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Topple   /tˈɑpəl/   Listen
Topple

verb
(past & past part. toppled; pres. part. toppling)
1.
Fall down, as if collapsing.  Synonym: tumble.
2.
Cause to topple or tumble by pushing.  Synonyms: tip, tumble.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Topple" Quotes from Famous Books



... should not have sat here. Everything Would have been different. For it would have been Another world." "Ay, and a better, though If we could see all all might seem good." Then The lovers came out of the wood again: The horses started and for the last time I watched the clods crumble and topple over After the ploughshare ...
— Poems • Edward Thomas

... stream by a way of his own, and we ran down to the stepping-stones by which we had come, in order to save the time which we should have been compelled to waste in feeling for a foothold as we went. Every second was of importance, and I fully expected to see Dennis topple unconscious into the pool below before I should be able to save him. I knew what it was exactly; he was going through my own horrible experience of "drowning on dry land," to quote Garnesk's vigorous phrase. Imagine ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux

... forty years with unanswerable problems of life and death, stepped towards her hastily. Robert pressed close to her side. Ellen came behind her, holding in a curious, instinctive fashion to a fold of the older woman's gown, as if she had been a mother holding back a child from a sudden topple to its hurt. Everybody expected her to make some heart-breaking manifestation. She did nothing. At that moment the sublime unselfishness of the woman, which was her one strength of character, seemed actually to spread itself, as with wings, before them all. She moved steadily, ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... days in which people made their wills before they took a journey of a hundred miles; and no wonder, when the roads were so bad that men had frequently to be hired to walk beside a gentleman's carriage, and give it a push to either side, when it showed an inclination to topple over; or oxen sometimes were fetched, to pull the coach out of a deep quagmire of mud, from which only one half of it was visible. So Farmer Lavender shook his head, and said "he didn't know, no, he didn't, whether ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt

... slopes of Vesuvius, although history says that now and again the mountain bubbles out in irruption, and the lava destroys many villages, and even towns. In other countries there are earthquakes, but the people forget all about them until the shock comes, and the houses begin to topple ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty

... evening, you will find the Bheestees of the station congregated, some coming and some going, like bees at the mouth of a hive, but most standing on the wall and letting down their leather buckets into the water. As they begin to haul these up again hand over hand, you will look to see them all topple head foremost into the well, but they do not as a rule. It makes an imaginative European giddy to look down into that Tartarean depth; but then the Bheestee is not imaginative. As the hot season advances, the water retreats further and further into the bowels of the earth, and ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA

... his starting-point; he crept on by slide and bush and stone. The moon magic faded and paled, mingled with the swift gray of dawn. He held his perilous way. Cold sweat stood on his brow. If Foy or a foe of Foy were on the cliff now, how easy to topple down a stone upon him! The absolute stillness was painful. A thought came to him of Stella Vorhis—her laughing eyes, her misty hair, the little hand that had lingered upon his own. Such a ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes

... plunged head foremost into the pool. Mukoki's coat fell to the ground. He crouched forward until it seemed he must topple from the stone upon which he stood. Another fifteen seconds and Wabigoon's head appeared above the water, and the old ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood

... when we would speak, the heart-throb of warning where we would love, that we grow contemptuous of the prizes of life, does not mean that the spirit has ceased from its labours, that the high-built beauty of the spheres is to topple mistily into chaos, as a mighty temple in the desert sinks into the sand, watched only by a few barbarians too feeble to renew its ancient pomp and the ritual of its once shining congregations. Before we, who were the bright children ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell

... terminate against glaciers. Thick ice frequently appears, too, crowning the exposed sea-cliffs, from the edges of which it droops in thick, tongue-like, and stalactitic projections, until its own weight forces it to break away and topple down the ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly

... But as she was raising her hand to her mouth to kiss it she remembered that the saint might not like such service from one who was already half a Jew at heart, and she refrained. She refrained, and then considered whether the bridge might not topple down with her into the stream because of her iniquity. But it did not topple down, and now she was standing beyond any danger from the water at the exact spot which Trendellsohn had named. She stood still lest she might ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope

... airplane gliding without power is a very dangerous thing. He may pile up the machine against some farm-house, fence, haymow, or clump of woods, smashing it badly and injuring himself. Or he may, through inexperience, lose flying speed in the course of his descent and topple over into ...
— Opportunities in Aviation • Arthur Sweetser

... to lead her up the steep bank beyond and through the rocks and rotten timbers to the great beam that protruded from the shattered foundations of the mill. The rickety old wheel, weather-beaten and sad, rose above them and threatened to topple over if they so much ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon

... through me. Some little distance back a tree hung over the sandy bottom, its roots partially laid bare by the washing of the stream which had now disappeared. The trunk was inclined at a sharp angle; but little force would be needed, I thought, to topple it over until it lay athwart the path which the pursuers must follow. Its foliage was thick, and though I did not flatter myself 'twould put an end to the pursuit, I thought it might serve as a check, and enable Uncle Moses to gain strength enough ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... towards her, upset the spider-legged table that was always ready to topple over on the least provocation, made a hopeless labyrinth of her embroidery silks, gave her a kiss of greeting, and hurried on with numberless questions, just as if he were in the greatest possible haste, and it was a necessity ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens

... wood, one-storied, and roofed with corrugated iron. There is only one brick shop-front in the street, which so over-tops the others, that malicious, perhaps envious, neighbours say it is sure to topple down some day on to the footway. The shops are of the usual description, grocers, bakers, butchers, and drapers; and the most frequent style of shop is a store, containing everything from a pickaxe and ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles

... response. "I don't think so. A bullet just grazed my side. I don't know how I came to topple ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes

... the drop in her face, when he saw features and expression fall from the lofty height of anticipation as a pile of cards topple in a mass upon the table, he was sorry. Her mouth opened—gaped. She looked as if a flat hand had ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston

... by a recent landslide, and we plunge unto it. We have to tear our feet out of the soft and clinging earth, lifting them high at each step. Then, when this crossing is laboriously accomplished, we topple down again into the slippery stream, in the bottom of which are two narrow ruts, boot-worn, which hold one's foot like a vice, and there are pools into which it goes with a great splash. In one place we must ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... mean!" blustered Fred, and coming closer, he hit Nat on the shoulder. At once our hero hit back, and Fred received a thump in the mouth that caused him to topple backwards. ...
— From Farm to Fortune - or Nat Nason's Strange Experience • Horatio Alger Jr.

... into ice. The more conformable ice-blocks will gradually be cemented together, while the fierce winds that beat upon the ridge will wear away the supports of the more egregious and unstable blocks, and one by one they will topple into the abyss on this side or on that. It will probably never again be the smooth, homogeneous slope it has been; "the gable" will probably always present a wide cleft, but the slopes beyond it, stripped now of their accumulated ice so as to be unclimbable, may build up again ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck

... overlooks a steep, often a sheer, descent, save at one point, where an isthmus unites it to the mountains that rise behind. In places the bounding wall runs on the very edge of a precipice, and many a crazy house, overhanging, seems ready to topple into the abyss. The views are magnificent, whether one looks down the valley to the leafy shore, or, in an opposite direction, up to the grand heights which, at this narrowest point of Calabria, separate the Ionian from the Tyrrhene Sea. I could now survey the ravines which, in twilight, ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing

... sword and lance At Algesiras land, Where is the bold Bernardo now Their progress to withstand? To Burgos should the Moslem come, Where is the noble Cid Five royal crowns to topple down ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... all." Mariel's voice was almost pleading. "Look, I don't know what Dartmouth Bearing had in mind. Who was I to ask questions? You don't realize their power, Shandor. Those bonds I spoke of—they hold millions of dollars worth of bonds! They hold enough bonds to topple the economy of the nation, they've got bonds in the names of ten thousand subsidiary companies. They've been telling Federal Economics Commission what to do for the past ten years! And they're getting us into this war, Shandor—lock, stock and barrel. They pushed for everything they could get, ...
— Bear Trap • Alan Edward Nourse

... Modestine's load would topple off. The villagers were delighted with this exhibition and laughed appreciatively. 'Judge if I was hot!' says Stevenson. 'I remembered having laughed myself when I had seen good men struggling with adversity in the person of a jack-ass, and the recollection filled me with penitence. ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent

... a single lightning stroke through one of the tremendous, twelve-hundred-foot trees that surrounded the compound could have felled it? Who could have predicted that it would topple toward ...
— Cum Grano Salis • Gordon Randall Garrett

... the trail. When the figure was within ten yards Cutler slowly drew an ivory-handled pistol. The lieutenants below saw the man leap to the middle of the bridge, sway suddenly with arms thrown up, and topple into White River. The current swept the body down, and as it came it alternately lifted and turned and sank as the stream played with it. Sometimes it struck submerged stumps or shallows, and bounded half out of water, then drew under with nothing but the back of the head in sight, turning round ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister

... lucky one. It caught Robin off his guard. His stick had rested a moment while he looked to see the giant topple into the water, when down came the other upon his head, whack! Robin saw more stars in that one moment than all the astronomers have since discovered, and forthwith he ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... other drew nearer his inspection changed to a painful absorption. Suddenly his attitude grew tense; he had the appearance of a man gazing at an enthralling but dangerous spectacle, such—for example—as a wall that might topple over, crushing anything human within ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer

... Ja, but he must have left after I tumbled into the tank, for I received no response to my cries. Doubtless he had felt as certain of my doom when he saw me topple from our hiding place as I had, and lest he too should be discovered, had hastened from the temple and back ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... passed by a minute donkey with two sole-leather trunks slung on one side of him, and on the other a mountainous heap of hand-bags and valises. This is the only creature with four legs, bigger than a dog, that ever gets down the Clovelly street; and why he does not lose his balance, topple backward, and go rolling continuously down till he falls into the sea below, nobody can imagine. But the valiant little animal kept steadily on, assisted by his owner, who followed and assiduously whacked him with a stout stick, ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge

... to the gravel," Chris warned. "He'll never keep his legs. He'll topple over into the pool. Not one horse in a thousand ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London

... side of the rock, the side that faces the ocean, is barren and deserted, and so steep that the shrubs that grow there have a hard time to remain where they are and look as if they were about to topple over every minute. ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert

... sympathy for our kind that makes us think so. If the trees were sympathetic beings, not a poor crippled specimen of humanity would have their pity, but the gnarled and half-rotten giants of the forest, threatening to topple down with every breeze; whilst to our eyes the dying tree, covered with moss and ferns, and, maybe, clasped by climbing vines, is a picturesque and pleasing sight. So, the fishes would pity their comrades caught by ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt

... them. Tom, in spite of his fatigue, lay awake for some time. He was thankful that they were safe on shore, and had been able to find a sheltered position for their encampment. The wind roared and howled in the most terrific manner among the forest trees. The very earth seemed to shake, as if it would topple down the high rock above them; but although branches, and sometimes large shrubs, torn up by the roots, flew over their heads, none fell on their tent. Sometimes, for several minutes together, ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston

... from every section of the United States to the tune of—"Sell—cut loose—throw over!" A universal mania to get any price for anything was sweeping the land like a conflagration. Tomorrow would bring those reflexes from today when banks and trust companies from the Lakes to the Rio Grande would topple in the wake of their metropolitan predecessors. Ruin sat crowned and enthroned, monarch of the day and parent of a panic which should close mills, and starve the poor and foster anarchy—but Hamilton Burton's hand ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... found on earth. It was a featureless convexity of chalk and soil—an ordinary specimen of those smoothly-outlined protuberances of the globe which may remain undisturbed on some great day of confusion, when far grander heights and dizzy granite precipices topple down. ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy

... be true! One had to find that verdict or topple over all human knowledge—that is, all human knowledge as we understand it. The judge, cutting short the criminal trial, took the only ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post

... Tom Bates," retorted the woman passionately. "Befo' you'd do a lick of honest work you'd let the roof topple plum down ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow

... with the currents, they melt very rapidly. The heat of the sun and the action of the waves gradually round off the sharp angles and topple down the spires that characterised them in the land of their birth. The process of dissolution, too, is carried on internally; for rain and melted water on the surface percolates through the mass, rendering it porous. ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne

... link between the savage beast and the human. Defoe delighted the world with a picture of the ideal economic status for the maintenance of white superiority over black man. These ideas the Negro wished to topple over. ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... or tired: Insatiate wanderer, marvellously fired, Most grandly piling and piling into the air Stones that will topple or arch he knows ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various

... mountains, grinding all the sharp edges into powder or leaving a polished surface behind it. It gathers rock dust and the wreck of every living thing, and mixes them up with snow and ice. These congeal again, or are compressed into soft, filthy monumental masses, waiting their turn to topple into the waves at last. The wash of the sea undermines the glacier; the sharp sunbeams blast it. It is forever sinking, settling, crushing in upon itself and splitting from end to end, with fearful and prolonged ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard

... Yet, to descend from these speculative comparisons, it seems that thou hast a friendly and meaning purpose in thy warnings. Thou knowest that there are in this armament men who grudge to me whatever I now owe to Fortune, who would topple me from the height to which I did not climb, but was led by the congregated Greeks, and who, while perhaps they are forging arrowheads for the eagle, have sent to place poison and a snare in its distant nest. So the Nausicaa ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton

... to rise, but sank back dizzily. The room seemed to become suddenly dark. She feared she would topple over as ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Ocean View - Or, The Box That Was Found in the Sand • Laura Lee Hope

... Four sovereigns a week secured to De Boursy-Williams the stored and applied knowledge, the wide experience, and the unerring diagnosis of the rising young London practitioner, who had had a brilliant career before him when a Hand had reached forth from the clouds to topple down the castle of his labours and his hopes. For Owen Saxham the money would purchase forgetfulness. You can buy a great deal of his kind of forgetfulness with four pounds, and drink was ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... saw it! I saw the schooner topple over, slide down first on its left side, crush one of the men who delayed too long about jumping to one side, then bound from block to block, and finally ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne

... of the slope, his face and neck craned forward, his jaw dropped, a sick, tranced look upon his features, stood Camille. I saw him topple, and shouted to him; but before my voice was well out, he swayed, collapsed, and came down with a running thud that shook the ground. Once he wheeled over, like a shot rabbit, and, bounding thwack with his head against ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes

... tunes to befit the coming winter. If the wind tugs at your coat-tails, it only seeks a companion for its games. It goes forth whistling for honest celebration, and who shall begrudge it here and there a chimney if it topple ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks

... intense terror, Mr. Rashleigh sat trembling to that extent that he threatened to topple off ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming

... still expand The crevice, and topple upon the sand The temple, while o'er its wreck ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth

... candle.] Whew! listen to it rain. How the rain do be runnin' down the legs of this here house. That's first class thunder too. Whew! that's no slouch uv a streak uv lightnin' nuther. Here, calm down there, gentlemen, or ye'll topple over this edifice. Time ter sleep ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... fundamental method of Yogi Breathing, instead of passing it by and trying some of the attractive looking variations given later on in this book. Again, we say to you: Start right, and right results will follow; but neglect your foundations and your entire building will topple over sooner or later. ...
— The Hindu-Yogi Science Of Breath • Yogi Ramacharaka

... that, and the other? Is it not all tremendously and overwhelmingly historical, and don't you have to keep exerting your mind and thinking and remembering? I would rather go down to Southern Italy and look at lazzaroni lie on stone walls, in red cloaks, as they do in pictures, and not be obliged to topple off the common Italian to pile the gray stone with old memories of some great dead man. Everything is ghostly in Rome. Now, there must be some excitement in Southern Italy. There's Vesuvius, and ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason

... earth, and continually waste away the soil. Landslips occur daily during the rainy season; streams of rich mud pour down the valley's slopes, and as the river flows beneath in a swollen torrent, the friable banks topple down into the stream and dissolve. The Atbara becomes the thickness of pea-soup, as its muddy waters steadily perform the duty they have fulfilled from age to age. Thus was the great river at work upon ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker

... aloft to furl the sails. We coughed on the yards, and were careful about the bunts. Do you see the lot of us there, putting a neat furl on the sails of that ship doomed to arrive nowhere? There was not a man who didn't think that at any moment the masts would topple over. From aloft we could not see the ship for smoke, and they worked carefully, passing the gaskets with even turns. 'Harbour furl—aloft ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad

... he said. He had chosen a spot where the rock rose perpendicularly above the road. "Drop them over," he said, "so that they may fall straight. The biggest you must roll over with your levers, but work them to the edge and let them topple over; don't thrust them out or they will bound ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty

... council has already passed resolutions restricting the height of the buildings to six stories. They ain't going to take the chance that New York does, and have some of these big tall ten-story affairs topple over ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey

... the greater number lean so much that the roof of one projects half a meter beyond that of the next house if it happens to be straight or but slightly inclined. The strangest part of it all is, that adjoining houses lean in different directions; one will lean forward as if it were going to topple over, another backward, some to the right, others to the left. In some places, where six or seven neighboring houses all lean forward, those in the middle being most inclined, they form a curve, like a railing that is bent by the pressure of a crowd. In some places two houses which stand ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis

... began to sink. If we turn away from Jesus Christ, and interrupt the continuity of our faith by calculating the height of the breakers and the weight of the water that is in them, and what will become of us when they topple over with their white crests upon our heads, then gravity will begin to work, and we shall begin to sink. And well for us if, when we have sunk as far as our knees, we look back again to the Master and say, 'Lord, save me; I perish!' The weakness which is our own when faith sleeps, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren

... were determined to have it, it was clear; for Roger threw down his paddle as they neared the tree, caught up a long rope, and gave it a cast towards the branching top as the rope went through the air, Mildred saw that it had a noose at the end. The noose caught:—the tree gave a topple in the water, when it found itself stopped in its course with a jerk; and the boys set up a shout as they pulled for the house, hauling in ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau

... coats, and three-cornered hats—very fine beaux, indeed; and the women stiffly encased in the most uncomfortable garments that ever the wit of mortal devised, holding their heads erect, lest the marvellous pyramids, built up with such expenditure of time and money, should topple over, and, in spite of all disadvantages, looking pretty and piquant. It was a crowd not so far removed from us by time, so that we can attribute to the men and women who composed it the same feelings and sensibilities as our own. And yet they were very ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... Pat slump forward, catch himself, and finally topple from the seat. As the reins slipped from his fingers the ponies lunged up the arroyo. Waco crouched, clutching the foot-rail. A bullet hummed over his head. Gaining the level, the ponies broke into a wild run. The red wind whined as it drove across the mesa. ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert

... about twelve feet, and my fourteen-foot ladder answered finely, but the difficulty was, it had to stand so straight that it was rather ticklish business going up; one could not help feeling that a slip or a little backward jerk would topple it over into the valley below, and as from the ledge where it stood to the bottom was some forty feet, a tumble on to the rocks ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory

... some one any minute to call out that it was time for me to go away. I was not sorry to leave Dubechnia, my sorrow was for my love, for which it seemed that autumn had already begun. What a tremendous happiness it is to love and to be loved, and what a horror it is to feel that you are beginning to topple down from ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff

... and hung at full length—not doubled, for your life—across the pack-saddle, the traveller is safe. The saddle will certainly not fit, such is the imperfection of our transitory life; it will assuredly topple and tend to overset; but there are stones on every roadside, and a man soon learns the art of correcting any tendency to overbalance ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... desire you to choose some other whelp. Being in your best lust, I would topple with ye, And pluck a good crow, ere ye brake your fast with me. What? are you mankin[261] now? I reckon it best, I, To bind your hands behind you, even as ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley

... one wonders, that there are times when one small nook of earth shuts out, as it were, the whole universe from our eyes, when one personal interest occupies us to the exclusion of the whole world of action, and progress, and speculation, and thought? Thrones may topple over, nationalities be effaced, revolutions in politics, in religion, in science be effected, and all pass unheeded while we sit counting our own private loss and gain in love or friendship, in grief or joy. Whilst Madelon has been wearying ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter

... his sheep. Advancing along the lower path, after some fifteen minutes it turned sharply to the right, and I stood under the precipitous cliff-like edge of the hill in a narrow coombe. The earth at the top hung over the verge, and beech-trees stood as it seemed in the act to topple, their exposed roots twisting to and fro before they re-entered the face of the precipice. Large masses of chalky rubble had actually fallen, and others were all but detached. The coombe, of course, could be overlooked ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies

... holiday—that I once saw darkly disturbed in this quiet little hamlet. Standing upon the table-rock that juts out at the foot of the fall so as to half-bridge over the lower-most eddy, I saw a small object topple over the summit of the cascade. It was nothing but a common pail or stable-bucket, as I perceived, when it glided past, almost within arm's length of me, and disappeared down the winding gorge. When I went up again to the road, I saw a crowd of holiday people standing near the little ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various

... she said. "If old Topple hasn't another lot of kittens. Have them? To be sure you may, and welcome, when they are big enough ...
— A Sweet Little Maid • Amy E. Blanchard

... what has happened. The old sealer, however, is not surprised at their indifference, guessing its cause. He knows that in the weird forests of Tierra del Fuego there is many a tree standing, to all appearance sound in trunk, branches, everything, yet rotten from bark to heartwood, and ready to topple over at the slightest touch, even if but a gun be rested against it. The fall of such trees being a thing of common occurrence, and the natives accustomed to it, they never give it a second thought. The fishers in the canoes have not heeded it, while ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid

... Beware, lest this night thy soul be required of thee. "Beware, lest he take thee away with His stroke: then a great ransom can not deliver thee." Oh, Lord God of Israel, see these impenitent souls on the verge of death ready to topple over! See them! Is there no help? Is this plea all in vain? I can not believe it, blessed God. Oh, thou mighty One, whose garments are red with the wine-press of Thine own sufferings, in the greatness of Thy strength ride through this audience, and may all this ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... Noue's assertion, that none could endure a siege like Huguenots. As soon as the cannonading began, the spirit of the inhabitants seemed to depart. The ministers exhorted their flocks in vain as the tiles and chimneys began to topple into the streets, and the concussions of the artillery were responded to by the universal wailing ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... bearers went down, and the palanquin itself began to topple. The Greatest Noble screamed as he ...
— Despoilers of the Golden Empire • Gordon Randall Garrett

... The huge stack of magazines, looking as if it would topple over, so much on the slant was it, was slowly moving into an upright position again! He leaped forward, thrusting his revolver between the opening of the two portions, and prevented them from ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre

... and Cape Roux are so exposed to the sun, and so protected from the cold, that this region has been called the Petite Afrique. Cape Roux itself, the abrupt termination of a lofty ridge, looks as if it would topple over into the sea, to which it is so close that both the rail and the road have to pass through it by tunnels. On the eastern side of this cape is the equally picturesque and sheltered bay, the Mer d'Eze, ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black

... many things people can live without," said Fleda, rather dreamily, intent upon settling an uneasy rose that would topple over. ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell

... just one of those figures that sit in a chair and are pelted with baseballs, three shots for a dime. "Every time you hit the nigger!" That's what the man used to call. When some one hit him a good hard crack he'd topple off the seat and then the man would give you a kewpie doll or maybe an ash-tray. The poor old wooden "nigger" had been packed away and all we had seen was his black face sticking ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... the sea made a low booming that suggested hidden caves. Looking over the edge in places, one could see that it had hollowed out the porous rock well under the base of the cliffs, and here and there fallen masses of boulder told of a gradual encroachment which, in course of time, would topple down into the abyss the precarious pathway on which I stood. Inland the usual level scrub gave place to a stretch of wild forest, very dense, and composed of trees of many varieties, loftier than was ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne

... finished two new ones last week, stuffed and embroidered within an inch of their lives. There being absolutely no other cushionless place to put them she stood them up against the wall on the stair landing. They topple over half the time and if we come up or down the stairs in the dark we fall over them. Last Sunday, when Dr. Davis prayed for all those exposed to the perils of the sea, I added in thought 'and for all those who live in houses where cushions are loved ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... hills, which, like a row of Alpine mountains with pinnacles formed like saws, frown over the sea, which is separated from them only by high clay banks; and year after year the sea bites a large mouthful off of these, so that their edges and summits topple over as if shaken by an earthquake. Thus they look at this day, and thus they were many years ago, when the happy young couple sailed from Spain ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen

... see what issue is ordained to come from this dreadful deed which so shaketh all the land, making the abbey towers topple and tremble to their oldest and deepest foundations. Truth is awakened and gone forth conquering and to conquer. It cannot be that ancient iniquities will be much longer endured, the arm of Wrath is raised against them, ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt

... too much under the spell of his music. And his instinct told him that a work of art the less would not make one happy man the more. The tragedy of want was no new thing to him: from his childhood on he had been used to treading on the edge of such abysmal depths, and contriving not to topple over. But he was apt to judge suicide harshly, being conscious as he was of such a fullness of force, and unable to understand how a man, under the pressure of any suffering whatsoever, could give up the struggle. Suffering, struggling, ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... depended on felling this forest monarch before the arrival of the Matabili. The latter could not be far-off, and every exertion was made to get the fortress ready for receiving the attack. There was a doubt as to the direction the tree would take in falling. Should it topple over into the water, their labour would be lost, and the way would be open for the Matabili to reach them by a rush. Should it fall across the isthmus, it would form an insurmountable barrier to their enemies. In silence and with intense ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid

... oily face of the Atlantic. Far ahead stretched the grey barricade that seemed to mark the spot where the voyage was to end. There was no going beyond that clear-cut line. When the ship came up to it, there would be no more water beyond; naught but a vast space into which the vessel must topple and go on falling to the end of time. The great sirens were silent, for the fog of the night before had lifted, laying bare a desolate plain. The ship was sliding into oblivion, magnificently indifferent to the catastrophe that awaited its arrival at the edge of the universe. And ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... takes him on for the rest of his journey, crawls slowly up the first six miles to the summit of the intervening range at the Cross Foxes Inn, and jolts swiftly down the other six miles, with red hot drag creaking and groaning lugubriously, till it seems to topple over sheer into the sea at the clambering High Street of the old borough. As you turn to descend the seaward slope at the Cross Foxes, you appear to leave modern industrial England and the nineteenth century well behind you ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... grew the distance from the shore, but no creek, no inlet, could be discerned in the towering wall of cliff, which seemed about to topple over and involve them in annihilation. Except a change of wind or, as Procope observed, a supernatural rifting of the rock, nothing could bring deliverance now. But the wind did not veer, and in a few minutes more the schooner was hardly ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne

... of the road, which had now become absolutely impassable again on account of innumerable transports. It was a dangerous ride, for any moment the bicycle might smash into some unseen obstacle and topple over into the abyss on the right, into which stones and loose earth were continually falling as the cycle pushed them ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff

... lost ground. The Pope so honored her that he made her the head of her order. Abelard, a man of splendid talents, and ranking as the first debater of his time, became timid, irresolute, and distrustful of his powers. He only needed a great misfortune to topple him from the high position he held in the world of intellectual excellence, and it came. Urged by kings and princes to meet the subtle St. Bernard in debate and crush him, he stood up in the presence of a royal and illustrious assemblage, and when his antagonist ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... forests far and wide, despoiled Of all their giant trunks: for as the mound On earth and brushwood stood, a timber frame Held firm the soil, lest pressed beneath its towers The mass might topple down. There stood a grove Which from the earliest time no hand of man Had dared to violate; hidden from the sun (27) Its chill recesses; matted boughs entwined Prisoned the air within. No sylvan ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan

... evident by hoarse shouts, now of encouragement to his horses, and now of derision at some luckless driver. Out in the country, when the heavily laden market carts loomed slowly out of the fog as they passed, they had the appearance of being miles up in the air, and as if they must inevitably topple over. Joshua knew all the carters, not by sight, for he could not see them, but by the time and place he met them on his nightly journey. Tim could reckon pretty well that after he had heard his gruff salutation of "a ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton

... holes in their hovel walls, or to build a fence on the windward side of their poppy patches. The rains soon undermine the pavement, especially where it is laid on a steep incline; sections of it topple down the slope, leaving chasms a yard or more in depth." Where traveling by water is impossible, sedan chairs are used to carry passengers, and coolies with poles and slings transport the luggage and goods. The distances covered by the sedan chair porters are remarkable, ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... was standing on a chair which threatened every minute to topple from its precarious position on ...
— Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School • Dorothy Whitehill

... time to do better. The objection is that the supporting logs must be close enough together to hold up the pots and pans, and, being round, this leaves too little space between them for the fire to heat the balance evenly; besides, a pot is liable to slip and topple over. A better way, if one has time, is to hew both the inside surfaces and the tops of the logs flat. Space these supports close enough together at one end for the narrowest pot and wide enough apart at the other ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... staggering under the weight of falling buildings, and being overwhelmed in the ruins; upheaving masses of rock, and burying themselves beneath; vainly striving to sustain the pillars of heavy roofs that topple down upon their heads; and, in a word, undergoing and doing every kind of mad and demoniacal destruction. The figures are immensely large, and exaggerated to the utmost pitch of uncouthness; the colouring is harsh and disagreeable; and the whole ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... a purple skin, Men and maidens carry in, Brimming baskets on their shoulders, Which they topple one by one Down the winepress. Men are holders Of the place there, and alone Tread the grapes out, crush them down, Letting loose the soul of wine— Praising Bacchus as divine, With the loud ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon

... curses,—growing fiercer, for there is nothing half so savage as despair that has been fooled with a hope,—swelling into a wave of indignation that swept and swayed the whole throng with it, and seemed an instant to threaten and topple over the officer in their midst. But it came to nought. The prudent nudged their neighbors, "With the cannon, boys, they can rake us on all sides"; and the angrier ones fell apart in little groups, and talked in whispers, and glared menacingly at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... that the opposite upper edge was directly over me—that is to say, mechanically speaking, its center of gravity barely falls with the base, and a heave of only a yard or two more would cause it to topple over. (Page 257.) ...
— The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff



Words linked to "Topple" :   force, tip, descend, fall, come down, push, keel over, go down



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