Totter Quotes & Sayings

For each Joan of Arc there is a Hitler perched at the other end of the teeter-totter. — Charles Bukowski

I understand that one of the purposes of bipartisanship is to cram something difficult and necessary down the American people's gullets for which neither party has the fortitude to assume full responsibility. It's a way of turning a possible gangplank into a teeter-totter. — James Wolcott

All through June the writing course had stretched before me like a bright, safe bridge over the dull gulf of summer. Now I saw it totter and dissolve, and a body in a white blouse and green skirt plummet into the gap. — Sylvia Plath

Foes I sniff, when I have less to shout
or murmur. Pals alone enormous sounds
downward & up bring real.
Loss, deaths, terror. Over & out,
beloved: thanks for cabbage on my wounds:
I'll feed you how I feel:--

of avocado moist with lemon, yea
formaldehyde & rotting sardines O
in our appointed time
I would I could a touch more fully say
my countless mind. The senses are below,
which in this air sublime

do I repudiate. But foes I sniff!
My nose in all directions! I be so brave
I creep into an Arctic cave
for the rectal temperature of the biggest bear,
hibernating -- in my left hand sugar.
I totter to the lip of the cliff. — John Berryman

No, see the slide's too high. He could fall and get a concussion. (Wulf)
Forget that. He could rack himself on the teeter-totter. (Chris)
Teeter-totter nothing. The swings are a choking hazard. Whose idea was it for him to have this? (Urian) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

What makes the voice pathetic is that it doesn't know what kind of people it's reaching. Us. No one hears it, except us. This Age wanted heroes. It got us instead: carefully constructed, but immobile. Subtle but, unfit to take up the burden of the times. It happens. A whole generation of washouts. History says stand up, and we totter and collapse, weeping, moved, but not sufficient. — Tony Kushner

Now you know well that the most deadly foes of the Catholic religion have always waged a fierce war, but without success, against this Chair [of St. Peter]; they are by no means ignorant of the fact that religion itself can never totter and fall while this Chair remains intact, the Chair which rests on the rock which the proud gates of hell cannot overthrow and in which there is the whole and perfect solidity of the Christian religion. — Pope Pius IX

Children demand that their heroes should be freckle less, and easily believe them so: perhaps a first discovery to the contrary is less revolutionary shock to a passionate child than the threatened downfall of habitual beliefs which makes the world seem to totter for us in maturer life. — George Eliot

Most 'Monty Python' fans are, of course, baby boomers, who have long been a nostalgic lot and are growing more so as they totter toward old age. — Terry Teachout

The Church seems to totter to its fall, almost all life extinct. On this occasion, any complaisance would be criminal which told you, whose hope and commission it is to preach the faith of Christ, that the faith of Christ is preached. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

An old man, having retired from active life, regains the gaity and irresponsibility of childhood. He is ready to play, he cannot run with his son, but he can totter with his grandson. Our first and last steps have the same rhythm. — Andre Maurois

Old politicians chew on wisdom past,
And totter on in business to the last. — Alexander Pope

Erienne closed the door and leaned against it as she frowned at Farrell. He had caught his good arm about the balustrade and was trying to steady himself while he tugged feebly at the ties of his cloak.
"Eriennie, give yer li'l Farrell a hand with 'is rebesh ... uh ... rebelush garment. It willn't leave me as I bid it." He grinned apologetically and lifted his crippled arm in helpless appeal.
"Fine time for you to be coming home," she admonished, helping him out of the recalcitrant cloak. "Have you no shame?"
"None!" he declared, attempting a gallant bow. His efforts caused him to lose his precarious balance, and he began to totter backward.
-Farrell & Erienne — Kathleen E. Woodiwiss

We have each had a commencement, and each stumbled and tottered on the threshold, and had our teachers scorned, instead of aiding us, we should stumble and totter yet. — Emily Bronte

Memory is a wonderfully useful tool, and without it judgement does its work with difficulty; it is entirely lacking in me ... Now,the more I distrust my memory, the more confused it becomes. It serves me better by chance encounter; I have to solicit it nonchalantly. For if I press it, it is stunned; and once it has begun to totter, the more I probe it, the more it gets mixed up and embarrassed. It serves me at its own time, not at mine. — Michel De Montaigne

All my life I have been a poor go-to-sleeper. People in trains, who lay their newspaper aside, fold their silly arms, and immediately, with an offensive familiarity of demeanour, start snoring, amaze me as much as the uninhibited chap who cozily defecates in the presence of a chatty tubber, or participates in huge demonstrations, or joins some union in order to dissolve in it. Sleep is the most moronic fraternity in the world, with the heaviest dues and the crudest rituals. It is a mental torture I find debasing. The strain and drain of composition often force me, alas, to swallow a strong pill that gives me an hour or two of frightful nightmares or even to accept the comic relief of a midday snooze, the way a senile rake might totter to the nearest euthanasium; but I simply cannot get used to the nightly betrayal of reason, humanity, genius. No matter how great my weariness, the wrench of parting with consciousness is unspeakably repulsive to me. — Vladimir Nabokov

You think it's...like a prank. Like the time you and the guys soaped all the windows at the high school or rolled the football coach's car to the park and left it on top of the teeter-totter. What did you do, stay up late with a six-pack of beer, jerking off to porn, and then think I should put Caroline up here? — Robin York

Arithmetic has began to totter. — Gottlob Frege

Only art is capable of dismantling the repressive effects of a senile social system that continues to totter along the deathline: to dismantle in order to build A SOCIAL ORGANISM AS A WORK OF ART. — Joseph Beuys

If you embrace 'positive thinking,' you are - by definition - spurning 'negative thinking.' So it's as if you were on a teeter-totter and are trying desperately to put all your weight on one side - the 'positive thinking' side. — Srikumar Rao

Steel screams when it's forged, it gasps when it's quenched. It creaks when it goes under load. I think even steel is scared, son. Take half an hour to think? A drink of water? A drink of wind? Totter off awhile. If it makes you seasick, then prudently vomit. If it makes you terrified, scream. If it makes you anything, pray. — Walter M. Miller Jr.

That is our Shield Ring, our last stronghold; not the barrier fells and the totter-moss between, but something in the hearts of men. — Rosemary Sutcliff

Life is a house of cards, balanced on a tetter-totter,
precariously perched on a roller coaster.
The only thing that should surprise us about our surprises is that we are surprised by them.
Beth Cardall's Diary — Richard Paul Evans

From the views I have already expressed, you will infer the sad conviction, which I share, I believe, with numbers, of the universal decay and now almost death of faith in society. The soul is not preached. The Church seems to totter to its fall, almost all life extinct. On this occasion, any complaisance would be criminal which told you, whose hope and commission it is to preach the faith of Christ, that the faith of Christ is preached. It — Ralph Waldo Emerson

If we can keep our minds calm on the subject of the "Eternity of God," if reason does not totter on her seat at the contemplation of underived existence, it will be strange if any other mystery relating to God should disturb us. He who can bring his reason to bow reverently at the idea of a Being who had no beginning, is well prepared to receive any communication of His will. — Nehemiah Adams

If vanity does not entirely overthrow the virtues, at least it makes them all totter. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

As I grow older and older, And totter toward the tomb, I find that I care less and less, Who goes to bed with whom. — Dorothy L. Sayers

In the Buddhist view, I depend on you for my existence. All things depend on each other, equally. Welcome to the doctrine of dependent origination. It's teeter-totter metaphysics - I arise, you arise; you arise, I arise. Forget about our presumed Maker, the divine machinist in the sky. Take a look at this moment right now. You are you because you are not something else; therefore, what you are not - the chair beneath you, the air in your lungs, these words - births you through an infinity of opposites. It's like the ultimate Dr. Seuss riddle: Without all the things that are not you, who would you be you to? There's no Higher Power in this system to grab on to for support; we are all already supporting each other. Pull a person or people the wrong way and you immediately redefine yourself in light of what you've done to your neighbor. — Shozan Jack Haubner

It is charming to totter into vogue. — Horace Walpole

It's sort of like a teeter-totter; when interest rates go down, prices go up. — Bill Gross

For I am aware what ability is requisite to persuade the proud how great is the virtue of humility, which raises us, not by a quite human arrogance, but by a divine grace, above all earthly dignities that totter on this shifting scene. — Augustine Of Hippo

Life for most of us is full of steep stairs to go up and later, shaky stairs to totter down; and very early in the history of stairs must have come the invention of bannisters. — Louis Kronenberger

the purpose of 'systematically shaking the foundations, systematically undermining society and all principles; for the purpose of demoralizing everyone and throwing everything into chaos, and then, once society had begun to totter as a result - and was sick and weakened, cynical and devoid of beliefs, yet still yearning for some guiding idea and self-preservation - they would suddenly take it into their hands, raising the banner of rebellion and relying on a complete network of groups of five, which would all be active at the same time, recruiting and making practical efforts to search out all the means and all the weak spots that could be exploited'. He concluded that here, in our town, Pyotr Stepanovich had organized only the first experiment in such systematic disorder, — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Normally Felicity liked to spend her recess holding the duty teacher's hand and tattling on kids who were breaking nitpicky safety rules like no climbing fences, no running up the slide, and no using the teeter-totter as a human catapult. - Zombiekins — Kevin Bolger

I'm sorry if I have the emotional stability of a teeter-totter right now, but that's better than you, who has the emotional maturity of a rock. — Chanda Hahn

When work goes out of style we may expect to see civilization totter and fall. — John D. Rockefeller

To my ninth decade I have totter'd on, And no soft arm bends now my steps to steady; She, who once led me where she would, is gone, So when he calls me, Death shall find me ready. — Walter Savage Landor