When he saw the wall shaking and crumbling irretrievably at a particular place, he patched it up with sops of cash from his three cash-earning companies.
This clay was money, and was applied, a sop here and a sop there, as fast as it was needed, but only when it was directly needed.
As he halted Sancho came up, and seeing him disposed to attack this well-ordered squadron, said to him, "It would be the height of madness to attempt such an enterprise; remember, senor, that against
sops from the brook, and plenty of them, there is no defensive armour in the world, except to stow oneself away under a brass bell; and besides, one should remember that it is rashness, and not valour, for a single man to attack an army that has Death in it, and where emperors fight in person, with angels, good and bad, to help them; and if this reflection will not make you keep quiet, perhaps it will to know for certain that among all these, though they look like kings, princes, and emperors, there is not a single knight-errant."
Into that vast perpetual torture-house: There are the Furies tossing damned souls On burning forks; there bodies boil in lead; There are live quarters broiling on the coals, That ne'er can die; this ever-burning chair Is for o'er-tortur'd souls to rest them in; These that are fed with
sops of flaming fire, Were gluttons, and lov'd only delicates, And laugh'd to see the poor starve at their gates: But yet all these are nothing; thou shalt see Ten thousand tortures that more horrid be.
The porter in his lodge answers exactly to Cerberus in his den, and, like him, must be appeased by a
sop before access can be gained to his master.
"Come, master, taste my sop," said he, kneeling down before the cup.
The sop was so good that Levin gave up the idea of going home.
Why, in a final access of pity, had she insisted on flinging, as a last
sop to that dcmon's soul, her divine song:
Was I a milk-and-water
sop? No; a thousand times no, and a thousand glasses no.
In sudden panic I dashed my knuckles on the wooden bars, to get at a duck to give the monster for a
sop. My knuckles bled.
Anne, by dint of talking over her shoulder to the girls and occasionally passing a
sop of civility to Billy--who grinned and chuckled and never could think of any reply until it was too late--contrived to enjoy the drive in spite of all.
All day it streamed rain; the island ran like a
sop, there was no dry spot to be found; and when I lay down that night, between two boulders that made a kind of roof, my feet were in a bog.