"Brink" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sabre-toothed felis. Its thick skin served as an impervious shield, protecting it from the most powerful blows of the fiercest animals. It is quite probable that packs of hyenas and wolves learned to take advantage of precipices, and that they frightened the rhinoceros over the brink, thus disabling him so that ...
— The Tree-Dwellers • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... remonstrance from the guide, he shot the canoe ahead, gave vent to another reckless shout, and flew, rather than glided, down the stream. On seeing this, the guide held back, so as to give him sufficient time to take the plunge ere he followed. A few strokes brought Charley's canoe to the brink of the fall, and Harry was just in the act of raising himself in the bow to observe the position of the rocks, when a shout was heard on the bank close beside them. Looking up they beheld an Indian emerge from the forest, fit an arrow to his bow, ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... the placing of his palace at Greenwich, which I would have had built between the river and the Queene's house, so as a large cutt should have let in ye Thames like a bay; but Sir John was for setting it in piles at the very brink of the water, which I did not assent to and so came away, knowing Sir John to be a better poet than architect, tho' he had Mr. Webb (Inigo ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... hand, he led him with caution to the brink of the Lynn; and then, folding him in his arms, dashed with him through the tumbling water into the cavern he had chosen for his asylum. Halbert sunk against the rocky side, and putting forth his hand to catch some of the water as it fell, drew a few drops to his ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... the same as Timothy," she'd give out, and I to stoop my shoulders the time the sun would prey upon my head. "He that is as straight and as clean as a green rush on the brink of the bog." ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory
... to the last; with me, Miss Wharton, America and her liberties were my earliest passion, and—" Again she paused, and Frances thought it was the struggle of death that followed; but reviving, she proceeded, "Why should I hesitate, on the brink of the grave! Dunwoodie was my next and my last. But," burying her face in her hands, "it was a love ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... one of those calendars with whom Mr. Galland has made us acquainted in his elegant tales. These gentlemen, you will remember, were for ever falling in with extraordinary incidents; and I was myself upon the brink of one so astonishing that I protest I cannot explain it ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thunders, here and there a philosopher proses against the money struggle. But they might as well whisper at the brink of Niagara. And often the preacher changes his thundering when a RICH church calls him, often the philosopher grasps the first chance to forget ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... hears, Which suddenly along the forest spread; Whereat from out his quiver he prepares An arrow for his bow, and lifts his head; And, lo! a monstrous herd of swine appears, And onward rushes with tempestuous tread, And to the fountain's brink precisely pours, So that the giant's join'd by all the boars. Morgante ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... I am at the brink of the last page, and I have said nothing of the Apollo, the Invalides, or Les Sourds et Muets. What shall I do? I cannot speak of everything at once, and when I speak to you so many ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... death sets not free, The hurt, misrepresented names, who come At each year's brink, and cry to History To do them justice, or ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... and gone, the graceless Girl! And robbed my failing years; My blood before was thin and cold But now 't is turned to tears;— My shadow falls upon my grave, So near the brink I stand, She might have stayed a little yet, And led me by ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... sun begins to sink, And soon is on the very brink Of setting in the quiet sea; The ploughing horses leave the lea, The weary workman homeward goes Thinking of supper and repose; And darkness closes o'er the scene, Where late the murderous sport had been: The moon, with pale and pitying looks, Shines on the slaughter-field of rooks: The ...
— CAW! CAW! - The Chronicle of Crows, A Tale of the Spring-time • RM
... on the brink of the giant hollow and clapped their hands for the very joy of seeing it all; and there—a little man stepped up to them and doffed his cap. The queen wanted them—she was waiting for them by the throne that very minute; ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... together, the injured lying moaning and ghastly beneath the overhanging shelf of rock, and the girl, who possessed all the patient stoicism of frontier training, resting in silence, her widely opened eyes on those far-off stars peeping above the brink of the chasm, her head ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... maternal tradition and kept on bringing himself up like a toy Pom. He did not know what else to do. Then, when he was five-and-twenty, he found himself at the edge of the world gazing in timorous starkness down into the abyss of the Great War. Something kicked him over the brink and sent him sprawling ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... Lord George was wedded to the country. They had on the whole behaved well to each other in the matter. The husband, though he feared that his wife was surrounded by dangers, and was well aware that he himself was dallying on the brink of a terrible pitfall, would not urge a retreat before the time that had been named. And she, though she had ever before her eyes the fear of the dullness of Cross Hall, would not ask to have the time postponed. It was now ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... a grey-haired man, trembling upon the brink of eternity, there came a vision in the solemn hours of night, and the form of Amy, wan as some marble statue, breathed again in his ear the last words she ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... walked with slow deliberation down to the river's brink. The trapped prisoner had shied halfway around, stretching out his arms to find a firmer grip on some rock large and heavy enough to anchor him. After his first startled cry he had made no sound, but now, as he sighted Rynch, his eyes widened ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... the brink of hating myself. So much thoughtlessness of others; such callousness to sorrows not my own: my hard heart has often reproached thee for sparing a sigh or a wish from me; that every gloom has not been dispelled ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... rule concerning the mote in thy neighbor's eye and the beam in thine own eve. Your worst pessimist is, after all, an optimist with regard to himself. We are quick to recognize the gravity of ill health in somebody else, yet we ourselves may be on the very brink of death without realizing it. It is a special phase of selfishness. We are loath to connect the idea of a catastrophe with our own person. Max, who saw a mote in the eye of everybody else's wife, failed to perceive the beam in the eye of ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... is a wide diversity in social situations, from rock-ribbed stability, to entire communities teetering on the brink or plunging over the brink into the maelstrom of revolution. Such diverse situations have existed again and again ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... one, struck a congenial chord in the father's heart. It connected him with her by a mute and unceasing sympathy. Templeton had felt so deeply the alarm and pain of illicit love, he had been (as he profanely believed) saved from the brink of public shame by so signal an interference of grace, that he resolved no more to hazard his good name and his peace of mind upon such perilous rocks. The dearest desire at his heart was to have his daughter under ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book X • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the brink on which he had wavered. A sudden mad rush—what else remained? What else? For an instant he had lost his head—one of the several times in his whole life. Just for an instant he had forgotten his phenomenal patience under ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore
... where mighty things are resolving, to lonely groves; to thy own abodes where thou dwell'st; gay and pleas'd among the rural swains in shady homely cottages; thou hast brought me to a grove of flowers, to the brink of purling streams, where thou hast laid me down to contemplate on Sylvia, to think my tedious hours away in the softest imagination a soul inspir'd by love can conceive, to increase my passion by every thing I behold; ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... that the New China ought to be judged, their opinion is the one which will finally be accepted as authoritative. The situation is admittedly dangerous; and it is imperative that a speedy remedy be sought; for the heirs and assigns of an estate which has been mismanaged to the brink of bankruptcy must secure at all costs that no public receivership ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... Run, run! Oh, stay her! fly; Bring her back hither! [Exit PYLADES. I shudder! She is still His mother, and he must have pity on her. Yet only now she saw her children stand Upon the brink of an ignoble death; And was her sorrow and her daring then As great as they are now for him? At last The day so long desired has come; at last, Tyrant, thou diest; and once more I hear The palace all resound ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... the brink of the trench; behind him came Eugene. Both drew their swords, and, brandishing them above their heads, Max Emmanuel called out in clear, distinct, and ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... the acknowledged "freaks" at the brink of insanity, who are but the extreme form of the unstable, and who, after having wasted haphazard much useless imagination, end in an insane asylum or ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... they were even diaries of travel. Since the hero strayed from place to place, it did not seem unreasonable that the story should stray from subject to subject. This is true of the bulk of the novels up to and including David Copperfield, up to the very brink or threshold of Bleak House. Mr. Pickwick wanders about on the white English roads, always looking for antiquities and always finding novelties. Poor Oliver Twist wanders along the same white roads to seek his ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... destination; he knew not that his sister had left England, and after writing again and again, and receiving no reply, he ceased altogether from writing. During the first years of his sojourn in California, he was unfortunate, and was several times brought to the brink of the grave by sickness. After a time fortune smiled upon his efforts, till he at length grew immensely rich, and finally left the burning skies of California to return to England. He landed at New York and intended, after visiting ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... his men true, Came linking up the brink, man; The Hogan Dutch they feared such, They bred a horrid stink then. The true Maclean and his fierce men Came in amang them a', man; Nane durst withstand his heavy hand. All fled and ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... alternately; at one time almost imbecile, at others, talking and planning as if he were in the vigour of his youth. O what a curse it must be—that love of money! I believe—I'm shocked to say so, Philip,—that that poor old man, now on the brink of a grave into which he can take nothing, would sacrifice your life and mine to have possession of those guilders, the whole of which I would barter ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... "Good-bye for ever" was written on each face and echoed in each heart. Words could not soothe that suffering which turned this common sorrow into an individual torture, which each must bear unaided and alone; and so they stood silent and with outward calm, knowing that on that brink of woe the quiver of an eye might overthrow their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... the accession of George III, the state of Ireland was almost as miserable as before. Trade and manufactures being nearly crushed out, want of employment brought the people in the towns to the brink of starvation. In the country, although the middle classes were on the whole becoming more prosperous, the condition of the labourers and cottiers was wretched in the extreme. It is not to be wondered at therefore ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... decked with figures and where the mind sees phantoms of accumulated and accumulating work, waiting, waiting like Fate. Stories have been told of criminals carrying the body of a victim around on their backs until they stood on the brink of insanity. Hundreds of bankboys know what it is to feel the weight of corpse-like figures on their backs. One cannot get away from the horrible burden, it clings until the heart is sick and the stomach nauseated. And these ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... the mask enhanced them. What mystery lay behind Manuela's sidelong eyes? What sin or suffering? What knowledge, how gained, justified Esteban's wizened saws? These two were wise before their time; when they ought to have been flirting on the brink of life, here they were, breasting the great flood, familiar with death, ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... midnight the bearers swung sharply at the brink of the cliff and plunged down the steep narrow road cut along its face. Brinnaria felt the dampness of the lake ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... was no easy matter. They were in utter darkness, and (as they had already found by groping about) on the brink of a chasm of unknown depth. The ledge upon which they had been cast was evidently very narrow, and almost as slippery as ice; and Jack, being encumbered with the loaf, and Pierre badly bruised against the rocks, they were not in ...
— Harper's Young People, February 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... concluded, as they four stood at the river's brink, looking out at the long line of the scows swinging in the rapid current of the Athabasca, "that's the first lesson. What do you think of our boat, the ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough
... that stood on the bank of the river, waiting for the water to run by, that he might cross over dryshod!'' And then he continues, with solemn emphasis and pity: 'All I have to say is this, that if a nation, trembling on the brink of anarchy and ruin, is so dead that it will not hear a plea to redress wrongs which the whole people admit call for reform, God in mercy pity ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... pitying derision as he remembered his recklessness. He had not been in love with life. In his gloomy moods he had often thought life was hardly worth the living. What sickly sentiment! He had been on the brink of the grave, but he had been snatched back from the dark river of Death. It needed but this to show him the joy of breathing, the glory of loving, the sweetness of living. He resolved that for him ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... little," said Tom, sharply, as he set his teeth; for he knew that they were on the brink of a hand-to-hand encounter. ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... was perilous sport for Sharon Whipple. Day after day, looking into the whirlpool, he was—in a moment of madness—himself to leap over the brink. On an afternoon had come his brother Gideon and Rapp, Senior, elated pupils of John McTavish, to play sportingly for half a ball a hole. They ignored certain preliminary and all-too-pointed comments of the watcher. They strode gallantly ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... sole consideration was for his friend Sah-luma, whom he entwined with one arm as he sprang down from the position they had hitherto occupied on the brink of the fountain, and made straight for the nearest of the six broad avenues that opened directly into the Square. Sah-luma looked pale, but was apparently unafraid,—he said nothing, and passively allowed himself to be piloted by Theos through the madly raging multitude, which, oddly ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... began for Undine. The Princess, chained her mother's side, and frankly restive under her filial duty, clung to her new acquaintance with a persistence too flattering to be analyzed. "My dear, I was on the brink of suicide when I saw your name in the visitors' list," she explained; and Undine felt like answering that she had nearly reached the same pass when the Princess's thin little hand had been held out to her. For the moment she ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... the pears, the four bottles of claret; and her fury broke forth like a cord that is overstrained, and she was on the verge of tears. She made terrible efforts at self-control, drew herself up, swallowed the sobs which choked her; but the tears rose nevertheless, shone at the brink of her eyelids, and soon two heavy drops coursed slowly down her cheeks. Others followed more quickly, like water filtering from a rock, and fell, one after another, on her rounded bosom. She sat upright, with a fixed expression, her face pale and ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... sank with a certain foreboding of evil. He found himself on the brink of an abyss, and felt the ground crumbling beneath him. First came a mad impulse to fly, to escape and hide himself; and he had almost carried it out. His hand was on the door, but he hesitated, turned back, and walked the ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... blessing of chance, Lucien, standing on the brink of the precipice over which he was destined to fall, heard warnings on all sides. D'Arthez had set him on the right road, had shown him the noble method of work, and aroused in him the spirit before which all obstacles disappear. ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... kneeling upon the brink of the spring, her sleeve pushed up to her shoulder, her hand and arm in the water, dipping for the fragment ...
— Lodusky • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... details came to view, and accustomed as he was to marvels of pageantry, the Prince exclaimed: "These are not men, but devils fleeing from the wrath of God!" and involuntarily he went nearer, down to the brink of the height. It seemed the land was being inundated with camels; not the patient brutes we are used to thinking of by that name, with which domestication means ill-treatment and suffering—the slow-going burden-bearers, always appealing ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... what is given. "Crossing a bare common," says Emerson, "in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear." ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... change spread to himself. His cheeks took on a ruddier hue, the sparkle of his black eyes mellowed into a calm and steady radiance. There was no trace of feverish elation which, in solitude, recoiled to the brink of despair. He sang to himself evenings in his dormitory, clearly and with joy. His step was as elastic as that of any school-boy. I often thought upon this change, and meditated how beautiful an illustration of confession's blessings it furnished. Frequently we were ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... Livingston strove to protect their monopoly, and the two States were brought to the brink of war. In the end the courts settled the difficulty by establishing the exclusive control of navigable waters by ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... her eyes as if on the brink of an abyss. In the long silence that followed was heard all over the park the falling of the leaves in the breeze, some still heavy with sap, dropping in bunches from bough to bough, others stealing down with a scarcely audible sound, like the rustling of a dress. Round the little hut, under ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... strange circumstances, I was destined to play my part, amid stirring scenes of Indian war, and in surroundings that would test my courage and manhood to the utter-most; yet, although I heard it not, the hour had already struck, and I stood on the brink of a tragedy beyond ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... as a man cultivates independence and autocratic ideas, just so in proportion is he nearing the brink over which many have fallen to destruction. When an independent man has a fall, his enemies glory and loud are the shouts that arise from them, and if we listen closely we will hear the multitude say: "Serves ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... she drew her comfort and her vital strength from the rites of the same Church. But, next after these spiritual advantages, she owed most to the advantages of her situation. The fountain of Domremy was on the brink of a boundless forest; and it was haunted to that degree by fairies that the parish priest (cure) was obliged to read mass there once a year, in order to keep them in any decent bounds. Fairies are important, even in a statistical view: certain weeds ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... of incantation resorted to to reclaim children from the Fairies, which was as follows:—The mother who had lost her child was to carry the changeling to a river, but she was to be accompanied by a conjuror, who was to take a prominent part in the ceremony. When at the river's brink the ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... on the brink of a precipice. That suspicion, that fear, not to be banished by action, added to the curiosity, as about an unknown ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... the brink of a five hundred-foot cliff, a great glistening white plain stretched into the distance. I seemed to see where it ended in a murky blur. And far higher than our own hilltop level a horizontal streak marked the rope railing ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... pausing on the brink, "that it flows towards the sea in the direction we have come from. Now step into the water and ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... Ray, snatched back again, and bearing her to safety. Ray has already scrambled from the shallow breach where his brother alone found bottom; waiting hands assist Beltran; but as she lingers that moment shivering on the brink, blindly remembering the double movement of that arm beneath the ice, she silently asks, with a thrill, if he suffered Ray to save himself because he was a boy, and could, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... the brink of the grave, I could not but feel a soothing comfort and hope under our affliction, so beautifully held out to us by the spirit of "the service of the dead;" and I even entertained an affection for the clergyman who ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... taken her goods to a poor market. Norris Vine is on the brink of ruin. If I turn the screw to-morrow, he must ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... which the excavations were propped up, in the year 1678 the surface of the ground fell in, forming a vast pit of above 180 feet in depth, 1200 feet long, and 600 feet broad, with precipitous and sometimes overhanging walls, so that the spectator appears to be standing on the brink of an enormous crater. The bottom is filled with masses of rubbish and the remnants of ancient shafts, and thick beams of wood are seen protruding in all directions. A broad and convenient wooden staircase has, however, ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston
... United States would never go to war with Germany, "because the German-Americans would revolt." That was one of Zimmermann's hobbies. Zimmermann told other American officials and foreign correspondents that President Wilson would not be able to bring the United States to the brink of war, because the "German-Americans were ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... nations with wonderful ease; nor was there any particular necessity for it if society at large was reconstructed on the new basis. The object of Jesus was to reconstruct the kingdom of heaven in Israel, and he was crucified. All Israel had the same object in view, and stood at the brink of dissolution. If the basis and principles of the kingdom of heaven became the postulate of society at large, Jesus is resurrected in the world, and Israel is ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... loved children in a kindly, detached way, but she had never appropriated them. But now she could not forget the feeling of that small, downy head that for a day or so nestled on her breast while the young mother's feet all but slipped over the brink. She remembered the strange look in the child's deep eyes the night it died. The lonely, aged look that, in passing, seemed trying to fix one familiar object. And when the dim light went out in the little face and only a dead baby lay in her arms, maternity ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... the scene painter and dramatist which tries to depict a real battlefield. For battlefield I felt this was, and my overstrained nerves no longer holding my imagination in check, I could already see human forms writhing in agony, and hear the moaning of souls on the brink of Eternity. As though to vivify this hallucination, the dying moon suddenly plunged behind a cloud, lighting the landscape but by strange lugubrious streaks, and in the distance behind us a long low rumble warned me that my dream might soon be a ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... striven, And all earth's pleasures overleaps. He shall through life's wild scenes be driven, And through its flat unmeaningness, I'll make him writhe and stare and stiffen, And midst all sensual excess, His fevered lips, with thirst all parched and riven, Insatiably shall haunt refreshment's brink; And had he not, himself, his soul to Satan given, Still must he ...
— Faust • Goethe
... fires my brain, Caught from Old England's fine time-hallowed drink; I snatch the pot again and yet again, And as the foaming fluids shrink and shrink, Fill me once more, I say, up to the brink! This makes strong hearts—strong heads attest its charm— This nerves the might that sleeps in ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... undergrowth teems with darting wings. All the town troops out to see the country in its gala dress. The very poorest have a favorite nook, a recollection of the bygone year to be revived and renewed; a sheltered corner that invited sleep, a glade where the shade was grateful, a spot beside the river's brink where the fish used to bite. Each one says, "Don't you remember?" Each one seeks his nest like a home-coming swallow. Does it still hold together? What havoc has been made by the winter's winds, and the rain, and the frost? Will it welcome us, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Another editor was reading "The Hearer of Truth," and a publisher was hovering on the brink of venturing "The Higher Cannibalism"; and so the two had new hopes to lure them on. When the spring-time had come, they would once more escape from the city, and would put up their tent on the lake-shore! They spent long afternoons picturing just how they would live—what they would eat, and ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... 1454, for it does not read like the work of a very young man. Professor Logeman was, perhaps, influenced in proposing this date by a desire to get in front of the critics of English literature (including ten Brink), who have assigned the English play to the reign of Edward IV., i.e. not later than 1483. As in the Miracle Plays, so in the Moralities, an original purely didactic purpose was gradually influenced by a desire to render the didacticism more palatable to a popular ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... recesses of the heart. And I know also that a passion, dominating or tyrannical, invading the whole man and subjugating all his faculties to its own unique end, may conduct him whom it spurs and drives, into all sorts of adventures, to the brink of unfathomable dangers, to the limits of ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... content. I am happy, Justin. Believe me, I am happy. What has my life been? Dissipated in the pursuit of a phantom." He spoke musingly, critically calm, as one who already upon the brink of dissolution takes already but an impersonal interest in the course he has run ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... strange fascination about these river uplands; no place was so dear to Nan, and yet she often thought with a shudder of the story of those footprints which had sought the river's brink, and then turned back. Perhaps, made pure and strong in a better world, in which some lingering love and faith had given her the true direction at last, where even her love for her child had saved her, the mother had been still taking ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... room whom should Richard meet but Storri. The Russ was on the brink of departure. At that meeting Richard's face clouded. Dorothy was alone with Storri; her mother had been called temporarily from the room. At sight of Dorothy's flower-like hand in Storri's hairy paw, ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... in 1999. Real GDP contracted by more than 6%, with poverty worsening significantly. The banking system also collapsed, and Ecuador defaulted on its external debt later that year. The currency depreciated by some 70% in 1999, and, on the brink of hyperinflation, the MAHAUD government announced it would dollarize the economy. A coup, however, ousted MAHAUD from office in January 2000, and after a short-lived junta failed to garner military support, Vice President Gustavo NOBOA took over ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... down the stairs as far as she dared,—almost to the very brink of the water. There she was near enough to see and hear what was doing. The tree was an apple-tree; and though the ripest apples were gone, a good many were left, which would be a treat when cooked. The boys ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... was. Hung with millions of electric bulbs, crowned and diademed, and laced with jewels of white flame, she signaled to them out of the mystery and immensity of the night. For a moment they were dumb, they stood still, as if they paused on the brink and struggled, protesting against this ravishing of their souls by the Exhibition. Straight in front of them, monstrous yet fragile, its substance withdrawn into the darkness, its form outlined delicately in beads of light, in brilliants, ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... are the heather and the flowers and the birds. There are the folk enjoying themselves upon the golf-links and the laborers yonder cutting the corn. You tell us that they and we may be upon the very brink of destruction—that this sunlit day may be that day of doom which the human race has so long awaited. So far as we know, you found this tremendous judgment upon what? Upon some abnormal lines in a spectrum—upon rumours from Sumatra—upon some curious personal excitement which we have ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... close to the house, but, considering that a bold effort was the only one likely to succeed, he walked out straight to the moat, hesitated a moment as to whether he should leap in and swim or wade across, and ended by walking sharply along its brink till it turned off at right angles, and he now saw a sandstone bridge facing the entry of a large, old-fashioned hall, that had evidently gone to ruin, and which, from the outside aspect, seemed to be uninhabited, ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... twelve years I have lived in silence; and now, as I wait at the brink of the grave for the stroke that will cast me into it, I will candidly own to you that this silence is beginning to weigh heavily upon me. I have borne my sorrows alone for twelve years; I have had none of the comfort that friendship gives ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... light and heard the baying of dogs. They had found an Indian village, and here they rested well, and had plenty of food and drink. Upon this new river they were charmed to see the deer come feeding down to the water's brink, and Raleigh describes the scene as though it reminded him of his own park at Sherborne. They were alarmed at the crowds of alligators, and one handsome young negro, who leaped into the river from the galley, was instantly devoured in ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... and the millions advanced, as it were over the brink of Eternity, towards London. But the reinforcements never came. Every transport that steamed out of Bremen, Hamburg, Kiel, Antwerp, Brest or Calais, vanished into the waters; for now the whole squadron of twelve Ithuriels ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... any man at all speak lies at the very brink of death, or hold any secret in his heart? It was at that time he had done with deceit, and he showed where his thought was, and had no word at all for me that had left the whole world for his sake, and that went wearing out my youth, pushing here and there as far as the course of the stars ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... with one of our party to view the cataract by moonlight. I took my favourite seat on the projecting rock, at a little distance from the brink of the fall, and gazed till every sense seemed absorbed in contemplation. Although the shades of night increased the sublimity of the prospect and "deepened the murmur of the falling floods," the moon in placid beauty shed her soft influence upon ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... strong redoubt on the bank of the river, opposite New Orleans, around which was a fosse twenty-five feet in width, the earth from which was thrown up to form a steep glacis, from the summit of the wall serving as a parapet to the brink of the fosse. Here a battery of two twenty-four pounders commanded at once the road and the ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith
... ditch. To the very edge the horse galloped,—too fast, indeed, if he meant to take the bank as Chiltern's horse had done,—and then stopping himself so suddenly that he must have shaken every joint in his body, he planted his fore feet on the very brink, and there he stood, with his head down, quivering in every muscle. Phineas Finn, following naturally the momentum which had been given to him, went over the brute's neck head-foremost into the ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... book of yours WE think You've double damned yourself to scorn; We warned you whilst yet on the brink 485 You stood. From your black name will shrink The ...
— Peter Bell the Third • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... are still there expiating their ghostly pranks. An old farmer was so troublesome to his survivors as to require seven clergymen to secure him. By their means, however, he was transformed into a colt; and a servant boy was directed to take him to Cranmere Pool. On arriving at the brink of the pool, he was to take off the halter, and return instantly without looking round. Curiosity proving too powerful, he turned his head to see what was going on, when he beheld the colt plunge into the lake in the form of a ball of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 82, May 24, 1851 • Various
... this aged pilgrim, who for more than eighty years had trod the uneven and often toilsome journey of life, would soon be forever at rest. The Widow Green remarked to my aunt one day in a mysterious whisper, "that she was sure grandma was drawing near the brink of the dark river, and the bright expression of her countenance was but a reflection of the happiness in store for her on the other side." Strong and self-reliant as was my aunt, the death of her mother was something ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... standing on the brink of the grave. I have now grasped your hand. I have clasped it, as people at prayer are wont to clasp their hands. Can you let me go down to the grave without teaching me one prayer. This night the murderer's knife has pierced my heart to liberate yours. Does not my heart deserve the accomplishment ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... thorough reconstruction of our whole social organism will suffice. Palliative philanthropy is, as the author says, "like standing upon the brink of the pit of hell and throwing snow balls ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... with eager hands and eyes, The beautiful blue damsel-flies That fluttered round the jasmine stems, 70 Like-winged flowers or flying gems: And, near the boy, who, tired with play, Now nestling 'mid the roses lay, She saw a wearied man dismount From his hot steed, and on the brink 75 Of a small imaret's rustic fount Impatient fling him down to drink. Then swift his haggard brow he turned To the fair child, who fearless sat, Though never yet hath daybeam burned 80 Upon a brow more ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... are forever thinking you are on the brink of nothingness, when the true horizon-line is too far for you ever to reach in your ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... dazzled eyes; the sun itself seemed to join in the dance, while the sea burned like a furnace, like all Vesuvius a-light, with flowing lava beneath. The horses broke loose from their stalls in terror—a herd of cattle, panic struck, raced down to the brink of the cliff, and blinded by light, plunged down with frightful yells in the waves below. The time occupied by the apparition of these meteors was comparatively short; suddenly the three mock suns united in one, and plunged into the sea. A few seconds afterwards, ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... decided that Cora should not attend that ball, or any other place of amusement, for a long time. And he was just on the brink of discovering the impertinent interference of Fate in human affairs, and especially ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... somebody else, Mary, whom you've kept on tenter-hooks ever so long? Are you sure he is not walking up and down under the limes on the brink of despair?' ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as soon as they were alone, rising up from her chair and coming over toward him tenderly, "I was horribly afraid you were going to break out before those two young men on the cliff to-day. I saw you were just on the very brink of it. But you resisted bravely. Thank you so much for that. You're a dear good fellow. I was so pleased with you and so proud ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... the earth, our planet was forced out of its orbit, according to Worlds in Collision. For a time, the world was on the brink of destruction. Quoting many authentic ancient records, including the Quich manuscript of the Mayas, the Ipuwer papyrus of the Egyptians, and the Visiddhi-Magga of the Buddhists, Dr. Velikovsky describes the cataclysm that took place. "The ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... present poverty and her own filial piety: it was, that her salary should be paid weekly—she would not accept it in advance—avowedly for her parent's necessities, who, poor exile! and tears stood in Eugenie's dark lustrous eyes as she spoke, was ever trembling on the brink of the grave from an affection of the heart with which he had been long afflicted. Mademoiselle de Tourville, I should state, spoke English exceedingly well as far as the rules of syntax and the meanings of words went, and with an accent ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... and extravagant; but, to balance that, every nation has some pleasure in being heartily abused by one of its own number; and the English nation has always had a special delight in being alarmed, and in being clearly convinced that it is and ought to be on the brink of ruin. With such advantages in the worthy doctor's favor, he might have kept the field until some newer extravaganza had made his own obsolete, had not one ugly turn in political affairs given so smashing a refutation to his practical conclusions, and called forth so sudden a rebound ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... sunshine as it was reflected off some bright surface, and with the inspiration of the moment I stepped into the opening at my feet and fell noisily through amid a small avalanche of rubble. Picking myself up, I looked out from the darkness, and saw, as I expected, Weems standing at the brink above nervously fingering ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... wrote it would go to Glacier Park. I am not a vindictive woman, but I know one or two places where I would like to place him and make him swallow that orange. I'd like to see him on a horse, on the brink of a canon a mile deep, and have his horse reach over the edge for a stray plant or two, or standing in a cloud up to his waist, so that, as Aggie so plaintively observed, "The lower half of one is in a snowstorm while the ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... interest me," said the Prince; "the more so as I gather that here in Gruenewald we are on the brink of revolution. Pray, since these have been your special studies, would you augur ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... green knoll and descended upon what I may call a very big and flat meadow beside the river. It was here that Eucalyptus stood; and from the knoll, which was really the beginning of the town, I had my first good view of it—one long street of low wooden houses running eastward to the river's brink, where a few decayed mills and wharves straggled to north and south—a T, or headless cross, will give you roughly the shape of the settlement. From the knoll you looked straight along the main street; with a field-gun ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Cortez and his companions for a moment bore back the foe; but, pressed by those behind, they swept aside resistance, and bore back the Spaniards to the edge of the canal. Cortez and his companions plunged in and swam across. Alvarado stood on the brink, hesitating. Unhorsed and defenseless, he could not make his way across the gap, which was now crowded with the canoes of the enemy. He set his strong lance on the bottom of the canal and, using it as a leaping pole, sprang across. ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... had little education, but a knowledge of men and motives that seemed to have come by instinct. Far beyond the common woman was she endowed with intrepid rashness, with a love for the pursuit of adventure to the brink of danger, and with desire for the pleasures of life. Her spirit was one to chafe under any curb; she was Eve after the fall, but before the bitterness of it was felt. She wore life as a ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... two birds with me on coming into the balloon—one of these was now dead, the other appeared stupefied. After having placed it upon the brink of the gondola, I tried to frighten it to make it take to flight. It moved its wings, but did not leave the spot; then I left it to itself, and it fell perpendicularly and with great rapidity. Birds are certainly not able to ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... white flaxen hair, reversing the usual lights and shadows of the human countenance, give so strange and foreign a look to his flat and comic features. This hobgoblin, Jack Rapley by name, is May's great crony; and she stands on the brink of the steep, irregular descent, her black eyes fixed full upon him, as if she intended him the favour of jumping on his head. She does: she is down, and upon him; but Jack Rapley is not easily to be knocked off ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... o'clock of a dark and rainy March evening. "Any statement you would like to make?" One stands upon the brink of the living world, facing the darkness and silence, and hears ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... of very gradual downward slope brought us suddenly and unexpectedly to the brink of a magnificent canyon, the densely populated valley of Cotahuasi. The walls of the canyon were covered with innumerable terraces—thousands of them. It seemed at first glance as though every available spot in the canyon had been either terraced or allotted to some compact ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... upon the store, had never frittered his heart away. This woman, strange and unusual as it may seem, was absolutely the first whose glance or voice had ever stirred his blood. His passion for her had grown slowly; for years it had been growing, ever since the grey-eyed girl on the brink of womanhood had conducted him to his castle home. It was no fancy, no light desire to pass with the year which brought it. Owen had little imagination, that soil from which loves spring with the rank swiftness of a tropic bloom to fade at the first ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... Near the brink of the Falls, beneath an aged pine, reclined a well- guarded, sorrowful, but haughty band. Their fine symmetry, noble height, and free carriage, were especially attractive. They were all young warriors, whose white paint presented emblems of peace: their plumes were ...
— Birch Bark Legends of Niagara • Owahyah
... Tondo they have the residence [colegio] of Santa Cruz, lately admitted as such, which is jointly a ministry of Sangleys, mestizos, and natives; the village and ministry of San Miguel, on the river brink; and about one legua above, the residence and novitiate of San Pedro Macati, with a ministry of natives. In the mountains, the village and capital of Antipolo, with the village and ministry of Bosoboso, where the natives of two mountain missions, called ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... better go yourself, if you think water will do him good." I had by this time somewhat recovered my exhausted powers, and, taking the can, I bent my steps as fast as I could to the pit; arriving there, I lay down on the brink, took a long draught, and then plunged my head into the water; after which I filled the can, and bent my way back to the dingle. Before I could reach the path which led down into its depths, I had to pass some ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... dinner-party of thirteen. Where am I going? To that 'Sea of Serenity' which astronomers tell us is located in the left eye of the face known in common parlance as the man in the moon. Where am I going? To Western Ross-shire, to pitch my tent and smoke my cigar in peace, on the brink of that blessed ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... standing, and among them chestnut-trees, which, from their enormous girth and vast apparent age, we may suppose to have survived from the era of the Caesars. The melancholy and sequestered lake of Nemi, deep set in a hollow of the surrounding woods, with the village on its brink, still preserve ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... and forced his way through the shrubbery, it was positively marvelous to see how the foliage turned yellow behind him, as if the autumn had been there, and nowhere else. On reaching the river's brink, he plunged headlong in, without waiting so much as to ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... whispering back from all sides, making Tom shiver; but he recovered himself directly, and taking a piece of greasy newspaper from his pocket he loosely crumpled it together, knelt down close to the brink of the abyss, lit the paper, and then threw it from him to blaze out brightly, and fall down—down rapidly—as it burned lower, and lower, and lower, till at a vast depth it burned out, but without illuminating anything. We saw no reflection from rocky ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... Papa on the brink of—let us say, his twentieth precipice, it was next necessary to stay a few days longer and reconcile him to the hardship of being rescued in spite of himself. You would have been greatly shocked, if you had seen how he suffered. ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... touch, she had enough good sense to know that a mutual confession, that is, taking it for granted Brandon loved her, as she felt almost sure he did, must be avoided at all hazards. It was not to be thought of between people so far apart as they. The brink was a delightful place, full of all the sweet ecstasies and thrilling joys of a seventh heaven, but over the brink—well! there should be no "over," for who was she? And who was he? Those two dreadfully stubborn facts ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... actually lies about the 'object, and is most closely related to it, puts such knowledge within our grasp. Ether- waves and your anger, for example, are things in which my thoughts will never PERCTEPTUALLY terminate, but my concepts of them lead me to their very brink, to the chromatic fringes and to the hurtful words and deeds which ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... in his pocket. The barrow had ceased to trundle. The mourners split and moved to each side of the hole, stepping with care round the graves. The gravediggers bore the coffin and set its nose on the brink, looping the bands ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... quickly, glad to be ahead of Ian with news. Then she found herself confronting an unexpected difficulty. "Mrs. B. M. trying new play small towns; will open Edinburgh in five or six days." With something like a gasp, Aline stopped on the brink of reading the telegram aloud. Who ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... he spoke, the great staghound made a dash at Max, who avoided the risk by leaping sideways, and getting as far as he could from the unprotected brink. ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... strength of certain marked similarities of style and diction to the signed poems of Cynewulf, the earlier editors of the Andreas assigned the poem to him, and were followed by Dietrich, Grein, and Ten Brink. But Fritsche (Anglia II), arguing from other equally marked dissimilarities, denies its Cynewulfian authorship, and is sustained in his position by Sievers, though vigorously opposed by Ramhorst. More recently Trautman (Anglia, Beiblatt VI. 17) reasserts the ...
— Andreas: The Legend of St. Andrew • Unknown
... he said, dropping into the cane-seated chair she had brought out of the cabin and placed between the flat stone at the doorstep and the well-brink, on which the yellow rooster stood spreading his wings. But Aunt Mehitable had returned to the cabin, and when she reappeared she was holding out to him a cracked saucer on which there was a piece of preserved watermelon ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... over the Wabash at Terre Haute, into St. Louis by the Eads bridge, through Kansas City, across the Missouri, along the corn-fields of Kansas, and then on—on—on with the Sante Fe Railway, across vast plains and past the brink of the Grand Canyon, to Pueblo and the lofty city of Denver. Twenty-five hundred miles along a thousand tons of copper wire! From Bunker Hill to Pike's ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... exaggerating her woes, making her feel herself misunderstood, unloved, unwanted ... oh, I don't know what you said, what passed between you, but this I do know. You saw that child shivering on the brink, as it were, of a dreadful precipice, and not only did you refrain from pulling her back from the edge, but I'm horribly afraid that yours was the hand which sought to push ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... could collect my thoughts and analyse my feelings; but when I recalled all my misdeeds—my departure from that path of virtue, so often and so clearly laid down by my affectionate parent—I was overwhelmed with grief, shame, and repentance. I considered how often I had been on the brink of eternity; and had I been cut off in my sins, what would have been my destiny? I started with horror at the dangers I had escaped, and looked forward with gloomy apprehension at those that still awaited me. I sought in vain, among all my actions since I left my mother's care, one single ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... with another—of loving your wife—of contributing with her to your happiness—my imagination made me forget that we are made of clay. Suddenly all these visions were dispelled—the fairy palace was overthrown, and I found myself awake, and on the brink of the abyss—you loved me, and in the moment of that fatal confession, the mask dropped from my soul, and I felt that you had become too dear to me. Be silent still, I implore you. I do not tell you of the emotions, ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... this. The hearts were full to the brink—to speak was to interfere with their consummate joy. The doctor was the only one who made the attempt, and he, after a very ineffectual endeavour to be jocose, held his peace. The Bible was produced. The servants of the house appeared. A chapter was read ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... side were the Southern dash, daring, and vigor; on the other, the Northern firmness and determination. The Federals slowly yielded, but for twelve hours obstinately disputed every inch of the way. At last, pushed to the very brink of the river, Grant massed his artillery, and gathered about it the fragments of regiments for the final stand. The Confederates, to meet them, had to cross a deep ravine, where, struggling through the mud and water, they melted away under the fire of cannon and musketry from above, and the shells ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... out of the spring The little maid Margaret ran; From the stream to the castle's western wing It was but a bowshot span; On the sedgy brink where the osiers cling Lay a dead man, pallid ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... to speak with a gentleman again. I—I had almost begun to believe there were none left in the world. You give me courage to go on, to acknowledge everything. Mr. Craig, I was a soul tottering on the brink when I met you out yonder; a desperate, disheartened girl, tempted to the point of surrender. I had lost hope, pride, all redeeming strength of womanhood. I scarcely cared whether death, or dishonor, claimed me. I do not know what fateful impulse moves me now, but I can look into ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... of this celebrated Captain, on the brink of a war with France, was an admission of the desperate strait to which the English interest had been reduced. And if the end could ever justify the means, Henry V., from his point of view, might have defended ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... changed her soft looks into daggers to stab me with. Her bloom became blight; her lips oozed out poison, and she dabbled in corrupt things. I tracked her footsteps from my sacred couch as they led to the very brink of the grave. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of Hayes' visit the people were in sore straits, and on the brink of actual starvation, for although there were fish and turtle in plenty, they had not the strength to catch them. A few months before, a cyclone had destroyed nearly all the coconut trees, and an epidemic followed it, and carried off ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... suffered for my King, the testimonies of a good conscience were my support and my reward. And may the favours of a grateful monarch enable my Eustace to enjoy those noblest privileges of greatness for which I pined with ineffectual desire! I am now old and helpless, tottering on the brink of eternity, a blank, as far as respects this world. May I then divest my soul of those passions which will unfit it for the abodes of peace! The injuries of Walter De Vallance are not irremediable. Still do I clasp ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... things that aroused our childish fantasy, when Balint Orzo and I were boys, but none so much as the old tower that stands a few feet from the castle, shadowy and mysterious. It is an old, curious, square tower, and at the brink of its notched edge there is a shingled helmet which was erected by one ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... Upon the brink of that abyss of shame into which his father had just tumbled, he thought he could see, not the inevitable woman, that incentive of all human actions, but the entire legion of those bewitching courtesans who possess unknown crucibles wherein to swell fortunes, and who have secret filtres to stupefy ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... white is the New Jersey tea. Those spreading, pointed fingers of coral with a background of dazzling white are the topmost twigs of the red osier dogwood. The strip of shrubs with graceful spray, now bowed in beauty by the river's brink, is a group of young red birches, and this bunch of downy brown twigs, two feet above the snow, sparkling with frost particles, is the downy viburnum. The great tangle of vine and lace work mixed with snow is ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... Sophia, in the distant hope of discovery and revenge. At the end of four years, some youths, climbing by a ladder in search of pigeons' nests, detected the fatal secret; and, as Andronicus felt himself touched and bound by the excommunication, he trembled on the brink of the abyss which had been so treacherously dug under his feet. A synod of bishops was instantly convened to debate this important question: the rashness of these clandestine anathemas was generally condemned; but as ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... of clouds. The atmosphere, after the rain, was of enchanting purity. The river doubled among the hillocks, a shining strip of mirror glass; and the dip of the paddles set the flowers shaking along the brink. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... who had always continued blind be told by his guide that after he has advanced so many steps he shall come to the brink of a precipice, or be stopped by a wall; must not this to him seem very admirable and surprizing? He cannot conceive how it is possible for mortals to frame such predictions as these, which to him would ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley
... which I have passed, I have retained possession of it. See, I press my lips to it, and solemnly swear that I never committed forgery in my life, and that I was innocent of crime until after I was transported. I have but a short time to live, and do you think I would commit perjury upon the brink of the grave? Do you believe ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... sketches of American life and tendencies, both Northern and Southern, are given with discrimination and truth. The dying scene, which closes the First Part, seems to us nobly wrought. The "death-bed hymn" of the slaves sounds a pathetic wail over an abortive life shivering on the brink of the Unknown. In the Second Part we find less of the color and music of a poem, and more of the rapid movement of a drama. The doom of Slavery upon the master now comes into full relief. The characters ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... might have led to a request for his recall. He knew that his constant presence, close to the English Government, was vital to our cause. Russell and Palmerston were by turns insolent and shifty, and once on the very brink of recognizing the Southern Confederacy as an independent nation. Gladstone, Chancellor of the Exchequer, in a speech at Newcastle, virtually did recognize it. You will be proud of Mr. Adams if you read how he bore himself and fulfilled his appallingly delicate ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... slowly get ahead, Even when the right is visibly unclouded, That if all men are classed as quick and dead, The judges all are dead, though some unshrouded. Pray Jove that when they're actually crowded On Styx's brink, and Charon rows in sight, His bark ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... character to lose, an estate to forfeit, the inestimable blessings of liberty at stake, and a life devoted, must be my excuse." Even now across the century these words come with a grave solemnity to our ears, and we can feel as he felt when he alone saw that he stood on the brink of a great crisis. It is an awful thing to know that the life of a nation is at stake, and this thought throbs in his words, measured and quiet as usual, but deeply fraught with much meaning to him and ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... rushed and roared in their strong surges over the ledges that made the Falls of St. Anthony; the long logs that had been, but a few months before, proud monarchs of the pine forests, sailed along toward this brink like sticks, then with their long ends balancing out over the rushing fall would tilt over and down into the rushing, curling, foaming torrent out of sight. But little else was thought of just then for we who were near were ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... firmly, with his foot against a solid spur of rock, held through the trying ordeal. Fred in a short time was clambering over the brink, delighted beyond measure at the chance to once more find himself on the ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... first Row with a wooden Ladder, and so with a Ladder still from every Story up to that above it, there being no way to ascend. The Plain on the first Precipice may be so wide, as to have room both for a Row of Houses that stand all along on the Edge or Brink of it, and a very narrow Street running along before their Doors, between the Row of Houses and the foot of the next Precipice; the Plain of which is in a manner level to the tops of the Houses below, and so for the rest. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... placed upon any other dangerous product. Just here we inevitably meet the cry of paternalism, but we shall always be confronted by the question to what extent the government should stand aside and see its citizens follow the bent of their appetites and passions over the brink of destruction. It is the inherent right of government to maintain its own integrity, and this it can do only through the conservation of the powers of its citizens. If paternalism is necessary to this end, then paternalism is a governmental virtue. Better, by far, some ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... didn't say anything, the Cirissin closed the door. "Batter blan," he announced. "Wheeze india buck terth. Cup girlish ear. Torch herf youdon brink high dragon bump." ...
— High Dragon Bump • Don Thompson
... who have turned the page on a dark preface, and have before them still the long bright volume of life. The girl has her arm linked in the man's, but as they walk she breaks often away from him, to dart into copses, to gather flowers, or to peer over the brink where the gulls wheel and oyster-catchers pipe among the shingle. She is no more the tragic muse of the past week, but a laughing child again, full of snatches of song, her eyes bright with expectation. They talk of the new world which lies before them, and her voice is happy. ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan |
