"Top-heavy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... could not sleep, and presently she found herself puzzling over a problem that had been growing upon her and now bulked big. The truth was that already the weight of the top-heavy household had fallen upon the girl's shoulders. Utterly unprepared and ignorant, she had been thrust into a tangled labyrinth of domestic affairs. The more familiar she had become with the internal working ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... correction or two in my part of the post-office article. I still observe the top-heavy "Household Words" in the title. The title of "The Amusements of the People" has to be altered as I have marked it. I would as soon have my hair cut off as an intolerable Scotch shortness put into my titles by the elision of little words. "The Seasons" ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... was overhead. There were armoured cars on the road, going toward the front; top-heavy machines that made surprisingly little noise, considering their weight. Some had a sort of conning tower at the top. They looked sombre, menacing. The driving of these cars over slippery roads must be difficult. Like the vans, they keep as near the centre of the road as possible, ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... with your head out, and your legs out from your knees down, by steadying yourself with your hands. You can sit, with your knees drawn up to your chin and your arms clasped around them, but you are bound to turn over presently, because you are top-heavy in that position. You can stand up straight in water that is over your head, and from the middle of your breast upward you will not be wet. But you can not remain so. The water will soon float your feet to the surface. You can not swim on your ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... dead? I never thought of that. After I'm dead," he repeated. "Child, a conscience like yours is top-heavy. Still, I'll mull it over. I can't take 'em to the grave with me, that's a fact. But my ghost is bound to get leg-weary doing the rounds to view them again. ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... had not become adapted to organized trade. After the move southward of the Chin dynasty the many immigrants had made the country of the lower Yangtze more thickly populated, but not over-populated. The top-heavy court with more than the necessary number of officials (because there was still hope for a re-conquest of the north which would mean many new jobs for administrators) was a great consumer; prices went up and stimulated local rice production. The estates of the southern gentry yielded more ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... did what she suggested. By good chance Oscar Hank's ship, the Prinz Karl, was due in from New York at the time, and when I saw her two big yellow funnels and top-heavy passenger decks blocking the view of the Principe, I went over. Mr. Hank, Signore Hank, was a man who had seen the best of his life before he married Rebecca. He was a tall, spare-ribbed man with high shoulders ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... sit. It cost nearly L2,000,000 to build, and is much bigger than anything in London. It stands on an eminence overlooking the lower part of the town, and is so huge that it may almost be said to make the capital of this tiny kingdom look top-heavy. ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Belgium • George W. T. Omond
... Overton. You don't know Dan, I suppose? Squarest man you ever met! And he don't have to scratch gravel any more, either, for he has a third interest in that Twin Spring find, and it pans out big. They say the girl sold her share for two hundred thousand. She doesn't look top-heavy over it, either." ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... deuse was the matter with you at one time?" asked Jack Parker. "We saw you were having a sort of convulsion. Our cap'n said you were bold chaps to be trifling with such a top-heavy boat." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... cop it yourself, old man? My crown's getting a bit top-heavy already. You got a finer sense of balance, and your neck's stronger. Them bolts I drew on the trestle pretty near gave me a headache—not to say as near as you came to it when the boss got swinging," he added with a leer. "Hugo ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... forms of rule, have collapsed under plutocracy, which is irresponsible rule. And this has come upon us because we departed from the old morality in three essential points. First, we supported notions against normal customs. Second, we made the State top-heavy with a new and secretive tyranny of wealth. And third, we forgot that there is no faith in freedom without faith in free will. A servile fatalism dogs the creed of materialism; because nothing, as Dante said, less than the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... right hung useless at his side. She reached forward—one hand on the tiller—to help him. The rim of the storm slipped up over the sun—a sudden flaw struck them—the rudder flew sharp round, wrenched out of her slight hold—the top-heavy sail caught the full force of the blow, surged downward with a heavy lurch, and the gale was on them. A great blow, and swift darkness, then fierce currents rushing coldly past him; strange, wild sounds filling his ears; and when his vision ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... next swings the cumbrous grub-axe, whose wide edge clears the earth from the larger roots. Then he puts his pipe in his pocket, and settles to the serious work of the 'great axe,' as he calls it. I never could use this ungainly tool aright: a top-heavy, clumsy, awkward thing, it rules you instead of you ruling it. The handle, too, is flat—almost with an edge itself sometimes—and is quite beyond the grasp of any but hands of iron. Now the American axe feels balanced like a sword; this is because of the peculiar curve of the handle. To strike ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... siding of the railway that runs from Moscow to Warsaw through Smolensk, was a string of thirteen freight cars, the short, chunky Russian kind—barely half as long as the American—looking as flimsy, top-heavy, and unwieldy as houseboats on wheels. No locomotive was tied to the string, and from the windward side, where the cars were whitewashed by the biting blizzard that had already stopped all traffic with its drifted barricades, they had the desolate ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various |
