"Totter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... saw her face whiten, and the slender figure totter ever so slightly. In a moment a strong arm was round her. The weary head ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... after all not so harmonious as I thought when I saw you entering here together!" exclaimed the emperor, laughing. "There are still differences of opinion, then, between the two pillars of my throne, and were I to lean on one, the other would totter and give way. Well, what do you want? ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... in eating it, owing to his swollen nose and mouth. He did his best to follow the herd, but, as the days went on, he grew weaker and weaker. The thorns had caused inflammation now, and the only thing he could do was to sway his huge head from side to side, and totter with short, uneven steps over ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... out, the limbs began to totter, and staggering backward she cried: "Somebody must ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... she heard a sound behind her. She turned in time to see the door pushed open, and Herman Brudenell—pale, wild, haggard, with matted hair, and blood-shot eyes, and shuddering frame—totter ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... we feel that mind to being comes Along with body, with body grows and ages. For just as children totter round about With frames infirm and tender, so there follows A weakling wisdom in their minds; and then, Where years have ripened into robust powers, Counsel is also greater, more increased The power ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... let loose, went like a whirlwind to the breaches, and again the crowded masses swarmed up the face of the ruins, but reaching the crest line they came down like a falling wall; crowd after crowd were seen to mount, to totter and to sink, the deadly French fire was unabated, the smoke floated away, and the crest of the ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... was still full of vigour; was too much within sight of the multitude below, that their cries on seeing him stop, even for an instant, would annoy and dishearten him; and that, while able to proceed alone, he would not appeal to preternatural assistance. At two-thirds of the height she felt him totter under the weight, and again repeated her earnest entreaties. But he no longer heard or listened: exerting his whole remains of strength, he staggered with her to the top, still bearing the untasted vial in his hand, and dropped dead on the ground. His mistress, thinking he ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... south comes With flickering flame; Shines from his sword The Val-god's sun. The stony hills are dashed together, The giantesses totter; Men tread the path of Hel, And heaven ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... limitations of different laws. It is the discord of the part with the whole. It is the antagonism of the soul with God. But the perpetual preservation of a perfectly balanced antagonism with God is inconceivable. It must vary, totter, grow either worse or better. If it grows worse, it will finally destroy itself, the aberrant individuality or malign insurgence vanishing in the totality of force, as the filth of our sewers vanishes purely in the purity ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... wipe off his old scores, and begin anew on an innocent and happy state that shall last for ever. What weakness to wish to live to such ghastly dotage, as to frighten the children, and make even the dogs to bark at us as we totter along the streets. Most certainly then, there is a time when, to a good man, death is a great mercy even to his body; and as to his soul, why should he tremble about that? Who can doubt that God created us to be happy; ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... incomprehensible. Carried away from himself, he seems to be suspended in a mysterious fiery element; he ceases to understand himself, the standard of everything has fallen from his hands; everything stereotyped and fixed begins to totter; every object seems to acquire a strange colour and to tell us its tale by means of new symbols;—one would need to be a Plato in order to discover, amid this confusion of delight and fear, how he accomplishes the feat, and to say to the dramatist: "Should a man come into our midst who ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... of high rank, enveloped in long white mantles, and with their faces hidden by a close veil of black, yellow, or blue gauze, form my third division. They walk, or rather totter, through the streets in numerous groups or bands, shod with yellow slippers or bottines, to enjoy a promenade outside the Jaffa Gate. You never hear them utter a word in the streets, nor do they pause for a moment. If that black or yellow object approach you, covered ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... to one side of the ladder, passed it loosely around the tree, and fastened it to the other side. Then, as the ladder was gradually raised, the wire slipped along up the tree, and when the ladder was in position it could not fall, although it might shake and totter a little. However, strong arms at the bottom held it pretty steady, and Harry was enabled to nail on his insulators with comparative ease, and in a ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... from being the cause of beauty; that this quality, where it is highest, in the female sex, almost always carries with it an idea of weakness and imperfection. Women are very sensible of this; for which reason they learn to lisp, to totter in their walk, to counterfeit weakness, and even sickness. In all this they are guided by nature. Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty. Blushing has little less power; and modesty in general, which is a tacit allowance of imperfection, is itself considered as an amiable quality, and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... madness, is still unbroken. Yet it is not in human nature to endure all this agony of suspense, all this hope deferred from day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year, and still be human. The man has, in some sense, become a brute. He now is seen to reel and totter to his cabin, late at night oftentimes. He has at last fallen into the habit of the camp. He can drink, gamble, carouse, as late as ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... played that part about as natural as a bull buffalo, but he fooled himself into believin' it, an' his voice was purty shaky at the end. Barbie's eyes filled up with tears, an' when he stopped an' began to totter feebly toward the house, she ran up an' threw her arms about his neck, an' said. "Dad. I just hate you—you don't play fair. You start the game under one set o' rules an' then when you get the worst of it you just simply ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... O Wolfings, from the garth your fathers built, And the House where sorrow dieth, and all unloosed is guilt? Turn back, turn back, and behold it! lest your feet be over slow When your shields are heavy-burdened with the arrows of the foe; How ye totter, how ye stumble on the rough and corpse-strewn way! And lo, how the eve is eating the afternoon of day! O why are ye abiding till the sun is sunk in night And the forest trees are ruddy with the battle-kindled ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... His eyes had gone beyond Morrison to the man sitting beside him and at the sight of that loved figure the old man began to tremble. His voice lowered to a whisper and he began to totter forward. ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... press! Not only infidels and atheists, but the vipers which the church has nurtured in her own bosom are rising up to sting her! Her canons are brought into contempt, her tests trampled on, and her dignitaries daily insulted! The hierarchy is in danger! The bishops totter on their bench! We are none of ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... less than any in the world. Curious to find statement like this gravely made in presence of twenty-eight Members, all told, including the SPEAKER. Suppose it's true, Empire on verge of precipice, into which, on slightest impulse, it may totter and disappear. Hon. Members, in the main, care so little that they busy themselves writing letters, chatting in Lobby, gossipping in Smoke-room; the few present admirably succeed in disguising terror that must possess them as HANBURY, in solemn ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 19, 1892 • Various
... battle-shout—pealed above the bellowing stadium. Even as he cried it, all saw his form draw upward as might Prometheus's unchained. They saw the fingers of the Spartan unclasp. They saw his bloody face upturned and torn with helpless agony. They saw his great form totter, topple, fall. The last dust cloud, and into it ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... ice; Scythia and wild Armenia had been yok'd, And they of Nilus' mouth, if there live any. 20 Rome, if thou take delight in impious war, First conquer all the earth, then turn thy force Against thyself: as yet thou wants not foes. That now the walls of houses half-reared totter, That, rampires fallen down, huge heaps of stone Lie in our towns, that houses are abandon'd, And few live that behold their ancient seats; Italy many years hath lien untill'd And chok'd with thorns; that greedy earth wants hinds;— Fierce ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... probable that his sudden weight jolted the plank out of its position. For hardly was he safe on the turf again when he heard a sharp cry. Throwing a look behind, he saw his pursuer totter, clutch at the slipping timber, and, still clutching at it, turn a ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... I was just paralyzed with amazement when I saw clean-cut chips flying at every stroke and caught a metallic gleam as his paw swung in the air. I didn't have much time to investigate the matter because the old Grizzly was a boss chopper and my tree began to totter very soon. I had sense enough to see that if I came down with the tree on the upper side the bear would nail me with one jump, and I threw my weight on the other side so as to fall the tree into the ravine. I thought I might have the luck to land without ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... this, Florry, you cause the whole fabric to totter, for on this doctrine, as a foundation, rests the arch, of which confession ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... and have I kept mine unshaken in spite of the storm that is raging in my native land? Armed in his simplicity only, he has gone to meet the gusts of temptation; and I have lived to see the Republic, which I believed inviolable as Mother Earth herself, tremble and totter, as one after another of her rotten pillars has fallen away. God grant that we may both, in this day of our peril, be able, as then, to realize that "Il ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... known to leave her own premises. There also her little great-grandson Peter first learned to walk, and as she slowly passed from one alcove to the other, resting in each when she reached it, he would take hold of her high staff and totter beside her, always bestowing on her as much as he could of his company, and early showing a preference for her over his aunt and even over ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... Maria Vittoria, rebelliously. "Say what you have said to me to her! Speak to her of the ignominy which will befall the King! Tell her how his cause will totter! Why talk of this to me? If she loves the King, your words will persuade her. For on my life they have nearly ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... Darwinism. So having carefully scanned the firmament of science for signs of the weather, I shall for once make a forecast for Darwinism, namely: Increasing cloudiness with heavy precipitations, indications of a violent storm, which threatens to cause the props of the structure to totter, and to sweep it ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... That man and his poetry haunt me. I'm getting gloomy and morose. Life is beginning to pall upon me. I seem to be under the influence of a perpetual nightmare. I can't stand it much longer, Mr. Grady; my reason will totter upon its throne. Here, only this morning, he sent me a poem entitled "Lines to Hannah." Are you fond ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... more shall I drink wine from the hand of Ul-Jabal. My knees totter beneath the weight of my lean body. Daggers of lambent fever race through my brain incessant. Some fibrillary twitchings at the right angle of the mouth ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... air!" Mr. Marrapit staggered to the window. "I reel before this sudden assault. For nine years at ruinous cost I have supported you. Must I sell my house? Am I never to be free? Must I totter always through life with you upon my bowed ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... courageous daring which will live in song long after their last remnant shall have passed away. At the time when I first stepped upon these grounds the red man still grasped the sceptre which has since been wrenched from his hand. They saw the throne of their father beginning to totter. Their realm had attracted the cupidity of a race of strangers, and with maddening despair, they grasped their falling power, and daily grew more desperate as they became more endangered. I among the rest had now a view of this exuberant ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... brought along, and Dale used one while Peleg Snuggers wielded the other. Soon the cedar commenced to totter. ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... greatly to frustrate that design of hell (Prov 6:16-19). 6. This is the way to bring them out of the world into fellowship that now stand off from our gospel privileges, for the sake of our vain janglings. 7. This is the way to make antichrist shake, totter, and tremble (Isa 11:13,14). 8. This is the way to leave Babylon as an habitation for devils only; and to make it a hold for foul spirits, and a cage only for every unclean and hateful bird. 9. This is the way to hasten the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and pride of men, could be released to a gentle, unmolested decay. I, for my part, would like to have the ducal cities of North Italy, such as Mantua, Modena, Parma, and Ferrara, locked up quietly within their walls, and left to crumble and totter and fall, without any harder presence to vex them in their decrepitude than that of some gray custodian, who should come to the gate with clanking keys, and admit the wandering stranger, if he gave signs of a reverent sympathy, to look for ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... saw the prince totter, he advanced toward the threshold of the pavilion. Diana, on her side, perceiving Francois stagger, sat herself down beside him ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... difficulties that they meet is in not knowing how to walk upon a stage, which, owing to the slight inclination in con struction, easily causes the feet to totter, particularly if one is a beginner, and especially at the entrances and exits. I myself encountered this difficulty. Though I had dedicated myself to the art from my infancy and had been instructed with the greatest care every ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... of half a league in length. At the point where the schooners happened to be just at that moment, the ice-islands were not so large, but quite as high, and consequently were more easily agitated. While the whole panorama was bowing and rocking, pinnacles, arches, walls and all, seeming about to totter from their bases, there came a wave sweeping down the passage that lifted them high in the air, some fifty feet at least, and bore them along like pieces of cork, fully a hundred yards. Other waves succeeded, though of less height and force; when, gradually, the water ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... reason, O unhappy man! Behold how useless is this gift celestial, For which, they say, thou should'st the rest disdain. Feeble as thou wert in thy infant days, Like thee she mov'd, she totter'd, and was weak. When age mature arriv'd, and call'd to pleasures, Slave to thy sense, she still was so to thee, When fifty winters, Fate had let thee count; Pregnant with thousand cares and worlds of woes, The hateful ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... to which her lover had directed her, was so spoken of that she did not dare to ask to be directed thither. When a compassionate railway porter pressed her to say whither she would go, she could only totter to a seat against the wall, and there lay herself down and sob. She had no friends, she said; no home; no protector except him who had just been carried away to prison. The porter asked her whether the man were her husband, and then again she was nearly choked with sobs. Even the manner ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... tank. He was dressed in a lilac robe, and held in his hand a long wand, which he several times dipped into the mysterious tank; then he made a sign, the doors opened, and twenty robust servants entered, and seizing such of the patients as began to totter on their seats, carried them into ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... desperate and most bloody struggle. It was the last lap of the contest. Twelve hours now, I kept telling myself, and the French will be here and we'll have done our task. Alas! how many of us would go back to rest? ... Hardly able to totter, our counter-attacking companies went in again. They had gone far beyond the limits of mortal endurance, but the human spirit can defy all natural laws. The balance trembled, hung, and then dropped the right way. The enemy impetus weakened, stopped, ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... quite clearly imagine what Aunt Margaret, Stannard's mother, would say to that question. She had never especially cared for Aunt Margaret. As Elliott looked at Bruce Fearing, one of the pillars of her familiar world began to totter. Actually, she could think of no particularly good reason why, when she had heard his story, she should proceed to shun him. His history simply didn't seem to matter, except to make her sorry for him; and yet ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... Count Claudieuse should end his evidence. He begins to totter; his eyes close; his head rolls from side to side; and two ushers have to come to his assistance to enable him, with the help of his own ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... moon, Proteus, chameleon, quicksilver, shifting sands, weathercock, harlequin, Cynthia of the minute, April showers^; wheel of Fortune; transientness &c 111 [Obs.]. V. fluctuate, vary, waver, flounder, flicker, flitter, flit, flutter, shift, shuffle, shake, totter, tremble, vacillate, wamble^, turn and turn about, ring the changes; sway to and fro, shift to and fro; change and change about; waffle, blow with the wind (irresolute) 605; oscillate &c 314; vibrate between, two extremes, oscillate ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... and he felt a pang of sorrow shoot through him at sight of her heavy body and uncouth gait. As he watched her go, the Nietzschean edifice seemed to shake and totter. The slave-class in the abstract was all very well, but it was not wholly satisfactory when it was brought home to his own family. And yet, if there was ever a slave trampled by the strong, that slave was his ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... maid or something in your bob's-worth of refined entertainment who drifts about saying, 'Yes, madam,' and all that sort of thing? Well, then that's just the thing. Topping! I knew I could rely on you, old bird. I'll get Lucille to ship her round to your address when she arrives. I fancy she's due to totter in somewhere in the next few days. Well, I ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... of Aurelia could bear no more—her knees began to totter, the lustre vanished from her eyes, and she fainted in the arms of her attendant. Sir Launcelot, aroused by this circumstance, assisted Dolly in seating her mistress on a couch, where she soon recovered, and saw the ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... joy be theirs while life shall last! And Thou, if they should totter, teach them to ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... glance of stern deprecation, Andrew Fraser saw the girl totter and her head fall upon the bosom of the woman who had "sorrowed of her sorrows" in all the years of the lonely colorless infancy, childhood, and budding womanhood! The old bookworm clung to the papers as if that "documentary evidence" ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... so young to perpetual prisonage, was indeed hard, too hard—enough to make reason totter on its throne and paralyze the powers of even the ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... anybody's heart ache to see these two poor little things, when they first got strong enough to totter about after this fever; so weak they felt, they could hardly stand; and they cried more than half the time, thinking about their papa and mamma, dead and buried without their even being able to kiss them once for good-by. The King himself ...
— The Hunter Cats of Connorloa • Helen Jackson
... daily society," she continued, looking towards the dining-room. "They have now reached the topmost point of their enjoyment—the General asleep with a cigar in his mouth, and the Captain absorbing his quantum of cognac. Afterwards he will fill his German pipe, totter off to the billiard-room, and smoke and sleep till tea-time. Come, now, as we have a full hour before us, confess yourself. Why have you not studied for a barrister?" And she fixed her large eyes on me as if she suspected that ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... shape of a couple of old boys, Noah and Benjamin by name, who defended him from Charity, and expended much time upon his education. They were both of them retired servants of former generations of the Browns. Noah Crooke was a keen, dry old man of almost ninety, but still able to totter about. He talked to Tom quite as if he were one of his own family, and indeed had long completely identified the Browns with himself. In some remote age he had been the attendant of a Miss Brown, and had conveyed her about the country on a pillion. He had a little round picture ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... carried into effect. An asylum was built upon the moor; it is called 'Betty Lamb's Home for the Young and the Aged.' The old Abbey also was walled in; lawns and flower beds were spread about the broken stones, and where the walls might totter they were supported. The honour of this change too is ascribed to the famous son of Betty Lamb, who had no ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... Travis pitch forward off his horse and slide limply to the ground. He saw him totter and waver and then sit down in a helpless, pitiful way,—then lie down as if ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... Truth sits upon the lips of dying men, And falsehood, while I lived, was far from mine. I tell thee, prick'd upon this arm I bear That seal which Rustum to my mother gave, That she might prick it on the babe she bore." He spoke; and all the blood left Rustum's cheeks, And his knees totter'd, and he smote his hand Against his breast, his heavy mailed hand, That the hard iron corslet clank'd aloud; And to his heart he press'd the other hand, And in a hollow voice he spake, and said:— "Sohrab, that were a proof which could not lie! If thou show this, then ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... the unfortunate one, but 'e could not swim. You can imagine my sensations? I was in a summer-'ouse, trembling with fright. Thunder, lightning, rain, storm, all round! Suddenly I see Fritz, pale as death, wet through, totter up the path from the lake. 'Where is Sasha?' I shriek out to 'im. And 'e shake 'is 'ead ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... no very clear remembrance of what happened after that. The shock was so great that I had just strength enough to totter to a chair and drop into it, and sit there staring vaguely at that dark splotch on the carpet. I told myself that I was the victim of a dreadful nightmare; that all this was the result of over-wrought nerves and that I should wake presently. ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... earnestly, "this boy has made three phrases. If you don't lock him up he will certainly become a poet. He will set your precious world of sanity ablaze with the fire of his mother, the moon. Your palaces will totter, Taylor, and your kingdoms become as dust. I ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... once; the surrounding mountains repeated the cannonade; the whole army covered the shore awaiting with anxiety the result of the enterprise. Already the fortifications seemed to be beginning to totter; the batteries had been firing for five hours; all at once the Prince of Nassau, who commanded a detachment, thought he perceived flames mastering his heavy vessel; the fire spread rapidly; one after another, the floating batteries ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... arm-chair near the altar. The prelate intended to have given them to his assistants, the priests of the King's chapel; but the monks of Saint Denis ran to him with great eagerness, exclaiming that the taper and the gold belonged to them. They threw themselves upon the Bishop, whose chair began to totter, and made his mitre fall from his head. If I had stayed there a moment longer the Bishop, with all the monks, would have fallen upon me. I descended the four steps of the altar in great haste, for I was nimble enough at that time, and looked on the battle ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... you arise very early in the morning; totter down stairs in a state of somnambulism; take the simulacrum of a meal by the glimmer of one lamp in the deserted coffee-room; and find yourself by seven o'clock outside in a belated moonlight and a freezing chill. The mail sleigh takes you up and carries you on, and you reach ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rugged knife-edged ridges was so perilous, that Dale went slowly and cautiously; and when he reached each stopping-place he held on till Saxe had passed down to him. Once the boy seemed to totter as he was passing from one of the rocks to the other, over a patch of snow between them; but the firm strain upon the rope gave him support, and he reached the rock and began ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... arms wildly, as though trying to fly. The ladies begged me not to approach him lest he totter from his precarious perch. Summoning all the authority I could command, I ordered him to come down off the rock. My commandment unheeded, next I humored him and tried to coax him back upon the pretext of showing him something of special interest. But he ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... extremely worn, his skin drawn tight over his face, his eyes watery and aged, his head slightly nodding. 'How altered from the fresh old man after Saturday's hunting,' says Haydon. 'It affected me. He looked like an aged eagle beginning to totter from its perch.' A second sitting in the afternoon concluded the business, and early next morning Haydon left for town. 'It is curious,' he comments, 'to have known thus the two great heads of the two great ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... for adjusting the boundaries of Transatlantic empires. When once its place has been thoroughly ascertained and carefully recorded, the brazen circle with which that useful work was done may moulder, the marble pillar may totter on its base, and the astronomer himself survive only in the gratitude of posterity; but the record remains, and transfuses all its own exactness into every determination which takes it for a groundwork, giving to inferior instruments—nay, ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... Now, though dynasties totter and empires crash, the first thing a woman thinks of when bidden to a public gathering is her attire. Iris declared most emphatically that to expect her to go ashore and meet certain military and civic dignitaries while she ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... time, by aid of some Immortal, Raised up the stately fabric, our wealth of long-ago: But I tremble lest it totter down, and ruin porch and portal, And the whirling dust of downfall rise above ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... night: and all, old and young, and sickly, labor to the last extent of their powers. The peasants toil so, that on every occasion, the mowers, before the end of the third stint, whether weak, young, or old, can hardly walk as they totter past the last rows, and only with difficulty are they able to rise after the breathing-spell; and the women, often pregnant, or nursing infants, work in the same way. The toil is intense and incessant. All work to the extreme bounds of their strength, and expend in this toil, not ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... Lila he was always sending her candy and little trinkets. Now Lila is in the grade above me, and do you know the Judge has taken to walking by the schoolhouse at recess, just to see her, and walking along at noon and at night to get a word with her. He has put up a swing and a teeter-totter board on the girls' playgrounds. This morning I saw him standing, gazing after her, and he was as sad a figure as I ever saw. He caught me looking at ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... poor Francesca Ziani. It is now her turn. Her cruel parents remain unsubdued and unsoftened by her deep and touching sorrows. She is made to rise, to totter forward to the altar, scarcely conscious of any thing, except, perhaps, that the worthless, but wealthy, Ulric Barberigo is at her side. Once more the mournful spectacle restores to the spectators all their better feelings. They perceive, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... very wet," said little Gluck; "I'll just let him in for a quarter of an hour." Round he went to the door, and opened it; and as the little gentleman walked in, through the house came a gust of wind that made the old chimneys totter. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... nation above the union, made the Nation, in its constitutionally specified sphere of action, sovereign and primary, the States secondary and subordinate. He thus made possible a world-wide victory for free institutions, by which, to-day, democracy and self-government are making thrones totter and tyrants tremble, and giving us the assurance that no government is so stable as a government conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are free and equal. Webster made logical use of "government of the people, by the people, and ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... at last, and, as if overcome by fate, began to totter silently back toward her stuffy little inferno of a cottage. It had no lofty portal, no terrific inscription of forfeited hopes—she did not understand wherein ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad
... The northern border mesas of the Basin were now only a short distance ahead. But already his swollen tongue was beginning to blacken in his mouth. When at last he came to the foot of the lower mesa he could barely totter. ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... my being, and crept, shaking, upon my hands and knees, and did near totter to my face thrice, so weak gone was I in that moment of terror; and I did have a wickedness of forgetting in that time; for I bared not mine arm, to have the Capsule to a readiness for my death, if that did need to be; and this was an abominable foolishness, ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... springing thereof.' Works thus begun, continued and ended, will never be put to confusion, and 'ways' thus ordered will be established. A path of righteousness like that can no more fail to be a way of peace than can God's throne ever totter or fall. An ordered life in which He is consulted, and which is all shaped at His bidding, and by His strength, and for His dear name, will 'stand four-square to all the winds that blow,' and, being founded upon a ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... whose touch the monument of a thousand ages crumbles to dust; at whose embrace empires totter to ruin, and at whose breath cities rise and sink like bursting bubbles in a pool, rolled on his ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... susceptibilities, the friars unite us in a common lot, in a firm bond, so firm that many are unable to move their elbows. Take away the friar, gentlemen, and you will see how the Philippine edifice will totter; lacking robust shoulders and hairy limbs to sustain it, Philippine life will again become monotonous, without the merry note of the playful and gracious friar, without the booklets and sermons that split our sides with laughter, without the amusing ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... extensive influence over her people; though, during a course of thirteen years, she had maintained the public tranquillity, which was only interrupted by the hasty and ill-concerted insurrection in the north; she was still kept in great anxiety, and felt her throne perpetually totter under her. The violent commotions excited in France and the Low Countries, as well as in Scotland, seemed in one view to secure her against any disturbance; but they served, on more reflection, to instruct her in the danger of her situation, when she remarked that England, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... but person in his election of a wife; willing to unite himself with one whose heart and mind were stranger to him, on bare report of her health and beauty, and some slight recollections of her childhood! Seeing her stop, and even totter, he advanced a few steps; but she, with the instinctive recoil and antipathy of some feeble creature from its natural enemy, retreated at his first movement—and, shocked by this betrayed repugnance, he again stood irresolute. Then rushed back upon her heart, with all the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... beneath this giant oak! It was an aged tree, Hollowed by time's resistless stroke, When life was green with me. Its lofty head it proudly rears To greet the summer sky, Whilst, bending with the weight of years, I feebly totter by. And hushed are all the thousand songs That filled these branches high: Echo no more for me prolongs The woodland minstrelsy. Silence has gathered round life's hall; My friends are in the clay; I hear no more the footsteps fall, That cheered my early day; ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... to totter into the house. She saw a red stain on the hand she had laid upon the cowboy's face, and with a strange, hot, bursting sensation, strong and thrilling, she put that red place to her lips. Running out with the things required by Wade, she was in time to hear the rancher say, ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... the shadows of the garden beyond the patio and hurriedly approached them. She heard him say something in Spanish which she did not understand. Then, all became blurred before her eyes. She felt herself begin to sway and totter—she fainted. ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... if he has to totter along on two sticks," Jerry said. "Besides, he has a stately, professorish sort of style. Do you suppose he really does want us to write ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price
... one eye and looked round; and then "By Jove, she has some jolly good things!" he had yearningly murmured. The room was small and densely filled with furniture; it gave an impression of faded silk and little statuettes which might totter if one moved. Rosier got up and wandered about with his careful tread, bending over the tables charged with knick-knacks and the cushions embossed with princely arms. When Madame Merle came in she found him standing before the fireplace with his nose very close to the ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... different; as it was, he cleared the gulf and landed on the other side, but without throwing himself forward sufficiently to recover himself, and Ned uttered a cry of horror as he saw the lad apparently about to totter backward ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... a silvery yacht glided across a silvery sea, while in far-off Azuria a throne did totter and fall; but ten thousand loyal subjects smiled in their sleep that night at a strangely happy dream, wherein their little Princess was pressing upon the lips of an unknown beggar the seal ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... John, We clamb the hill thegither, And mony a canty day, John, We've had wi' ane anither; Now we maun totter down, John, But hand in hand we'll go, And sleep thegither at the foot, ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... contemptuously so called, and they answered to these names. I remember Cree best as a battered old weaver, who bent forward as he walked, with his arms hanging limp as if ready to grasp the shafts of the barrow behind which it was his life to totter uphill and downhill, a rope of yarn suspended round his shaking neck, and fastened to the shafts, assisting him to bear the yoke and slowly strangling him. By and by there came a time when the barrow and the weaver seemed both palsy-stricken, and Cree, gasping for breath, ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... of Serapis, debased and degraded by the most contemptible trivialities; lost all their worth and dignity; and after the great Apostle to whom this basilica is dedicated, had brought the gospel to Alexandria, the idol's throne began to totter, and the tidings of salvation shook its foundations and brought it to the verge of destruction in spite of the persecutions, in spite of the edicts of the apostate Julian, in spite of the desperate efforts of the philosophers, sophists, and heathen—for ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... four legs again, Basil had thrust it in the neck, giving full force to the blow. The blood rushed forth in a thick stream, as the jugular vein had been cut by the keen blade; and the huge brute was seen to totter in its steps, and then fall with a dull heavy sound to the earth. In a few moments the hunter had the satisfaction of perceiving that it was ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... told Jaqui all that she said, but she must have used very severe language. She declared he had used her shamefully and wickedly in keeping her asleep for so long, and then wakening her to be the wife of a miserable old man just ready to totter into the grave. But she would not be his wife. She vowed she would have nothing to do with him. He had deserted her; he had treated her cruelly; and the holy father, the Pope, would look upon it in that ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... perfumes nor ointment. No Kalydors and no Glycerines came within the category of her healthful experience. Alert and graceful, she neither burnt her fingers nor cut her hands, and had need therefore of no soothing salves or sirups; and as she did not totter in scrimped shoes or tight laces, and so did not fall and break her bones, she had no need even of that modern necessity in all well-regulated families, "Prepared Glue." There was no medicine-chest in Colonel Fox's house. Healthy, occupied, active, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... word. I passed; and as I turned, I saw him slyly laugh, shaking his keys. When he perceived that I was looking at him, he smiled at me, making signs of friendship. He must have some secret project, and we are in the hands of a master whose reason begins to totter.... To-morrow we shall be far away.... Yonder there are wonderful countries that resemble thine.... Astolaine has already provided for our flight and ...
— Pelleas and Melisande • Maurice Maeterlinck
... show them The gait of the peasant Exhausted by hunger, 180 And swayed by the wind. Restrained are his movements And slow. After singing "The Hungry One," thirsting They make for the bucket, One after another Like geese in a file. They stagger and totter As people half-famished, A drink will restore them. 190 "Come, let us be joyful!" The deacon is saying. His youngest son, Grisha, Approaches the peasants. "Some ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... Invincible shuddered and seemed to totter in space, as if something, some mighty force, had struck the ship a terrific blow. The needle swung swiftly backward, reached one mile a second, dipped to ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... entered in time to see a thin old man, in a tattered threadbare great-coat, with a red woollen cap on his head, and slippered feet, his stockings hanging about his ankles, totter back to an arm-chair from which he had risen, by the side of a small wood fire on which a pot ...
— Ned Garth - Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade • W. H. G. Kingston
... it's my trade to meet objections. But it may create tiresome delays, of which there have been too many, from various causes, already. Lady Coxon got very bad, then she got much better. Then Mr. Anvoy suddenly began to totter, and now he seems quite on his back. I'm afraid he's really in for some big reverse. Lady Coxon's worse again, awfully upset by the news from America, and she sends me word that she MUST have Ruth. How can I supply her with Ruth? I haven't ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... parasols, sinking, but still obstinate. Every eye was turned anxiously and supplicatingly towards the settees laden with people. And all that those thousands of sight-seers were now conscious of, was that last fatigue of theirs, which made their legs totter, drew their features together, and tortured them with headache—that headache peculiar to fine-art shows, which is caused by the constant straining of one's neck and the blinding ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... been left behind. We seemed to be pressing our way against a great curtain, the curtain made by the rich dusk that filled the narrow thoroughfare. Through the darkness the sinuous street and rickety houses wavered in outline, as the bent shapes of the aged totter across dimly-lit interiors. A fisherman's bare legs, lit by some dimly illumined interior; a line of nets in the little yards; here and there a white kerchief or cotton cap, dazzling in whiteness, thrown out against ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... most perfect indifference, should pass for something approaching to encouragement in the royal gallant's apprehension, and that any resolutions he had formed against being tempted to violate the hospitality of Woodstock, should begin to totter, as opportunities for doing so ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... midday we were once more sent up to the front line to reinforce our right wing, which was attacked by French and English. Just as we got to our trenches we were greeted by a heavy shell fire, the shells falling in front of our parapets, making the sandbags totter. Seeing this, I sprang to the spot and held the whole thing together till the others hurried up to my assistance. Just as I was about to let go, I must have got my head too high above the parapet, as I got shot in the scalp. ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... saw things which she could not account for. Again the small and trivial, acutely stinging horror of some ordinary object in a new and awful guise possessed her. She was almost paralyzed at the sudden glimpse of something on the divan across the room. It was a long time before she could possibly totter to investigate, and ascertain it was one of her own gloves. But it did not strike her as at all funny. There was still something frightful to her about the glove. She went back to the window, and soon she distinctly heard a noise up-stairs, and then a shadow crossed the ceiling. A new ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... and the servant, Clarence was gradually prepared to go ashore. He was exceedingly weak, could scarcely totter across the deck; and it was with some difficulty that they at last succeeded in placing him safely in the boat. After they landed, a carriage was soon procured, and in a short time thereafter Clarence was comfortably established in the house ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... of green—thickets of stunted sandalwood whose evergreen leaves defied alike the torrid summer heat and the black frosts of winter months; but underneath them lay the shrivelled carcasses and whitening bones of hundreds of cattle which had perished of starvation—too weak even to totter down to die, bogged in the banks of the creek. As I sat and smoked a strong feeling of depression took possession of me; I already began to hate the place, and regretted I could not ...
— "Five-Head" Creek; and Fish Drugging In The Pacific - 1901 • Louis Becke
... rocks on the sea-shore is capped and patched with just such refuse as this, but how happily the rust-colour of dying things is broken by the grey of the loose stone walls—"hedges," they call them in Cornwall—that seem to totter up the hill like old men! The mist of rain that leaves each individual plant bedraggled seems to make the red and green and grey pattern of the patched hill only more beautiful and mysterious. The truth is, winter speaks ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... bear within her own mind the whole horror of the secret, that oppressed it, her reason seemed to totter under the intolerable weight. She often fixed a wild and vacant look on Annette, and, when she spoke, either did not hear her, or answered from the purpose. Long fits of abstraction succeeded; Annette spoke repeatedly, but her voice seemed not to make any impression on the sense of the long ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... held out for eighteen months. Then it began to totter. The financial world stood bewildered. It had always been reckoned one of the safest banks in the country. People asked what could be the cause. I knew well enough, but I ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... least, that on some occasions, when a favourite begins to totter, when strong objections are raised against the continuance of a standing army, when a convention requires the ratification of the legislature, or some fatal address is proposed to be presented to the crown, a pecuniary reward may sometimes ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... predilection to former opinions, or any sinister bias whatsoever, the most honest and impartial consideration of which I am capable. The public has a full right to it; and this great city, a main pillar in the commercial interest of Great Britain, must totter on its base by the slightest mistake with regard to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke |
