roofed settlement of the Sleepers. The huts had served to buttress the snow for the blizzard. They were buried deep under the great white ridges which the storm ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... for me to meet any but the milder members of the tribe living in the vicinity of Compostela. On one occasion I had made arrangements to meet a Maggugan warrior chief at an appointed trysting place in the forest. Upon arriving at the spot, one of my companions beat the buttress of a tree as a signal that we had arrived, but it was more than an hour before our Maggugan friends made their appearance. Upon being questioned as to the delay, they informed us that they had circled around at a considerable distance, ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... them in the garden by a walk shaded with chestnut trees was filled in the yard by a row of outbuildings. An old rust-devoured iron gate in the garden wall balanced the yard gateway, a huge, double-leaved carriage entrance with a buttress on either side, and a mighty shell on the top. The same shell was ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... of social as well as of individual life. The hunter tries out a new snare or weapon, the machinist constructs a new tool, the chemist works out a new formula, the architect creates a new variety of arch or buttress, the educator writes a new kind of text-book, the sanitary engineer devises new methods for securing and safeguarding a water supply, the statesman plans a new system of roads that will open up the rural districts, ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing
... occurs several times in the Berlin Papyrus, No. ii. For instance, the peasant who is the hero of the story, says of the lord Miruitensi, that he is "the rudder of heaven, the guide of the earth, the balance which carries the offerings, the buttress of tottering walls, the support of that which falls, the great master who takes whoever is without a master to lavish on him the goods of his house, a jug of beer and three loaves" ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... appeared on the walls; the very portals, though locked and barred, seemed unguarded; above, the many domes and glittering crescents pierced heaven; while the old walls, survivors of ages, with ivy-crowned tower and weed-tangled buttress, stood as rocks in an uninhabited waste. From within the city neither shout nor cry, nor aught except the casual howling of a dog, broke the noon-day stillness. Even our soldiers were awed to silence; the music paused; the clang of arms was hushed. Each man asked ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... where it is,' said Waterloo. 'If people jump off straight forwards from the middle of the parapet of the bays of the bridge, they are seldom killed by drowning, but are smashed, poor things; that's what THEY are; they dash themselves upon the buttress of the bridge. But you jump off,' said Waterloo to me, putting his fore- finger in a button-hole of my great-coat; 'you jump off from the side of the bay, and you'll tumble, true, into the stream under the arch. What you ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... whom Myles had struck down with his cudgel was sitting up rubbing the back of his head, and Wilkes had gathered his wits enough to crawl to the shelter of the nearest buttress. Myles, peeping around the corner behind which he stood, could see that the bachelors were gathered into a little group consulting together. Suddenly it broke asunder, and ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... neared the village his course took him about the base of the crag, and as he rounded the western side he heard the murmur of subdued voices. He slowed and approached cautiously. A jutting buttress of rock masked the talkers until he was almost upon them, and as he turned this corner he halted in a wretched pang of the jealousy he thought he ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... See how they rest under the shadows of those gigantic palm-trees with their drooping leaves! And the girdle of reeds which encircles them through which a pirogue can with difficulty make its way! And the mangrove trees, whose fantastic roots buttress them to the bank like the claws of some gigantic crab! Yes, the islands are beautiful, but, beautiful as they are, they cannot equal the one ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... tower, and its own height above the eye. The first stage is panelled so as not to present too great a contrast to the octagon, and the next is also panelled and has narrow canopied slits on alternate sides, with four thin buttress-like projections on each face. These provide the slight entasis to the outline which is found in so many spires, as it is in classic columns, and is designed to correct the appearance of hollowness which would occur in so long a straight line. The upper two-thirds ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Churches of Coventry - A Short History of the City and Its Medieval Remains • Frederic W. Woodhouse
... involuntarily, and for a moment the architect fancied that he discerned the figure of a man standing in the shadow of the end buttress. But, as he took a few steps nearer, he saw that he had been deceived by a shadow, and that ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... busy in a quiet way about the place. Men were at work blasting the rocks in a quarry not far off, whence laden carts went creeping to the castle; but this was oftener in the night. Some of them drove into the paved court, for here and there a buttress was wanted inside, and of the battlements not a few were weather-beaten and out of repair. These the earl would have let alone, on the ground that they were no longer more than ornamental, and therefore had better be repaired AFTER ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... the entrance has been a spiral staircase, leading to the rooms above and to the top of the castle, which has had a flat roof, surrounded by a parapet and several turrets. The walls of this tower are very strong and firm; a deep buttress is placed at each corner, and one against the middle of each side wall. A small square tower has stood at the southern corner, but the greater part of it has been thrown down by the sea. The foundation of one side wall is also undermined the whole ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... Then I dived again, and swam under water, making towards the right and the castle rock, which ran sheer down to the moat. This course I chose because I had often noted, from the drawbridge, a jutting buttress of rock, behind which, at least, I should be out of arrow-shot. My craft was to give myself all the semblance of a drowning man, throwing up my arms, when I rose to see whereabout I was and to take breath, as men toss their ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... so that, as Delaune remarks, "a great many wicked persons capable of the blackest villainies do creep about, as daily and sad experience shows." It was not only those who, with drawn swords, darted from some deep porch or sheltering buttress, in hopes of enriching themselves at their neighbour's expense, that were to be dreaded. It was a fashion of the time for companies of young gentlemen to saunter forth in numbers after route or supper, when, being merry with wine and eager for adventure, they were ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... shapeless pile of towers and machicolated and battlemented curtains, falling into almost complete ruin. But on passing through the single entrance, one finds oneself in a well-proportioned church of nave and side aisles, a south chapel, and an apse. Each buttress of the apse is battlemented outside and forms a turret, and two strong towers are adapted internally to serve as ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... nave of the church, under the eaves, he noted no less than three swarms of bees, that had made their nest under the timbers of the roof, and were just awakening into summer activity. The drones were being cast out of the hives, and in an angle formed by the buttress of the church, Hugh found a small lead cistern of water, which was a curious sight; it was all full of struggling bees fallen from the roof above, either solitary bees who had darted into the surface, and could not extricate themselves, ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... White were his locks, as is the wintry snow On hoar Plinlimmon's head. A golden staff His steps supported; powerful talisman, Which whoso feels shall never feel again The tear of Pity, or the throb of Love. Touch'd but by this, the massy gates give way, The buttress trembles, and the guarded wall, Guarded in vain, submits. Him heathens erst Had deified, and bowed the suppliant knee To Plutus. Nor are now his votaries few, Tho' he the Blessed Teacher of mankind Hath said, that easier thro' the needle's eye ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... to stand for a widespread and lively joy in simple beauty which seemed to have vanished out of the world. In ancient times it was natural to the old builders if they had, say, a barn to build, to make it strong and seemly and graceful; to buttress it with stone, to bestow care and thought upon coign and window-ledge and dripstone, to prop the roof on firm and shapely beams, and to cover it with honest stone tiles, each one of which had an individuality of its own. But now he saw that if people built naturally, they ran up flimsy walls ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... said of the qualities which Lincoln exhibited in the White House: "Lincoln is a strong man, but his strength is of a peculiar kind; it is not aggressive so much as passive; and among passive things, it is like the strength not so much of a stone buttress as of a wire cable. It is strength swaying to every influence, yielding on this side and on that, to popular needs, yet tenaciously and inflexibly bound to carry its great end.... Slow and careful in coming to resolutions, willing to talk with every person who has anything to show on any side ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... [Footnote 167: Buttress roots are not peculiar to any one species, but common to most of the large trees in the crowded forest, where the lateral growth of the roots is made difficult by the multitude of rivals. The Paxiuba, or big-bellied palm, is ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... day Gild but to flout the ruins gray: When the broken arches are black in night, And each shafted oriel glimmers white; When the cold light's uncertain shower Streams on the ruin'd central tower; When buttress and buttress alternately Seem framed of ebon ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... sense. Thus, men of every school, under the mighty names of men who knew the truth—but who could only give such portion of truth as they deemed man at the time was able to receive—use their names to buttress up mistaken interpretations, and thus walls are continually built up to block the advancing life ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... the rocks and the lichen shone in rings of soft and varied color. Blue shadows filled the dale, which, from the side of the Buttress, looked profoundly deep. A row of young men and women followed a ledge that crossed the face of the steep crag; Mortimer Hyslop leading, a girl and Vernon a few yards behind, Lister ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... gleams of light. Hatteras's orders were heard in the midst of the crew's strange struggle with the icebergs. The ship giving way to the tremendous pressure, bent to the larboard, and the extremity of her mainyard leaned like a buttress against the iceberg and threatened to break ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... first love affair occured about a week after her arrival in her home in Florence. She was in the habit of walking to mass at the cathedral with her maid Vivace. One morning, so Poliolioli relates, a handsome soldier stepped out of the shadows of an adjoining buttress and looked at her. Bianca at once swooned. The same thing happened again—and again—and yet again. One night she heard the shutters of her bedchamber rattle! "Who is there?" she cried, yet not too loudly, because her woman's instinct warned her to be wary. The shutters were flung ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... evening of that day, after having clambered up two thousand of these rough steps, we found ourselves overlooking a kind of spur or projection of the mountain—a sort of buttress upon which the conelike crater, properly so ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... There was a buttress of Notre Dame, a black arch of the Pont Neuf, part of an old courtyard in the Faubourg St. Germain,—all very fresh and striking. Yet, with the recollection of his poverty in her mind, she could not help saying, "But if you copied one of those masterpieces, you know you could sell it. There ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... unnecessary to say that I returned by the way I had come. I had had enough of the road to Argeles. My one idea was to rejoin Adele and Berry and to sit down in the car. Mentally and physically I was weary to death. I craved to set my back against the buttress of company in this misfortune, and I was mad to sit down. Compared with standing any longer upon my feet, the contingency of ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... moral retribution which may overtake evil-doers in the life to come, their ideas are very vague; only they are sure that the ghosts of the niggardly will be punished by being dumped very hard against the buttress-roots of chestnut-trees. They say, too, that all breaches of etiquette or of the ordinary customs of the country will meet with certain appropriate punishments in the spirit land. When the soul has thus done penance, it takes possession of the body of some animal, for instance, the ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... unbroken the ascent from this, the simplest architecture, to the loftiest. The placing of the timbers in a ship's stem, and the laying of the stones in a bridge buttress, are similar in art to the construction of the plowshare, differing in no essential point, either in that they deal with other materials, or because, of the three things produced, one has to divide earth by advancing through it, another to divide water by advancing through it, and the third ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... also consisting of a number of one-horse sledges. It took some time to pass, as the track was narrow and the horses floundered in the deep snow when passing each other. After we had got by and were continuing on our way down to Sues, we turned along an outstanding buttress of cliff and saw that some two miles of steep slope ahead had avalanched. The whole surface of the snow had slipped to the bottom of the valley and if either of the diligences had been on this slope when it happened, ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... the retention of conquered territory demands, its militarization, regimentation, centralization, and unchallenged authority; the cultivation of the spirit of domination, the desire to justify and to frame a philosophy to buttress it. Some one has spoken of the war which made 'Germany ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... approached it, he fancied that he might, perhaps, find her there. When, at the turn of the gallery which opens on the roof of the side aisles, he perceived the tiny cell with its little window and its little door crouching beneath a great flying buttress like a bird's nest under a branch, the poor man's heart failed him, and he leaned against a pillar to keep from falling. He imagined that she might have returned thither, that some good genius had, no ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... hills which there blocked their course, they had followed the level and open beach at the foot of the cliff, aware, of course, of the gap which Felix had found. While they were talking, Felix saw the cloud of dust raised by the sheep as the flocks wound round a jutting buttress of cliff. ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... Oliver was fair and ruddy and his air of dozing contentment was always vexatious to his younger brother. He had every reason for contentment. Betty's money had securely buttressed the family fortunes and he had three delightful little boys to buttress Betty's money. Gregory grew a little out of temper after talking for five minutes to Oliver and this was not a fortunate mood in which to realise, as the Montgomerys, the Overtons and the Canning-Thompsons followed ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... New England. Laws are going to be violated, Hood, both in actual letter and in spirit. But that's your end of the business. It's up to you to get around the Interstate Commerce Commission in any way you can, and buttress this little monopoly against competition and reform-infected legislatures. I don't care what ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... Amphalula, vice-president of Hooligan Gulch and Red Water, secretary of Horse's Neck, Holy Jo, Gargoyle Extension, Cowhide Number Five, Consolidated Bimetallic, Nevada Mastodon, Leaping Frog, Orelady Mine, Why Marry and Sol's Cliff Buttress, and ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... threatened, with every second to blow over and submerge our homestead; but the vortex setting past the Toll House was too strong; and there lay our little platform, in the arms of the deluge, but still enjoying its unbroken sunshine. About eleven, however, thin spray came flying over the friendly buttress, and I began to think the fog had hunted out its Jonah after all. But it was the last effort. The wind veered while we were at dinner, and began to blow squally from the mountain summit and by half-past one ...
— The Sea Fogs • Robert Louis Stevenson
... defence of it; he did not go into any argument, but still, at the same time, he rather defied anybody to make an assault upon it; he believed that it would not succeed, and that it was very wrong; but what does he really propose? Only this: to add another buttress in the shape of another bribe. He says that he will make an offer to the Roman Catholic hierarchy and people of Ireland— some say that the people do not want it, and that the hierarchy do want it, but I say nothing about that, because I hope the Catholic ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... name—were once a refuge for the Picts; and Caerketton—probably Caer-etin, the giant's strong-hold—is one of them. Darkly its cliffs frown down upon you, while all else is flashing white in the winter sunlight. For once, in this last buttress thrown out into the plain of Lothian towards the royal city, the outer folds of the Pentlands loses its boldly-rounded curves, and drops an almost sheer descent of black rock to the little glen below. In a wrinkle of the foothills Swanston farm and hamlet ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... eagle's nest, and not nearly so large as that in which some eaglets are reared, made by interlacing branchlets of white mangrove until the mass was sufficient to support his weight. With a double ended paddle rudely shaped from the thin buttress roots of the red mangrove, and comic in the crudeness and disproportion of its parts, he felt himself safe miles out to sea. When he approached a passing vessel he presented the illusion, not of walking, but of sitting on the water, for the float was almost completely submerged. ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... by a battlemented wall which formed the horizon. The sky overhead was so blue and cloudless that it might have formed the background for an Italian landscape, and framed against it was the massive tower of the cathedral, its silver-greys darkening almost to black, as a buttress here and there brought it in shadow. Among its pinnacles a few wise old rooks flapped lazily in the still air, as much a part of their surroundings as the stately swans that floated on the stream which lapped the foot of the tower, while on all sides there stretched ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... consciousness that he need not debase himself, nor do violence to his convictions, in order to achieve success therein, since he can live and thrive in another (if you choose, humbler) vocation, if driven from that of his choice. This buttress to integrity, this assurance of self-respect, is to be found in a universal training to efficiency in ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... crutch, alpenstock, baton, staddle[obs3]; bourdon[obs3], cowlstaff[obs3], lathi[obs3], mahlstick[obs3]. post, pillar, shaft, thill[obs3], column, pilaster; pediment, pedicle; pedestal; plinth, shank, leg, socle[obs3], zocle[obs3]; buttress, jamb, mullion, abutment; baluster, banister, stanchion; balustrade; headstone; upright; door post, jamb, door jamb. frame, framework; scaffold, skeleton, beam, rafter, girder, lintel, joist, travis[obs3], trave[obs3], corner ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... against one of the sharp buttresses that here and there jutted boldly forth, she fell to the ground. Though much bruised, her senses did not leave her; she uttered no cry; nay, she hailed the accident that had led her to something like a screen; and creeping close up to the angle formed by the buttress, so that on one side at least she was sheltered from view, she gathered her slight and small form into its smallest compass, and breathlessly ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... essential for his rescue. The effort now on these icy steeps might cost either man or beast a broken limb, if no more. With an instinct of self-protection the animal had chosen the lee of a great buttress of the cliff, and could stand there safely all night though the temperature should fall still lower. The young pack-man called out a word or two of encouragement, listening fearfully as the sound struck back in the silence from the icy ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... vole's burrow was situated about a foot below the summer level of the river, and in a kind of buttress of gravel and soil, which, at its base, sloped abruptly inwards like an arch. This buttress jutted out at the lower corner of a little horse-shoe bay; and hereabouts, during summer, a shoal of minnows had often played, following each ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... as much to afford her opportunity to overcome her emotion, as to give relief to his own. Though now well on the wrong side of sixty, John Knott was hale and vigorous as ever. His rough-hewn countenance bore even closer resemblance, perhaps, to that of some stone gargoyle carved on cathedral buttress or spout. But his hand was no less skilful, his tongue no less ready in denunciation of all he reckoned humbug, his heart no less deeply touched, for all his superficial irascibility, by the pains, and sins, and grinding miseries, of poor humanity ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... little troop of cavalry was pushing westward across the desert. The young May moon was sinking to rest, its pure pallid light shining faintly in contrast with the ruddy glow of some distant beacon in the mountains beneath. Ever since nightfall the rock buttress at the pass had been reflecting the lurid glare of the leaping flames as, time and again, unseen but busy hands heaped on fresh fuel and sent the sparks whirling in fiery eddies to the sky. Languid and depressed after a long day's battling with the fierce white sunshine, horses and men ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... on past many hiding-places well known to him, till the two reached the point where the mountain face sweeps backward in the curve of which the Downfall makes the centre. At the outward edge of the curve a great buttress of ragged and jutting rocks descends perpendicularly towards the valley, like a ruined staircase ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... shallow at the place, but it was on the contrary extremely deep. Remaining myself in the boat, I directed all the men to land, after we had crossed the stream, upon a large rock that formed the left buttress as it were to this sluice, and, fastening the rope to the mast instead of her head, they pulled upon it. The unexpected rapidity with which the boat shot up the passage astonished me, and filled the natives with wonder, who testified their admiration of so dextrous a manoeuvre, ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... Tr. 15) contains several small sketches of sections and exterior views of the Dome; some of them show buttress-walls shaped as inverted arches. Respecting these ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci |
