"Topsy-turvy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... topsy-turvy old humbug," cried Tom wrathfully. "Think I don't know you?" and he ran on, and caught up to his uncle as he was passing through ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... and hugged as the African reverences and hugs his fetish. And surely it is a case for congratulation, when some great, exciting question breaks out and jars these conventional idols, and so sweeps and shatters these party organizations and turns them topsy-turvy, that a man is shaken out of his harness, does not know exactly what party he does belong to, and begins to feel that he has a soul of his own. I am not denying the use and the necessity of parties as instruments, but protest against them ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... Addison's or Irving's or Thackeray's. It does not amuse by the perception of the characteristic. It is not founded upon truth, but upon incongruity, distortion, unexpectedness. Every thing in life is reversed, as in opera bouffe, and turned topsy-turvy, so that paradox takes the place of the natural order of things. Nevertheless they have supplied a wholesome criticism upon sentimental excesses, and the world is in their debt for many ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... darling, I know that in my absence you could have behaved badly! Another in your place would have turned the house topsy-turvy, but you have only broken a pane of glass! God bless you for your considerateness. Go on in the same way and you will earn ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... managers of several factories agreed that the occupation of the territory was the best thing that could have happened. On the other side of the Rhine, labour refused to work, and demanded unheard-of pay—everything was topsy-turvy. In fact, before the Allied armies arrived, revolutionary notions were growing rapidly along the Rhine. One director of a well-known chemical plant is said to have escaped by night with his life by way of the river, when his employees ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden
... turning another corner, we came on a poor bourgeois house that had had its whole front torn away. The squalid revelation of caved-in floors, smashed wardrobes, dangling bedsteads, heaped-up blankets, topsy-turvy chairs and stoves and wash-stands was far more painful than the sight of the wounded church. St. Eloi was draped in the dignity of martyrdom, but the poor little house reminded one of some shy humdrum person suddenly exposed in the glare ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... were worked, for the most part as open quarries, still showing plenty of visible gold on the face of the slopes. Yet to these alleged Jews this gold was of no account. Imagine it; as Quick said, such a topsy-turvy state of things was enough to make a mere Christian feel cold down the back and go to bed thinking that the world must be coming to ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... moveless and placid. The bedroom is like a show. It might be the bedroom of some famous man exposed to worshipping tourists at sixpence a head. A few chairs have fallen out of the house, and they lie topsy-turvy in the street amid the debris; no one has thought to touch them. In all directions thoroughfares branch ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... shipmasters are shouting out orders to the crew, and trying to keep their vessels from turning topsy-turvy or going down out of sight, that the fishes are scampering about wild, driven here and there by the fierce winds, and scared half to death by the fury of ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever
... feels dreadfully because you all have been so naughty. Winthrop!—your finger! Instantly! Clemence, baby, where on earth did you acquire all that grime on your face and fists?" And to her brother: "Such a household, Phil! Everybody incompetent—including me; everything topsy-turvy; and all five dogs perfectly possessed to lie on that pink rug in the music room.—Have they been there to-day, ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... been able hitherto, in a minute to allot his proper place to every individual, in a drove of a thousand, nay, even of ten thousand captured souls; and what difficulty can he have with seven, however dangerous they may be. But though these seven should turn the infernal government topsy-turvy, do you drive them thither instantly, for fear I should receive commands to annihilate you before your time. As for his threats, they are only lies; for although thy end, and that of the old man yonder, (looking at Time,) are nigh at hand, being written only a few pages further on, in ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... bush. E—— tore after it, and in a few hundred yards came up to the horse standing trembling, and gazing at the shattered remains of our poor vehicle. He had tried to turn the corner, when the whole thing capsized topsy-turvy, and he had almost freed himself of all the harness; luckily he was considerate enough not to have given that "one more struggle" which would have indeed settled the whole question, and obliged us to foot it on our ten toes home. Curiously enough the shafts were not broken, ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... Bruyn! And always Bruyn in such a way that Bruyn was more worn-out by the clemency of his wife than he would have been by her unkindness. She turned his brain wishing that everything should be in scarlet, making him turn everything topsy-turvy at the least movement of her eyebrow, and when she was sad the seneschal distracted, would say to everything from his judicial seat, "Hang him!" Another would have died like a fly at this conflict with the maid's innocence, but Bruyn was of such an iron nature that it was ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... topsy-turvy in her zeal to sail by the next boat, the very next day. She succeeded; and when she left the house I left it, too; to come here; to the General; to a house that would two months ago have seemed a palace such as I could never dream of living in. It would ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... to think we grow more wise When Radcliffe's page we cease to prize, And turn to Malthus, and to Hervey, For tombs, or cradles topsy-turvy; 'Tis sweet to flatter one's dear self, And altered feelings vaunt, when pelf Is passion, poetry, romance; — And all our faith's in three ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... of the vastly more attractive yellow metal is within reach. It is singular that while the existence of gold was incontestably known for many years, little or no excitement was produced until 1896 and 1897, when the whole civilized world was turned almost topsy-turvy by the bewildering reports. During the first three months of the latter year more than four million dollars were taken from a space of forty square miles, where a few placer claims were worked. What harvest will be during the next few years no man ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis
... And now, when I am about to marry again, I have purposely picked out a young girl whom I can educate to suit myself. For the woman, you know, is the man's child, and if she is not, he becomes hers, and then the world turns topsy-turvy. ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... been hoping that the war would knock some of this topsy-turvy nonsense out of us. Maybe it has. Sometimes I see on the faces of our commuters the unaccustomed agitation of thought. At least we still have the grace to call ourselves a suburb, and not (what we fancy ourselves) a superurb. But I don't like the pretense that runs like a jarring note ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... be. I saw the money; saw it in the hand of the person who hid it there. Let me look for it, constable. I will not give up the search till I have turned the place topsy-turvy." ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... granny declared it sounded like some wicked thing done by evil spirits, and she wasn't going to believe it. Elsie was inclined to feel very much like poor old granny, who thought the world was turning topsy-turvy since her young days. But although she could not understand it, Elsie had a dim uneasy feeling that there was too much likelihood of Mrs. Donaldson's words being true ones for her to ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... Katharine, as she opened it. "She is the best of them all to write, and her letters sound just like her funny, topsy-turvy self." ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... he said, "that you seem to delight in taking a topsy-turvy view of life. It arises, I think, from an over developed sense of humour. You would find things to laugh at even ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and makes the unlimited the goal both of imagination and conduct. Oscar Wilde's epigrams, and more particularly his fables, are examples of a thoroughgoing naturalist's insolent indifference to any form of restraint. All things, whether holy or bestial, were material for his topsy-turvy wit, his literally unbridled imagination. No humanistic law of decency, that is to say, a proper respect for the opinions of mankind, and no divine law of reverence and humility, acted for him as a restraining force or a selective ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... number of others I got from the hotel to the hill in a wagon. The sight from our eminence was one that I shall never forget—that I can never fully describe. The whole world appeared to be topsy-turvy and at the mercy of an angry and destroying demon of the elements. People were floating about on housetops and in wagons, and hundreds were clinging to tree-trunks, logs and furniture ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... her immediate bewilderment by a scalding douche down her neck—the waiter, a young German with heart disease painted on his livid lips and pasty complexion, having held the coffee-pot suspended topsy-turvy for an instant, and then fallen in a fit on ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... Army, or rather Yeomanry life, its fatigues and worries, big and small, on men hitherto unaccustomed to such things, has been marvellous, and productive of a topsy-turvy dom of character, after Mr. W. S. Gilbert's own heart. To commence with, it is curious to note that in many cases men who claim to have roughed it in various parts of the world have been amongst the worst to stand the roughing here, and while weak-looking striplings have developed into fine hardy ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... repose, and had for some time enjoyed a very agreeable slumber, when he was startled by a knocking at his chamber door. "I beg your honour's pardon," said the landlady, "but there are two uncivil persons in the kitchen who have well-nigh turned my whole house topsy-turvy. Not content with laying violent hands on your honour's supper, they want to be rude to two young ladies who are just arrived, and have called for a post-chaise to go on. They are afraid to open their chamber door to get out, and the young lawyer is like to be murdered ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... significant things—has ended in the wildest whirl of weather imaginable. The rains have been terrific, blinding, tropical in their almost ceaseless roar and fury. Surely only madmen or fiends would fight in such an elemental maelstrom. We may be both, and perhaps we are, now that the whole world is topsy-turvy; for we are going savagely on at this dread business, half blind and wholly desperate. If the furious sky were to rain red-hot pitchforks the contending armies would still be undismayed and would crawl, if not fly, at ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... this use:— It lends a lustre, and more great opinion, A larger dare to our great enterprise, Than if the earl were here; for men must think, If we, without his help can make a head To push against the kingdom; with his help We shall o'erturn it topsy-turvy down.— Yet all goes well, yet all our ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... Socratic every dining-room was Attic (Which suggests an architecture of a topsy-turvy kind), There they'd satisfy their twist on a RECHERCHE cold [Greek text which cannot be reproduced], Which is what they called their lunch - and so may you, if you're inclined. As they gradually got on, they'd [Greek text which cannot be reproduced] (Which is ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... awakening of love's young dream showed in the hasty nature of her departure for the ice-box was lamentably odorous of forgotten food, the kitchenette needed scrubbing with hot water and lye, the modest fittings of the whole place were in topsy-turvy neglect. When Lorelei's trunks were dumped inside, the chaos appeared complete. She was not accustomed to rely upon her own hands, and at this moment she felt none of the pride that comes of independence. Instead of the ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... is not with words, witty sayings, funny observations and topsy-turvy language alone that the writer works, when he constructs a vaudeville two-act. It is with clever ideas, expressed in laughable situations and actions, that his brain is busy when he begins to marshal to his aid the elements ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... dip again and again into his stolen bread and milk with a lofty indifference. It might be an earthquake that had come to Old Studley for all he knew. What if it were? There would always be a ledge of rock somewhere about where he, Mike, could hold on in safety if the earth were topsy-turvy. Besides, he had now scooped up the last scrap of Jinty's breakfast, and it behoved him to be ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... his head. He hated clashing and conflict above all things, and was for peace. Why should they thus rush to thrust themselves into trouble? Let matters abide as they were a little longer; surely life was pleasant enough without turning it all topsy-turvy. Then, with a sort of indignation, why should Myles, who had only come among them a month, take such service more to heart than they who had endured it for years? And, finally, with the hopefulness of so many of the rest of us, he advised ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... the goal of his desires as I was at that moment. The regions around the North Pole — well, yes, the North Pole itself — had attracted me from childhood, and here I was at the South Pole. Can anything more topsy-turvy be imagined? ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... return to the Kempt family now and then, if they will let me. I must get away for a time and think. My life has suddenly become all topsy-turvy, and I need to get my bearings, as does a ship that has been through a storm and lost ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... 'Article 7' of M. Ferry. M. Ferry is the true, though more or less occult, head of the present Administration in France. 'M. Ferry,' said a caustic French Radical to me in Paris, 'ought to be the mask of M. Carnot. Nature gave him a Carnival nose for that purpose. Everything is topsy-turvy now in France, and so M. Carnot is the mask of M. Ferry. But the nose will come ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... glorified in all shapes and guises, and represented as the highest aim of life. Woman's virtues, yea, even her vices, were invested with exaggerated importance. Woman became accustomed to think that she could be neither faithful nor faithless without turning the world topsy-turvy. She shared the fate of all objects of excessive adulation: flattery corrupted her. Thus it came about that love of woman overshadowed every other social force and every form of family affection, and so spent its power. The Jews were ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... of reach of the wrath of the Count of Biaucaire. The vessel, however, is soon overtaken by a terrible tempest, which, after tossing it about for seven days, drives it into the harbor of Torelore. This is the mediaeval "topsy-turvy land," for on entering the castle Aucassin learns that the king is lying abed, because a son has been born to him, while the queen is at the head of the army fighting! This state of affairs so incenses Aucassin, that ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... table, pledge every toast, silently join in every roar of merriment. I become a sort of universal guest. With what propriety is this jovial season, placed amid dismal December rains and snows! How one pities the unhappy Australians, with whom everything is turned topsy-turvy, and who holds Christmas at midsummer! The face of Christmas glows all the brighter for the cold. The heart warms as the frost increases. Estrangements which have embittered the whole year, melt in to-night's hospitable smile. There are warmer ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... all these men—Dickens, Carlyle, Ruskin and Morris. They differed in much; but, like great mountains lying apart in the base, they converge high up in the air." The landscape suggested in these sentences is more topsy-turvy than the imagination likes to dwell upon. And the criticisms in the book are seldom lightning-flashes ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... that the human mind from accident, from grief, or from that mysterious excitement, during which in half an hour a blaspheming costermonger "gets religion" and becomes a saint of God—nothing is more certain than that the human mind can like this, at a flash, turn topsy-turvy; the good coming to the top, the bad going to the bottom. Mechanical pressure on the cortex of the brain can bring this state of things about, even as it can convert a saint of God into a ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... "Highty-tighty, what ails Susan, and what ails you?" continued the farmer, turning to John. "Dang it, but everything seems to go wrong this blessed day. First there be all the apples stolen—then there be all the hives turned topsy-turvy in the garden—then there be Caesar with his flank opened by the bull—then there be the bull broken through the hedge and tumbled into the saw-pit—and now I come to get more help to drag him out, I find one woman ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... with a loving recognition of fellowship, and disfigure them into butts of mockery?—nay, worse—use it to degrade the healthy appetites and affections of our nature as they are seen to be degraded in insane patients whose system, all out of joint, finds matter for screaming laughter in mere topsy-turvy, makes every passion preposterous or obscene, and turns the hard-won order of life into a second chaos hideous enough to make one wail that the first was ever thrilled ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... Time passed dreary enough for a month, at the end of which time his reverence came to me, leaving the porter just outside the door in older to come to his help should I be violent, and then he read me a very purty lecture on my conduct, saying I had turned the religious house topsy-turvy, and corrupted the scholars, and that I was the cheat of the world, for that on inspecting the pack he had discovered the dirty marks which I had made upon the trump cards for to know them by. He said a great deal more to me, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... need it most. It's only called a 'Bible reading'"—here Charley carefully spread his gloves across his right knee—"there's no law against reading the Bible to men?" he added, looking up with a quick winning smile. "Now you see she turns the scripture topsy-turvy. Instead of women having to inquire of their husbands at home, men are obliged to inquire of their wives and sweethearts. I don't mind that, though. I'd rather hear it from you than from Mrs. Frankland any day." And he gathered up his gloves, and leaned ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... in her daughter's family; one of the children would cut his foot, and for sometime there would be danger of amputation—another urchin would upset a kettle of scalding water on himself, and then he would be laid up for sometime, while mamma turned the green-ribbon room topsy-turvy in her searches after old linen—and once the daughter fell down stairs, and was taken up for dead. They seemed to be an unfortunate family—always meeting with hair-breadth escapes. Aunty Patton's reticule was always well filled with good ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... kind of a joke On the poor, long-suffering mortal folk; And a few mysterious words he said, His fool's cap close to her flower-crowned head. Then he laughed till he made his cap-bells ring, At the thought of the topsy-turvy Spring. "'Tis a fair exchange," he said, with a wink— "It is!" she said, and what do you think? The flowers that should bloom in the month of May Every one of them came on an April day! And they looked ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... as everything else happens in that topsy-turvy land and in the eastern sky hung a double quivering rainbow. I rubbed my eyes and looked again. It was double! The Chief explained that this was due to a mirage, but I placed it to the credit of altitude, like all ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... I can only say the whole question demands much more anxious thought than you seem to have given it. You say that he is a gentleman. He knows how to behave, I admit; but if his morals are as topsy-turvy as his tastes and—er—politics, as I've no doubt they are, then—er—In short, I do not approve of Brian Strange as a husband for my niece ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne
... the little home seemed to clutch at his heart, and on a swift impulse he strode up the path, ascended the steps of the porch and peered in the window of the living-room. Everything in the usually orderly room was topsy-turvy, and everywhere there was evidence of hurried flight. From where he stood the desk—her desk—was plainly visible, its ransacked drawers pulled open, the floor before it strewn with torn and scattered papers. Its top was bare, amid the surrounding ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... toward this public firebrand who lives in their vicinity and used to be a village boy under the care of his uncle, the shoemaker. Is he on their visiting-list? I rather suspect not. The world must be turning topsy-turvy for them when they allow themselves to reflect, as they must at times, that this upstart has the entry to royal palaces and is one of the principal advisers of the King of England. I have an idea that ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... scholar to speak of, and hard up for an authority—why, it was a very great temptation for him. But some people, and I am afraid the professor was one of them, interpret that in a more strange, curious, one-sided, left-handed, topsy-turvy, inside-out, behind-before fashion than even Cousin Cramchild; for they make it mean, that you must show your respect for children, by never confessing yourself in the wrong to them, even if you know that you are so, lest they should lose ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... saints and nuns, and bones, and relics, and miracles, and icons, and calvaries, and cells, and celibacy, and horsehair shirts, and blood, and dirt, and tears, was true after all! What if the world of beauty I had been content to live in was a Satanic show, and the real thing was that dead, topsy-turvy world down there in the cold, gray lake under the reeking mists? I sneaked back into the house to see if the streak hadn't dried yet; but no! it loomed in tell-tale ghastliness, a sort of writing on the wall announcing the wrath and visitation of heaven. I went ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... sat gazing on the fire, quietly, and took no notice of the request. "People's heads," continued the medical gentleman, "seem turned topsy-turvy. Dear me, how different it was in my time! What men are about, I can't think. The very last newspaper I read had an advertisement that I should as soon have expected to see there when my father was alive, as a ship sailing along this coast keel upwards. You ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... suffering in a large city. . . . They are born into a world where the father is inconsiderate and abusive of the mother; where cleanliness, fresh air, and good food are not assured to them; where all the economic laws of the civilized world seem topsy-turvy; where things sometimes come miraculously, without any return for them in labor, and where they sometimes do not come at all. They are born, moreover, with diseased bodies, often with the taint of alcoholism in their veins; too often ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... topsy-turvy, the proletariat require only arms and a rallying-point. The Girondins furnish both. Through a striking coincidence, one which shows that the plan was concerted,[2384] they start three political engines at the same time. Just at the moment when, through their deliberate ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... by her sudden return on the following day, in a pouring rain which beat her face without her apparently minding it. Penelope at a full gallop was observed by every one, and Jacquelin's grin, the early hour, the parcels stuffed into the carriole topsy-turvy, and the evident impatience of ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... quiet village of Cyrus, with its whimsical villagers, is abruptly turned topsy-turvy by the arrival in its midst of an actress, distractingly feminine, Lila Laughter; and, at the same time, an ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... been turned topsy-turvy, and a few articles of bric-a-brac had been smashed, but otherwise the loss did not seem to be of much consequence outside of the fact that two dozen silver spoons and a gold butter dish were missing, also some wine and whiskey ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... The Twelve True Fishermen held their annual dinners was an institution such as can only exist in an oligarchical society which has almost gone mad on good manners. It was that topsy-turvy product—an "exclusive" commercial enterprise. That is, it was a thing which paid not by attracting people, but actually by turning people away. In the heart of a plutocracy tradesmen become cunning enough to be more fastidious ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... I said; "everything seems topsy-turvy up here. Why, to-day I saw a man come in with a box of apples which the crowd begged him to open. He was selling those apples at a dollar apiece, and the folks were just fighting to ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... at the landscape through it. Everything became grotesquely transfigured. A cabbage in the foreground became opalescent, and an ear of corn a mass of jewels, but the whole atmosphere above and beyond was lurid, and the chimneys and church spires were topsy-turvy. ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... who has just been under instruction; let him chatter freely, ask questions, and talk at his ease, and you will be surprised to find the strange forms your arguments have assumed in his mind; he confuses everything, and turns everything topsy-turvy; you are vexed and grieved by his unforeseen objections; he reduces you to be silent yourself or to silence him: and what can he think of silence in one who is so fond of talking? If ever he gains ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... no nonsense, no topsy-turvy straining after new effects, which is so wearisome to those who love the racy naturalism of Parson Adams and Edie Ochiltree. But let us have no pessimism also. The age is against the romance of colour, movement, passion, ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... Such topsy-turvy habitations as the stores and dwellings of Canvas Town never were seen. The main street, if the thoroughfare where all the business of the mushroom township was transacted could be dignified with such a name, was a snare to the pedestrian and an impossibility ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... forbidden. They fabricate systems, they recast society, they demolish the monarchy, they fling all laws to the earth, they put the attic in the cellar's place and my porter in the place of the King, they turn Europe topsy-turvy, they reconstruct the world, and all their love affairs consist in staring slily at the ankles of the laundresses as these women climb into their carts. Ah! Marius! Ah! you blackguard! to go and vociferate on the public place! to discuss, to debate, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Delusion! Were it not for thee The world turned topsy-turvy we should see; For Vice, respectable with cleanly fancies, Would fly abandoned ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... Cook with the conservation menus, and it is funny to see how topsy-turvy everything is. It is perfectly patriotic to eat mushrooms and lobsters and squabs and ducklings, and it is unpatriotic to serve sausages and wheat cakes. And Cook can't get adjusted to it. She will insist upon bacon for breakfast, because well-regulated families since the Flood have eaten ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... be disturbed by men seeking that young scoundrel? Look at this place, fairly topsy-turvy with their hunt! Faith! The room is before you. Look and see!" and with a great indifference he went ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... Gilet," answered Philippe. "He need only take himself off from Issoudun and go to America on a venture. I should be the first to advise you to give him an outfit, and to wish him a safe voyage. He would soon make a fortune there, and that is far more honorable than turning Issoudun topsy-turvy at night, and playing ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... of her life. Even the palace gates swung wide to her: most of them with the more readiness because she had already passed through other gates—Mrs. Grainger's, for instance. Baiae, apparently, is a topsy-turvy world in which, if one alights upside down, it is difficult to become righted. To alight upside down, is to alight in a palace. The Graingers did not live in one, but in a garden that existed before the palaces were, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... fishiness washed off, Mrs Widger was distributing the school bank-cards and Monday morning pennies. (By the time the children leave school, they will have saved thus, penny by penny, enough to provide them with a new rig-out for service—or Sunday wear.) There was a frizzling in the topsy-turvy little kitchen. ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... preserve the appearance of doing their duty strictly. I have seen some of the English bluster and go in a passion about having their things tumbled about, as they expressed it, but it only makes matters worse. I have known the searchers in those cases to turn a large chest completely topsy-turvy, so that not a single article has escaped examination, and the whole has had to be re-packed. It is at best an unpleasant tax upon travellers, but it is always better policy to submit to it with ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... could have been to our persons; no Certainty, no Enjoyment of our Possessions; no Justice between Man and Man, no Distinction between Good and Bad, between Friends and Foes, between Father and Child, Husband and Wife, Male or Female; but all would have been turned topsy-turvy, by being exposed to the Malice of the Envious and ill-Natured, to the Fraud and Violence of Knaves and Robbers, to the Forgeries of the crafty Cheat, to the Lusts of the Effeminate and Debauched, and what not! Our Courts of Justice ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... true; they could only approach with their smallest vessels, and that not near enough;—besides, their shot fell sometimes among our troops. It did some good, however! It broke the French lines, and raised our courage. Away it went. Helter-skelter! topsy-turvy! all struck dead, or forced into the water; the fellows were drowned the moment they tasted the water, while we Hollanders dashed in after them. Being amphibious, we were as much in our element as frogs, and hacked away at the enemy, and shot them down as if they had ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... nonsense. The whole place here's topsy-turvy like. Why, it's Christmas in about a fortnit's time, and are you going to tell me this is Christmas weather? Why, it's hot ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... arm, busy in setting his antechamber to rights, heard a light tap at the door. There had been no ring, which was discreet on such a day. Basque opened the door, and beheld M. Fauchelevent. He introduced him into the drawing-room, still encumbered and topsy-turvy, and which bore the air of a field of battle after the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... places that seemed inviting. But Bob and the rest of the company went on till they crossed the Paraguay River; and there, in the western part of that country, they made themselves at home. A strange, topsy-turvy land it is—as queer in some ways as the Wonderland Alice entered when she went through the Looking-Glass; for in Paraguay January comes in the middle of summer; and the hot, muggy winds blow from the north; and the cool, refreshing breezes come from the south; and some of the ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... in Maggie, who had stolen to her father's elbow again, listening with parted lips, while she held her doll topsy-turvy, and crushed its nose against the wood of the chair—"father, is it a long way off where Tom is to go? Shan't we ever go to ...
— Tom and Maggie Tulliver • Anonymous
... an Englishman would not hesitate to do, a topsy-turvy morality, let us realize that sayings such as these really give us the true values of things as nothing else could. For there are more sins "in heaven and earth than are dreamt of" in a nation's classified immoralities. Stealing a shilling is a recognized ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... what jewels the Empress should wear on such and such an occasion. One day he daubed her dress with ink because he did not like it, and wanted her to put on another. Whenever he looked into her wardrobe he was sure to throw everything topsy-turvy." ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... for Jesus in Bethlehem. There was no room for Him in the inn. There was no cradle in the stable. There was no protector when Herod arose to kill. What a strange world it is! Did ever babe open eyes on such a topsy-turvy condition of affairs? The King of Glory had not where to lay His head! Mary, it is true, was strong in faith, but both she and Joseph must needs soon fly into Egypt with the Babe. Refused at the inn, soon even the stable must cast ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... demands of never-satisfied, exacting travellers, alone involved a daily recurring struggle, in which the softer emotions would have been altogether out of place, we may suppose. In the present instance she considered it a hard case that her house should be turned topsy-turvy at such an untimely hour, and its general propriety endangered thereby; and Madelon's grief, which at another time would have excited her compassion, had for the moment taken the unexpected form of determined ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... of straw; it had neither heart, entrals, nor any thing, for the fairies belike had stollen him out of his cradle, and left that of straw instead of him. Give me credit, I beseech ye, women are craftier than we are, play their tricks by night, and turn every thing topsy-turvy. After this our tall fellow never came to his colour again, but in a ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... was occupied by swings, where some eight or ten boat-loads of persons were flying topsy-turvy into the air, making one giddy to look at them, and constant fearful shrieks arose from the lady swingers, at finding themselves in a horizontal or inverted position, high above the ground. One of the machines was like a great wheel, with four cars attached, which ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... carefully examined by Monsieur at the bureau, of the prison. Monsieur made me turn everything topsy-turvy and inside out. Monsieur expressed great surprise at a huge shell: where did I get it?—I said a French soldier gave it to me as a souvenir.—And several tetes d'obus?—also souvenirs, I assured him merrily. Did Monsieur suppose I was caught in the act of blowing up the French Government, or ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... What a topsy-turvy world it was, to be sure! What alternations between despair and hope! What rebound from the gates of Death to the threshold of Eden! How untrue, after all, was the nebulous philosophy of Omar, the Tentmaker. Surely in the happenings of the bygone day there was more ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... a topsy-turvy world! Mr. Lloyd George is "the man who won the war," he who did nothing to prepare for it, and suggested some things that might have made it difficult to be won; while Lord Haldane, who did prepare for it, and ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... at the heavenly scenery Alcides always managed to send the canoe on to some rock, which quickly brought me back, not to earth but to water. His principle in life was always to do the worst thing and then you knew that nothing worse could happen—a topsy-turvy philosophy for which we all had to suffer. Emerging from the basin, we had two channels before us, one to the N.N.E., the other N.N.W. Gigantic palm trees such as we had seen along the River Arinos were now to be seen all along the banks of the river. We ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... forever exist half-exploiter and half-exploited. Until we become buyers and sellers alike, producers and consumers alike, keeping the balance not for profit but for service, we are going to have topsy-turvy conditions. ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... her love? She took off her ducal coronet, and flung it on the platform of a clown! She took from her brow the Olympian aureola, and placed it on the bristly head of a gnome! The world had turned topsy-turvy. The insects swarmed on high, the stars were scattered below, whilst the wonder-stricken Gwynplaine, overwhelmed by a falling ruin of light, and lying in the dust, was enshrined in a glory. One all-powerful, revolting against beauty and ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... precise, immaculate house, where everything and everybody was controlled by certain unvarying and inflexible rules, the old mother felt almost as straitened as she ever had in the small topsy-turvy one. ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... imported a London and Dublin idea: turning cart-wheels, somersaults, and walking all about us on their hands, with feet in the air, to attract attention and elicit pennies. One little fellow gyrated about in a most marvelous style, keeping so persistently topsy-turvy as to grow black in the face, and we finally paid him to keep right side uppermost. Begging is reduced to a science in India, and our little party were beset, as by ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... had other views of it. Even when at last he was relieved from duty he never closed an eye. The blowing out of the lamp had turned his ideas and hopes all topsy-turvy. His heart sang loud and turbulent within him. He had kissed other girls indeed before at kirns and country dances. He laughed triumphantly within him at the difference. They had run into corners and screamed and struggled, and ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... in the more conventional manner, with ideas and principles right side up; the objects are the same, the events and results are the same; but there is a curious glamour over all, and the spectator has a mystical feeling of topsy-turvy, ending in vertigo ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... hundred,—it do seem to me that if his jinerin' hadn't been tip-top, it would ha' been but like the rest on it. There, grannie! Mind, I mean no offence; an' I don't doubt you ha' got somethink i' your weskit pocket as 'll turn it all topsy-turvy in a moment. Anyhow, I won't purtend to nothink, and that's ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... two score years since CARROLL'S art, With topsy-turvy magic, Sent ALICE wondering through a part Half-comic ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. With a Proem by Austin Dobson • Lewis Carroll
... from the fertile country behind them, and to cooeperate against the troops of Savoy and Austria, which had occupied the passes of lower Piedmont, and blocked the way into Lombardy. By this time the law for compulsory enlistment had been enacted, but the general excitement and topsy-turvy management incident to such rapid changes in government and society, having caused the failure of the Sardinian expedition, had also prevented recruiting or equipment in either of these two divisions of the army. The outbreak of open hostilities in all the ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... and then he looked at Ginger, and they walked by grinding their teeth. They stuck to Isaac all day, trying to get their money out of 'im, and the names they called 'im was a surprise even to themselves. And at night they turned the room topsy-turvy agin looking for their money and 'ad more unpleasantness when they wanted Isaac to get up and ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... been tampered with by a mischievous wag, the result being that when he dips his pen into the inkstand he draws it out all covered with mud, when he fancies he is sitting down on a solid chair he finds himself sprawling on the floor, in a word his actions are all topsy-turvy or mere beating the air, while in every case the effect is invariably one of momentum. Habit has given the impulse: what was wanted was to check the movement or deflect it. He did nothing of the sort, but continued like a machine in the same straight line. The victim, then, of a practical ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... a little excitement," returned Mr. Swann. "I don't suppose they'll trouble me much, but they'll turn your place topsy-turvy, I expect. Still, that can't be helped. You know what fools the police are; they'll think you've murdered the captain and hidden his body under the boards. They'll have all the ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... things were all topsy-turvy once more. The seventh Janissary regiment, when the two-and-thirty Janissaries returned to them with bloody swords boasting of their deed, rushed upon them and cut them to pieces. The new Janissary Aga was shot ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... You have expressed opinions which are calculated to make people discontented with things as they are. You rob them of the content which has made them comfortable heretofore, and yet you offer them nothing better in return for it. You would have society turned topsy-turvy, and all for what? Why, simply to make a wrong thing right for yourself! If your example were followed by all the unhappy people in the world, how would it end, do you think? There must be moral laws, and it is inevitable that they should press ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... women ridiculed him, And the maidens laughed and jeered him. In the lane he drove most strangely, Strangely to the farm came driving, Turned the sledge all topsy-turvy, At the gate ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... anywhere but in Wistaria Terrace. It is absurd that you should say you have given your consent, papa. How could you possibly have consented when the house could not get on without me? You know it could not. Why, even for a day things would be all topsy-turvy without me." ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... he handled them, made silly remarks, and pondered over them like a perfect child, until it was quite dark. Torches were then lit, and guns, pistols, powder, boxes, tools, beads—the whole collection, in short—were tossed together topsy-turvy, bundled into mbugus, and carried away by the pages. Mtesa now said, "It is late, and time to break up; what provisions would you wish to have?" I said, "A little of everything, but no one thing constantly." "And would you like to see me to-morrow?" "Yes, every ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... responsible for that. It is I who should rather complain; you prostituted me vilely to scoundrels, whose laudations and cajolery of you were only samples of their designs upon me. As to your saying that I wound up by betraying you, you have things topsy-turvy again; I may complain; you took every method to estrange me, and finally kicked me out neck and crop. That is why your revered Dame Poverty has supplied you with a smock-frock to replace your soft raiment. Why, I begged and prayed Zeus ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... be full glad that her heart had strayed away—as it must needs stray somewhere—to the son of the third greatest man in England. As for his being an outlaw, that mattered little. He might be inlawed, and rich and powerful, any day in those uncertain, topsy-turvy times; and, for the present, his being a wolf's head only made him the more interesting to her. Women like to pity their lovers. Sometimes—may all good beings reward them for it—they love merely because they pity. And Torfrida found it ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... will say, is an emblem of a tree standing on its head; and pray what is man but a topsy-turvy creature, his animal faculties perpetually mounted on his rational, his head where his heels should be, groveling on the earth! and yet, with all his faults, he sets up to be a universal reformer and corrector of abuses, a remover of grievances, ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... miles; and also over a space of about fifteen miles square, near the place now known as the town of Shasta, in the Coast Mountains, at the head of the Sacramento Valley. The whole country had been turned topsy-turvy; towns had been deserted, or left only to the women and children; fields had been left unreaped; herds of cattle went without anyone to care for them. But gold-mining, which had become the great interest ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... say you are going to let that man turn every thing topsy-turvy, and the congregation out of the ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... went on speaking, more and more vacantly, more and more rapidly. "The Mistress said to the Maid. We've got him off. What about the letter? Burn it now. No fire in the grate. No matches in the box. House topsy-turvy. Servants all gone. Tear it up. Shake it up in the basket. Along with the rest. Shake it up. Waste paper. Throw it away. Gone forever. Oh, Sara, ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... both started from the room and ran up-stairs. Here they found Henry, a boy two years older than Mary, who was between three and four, lying on the carpet with a bureau drawer upon him, which he had, while turning topsy-turvy after something or other, accidentally pulled out upon him. He was more frightened than hurt, by ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... the path of largeness. There are, therefore, in self-sacrifice both negative and positive elements. But why select its name from the subordinate part? Why turn to the front its incidental negations? This is topsy-turvy nomenclature. Better blot the word self-sacrifice from our dictionaries. Devotion, service, love, dedication to a cause, —these words mark its real nature and are the only descriptions of it which its practicers will recognize. That damage to the abstract self which chiefly impresses the ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... real captain now dear old Heriot 's gone,' he said. 'The school's topsy-turvy: we're like a lot of things rattled in a box. Oh, dear! how I do like a good commander. On he goes, you after him, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... under His Holiness the late Pope, but he's cock of the walk now. He has jumped into favour all at once and can do as he pleases. How am I to oppose him? He may have secret authorization from the Vatican, for all I know. Everything's topsy-turvy now; you can't tell from day to day what may happen next. In the good old times one knew what to be ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... tipsy-topsy-turvy feeling stopped, the cook opened her eyes, gave one sounding screech and shut them again, and Anthea took the opportunity to get the desperately howling Lamb ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... weakness, it was agreed that I should call in about an hour at the office of the lawyer, whom (as he left the library) Uncle Adam should waylay and inform of the arrangement. I suppose there was never a more topsy-turvy situation: you would have thought it was I who had suffered some rebuff, and that iron-sided Adam was a generous conqueror who ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... possession of which they have sacrificed the lives of so many thousand men, and have spent their own in hurry and trouble. Men have before them vast tracts of land uninhabited and uncultivated, and they turn mankind topsy-turvy for one nook of that neglected ground in dispute. The earth, if well cultivated, would feed a hundred times more men than she does now. Even the unevenness of ground, which at first seems to be a defect, turns either into ornament or profit. The mountains ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... Here's Topsy-Turvy, upside down, The ceiling seems the base: Reverse the ground and 'twill be found The things are ...
— The Royal Picture Alphabet • Luke Limner
... Charles Greville, "such a stirring-up of all the elements of society as nobody ever dreamt of; we have seen a general saturnalia—ignorance, vanity, insolence, poverty, ambition, escaping from every kind of restraint, ranging over the world, and turning it topsy-turvy as it pleased. All Europe exhibits the result—a mass of ruin, terror, and despair." Matthew Arnold, young and ardent, and in some ways democratic, wrote in a different vein: "The hour of the hereditary peerage, and eldest sonship, and immense properties, has, I am convinced, ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... the butcher's boy or the milkman. Himself would have laid out all our journeyings for us, and we should have gone placidly along in well-ordered paths. As it is, we are already pledged to do the most absurd and unusual things, and Ireland bids fair to be seen in the most topsy-turvy, helter-skelter ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... for you, my boy," I thought. "Otherwise it wouldn't have taken me long to send you through the window to air your ironies at your ease. The law of gravity ought not to be topsy-turvy here at Ahaggar." ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... Trottman, 'to afford you a sample of his gibberish; you may then examine what degree of instruction you suppose may be obtained from a heterogeneous topsy-turvy mass ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... and variegated atmosphere around them. This is a fair specimen of the whole establishment, with the exception of the travelers' room. The beds in these cabins are the chief articles of luxury. Feathers being abundant, they are sewed up in prodigious ticks, which are tumbled topsy-turvy into big boxes on legs that serve for bedsteads, and then covered over with piles of all the loose blankets, petticoats, and cast-off rags possible to be gathered up about the premises. Into these comfortable nests the sleepers dive ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... going to do anything; but our plans seem turned topsy-turvy. We are close to the bows, where we ought to get up for ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... man possessed by the illusion that his dreams are the real thing and his waking hours are imaginary. Just think what a topsy-turvy state that ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... grain of rice, nor a tiny wee bit of pulse, but only a smell that was so uncommonly nice that he actually cried with rage and disappointment. He flew into the most dreadful temper, but though he turned the house topsy-turvy, he could not find a morsel of food. Finally, he declared he would take the wood away again, but, as the crafty old woman had imagined, when he came to the task, he did not care, even for the sake of revenge, to carry so ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... I declare I won't," said the Miller. So he sat up all night in an arm-chair, and threw everything he could lay his hands on at the corners where he heard the mice scuffling, till the place was topsy-turvy. ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... Siddons on Lady Macbeth). But, as music, it becomes simply impossible to be executed, so frightful is the strain on the energies of her who is to present the heroine. Compared with this character, Beethoven's Leonora, Weber's Euryanthe, are only so much child's play." This is topsy-turvy reasoning, of course, but at the same time it ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... her glittering dress, or bending over the boy, or holding her face to his as he kissed her on the stairs. Never since had she shown him the smallest glimpse of such a mood. What was wrong with her and with himself? Something, since May, had turned their life topsy-turvy, and it seemed to Ashe that in the general unprofitable rush of futile engagements he had never yet had time to stop and ask himself what ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... represents them. To mark the fifth, they chose a V, which is made out by bending inwards the three middle fingers, and stretching out only the thumb and the little finger; and for the tenth they used an X, which is a double V, one placed topsy-turvy under the other. From this the progression of these numbers is always from one to five, and from five to ten. The hundred was signified by the capital letter of that word in Latin, C—centum. The ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the thirty-first of August, everything in the Rostovs' house seemed topsy-turvy. All the doors were open, all the furniture was being carried out or moved about, and the mirrors and pictures had been taken down. There were trunks in the rooms, and hay, wrapping paper, and ropes were scattered about. The peasants and house serfs carrying out the things ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... right. I'm in a crazy world. Everything's topsy-turvy. Even the streets have gone insane. They wind and twist until they cross their own tracks. I know I'll get lost looking for that French bakery. (He goes to the door.) Greenwich Village! ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... at all. General Clarke's movement was the result of an enterprise which was aimed against the Spaniards; and, though the facts have no real connection with the Yazoo speculation, they may be briefly told here, especially since Stevens, in his "History of Georgia," turns them all topsy-turvy. ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... service which he praised highly; it is true there would be trouble with the sergeants; but then the officers were gentlemen, and his own, in particular, one among ten thousand. It sounded so far exactly like an episode in the rakish, topsy-turvy life of such an one as I had imagined. But then there came incidents more doubtful, which showed an almost impudent greed after gratuities, and a truly impudent disregard for truth. And then there was the tale of ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... overlaid with metaphysical and religious accretions, so that the dialectical nerve and reasonableness of them were obliterated, and there survived only miscellaneous conclusions, fragments of wisdom built topsy-turvy into the new mythical edifice. It is the sad task reserved for historical criticism to detach those sculptured stones from the rough mass in which they have been embedded and to rearrange them in their pristine order, thus rediscovering the inner Socratic principle of moral philosophy, which ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... she only, is she whose square answereth to the square of her figure, and to the character which her Lord hath given of his own, and so the game began. For so soon as this mistress became a dame in the world, and found that she had her stout abettors, she attempts to turn all things topsy-turvy, and to set them and to make of them what she lists. And now she will have an altar like that which was Tiglath-pileser's. Now must the Lord's brazen altar be removed from its place, the borders ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... twenty years.' King always calls him Fritzchen. But Fritzchen," thinks Seckendorf Junior, "knows nothing about business. The King is aware of it; and said in the face of him one day: 'If thou begin at the wrong end with things, and all go topsy-turvy after I am gone, I will laugh at thee out of my grave!'" [Seckendorf (BARON), Journal Secret; ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... they wanted—they had finished the door on the birthday, and proud enough they were of it. The griffins, cupids, and so on, were, I must own, most beautiful to behold; though so many in number, so entangled in flowers and devices, and so topsy-turvy in their actions and attitudes, that you felt them unpleasantly in your head for hours after you had done with the pleasure of looking at them. If I add that Penelope ended her part of the morning's work by being sick in the back-kitchen, it is in no unfriendly spirit towards ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... cut with a penknife, let me see it dipped in the water, and let it come out with the cut cicatrised. The miracle will be quite as great, and I shall bow to it respectfully." Then he added: "If I possessed a source which could thus close up sores and wounds, I would turn the world topsy-turvy. I do not know exactly how I should manage it, but at all events I would summon the nations, and the nations would come. I should cause the miracles to be verified in such an indisputable manner, that I should be the master of the earth. Just think what an extraordinary power it would be—a divine ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola |
