Quotes about top
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“The results are something I can't control, so I can't say 'damnit, I didn't place in the top three today.' I can't control any of that. I just skate. And my goal was to show my heart, to take them on a journey with me so they can feel me.”

Johnny Weir (1984) figure skater

Source: ; On scoring

Feeling, Heart

“When you're knocked on your back and you life's a flop,
When you're down on the bottom and there's nothing else but to shout to the top!”

Paul Weller (singer) (1958) English singer-songwriter, Guitarist

Shout To The Top! (1984)

Life

“Now the trickiest catch in the negro problem is the fact that it is really twofold. The black is vastly inferior. There can be no question of this among contemporary and unsentimental biologists—eminent Europeans for whom the prejudice-problem does not exist. But, it is also a fact that there would be a very grave and very legitimate problem even if the negro were the white man's equal. For the simple fact is, that two widely dissimilar races, whether equal or not, cannot peaceably coexist in the same territory until they are either uniformly mongrelised or cast in folkways of permanent and traditional personal aloofness. No normal being feels at ease amidst a population having vast elements radically different from himself in physical aspect and emotional responses. A normal Yankee feels like a fish out of water in a crowd of cultivated Japanese, even though they may be his mental and aesthetic superiors; and the normal Jap feels the same way in a crowd of Yankees. This, of course, implies permanent association. We can all visit exotic scenes and like it—and when we are young and unsophisticated we usually think we might continue to like it as a regular thing. But as years pass, the need of old things and usual influences—home faces and home voices—grows stronger and stronger; and we come to see that mongrelism won't work. We require the environing influence of a set of ways and physical types like our own, and will sacrifice anything to get them. Nothing means anything, in the end, except with reference to that continuous immediate fabric of appearances and experiences of which one was originally part; and if we find ourselves ingulphed by alien and clashing influences, we instinctively fight against them in pursuit of the dominant freeman's average quota of legitimate contentment.... All that any living man normally wants—and all that any man worth calling such will stand for—is as stable and pure a perpetuation as possible of the set of forms and appearances to which his value-perceptions are, from the circumstances of moulding, instinctively attuned. That is all there is to life—the preservation of a framework which will render the experience of the individual apparently relevant and significant, and therefore reasonably satisfying. Here we have the normal phenomenon of race-prejudice in a nutshell—the legitimate fight of every virile personality to live in a world where life shall seem to mean something.... Just how the black and his tan penumbra can ultimately be adjusted to the American fabric, yet remains to be seen. It is possible that the economic dictatorship of the future can work out a diplomatic plan of separate allocation whereby the blacks may follow a self-contained life of their own, avoiding the keenest hardships of inferiority through a reduced number of points of contact with the whites... No one wishes them any intrinsic harm, and all would rejoice if a way were found to ameliorate such difficulties as they have without imperilling the structure of the dominant fabric. It is a fact, however, that sentimentalists exaggerate the woes of the average negro. Millions of them would be perfectly content with servile status if good physical treatment and amusement could be assured them, and they may yet form a well-managed agricultural peasantry. The real problem is the quadroon and octoroon—and still lighter shades. Theirs is a sorry tragedy, but they will have to find a special place. What we can do is to discourage the increase of their numbers by placing the highest possible penalties on miscegenation, and arousing as much public sentiment as possible against lax customs and attitudes—especially in the inland South—at present favouring the melancholy and disgusting phenomenon. All told, I think the modern American is pretty well on his guard, at last, against racial and cultural mongrelism. There will be much deterioration, but the Nordic has a fighting chance of coming out on top in the end.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to James F. Morton (January 1931), in Selected Letters III, 1929-1931 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 253
Non-Fiction, Letters, to James Ferdinand Morton, Jr.

Life, World, Penalty, Way

“The point is that one sees things at different moments with different eyes. Differently in the morning then in the evening. The way in which one sees also depends on one's mood…. coming in from a dark bedroom in the morning into the sitting room one will, for example, see everything in a bluish light. Even the deepest shadows are topped with bright light. After a while one will accustom oneself to the light and the shadows will be deeper and everything will be seen more sharply. If an atmosphere of this kind is being painted it won't do merely to sit and gaze at everything 'just as one sees'. One must paint precisely the fleeting moment of significance – one must capture the exact experience separating that significant moment from the next – the exact moment when the motif struck one… In some circumstances a chair may seem to be just as interesting as a human being. In some way or another it must have caught the interest in which case the onlooker's interest must somehow be engaged in the same way. It's not the chair that should be painted, but what the person has felt at the sight of it [written in Saint Cloud, 1890 - probably related to the chair of Vincent van Gogh”

Edvard Munch (1863–1944) Norwegian painter and printmaker

Quote of Munch from: T 2770, (1890); as cited in Edvard Much – behind the scream, Sue Prideaux; Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2007, pp. 83-84
1880 - 1895

Way, Mood, Light, Painting

“I've been in The Who, I've been in The Beatles and I've been in Pink Floyd! Top that!”

David Gilmour (1946) guitarist, singer, best known as a member of Pink Floyd

Record Collector (May 2003)

“Stand here with me…with the stars and hills as witness and in their presence consecrate your life and talent, your song and your speech, your thought and your dream, to the motherland. O poet see visions from hill –tops and spread abroad the message of hope to the toilers of the valleys.”

Sarojini Naidu (1879–1949) Indian politician, governor of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh from 1947 to 1949

G.K. Gokhale urged her to join the Indian Independence Movement quoted in [Naravane, Vishwanath S., Sarojini Naidu: An Introduction to Her Life, Work and Poetry, http://books.google.com/books?id=h6v8HsRUBucC&pg=PA133, 1 January 1996, Orient Blackswan, 978-81-250-0931-3, 133]

Life, Dreams, Hope, Star

“I am an artist who makes walks. A walk defines the form of the land in space and time beyond the scale of sculpture or the fixed image. Some of my walks are formal (straight, circular, rhythmic) almost ritualised. I have climbed around mountains instead of to the top, I have made walks about slowness, walks about stones and water. I have made walks within a place as opposed to a linear journey; walking without travelling.”

Richard Long (1945) artist

Richard Long (1980), five, six, pick up sticks, seven, eight, lay them straight, London: Anthony D'Offay Gallery
1980s

Travel, Mountain, Water, Time

“His grammar is foolishly correct, offensively precise. It flaunts itself in the reader's face all along, and struts and smirks and shows off, and is in a dozen ways irritating and disagreeable. To be serious, I write good grammar myself, but not in that spirit, I am thankful to say. That is to say, my grammar is of a high order, though not at the top. Nobody's is. Perfect grammar—persistent, continuous, sustained—is the fourth dimension, so to speak: many have sought it, but none has found it.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1 (2010), p. 120

Way, Perfection

“Lenin's methods [of "hard" centralism and mistrust of the working class] lead to this: the party organization substitutes itself for the party, the central committee substitutes itself for the organization, and, finally, a "dictator" substitutes himself for the central committee. … The party must seek the guarantee of its stability in its own base, in an active and self-reliant proletariat, and not in its top caucus … which the revolution may suddenly sweep away with its wing.”

Leon Trotsky book Our Political Tasks

"Our Political Tasks" (1904), as quoted in The Prophet Armed (1963) by Isaac Deutscher

“That change didn't happen from the top down, but it happened from the bottom up.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2017, Farewell to Staff Members (January 2017)
Context: That change didn't happen from the top down, but it happened from the bottom up. It was met sometimes with skepticism and doubt. Some folks didn't think we could pull it off. There were those that felt that the institutions of power and privilege in this country were too deeply entrenched. And yet, all of you came together in small towns and big cities, a whole bunch of you really young, and you decided to believe and you knocked on doors and you made phone calls and you talked to your parents who didn't know how to pronounce Barack Obama. And you got to know each other. And you went into communities that maybe you had never even thought about visiting and met people that on the surface seemed completely different than you -- didn't look like you or talk like you or watch the same TV programs as you. And yet, once you started talking to them, it turned out that you had something in common. And it grew and it built. And people took notice. And throughout, it was infused with a sense of hope. As I said in 2004, it wasn't blind optimism that drove you to do all of this work. It wasn't naiveté. It wasn't willful ignorance to all the challenges that America faces. It was hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. You proved the power of hope.

Change

“For example, I never cheat or steal. Also, I never wear a top-hat with a sack coat or munch bananas in public on the streets, because a gentleman does not do those things either.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Woodburn Harris (25 February-1 March 1929), in Selected Letters II, 1925-1929 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 288-289
Non-Fiction, Letters
Context: About my own attitude toward ethics—I thought I made it plain that I object only to (a) grotesquely disproportionate indignations and enthusiasms, (b) illogical extremes involving a reductio ad absurdum, and (c) the nonsensical notion that "right" and "wrong" involve any principles more mystical and universal than those of immediate expedience (with the individual's own comfort as a criterion) on the other hand. I believe I was careful to specify that I do not advocate vice and crime, but that on the other hand I have a marked distaste for immoral and unlawful acts which contravene the harmonious traditions and standards of beautiful living developed by a culture during its long history. This, however, is not ethics but aesthetics—a distinction which you are almost alone in considering negligible. … So far as I am concerned—I am an aesthete devoted to harmony, and to the extraction of the maximum possible pleasure from life. I find by experience that my chief pleasure is in symbolic identification with the landscape and tradition-stream to which I belong—hence I follow the ancient, simple New England ways of living, and observe the principles of honour expected of a descendant of English gentlemen. It is pride and beauty-sense, plus the automatic instincts of generations trained in certain conduct-patterns, which determine my conduct from day to day. But this is not ethics, because the same compulsions and preferences apply, with me, to things wholly outside the ethical zone. For example, I never cheat or steal. Also, I never wear a top-hat with a sack coat or munch bananas in public on the streets, because a gentleman does not do those things either. I would as soon do the one as the other sort of thing—it is all a matter of harmony and good taste—whereas the ethical or "righteous" man would be horrified by dishonesty yet tolerant of course personal ways. If I were farming in your district I certainly would assist my neighbours—both as a means of promoting my standing in the community, and because it is good taste to be generous and accommodating. Likewise with the matter of treating the pupils in a school class. But this would not be through any sense of inner compulsion based on principles dissociated from my personal welfare and from the principle of beauty. It would be for the same reason that I would not dress eccentrically or use vulgar language. Pure aesthetics, aside from the personal-benefit element; and concerned with emotions of pleasure versus disgust rather than of approval versus indignation.

Cheating

“Progress of human civilization in the area of defining human freedom is not made from the top down. No king, no parliament, no government ever extended to the people more rights than the people insisted upon.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

"True Hallucinations" (1993)
Variant: Progress of human civilization in the area of defining human freedom is not made from the top down. No king, no parliament, no government ever extended to the people more rights than the people insisted upon.
Context: Progress of human civilization in the area of defining human freedom is not made from the top down. No king, no parliament, no government ever extended to the people more rights than the people insisted upon. And I think we've come to a place with this psychedelic issue. And we have the gay community as a model, and all the other communities, the ethnic communities. We simply have to say, Look: LSD has been around for fifty years now, we just celebrated the birthday. It ain't going away. WE are not going away. We are not slack-jawed, dazed, glazed, unemployable psychotic creeps. We are pillars of society. You can't run your computers, your fashion houses, your publishing houses, your damn magazines, you can't do anything in culture without psychedelic people in key positions. And this is the great unspoken truth of American Creativity. So I think it's basically time to just come out of the closet and go, "You know what, I'm stoned, and I'm proud."

People, Freedom

“Let a child but be ordered to whip his top at a certain time every day”

John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Sec. 73
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)
Context: None of the things they learn, should ever be made a burthen to them, or impos's on them as a task. Whatever is so proposed, presently becomes irksome; the mind takes an aversion to it, though before it were a thing of delight or indifferency. Let a child but be ordered to whip his top at a certain time every day, whether he has or has not a mind to it; let this be but requir'd of him as a duty, wherein he must spend so many hours morning and afternoon, and see whether he will not soon be weary of any play at this rate. Is it not so with grown men?

Time

“There is a great deal of talk about loyalty from the bottom to the top. Loyalty from the top down is even more necessary and much less prevalent.”

George S. Patton (1885–1945) United States Army general

War As I Knew It (1947); also quoted in Patton's One-Minute Messages: Tactical Leadership Skills for Business Management (1995) by Charles M. Province, p. 88
Context: There is a great deal of talk about loyalty from the bottom to the top. Loyalty from the top down is even more necessary and much less prevalent. One of the most frequently noted characteristics of great men who have remained great is loyalty to their subordinates.

Loyalty

“When families have less to spend, that means businesses have fewer customers, and households rack up greater mortgage and credit card debt; meanwhile, concentrated wealth at the top is less likely to result in the kind of broadly based consumer spending that drives our economy, and together with lax regulation, may contribute to risky speculative bubbles.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2013, Remarks on Economic Mobility (December 2013)
Context: So let me repeat: The combined trends of increased inequality and decreasing mobility pose a fundamental threat to the American Dream, our way of life, and what we stand for around the globe. And it is not simply a moral claim that I’m making here. There are practical consequences to rising inequality and reduced mobility. For one thing, these trends are bad for our economy. One study finds that growth is more fragile and recessions are more frequent in countries with greater inequality. And that makes sense. When families have less to spend, that means businesses have fewer customers, and households rack up greater mortgage and credit card debt; meanwhile, concentrated wealth at the top is less likely to result in the kind of broadly based consumer spending that drives our economy, and together with lax regulation, may contribute to risky speculative bubbles.

Family, Business, Wealth

“It’s important that not only low-level corruption is punished, but folks at the top, if they are taking from the people, that has to be addressed as well. But it's not something that is just fixed by laws, or that any one person can fix. It requires a commitment by the entire nation -- leaders and citizens -- to change habits and to change culture. […] People who break the law and violate the public trust need to be prosecuted.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Remarks to the Kenyan People (July 2015)
Context: Because corruption holds back every aspect of economic and civil life. It’s an anchor that weighs you down and prevents you from achieving what you could. If you need to pay a bribe and hire somebody’s brother -- who’s not very good and doesn’t come to work -- in order to start a business, well, that’s going to create less jobs for everybody. If electricity is going to one neighborhood because they’re well-connected, and not another neighborhood, that’s going to limit development of the country as a whole. If someone in public office is taking a cut that they don't deserve, that’s taking away from those who are paying their fair share. So this is not just about changing one law -- although it's important to have laws on the books that are actually being enforced. It’s important that not only low-level corruption is punished, but folks at the top, if they are taking from the people, that has to be addressed as well. But it's not something that is just fixed by laws, or that any one person can fix. It requires a commitment by the entire nation -- leaders and citizens -- to change habits and to change culture. [... ] People who break the law and violate the public trust need to be prosecuted. NGOs have to be allowed to operate who shine a spotlight on what needs to change. And ordinary people have to stand up and say, enough is enough.

People, Law, Change, Personality

“Many people, especially in the US, see countries like Sweden or Norway or Finland as role models – we have such a clean energy sector, and so on. That may be true, but we are not role models. Sweden is one of the top 10 countries in the world when it comes to the highest ecological footprints, according to the WWF – if you count the consumer index, then we are among the worst per capita.In Sweden, the most common argument that we shouldn’t act is that we are such a small country with only 10 million inhabitants – we should focus more on helping other countries. That is so incredibly frustrating, because why should we argue about who or what needs to change first? Why not take the leading role?”

Greta Thunberg (2003) Swedish climate change activist

Quoted in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez met Greta Thunberg: 'Hope is contagious', The Guardian, Emma Brockes https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/29/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-met-greta-thunberg-hope-contagious-climate|When (29 June 2019) <br class="br">2019

Country, Help, People, World

“Then Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh walked hand in hand down the forest path and they said goodbye. So they went off together. But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the forest a little boy and his bear will always be playing and waiting.”

A.A. Milne book The House at Pooh Corner

The House at Pooh Corner (1928)

Way, Waiting, Boy

“The music industry as a whole just needs more women. There are a lot of men at the top of the ranks.”

Dua Lipa (1995) English singer and songwriter

Dua Lipa Believes the Future of Music Is Female, Glamour, 2017-07-17 https://www.glamour.com/story/dua-lipa-believes-the-future-of-music-is-female,

Music, Women, Men

“Nine hundred feet below my cave rhododendrons blossomed. I climbed barren mountain-tops. Long tramps led me to desolate valleys studded with translucent lakes... Solitude, solitude! ...Mind and senses develop their sensibility in this contemplative life made up of continual observations and reflections. Does one become a visionary or, rather, is it not that one has been blind until then?”

Alexandra David-Néel (1868–1969) French explorer, spiritualist, Buddhist, anarchist and writer

Magic And Mystery In Tibet

Sense, Mountain, Solitude, Life

“Ya listen to me, you'll go to the top! You don't listen to me, you're never heard from again!”

Bobby Heenan (1944–2017) American professional wrestler, professional wrestling commentator and manager

Source: World Wrestling Federation (1984-1993)

“Fate is a ladder on which you cannot afford to miss a single rung. To skip out on even one step would mean you'll never make it to the top.”

Banana Yoshimoto book Kitchen

Source: Kitchen

Fate

“You don't start at the top if you want to find the story. You start in the middle, because it's the people in the middle who do the actual work in the world.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

People, World

“There’s an undeniable pleasure in stepping into an open-top sports car driven by a beautiful woman. It feels like you’re climbing into a metaphor.”

Hugh Laurie book The Gun Seller

Source: The Gun Seller (1996)

Pleasure, Beauty, Cars, Feeling

“I do not know anyone who has gotten to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It will not always get you to the top, but it will get you pretty near.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

“What did he say?" Hazel asked.
"With the cussing removed? He said he can get us to the top," Percy replied.”

Rick Riordan book The Son of Neptune

Source: The Son of Neptune

“…You don’t want the best of times to be just one thing, forever. You have to have a lot of bests of times, each one topping the last. You know?”

Sarah Dessen book Along for the Ride

Source: Along for the Ride

Time

“I determine to render more and better service, each day, than I am being paid to render. Those that reach the top are the ones who are not content with doing only what is required of them.”

Og Mandino book The Greatest Salesman in the World

Source: The Greatest Salesman in the World

“Books wrote our life story, and as they accumulated on our shelves (and on our windowsills, and underneath our sofa, and on top of our refrigerator), they became chapters in it themselves.”

Anne Fadiman (1953) American essayist, journalist and magazine editor

Source: Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader

Life, Books

“The key to a good life is this: If you're not going to talk about something during the last hour of your life, then don't make it a top priority during your lifetime.”

Richard Carlson (1961–2006) Author, psychotherapist and motivational speaker

Life

“I blame my mother for my poor sex life. All she told me was 'the man goes on top and the woman underneath.' For three years my husband and I slept in bunk beds.”

Joan Rivers (1933–2014) American comedian, actress, and television host

Life, Sex

“If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read "President Can't Swim.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

Water, Reading

“This is the trouble with all happiness -all of it is built on top of something men want.”

Rick Riordan book The Sea of Monsters

Source: The Sea of Monsters

Men, Happiness

“Life is a slope. As long as you're going up you're always looking towards the top and you feel happy, but when you reach it, suddenly you can see the road going downhill and death at the end of it all. It's slow going up and quick going down.”

Guy De Maupassant Bel-Ami

Source: Bel-Ami

Life, Death, Feeling, Happiness

“Piper had a new entry in her top-ten list of.
Fighting Shrimpzilla with a dagger and a pretty voice? Not so effective.”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

Fight

“I rode out of the stables on top of an eight-foot-tall donkey that looked like she had robbed a Holstein cow and was now wearing the stolen clothes.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Breaks

Clothes

“A lion chased me up a tree, and I greatly enjoyed the view from the top.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Tree

“All this new stuff goes on top
turn it over, turn it over
wait and water down
from the dark bottom
turn it inside out
let it spread through
Sift down even.
Watch it sprout.

A mind like compost.”

Gary Snyder (1930) American poet

Water, Waiting

“The secret of being a top-notch con man is being able to know what the mark wants, and how to make him think he's getting it.”

Ken Kesey book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Source: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Secret, Thinking

“Society is like a stew. If you don't stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

“Inigo Montoya: He's right on top of us. I wonder if he is using the same wind we are using.”

William Goldman book The Princess Bride

Source: The Princess Bride

“Their friendship was like a wilted bunch of flowers that she insisted on topping up with water. Why not let it die instead?”

David Nicholls book One Day

Source: One Day

Friendship, Flowers, Water

“Absoballylutely top hole, wot. A and B the C of D I'd say… Above and Beyond the Call of Duty.”

Brian Jacques (1939–2011) British fiction writer known for Redwall animal fantasy novels

Source: Taggerung

“A ruby-encrusted orb popped its top and helicopter blades unfolded. Leo was glad Buford the table wasn't here-he would've fallen in love.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Love

“Asking an eight-year-old girl if something is a little over-the-top is like asking a Texan if there are too many jalapenos in the salsa. The answer is always no." -Liberty Jones”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Sugar Daddy

Girl

“The only Zen you find on tops of mountains is the Zen you bring there.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 20
Context: Zen is the "spirit of the valley." The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.

Mountain

“You do not win by struggling to the top of a caste system, you win by refusing to be trapped within one at all.”

Naomi Wolf book The Beauty Myth

Source: The Beauty Myth (1991), Chapter 8 : 'Beyond the Beauty Myth', p. 290

“Or you might shout at the top of your lungs or whisper into your sleeve, "I hate you, God." That is a prayer too, because it is real, it is truth, and maybe it is the first sincere thought you've had in months.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers

God, Hate, Truth, Sincerity

“I live on the Jellicoe Road. Where trees make canopies over-head and where you can sit at the top of them and see forever.”

Melina Marchetta book On the Jellicoe Road

Source: On the Jellicoe Road

Tree

“to be once defeated is to find cause for an everlasting struggle to reach the top.”

Marcus Garvey (1887–1940) Jamaica-born British political activist, Pan-Africanist, orator, and entrepreneur

Source: Selected Writings and Speeches of Marcus Garvey

“Stop running, you fools!" Kronos yelled. "Stand and ACKK!"
That last part was because a panicked Hyperborean giant stumbled backwards and sat on top of him. The lord of time disappeared under a giant blue butt.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Fools, Time, Parting

“Just my luck, on top of everything else I had to take baboon medicine.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

“… she studied his clothes, his top hat. “And you’ve just come from Parliament? How are you finding that?”

“It’s much like piracy. You tell your enemies that if they don’t fall in line, you’ll leave them to die.”

Meljean Brook (1977)

Source: The Iron Duke

Study, Clothes

“Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all Aristotle in his head.”

Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet

Source: Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“Those touchy mediocrities who sit trembling lest someone's work prove greater than their own - they have no inkling of the loneliness that comes when you reach the top. The loneliness for an equal - for a mind to respect and an achievement to admire.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

Loneliness

“Boo, Forever

Spinning like a ghost
on the bottom of a
top,
I'm haunted by all
the space that I
will live without
you.”

Richard Brautigan (1935–1984) American novelist, poet, and short story writer

Source: The Pill vs. the Springhill Mine Disaster

“It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Source: Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the '80's

Law, Food, Sea

“The great corporation which employed you lied to you, and lied to the whole country—from top to bottom it was nothing but one gigantic lie.”

Upton Sinclair book The Jungle

Source: The Jungle

Lie, Country

“I've told you before,” he said huskily. “I'll take you however I can get you.”
“Whatever. Don't think I don't know you're topping from the bottom.”
His mouth curved with unapologetic amusement.”

Sylvia Day book Bared to You

Source: Bared to You

Thinking

“I really can't believe what a state the Pyramids are in. I thought they had flat rendered sides, but when you get up close, you see how they are just giant boulders balanced on top of each other, like a massive game of Jenga that has got out of hand.”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

Source: An Idiot Abroad: The Travel Diaries of Karl Pilkington

Game

“I'd scale that monster sycamore if I could. Right to the top. And I'd yell her name across the rooftops for the whole world to hear.

-Bryce”

Wendelin Van Draanen Flipped

Source: Flipped

World

“Silence, and then Eve said, "Okay, that was extra creepy, with whipped creepy topping. And this is me, changing my mind.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Lord of Misrule

Silence, Change

“Because the moment you stop doing the very things that got you to the top of the mountain is the very moment you begin the slid down to the valley.”

Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer

Mountain

“Sasori, your strength came because of your soul, not in spite of it… You were supposed to be a a top-class ninja puppeteer, not a worthless nobody who lets someone else pull the strings.
- Kankurou (Naruto Ch 518)”

Masashi Kishimoto book Naruto

Soul

“Brightness… I believe you stray into sarcasm."

"Funny. I thought I'd run straight into it, screaming at the top of my lungs.”

Brandon Sanderson book The Way of Kings

Source: The Way of Kings

“Death didn't bother me much. Strong Christian and all that. Method of death did. Being eaten alive. One of my top three ways not to go out.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book The Laughing Corpse

Source: The Laughing Corpse

Death, Way, Strong

“You won't find reasonable men on the tops of tall mountains.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Men, Mountain

“Then I turned the page and at the top it said THINGS I MISS ABOUT M and there was a list of 15 things, and the first was THE WAY HE HOLDS THINGS. I did not understand how you can miss the way somebody holds things.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Way, Understanding

“the loss pressed down on her chest and came up into her throat. it was a fine cry -- loud and long -- but it had no bottom and no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.”

Toni Morrison book Sula

Source: Sula

Loss, Cry

“This is our world, although the people who drew this map decided to put their own land on top of ours. There is no top or bottom, you see.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie book Half of a Yellow Sun

Source: Half of a Yellow Sun

People, World

“At the top of the mountain we are all snow leopards.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Source: Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century

Mountain

“Years ago, I tried to top everybody, but I don't anymore. I realized it was killing conversation. When you're always trying for a topper you aren't really listening. It ruins communication.”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

As quoted in What Color is Your Paradigm: Thinking for Shaping Life and Results (2003) by Howard Edson, p. 184
Source: The Essential Groucho: Writings by, for, and about Groucho Marx

Communication

“If we recognize our talents and use them appropriately, and choose a field that uses those talents, we will rise to the top of our field.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

“I rolled my eyes so far into the top of my head I almost fell over backward.”

Janet Evanovich Three to Get Deadly

Source: Three to Get Deadly

“I'm the top of the food chain and well… you're the food.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon book Dance with the Devil

Source: Dance with the Devil

Food

“What we don't let out traps us. We think, "No one else feels this way, I must be crazy." So we don't say anything. And we become enveloped by a deep loneliness, not knowing where our feelings come from or what to do with them. "Why do I feel this way? Last week, I was on top of the world and now my feelings don't make sense." Voicing it, getting it out and letting it other people hear it, helps to dissipate it. The fears and self-criticisms begin to leak. And we begin to heal.”

Sabrina Ward Harrison (1975) Canadian writer

Quoted by Katherine Martin in Women of Courage: Inspiring Stories from the Women Who Lived Them, p. 268 (1999)

People, World, Fear, Way

“Kilimanjaro is a pretty tricky climb you know, most of it's up until you reach the very very top, and then it tends to slope away rather sharply.”

Graham Chapman (1941–1989) English comedian, writer and actor

“Rose,” he said, forcibly trying to keep a serious tone, “I can think of many words to describe you, sexy and hot being at the top of the list. You know what’s not on the list? Sane.”

Richelle Mead book Spirit Bound

Source: Spirit Bound

Thinking

“Buffy's high school was built on top of a vortex of evil, the Hellmouth. And whose wasn't?”

Sarah Vowell book The Partly Cloudy Patriot

Source: The Partly Cloudy Patriot (2003)

School, Evil

“It was a lame excuse, and I knew that wasn't the reason he was canceling. If he wanted to avoid me, I would have preferred he made up something about how he and the other guardians had to up Moroi security or practice top-secret ninja moves.”

Richelle Mead book Frostbite

Source: Frostbite

Secret

“Ooh. Top secret angel business, huh? What’re you going to do? Dance on a pinhead? Lobby for National Cute Puppy Day?”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Succubus Dreams

Secret, Angels, Business, Dance

“I'm brilliant as well as skilled," he said modestly. "It's a great burden, all of that on top of my angelic good looks. But I try to soldier on as best I can.”

Jim Butcher Dead Beat

Source: Dead Beat

Angels

“He showed the words “chocolate cake” to a group of Americans and recorded their word associations. “Guilt” was the top response. If that strikes you as unexceptional, consider the response of French eaters to the same prompt: “celebration.”

Michael Pollan (1955) American author, journalist, activist, and professor of journalism

Source: In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

“What do you want, Acheron? (Artemis)
You know what I want. After all I’m the top of the Food Chain and you…you’re the Food. (Acheron)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon book Dance with the Devil

Source: Dance with the Devil

Food

“… you expect me to fall on my back with my legs spread."
"Not necessarily…. You can fall on your hands and knees if you prefer. Or against the wall. Or on the kitchen counter. I suppose I might let you be on top, if you make it worth my while.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Strikes

“It's like looking at all the students and wondering who's had their heart broken that day, and how they are able to cope with having three quizzes and a book report on top of that.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Books, Heart

“There are a few absolute no-brainer rules in my world. Real close to the top of this list is: if an Unseelie prince runs from it, I'm going to run from it, too. [said Dani]”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Iced

World

“Let me get this straight. The future of our relationship hinged on advice from a fifteen-year-old girl, a probably untrue story from a one-eyed Chihuahua trainer, and me unromantically - yet skillfully - kissing you on top of silverware and china?”

Richelle Mead book The Indigo Spell

Variant: The future of our relationship hinged on advice from a fifteen-year old girl, a probably untrue story from a one-eyed Chihuahua trainer, and me unromantically – yet skillfully – kissing you on top of silverware and china?
Source: The Indigo Spell

Girl, Kiss, Future

“Hazel screamed at the top of her lungs, but it was a scream of delight. For the first time in her life-in her two lives-she felt absolutely unstoppable.”

Rick Riordan book The Son of Neptune

Source: The Son of Neptune

Life, Time