Prop Up Quotes & Sayings

I plant my elbows on the kitchen table, prop up my chin and think: When the hell did the compass needle get out of whack and lead my life astray? — Haruki Murakami

I can stand on my own feet; I don't need any man's mahogany desk to prop me up — William Faulkner

I was never in danger. Nothing bad can happen to you if you're with your mom. Your mom can stop a bullet from lodging in your heart. She can prop you up when you can't. You mom is your blood and bone before your body even knows how to make any. — Scaachi Koul

One works hard to prop up an illusion that sucks the life out of them, and the other works hard to make their home a place that restores them, nurtures them, and gives life to others. — Craig Groeschel

It did not speak well of the power of God, in other words, if He needed a human government to prop him up. — Jon Meacham

Conceit may puff a man up, but never prop him up. — John Ruskin

I believe Government should encourage competition, NOT prop up the weak when the going gets tough. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

SHUT UP," Carot Top say, the cocane now taking effect. "This isnt Poetry 101. People want to laugh. Your suposed to be a 'King' of Prop Comedy. But youve been acting more like a jester of prop comedy. — Seinfeld 2000

A single prop that does not look real to an audience can louse you up. The same is true of the smallest flaw in setting up the motivation in a story line. — Desi Arnaz

The modern believer is not suspicious enough, which is perhaps why, when they try to construct arguments in their defence, the convictions are left doing all the work and reason, debilitated by neglect, weakly fails to prop them up. — Julian Baggini

Self-righteousness is exactly that - thinking that your righteousness (your standing before God and others) relies only on yourself. You think you can earn it. You think it's about what you do or don't do. Because of this you are driven to act only in ways that continue to prop up how awesome you think you are. It produces a very prideful I-have-all-the-answers-and-you-are-all-idiots type of arrogance. — Jefferson Bethke

Country music is one of those places where we support each other and prop each other up. — Chris Stapleton

There's nothing worse than worried, old women who are eager to 'help.' It took ten minutes to get rid of them. They fed me cake because 'sugar gets the blood running.' They argued over the number of pillows that should prop up my head, as if there were some magic number that would miraculously cure my mysterious ailments. — Katherine Pine

Live in dreams for too long and ye go mad - ye can never wake up prop'ly, ye can never get the hang o' reality again. — Terry Pratchett

We are always boosting or trying to prop up the ego by fulfilling some desire or other, and always craving affirmation from the outside. — Pankaj Mishra

Frank Capra was a prop man, I think. John Ford was a prop man. It was a little bit of a father and son thing, and you kind of worked your way up. — Francis Ford Coppola

I don't care much for facts, am not much interested in them, you can't stand a fact up, you've got to prop it up, and when you move to one side a little and look at it from that angle, it's not thick enough to cast a shadow in that direction. — William Faulkner

Do you dance? Or are you strictly a prop-up-the-wall-with-a-beer kind of guy?"
"I dance. But I don't shag."
She laughed. "I think we've just established that you do".
"Not Austin Powers shagging. It's A Carolina thing. A dance. — Virginia Kantra

The median family of four ... paid $4,722 in federal taxes last year. That's enough to pay for a new curtain for the secretary of commerce's office, to bribe a farmer not to plant 38 acres with corn ... seven weeks of salary for a Customs man assigned to save us from the terror of high-quality, low priced foreign TV sets, or the subsidy on 6,000 bushels of wheat to prop up the Soviet regime. Surely civilization would collapse without such essential services. — Alan Bock

I'm not against government involvement in times of need. I am for recognizing that big public companies will continue to cut jobs in an effort to prop up stock prices, which in turn stimulates the need for more government involvement. — Mark Cuban

The sound of running feet indicated that Sergeant Detritus was bringing some of the latest trainees back from their morning run. He could hear the jody Detritus had taught them. Somehow, you could tell it was made up by a troll: "Now we sing dis stupid song! Sing it as we run along! Why we sing dis we don't know! We can't make der words rhyme prop'ly!" "Sound off!" "One! Two!" "Sound off!" "Many! Lots!" "Sound off!" "Er ... what? — Terry Pratchett

The failure of Lehman may have allowed the government to do more to prop up the economy than it otherwise could. — Andrew Ross Sorkin

Universal military service may be compared to the efforts of a man to prop up his falling house who so surrounds it and fills it with props and buttresses and planks and scaffolding that he manages to keep the house standing only by making it impossible to live in it. — Leo Tolstoy

There is a gambling element to being somebody who is going to take on the job of constantly trying to represent and prop up people who might be somewhat shady. That notion is probably part of how they got the rap. But, I have to find the balance of being colorful, being at times despicable, and also being somebody who does believe in something. — Greg Kinnear

Women never use their intelligence, except when they need to prop up their intuition. — Jacques Deval

I suspect each of us uses the past to prop up the bruised present. It's a clumsy try for the comfort of normality. — Adib Khan

Perhaps the deepest reason we are afraid of death is that we do not know who we are. We believe in a personal, unique, and separate identity; but if we dare to examine it, we find that this identity depends entirely on an endless collection of things to prop it up: our name, our "biography", our partners, family, home, job, friends, credit card ... It is on their fragile and transient support that we rely for our security. So when they are all taken away, will we have any idea of who we really are? — Sogyal Rinpoche

There is one kind of charity common enough among us ... It is that patchwork philanthropy which clothes the ragged, feeds the poor, and heals the sick. I am far from decrying the noble spirit which seeks to help a poor or suffering fellow being ... [However] what advances a nation or a community is not so much to prop up its weakest and most helpless members, but to lift up the best and the most gifted, so as to make them of the greatest service to the country. — Jamsetji Tata

If you can't compete fairly, honestly, effectively, no government should intervene. Now, some governments do. They prop up failing industries. — Hillary Clinton

As those that pull down private houses adjoining to the temples of the gods, prop up such parts as are contiguous to them; so, in undermining bashfulness, due regard is to be had to adjacent modesty, good-nature and humanity. — Plutarch

When kids are unhappy, we don't have to prop them up with frantic praise. It's more helpful to say, "Ugh, you are not happy with the way that bicycle came out. It doesn't look like what you see in your head. It's not easy to draw a bike. It's hard to put something from real life onto a flat piece of paper and get it to look right. — Julie King

Bo : Prop's very brave and I'm
good at cheering him up, so
we make a good team. — Cornelia Funke

Renounce," he says again and now it begins to make sense.
"No," I breathe and prop myself up on my elbows. "Never. — Celia Mcmahon

We have a lot of books in our house. They are our primary decorative motif-books in piles and on the coffee table, framed book covers, books sorted into stacks on every available surface, and of course books on shelves along most walls. Besides the visible books, there are books waiting in the wings, the basement books, the garage books, the storage locker books ... They function as furniture, they prop up sagging fixtures and disguised by quilts function as tables ... I can't imagine a home without an overflow of books. The point of books is to have way too many but to always feel you never have enough, or the right one at the right moment, but then sometimes to find you'd longed to fall asleep reading the Aspern Papers, and there it is. — Louise Erdrich

If you think that running your economy into the ground and having to send troops in in order to prop up your only ally is leadership, then we've got a different definition of leadership. — Barack Obama

The brands with which we surround ourselves prop us up, make us feel sexy and beautiful, when in reality we're pretty dumpy creatures. — Aaron Belz

I am not writing to flatter paternal egotism, to echo cant, or prop up humbug; I am merely telling the truth. — Charlotte Bronte

There was only the broad square with the scattered dim moons of the street lamps and with the monumental stone arch which receded into the mist as though it would prop up the melancholy sky and protect beneath itself the faint lonely flame on the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which looked like the last grave of mankind in the midst of night and loneliness. — Erich Maria Remarque

American society loves to prop people up and then take them down. — Zach Galifianakis

You see all the other fellows were so active and earnest and all that sort of thing- always rampaging, and skirmishing, and scouring the desert sands, and pacing the margin of the sea, and chasing knights all over the place, and devouring damsels, and going on generally- whereas I liked to get my meals regular and then to prop my back against a bit of rock and snooze a bit, and wake up and think of things going on and how they kept going on just the same, you know! — Kenneth Grahame

Crank, You See isn't any ordinary monster. It's like a giant octopus, weaving its tentacles not just around you, but through you, squeezing not hard enough to kill you, but enough to keep you from reeling until you try to get away. Try, and you hunger for it grasping clutch, the way its tendrils prop you up, your need intensifying exponentially every minute you refuse to admit its being (p.469) — Ellen Hopkins

I looked at her. Sheila was my girl
the girl I wanted
and wanted for keeps. But it wasn't any use having illusions about her. Sheila was a liar and probably always would be a liar. It was her way of fighting for survival
the quick easy glib denial. It was a child's weapon
and she'd probably never got out of using it. If I wanted Sheila, I must accept her as she was
be at hand to prop up the weak places. We've all got our weak places. Mine were different from Sheila's, but they were there. — Agatha Christie

Instead of focusing on men and focusing on what we can do to prop them up, people seem really incredibly focused on the fact that women are doing well and maybe that's not such a good thing. — Jessica Valenti

Perhaps the deepest reason why we are afraid of death is because we do not know who we are. We believe in a personal, unique, and separate identity - but if we dare to examine it, we find that this identity depends entirely on an endless collection of things to prop it up: our name, our "biography," our partners, family, home, job, friends, credit cards ... It is on their fragile and transient support that we rely for our security. So when they are all taken away, will we have any idea of who we really are?
Without our familiar props, we are faced with just ourselves, a person we do not know, an unnerving stranger with whom we have been living all the time but we never really wanted to meet. Isn't that why we have tried to fill every moment of time with noise and activity, however boring or trivial, to ensure that we are never left in silence with this stranger on our own? — Sogyal Rinpoche

We grasp at transitory pleasures. We brood about the past and worry about the future. We continually seek to prop up and defend an egoic self that doesn't exist. — Sam Harris

Oh, please. If she's going to use Mr. Darcy to prop up her arguments, I give up. — Sophie Kinsella

Standards are declining left and right, and it doesn't matter. It's whatever is necessary to prop up Obama. — Rush Limbaugh

[I]t was in the pairs that the prisoners kept alive the semblance of humanity concluded Elmer Luchterhand, a sociologist at Yale who interviewed fifty-two concentration camp survivors shortly after liberation.
Pairs stole food and clothing for each other, exchanged small gifts and planned for the future. If one member of a pair fainted from hunger in front of an SS officer, the other would prop him up.
Survival ... could only be a social achievement, not an individual accident, wrote Eugene Weinstock, a Belgian resistance fighter and Hungarian-born Jew who was sent to Buchenwald in 1943.
Finally the death of one member of a pair often doomed the other. Women who knew Anne Frank in the Bergen-Belsen camp said that neither hunger nor typhus killed the young girl who would become the most famous diarist of the Nazi era. Rather, they said, she lost the will to live after the death of her sister, Margot. — Blaine Harden

There must be some other possibility than death or lifelong penance ... some meeting, some intersection of lines; and some cowardly, hopeful geometer in my brain tells me it is the angle at which two lines prop each other up, the leaning-together from the vertical which produces the false arch. For lack of a keystone, the false arch may be as much as one can expect in this life. Only the very lucky discover the keystone. — Wallace Stegner

During the year of 2015 stay grounded. How? Each night before you go to sleep, write a word/expression capturing a positive state of mind on a sheet of paper. Fold the paper in a V and prop it on your nightstand beside your bed so you will see it the first thing in the morning.
When you wake up, look at the word, put the word into your mind and feel it/express it throughout the day, no matter what happens to you that day. Examples are: appreciation, look for the positive in others and events; happy, worthiness, creative, cheerful, forgiving, gratitude, letting go of your ego and focus on others, selfless, love, kindness, etc. — J.F. Kelly

Prop 87 out here in California is about lessening our dependence on oil by using alternative fuels, and Bill Clinton comes on at the end of the ad and says, "If Brazil can do it, America can, too!" Since when did America have to buck itself up by saying we could catch up to Brazil? We invented the airplane and the lightbulb, they invented the bikini wax, and now they're ahead? — Bill Maher

To prop up the stock price, managers have to turn down the screws on everybody. That forces them to cancel all the projects that would lead to future growth in order to drop money to the bottom line. This is HP's dilemma today. Once a company's growth has stopped, the game as we have known it is over. It's a scary thing. — Clayton Christensen

PEOPLE DIE.
This is the fact the world desperately hides from us from birth. Long after you find out the truth about sex and Santa Claus, this other myth endures, this one about how you'll always get rescued at the last second and if not, your death will at least mean something and there'll be somebody there to hold your hand and cry over you. All of society is built to prop up that lie, the whole world a big, noisy puppet show meant to distract us from the fact that at the end, you'll die, and you'll probably be alone. — David Wong

I'm all right,' Jace protested, but his hand gripped Alec's sleeve tightly. 'I can stand.'
It looks to me like you're using a wall to prop you up. That's not my definition of "standing."'
It's leaning,' Jace told him. 'Leaning comes right before standing. — Cassandra Clare

As the places where Americans dwell become evermore depressing and impossible, Disneyworld is where they escape to worship the nation in the abstract, a cartoon capital of a cartoon republic enshrining the falsehoods, half-truths, and delusions that prop up the squishy thing the national character has become
for instance, that we are a nation of families; that we care about our fellow citizens; that history matters; that there is a place called home. — James Howard Kunstler

We can choose to move with God, further into justice and wholeness, or we can choose to prop up the world's dead systems, baptizing injustice and power in sacred language. — Sarah Bessey

You know, house-elves get a very raw deal!" said Hermione indignantly. "It's slavery, that's what it is! That Mr. Crouch made her go up to the top of the stadium, and she was terrified, and he's got her bewitched so she can't even run when they start trampling tents! Why doesn't anyone do something about it?" "Well, the elves are happy, aren't they?" Ron said. "You heard old Winky back at the match . . . 'House-elves is not supposed to have fun' . . . that's what she likes, being bossed around. . . ." "It's people like you, Ron," Hermione began hotly, "who prop up rotten and unjust systems, just because they're too lazy to - — J.K. Rowling

A lot of share-buying, not bargain-seeking, is designed to prop stock prices up. Thirty to 40 years ago, it was very profitable to look at companies that were aggressively buying their own shares. They were motivated simply to buy below what it was worth. — Charlie Munger

We'll support the government on issues if it's essential to the country but our primary responsibility is not to prop up the government, our responsibility is to provide an opposition and an alternative government for Parliament and for Canadians. — Stephen Harper

Most times he knew there was no hope for Arjuro and Gargarin and Lirah and De Lancey. Too much pain in the past and too much power working against them in the present day. But as he watched Arjuro prop up De Lancey to better remove the arrow, Froi saw the foolishness of dreamers, and he decided he'd like to die so foolish. With a dream in his heart about possibilities rather than a chain of hopelessness. Finnikin had once said that was the only way to live. That he wanted to drown in hope rather than wallow in despair. — Melina Marchetta

While it may seem a bit antithetical to use quite so many "naughty words" in an etiquette book, I can assure you that I would never use curse words for shock value alone or to prop up a needy joke. We live in a world in which one Real Housewife of New Jersey seriously admonished another to "show some fuckin' class!" Enough said. — Celia Rivenbark

Does it have a bed?" Liz asked doing her best to prop him up.
"A couple of old army cots that probably have more mildew than a politician has bullshit. — Hunter Shea

The CD, it should be noted, was born out of greed. It was devised to prop up record sales on the expectation of people replenishing their record collections with CDs of albums they had already purchased. — John Mellencamp

Scientists have odious manners, except when you prop up their theory; then you can borrow money off them. — Mark Twain

Would we as a nation be better off dealing with the truth rather than believing fantasies that prop up the Status Quo and the Fed's dearly beloved measure of the economy, the stock market? How often does accepting illusion help us navigate real life? Short answer: never. — Charles Hugh Smith

I love costumes. My dream growing up was always to have my own costume and prop shop. — Amy Sedaris

Well, yes," she said, looking equal parts amused and bewildered. "But it's the truth! I love my work, and that counts for something, doesn't it?" Those government bureaucrats would trample Sophie to pieces if she couldn't stand up for herself. He walked around the counter until he was standing directly opposite her. "Come on, Sophie! Stand up straight and look me in the eye. Tell me that you are the master and commander of that climate observatory. That there is no one in the state of New York who can operate that office with more efficiency than you. Make me believe it!" "Shhh . . . your grandfather is taking a nap," she said, but she was giggling and at least seemed to be considering his point. It was going to be a challenge to prop her up enough so she could land a position at one of these newfangled observatories, but a fun one. "Let's hear it. Dazzle me with your rhetorical brilliance. — Elizabeth Camden

Honesty is all I've got," she said finally, speaking in a low voice. "I don't have family. I don't have beauty, or a man. I don't have money, and I sure as hell don't have a future. All I've got to prop up my pride is my word." Her chin rose. "When Jenny Jones says something, you can bet your last peso that it's true. — Maggie Osborne

He wished he could prop his fearful self up in a corner like a broom and walk away. — Nina George

A knife can be a symbol, but it also better be able to cut string. And if it represent cutting free, cutting loose, in the story's beginning, it better not be used to prop up a bookcase and then forgotten later on. — Ansen Dibell

Obama is clearly a narcissist in the non-scientific use of the word. He is so self-involved, you see it from his rise.There's not anyone of independent stature around him. There was in the first term, because he needed them to prop him up. But now that he entered a second term, he's the master of the universe, so there's nobody around him. He is impervious to outside advice, real advice that he takes. — Charles Krauthammer

He felt like part of himself had been taken away, an inward prop that was holding up his courage and confidence. — Orson Scott Card

I loved this place. You could prop up the bar and watch the world go by; no one made you talk or expected anything of you — Tim Relf

And by the way, I would not only reappoint Greenspan; if Greenspan would happen to die, God forbid, I would do like they did in the movie 'Weekend at Bernie's.' I would prop him up and put a pair of dark glasses on him. — John McCain

Now there's always exceptions to that and the reason is if the film doesn't really work, whereas before you could rely on a decent amount of DVD sales to prop up the revenue to ensure that you got out in a decent manner, now if the film doesn't work, the film doesn't work and there's none of that DVD revenue to fall back on and you can lose a huge, huge sum of money on a big budget movie. — Eric Fellner

We'll take care of the cooking, Gram, so you can relax." When he and Cat both looked at her, Emma blushed. "Okay, fine. Sean will take care of the grilling so you can relax."
"I was counting on it. And, Sean, why don't you sit down and help us settle on a wedding date."
"I told Emma to tell me when to be there and I'd be there."
"Nonsense. Sit down."
He'd rather be dipped in barbecue sauce and dropped in the desert, but he sat. One more week and it would be over.
Then he wouldn't have to think about Emma anymore. Not think about marrying her or having babies with her or holding her in his arms at night. He'd be gone and she'd be some funny story his brothers brought up sitting around the fire knocking back beer.
"Really, Sean, are you okay?" Cat asked him, putting her hand on his arm.
He realized he'd been rubbing his chest, and he forced himself to lean forward and prop his arms on the table so he wouldn't do it again. "I'm fine. Let's pick a date. — Shannon Stacey

We had an electronic head and arm for Threepio, and I manipulated the mechanism with a joystick. But it wasn't working. The propman said, 'Give me fifteen minutes.' We all went to get coffee, and when we came back, Threepio's head turned perfectly and his arm moved naturally. I looked up and realized that the prop man had a fishing pole with a fine nylon string attached to Threepio's arm. He had rigged another string around the head, which Chewbacca was holding. As Chewie moved his hands, Threepio's head turned! — Irvin Kershner

This notion that we're going to prop up foreign governments, that we're going to invade other countries for some kind of perceived benefit where we're going to install somebody who's going to be supportive of American interests or American corporate private interests needs to stop. — Matt Gonzalez

If we can elect an African American as president, we can support gay marriage! Defeat prop 8! We will not give up! — Madonna Ciccone

What alternative is there to the media's "Us" versus "Them"? The danger is that if it is used to prop up this "righteous" position of "ours" all we will see from now on are ever more exacting and minute analyses of the "dirty" distortions in "their" thinking. Without some flexibility in our definitions we'll remain forever stuck with the same old knee-jerk reactions, or worse, slide into complete apathy. — Haruki Murakami

In fact, books are still being published by the lunatic fringe with the same explanation. In case this book should be read by some fundamentalist searching for straws to prop up his prejudices, let me state categorically that all my experience (such as it is) has led me to an unqualified acceptance of evolution by natural selection as a sufficient explanation for what I have seen in the fossil record. — D. V. Ager

And when I go around and talk to schools, what I tell the kids are, first of all, you have to accept each other's differences. Some of you are going to be a crappy football player, some of you are going to be a great mathematician. Whatever it is, accept each other's differences and help prop each other up. — Vince Flynn

Some people drink to unleash their libidos, and other people drink to prop up their egos. — Lou Reed

On all levels and in every aspect of our society, the poor are rejected, mistreated, and forced more deeply into their poverty. Christianity should have taken up the cause of the poor; better yet, it should have identified with the poor. Instead, during almost the entire course of its history, the Church has served as a prop of the powerful and has been on the side of exploiters and states — Frank Schaeffer

I know that I've overfed myself trying to prop myself up because I'm exhausted. — Geri Halliwell

Gethin Jenkins is one of the best loose-head props in the world. He hits up to 40 rucks a game, makes at least 10 carries and even more tackles. Those are amazing statistics for a prop and he is a very intelligent rugby player. — Warren Gatland

My very first professional job was with a theatre company in 1965 and the first job they gave me was literally shovelling sh*t. I was an assistant stage manager and they told me to clear out the prop store. I opened it up and no-one had been in there for 25 years and it was inches deep in rat sh*t. So before I could get anywhere I had to clear it up. I thought, 'All these years of training, the best drama school in the world, and this is what I'm doing.' — Martin Shaw

Think of how many religions attempt to validate themselves with prophecy. Think of how many people rely on these prophecies, however vague, however unfulfilled, to support or prop up their beliefs. Yet has there ever been a religion with the prophetic accuracy and reliability of science? ... No other human institution comes close. — Carl Sagan

If you let markets - in general, my belief is that if you let markets give you information, they'll give you the information rather than artificially prop up everything. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

My mother always taught me that two wrongs don't make a right. We shouldn't bail out Wall Street. We shouldn't bail out Detroit. It will cost the economy more than the cost of the bailout which is more than the politicians think. We'll run into the hundred of millions to prop these companies up. — Peter Schiff

It runs in the family. And don't expect me to be ashamed. Yankees lock away loony relatives, but down here, we prop 'em up on parade floats and march 'em through the middle of town. — Susan Elizabeth Phillips

People slice up tree trunks, nail the pieces together into boxy shapes, and then go inside to sleep. Trees use the wood in their trunks for a different purpose - namely, they use it to fight with other plants. From dandelions to daffodils, from ferns to figs, from potatoes to pine trees - every plant growing on land is striving toward two prizes: light, which comes from above, and water, which comes from below. Any contest between two plants can be decided in one move, when the winner simultaneously reaches higher and digs deeper than the loser. Consider the tremendous advantage that wood confers to one of the contestants during such a battle: armed with a stiff-yet-flexible, strong-yet-light prop that separates - and connects - leaves and roots, trees have dominated the tournament for more than four hundred million years. — Hope Jahren