"Upside-down" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Dorry seized the clock—shook it, slapped it, turned it upside-down. But still the sharp, vibrating sounds continued, as if the clock, having got its own way for once, meant to go on till it was tired out. At last, at the one-hundred-and-thirtieth stroke, it suddenly ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... they might be. I don't know much about them," said Peter, rubbing his chin. "Rough as a porcupine, aren't I? You must have thought me a savage when you found me stuck upside-down in that tree like a sloth. What ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... was laid in the long keeping-room adjoining the kitchen, covered with a striped cloth of crimson and blue, smooth as satin to the touch. Temperance had turned the plates upside-down around the table, and placed in a straight line through the middle a row of edibles. She was going to have waffles, she said, and shortcake; they were all ready to bake, and she wished to the Lord they would come and have it over with. With the silver sugar-tongs I slyly nipped lumps of sugar ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... shelves unrepaired, to pursue the downward road toward destruction. And I have been in many libraries in which the books upon the shelves exhibited such utter want of care, such disarrangement, such tumbling about and upside-down chaos, and such want of cleanliness, as fairly to make one's heart ache. In some cases this may have been due in great part to unwise free admission of the public to the shelves, and consequent inevitable disorder; in others, it may be partially excused by the librarian's ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... stores—for the most part rounded masses tapering downwards into the ground—some are as good for human beings as honeycombs are; only not so sweet. We steal them from the plants, as we do from the bees, and these conical upside-down hives or treasuries of Atreus, under the names of carrots, turnips, and radishes, have had important influence on human fortunes. If we do not steal the store, next year the plant lives upon it, raises its stem, flowers and seeds out of that abundance, ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... the centre of the studio. The artist rises, tightens his waist belt to another hole, and lights the stove. He goes to a tin bread box, half-hidden by a screen, takes out a solitary link of sausage, turns the box upside-down to show that there is no more, and chucks the sausage into a frying-pan, which he sets upon the stove. The flame of the stove goes out, showing that there is no more oil. The artist, in evident despair, seizes the sausage, in a ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... smooth head with short hair clinging to it at the sides, a soft way of speaking, with a peculiar habit of whispering the letter S so distinctly, that he seemed to use it oftener than any other man; but every peculiarity that he had he made respectable. If his nose had been upside-down, he would have made that respectable. He surrounded himself with an atmosphere of respectability, and walked secure in it. It would have been next to impossible to suspect him of anything wrong, he was so thoroughly respectable. ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... come in to turn everything upside-down, you might as well have stayed away.' He spoke with difficulty, ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... article of food and devours it; whereupon the child, crying aloud, pursues him hither and thither about the stage. The incident always excites much amusement; for in pantomimes the world is turned upside-down, and moral principles have no existence; cruelty is only comical, and outrageous crime the best of jokes. The paper parcel borne to the theatre by the clown under mention enclosed the bread-and-butter that was to figure in the harlequinade. "You see I'm a particular feeder," the performer ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... enable him to negotiate between Potentates might a little infect his ordinary behaviour between Man and Man. There is no Question but these young Machiavil's will, in a little time, turn their College upside-down with Plots and Stratagems, and lay as many Schemes to Circumvent one another in a Frog or a Sallad, as they may hereafter put in Practice to over-reach a ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... Redmond. His gaze fell on a diminutive, red-headed, inquisitive-faced urchin of some eight years, and a small, gray-eyed, wistful-looking maiden, perhaps about a year younger, with hair that matched the boy's in colour. Under one dimpled arm she clutched tightly to her—upside-down—a fat, squirming fox-terrier puppy. Hand-in-hand, in an attitude of breathless, speculative awe, they sat there bolt upright, like two small gophers; watching intently the face of the uniformed representative of the Law, as if ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... for Miss Mitchell at her gate and run to meet her, and seize her hand and walk at her side, blushing with delight. Miss Mitchell lived not far from Ellen, in a tidy white house with a handsome smoke-tree on one side of the front walk and a willow with upside-down branches on the other. Miss Mitchell had been born and brought up in this house, but she had been teaching school in a distant town ever since Ellen's day, so they had never been acquainted before she went to school. Miss Mitchell ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... so much that Ross closed his eyes. Then a shock of icy liquid thrown into his face aroused him to make a feeble protest and he saw, hanging over him in a strange upside-down way, a bearded face which he knew ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... propagated in straight lines. To prove this is easy. Get a piece of cardboard and prick a hole in it. Set this up some distance away from a candle flame, and hold behind it a piece of tissue paper. You will at once perceive a faint, upside-down image of the flame on the tissue. Why is this? Turn for a moment to Fig. 106, which shows a "pinhole" camera in section. At the rear is a ground-glass screen, B, to catch the image. Suppose that A is the lowest ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... grey overhead; the dock like a sheet of darkling glass crowded with upside-down reflections of warehouses, of hulls and masts of silent ships. Rare figures moved here and there on the distant quays. A knot of men stood alongside with clothes-bags and wooden chests at their feet. Others were coming down the lane between tall, blind walls, ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... if necessary; the Duke of Newcastle particularly would do anything. These were the men who were so squeamish that they could not be brought to support amendments even, unless they were permitted to turn the schedules upside-down, straining at gnats out of office and swallowing camels in. It is remarkable that after the sacrifice Wharncliffe made to re-ingratiate himself with the Tories, incurring the detestation and abuse of the Whigs, and their reproach of bad faith, the former have utterly neglected ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... gate, in a grassy round Whence they had earliest flown, He upside-down'd his scythe, and ground Its edge with careful hone. But we heeded not, if we heard, the sound, For the world was ours alone; The world was ours!—and with a ...
— The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q" • Q
... between the body and the principal entrance of the death chamber; and the kaimyo, inscribed upon a strip of white paper, is fastened upon the screen. If the dead be young the screen must be turned upside-down; but this is not done in the case ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... museum, - a very interesting establish- ment, which I was condemned to see as imperfectly as I had seen the Capitol. It was being rearranged; and the gallery of paintings, which is the least in- teresting feature, was the only part that was not upside-down. The pictures are mainly of the mo- dern French school, and I remember nothing but a powerful, though disagreeable specimen of Henner, who paints the human body, and paints it so well, with a brush dipped in blackness; ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... began a systematic search of the house. Everywhere everything was upside-down, and finally we came to a door on the third story back, leading into the children's play-room, and as we turned the knob and tried to open it we heard ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... proved her wrong—that is so far as the upside-down of it was concerned. He did this by staying awake the whole of the following night and noting that the city stayed right-side up throughout the long hours. Cis, poor girl, had ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... particularly one pot on the window-sill, which, instead of being red and regular pot-shaped, seemed to be rounder and light-coloured, and to have a couple of eyes, and grinning white teeth. There were no leaves above it nor scarlet blossoms, but a straw hat upside-down, with fuzzy hair standing up out of it; and the eyes kept on staring at me till it seemed to be Shock! Then it grew dark and I must have fallen asleep, wondering what that boy could have ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... middle of his paper—only nominally so, however, in many cases, since when he uses a headline he counts that in, the result as measured by the eye being that the lower margin is less than the top one, and that the whole opening has an upside-down look vertically, and that laterally the page looks as if it were being driven ...
— The Art and Craft of Printing • William Morris |
