"Tottering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... got to his feet, somehow he dragged his revolver out of its holster, somehow he took a dozen tottering steps forward. He saw that Kish Taka had seen him and had stopped; that the Indian carried his canteen; that he was moving again. Howard lifted his gun, holding it in both hands. He was afraid that even now his quarry would escape him, that Kish Taka ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... prayer of Saul. Instead of showing you the ghosts, she gives you cabalistic words and powerful potions to bring them back in your dreams. Ah, how many a sorrow has recourse to these! The grandmother herself, tottering with her eighty years, would behold her grandson again. By an unwonted effort, yet not without a pang of shame at sinning on the edge of the grave, she drags herself to the spot. She is troubled ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... of crystal streams invited us to stoop and drink. We were starved so that we had looked at each other with maniac thoughts, and now we placed in our mouth the very fat of the land. We had seen our cattle almost perishing; seen them grow gaunt and tottering; seen them slowly plod along with hanging heads and only the supremacy of human will over animal instinct had kept them from lying down never to rise again. Now they were in pastures of sweet grass, chewing the cud of content and satisfaction. Life ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... Star-Spangled Banner.' We were passing the American Consulate. His song over, he settled down and fell into a deep sleep, and the caleche jolted down even narrower streets, curiously paved with planks, and ways that led through and under the ancient, tottering wooden houses. ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... fever following dislocation of the hip-joint. He had lost his footing when stepping from his boat. Surgical science was then less equal to such a case than it is now, and for nine days he suffered agony, which on the tenth resulted in fever. When hurriedly carried out of his tottering house, which in a few hours was scoured away by the rush of the torrent into a hole fifty feet deep, his first thought was of his garden. For six months he used crutches, but long before he could put foot to the ground he was ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... miserably deficient in geographical knowledge, and can tell us nothing about it. They suspect us, and we cannot get information, or indeed much of anything else. I feel deeply thankful at having got so far. I am excessively weak—cannot walk without tottering, and have constant singing in the head, but the ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... is o'er; the old man gone. With tottering steps and slow He pauses ever and anon, To view the vale below: And, leaning on his staff the while, Gazes with pleasure on the pile, Which crowns that landscape fair: Then as the grateful tear-drop falls, For ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... avenue, Eddie moving submissively along by his grandfather's side, but with tottering steps; for the dreadful excitement of the last hour had exhausted him greatly. Perceiving this Mr. Dinsmore presently took him in his arms and carried him to ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... his hand to his head with a startled movement; then, seeming to recover himself, walked over to where Daisy sat, ceremoniously stooped to kiss her forehead, and, with a painfully obvious effort to keep his gait from tottering, moved proudly out ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... called her "mother," it was like a child's hand patting her on the cheek. On Sunday, if Pavel had no time, he chopped wood for her; once he came with a board on his shoulder, and quickly and skillfully replaced the rotten step on the porch. Another time he repaired the tottering fence with just as little ado. He whistled as he worked. It was a ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... of Elba, had returned to Europe, collected an army, and, contesting at Waterloo the strength of England and Prussia, had fallen. He was now watched and guarded at St. Helena, while the civilized world began to breathe freely. The mushroom kingdoms which he had set up were fast tottering, or had fallen, while the older dynasties of Europe were feeling once more secure, because the man who hesitated not to sacrifice vast myriads of human lives to accomplish his own aggrandizement, was now bound, and, like a tiger in chains, could do ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... covered him. Transported with grief and passion, I immediately darted forward to offer him my feeble support; but, in the very instant of my arrival, he received a straggling ball in his bosom, and, tottering to a tree, supported his fainting limbs against the trunk. Just in that moment three of our savage enemies observed his situation, and marked him for their prey; they raised their hideous yell, and darted upon him with the speed and fierceness of wolves. ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... faded wall-paintings, limbs of decapitated goddesses gleaming white through the grass and rioting weeds, tottering columns, arches, and vaults, and deserted galleries receding in endless perspective, leaped out lifelike on a background ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... Shackelford stood on tottering old legs. His nightshirt hung below his knees. Horrified shock blanched his lined face. "Blasphemer!" he cried. "False prophet! Get ...
— Stopover Planet • Robert E. Gilbert
... Montfort works for England's weal alone—and methinks, nay knowest, that he would be first to spring to arms to save the throne for Henry. He but fights the King's rank and covetous advisers, and though he must needs seem to defy the King himself, it be but to save his tottering power from utter collapse. But, gad, how the King hates him. For a time it seemed that there might be a permanent reconciliation when, for years after the disappearance of the little Prince Richard, De Montfort devoted much of his time and private fortune to prosecuting a search through all the ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... which looked like the water of the marshes—dull green. The spaces of wall between the windows were covered with spots, as if time were trying to write there in hieroglyphics the history of the old house, and the tottering roof added still more to its pitiable condition. It seemed as if the whole building bent toward the ground, to await the last stroke of that fate which should transform it into a chaos of rotting remains, ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... a drudge," said Rebecca mysteriously, with laughing eyes, "but I really am a princess; you mustn't tell, but this is only a disguise; I wear it for reasons of state. The king and queen who are at present occupying my throne are very old and tottering, and are going to abdicate shortly in my favor. It's rather a small kingdom, I suppose, as kingdoms go, so there isn't much struggle for it in royal circles, and you mustn't expect to see a golden throne set with jewels. It will probably be only of ivory with a nice screen of peacock feathers ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... deep gorges by the rains, and flung up in great mounds. Stripped of the green magnolias and the cane, the banks of clay stood forth in hideous yellow nakedness, save for a lonely stunted growth, or a bare trunk that still stood tottering on the edge of a banks its pitiful withered roots reaching out below. The May weather was already ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... long in this den; they die like flies. I know, for I've seen 'em," said a haggard prisoner, who had entered the prison a hale, lusty man and was now a tottering skeleton. ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... murmured platitudes, or nothing. Nobody tried to be original or witty. Alexina and Aileen gradually disengaged themselves and were making their way toward the pictures that turned the four walls into a harmonious mass of color, when an old man came tottering up. He had bright, eyes and ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... became king, in 871, his throne seemed tottering to its fall. Practically all the rest of England was at the feet of the ruthless Northmen, and soon Alfred himself was little better than a fugitive. But by his military skill, which was successful if not brilliant, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the man is only mad at the time of the new or the full moon (I forget which), and that his raving lasts but two or three days. Then nobody ventures near him; but at other times he is quite rational and harmless. He has left, however, upon me an impression more lasting perhaps than that of the old tottering staircase that threatens to close up every moment like a toy snake that has ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... and again he called for help, but no help came, for his cousin had betrayed him, and Little John was too far away to hear his voice. So he bled and bled until he felt his strength slipping away from him. Then he arose, tottering, and bearing himself up by the palms of his hands against the wall, he reached his bugle horn at last. Thrice he sounded it, but weakly and faintly, for his breath was fluttering through sickness and loss of strength; nevertheless, Little John heard it where he lay ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... foul atmosphere. Then it almost seemed as if his great frame shrank in stature, and became suddenly a wreck of itself. As if age and decay had suddenly come upon him. As if the weight of his body had become too heavy for him, and set his great limbs tottering ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... great bombardment and the indescribable babbling cries of a beaten army. Before we reached them that maddened horde had swept down on them, men panting and gasping in their flight, many of them bloody from wounds, many tottering in the first stages of collapse and death. I saw the horses seized by a dozen hands, and a desperate fight for their possession. But as we halted there our eyes were fixed on the battery on the road above us, for round it was now sweeping the van of ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... into a tool for certain elements and interests. My opinion is that all these impulses, sentiments, weaknesses, and imperfections of woman are due to nothing but to the seclusion in which she has been kept. They are the effects of an educational and social system tottering to decay, of a system that does not give the natural faculties of woman that room for expansion and development which is as necessary to life as steam is to electricity and electricity to light. And those defects and imperfections ...
— The Woman and the Right to Vote • Rafael Palma
... tottering, into her room, and closed the door, as the three touched spectators of the reconciliation looked on in pleased silence. Ever after, ever after, the tender accents of that voice faltering sweetly at his ear—the look of the sacred eyes beaming with an affection ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... this need years ago, and said: "The next remove must be to the study of politics, to know the beginning, end, and reasons of political societies; that they may not, in a dangerous fit of the commonwealth, be such poor, shaken, uncertain reeds, of such a tottering conscience, as many of our great counsellors have lately shown themselves, but steadfast pillars ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker
... his prodigious hospitality, his double official duties as Sheriff and Clerk of Session, the labours and anxieties in which the ill-directed and tottering firm of Ballantyne involved him, the keen interest which he took in every detail of the adornment of the house and estate of Abbotsford, and finally, notwithstanding obstinate and agonizing attacks of internal cramp which were undermining his constitution, Scott continued to produce ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... large as the church but was always meant to be handsomer; and there, behind the high altar, in her own private apartment, Mary sat, receiving her innumerable suppliants, and ready at any moment to step up upon the high altar itself to support the tottering authority of ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... the month arrived without bringing any prospect of our release, whilst we were harassed by false reports of all kinds. The Dewan went on the 25th to a hot bath, a few hundred feet down the hill; he was led past our hut, his burly frame tottering as if in great weakness, but a more transparent fraud could not have been practised: he was, in fact, lying on his oars, pending further negotiations. The Amlah proposed that Campbell should sign a bond, granting immunity ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... the Tartar cataclysm had threatened to engulph it. The Tartars themselves were already becoming an object of curiosity rather than of fear, and soon became an object of hope, as a possible help against the old Mahomedan foe. The frail Latin throne in Constantinople was still standing, but tottering to its fall. The successors of the Crusaders still held the Coast of Syria from Antioch to Jaffa, though a deadlier brood of enemies than they had yet encountered was now coming to maturity in the Dynasty of the Mamelukes, which ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... them thirty years back when Ruth's mother was but a tottering child. They would not suffer me to dwell in peace among them, but drove me out because ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... not seen to rise and set. And as he watched, his eyes were fixed ever on the north, looking for the signal of fire which should bring good tidings to the Queen and to all Argos. For now the great city of Troy was tottering to its fall, and the ten years' toil was coming ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church
... his eyes reeled; the room swam before him; the excitement of his feeble frame had reached its highest pitch; the disease of many weeks had attained its crisis; and, tottering back a few paces, he fell upon the floor, the victim of ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with peculiar greenish flickerings, and a pungent flavour. In the street an inaggressively disorderly crowd clambered over the rescued fire escape and resisted the attempts of the three local constables to get it away from the danger of Mr. Polly's tottering facade, a cluster of busy forms danced and shouted and advised on the noisy and smashing attempt to cut off Mantell and Throbson's from the fire station that was still in ineffectual progress. Further a number of people appeared to be destroying ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... master of his motions, he suddenly drew his sword, hustled the Indians in a line by two and two, pointed out to Aragon his position as rear-guard, and cried with a voice of thunder, "Adelante!" The porters and peons staggered forward, knocking against each other's elbows and tottering on their stout legs. The three white men, burdenless, but regretting their horses, walked as they pleased, keeping the train in sight. And John the nephew of Aragon's guitar, dangling at his back, brought up the rear, with its ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... together. Their thoughts and interests are seldom apart. All their little pleasures, their minor griefs, youthful hopes, disappointments, are shared with each other. They move together through the opening years of their life. Sometimes old age finds them still together, tottering hand in hand to the grave. Of all her sisters, Bessie could least spare Hatty, and her death left a void in the girl's life that was very difficult to fill. From the first, Bessie had accepted the responsibility of Hatty. Hatty's ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... itself, which was made at the angle of a large square flanking-tower, one-half of which had been battered into ruins, while the other fragment remained in a state strangely shattered and precarious, and seemed to be tottering above the huge aperture in the wall. A stern still smile was exchanged among the Puritans, as the sight reminded them of the victories of former days. Holdfast Clegg, a millwright of Derby, who had ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... Michelangelo they sprawled about the deck, groaning with anguish; huddled up in corners with a lemon-prophylactic against sea-sickness, apparently-pressed to faces which, by some subtle process of colour-adaptation, had acquired the complexion of the fruit; tottering to the taffrail. ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... connections and fired everything combustible within the tower. A terrific heat. It began to melt and burn the blenite.[10] The upper portion of the tower walls began to crumble. Huge blocks of stone were shifting, tottering; and they began to fall through the glare of mounting flames and the ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... most obscure, from the attempts of a Cheyenne to convey the idea of old man. He held his right hand forward, bent at elbow, fingers and thumb closed sidewise. This not conveying any sense, he found a long stick, bent his back, and supported his frame in a tottering step by the stick held, as was before only imagined. Here at once was decrepit age dependent on a staff. The principle of abbreviation or reduction may be illustrated by supposing a person, under circumstances forbidding the use of the voice, seeking to call attention to a particular bird on a tree, ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... saw a poor old man tottering under a burden so heavy, that I expected him every moment to sink under it. I peeped into his pack, and saw it was made up of many sad articles: there were poverty, oppression, sickness, debt, and what made by far the heaviest part, undutiful children. I was wondering how it was that ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... hung my rein over one of the rails of the porch steps, and passed round into the garden. Not a flower to be seen; but the place of them famously supplied with potatoes and other useful articles—and the same evidence of absenteeism in the shape of tottering walls, and grass grown walks, and dusty fountains in all directions. What a shame!—if I knew the boy's address, I would write to him to come home at once; but that Leicestershire guardian has kept him quite separated from those who ought to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... left the room. His dress was a plain mitre of gold tissue, a rich, garment of gold and crimson, embroidered, a splendid clasp of gold, about six inches long by four wide, set with precious stones, upon his breast. He is very decrepit, limping or tottering along, has a defect in one eye, and his countenance has an expression of pain, especially as the new cardinals ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... sunshine, as before. Markland looked already cold in its bareness against the distant sky, all flushed with flying clouds, the young saplings about, bending before the wind, as if they supplicated for shelter and a little warmth, and the old tottering cedar behind the house, looking as if the next blast would bring it down with a crash. There had been a great deal of planting going on, but this only added to the straggling lines of weak-kneed, uncomfortable younglings, who fluttered their handful of leaves, ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... man sprang up from a table, his face ghastly pale and distorted as though with terror. His eyes were wild and staring. He chattered incoherently as he hastened away with tottering steps. Then his hands gripped his hair, as though about to tear ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... hand, moved to the door. He was curious to see exactly what was happening. The bulk had risen; a broad back swayed like a pendulum, and a swollen hand gripped the stair rail. The form heaved itself up a step, paused, tottering, and then mounted again. Woolfolk saw at once that the other was going for the knife buried in the wall above. He watched with an impersonal interest the dragging ascent. At the seventh step it ceased; the figure crumpled, slid halfway back to ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Swaying and tottering, he swung round to the chair he had left, and fell into it, even while the old Duke, who stood raging before him, started back in outraged amazement. What was the fellow doing? Was he making faces at him? The drawn malignant mouth and muscles suggested it. Was he a lunatic, ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... emulation, strife, betrayal of sacred trusts, indulgence of lust. The whole system of religious principles and doctrines, which should form the foundation and framework of social life, seems to be a tottering mass, ready to fall to ruin. The vilest of criminals, when thrown into prison for their offenses, are often made the recipients of gifts and attentions, as if they had attained an enviable distinction. Great publicity is given to their ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... Green Star, struck over the edge of the dark sun, and lit the world. It fell upon a great, ruined structure, some two hundred yards away. It was the house. Staring, I saw a fearsome sight—over its walls crawled a legion of unholy things, almost covering the old building, from tottering towers to base. I could see them, ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... a bit ahead through Oswald lending the tottering Denny a hand over the rough places. Denny's feet hurt him, because when he was a beaver his stockings had dropped out of his pocket, and boots without stockings are not a bed of luxuriousness. And he is often ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... hundred yards. In front of it and on either side, the trees had been cut away, but a tangle of riotous shrubbery lined the path to the door. Behind the house the trees had been left untouched, and now in its tottering condition the venerable building literally rested on two of the great elms, like an old man ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... growing better, and if we will only be patient, we shall grow better too, because we belong to the world and cannot be left behind. Once more I say in reply, that I am not content with no greater progress than the old States of Europe, burthened with the institutions of dark ages and tottering with infirmity, are able to make. It is for us to encourage them, by the spectacle of what may be accomplished by young and unshackled energies. It is for us to do the world a greater service than it has yet received through ...
— The Religion of Politics • Ezra S. Gannett
... and put up at the house of the deacon, her father. This good young man, being violently attacked on the doctrine of election by Miss Cerinthy, had been drawn on to illustrate it in a most practical manner, to her comprehension; and it was the consciousness of the weak and tottering state of the internal garrison that added vigour to the young lady's tones. As Mary had been the chosen confidante of the progress of this affair, she was quietly amused ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... witnesses describe the heat as so intense that brick and stone offered little more resistance than wood. A mile of wharfage was destroyed, and Water Street completely gutted. "Over a vast area," wrote one who noted the effects, "nothing is now to be seen but tottering walls and chimneys." It was computed that 10,000 persons were left homeless, and that the total damage exceeded 20,000,000 dollars, of which less than 5,000,000 dollars were covered by insurance. The Savings Bank, the Hospital, the Masonic Hall, and the Anglican Cathedral, alike ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... Now he is tottering to his fall, amidst the ruins of a crumbling State, forsaken by the Powers that egged him on with covert promises of armed support, abandoned to the tender mercies of his foes by those on whose behalf he drew the sword. Yet, even now, the dauntless spirit ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... crawled into the chapel one morning, and contrived with tottering steps to find her way back to her cell. The next morning she did not appear at matins, and when the Eldress went to see what had become of her, she was found stretched on her bed, dead, her pillow and sheets stained with blood, which had flowed from her ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston
... time, a domestic, clad in a rich but very antique dress, appeared before the old couple, and commanded them to attend his lord and lady in the great hall. They went with tottering steps, and to their great terror found themselves in the midst of a most brilliant and joyous company; but the fearful part of it was, that most of the guests resembled the ancestors of John's family, and were known to ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... behind the others from the first. Poor little Furchtsam had a trembling tottering gait; and as he walked, he looked on this side and on that, as if every step was dangerous. This led him often to look off his book of light, and then it would shut up its leaves, and then his little lamp grew dimmer and dimmer, and his feet stumbled, and he trembled so, that he almost dropped ...
— The Rocky Island - and Other Similitudes • Samuel Wilberforce
... and gasped. Her skin seemed to turn gray, and her eyes opened to double their normal size. She took one tottering step ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... have is my own, forbye a comic song or two, gasped and death-rattled out by poor old Sir Adam Fergusson, whom I met seventeen years ago at Walter Scott's house, and who is still tottering on, with inexhaustible spirits, but a body that seems quite threadbare, tattered, and ready to fall in pieces ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... who the earth made firm as it was shaking, And made repose the forward tottering mountains; Who measured wide the inter-space aerial, And heaven established; he, ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... hame, auld man, an' darn your hose, Fill up your lanky sides wi' brose, An' at the ingle warm your nose; But come na courtin' me, carle. Oh, ye tottering auld carle, Silly, clavering auld carle, The hawk an' doo shall pair, I trew, Before I ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... until an old woman, tottering out from among the crowd, put her hand to her brow, and peering under it in his face for a moment, exclaimed, "Sure enough! it is Rip Van Winkle—it is himself! Welcome home, again, old neighbor—-Why, where have you ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... this month, a general insurrection took place in Poland: the grandduke, Constantine, was driven out of Warsaw, and Poland declared herself independent. A great part of Germany was also convulsed: and a part of the ill-raised fabric, erected by the statesmen of 1815, fell tottering to the ground. ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... He almost cried at the sight of this destitute, tottering, honest old man, and before the latter could get farther in his lament another shilling was in his palsied old hand, and the grey old ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... youth with its yearning engage All vigorous passion that lives in the breast, While tearful remembrance of tottering age Finds halcyon harbors of comforting rest; Let silver of years with the ardor of youth Be going again through the temple of joy, While palms of amusement and laurels of truth Encircle the hearts of the maiden ...
— Oklahoma and Other Poems • Freeman E. Miller
... hurrying to the gate at the far end. Then that was the way out! Ariston picked up his heavy feet and ran. Suddenly the earth swayed under him. He heard horrible thunder. He thought the mountain was falling upon him. He looked behind. He saw the columns of the porch tottering. A man was running out from one of the buildings. But as he ran, the walls crashed down. The gallery above fell cracking. He was buried. Ariston saw it all and cried out in horror. ...
— Buried Cities: Pompeii, Olympia, Mycenae • Jennie Hall
... British and Russian empires until it won independence from notional British control in 1919. A brief experiment in democracy ended in a 1973 coup and a 1978 Communist counter-coup. The Soviet Union invaded in 1979 to support the tottering Afghan Communist regime, touching off a long and destructive war. The USSR withdrew in 1989 under relentless pressure by internationally supported anti-Communist mujahedin rebels. Subsequently, a series of civil wars saw Kabul finally fall in 1996 to the Taliban, a hardline Pakistani-sponsored ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... a spiritual Hercules, a heroic Son of Light; Slayer of the Nightmare Monsters, and foul Dragons and Devils that were preying on us: to you shall not we now say, Long life, with all our throats and all our hearts,"—and so quench you at last! Which they managed to do, poor repentant souls. The tottering wayworn Voltaire, over-agitated in this way, took to bed; never rose again; and on that day two months was dead. [In DUVERNET, and still better in LONGCHAMP ET WAGNIERE, ample account of these interesting occurrences.] His light all done; to King Friedrich, or to any of us, no flash of radiancy from ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... applause. The famous letter was read by all France—nay, more, by all Europe. Roland was a hero. The plaudits of the million fell upon the ear of the defeated minister, while the execrations of the million rose more loudly and ominously around the tottering throne. This blow, struck by Madame Roland, was by far the heaviest the throne of France had yet received. She who so loved to play the part of a heroine was not at all dismayed by defeat, when it came with such an aggrandizement ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... tottering fortress of the ultra-masculine, abetted by a petty handful of witless traitors—those petticoated creatures who also see in women nothing but their sex. They may be, in some cases, honest in their belief; ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... cast by turning"—no alternating of light and darkness. In other words, there will not be the variation and instability characteristic of this world, even of the Christian life—today joyous, tomorrow sad; now standing but soon tottering. It is in the Christian life just as in the physical world: we find variableness and continual change—light is succeeded by darkness, day by night, cold by heat; here are mountains, there valleys; today we are well, tomorrow ill; and so it goes. ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... stranger, now for eight years past, Hath weltered in the blood of Judah's kings Unpunished,—odious murderer of her sons; And now e'en raiseth her perfidious arm 'Gainst God: and you, though nourished in the camp Of Josaphat, the saintly king, are one Of the upholders of this tottering state; Who led our armies under Joram's son, And who alone revived our towns alarmed When the abrupt decease of Ochoziah Dispersed all his camp at Jehu's sight; God fear, I say you, and His word affects me! Hear, how that God rebukes ...
— Athaliah • J. Donkersley
... the rich and powerful province of Oude, who, like the other viceroys of the Mogul was now in truth an independent sovereign, menaced Bengal with invasion. Nothing but the talents and authority of Clive could support the tottering government. While things were in this state, a ship arrived with despatches which had been written at the India House before the news of the battle of Plassey had reached London. The Directors had determined to place the English ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... I am before the hour, the hour whose voice, Pealing into the arch of night, might strike These palaces with ominous tottering, And rock their marbles to the corner-stone, Waking the sleepers from some hideous dream Of indistinct but awful augury Of that which will befall them. Yes, proud city! Thou must be cleansed of the black blood ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... Come down at Dunoon? Daintily, Tenderly, Fairily, Gingerly, Glidingly, Slidingly, Slippingly, Skippingly, Trippingly, Clippingly, Bumpingly, Thumpingly, Stumpingly, Clumpingly, Starting and bolting, And darting and jolting, And tottering and staggering, And lumbering and slithering, And hurrying and scurrying, And worrying and flurrying, And rushing and leaping and crushing and creeping; Feathers a-flying all—bonnets untying all— Petticoats rapping and flapping and slapping all, Crinolines flowing and blowing and showing ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... red and angry, in the arms of an old woman who attempted vainly to soothe him by tottering up and down the room as fast as her decrepit legs would carry her. The serving-girl, who had opened the door on the previous evening, stood beside the window, her eyes swollen ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... upon his mother's bosom, and he knew he had a brother. The form expanded, and grew in height, and the hair hung in golden ringlets down to shadow the beautiful eyes. And a tiny hand sought his, and tottering steps fell lightly at his side. Still the form grew, till in his dream it seemed to rise above him—not grown above him; but the feet stood upon a silver cloud, which kept rising higher and higher, till the tiny hand he clasped in his was ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... from which we derive our subject. The inspired apostle said, "Though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day." 2 Cor. 4:16. As the outward, physical man, day by day, becomes more feeble, the furrows on the brow grow deeper, the locks more silvery, the steps more tottering, the voice weaker and more husky, the cheeks more sunken, the ear more deaf, the eye more dim, and the heart-beats more slow; the inward man is gathering strength, or fledging his wings, ready for his upward flight to his beautiful mansion in the sky. Oh, how often the ...
— Food for the Lambs; or, Helps for Young Christians • Charles Ebert Orr
... one who feels the breathless nightmare grip His heart-strings, and through visioned horrors fares, Now on a thin-ledged chasm's rock-crumbling lip, Now on a tottering pinnacle that dare The front of heaven, while always unawares Weird monsters start above, around, beneath, Each glaring from some uglier ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... of Knowledge.—Very early in the days of the decline of the Roman Empire, when the inroads of the barbarian had destroyed reverence for knowledge, and, indeed, when within the tottering empire all philosophy and learning had fallen into contempt, the church possessed the learning of the times. Through its monasteries and its schools all the learning of the period was found. It sought in a measure to preserve, by copying, the ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... She warned Bonner, openly and bluntly, in few words; but the complexities of higher existence confused the situation to him, and he laughed at her evident anxiety. To him, Amos was a poor, miserable devil, tottering desperately into the grave. And Bonner, who had suffered much, found it ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... of licorice-juice, clicking his brass cups calls out to the thirsty one, "Come, drink and live! Come, drink and live!" And ere you exclaim, How quaint! How picturesque! a train of laden camels drives you to the wall, rudely shaking your illusion. And the mules and donkeys, tottering under their heavy burdens, upsetting a tray of sweetmeats here, a counter of spices there, must share the narrow street with you and compel you to move along slowly, languidly like themselves. They seem to take Time by the sleeve ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... work of giants decaying, the roofs are fallen, the towers tottering, dwellings unroofed and mouldering, masonry weather-marked, shattered the places of shelter, ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... rose with the doctor's aid, for she could scarcely stand; tottering, she stepped forward between him and the executioner, who took charge of her immediately after the sentence was read, and was not allowed to leave her before it was completely carried out. They all ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... with its silvery locks, will come stealing on, And bring the tottering step, the furrow'd cheek, The eye, from whence each lustrous gleam hath gone; And the pale lip, with accents low and weak; Will ye then think upon your youth's gay prime, And, smiling, bid love ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... exercise, we rejoiced now in being able to see a little, although it might be to reveal only sights of woe. Mr. Southey marched on like a pillar of strength, with a lady pressing on each arm, while the relator lagged in the rear, without even a pilgrim's staff to sustain his tottering steps. Our condition might have been more forlorn, had not Mr. Coleridge from before cheered on his associates in misfortune; and intrepidity ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... story is too much in the style of the male story-monger—you all know him—who repeats with undiminished gusto for the forty-ninth time a story that was tottering in senile imbecility when Methuselah was teething, and is now in a sad ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... Louis was not like to remain at Lille very long: within twenty-four hours probably he would continue his journey—his flight—to Ghent—where once more he would hold his court in exile, with all the fugitive royalists rallied around his tottering throne. ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... held responsible by the public judgment for the deeds of darkness now being brought to light. It was now perhaps the old mother and young wife of a prisoner, holding up between them the son and husband, and guiding his tottering steps, that set the people crying and groaning. Now it was perhaps a couple of sturdy sons, unused tears running down their tanned cheeks, as they brought forth a white-haired father, blinking with bleared eyes at the forgotten sun, and gazing with dazed terror at the crowd ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... our imaginations, Nina!' said Kate. 'Is not that boundless sweep before us as fine as your boasted Campagna? Does not the night wind career over it as joyfully, and is not the moonlight as picturesque in its breaks by turf-clamp and hillock as by ruined wall and tottering temple? In a word, are not we as well here, to drink in all this delicious silence, as if we were ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... the evidence again brought up and examined. The dignity of the State was threatened. At this time the State did the one thing necessary to save its tottering reputation. It would not surrender, but it capitulated, and Berry Hamilton ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... the park,—Clothes-line Park, Amarilly had dubbed it—one Monday afternoon, singing a song of gladness. The park was confined by a clothes-line stretched between three tottering poles and the one solitary poplar tree of the Jenkins estate. The line was hung with white linen garments, and smaller articles adorned the ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... deep thought, OEdipus answered that the creature was man. "For," said he, "in the morning of life, or in babyhood, man creeps on hands and knees; at noon, or in manhood, he walks erect; and at evening, or in old age, he supports his tottering steps with ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... revealed everything—her dreams, her ambitious longings, and her disappointment. She confessed that now she loved—yes, loved—a man who was her ideal, whose name she knew not, and she begged to be defended against herself, for she felt tottering on the edge of an abyss. She was mistress of her own ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... timbers which had once formed part of a shack, and a few strands of fence wire, trailing from tottering posts, ran into the grass. The place appeared to have been a farm, whose owner had, no doubt, abandoned it after finding the soil too light, or after losing a crop by frost; but George was more curious to discover if there were any other homesteads in the vicinity. His view was restricted, ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... these birch-bark canoes. Father Charlevoix wrote a beautiful and vivid description of them. All the early travellers noted their ticklish balance. Wood, writing in 1634, said, "In these cockling fly-boats an Englishman can scarce sit without a fearful tottering," and Madam Knights a century later said in her vivid English ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... despoiling laws and misery throughout!" But ere this terrific indictment had been thrust at them, they had become conscious that their dissolute and chaotic regime was at an end, and that Napoleon had become the ruler of the France he had left prosperous and found tottering to pieces on his return ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... creature she is! One of those that just go right on, do their own work and everybody else's, killing themselves inch by inch without ever thinking about it,—singing and dancing at their toil when they begin, worn and saddened after a while, but pressing steadily on, tottering by-and-by, and catching at the rail by the wayside to help them lift one foot before the other, and at last falling, face down, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... nymphs of like number: is it dreadful if we retaliate with any aid to the Rutulians? Aeneas is away and ignorant; away and ignorant let him be. Paphos is thine and Idalium, thine high Cythera; why meddlest thou with fierce spirits and a city big with war? Is it we who would overthrow the tottering state of Phrygia? we? or he who brought the Achaeans down on the hapless Trojans? who made Europe and Asia bristle up in arms, and whose theft shattered the alliance? Was it in my guidance the [92-125]adulterous ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil |
