"Perilously" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sweeping inaccuracies concerning Cesare. But it is staggering to find the statement in such a place, amid Macchiavelli's letters on Cesare, breathing an obvious and profound admiration of the duke's talents as a politician and a soldier—an admiration which later is to go perilously near to worship. To Macchiavelli, Cesare is the incarnation of a hazy ideal, as is abundantly shown in The Prince. For Villari to reconcile all this with his own views must seem impossible. And impossible it is; yet Villari achieves it, with an audacity that leaves ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... deeds, when placed in the first independent command ever conferred upon me. Jason, with his Argonauts, went to bear away the Golden Fleece; Columbus, and his heroes, to give a world to the sovereign of Spain; and I, with two little boys, pushed out of the Cove perilously to procure some sand in the dingy. Nothing elevates a biography like appropriate comparison. But I doubt whether either Jason or Columbus felt a more enthusiastic glow pervade their frames when each saw himself fairly under sail for ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... noticing the squalor of his home. The table was stained, and the books which littered half of it were thick with dust and grease-spotted. The earthen floor was damp and pitted here and there, so that the chairs stood perilously among its inequalities. The fine white powder of turf ashes lay thick upon the dresser. The whitewash above the fireplace was blackened by the track of the smoke that had blown out of the chimney and climbed up to the still blacker rafters of the roof. Hyacinth remembered how he, ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... Ojeda was perilously situated, surrounded as he was by warlike enemies, led by so bold and persistent a chief. In the face of this peril he adopted an expedient as daring as any of those shown by Cortez, Pizarro, or any other of the Spanish caballeros of that age of conquest, ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... unconscious that a warmer sentiment than gratitude made his companionship the sunshine of her life. Pauline saw this, and sometimes owned within herself that she had evoked spirits which she could not rule, but her purpose drove her on, and in it she found a charm more perilously potent than before. Gilbert watched the three with a smile darker than a frown, yet no reproach warned his wife of the danger which she did not see; no jealous demonstration roused Manuel to rebel against the oppression of a presence so distasteful to him; no rash act or word gave Pauline ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott
... crooked as a dog's hind leg. It is as risky as barratry. If you pull it off you may—after paying Ryder his share—divide sixty-five, or possibly sixty-seven, thousand dollars between you and your associates. If you fail, and you are perilously like to fail, you will be sure to have a man or two of your companions shot, maybe yourself obliged to pistol certain people, and in the end fetch up at Tahiti, prisoner in a ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... was, it yielded a little with his weight, and he came perilously near the water midway; but the rope held firm, and in another moment he was safe upon the islet, shaking hands heartily with the ...
— Harper's Young People, October 5, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... man is as good as another; but the Fire Department says he is better. This is a too generous theory, but the law will not tallow itself to be construed otherwise. All of which comes perilously near to being a paradox, and commends itself to the attention of ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... gasping cry Eustace crept closer again, and bending low he strained to catch a glimpse of the man's face without going too perilously deep ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... not over, for by the next day our brother was as ill, or worse, than ever. The doctor who came from London allowed that he had expected something of the kind, but thought we must have let him exert himself perilously. Poor innocent Martyn and Anne, they little suspected that their bright eyes and happy voices had something to do with the struggle and disappointment, which probably was one cause of the collapse. As to poor Frank Fordyce, I never saw him so distressed; he felt as if it were all his own ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... days, all in order; nor did any host ever advance seeking battle so perilously. For they were in peril on two accounts; first because they were so few, and those they were about to attack so many; and secondly, because they did not believe the Greeks, with whom they had just made peace, ...
— Memoirs or Chronicle of The Fourth Crusade and The Conquest of Constantinople • Geoffrey de Villehardouin
... the edge of the bed it seemed that he must fall head-first to the floor. But consciousness fluttered up in him. He righted himself and for a moment perilously balanced. Then he struck the floor on his feet. On the instant his mother seized him by the shoulders and shook him. Again his fists struck out, this time with more force and directness. At the same time his eyes opened. She ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... a lamb onct," announced his neighbor, rocking perilously on the two back legs of her chair. "It was a ram lamb and it butted me in my stomach, it ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... will be the easier to beat. Instead of which, Friedrich, leaving the Pandours to their luck, lies concentrated in Neisse Valley; watching, with all his faculties, Prince Karl's own advent (coming on like Fate, indubitable, yet involved in mysteries hitherto); and is perilously sensible that only in giving that a good reception is there ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... proportion of thoroughly respectable names: Plautus rarely introduces us to people, male or female, whom we should care to have long in the same house with us. A real lady seldom appears in these comedies, and—to approach a paradox—when she does she usually comes perilously close to being no lady; the same is usually true of the real gentleman. The generalization in the Epilogue of The Captives may well be made particular: "Plautus finds few plays such as this which make good men better." ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... perilously near the crisis when you wrote me? Did the reflective tone come because you were brought at last squarely to the mark, because you must decide what one of the possible conceptions of life you really want? Don't think, I pray you; go straight on ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... At last Light penetrates that cobwebbed cranium, And I can laugh in public! All these months, I several times have come perilously near Bursting with mirth at ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... cross a pool, not deep, but splashy and unpleasant. Then more perilously they made their way along the edges of the water, walking carefully upon the slippery stones, wet with the clammy, contracted breath of the cave. Soon, however, the cavern opened out into a wider and drier place, till they seemed to be fairly under ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... brilliant ribbons suddenly fell from the ceiling; she looked at him with something perilously close to a sigh. Out of an old hat he produced a cage full of parrots; every parrot repeated her first name decorously, monotonously, until packed back into the hat and stuffed into a box which ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... toward Whom it is directed. Faith is a redirecting of our sight, a getting out of the focus of our own vision and getting God into focus. Sin has twisted our vision inward and made it self-regarding. Unbelief has put self where God should be, and is perilously close to the sin of Lucifer who said, "I will set my throne above the throne of God." Faith looks out instead of in and the whole ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer
... gave St. George her hand he came perilously near telling her that he would follow her to Yaque; but he reflected that if he were to tell her at all, he would better do so on the way to the submarine. So he went blindly down the hall and rang the elevator bell for so long that the boy deliberately stopped on the floor below and waited, ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... forgotten where enterprise ends and kleptomania begins. But these excesses are, after all, rare, and for that matter they are merely those that attach to all exaggerations of legitimate passion. As for the notion that one should love beautiful things without desiring them, it seems to me to lie perilously near a sort of pseudo-Platonism, which, wherever it recurs, is the enemy of life itself. As I write, my eye falls upon a Japanese sword-guard. I have seen it a thousand times, but I never fail to feel the same thrill. Out of the disc of blued steel the artisan has worked the soaring form ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... the heat of the interior she came out again in search of fresh air, and stared in amazement at the white figure as he sprang to his feet perilously near the edge of ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... for a moment on the perilously small and narrow platform which made the floor of the tower, Claire grasped firmly a strand of the knotted rope and began descending the long steps cut in the cliff side. She no longer gazed out to sea, instead ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... his mind, he could see the whole twenty-odd miles of his valley. Along the left bank, hanging perilously to the slope of the mountain, he saw the rails of a narrow-gauge railroad reaching from Coldriver Valley to the main line that passed the valley's mouth. He saw sturdy, snorting little engines drawing logs to sawmills of a magnitude not dreamed of by any other man in the locality, ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... rear. On one arm was slung a bundle, and astride her shoulders sat a baby girl, no light burden, so that she had to pull herself along with the aid of branches and twigs. She was singing nonsense—snatches to lighten the way for the little ones, but the tears were perilously near her own eyes. Had ever such a company marched out against the entrenched forces of evil? Surely God had made a mistake in going to Okoyong in such a guise? And yet He often chooses the weakest things of this world to confound and ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... was even dispatched to the Bermudas to seize there a supply of powder, of which the general, always listening, had heard. Thus the immediate and grinding pressure was presently relieved, but the staple of war still remained pitifully and perilously meagre all through ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... quite certain she had never met a man who was quite fit to breathe the same air with Donald McKaye; already she had magnified his virtues until, to her, he was rapidly assuming the aspect of an archangel—a feeling which bordered perilously on adoration. ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... you as the personality of a woman. There is nothing deeper—nothing more in the affair—no other reason, as you yourself would say, upon God's earth!" He ended abruptly; his arms fell to his sides; his voice held in it a sound perilously like a sob. ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... able to get up this place," murmured Laura, looking up at the sheer wall down which she had come so perilously. ...
— The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna - or, The Crew That Won • Gertrude W. Morrison
... picador. Domineering and ever dominant, he had been accustomed throughout his life to impose his will upon others. Shrewd and capable in his chosen business, successful in the limited area of his activities, he had come perilously close to believing himself omnipotent, not only in all that pertained to his own destiny, but in the destinies of those about him. Never until the last few weeks had either men or events dared to march contrary to his wish, whereas now they appeared to have entered deliberately into a conspiracy ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... conning of their difficult parts. To the caricature of Daniel and Munday in "Cynthia's Revels" must be added Anaides (impudence), here assuredly Marston, and Asotus (the prodigal), interpreted as Lodge or, more perilously, Raleigh. Crites, like Asper-Macilente in "Every Man Out of His Humour," is Jonson's self-complaisant portrait of himself, the just, wholly admirable, and judicious scholar, holding his head high above the pack of the yelping curs of envy and detraction, but careless of ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... George Canning in the enclosure of Westminster Abbey, he was astonished to perceive it nodding its head at him, like the statue in "Don Giovanni," in a "How d'ye do?" kind of way. Sir Robert, who, since his introduction to the Palace, has grown perilously polite, took off his hat, and made a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... lie-detector—and Korvin felt himself marveling again at this race. Earth science had nothing to match their enormous command of the physical universe; adapting a hypnopaedic language-course to an alien being so quickly had been wonder enough, but adapting the perilously delicate mechanisms that necessarily made up any lie-detector machinery was almost a miracle. The Tr'en, under other circumstances, would have been a valuable addition to the ...
— Lost in Translation • Larry M. Harris
... the girl's hand on the man's arm, but neither stirring; then with a sound perilously near a sob, the ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... were thereto attracted by courage as much as by desire; but all idly and perilously wasted their pains. Ragnar, learning from men who travelled to and fro how the matter stood, asked his nurse for a woolen mantle, and for some thigh-pieces that were very hairy, with which he could repel the snake-bites. He thought ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... from him his father's love; he had driven him, if not to ruin, at least perilously close to it. He had run away with the girl he loved, and now, through him, even ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... The Quakers' teaching as to the inward light seemed to him a serious disparagement of the Holy Scriptures, while their mystical view of the spiritual Christ revealed to the soul and dwelling in the heart, came perilously near to a denial of the historic reality of the personal Christ. He had had public disputations with male and female Quakers from time to time, at the Market Cross at Bedford, at "Paul's Steeple-house in Bedford ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... been so beautiful before. Living in the ideal where her baby was concerned made it perilously easy for her to live ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... women clearly more suitable; but now dispassionateness was a professor's mean thumb-rule, too far below to consider. Of a sudden, as he watched her loveliness, all his instincts clamored that here and now was his worthy bride: one, too, still perilously not broken to his bit. But ... Was it, after all, possible? Was it conceivable that this unknown small-capitalist's daughter, rated so carelessly only the other day, was the destined ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Coleridge's chapter on poetic diction, and Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, in a preface that is as unconventional in manner as it is stimulating in most of its substance, maintains the tradition. As a matter of fact, what Coleridge has to say on poetic diction is prolix and perilously near commonplace. Instead of making to Wordsworth the wholly sufficient answer that much poetry of the highest kind employs a language that by no perversion can be called essentially the same as the language of prose, he allows himself to be led by his German metaphysic into considering poetry ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... strange things in England now," Sir Baldwin said; "and Worcester is perilously near to Evesham. With a clump of twenty spears, Sir Rudolph might break into the convent and carry off the young lady, and marry her by force; and although the Church might cry out, crying would be of little avail when the deed was done; and a handsome present on the part of Sir Rudolph ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... spite of this, her life grew perilously sweet at times. Only a few months ago she had dreamed of such bliss as Jane Eyre's and Zulick's, wonderingly; but there were brief moments now and then when she believed in it faithfully. She was very ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... certain passionate tenderness, saying, softly, "Now, don't you cry when we are gone, dear, dear mamma," and then, in a whisper, "I will pway God not to let you cwy," and so fled away, leaving her still perilously close to tears. Very soon, up-stairs, the old nurse, troubled by the children's disappointment, was assuring them with eager mendacity that Kris would be certain to make his usual visit, while down-stairs the mother walked ...
— Mr. Kris Kringle - A Christmas Tale • S. Weir Mitchell
... 'a glorious human boy', of course he frolicked and flirted, grew dandified, aquatic, sentimental, or gymnastic, as college fashions ordained, hazed and was hazed, talked slang, and more than once came perilously near suspension and expulsion. But as high spirits and the love of fun were the causes of these pranks, he always managed to save himself by frank confession, honorable atonement, or the irresistible power of persuasion which he possessed in perfection. In fact, he rather prided ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... eagerness and her theory of the equality, almost the identity, of the sexes might betray her. Too much of the woman in a daughter of our race leads her to forget danger. Too little of the woman prompts her to defy it. Fortunately for this last class of women, they are not quite so likely to be perilously seductive as their ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the roof in time to avoid falling half stunned between the front of the caboose and the rear of the logging-truck. The caboose had once been a box-car; hence there was no railed front platform to which Bryce might have leaped in safety. Clinging perilously on the bumper, he reached with his foot, got his toe under the lever on the side, jerked it upward, and threw the pin out of the coupling; then with his free hand he swung the axe and drove the great steel jaws of ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... the water from the schooner's deck, and ten swarthy, ragged Portuguese fishermen crammed into her. A couple pushed at the oars, and they made their way perilously over the deep hill and dale of ocean with that easy familiarity which none but deep-sea fishermen can attain. They worked up alongside, caught a rope which was thrown them, and nimbly climbed ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... herself overtaken; whereupon, with swelling heart and face averted, she dropped again to the rear. She was drawing perilously near the verge of that feminine cataclysm, tears, when Fate stepped in to save ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... haste to match her own, presented Rock in the same breath with wishing that Rock was elsewhere; for Mose was not in the kitchen, and he had not had more than a few words with her for twenty-four hours. He was perilously close to forgetting his legal halter when ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... seem to suggest. It was for the very purpose of escaping redundancy and getting rid of surplusage that the Anglican Reformers condensed Missal, Breviary, and Rituale into the one small and handy volume known as the First Prayer Book of Edward VI. It was a bold stroke, doubtless denounced as perilously radical at the time; but experience has justified Cranmer and his friends. In the whole history of liturgies there is no record of a wiser step. It is scarcely possible so grievously to sin against a people's Prayer Book as by making it more complicated in arrangement ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... the bill passed leisurely, and some of us feared perilously, through the various stages of clerical progress till November 22, when it received the signature of Governor William A. Newell, who used a gold pen presented him for the purpose by women whom his act made free. And when at a given signal the church bells rang in glad acclaim, and the loud ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... nurse set down the bowl of water poised perilously on one arm, and stammered, "I—I beg your pardon, Dr. Shumway. You are rather late this morning, or am ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... scruple. Of course, the paragraph in the West End originated with him; since Dymes knew nothing about it, it could have no other source. Slowly, but very completely, the man of wealth and social influence had drawn his nets about her; at each meeting with him she felt more perilously compromised; her airs of command served merely to disguise defeat in the contest she had recklessly challenged. Thrown upon herself, she feared Redgrave, shrank from the thought of seeing him. Not that he had touched her heart or beguiled her senses; she hated ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... Tom, and some women, with baskets hastily deposited by the roadside, and even boys not much bigger than himself, were toiling to bring as fast as possible in pails from the brook, before the flames should spread to the row of cottages so perilously near? No earthly power could have kept the mite out of the fray. Before the old dame knew where he was, his little hands were clenched round the handle of a heavy iron pail, and he was struggling up the yard to where the men were tearing down the connecting fences, in a desperate endeavour to ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... know! I know!" cried Dot, perilously balancing a spoonful of mush and milk on the way to her mouth, in midair. "It was in 1492 at Thanksgiving time, and the Pilgrim Fathers found it first. So they called it Plymouth Rock—and you've got some of their hens in ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... led to Blanche's favorite walk at Ham Farm. Without absolutely distrusting her ladyship's discretion, the idea had occurred to him that he would do well to join his wife and her step-mother. By making a third at the interview between them, he might prevent the conversation from assuming a perilously confidential turn. ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... precipitous border line there is a charmed region where, if the statelier growths of philosophy die out and disappear, the flowers of poetry next the very edge of the chasm have a peculiar and mysterious beauty. "Uriel" is a poem which finds itself perilously near to the gulf of unsounded obscurity, and has, I doubt not, provoked the mirth of profane readers; but read in a lucid moment, it is just obscure enough and just significant enough to give the voltaic thrill which comes ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... handful of stops and dashed into the stretto. The organist had not heard the boy on the stairs, and gave a violent start as he suddenly caught sight of the white surplice. Hands and feet for an instant lost their place, and the music came perilously near breaking down. It was only for an instant; he pulled himself together, and played the fugue ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... true—Billy told herself very indignantly that it was; indeed it was! Yet the very fact that she had to tell herself this, caused her to know how perilously near she was to being actually jealous of that portrait of Marguerite Winthrop. And it ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... rose-colored machine would soon find themselves together on the twelve-mile circuit, allowing for their difference in starting time. But as the Mercury turned into the straight stretch of back road, on the second time around, there sounded a sharp report, the car staggered perilously, and a tire tore itself loose from a rear wheel to hurtle, a vicious projectile of rubber and steel, far across the stubble fields. Reeling, but held to its course by the driver's trained hand, the Mercury slackened its flight and was brought to a stop. Rupert was already leaning over the ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... my dear lord, hear me," he said in a gasping voice, still hanging perilously between earth and heaven. "If I have indeed been a faithful servant, I beseech you come with me—for the sake of the house of Douglas and of your mother, a widow ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... occasionally an antagonist not to be trifled with. The colonists relate many instances of arduous and even fatal encounters with the hunted leopard. The following is one of these adventures, which occurred in a frontier district in 1822, as described by one of the two individuals so perilously engaged in it. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... hiding-places the paddles and the pretty triangular sails are fetched and fastened on the canoes; then the boats are pushed off and the whole crowd jumps in. The babies sit in their mothers' laps or hang on their backs, perilously close to the water, into which they stare with big, dark eyes. By twos and threes the canoes push off, driven by vigorous paddling along the shore, against the current. Sometimes a young man wades after a canoe and ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... others. It chanced that just now he was deeply involved in several amorous affairs and because of them was experiencing no small degree of worry. The tangle between Bob, Delight, and Cynthia Galbraith kept him in a state of constant speculation and disquietude; then Bart Coffin and Minnie were perilously near a rupture because of another rejuvenation of the time-honored black satin; and although weeks had passed, Jack Nickerson had not yet mustered up nerve enough to offer his heart and hand ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... the bottom boards of the little gig and gave way to gloomy thoughts. What else could be when we were alone and adrift on the broad Pacific, without food or water, in a tiny gig already perilously deep with the burden of eight of us? What a difference to the gay day when we manned the same little boat and set out in pride to the contest! Here was the same spare oar that we held up to the judges—the long oar that Jones was now swaying over the stern, keeping her head to ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... scientific budget-planning was that he felt at once triumphantly wealthy and perilously poor, and in the midst of these dissertations he stopped his car, rushed into a small news-and-miscellany shop, and bought the electric cigar-lighter which he had coveted for a week. He dodged his conscience by being jerky and ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... The Scarlet Mask had evidently lost temper. The command was roared out in a voice that sounded perilously like that of ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... cautiously, their blades rasping against each other, and neither man gaining any advantage, although once or twice Vane found his antagonist's weapon perilously near his body. Then all at once Dorrimore changed his methods. He began fencing in earnest, and so rapid was the play of his sword that the eye could scarcely follow it. Suddenly he muttered an oath as a red stain appeared on his arm. Vane had been lucky enough ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... excitedly. He was glancing at his watch again, and changing the angle of his wings. "By heavens, we are just in time!" The craft dove perilously; he straightened its course. "Look closely, I tell you! It's something you've never seen before, ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... with it if he had lived in the times of the Classical Dictionary. So much, indeed, is the reverse the case that the assertion creates an awkwardness in saying anything more about him. The beautiful youth usually verges so perilously on the incipient coxcomb, who is about to become the Lothario or Juan among the neighbouring maidens, that, for the due understanding of our present young man, his sublime innocence of any thought concerning his own material aspect, or that of ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... bicycles dared the spaces that were left. From afar off there came a flying light, like a shot out of a gun, and it grew into a man perched on a shuddering contrivance that might have been invented by H.G. Wells, and swept perilously into the contending currents, and by miracles emerged untouched, and was gone, driven by the desire of the immortal soul within the man. This strange thing happened again and again. The pavements were ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... Senators and Congressmen had made clear to him that Northern opinion would support him. It was the right decision, for it conspicuously avoided the appearance of provocation, while it upheld the right of the Union; but it was taken perilously late, and the delay exposed the Government to the risk of ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... Bishop Selwyn and tutor to his son, conducted along with myself, alternately, an Anglican and a Presbyterian Service. We passed through a memorable thunder-burst in rounding the Cape. Our good ship was perilously struck by lightning. The men on deck were thrown violently down. The copper in the bulwarks was twisted and melted—a specimen of which the Captain gave me and I still retain. When the ball of fire struck the ship, those of us sitting on chairs, screwed to the floor around the cabin table, felt ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... fascinated by Johnny's sneers at superstition, and sometimes on dark nights the inventor had to make his courage good by seeing the farmer past the doulie yates (ghost gates), which Muckle Haws had to go perilously near on his way home. Johnny was a small man, but it was the burly farmer who shook at sight of the gates standing out white in the night. White gates have an evil name still, and Muckle Haws was full of horrors ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... character which are perceptible in what he wrote, as well as in what he did. He had the Gallic wit in great measure, but he was absolutely devoid of any sense of humor. This is why, in both his prose and his poetry, his most tremendous pages often come perilously near to bombast; and this is why, again, as a man, his vanity was almost as great as his genius. He had good reason to be vain, and yet, if he had possessed a gleam of humor, he would never have allowed his egoism to make him arrogant. As it was, he felt ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... clang of falling planks. Then, as we walked along the military road on the mountain-side, we saw below, on the top of the lemon gardens, long, thin poles laid from pillar to pillar, and we heard the two men talking and singing as they walked across perilously, placing the poles. In their clumsy zoccoli they strode easily across, though they had twenty or thirty feet to fall if they slipped. But the mountain-side, rising steeply, seemed near, and above their heads the rocks glowed ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... of the Hall are full of surprises even to those familiar with Crabbe's earlier poems. He can still allow couplets to stand which are perilously near to doggerel; and, on the other hand, when his deepest interest in the fortunes of his characters is aroused, he rises at times to real eloquence, if never to poetry's supremest heights. Moreover, ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... long ago; long enough ago, however, for young Andrew Lackaday to have come perilously near the end of his savings in Paris, before the Almighty Moignon (now curse-withered), but then vast and unctuous, reeking of fat food and diamonds and great cigars, had found him this engagement at Avignon. He had journeyed thither full of the radiant ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... in itself. Then its mere cleverness attracts its user, and gives him an easily purchased pleasure. When a poet falls a complete victim to this pleasure, imagination hides her face from him, passion runs away, and what he produces resembles, but is not, poetry. And Browning, who had got perilously near to the absence of poetry in Bishop Blougram's Apology, succeeded in Mr. Sludge, the Medium, in losing poetry altogether. In The Ring and the Book there are whole books, and long passages in its other books in which poetry almost ceases to exist and is replaced ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... far longer than was necessary after her recovery, and roused Harold's jealousy to a violent pitch by her demeanour towards a fellow of her own rank, whom she probably would have married but for Harold's unfortunate advantages, and whom she now most perilously preferred. ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of help. Her father's need of it was sore, and made the aid of her old friend invaluable. Death stood at his pillow. A shade, already, of what he had been, shattered in mind, and perilously sick in body, he laid his weary head down on the bed his daughter's hands prepared for him, and ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... its guarded mechanism, its heavy armament, and its impenetrable revolving turret, to that near battle with the "Merrimac," on which, as it seemed to us at the time, the destiny of the nation was perilously poised. The material of which the ship was wrought was largely that which is built in beauty into this luxurious lofty fabric. But no contrast could be greater among the works of human genius than between the compact and rigid solidity into which ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley
... she had perilously dared to hope he would be at this crisis. He soothed her and healed her by his loyalty; promised, without her extorting it, that he would never tell a soul what she had just told him; pixie-shy, yet he spoke of his personal need of her—and ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... he had come perilously near to the borderland beyond which are gibbering, moving things: that he had stood upon the frontier of insanity; and realizing the futility of such reflections, he struggled to banish them from his mind, for his mind was not yet healed—and he must be ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... Farther out, on a rocky spit, was the mark of last night's beacon-fire. Here Waverley had to turn back. Cliffs shut him in on every side, and Edward was at a loss what to do, till he discovered, climbing perilously out in the rock above the cave mouth, some slight steps or ledges. These he mounted with difficulty, and, passing over the shoulder of the cliff, found himself presently on the shores of a loch about four miles long, surrounded on every side ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... succeeded. The Fifth led, the Sixth followed. One man, or at most two or three, at a time, they tip-toed from tie to tie, watching the chance to make it in the intervals between the shells. Though these came perilously near to the bridge none of them hit it, at least while we were crossing. They went over and struck in the river or woods below. It looked perilous, and it was not devoid of danger, but I do not remember that a single man was killed ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... of a woman, with broad shoulders, and nearly the same breadth all the way down to her feet. She wore a rusty black dress, which fitted perilously tight to her arms and bust; on her head was a lopsided, dismantled black bonnet with a feather—a bonnet that had evidently been put away in a drawer and forgotten for years. Any want of colour or style in her dress was amply made up for by the fact that ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... unmolested by man, and only kept down by the natural law that prevents any animals increasing beyond the capacity of the country they inhabit to support them. Needless to say, however, we did not shoot many of them, first because we could not afford to waste ammunition, of which our stock was getting perilously low, a donkey loaded with it having been swept away in fording a flooded river; and secondly, because we could not carry away the ivory, and did not wish to kill for the mere sake of slaughter. So we ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... I see, now, where we accomplished anything beyond killing time the following day. To be sure, we scouted faithfully, and once or twice came perilously near being caught by squads of Mounted Police appearing from unexpected quarters. Our scouting was so much wasted energy. We got nowhere near the Police camp; we failed to get a glimpse of any of our men; and so, ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... torment his own world had been born. He had now seen as much of space as any man, with the exception of Grim Hagen, and so far it had been a tumultuous creation that he had watched. Nothing was still. The forges of space were white-hot. As they sped toward this sun, they passed two planets, perilously close together, pelting each other with splashing gobs and spears of flame and slag. The third was a red sun with lonely burned-out planets circling wearily about it. As they skimmed above its surface Odin slid a dark plate ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... guilty. In one of these councils, one debater—wearing civilized dress, by the way—suddenly broke through the circle and disappeared, much to our astonishment, until it was explained that his opponent in the debate had charged him with having recently poisoned six persons; as this was perilously near the truth, the criminal simply ran away. The accuser was a fine-looking man, splendidly dressed, of a haughty countenance, displaying the greatest contempt for all the arguments addressed to him, his impatience being marked by "Has!" accompanied by stamping on the ground the while and ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... Nyanza, and knew half a dozen Bantu languages. In a minute after that we had the plan well understood and truly laid; and, what was better, they had ceased to believe me a victim of nerves—a fact that gave me back the nerve that had been perilously close to vanishing. ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... felt that he ought to note his impressions on his first ascent, but all that he actually did notice was that it was hard to tell at what instant they left the ground; that when they were up, the wind threatened to crush his ribs and burst his nostrils; that there must be something perilously wrong, because the machine climbed so swiftly; and, when they were down, that it had been worth waiting a whole ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... no means been free from anxiety. We are told that the fabric of the balloon repeatedly caught fire, which it took the aeronauts all their time to extinguish. At times, too, they came down perilously near to the Seine, or to the housetops of Paris, but after the most exciting half-hour of their lives they found themselves once more on ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... sweeping over growing swells. Once, a black, towering shape dropped down upon us. Far above, lights blazed, bells rang, vague cries pierced the fog. The launch pitched and rolled perilously, but weathered the wash of the liner which so nearly had concluded this episode. It was such a journey as I had taken once before, early in our pursuit of the genius of the Yellow Peril; but this was infinitely more terrible; for now we were ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... each other by helping him. One day a load of wood will find its way to his door. The next a few fresh "turr," a very "fishy" sea auk, are left ever so quietly inside his woodshed—and so it goes. It is a constant marvel to me that these people, who live so perilously near the margin of want, are always so eager to share up. Francois is sitting in our cellar as I write pulling nails from old boxes with my new patent nail-drawer. A moment ago I could not resist the temptation of putting ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... cheap theatrical boarding houses (the most soul-searing cheapness in the world), of one-night stands, of insult, disappointment, rebuff, and something that often came perilously near to want, Josie Fifer managed to retain a certain humorous outlook on life. There was something whimsical about it. She could even see a joke on herself. When she first signed her name Jose Fyfer, for example, she did it with, an appreciative giggle and a glint in her eye ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... certainties of divine things than that he who feels himself to be in death and hell with his heart so full of by-ends is all the time as far from death and hell as any one can be who is still on this side of heaven. When a man's whole will and desire is set on God, as is now and then the case, that man is perilously near a sudden and an abundant entrance into that life and that presence where his heart has for so long been. When a man is half mad with his own heart, as Thomas Shepard for one was, that stranger on the earth is at last within a step of that happy coast where ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... this way under a high blue sky, beside a woman whose ways and interests were so unusual. The spirited team held Mrs. Owen's attention, but she never allowed the conversation to flag. Several times as they crossed car lines it seemed to Sylvia that they missed being struck only by perilously narrow margins. When they reached the creek they paused on the bridge to allow the sorrels to rest, and Mrs. Owen indicated with her whip the line of the new boulevard and recounted the history ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... and generally make a happy home out of a crazy shanty with a wobbly roof and a door facing the Boche. Many would have preferred to go elsewhere in case of shelling, but these two never left their papers, though more than once the roof came perilously near being whisked off by some whizz-bang. Philosopher James Lincoln was particularly imperturbable, as he sat surrounded by pipes and beautifully-sharpened pencils, discussing the weather and the crops with any ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... to orient himself to this unexpected and amazing minifying of Hooker's Bend. He had left a metropolis; he was coming back to a tumble-down village. Yet nothing was changed. Even the two scraggly locust-trees that clung perilously to the brink of the river bank still held their toe-hold among the ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... that," I cried, "she baffles me; for a hint I let drop in a mere careless badinage of your gallanting reputation made her perilously near angry." ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... painted in strange patterns, or awninged; some with rails like open trellis work of many colours, over which dark faces shone like copper in the sunshine; rowing boats, "galleys" with fluttering flags, and old soap-boxes roughly lined with tin, in which naked imps of boys perilously paddled. Out from the boats rushed music in clouds like incense; wild, African music of chanting voices, beating tom-toms, or clapping hands that clacked together like castanets. Very old men and very young youths thumped ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... point of a spear, and we were obliged to bale away harder than ever. While we were at work, the clouds opened, the sky in the horizon cleared slightly, and there were evident signs of the gale breaking. In a little time more the gale lessened, and the sea no longer ran so perilously high as before. Still we were in much danger, for the leaks rather increased than lessened, and it required the utmost exertions of all hands to keep the vessel free of water. We hoped, however, when it ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... walk to the east from this lofty common, and we are immediately above Henley, clinging to the hill side, an almost Alpine hamlet. Henley, however, no longer sees the travellers that once it did, for the coach road, which of old climbed perilously through it, has been diverted in a curve through the hanger, and now sweeps into Fernhurst by ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... experiences of the later portion of this march convinced Metellus that some decisive effort should be made, which would crown his earlier successes, give him some sort of command of the line of country through which he had so perilously passed, and might, by the importance of the attempt, force Jugurtha to a battle. The hilly country through which he had just conducted his legions, was that which lay between the great towns of Sicca ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... had curtailed decoration, but the enthusiastic employes (mainly feminine) of one tall store strove to rectify the lack by arming themselves with flags and stationing themselves at every window. Balancing perilously, they waited until the Prince came level, and then set the whole face of the tall building ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... practice. Many of the young women in lodgings were young and were friendless and were earning very low pay. Eighteen per cent of those who were reported without the use of a sitting-room were under twenty-five. The housing or food, or both, were reported as bad for a number of these perilously defenceless ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... enshrined. One also realised dimly a mysterious Cyclic Law of Change, seen not merely in inorganic matter but also in organised life and its highest manifestations. One saw how inertness passes into the climax of activity and how that climax is perilously near its antithetic decline. This basic change puzzles us by its seeming caprice not merely in our physical instruments but also in the cycle of individual life and death and in the great cycle of the life and death of nations. We fail to see things in their totality ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... fountains, that he will keep thus bleeding and bleeding for a considerable period; even as in a drought a river will flow, whose source is in the well-springs of far-off and undiscernible hills. Even now, when the boats pulled upon this whale, and perilously drew over his swaying .. flukes, and the lances were darted into him, they were followed by steady jets from the new made wound, which kept continually playing, while the natural spout-hole in his head was only at intervals, however rapid, sending its affrighted moisture into the air. From ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... that led to their single place of refuge—a cabin, half hotel, half trading-post, scarce a mile away—skirted the base of the rocky dome, and passed perilously near the precipitous wall of the valley. There was a rapid descent of a hundred yards or more to this terrace-like passage; and the guides paused for a moment of consultation, cooly oblivious, alike to the terrified ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... be seen the heads of three or four men swimming. As for themselves they seemed to be clear and unhurt, except for the loss of their bowsprit; indeed, the little vessel was riding over the seas on the bar like any swan. Hans glanced at the slow-match which was smouldering away perilously near to the deck, whereon ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... after Master Jones was asleep turned upon bigamy, but Mr. Brown snored through it all, though Mr. Legge's remark that the revelations of that afternoon had thrown a light upon many little things in his behaviour which had hitherto baffled him came perilously ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... was not easily startled, but his jerk of surprise sent the car perilously near the side ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... mystery feminine is of great advantage to her; it often gets him for her as a husband. In this particular case of Margaret Severence and Joshua Craig, while his awe of her was an advantage, it was also a disadvantage. It attracted him; it perilously repelled him. He liked to release his robust imagination upon those charms of hers—those delicate, refined beauties that filled him with longings, delicious in their intensity, longings as primeval in kind as well as in force as those that set delirious the savage hordes ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... There was nothing he could do. The train had gone; there was no telegraph to Patesville, and no letter could leave Clarence for twenty-four hours. The best laid schemes go wrong at times—the stanchest ships are sometimes wrecked, or skirt the breakers perilously. Life is a sea, full of strange currents and uncharted reefs—whoever leaves the traveled path must run the danger of destruction. Warwick was a lawyer, however, and ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... valley shows a rolling mountain chain washed in in tender shades of purple, paling nearer at hand to blue, the tender indescribable mountain blue. Great jagged headlands hang perilously over the deep, and the silver thread of a distant waterfall gleams here and there down the face of the gorges of whose wonderful beauty the tourist has heard and comes thousands of miles ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... ungainly, crooked of body, and doubtless short of vision, missed her way among the columns and passed perilously near to the Knight. With his long arm, he could have clasped her. How old Antony would have chuckled, could she but have known! "Sister Mary Rebecca embraced by the Knight of the Bloody Vest? Nay then; the ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... towers. Now the flanking walls had either disappeared altogether, or they had become little moss-covered mounds of stone. Trees and bushwood hid it from view on one side; broken steps went up a second, which led more or less perilously to the top, where a table, some rough wooden seats, and a rustic chair or two showed that it was used by the children, if not by their elders. On the third side, where the ivy had grown thick with age, and stood out from the wall like a tree, was a heavy oak door, clamped with iron and ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... perilously pretty as she arched her brows and pouted her ripe lips, and Mary looked at her in loving admiration, while ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... would be derogatory to his royal character to put himself in a position where comments could be made, either by the opposing barrister or by the public outside, on his evidence. And, on the other hand, it would be perilously unfair to one litigant for his adversary to be able to produce a witness who was not subject to cross-examination, nor to ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... have been married that next June. But that next June Chet Ball, perched perilously on the branch of a tree in a small woodsy spot somewhere in France, was one reason why the American artillery in that same woodsy spot was getting such a deadly range on the enemy. Chet's costume was so devised that even through field glasses (made ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... opened, the vast Richmond Terminal system was perilously near financial collapse. Notwithstanding the great value of many of the lines, its physical condition was poor; the liabilities and capitalization were enormous; and much of the mileage was distinctly unprofitable. About this time many disquieting facts ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... vii, 5), and these torture me ceaselessly, the fears being indeed without as well as within, and the fightings wheresoever there are fears. Nay, the persecution carried on by my sons rages against me more perilously and continuously than that of my open enemies, for my sons I have always with me, and I am ever exposed to their treacheries. The violence of my enemies I see in the danger to my body if I leave the cloister; but within it I am compelled incessantly to endure ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... lies between the bright water and the forest, then turned into the jungle, and waded through a stream which was up to my knees as we went, and up to my waist as we returned. Then a tremendous shower came on, and we were asked to climb into a large Malay house, of which the floor was a perilously open gridiron. At least three families were in it, and there were some very big men, but the women hid themselves behind a screen of matting. It looked forlorn. A young baboon was chained to the floor, and ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... scruples; and though it must have been difficult for him to believe that it was really I who followed them, he could not very well doubt the witness of his own eyes; and so he trained their stern gun upon me with his own hands, and an instant later an explosive radium projectile whizzed perilously close above my deck. ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... may need to be moved a little astern, more or less, to avoid a shoal or what not; and to do this the sail mentioned is braced either to shake, neutralizing it, or to bring it also aback, as the occasion demands. This rather long preamble is perilously like explaining a joke, but it is necessary. Balch had seen a good deal of this work in China, and he told us that the Chinese pilot's expression, if he wanted the sail shaken, was "Makee sick the mizzen topsail;" but ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... did a far ampler work by his doctrine of immanence, which is perilously near Pantheism. Understood, however, in the spirit of "liberal theology," it will not only finally govern, but also "bring about at last the complete reconcilement of science and religion." But we must remind Mr. Brooke that this is sheer prophecy. ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... in the Cabinet when a treaty is the subject of converse. Still further, I will assume that, contrary to nearly all precedent, the collective sagacity of the Ministry has not been impaired, and its self-conceit perilously tickled, by the long exercise of absolute power in face of a Parliament of poltroons. And, lastly, I will abandon my old argument that the discussion of peace terms might shorten the war, without any risk of prolonging it. And still I very strongly ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... said to be of the nature of retrospective prophecies; though it is perhaps a little hazardous to employ phraseology which perilously suggests a contradiction in terms—the word "prophecy" being so constantly, in ordinary use, restricted to "foretelling." Strictly, however, the term prophecy applies as much to outspeaking as to foretelling; and, even in the restricted sense of "divination," it is obvious that the ...
— On the Method of Zadig - Essay #1 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... up his head, being a man; plotted escape in dreams and waking; fought for freedom as a pinioned eagle might; was at last rescued by the Society for the Redemption of Slaves; sailed home from slavery to penury; came perilously near the age of threescore, poverty-stricken and unknown, when, like a sun which leaps from sunrise to noon at a single bound, this maimed soldier sprang mid-sky, impossible to be ignored or forgotten, and disclosed ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... of dining out somewhere - the lot of us - and going on to the Empire afterwards," said Nevin, with hesitation. He did not like to ask Cleever to come too. The invitation might be regarded as perilously near to "cheek." And Cleever, anxious not to wag a gray beard unbidden among boys at large, said ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... drawn to him again, and the supplication, as she lifted her blushing face, and the yielding, were perilously sweet. ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... at first. I came down here by chance, and resolved to cut myself utterly adrift from my old life and see if I could not forget you. I was not very successful." He smiled down into her eyes. "And you were going away tomorrow. How perilously near we have been to not meeting! But how are we going to explain all this to ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... which Maupassant says he learnt from Flaubert (in whose own hands it was always subordinated to an effort at larger completeness) does lead to the composition of a series or flock of isolated vignettes or scenes rather than to that of a great picture or drama. For it comes perilously close—though perhaps in Maupassant's own case it never actually reached—the barest and boldest (or baldest) individualising of impressions, and leaving them as they are, without an attempt at architectonic. For instance, once upon a time[512] I ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... part of the host, after the guest has refused a second helping, is overdoing the bounds of hospitality, and perilously borders ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... gleam in the American's eyes, though his face was as impassive as usual. And the worst of it was that it suggested humor, not resentment. Even in the tumult of wounded pride that took her heart by storm, she realized that her fiery vehemence had gone perilously near to a literal translation of the saintly scoff at old Barbariccia. And, now if ever, she must be dignified. Anger yielded to disdain. In an instant she grew cold ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... wayward, sorrowful Rousseau. Hercules, according to the old fable, "was afflicted with madness as a punishment for his being so near the gods;" and the imaginativeness of a brain which had in it a fibre of insanity, near which genius often perilously lies, may be supposed to account for much that is strange and sad in his career. The place of his birth was a fit cradle for a poet. On the edge of a bold cliff, overlooking the sea at Sorrento, is the ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... hanging filaments were never altogether withdrawn into its body when disturbed, as was the case with the other sea-anemones, and which were thus a constant source of alarm to Bob's little crabs; for, it was ever listlessly waving perilously near these nervous creatures, making them hurry out of their way in such frantic haste as ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the freedom of the human soul men in some measure lost their way. They demanded and in a measure they succeeded in asserting the freedom of the religious organization, as against the temporal organization, but in doing this they went perilously near to denying the freedom of the individual spiritual experience. They went perilously near to denying it, but they never wholly forgot it. The Church claimed and exercised an immense authority in religion, so immense an authority that it might easily seem as though there were ...
— Progress and History • Various
... turned, paid no attention to the warning—probably did not even hear him. The coping, poised on the wall's edge, swayed perilously. If it fell, there would be one less of the indigent and helpless for the relief committees to support. With a half angry ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... deer skin; in warm weather and at work, blue drill; but always that middy-styled cloak with the hood attached. And the hood was never off his head, at least not in waking hours. He had dressed that way even in Seattle, where Johnny had signed him up to join his outfit on this perilously uncertain search for gold in the Seven Mines which were supposed to exist in Arctic Siberia, at the mouth of the Anadir River ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... ago: "There's no hope, I'm afraid; but, by George, I intend to go down fighting," and with the recollection came a like resolve on her part—to go down fighting, and so she struck out against the powerful waters that swirled her hither and thither, now perilously close to the rocky sides of the entrance, and now into the mad chaos of the channel's center. Would to heaven that Theriere were near her, she thought, for if any could save her ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of the rifles, screamed "Veev la France! A baa la Bosh!" The rifles by this time were pelting a storm of lead at him, and now that the haste and flurry of the urgent call had passed and the shooters had steadied to their task, the storm was perilously close. 'Enery stayed a moment even then to spread his hands and raise his shoulders ear-high in a magnificent stage shrug; but a bullet snatched the cap from his head, and 'Enery ducked hastily, turned, and ran ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... perilously near an embrace— so colorable an imitation of the real thing that Winter, entering at that instant, could make no distinction, and was secretly amazed at these strenuous methods of consoling the lady— ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... influence of his critical antagonism to Brunetiere, growing keener, stronger, and more bitter. In 'Thais' he has undertaken to show the bond of sympathy that unites the pessimistic sceptic to the Christian ascetic, since both despise the world. In 'Lys Rouge', his greatest novel, he traces the perilously narrow line that separates love from hate; in 'Opinions de M. l'Abbe Jerome Coignard' he has given us the most radical breviary of scepticism that has appeared since Montaigne. 'Le Livre de mon Ami' is mostly autobiographical; ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... attend to the safety of both vessels, which were now perilously near the reefs ahead. Half a dozen men were sent on board the brigantine to assist those already there in working her, when the grapplings were cast off, the brigantine starboarded her helm while ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... to a drink, after a quizzical look at his guest, decanter in hand; the usurer snatched it from him and splashed out half a tumbler. Certainly he was beginning to know his Raffles perilously well. ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... bear. The supplies begin to give out. The wood-pile that stood so high when the first snow came is getting lowered to very near the ground. The poor man's little hoard, that was to bridge him over till the season of good work, is perilously shrunken. Vitality, too, begins to run low. The body pines for the out-door life from which it has too long been shut off. Winter is a hard-fisted churl who does n't give just measure. He drives off the mellow and jolly Autumn before its mid-month October is fairly ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... a dangerous habit of investigation. This style of harmony pleased the queen-mother exceedingly, but it was not perhaps so agreeable to the young princess, who was an incarnation of coquetry, and who, without any fear as far as her own voice was concerned, sought opportunities of so perilously distinguishing herself. She possessed one of those fearless and incautious dispositions that find gratification in an excess of sensitiveness of feeling, and for whom, also, danger has a certain fascination. ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... from a wistful, backward look, nor from regard to his own reputation; but the soul of it is an earnest desire to know the 'wherefore' of this disaster. It traces the defeat to God, and means really, 'Show me wherefore Thou contendest with me.' No doubt it runs perilously near to repeating the old complaints at Kadesh and elsewhere, which are almost verbally reproduced in its first words. But the same things said by different people are not the same; and Joshua's question is the voice of a faith struggling to find footing, and his backward look ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... a reconnaissance before the enemy arrived upon the field of battle. He had made—at least he had thought so—considerable progress with Alice during the three weeks since her return from Washington, and once or twice Alice had been perilously near the tender stage. This visit had disturbed the situation and threatened to ruin his chances; but he did not mean to ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... round and I dared not stop. Words and phrases began repeating themselves in my head as they will under a strain: so I know at sea a man perilously hanging on to the tiller makes a kind of litany of his instructions. The central part was passed, the three-quarters; the tension of that enduring effort had grown intolerable, and I doubted my ability to complete the task. Why? What could prevent me? ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... the latent motherhood within her that has been denied its own. It was the secret of the soft wistfulness in Cornelia's eyes. So she sat until the minister came home. It was the sound of his big step on the walk that roused her and sent the color into her face and made it perilously beautiful. ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... existence of 1,500 years, must be reinstated in something resembling its old position; for Korea has always been the keystone of the Far Eastern arch, and it is the destruction of that arch more than anything else which has brought the collapse of China so perilously near. ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... own voice And sweet self-pity, or the fancy of it Made his eye moist; but Enid fear'd his eyes, Moist as they were, wine-heated from the feast; And answered with such craft as women use, Guilty or guiltless, to stave off a chance That breaks upon them perilously, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... giving her the scope of the apartment, to the damp uneven floor. A very damp and uneven floor it was. There were crevices in the roof above, which gave free access to the elements; and the turf walls, perilously bulged by the leakage in several places, were green with mould. One of the masons and I simultaneously interfered. It would never do, we said, to pin down a human creature in that way to the damp earth. Why not give her what the length of the chain permitted—the full range of the room? If ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... each other with the greatest animosity. They heaved around them liquid mountains, which rolled even to our raft and rocked it perilously. Twenty times we were near capsizing. Hissings of prodigious force are heard. The two beasts are fast locked together; I cannot distinguish the one from the other. The probable rage of the conqueror inspires ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... in Southern England. As he stood up and gazed down and down and down, to his right he saw what looked from up here such a tiny toylike town, and it recalled suddenly a book he had once read, as one reads a Jules Verne romance, "The Battle of Dorking," a soldier's fairy-tale that had come perilously near being a prophecy. ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes |
