"Topple" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and stronger. For the new life must be so regulated that it continually increase and progress, but it must suffer much opposition. For the devil is such a furious enemy that when he sees that we oppose him and attack the old man, and that he cannot topple us over by force, he prowls and moves about on all sides, tries all devices, and does not desist until he finally wearies us, so that we either renounce our faith or yield hands and feet and become listless or impatient. Now to this ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... the carriage window-panes Goes flitting past in furious flight; whole plains With streams and harvest-fields and trees and blue Are swallowed by the whirlpool, whereinto The telegraph's slim pillars topple o'er, Whose wires look ...
— Poems of Paul Verlaine • Paul Verlaine
... Diminish'd to her cock; her cock a buoy Almost too small for sight: the murmuring surge That on the unnumber'd idle pebble chafes Cannot be heard so high.—I'll look no more; Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight Topple down headlong. ...
— The Tragedy of King Lear • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... it) answer me: Though you vntye the Windes, and let them fight Against the Churches: Though the yesty Waues Confound and swallow Nauigation vp: Though bladed Corne be lodg'd, & Trees blown downe, Though Castles topple on their Warders heads: Though Pallaces, and Pyramids do slope Their heads to their Foundations: Though the treasure Of Natures Germaine, tumble altogether, Euen till destruction sicken: Answer me To what ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... hand of a stronger and more expert companion. How soon we learned to do the trick, and what fun there was in "keep the pot a-boiling," while strings of youngsters took the slide. What if some did topple over? No bones were broken, and the incident always caused a ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... guess we'd got into a harbour; but she did not come to an anchor, but sail on and on. Den, looking up through the skylight, I see de boughs ob de green trees oberhead, and a high cliff which seem about to topple down on de deck ob de ship. Still we sail on and on, till at last I hear de anchor let go and de cable run out, and when I come on deck I find de ship in a wide lagoon wid several oder vessels and some large boats, and a village ob huts and sheds under de trees on de shore. I now know dat ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... he said. He had chosen a spot where the rock rose perpendicularly above the road. "Drop them over," he said, "so that they may fall straight. The biggest you must roll over with your levers, but work them to the edge and let them topple over; don't thrust them out or they will bound over ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... finished two new ones last week, stuffed and embroidered within an inch of their lives. There being absolutely no other cushionless place to put them she stood them up against the wall on the stair landing. They topple over half the time and if we come up or down the stairs in the dark we fall over them. Last Sunday, when Dr. Davis prayed for all those exposed to the perils of the sea, I added in thought 'and for all those who live in houses where cushions are loved not wisely but too well!' There! we're ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... vexatious, because I meant that nook for your garden. It is the only place that is sheltered from the wind and at the same time has sunshine and a good outlook. But the wall has thrice been all but finished, and each time the stones have begun to sink and topple. This time Howel the mason was nearly killed. Of course, a feeble bent old woman who can hardly hobble ten rods cannot have undermined a wall at this distance. That is absurd. But the panic the men have got into is not. That wall ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... made and won he felt that silent approbation behind him; insensibly it steadied Ford and sharpened his instinct for reading the faces of the other players, so that the miniature towers of red chips and blue grew higher until they threatened to topple—whereupon other little towers began to grow up around them. And the men in the saloon began to feel the fascination of his success, so that they grouped themselves about his chair and peered down over his shoulder at ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... dash o'er them and topple around, They see they are pretty near sure to be drowned. A terrible wave o'er the quarter-deck breaks, And the vessel it sinks in a couple ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... began to wind her way along like a snake. By the light of her torch Jack saw that the roof threatened at every second to fall in and block the passage. One great stone hung half-released from the grip of its fellows, as if about to topple headlong. The woman went through the tiny space in safety, and then crouched down on the other side and threw the light into the gap to show ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... logs must be close enough together to hold up the pots and pans, and, being round, this leaves too little space between them for the fire to heat the balance evenly; besides, a pot is liable to slip and topple over. A better way, if one has time, is to hew both the inside surfaces and the tops of the logs flat. Space these supports close enough together at one end for the narrowest pot and wide enough apart at the other for ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... lot the first time round, but soon got his equilibrium. He brandished the shears and plunged the points of them into Podgy's belly-wool—also into Podgy's skin. "Bur-UR-R!" Podgy blurted and struggled violently. Dave began to topple about. He dropped the shears. The audience guffawed. Then Dave jumped; but Podgy's horns got caught in his clothes and made trouble. Dave hung on one side of the horse and the sheep dangled on the other. Dave sang out, so ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... said a day will come when the Polar ice shall have accumulated, till it forms vast continents many thousands of feet above the level of the sea, all of solid ice. The weight of this mass will, it is believed, cause the world to topple over on its axis, so that the earth will be upset as an ant-heap overturned by a ploughshare. In that day the icebergs will come crunching against our proudest cities, razing them from off the face of the earth as though they were made of rotten blotting-paper. There is no respect ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... Politi stood so near the edge of a monstrous quarry that it seemed as if it might topple into the abyss at any moment. Our friends were on historic ground, indeed, for these quarries—or latomia, as they are called—supplied all the stone of which the five cities of ancient Syracuse were built—cities which in our age have ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... repeated, very gravely, "and if you ever saw a caterpillar topple over, you'd know it's a serious thing, and not sit g'inning like that—and I shan't tell you ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... stimulated and developed in the modern mind, and—what is to be regretted—it has been mostly at the expense of the sense of awe and reverence. We "poke fun" at everything in this country; to whatever approaches the verge of the ridiculous we give a push and topple it over. The fear which all Americans have before their eyes, and which is much stronger than the fear of purgatory, is the fear of appearing ridiculous. We curb and check any eccentricity or marked individuality of manners or dress, lest we expose ourselves to the shafts of ridicule. ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... it was his mortal enemy Sam attacked the unsuspecting palm tree and dealt it such fierce blows that it soon required only a slight exercise of strength to topple ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and the Treasure Cave • Ross Kay
... of Vesuvius, although history says that now and again the mountain bubbles out in irruption, and the lava destroys many villages, and even towns. In other countries there are earthquakes, but the people forget all about them until the shock comes, and the houses begin to topple ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... Dorothy ran after the wagon containing their friends, while the vehicle swayed from side to side in the road, they saw it give a sudden lurch, and almost topple over on the steep embankment which ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... Saint-Jacques, and, nearer in, the pavilions of the new Louvre and the Tuileries, were crowned by a blaze, which lent them the aspect of sacrificial pyres. The dome of the Invalides was flaring with such brilliancy that you instinctively feared lest it should suddenly topple down and scatter burning flakes over the neighborhood. Beyond the irregular towers of Saint-Sulpice, the Pantheon stood out against the sky in dull splendor, like some royal palace of conflagration reduced to embers. ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... fall in love with Jean Roland and no one else. She is the smallest and the darkest and much the best dressed. I do hope and trust it will be love at first sight. She is already just wild about you, without ever even seeing you, and when she sees you she is sure to topple over completely." ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... enough, although the lower half of it, which was next to the engine-room, was under the water-line. Sam actually found a ladder with hooks at one end of it, and while he was handing it up to us—which was very hard to do, for he had to climb up on all sorts of things—he let it topple over, and the end with the iron hooks fell against the round glass of one of the port-holes. The glass was very thick and strong, but the ladder came down very heavy and shivered it. As bad luck would have it, ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... the window of a filter-maker's shop, close by old Temple Bar. In this window were displayed a number of glass domes, under each of which a little jet of water tossed about a cork ball. The ball would soar sometimes to the roof of the dome and would then topple over, sometimes to be caught midway upon the jet and sometimes to fall to the bottom, but always to be kept drenched and dancing in a melancholy futile way. I was comparing it with myself when a hand was clapped upon my ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... instant, but the shekarry in an excited whisper implored me not to fire. I hesitated, and just then the stately head turned round to look behind, and exposing the beautifully curving neck full to my aim, I fired, and had the satisfaction of seeing the fine buck topple over, seemingly ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... No giant, such as these were, could crowd through that hole. And the hopper was heavy. Applying all his strength to it, he felt it give ever so slightly. It was not bolted down; it was merely balanced there. He would be able to topple it over. And, once over, it would be a difficult affair to handle, especially ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... we could see, beyond the Jordan, and away southward to the mountains of Moab and the cliffs of Engaddi, the whole country was covered as with the smoke of a furnace; and the furious sirocco, that threatened to topple us down the gulfs yawning on either hand, had no coolness on its wings. The horses were sure-footed, but now and then a gust would come that made them and us strain against it, to avoid being dashed against the rock on one side, ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... March 4, 1858, Senator Hammond of South Carolina, asked in a speech, "What would happen if no cotton was furnished for three years? I will not stop to depict what everyone can imagine, but this is certain: England would topple headlong and carry the whole civilized world with her save the South. No, you dare not make war on cotton. No power on earth dares make war upon it. Cotton is King[656]." Two years later, writing before the elections of 1860 in which the main question was that of the territorial ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... agreed warmly, "but it does require the right kind of skirt, Grannie. Did anyone ever topple ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... the Moor with sword and lance At Algesiras land, Where is the bold Bernardo now Their progress to withstand? To Burgos should the Moslem come, Where is the noble Cid Five royal crowns to topple down As ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... tell you all about it—to-night, eh?" he said, hastily. He was vastly afraid she might topple over in a swoon. ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... trifle uncomfortable. She had a vague idea the humble-bee was making sport of her. The next moment she was sure of it; for he burst into a deep laugh, and shook so from side to side that she thought he would surely topple off the wisp of hay on which ...
— Dreamland • Julie M. Lippmann
... piking for subs and practicing emergency drills, just to let old Blondy know he can't stop us from coming across—you'd say you were with the Colors! If you stood where I did and saw that little old periscope topple over like a ninepin and heard Tommy say, 'Go get me another apple, Archie—we'll hit 'em again for good luck!'—you'd say you were with the Colors, all right! You might be in the third-line trenches a whole year an' have nothing to do with yourself ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... the subject, he established harmony between the Assembly and Montmorin, and so prevented foreign intervention, at the same time maintaining the honor of France abroad. But this bulwark to the nation's safety was about to topple and fall, precipitated by its own decay. As in all things, Mirabeau had been colossal in his excesses, and like them, the punishment was great. He wished to live, but he did not fear death. Early in 1791 the structure began to weaken, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... me—I have laid hands on a canal—the Rio Giuseppe—all of it—from the beginning of the red wall where the sailors land, along its crookednesses to the side entrance of the Public Garden, and so past the rookeries to the lagoon, where the tower of Castello is ready to topple into the sea. ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... soil; but the other side of the rock, the side that faces the ocean, is barren and deserted, and so steep that the shrubs that grow there have a hard time to remain where they are and look as if they were about to topple over ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... a large, firm berry, and after ripening it would remain on the plant a long time without falling off. These plants grew up in remarkably long canes, but not knowing how to head them back they would often topple over during a heavy storm. This added another valuable lesson to my increasing experience, which resulted in my pinching of the new canes as soon as they had attained a height of from three to four feet. This made the plants more stocky and ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... wrong man. 'No, sir,' said I. 'Find a box for yourself, if you want one.' And I held mine so that he could not see that the bottom of it was glass. Then the captain came along and told him not to try to get down on that hatch, for if he did he would topple into the water and get himself drowned, which would have been certain to happen, for he could not swim. Then the hatch was hauled on deck, and I went below with the captain to his cabin to tell him what I had seen. The stock-broker tried awfully hard to come with us, but ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... cut off the lamps—he's released the platform. God! Look—Foulet!" My voice tore through my throat; my eyes burned with sudden, blinding emotion. In the soft darkness of the starry night I could see the platform waver, topple, rise! It rose straight up, tilting and swaying in the light breeze. What was it Fraser had said? If it was released it would go straight to the stars! ...
— The Floating Island of Madness • Jason Kirby
... and the burning of that bitter indignation; but Jack could not guess at that, and if both felt difficulty in the neatly balanced friendship pledged under the wisteria, if there was a breathlessness for both in the tight-rope performance,—where one false step might topple one over into open hostility, or else, who knew, into complete surrender,—it was Imogen who gained composure from Jack's nervousness, and while he walked the rope with a fluttering breath and an anxious eye she herself could show the most graceful ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... in deep," said David, "so she won't topple, and fix her up to suit yourselves, girls, ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... mean!" blustered Fred, and coming closer, he hit Nat on the shoulder. At once our hero hit back, and Fred received a thump in the mouth that caused him to topple backwards. ...
— From Farm to Fortune - or Nat Nason's Strange Experience • Horatio Alger Jr.
... thither. Yet, to descend from these speculative comparisons, it seems that thou hast a friendly and meaning purpose in thy warnings. Thou knowest that there are in this armament men who grudge to me whatever I now owe to Fortune, who would topple me from the height to which I did not climb, but was led by the congregated Greeks, and who, while perhaps they are forging arrowheads for the eagle, have sent to place poison and a snare in its distant ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... learning, and happiness; but Mr Lennox became more opposed to the scheme each moment. His one hope was that Mrs Macintyre might turn out to be impossible, in which case these castles in the air would topple to the ground. ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... "Never be in a hurry—-especially don't be in a hurry about answering letters. If you leave things long enough and quiet enough they answer themselves, whereas if you hurry matters balanced on the edge of a precipice, they often topple over instead of settling and remaining ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... soul!" cried Mr. Damon. "It's as much as a man's life is worth to attempt it. If he got dizzy, he'd topple over, and fall a thousand ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton
... She had seen more than one man dally on the brink, and then topple over to the blankness of despair. Even if she had pitied herself, which she did not, she could have had no mercy on him. Now she was set to her work, and she meant to do it if she brought into play every fascination art and ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... was deceived by his pretension into thinking—you remember that first sermon, Aunt Bell—how independent and noble I thought it was going to be. Oh, Aunt Bell—what a slump in my faith that day! I think its foundations all went, and then naturally the rest of it just seemed to topple. Did you realise it all ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... rather better since we returned." And now Mrs. Corey, as if forced to the point, said bunglingly that the young ladies had wished to come with her, but had been detained. She based her statement upon Nanny's sarcastic demand; and, perhaps seeing it topple a little, she rose hastily, to get away from its fall. "But we shall hope for some—some other occasion," she said vaguely, and she put on a parting smile, and shook hands with Mrs. Lapham and Penelope, and then, after some lingering commonplaces, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... are times when one small nook of earth shuts out, as it were, the whole universe from our eyes, when one personal interest occupies us to the exclusion of the whole world of action, and progress, and speculation, and thought? Thrones may topple over, nationalities be effaced, revolutions in politics, in religion, in science be effected, and all pass unheeded while we sit counting our own private loss and gain in love or friendship, in grief or joy. Whilst Madelon has been wearying out her little heart and ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... such places the stream was engaged at undermining the banks which rose eight and ten feet above the water. Occasional sections, containing tons of earth and covered with tall, slender willow trees, would topple over, falling on the water with the roar of a cannon or a continued salute of cannons; for the falling, once started, quite often extended for half a mile down the stream. At one such place eighteen trees fell in three minutes, and it would ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... seemed about to topple over, at the same time emitting a groan of pain which proved him to be thoroughly human. Helen was frightened, but there was a new kind of awe in this fright. All suggestion of superstition had left her and in its place was the dread that she might ...
— Campfire Girls at Twin Lakes - The Quest of a Summer Vacation • Stella M. Francis
... them, "our friend George bets that when the tower of the Singer Building falls, it will topple over toward the North River, and I bet ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... catastrophe. "All will go on almost of its own accord, so long as foreign affairs are quiet and unbroken," wrote Mirabeau after Frederick's death. "But at the first gunshot or at the first stormy situation the whole of this little scaffolding of mediocrity will topple to the ground. How all these underling Ministers would crumple up! How everyone, from the distracted chief to the convict-gang, would shout for a pilot! Who ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... game in which they pile blocks up to see how high they can go before they topple over. In medieval times, petty rulers in their Italian states vied with one another to see who could build the tallest tower. Some beautiful results of this game still remain in Florence, Siena, and other Italian hill cities. Currently, Americans vie in a similar way with the wheelbase ...
— A Brief History of Element Discovery, Synthesis, and Analysis • Glen W. Watson
... John Buchan and James Winslow, miners working a claim on the Sangre de Christo range, were buried in their cabin beneath a snow slide. It is believed the men are alive although there seems to be small hope of rescuing them on account of an overhanging cliff which may topple at any moment, with the melting snows and crush them out of existence. Rescue parties are ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... off. I linger among its creaking rafters, like the last rat; it will topple down if they don't get some buttresses. They have pulled down three,—Hazlitt, Procter, and their best stay, kind, light-hearted Wainewright, their Janus. [1] The best is, neither of our fortunes is concerned ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... scoundrel. There's Larion, another rich one at Dubetchnya, and I bet he strips the bark off your trees as much as any poor one; and he is a foul-mouthed fellow; his children are the same, and when he has had a drop too much he'll topple with his nose in a puddle and sleep there. They are all a worthless lot, Madam. If you live in a village with them it is like hell. It has stuck in my teeth, that village has, and thank the Lord, the King of Heaven, I've ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... neither glide nor shuffle fits his gait any more accurately. It was simply a walk with the least possible waste of energy. It fitted Dr. Holmes's definition of walking as forward motion to prevent falling. And yet Field never gave you the impression that he was about to topple over. His legs always acted as if they were weary and would like to lean their master up against something. As to what that something might be, he would probably have ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... journey, crawls slowly up the first six miles to the summit of the intervening range at the Cross Foxes Inn, and jolts swiftly down the other six miles, with red hot drag creaking and groaning lugubriously, till it seems to topple over sheer into the sea at the clambering High Street of the old borough. As you turn to descend the seaward slope at the Cross Foxes, you appear to leave modern industrial England and the nineteenth century well ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... centre of the stream by a way of his own, and we ran down to the stepping-stones by which we had come, in order to save the time which we should have been compelled to waste in feeling for a foothold as we went. Every second was of importance, and I fully expected to see Dennis topple unconscious into the pool below before I should be able to save him. I knew what it was exactly; he was going through my own horrible experience of "drowning on dry land," to quote Garnesk's vigorous phrase. Imagine my astonishment, therefore, when I reached Dennis's side ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... saw the drop in her face, when he saw features and expression fall from the lofty height of anticipation as a pile of cards topple in a mass upon the table, he was sorry. Her mouth opened—gaped. She looked as if a flat hand ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... roof of the castle was established a sort of furnace for heating water or oil, to be poured down upon the besiegers; and crowbars lay there in readiness to loosen out and dislodge the battlements, and topple them over ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... rise, but sank back dizzily. The room seemed to become suddenly dark. She feared she would topple over ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Ocean View - Or, The Box That Was Found in the Sand • Laura Lee Hope
... Windermere. The coach was greatly overburdened with outside passengers,—fifteen in all, besides the four insiders, and one of the fifteen formed the apex of an immense pile of luggage on the top. It seems to me miraculous that we did not topple over, the road being so hilly and uneven, and the driver, I suspect, none the steadier for his visits to all the tap-rooms along the route from Cockermouth. There was a tremendous vibration of the coach now and then; and I saw that, in ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... tops of almost all our mountains, and they are all called "men". At the bottom of the Carrock Man I seated myself for shelter, but the wind became so fearful and tyrannous, that I was apprehensive some of the stones might topple down upon me, so I groped my way farther down and came to three rocks, placed on this wise 1/32*** each one supported by the other like a child's house of cards, and in the hollow and screen which they made, I sate for a long while sheltered, as if I had been ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... minute to call out that it was time for me to go away. I was not sorry to leave Dubechnia, my sorrow was for my love, for which it seemed that autumn had already begun. What a tremendous happiness it is to love and to be loved, and what a horror it is to feel that you are beginning to topple down from ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... thought, truth or motion can be defined. Who has answered the question, "What is truth?" Man cannot see God and live. We cannot go so far back upon ourselves as to undermine our own foundations; if we try to do so we topple over, and lose that very reason about which we vainly try to reason. If we let the foundations be, we know well enough that they are there, and we can build upon them in all security. We cannot, then, define reason nor crib, cabin and confine ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... the morning, when the queen receives the homage of her subjects. She gets her presents, and there are pretty speeches made to her, and she has her dainty feast and her crown of flowers. Yes, that time is the crown of the day, and that is just the moment when the poor little queen shall topple down. The throne shall be knocked from under her; the presents will vanish; the sovereignty will cease to exist. Poor, poor little queen without a kingdom! How will you like it, Paulie? Do you think you could bear it? To have no kingdom and no crown and no presents ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... shadows; the prison-gloom is sealed on Porphyro's face,—power and purpose indomitable; just as the "gruesome Emperor" is to-day, we find him in that book,—dark in the midst of his glory, as enduring as a Ninevite sculpture, strong and inscrutable as the Sphinx. But his heights topple over with this world's decline, while the other builds for the eternal aeons. Rodomant,—did one fail to find his identity, they would yet recognize him in those old prints, the listening head bent forwards, the features like ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... though, topple into any flour barrels. It was Sue who had the next accident at the corner grocery, and this is ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Keeping Store • Laura Lee Hope
... we never felt so silly in our lives. Poor bandit, he was just one of those figures that sit in a chair and are pelted with baseballs, three shots for a dime. "Every time you hit the nigger!" That's what the man used to call. When some one hit him a good hard crack he'd topple off the seat and then the man would give you a kewpie doll or maybe an ash-tray. The poor old wooden "nigger" had been packed away and all we had seen was his black face sticking up above ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... long, rambling sentences that topple a letter over onto the waste basket toboggan. But the sentence with a climax, working up interest step by step, is indispensable. By eye test, by mechanical test, by erasure test and by strength test, Orchard Hill Bond makes ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... hard, disagreeable work, requiring little intelligence. Most of the people of the world are unintelligent—unfit to do any other work. If it were not done by them it would not be done, and it is the basic work. Withdraw them from it and the whole superstructure would topple and fall. Yet there is too little of the work, and there are so many incapable of doing anything else that adequate return is out of the question. For the laboring class there is no hope of an existence that is comfortable in comparison with that of the other class; ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... whale indeed among fishes, a world-bearing monster, who fancieth that all the affairs of this earth rest upon his shoulders. 'Tis a cup which our gallant knight will soon spill for him. Hold fast, fair ladies, for the globe is about to topple from ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... distortion of look and limb, are depicted as staggering under the weight of falling buildings, and being overwhelmed in the ruins; upheaving masses of rock, and burying themselves beneath; vainly striving to sustain the pillars of heavy roofs that topple down upon their heads; and, in a word, undergoing and doing every kind of mad and demoniacal destruction. The figures are immensely large, and exaggerated to the utmost pitch of uncouthness; the colouring is harsh and disagreeable; and the whole effect more like (I should imagine) a violent ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... of crass material endeavour," small wonder that the American had remained in spiritual poverty of the most debasing sort until the New Dawn should come to enrich him, to topple in ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... other, gallant fellow! reined about in wide, sweeping circle, and turned back to meet his running comrade. They saw him bend to lend a helping hand, saw him bend still lower as three of the Indians leaped from their ponies and, kneeling, loosed their rifles all at once; saw him topple out of saddle, and his stricken horse, with flapping rein, trot aimlessly about a moment before he, too, went floundering in his tracks; saw the other soldier turn to face his fate by his dying comrade's side, fighting to the last, overwhelmed and borne down by the rush of red warriors. ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... that must have been a heavy blow for you, my poor ALINE. I can understand that your spirits can never be really high again. And then for poor Master Builder SOLNESS to be so taken up with that Miss WANGEL as he was—that, too, was so wretched for you. To see him topple off the tower, as he did that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 11, 1893 • Various
... aunt, "in the next street to ours there is a miserable building, that looks as if it were just going to topple over; and away up in the third story, in a little room just under the eaves, live two poor, lonely old women. They are both nearly on to ninety. I was in there day before yesterday. One of them is constantly confined to her bed with ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... what feeling 'more than joy' can be, unless haply it topple over t' other side and become woe, and I would be ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... pilasters, porticos and colonnades, cornices and battlements, flanked here and there with tall outstanding towers, and crowned with spires so slender that it seemed as though a breath of air would suffice to topple them from their foundations. To accomplish the object for which we had come so far, it seemed necessary that we should ascend this butte. The day was perfectly clear and intensely hot, the mercury standing at 92 degrees in the shade, and the red sandstone, out of ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... blot upon the fair face of nature; but it is our sympathy for our kind that makes us think so. If the trees were sympathetic beings, not a poor crippled specimen of humanity would have their pity, but the gnarled and half-rotten giants of the forest, threatening to topple down with every breeze; whilst to our eyes the dying tree, covered with moss and ferns, and, maybe, clasped by climbing vines, is a picturesque and pleasing sight. So, the fishes would pity their comrades caught by the kingfisher, the birds those in the claws of the hawk—every ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... many things people can live without," said Fleda, rather dreamily, intent upon settling an uneasy rose that would topple over. ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... the beanstalk which cut it half in two. The ogre felt the beanstalk shake and quiver so he stopped to see what was the matter. Then Jack gave another chop with the axe, and the beanstalk was cut in two and began to topple over. Then the ogre fell down and broke his crown, and ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... I knows on," drawled the old fellow, laughing until his old head seemed ready to topple from his shoulders. "No blood relation, any how, sir. You see, my wife's cousin's aunt's husband's brother Jerry was a cousin to Nicodemus Dunce, who, if I don't disremember, was related in some way to Isacker Pete's wife's sister, and she was this ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... independent girl without any illusions, who is in so many cases the child of such a mother, and who is in revolt so complete from all that mother's traditions, so highly set on the crown of every opposite principle, that nature vindicates itself by the possibility that she may at any moment topple over and become again what her mother was. He would have been a bold man, however, who in the present stage would have prophesied any such fate for Dolly Prestwich, who between working at Whitechapel, attending on a ward in St. Thomas's, drawing three days a week in the Slade School, and other ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... up to him to jump off his horse, seize the steer by a horn and the muzzle, then stoop down and grip the animal's upper lip with his teeth, turn his hands loose, and so by means of his powerful jaws and neck alone throw down and topple the steer over. The negro took many chances, and often the huge steer would fall on him in such a way as would have broken the neck or ribs of any ordinary white man. In this case also the steer must be an ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... were interrupted by a terrific explosion in such close proximity to us that it caused us to jump, and was followed by a deafening crash of falling masonry. From the lattice we saw the high handsome minaret of the palace topple and fall amid a dense smoke and shower of stones. Our men had undermined it and ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... quite well that your house, with all that therein is, stands on the edge of a precipice, and that at any moment a landslip might topple it over into everlasting ruin. And yet you behave as though your house was planted in the midst of a vast and secure plain, sheltered from every imaginable havoc. I speak metaphorically, of course. It is not a material precipice that your house stands on ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... hats—very fine beaux, indeed; and the women stiffly encased in the most uncomfortable garments that ever the wit of mortal devised, holding their heads erect, lest the marvellous pyramids, built up with such expenditure of time and money, should topple over, and, in spite of all disadvantages, looking pretty and piquant. It was a crowd not so far removed from us by time, so that we can attribute to the men and women who composed it the same feelings and sensibilities as our own. And yet they were very far removed ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... The blow was square in the face; it jarred every bone; the world seemed to topple. His mother, rising from her chair, choked slightly, and hurried to join the nurse, who was already on her way upstairs. Cora sent an affectionate laugh across the table to ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... Lanier. Longfellow, who remains even to-day the most popular of our poets, was still in full swing. Lowell was in his prime. Thus it appears that public appreciation, and not creative power, was the first to trip and topple down the slopes of the Parnassian hill. Not until then did ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... so weak as to be scarcely equal to the exertion of getting over the side into the life-buoy or bag, and he was so tall that, despite the efforts he made to double himself together, there was so much of him above the machine that he had a tendency to topple over. This would have mattered nothing if he had possessed even a moderate degree of power to hold on, but his hands were as weak as those of a child. However, the case being desperate, he made the attempt, and was sent away from ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... fair or foul, a ship is generally quick to leave the company of so dangerous a neighbor as an iceberg. Sometimes great masses of ice take a notion to topple over, and, looking at the matter in what light you please, I think that they are not to ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... (much) tro. Tool ilo. Tooth dento. Toothless sendenta. Top (summit) supro. Top (peak) pinto. Top (of head) verto. Topaz topazo. Topic subjekto. Topmost plejsupra. Topography topografio. Topple fali. Topsy-turvy, to turn renversi. Topsy-turvy renversita—ite. Toque cxapo. Torch torcxo. Toreador toreadoro. Torment turmenti. Torment turmento—ado. Torpedo torpedo. Torpedo boat torpedboato. Torpid ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... of youth have come again!" And, from that day to this, no man has ever seen the three Gray Sisters, nor does any one know what became of them. But the winds still whistle through their cheerless cave, and the cold waves murmur on the shore of the wintry sea, and the ice mountains topple and crash, and no sound of living creature is heard in all ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin
... are transformed into cliffs and caves and towers and minarets. These two aspects of mountain scenery have been seized by painters, and in their art two classes of mountains are represented: mountains with towering forms that seem ready to topple in the first storm, and mountains in masses that seem to frown defiance at the tempests. Both classes have told the truth. The two aspects are sometimes caught by our painters severally; sometimes they are combined. Church paints a mountain like a kingdom of glory. Bierstadt paints a mountain ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... is blocked by a recent landslide, and we plunge unto it. We have to tear our feet out of the soft and clinging earth, lifting them high at each step. Then, when this crossing is laboriously accomplished, we topple down again into the slippery stream, in the bottom of which are two narrow ruts, boot-worn, which hold one's foot like a vice, and there are pools into which it goes with a great splash. In one place we must stoop very ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... throws off with more facility and safety those crude and dangerous humours which must at times arise in all human communities. The march of revolution must here at least be orderly. We are preserved from those reckless and tempestuous sallies that in other countries, like a whirlwind, topple down in an instant an ancient crown, or sweep away an illustrious aristocracy. This constitution, which has secured order, has consequently promoted civilisation; and the almost unbroken tide of progressive amelioration has made us the freest, the wealthiest, and the ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... wide plains and bogs, encircled by high hills, which, like a row of Alpine mountains with pinnacles formed like saws, frown over the sea, which is separated from them only by high clay banks; and year after year the sea bites a large mouthful off of these, so that their edges and summits topple over as if shaken by an earthquake. Thus they look at this day, and thus they were many years ago, when the happy young couple sailed from Spain in ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... caress thee [Perceval shrinks]; but believe Before five more have joined the shotten years Whose useless films infest the foggy Past, Traced thick with teachings glimpsed unheedingly, The rawest Dynast of the group concerned Will, for the good or ill of mute mankind, Down-topple to the dust like soldier Saul, And Europe's mouldy-minded oligarchs Be propped anew; while garments roll in blood To confused noise, with burning, and fuel of fire. Nations shall lose their noblest in the strife, And tremble at the ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... felling this forest monarch before the arrival of the Matabili. The latter could not be far-off, and every exertion was made to get the fortress ready for receiving the attack. There was a doubt as to the direction the tree would take in falling. Should it topple over into the water, their labour would be lost, and the way would be open for the Matabili to reach them by a rush. Should it fall across the isthmus, it would form an insurmountable barrier to their enemies. In silence and with intense interest did the Makololo stand watching ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... Western Kansas, in the early Eighties, I saw a loaded four-horse wagon skid and topple in ...
— The Mintage • Elbert Hubbard
... without reason. He had wronged this woman, not with direct intention it was true, but nevertheless he had wronged her; and her presence here could mean nothing less than that fate had selected this spot for the reckoning. She could topple down his carefully reared schemes with the same ease with which he had blown over hers. And to him these schemes were life to his breath and salt to his blood, everything. What was one woman? cynically. "Yes, it is I," in the tongue ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... in the ribs, but Tommy was as white as death and did not even feel it. Something had happened, something that made him feel giddy and very sick. That significant silence was to him nothing short of tragedy. He had seen his hero topple at a touch from the high pinnacle on which he had placed him, and he felt as if the very ground under his feet had become ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... Whatever he might have said or done at the time, it was entirely too late to go back on his conduct now. One event had followed on the heels of another until to slip out a single stone of the structure he had built up would topple over the ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... them, but something which flashed a wild hope through me. Some little distance back a tree hung over the sandy bottom, its roots partially laid bare by the washing of the stream which had now disappeared. The trunk was inclined at a sharp angle; but little force would be needed, I thought, to topple it over until it lay athwart the path which the pursuers must follow. Its foliage was thick, and though I did not flatter myself 'twould put an end to the pursuit, I thought it might serve as a check, and enable Uncle Moses to gain strength ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang |
