Topple Quotes & Sayings

Without expectations, what can topple the surprising wonder of the moment? — Ann Voskamp

When one thing, the right thing, is set in motion, it can topple many things. And that's not all. — Gary Keller

Taking Beatrix's gloved hand in his, Christopher lifted it and pressed a kiss to the back of her wrist. He wanted to carry her away from the crowded drawing room and have her all to himself.
"Soon," Beatrix whispered, as if she had read his thoughts, and he let his gaze caress her. "And don't look at me like that," she added. "It makes my knees wobbly."
"Then I won't tell you what I'd like to do with you right now. Because you'd topple over like a ninepin. — Lisa Kleypas

Our role in the world is not to roam the globe looking for new dictators to topple. Our role in the world is to make ourselves a beacon of hope. Make ourselves stronger at home, but also our role in the world, yes, is also to confront evil when it rises. — Martin O'Malley

A conviction borne of God amply possesses the potency and power to brazenly reach beyond the possible in order to topple the impossible. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

The favorites of fortune or of fame topple from their pedestals before our eyes without diverting us from ambition. — Luc De Clapiers

From the time the Joshua tree was a tiny sapling, it had been so beaten down by the whipping wind that, rather than trying to grow skyward, it had grown in the direction that the wind pushed it. It existed now in a permanent state of windblowness, leaning over so far that it seemed ready to topple, although, in fact, its roots held it firmly in place.
pg. 35 — Jeannette Walls

Why were we tortured? We were in love and life was a fast current swarming around our ankles, threatening to topple us into the wet part of the planet. It was intense, that's why we were tortured. It was enormous and exploding like palm tree. Iris was my Yuri-G, my Delilah, my Stella Marie. Strong dark women you had to love with a strong dark heart that throbbed in gorgeous pain because love is terrible. I mean, ultimately. It would go away like a needle lifting from the vinyl at the end of the song, we knew this. The music would cease, one of us would die or else we'd just break up, and this drove us to drink from each other like two twelve-year-olds sneaking vodka from the liquor cabinet, trying to get it all down, trying to get as fucked up as possible before we got caught. — Michelle Tea

That's it? That's all that happens after you topple from grace? We lose our rubies and rations?" Marshall smirked. "Woe is me. — Sophie Avett

Every believer is an anarchist at heart. True believers would rather see governments topple and history rewritten than scuff the cover of their faith. — Jeanette Winterson

Sometimes it could be the smallest thing that could topple over a whole life, and, in the end, destroy it. — Nova Ren Suma

Plato claimed that we were all joined to someone else once, we were humans with four arms and four legs, and a head of two faces, but we were so powerful we threatened to topple the Gods. So they split us from our sole mates down the middle, and doomed us to live forever without our counterparts — Sarah Crossan

If men like [Ken] Starr and his allies could ignore the Constitution and abuse power for ideological and malicious ends to topple a President, I feared for my country. — Hillary Clinton

When Harper was in among the stones she could see brass plaques screwed into the towering pillars of granite. One listed the names of seventeen boys who had died in the mud of eastern France during the First World War. Another listed the names of thirty-four boys who had died on the beaches of western France during the Second. Harper thought all tombstones should be this size, that the small blocks to be found in most graveyards did not even begin to express the sickening enormity of losing a virgin son, thousands of miles away, in the muck and cold. You needed something so big you felt it might topple over and crush you. — Joe Hill

That's how religions and histories make their way into the world, not through battles and conquests, but through poems and kennings and songs, passed through generations and written down by scholars and scribes ...
After all, words are what remain when all the deeds have been done. Words can shatter faith, start a war, change the course of history. A story can make your heart beat faster, topple walls, scale mountains
Hey, a story can even raise the dead. And that's why the King of Stories ended up being King of the gods, because writing history and making history are only the breadth of a page apart. — Joanne Harris

Declaring that we will master our fears is the first great leap toward freedom. Our vitality, growth, and destiny all demand that we can topple fear. As so much hangs in the balance, let us better understand what fear really is. Fear is the human motive of aversion. Fear doesn't help us commit to higher aims. It doesn't help us imagine greatness. Its sole aim is immediate release from threat, strain, or pain. It often becomes a by-all-means-necessary approach to controlling any given situation so that the body - but most often the ego - can feel safe and unchallenged. — Brendon Burchard

The other gift - a book of poems, called, "The Cowardly Morning" - Waner put on Corinne's desk at the office, with a note saying, "This man is Coleridge and Blake and Rilke all in one, and more."
She didn't pick up the book again until she was in bed, late that night.
[...]
The first poem was the title poem. This time Corinne read it through aloud. But still she didn't hear it. She read it through a third time, and heard some of it. She read it through a fourth time, and heard all of it. It was the poem containing the lines:
'Not wasteland, but a great inverted forest
with all foliage underground.'
As though it might be best to look immediately for shelter, Corinne had to put the book down. At any moment the apartment building seemed liable to lose its balance and topple across Fifth Avenue into Central Park. She waited. Gradually the deluge of truth and beauty abated.
- The Inverted Forest (1947) — J.D. Salinger

Our assignment was to topple this prudish, judgmental civilization. And it worked. — Timothy Leary

Don't you give me that postmodern bullshit. There is truth, There is a truth. And what you want, or you feel, or you need, isn't going to change the truth. Any more than it's going to topple a skyscraper. There's truth, and there's belief. Don't call a mule a stallion. — Carol Plum-Ucci

We cannot afford the luxury of self pity. Our top priority now is to get on with the building process. My personal peace has come through helping boys and girls reach beyond the ordinary and strive for the extraordinary. We must teach our children to weather the hurricanes of life, pick up the pieces, and rebuild. We must impress upon our children that even when troubles rise to seven-point- one on life's Richter scale, they must be anchored so deeply that, though they sway, they will not topple — Mamie Till

Great meals rarely start at points that all look like beginnings. They usually pick up where something else leaves off. This is how most of the best things are made - imagine if the world had to begin from scratch each dawn: a tree would never grow, nor would we ever get to see the etchings of gentle rings on a clamshell ... Meals' ingredients must be allowed to topple into one another like dominos. Broccoli stems, their florets perfectly boiled in salty water, must be simmered with olive oil and eaten with shaved Parmesan on toast; their leftover cooking liquid kept for the base for soup, studded with other vegetables, drizzled with good olive oil, with the rind of the Parmesan added for heartiness. This continuity is the heart and soul of cooking. — Tamar Adler

He saw in Populism the first glimmerings of some of the great intellectual upheavals of the twentieth century - naturalism, muckraking, and hard-hitting social satire - which would eventually topple the genteel tradition of the nineteenth century. In a peculiar way, Parrington seemed to think, Kansas was one of the birthplaces of literary modernism. — Thomas Frank

Mother Teresa's detractors have accused her of overemphasizing Calcuttans' destitution and of coercing conversion from the defenseless. In the context of lost causes, Mother Teresa took on battles she knew she could win. Taken together, it seems to me, the criticisms of her work do not undermine or topple her overall achievement. — Bharati Mukherjee

I have seen many amazing things in my long and troubled life history. I have seen a series of corridors built entirely out of human skulls. I have seen a volcano erupt and send a wall of lava crawling towards a small village. I have seen a women I loved picked up by an enormous eagle and flown to its high mountain next. But I still cannot imagine what it was like to watch Aunt Josephine's house topple into Lake Lachrymose. — Lemony Snicket

Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break into pieces. — Etienne De La Boetie

Then let me ask you" - here it comes, the verbal aikido that will use my words to topple my beliefs - "is it possible to live your authentic life if you have inauthentic people around you? — Neil Strauss

The workers of America have power enough to topple the structure of capitalism at home and to lift the whole world with them when they rise. — James P. Cannon

When you have a democratically elected president of Iran you don't topple him for the Shah. You don't help topple Arbenz in Guatemala. You don't do what we did in Vietnam, etc. — Matt Gonzalez

The future is shaped by young people foolish enough to believe they can topple a mountain. And yet, when we stand among the rubble, we wonder why no one tried sooner. — Mitch Rowland

We all know why [the generals] are so critical of the defense secretary. They're being defensive because they weren't able to implement his brilliant plan [on screen: Operation 'Greet Us As Liberators']. It was so simple: Go in with 100,000 troops, topple the regime, everybody loves us, and we leave by Easter 2003. These ex-military men have their right to their opinions, that's fine. They just shouldn't voice them during a war [on screen: 'Loose Lips Sink Approval Ratings'] — Stephen Colbert

I went to a foot specialist recently and she said:
"You've broken a bone, it's healed funny."
"What can you do?"
"Not much."
She strapped me up though and that's the reason my foot is hurting, because the strapping gave me cramp.
When I'm about to die I'm going to head ti a swamp so I topple in when the time comes. In 50,000 years when they dig me up, pretty well preserved, the scientists will have to work out what sort of life I led from my bone structure, teeth and whatnot. Maybe I'll be clutching a Felt record or something to give them a clue. They'll look at my foot and say: "This man broke a bone and it's healed funny." And they'll look at the Felt record, analysing the grooves with a Groove Analyser and they'll say: "He was obviously in an indie band and one day the pressure got too much, and he booted a wall." And they wouldn't be far from the truth, those crazy scientists. — Stuart Murdoch

Pudge was quivering like a weeble toy likely to topple over any second — Saira Viola

He tried not to topple the tray as he hurried down the hallway to his small room. Kyle was all his for a few more hours. He let the happiness come from his feet to the top of his head. — Debra Anastasia

We won when we toppled Saddam. That was the only clear goal of this war, to topple the Iraqi government. It took about 10 minutes. — Howard Dean

And it seemed increasingly obvious that the world would have to topple if he was to attain the glory that was rightfully his. They were consubstantial: glory and the capsized world. — Yukio Mishima

You either deny terrorists any acceptance in the international life, or you make your double standard policy work the way it has been working - 'I don't like that guy in this country, so we will be calling him a dictator and topple him. This guy in another country also dictatorial, but he's our dictator.' — Sergei Lavrov

We need to learn from history. These same leaders - [Barack] Obama,[Hillary] Clinton, and far too many Republicans - want to topple [Bashar] Assad. Assad is a bad man. Gadhafi was a bad man. Mubarak had a terrible human rights record. But they were assisting us - at least [Muammar]Gadhafi and[Hosni] Mubarak - in fighting radical Islamic terrorists. — Ted Cruz

Diamond Sutra says, 'Make no formed conceptions about the realness of existence nor about the unrealness of existence, or words like that. Handcuffs will get soft and billy clubs will topple over, let's go on being free anyhow. — Jack Kerouac

Superpowers will topple and reorganize. — Lidia Yuknavitch

There is one day that has brought me unspeakable pain, & the effects of that day continue to cover & erode my world like rust. I suspect that someday the rust will eat through the joists & posts of my life & I will topple, literally as well as figuratively. — Richard Paul Evans

Mr. Italia sat belching under a pair of oval-framed photographs of parents hairier, if possible, than himself. His wife was dead, but there was a picture of her, too, in her casket, gazing out at us with an eerie simulacrum of motherly love. Dark-complected Mr. Italia was indeed, with handle-bar mustaches of a size that might have made him topple forward out of his chair were it not for the posture seemingly aimed at correcting the leverage in his favor. He drank beer after thrusting into my hand a bottle of soda pop of marked but unidentifiable flavor, pale yellow in color, and lukewarm. — Peter De Vries

I have a notion that, at big fires, a moment of extreme suspense can sometimes occur, when the jets of water slacken off, the firemen no longer climb, no one moves a muscle. Without a sound, a high black wall of masonry cants over up above, the fire blazing behind it, and, without a sound, leans, about to topple. Everyone stands waiting, shoulders tensed, faces drawn in around their eyes, for the terrible crash. That is how the silence is here. — Rainer Maria Rilke

In my opinion, we've spent $4 trillion trying to topple various people [on the Middle East] that frankly, if they were there and if we could've spent that $4 trillion in the United States to fix our roads, our bridges, and all of the other problems; our airports and all of the other problems we've had, we would've been a lot better off. — Donald Trump

The business of beauty isn't a natural model;
It's built to be the opposite of the cultures we topple.
These magazines got you caught in a hustle,
Cause when you starve yourself, your body doesn't burn fat, it burns muscles. — Immortal Technique

I'm drawn to the unconventional because I've been drawn unconventionally. I believe that I'm supposed to topple over these false images of what's idealistically beautiful. Because, of course, these intangible qualities are very attractive to women. Sincerity. Sense of humor. Success. — CeeLo Green

All grandeur, all power, and all subordination to authority rests on the executioner: he is the horror and the bond of human association. Remove this incomprehensible agent from the world and at that very moment order gives way to chaos, thrones topple and society disappears. — Joseph De Maistre

Still people want to topple [Bashar] Assad. And then there will be chaos, and I think ISIS will then be in charge of Syria. — Rand Paul

Elvis Presley's talent brightened millions of lives. He widened the horizons of my world certainly. The first record I ever owned was a 78 rpm of "Hound Dog" backed by "Don't Be Cruel" and when I listened to those tunes I felt about ten feet tall and I grinned so hard that I felt like the corners of my mouth would meet in the back and the tip of my head would simply topple off. All I know about Rock and Roll is that it makes people feel good. Elvis Presley more than made me feel good, he enriched my life and made it better. — Stephen King

Veins of ivy scale stones,
find footholds but
the caretaker cuts
earth short, peels
creepers from Cotswold
rock and props the dead
head to head so they won't
topple like drunks
on their moss-soft shadows. — Jalina Mhyana

Ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. That was the whole idea, right? That's why we went. I am reluctant to let that fact disappear down the memory hole, because if - as the war ends, or at least starts to end - if, at this time, the history of the war is written as us going there to topple the regime of a bad man when that frankly isn't why were told that we were going there - Aren't we still at risk of making this horrific mistake again? And, aren't we letting the people who foisted the WMD idea on us, not many years ago, aren't we sort of letting them get away with it? — Rachel Maddow

When he had finished placing the objects that would be a part of the portrait, the artist asked his subject, "Why do you wish to include the top, milord?" He paused. "I ask this so that I may better understand its place in the portrait." "Because, when it is set in motion, it stands by its own rules. Then it is not an inert thing, like a tree, or a rock." Westcott had smiled. "Ah! But your hand must set it in motion, milord. So it cannot be as independent as you say." "It is the symbol of a soul, Mr. Westcott. Or of a mind. Every man has one, and it is like a top, fashioned by himself. He must keep it upright, by his own hand. He must exert the effort. Otherwise it will topple, and lay inert and useless within himself, not a living thing at all. Or another hand may set it in motion, and then he will have no say in its motion or course." Hugh paused. "This top has sentimental value to me, sir, and I wish to remember it. — Edward Cline

But it's all a diversion. A card-house waiting to topple. — Rick Remender

We saw the strong trees struggle and their plumes do down, The poplar bend and whip back till it split to fall, The elm tear up at the root and topple like a crown, The pine crack at the base - we had to watch them all. The ash, the lovely cedar. We had to watch them fall. They went so softly under the loud flails of air, Before that fury they went down like feathers, With all the hundred springs that flowered in their hair, and all the years, endured in all the weathers - To fall as if they were nothing, as if they were feathers. — May Sarton

On the street below, the weather is calm. But up here, high winds threaten to topple the workers. A sudden gust can knock them from their footing with its sheer force or send a fatal vibration through the beams on which they stand. And yet the men joke, laugh, stroll across the foot-wide beams as though they are on solid ground. To the people on the sidewalk, tiny as ants below, the skywalkers appear entirely unafraid. A hundred years ago, their grandfathers and great-grandfathers built the skyscrapers and bridges that surround them. — David Weitzman

I want to protect myself from any further, darker memories of hers, get myself out of here gracefully before something embarrassing happens. She's balanced on the edge of an artificial hilarity that could topple over at any moment into its opposite, into tears and desperation. — Margaret Atwood

Even as the stupid dwarves cut down a few of my lesser fighters, more warriors swarm to join the ranks of my army! Doom is upon you all, Drizzt Do'Urden! Akar Kessell is come!" The fog cleared. With a thousand fervent warriors behind him, Wulfgar approached the unsuspecting monsters. The goblins and orcs who were closest to the charging barbarians, holding unbending faith in the words of their master, cheered at the coming of their promised allies. Then they died. The barbarian horde drove through their ranks, singing and killing with wild abandonment. Even through the clatter of weapons, the sound of the dwarves joining in the Song of Tempos could be heard. Wide-eyed, jaw hanging open, trembling with rage, Kessell waved the shocking image away and swung back on Drizzt. "It does not matter!" he said, fighting to keep his tone steady. "I shall deal with them mercilessly! And then Bryn Shander shall topple in flames! — R.A. Salvatore

You take enough blasting gelatin and wrap the foundation columns of anything, you can topple any building in the world. You have to tamp it good and tight with sandbags so the blast goes against the column and not out into the parking garage around the column.
This how-to stuff isn't in any history book. — Chuck Palahniuk

But I'm the sort of person who, if certain structures topple, it could all go horribly wrong. — Patrick Marber

A raging, glowering full moon had come up, was peering down over the side of the sky well above the patio.
That was the last thing she saw as she leaned for a moment, inert with fatigue, against the doorway of the room in which her child lay. Then she dragged herself in to topple headlong upon the bed and, already fast asleep, to circle her child with one protective arm, moving as if of its own instinct.
Not the meek, the pallid, gentle moon of home. This was the savage moon that had shone down on Montezuma and Cuauhtemoc, and came back looking for them now. The primitive moon that had once looked down on terraced heathen cities and human sacrifices. The moon of Anahuac. ("The Moon Of Montezuma") — Cornell Woolrich

I went with him to the Opera Orchestra, even though the programs were so boring and dragged on so long that I feared I might actually black out and topple into the aisle. — Anonymous

Corporations, government entities and media conglomerates-fear the ideology of an animal liberationist could catch hold and topple them from their golden thrones, reducing their animal product profits. — Charlotte Laws

The American president had allowed the old order to topple without a viable alternative in place, a reckless act with no precedent in modern statecraft. And for some reason he had chosen this moment in time to throw Israel to the wolves. — Daniel Silva

There was no dissent, no strike, no protest, no hesitation to shoulder a rifle against fellow workers of another land. When the call came, the worker, whom Marx declared to have no Fatherland identified himself with country, not class. He turned out to be a member of the national family like anyone else. The force of his antagonism which was supposed to topple capitalism found a better target in the foreigner. The working class went to war willingly, even eagerly, like the middle class, like the upper class, like the species. — Barbara W. Tuchman

She still remembers the effect a certain book can have on people at the right time in their lives. A book, at its most mundane,can be a loaded gun. At its most powerful, it can split the trunk of a tree, mend a broken heart, heal the sick, and topple a corrupt government. — Don Borchert

Brake lights, brake lights, brake lights; a domino topple of red stop lights ripples back from some non-event up ahead. Some idiot blew his nose too abruptly and a Mexican wave of mini traffic lights all went red in neat little pairs.

There are no green lights on a motorway to tell you that you can go. You just go when you can. Another short burst of hemmed in freedom until the next tsunami of 'stop' floods the road. — Christian Cook

Dive for dreams
or a slogan may topple you
(trees are their roots
and wind is wind)
trust your heart
if the seas catch fire
(and live by love
though the stars walk backward)
honour the past
but welcome the future
(and dance your death
away at this wedding)
never mind a world
with its villains or heroes
(for god likes girls
and tomorrow and the earth) — E. E. Cummings

Nothing is harder to topple than a fact that supports a deeply held prejudice denied by its holder. — Russell L. Ackoff

My grandmother once told my mother that there is a splice of quartz inside each of us, like the quartz inside a compass or clock. We feel the stone glow warm when we find what it is we are meant to do. My grandmother was a singer; voice was her quartz, a second heartbeat that reminded her always of who she was. My mother's quartz is dance and Joaquin's is the piano. The saddest souls in the world, my mother believes, are those who never discover this thing within them. There is a difference between those who wander in search of that glow and those who wander in hopes of evading it. It is frightening, after all - that first awakening when the radiance within threatens to topple you. Even more terrifying is the decision to allow the fire to continue smoldering, because the brighter you let it get, the more terrible the darkness should you ever let it out."

- Elizabeth Genovise "Irises" (O. Henry prize winner 2016) — Elizabeth Genovise

I leaned forward. "How did I turn out? Are you proud of the monster you made?"
Roland smiled. Hugh and Landon were right. It was like the sun had risen. Like digging a hole in your backyard and finding a glittering jewel in the dirt.
"Child, my dangerous one, my beautiful one. You've claimed your city. You shouldn't have been able to do that for another hundred years. I'm so proud that my pride could topple mountains. If you let me, I would show you to the world. I would show the world to you."
"So I could see it through your eyes?"
"So you could see it through your own. — Ilona Andrews

It is vain to trust in wrong; it is like erecting a building upon a frail foundation, and which will directly be sure to topple over. — Hosea Ballou

Lower oil prices won't, by themselves, topple the mullahs in Iran. But it's significant that, historically, when oil prices have been low, Iranian reformers have been ascendant and radicals relatively subdued, and vice versa when prices have been high. — James Surowiecki

I think the real target of al-Qaeda is Saudi Arabia by the way. They hate us and we're a vehicle to get at Saudi Arabia. I think Osama bin Laden really wants to topple that regime and have his people move in, but that's a whole other story. — Frank Carlucci

Leave safety behind. Put your body on the line. Stand before the people you fear and speak your mind - even if your voice shakes. When you least expect it, someone may actually listen to what you have to say. Well-aimed slingshots can topple giants. — Maggie Kuhn

But there are times when a tree can no longer withstand the pain inflicted on it, and the wind will take pity on that tree and topple it over in a mighty storm. All the other trees who witnessed the evil look down upon the fallen tree with envy. They pray for the day when a wind will end their suffering. I pray for the day when God will end mine. — Julius Lester

It's being made out that the whole point of the war was to topple the Taliban regime and liberate Afghan women from their burqas, we are being asked to believe that the U.S. marines are actually on a feminist mission. — Arundhati Roy

A culture that denies death is a barrier to achieving a good death. Overcoming our fears and wild misconceptions about death will be no small task, but we shouldn't forget how quickly other cultural prejudices--racism, sexism, homophobia--have begun to topple in the recent past. It is high time death had its own moment of truth. — Caitlin Doughty

Any medium powerful enough to extend man's reach is powerful enough to topple his world. — Alan Kay

Did you see the statue topple? Bill Clinton got nostalgic seeing something that big in a beret go down. — Craig Kilborn

Smallness is subversive, because smallness can creep into smaller places and wreak transformation at the most vulnerable, cellular level. In a time when largeness is threatening to topple us, I wish to remember and praise the beauty of smallness, in order to banish the Goliath of loneliness. — Sarah Ruhl

Only two towers remained standing, one of which was so crooked and damaged it looked ready to topple at a cough from a butterfly. — Brandon Mull

I considered that the world, and especially the cinema, was burdened with false gods. My task was to overthrow them. Sword in hand, I was ready to consecrate my life to the task. But the false gods are still there. My perseverance during a half-century of cinema has perhaps helped to topple a few of them. It has likewise helped me to discover that some of the gods were real, and had no need to be toppled. — Jean Renoir

Don't say another goddamn word. Up until now, I've been polite. If you say anything else--word one--I will kill myself. And when my tainted spirit finds its destination, I will topple the master of that dark place. From my black throne, I will lash together a machine of bone and blood, and fueled by my hatred for you this fear engine will bore a hole between this world and that one. When it begins you will hear the sound of children screaming--as though from a great distance. A smoking orb of nothing will grow above your bed, and from it will emerge a thousand starving crows. As I slip through the widening maw in my new form, you will catch only a glimpse of my radiance before you are incinerated. Then, as tears of bubbling pitch stream down my face, my dark work will begin. I will open one of my six mouths, and I will sing the song that ends the Earth. — Jerry Holkins

Here is Thomas Kuhn, the philosopher of science, describing the way scientists react when their pet theories are unraveling: "What scientists never do when confronted by even severe and prolonged anomalies," Kuhn wrote, " ... . [is] renounce the paradigm that led them into crisis." Instead, he concluded, "A scientific theory is declared invalid only if an alternate candidate is available to take its place." That is, scientific theories very seldom collapse under the weight of their own inadequacy. They topple only when a new and seemingly better belief turns up to replace it. — Kathryn Schulz

The prophecy is clear, Your Highness. The Messiah shall topple all the kingdoms of the world. Even yours. — Seth Grahame-Smith

Then she sighed. Just the faintest, softest release of breath. The sound swept through his chest like a hurricane, with the force to topple trees. — Tessa Dare

I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces. — Etienne De La Boetie

The great wall of vegetation, an exuberant and entangled mass of trunks, branches, leaves, boughs, festoons, motionless in the moonlight, was like a rioting invasion of soundless life, a rolling wave of plants, piled up, crested, ready to topple over the creek, to sweep every little man of us out of his little existence. And it moved not. A deadened burst of mighty splashes and snorts reached us from afar, as though an ichthyosaurus had been taking a bath of glitter in the great river. — Joseph Conrad

Usama bin Laden feels like Iraq is a part of this War on Terror. He has made it clear that he would like for us to leave before Iraq can defend itself or govern itself and sustain itself, so that he could have a safe haven from which to launch further attacks, a safe haven from which to topple modern governments, a safe haven from which to, you know, be able to get a hold of oil resources. — George W. Bush

Now it is you who everyone presumes is so fragile. Wounded. Scarred. Maybe they're right. Perhaps you are. A nursery rhyme comes into your head, and, like an egg, you allow yourself to topple onto your side, your legs still pulled hard against your torso. You lie like that a long while, watching the chrome shell of the tape measure sparkle until the sun moves. — Chris Bohjalian

God's throne is still unshaken. His world just takes its course. Now and then God smiles for a moment about the important gentlemen who think they're really something. A new batch of little Titans are still busy piling up little boulders so that they can topple him down off his heights and arrange the world the way they think it should be. He only laughs, and thinks: "That's good, boys. You may be crazy but I still like you better than the proper, sensible gentlemen. I'm sorry you have to break your necks and I have to let the gentlemen thrive, but I'm only God."
And So everything takes its little course, and woe to those who ask: Why? — Nescio

Heaven and Earth are meeting in a storm that, when it's over, will leave the air purer and the leaves fertile, but before that happens, houses will be destroyed, centuries- old trees will topple, paradises will be flooded. — Paulo Coelho

In a future that portends stronger and more-frequent hurricanes striking North America's Atlantic coast, ferocious winds will pummel tall, unsteady structures. Some will topple, knocking down others. Like a gap in the forest when a giant tree falls, new growth will rush in. Gradually, the asphalt jungle will give way to a real one. — Alan Weisman

But the Seeker, who is of unsure gait, also has unsure traits. The way that he moves is unstable and ungainly. It is also unnatural. No other life form adopted this precarious locomotion method of walking on two legs. Intrinsically off balance at all times, it takes just a small stone or a banana peel to topple him over. It is a mysterious wobbly motion much like that of a bicycle. How easy it is, to throw a cyclist off balance, need not be elaborated. But try throwing a truck off balance? Unsettling the Seeker's balance is also equally easy. But try throwing a horse or a tiger off balance? Even a child knows that four wheels or, at least, three wheels are more stable than two wheels. — Biju Vasudevan

My gift to you, Yukiko-chan.' He nodded. 'Use it to cut away your fear, and leave nothing in its wake. Cherish it. And cherish this truth I speak to you now, if no other before or after: The greatest tempest Shima has even known waits in the wings for you to call its name. Your anger can topple mountains. Crush empires. Change the very shape of the world.'
He pressed the blade into her hand, watched her with cool eyes the colour of steel.
'Your anger is a gift. — Jay Kristoff

I'll go first. I dare Kope to kiss Anna.
It's like a monk kissing a nun. Brilliant. I lean back and cross my arms, enjoying their shifty-eyed embarrassment. Anna suddenly stands, I'm assuming to get far away from me, but instead she heads straight for me and kicks my chair up. I lose my balance and topple backward like an idiot. But when I look up and see her standing over me with eyes ablaze, I can only grin.
There's my girl. I'm relieved I've made her feel something. — Wendy Higgins

Some people grow up gradually, the foundations of their childhood steadily sinking into the earth so slowly they barely notice the change. Until one day they're simply standing on their own two feet with little idea how they got there. Then there are people whose childhoods are smashed to bits in one blow. They topple into adulthood, flailing about for something to hold onto, and the terror of falling leaves a permanent scar on their psyche. Do those people ever end up feeling safe? — Kristen Callihan

For many years a tree might wage a slow and silent warfare against an encumbering wall, without making any visible progress. One day the wall would topple
not because the tree had suddenly laid hold upon some supernormal energy, but because its patient work of self-defense and self release had reached fulfillment. The long-imprisoned tree had freed itself. Nature had had her way. — Lloyd C. Douglas

There's a long history of resistance movements igniting in the soccer stadium. In the Red Star Revolution, Draza, Krle, and the other Belgrade soccer hooligans helped topple Slobodan Milosevic. Celebrations for Romania's 1990 WOrld Cup qualification carried over into the Bucharest squares, culminating in a firing squad that trained its rifles on the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife. The movement that toppled the Paraguayan dictator Alfredo Stroessner had the same sportive ground zero. — Franklin Foer

It's like chopping down a huge tree of immense girth. You won't accomplish it with one swing of your axe. If you keep chopping away at it, though, and do not let up, eventually, whether it wants to or not, it will suddenly topple down. When that time comes, you could round up everyone you could find and pay them to hold the tree up, but they wouldn't be able to do it. It would still come crashing to the ground ... . But if the woodcutter stopped after one or two strokes of his axe to ask the third son of Mr. Chang, "Why doesn't this tree fall?" And after three or four more strokes stopped again to ask the fourth son of Mr. Li, "Why doesn't this tree fall?" he would never succeed in felling the tree. It is no different for someone who is practicing the Way. - ZEN MASTER HAKUIN — Robert Greene

I'm going to touch you now," Trent whispered, "but you are going to have to keep perfectly still if you don't want us to topple out — S.J. Higgins