"Brink" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... word in the native, his eye still undeviatingly fixed on the captain; and the servant thrust Huish smartly forward from the brink of the stair. With an extraordinary simultaneous dispersion of his members, that gentleman bounded forth into space, struck the earth, ricocheted, and brought up with his arms about a palm. His mind was quite a stranger to these events; the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had reason to believe that if it had directed a call on President Jackson for a military force it would have been refused. It is reported that the President, in private conversation, intimated as much. Possibly he might have been justified in the refusal. South Carolina was on the brink of war with the United States. Georgia was her next neighbor, and might have been induced to make common cause with her, if Jackson had battered down the doors of her penitentiary to release a man who, her courts insisted, had been properly convicted of a serious ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... flickered with the suggestion of a surface agitated by an incoming swell. As soon, therefore, as they had finished their lunch, the pair made their way in the direction of this appearance of water; and after about ten minutes of easy walking found themselves standing upon the brink of a kind of "sink" or basin about a quarter of a mile in diameter, having a narrow opening communicating with the open sea. It was a strange-looking place, presenting an appearance suggestive of a vast hollow under the coast-line having ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... Houghton was too far gone to appreciate the jest. Indeed, he was on the brink of the grave. A few days later he left for Vichy, where he died on August 11th. His remains were brought to Fryston, and Burton and Arbuthnot were ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... Across us shoot their dusky wink; I hear the parliament of chats In haws beside the river's brink; And drops the vole off alder-banks, To push his arrow through the stream. These busy people had our thanks For tickling sight and sound, but theme They were not more than breath we drew Delighted with our world's embrace: The moss-root smell where beeches grew, And watered grass in breezy space; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... murmurs began to arise that Barratt had practised the same or similar villainies in former instances. One case in particular was beginning to be whispered about, which at once threw a light upon the whole affair: it was the case of a young and very beautiful married woman, who had been on the very brink of a catastrophe such as had befallen my own wife, when some seasonable interference, of what nature was not known, had critically delivered her. This case arose 'like a little cloud no bigger than a man's hand,' then spread and threatened to burst in tempest upon the public mind, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... life is that head-light axiom, "Man proposes, God disposes," so often flashed plump in the eyes of enthusiastic travellers for their bewilderment or befuddlement as in finance. At this very moment of success I was, without knowing it, on the brink of ruin, owing to causes and conditions which were beyond human power to calculate or foresee. Here ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... old house! and how many dandelions somebody must have dug to buy it!—Jemmy's arithmetic couldn't compute it; and that fine statue, too, on the brink of the pond, with its finger on its lip; (it's no use, is it Jemmy?) the birds won't "hush" for the daintiest bit of marble ever sculptured; nested to their minds; no taxes to pay;—nothing to do but warble. May no sportsman's ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... unquiet and discontented, and that seek revenge upon them that persecute them for their profession, do, by so doing, also put themselves upon the brink of those ruins that others are further from. These men are like the fly that cannot let the candle alone until she hath burned herself in the flame. Magistrates and men in power have fortified themselves from being attacked with turbulent ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... at least a minute on the brink before I descried a black object floating at the far end of the tarn. What this object was I could not make out; but I knew it on the instant to be that for which I longed, and all my will grew suddenly ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of a 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 Loch Maree, whereof ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... they call in love," Jerome said to himself. He turned very pale, and looked away from Lucina. He felt as if suddenly he had come to the brink of some dread abyss ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... and I will meet my doom, or achieve my safety,' my sister said; but the young man answered, 'Nay, I will go over the fall too: I can then be of some service to you.' So he swam along by the canoe's side directing my sister, and shaping the course of the prow on the very brink of the fall. Then all shot over together. The canoe and Annette, and the young man were buried far under the terrible mass of water, but they soon came to the surface again, when the heroic stranger seized my sister, and through the fury of the mad churning flood, landed her unhurt upon the bank. ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... Laura, falling upon her knees and raising her arms pleadingly toward the queen; "speak no more! humble me no further! Do not betray my secret, which in your mouth becomes a denunciation! Let me remain even on the brink of the precipice, where you have dragged me! that is appalling, but cast me not down! So low and dust-trodden a creature is no longer worthy of the honor of approaching your majesty, I see that, and beg humbly for ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... gap where the screen of bush broke off, leaving the barren shoulder overlooking the valley. It was where the hard-beaten, converging cattle-paths hurled themselves over the brink to the wide ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... and found in these vaults. Oppressed by the ignominy of his fate, he went down, and following, carefully, to an immense depth, the winding of a stone staircase, came to an iron door, which opened, as if by a spring, when he knocked. He entered, and found himself on the brink of a deep vault. In the centre of the ceiling hung a lamp, which was nearly burnt out, and, by its flickering light, he saw, below, a huge stone table, round which many warriors, clad in armour, sate, resting, as if in slumber, their heads on their arms, which they laid ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... together at the idea, for both were twentieth-century products, healthy-minded and normal, with souls that delighted in the butterfly-chase of ideals but that halted before the brink ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... arching foot, with eyes upraised, with clasped adoring hands—waiting, watching, trembling, praying for the trumpet's call to rise from dust for ever! Ah, vision too fearful of shuddering humanity on the brink of almighty abysses!—vision that didst start back, that didst reel away, like a shrivelling scroll from before the wrath of fire racing on the wings of the wind! Epilepsy so brief of horror, wherefore is it that thou canst not die? Passing so suddenly into darkness, wherefore is it ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... saved civilization on Aton. There were four great nations; the two greatest were at the brink of war, and the others were waiting to pounce on the exhausted victor and then fight each other for the spoils. The Space Vikings forced them to unite. Out of that temporary alliance came the League for Common Defense, and from that the Planetary Republic. ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... narrow escape. A few more years of sin, and his rescue would have been impossible; both mind and body would have been sunk so deep in the mire of concupiscence that none but Almighty power could have saved him from utter destruction. Thousands of boys and young men are to-day standing on the slippery brink of that awful precipice from which but very few are snatched away. Soon they will plunge headlong over into the abyss of debasement and corruption from whence they will never escape. Oh that we had the power to reach each one of these unfortunate youth before it is too late, and to utter in ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... breath away," he said. "I feel as if I were on the brink of a torrent and had an irresistible desire to jump into it ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... "my disastrous connection with Thomas Welbeck. You recollect his sudden disappearance last July, by which I was reduced to the brink of ruin. Nay, I am, even now, far from certain that I shall survive that event. I spoke to you about the youth who lived with him, and by what means that youth was discovered to have crossed the river in his company on the night of his departure. ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... a moment. Now that he had broken the ice, he feared to go on. It was something of a shock to find himself on the brink of a confidence when he had not intended to ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... horns blew and women wailed, while the captains of the Umpondwana issued their commands, and the men piled up stones upon the brink of the precipice to roll down upon the foe, and drove the herds of cattle into the great kraal ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... the mountain from the top of this side, to a small village called Novalesa, is four Italian miles. When the snow has filled up all the inequalities of the mountain, it looks, in many parts, as smooth and equal as a sugar-loaf. It is on the brink of this rapid descent that they put the sledge. The man who is to guide it, sits between the feet of the traveller, who is seated in the elbow-chair, with his legs at the outside of the sticks fixed at the ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... brink of a sheer precipice, which fell away more than two hundred feet to a mass of jagged rock on which the sea was booming with a hollow sound like the voice of a ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... entirely different from its manner a moment before on approaching the nest with a cherry or worm, it is certain to be engaged in this office. One may observe the social sparrow, when feeding its young, pause a moment after the worm has been given and hop around on the brink of the nest ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... go for your theology! I was puzzled to understand you, but now all is plain! Young man, you are on the brink of perdition. That book will poison your ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... that drear, barren expanse was fully ten miles distant, while all about where he rode the conformation was irregular, comprising narrow valleys and swelling mounds, with here and there a sharp ravine, riven from the rock, and invisible until one drew up startled at its very brink. The general trend of depression was undoubtedly southward, leading toward the valley of the Arkansas, yet irregular ridges occasionally cut across, adding to the confusion. The entire surrounding landscape presented the same aspect, with no special ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... I had remained a mere spectator of what had happened. But now I feared that I was on the brink of witnessing ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... we were utterly unable to prosecute it with success or honour. We were driven out of Germany, of Italy, of the Low Countries. We could not sustain the war, or resolve to make peace. Every day led us nearer and nearer the brink of the precipice, the terrible depths of which were for ever staring us in the face. A misunderstanding amongst our enemies, whereby England became detached from the grand alliance; the undue contempt ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... conflict, and its relation to the fundamental character of economic institutions, which he dimly perceived, so Fourier failed to grasp the significance of the evolutionary process which he described, and, like Saint-Simon, he halted upon the brink, so to speak, of an important discovery. His concept of social evolution meant little to him and possessed only an academic interest. And Owen, in many respects the greatest of the three, realized in a practical manner ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... are forsaken when we have sinned, when for this very thing-to wit, to keep us from thinking so, is the Lord Jesus become our Advocate-"If any man sin, we have an Advocate." Christian, thou that hast sinned, and that with the guilt of thy sin art driven to the brink of hell, I bring thee news from God-thou shalt not die, but live, for thou hast "an Advocate with the Father." Let this therefore be considered by thee, because it ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... on the brink of marrying her," Lush went on. "But I hope it's off now. She's a niece of the clergyman—Gascoigne—at Pennicote. Her mother is a widow with a brood of daughters. This girl will have nothing, and is as dangerous as gunpowder. It would ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... thrown in the way of all his measures for the benefit of the island by the delays of cabinets and the chicanery of Fonseca and his satellites. At this critical juncture, when faction reigned triumphant, and the colony was on the brink of ruin, tidings were brought to the Vega that Pedro Fernandez Coronal had arrived at the port of San Domingo, with two ships, bringing supplies of all kinds, and a strong reinforcement of ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... exists to attest his object. But those who went on into the great continent, reaching the shores of vast lakes and the banks of mighty rivers, learnt another and a truer story. They saw these rivers flowing with vast volumes of water from the north-west; and, standing on the brink of their unknown waves, they rightly judged that such rolling volumes of water must have their sources far away in distant mountain ranges. Well might the great heart of De Soto sink within him when, after long months of arduous toil through swamp and ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... feelings in the unequivocal language of love! Yet she seemed so hideously unhappy as she stretched before him in her white robes of death. Why? What secret was this disclosed at the twelfth hour of life, on the very brink of the grave? Did death, then, hold the solution to the enigma of ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... it means," said the boy, and a great fear possessed him; he felt as though he were on the brink of a fathomless chasm, a chasm which was ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... ceremonie lay on me, which I perform'd with all the decency I could, inviting the Mayor and Aldermen to come in their formalities; Sir Jonas Atkins was there with his guards, and the Deane and Prebendaries; one of his countrymen pronouncing a funeral oration at the brink of his grave, which I caus'd to be dug in the quire." Such was the funeral of a brave ally; the English and French were then fighting together against the Dutch.[9] It is interesting to note here ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer
... path, fishing. The willow leaned very much, and this made it easy to climb the stem of it. It had been headed down, too, so that there was a pretty good place to sit on the top of it. It was on the very brink of the stream, and indeed the leaning of the stem carried the top of the willow somewhat over the water, and thus it made quite a good place ...
— Rollo in Geneva • Jacob Abbott
... from across the lake had not stirred. The big man on the cliffs came back slowly to the brink and crouched there, looking down, motionless so long that it was hard for the eye to be sure of him, to know if it were really a human being or a poised boulder squatting there. There came no call from below; the hawk wheeled ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... day? or had the nearness of the eternal world brought everything to its level? It would depend on her natural temperament: there are people whose vanity and self-love can be flattered at the grave's brink. She lingered, and stuck to life like a beech leaf to the tree, which a child's breath might almost blow to the ground. But she had weathered the winter, and the days were stretching out again: it was almost the end of March, with bright sunshine and an occasional softness in the atmosphere ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... the dreaded future Has less bitter than I think; The Lord may sweeten the waters Before I stoop to drink; Or if Marah must be Marah, He will stand beside the brink." ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... the passage ended, and she halted and bade the mutes hold up the lamps, and, as she had prophesied, I saw a scene such as I was not likely to see again. We were standing in an enormous pit, or rather on the brink of it, for it went down deeper—I do not know how much—than the level on which we stood, and was edged in with a low wall of rock. So far as I could judge, this pit was about the size of the space beneath the dome of St. Paul's in London, ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... Barras, the defender of the members of the Convention, the man of the 13th of Vendmiaire, the murderer of the Duke of Enghien, the enemy of all the thrones of Europe, the author of the treachery of Bayonne, the persecutor of the Pope, the excommunicated sovereign. Twice he had driven Austria to the brink of ruin, and it had even been said that he wished to destroy it altogether, like a second Poland. The young archduchess had never heard the hero of Austerlitz and Wagram spoken of, except in terms ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... here, was evident enough, for a zigzag path had been worn down the rocky and precipitous sides; but our three horses were unused to sliding down or climbing precipices, and they drew back on being led to the brink ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... clay-cold brow, cheeks, lids, and lips once more, And with a maniac's wan, heart-breaking smile, Veiled, hooded, glided through the twilight streets, A sable shadow. From the willow-grove, Close by the Moldau's brink, beyond the bridge, Her trace was lost. 'T was evening and mild May, Air full of spring, skies perfect as a pearl; Yet one who saw her pass amidst the shades O' the blue-gray branches swears a sudden flame, As of miraculous lightning, thrilled through heaven. One hour thereafter she reentered ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... sat down again. Then he began at once speaking with loud, nervous haste, gesticulating, and in a positive frenzy. He was unmistakably a man driven into a corner, on the brink of ruin, catching at the last straw, ready to sink if he failed. Old Samsonov probably grasped all this in an instant, though his face remained cold and ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... wind bore to us the piercing notes of the long Roman clarions, and our hearts leaped at the martial music. A horde of Numidian horsemen, wrapped in long white robes, preceded the army. The column halted a moment, and several of the Numidians went down at full tilt to the brink of the river. In order to ascertain whether it was fordable, they entered it on horse-back, and approached the nearer side, notwithstanding the hail of stones and arrows which the Gallic slingers ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... within half a mile of the point where the second runaway commenced, and there there was an embankment twenty or more feet deep on the opposite side of the pike. I got the horses stopped on the very brink of the precipice. My new horse was terribly frightened and trembled like an aspen; but he was not half so badly frightened as my companion, Mr. Payne, who deserted me after this last experience, and took passage on a freight wagon for Maysville. Every time I attempted to start, my new horse would ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... was written (in Dutch) by his pupil Bakhuizen van der Brink (1865); for an appreciation of his services to classical literature see L. Mueller, Geschichte der klassischen Philologie in den ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... for her betrayal, and one may dream other dreams there than those of peace and love. The vision of a pale, strong man rises at the edge, bound and helpless, lifted from the ground by savage hands and hurled from the brink to the death below,—Manlius, who saved the Capitol and loved the people, and was murdered by the nobles,—and many others after him, just and unjust, whirled through the clear air to violent destruction for their bad or their good deeds, as justice or injustice chanced to be in the ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... remembered those childish ecstasies before the Eucharist: he recalled the pictures of a burning hell his Jesuit teachers had painted; he heard the trumpets of the Day of Judgment, and the sentence 'Go ye wicked!' On the brink of heresy he trembled and recoiled. The spirit of the coming age, the spirit of Bruno, was not in him. To all appearances he had not heard of the Copernican discovery. He wished to remain a true son of the Church, and was in fact of such stuff as the Catholic Revival wanted. Yet the memory of these ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... would have clasped all Nature in one vast embrace in thankfulness that she had become incarnate, for me, in a being that united all her charms and splendor, power, and delights. I knelt on the stones and briers of the ruins without feeling them and on the brink of precipices without perceiving them. I uttered inarticulate words, which were lost in the sound of the noisy waters of the lake; I strove to pierce the vaults of heaven, and to carry my song of gratitude, and my ecstasy of joy, into ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... the brightly-looming bulk of the fashionable Anglo-American hotel on the water's brink began to radiate toward their advancing boat its vivid suggestion of social order, visitors' lists, Church services, and the bland inquisition of the table-d'hote. The mere fact that in a moment or two she must take her place on the hotel register as Mrs. Gannett ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... that, foreign as her subject would seem to be to the French taste, her literary skill has been duly recognised by the Revue des Deux Mondes. Bret Harte and Frank Stockton are so eminently short-story writers that the longer their stories become, the nearer do they approach the brink of failure. Other names that suggest themselves in a list that might be indefinitely extended are those of Miss Jewett, Mrs. Elizabeth Phelps Ward, Mr. Richard Harding Davis, Mr. T.B. Aldrich, Mr. Thos. Nelson Page, Mr. Owen Wister, ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... soon—very soon, I must join them in the spirit land. Oh, mother, do try by repentance and faith, to meet us there, so that we may be a united family in heaven, though we have been divided upon earth. As I now stand upon the brink of the grave, looking back upon life, and forward to the future life, I feel like the shipwrecked mariner, who has entered the haven of peace, after the winds and the storms have subsided, and the tumultuous ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... little; seeing the abyss upon the brink of which this brave little girl was standing, he had not the heart to aggravate her by telling the failures of the past. Better to soften the inevitable discovery if possible. But his hesitation was ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... that he now revoked his decision not to mingle in Swiss politics, and ordered the federal authorities and troops to disperse, and the cantons to send deputies to Paris for the regulation of their affairs under his mediation. Meanwhile he bade the Swiss live once more in hope: their land was on the brink of a precipice, but it would soon be saved! Rapp carried analogous orders to Lausanne and Berne, while Ney marched in with a large force of French troops that had been ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... dost sit I let's tope like mad! Here's belly-timber store; ne'er spare it, lad. Straight these huzza like wild. One fills up drink; Another plaits a wreath, and crowns the brink O' th' teeming bowl. Then to the verdant bays All chant rude carols in Apollo's praise; While one the door with drunken fury smites, Till he from bed ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... recoiled a single pace and gathered his muscles for the leap. He took one quick step and made a terrific bound upward and outward, straight for the rocky brink whereon Deerfoot the Shawanoe ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... he did not attempt to define. He did not admit that he was hovering on the brink of loving Betty Gower—it seemed an incredible thing for him to do—but was vividly aware that she had kindled an incomprehensible fire in him, and he suspected, indeed he feared with a fear that bordered on spiritual shrinking, that it would go on glowing after ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... abated: ten flakes fell where twenty had fallen, then one had the room of ten. Not long after a form moved by the brink of the river. ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... says of Mr. Lloyd George's work that it "was done in the face of a dead weight of senseless but powerful opposition, all of which he had to undermine and overcome." He speaks of the "apathy of a Government which had brought the Empire to the brink of disaster," although his attitude towards the head of that Government hardly betrays this. He devotes his last chapter to "making known some of the efforts" that he "made to awaken both the Government and the public from the apathy which meant ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... crime. Each of our new resolutions depends upon those which have preceded it, and is their logical sequence just as the sum-total is the product of the added figures. Woe to him who, being seized with a dizziness at the brink of the abyss, does not fly as fast as possible, without turning his head; for soon, yielding to an irresistible attraction, he approaches, braves the danger, slips, and is lost. Whatever thereafter he does or attempts he will roll ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... was most arduous, but in passing by a spring he had the leisure to have these verses of Saadi inscribed on its brink:— ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... channel. The oars are plied vigorously to a weird refrain of "deelah, sahlah-deelah, sahlah!" the stroke oarsman shouting "deelah" and the others replying "sahlah" in chorus. Two hours are consumed in crossing the river, but once across the road is perfection itself, right from the river's brink. ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... south. Already had my steps, Tho' slow, so far into that ancient wood Transported me, I could not ken the place Where I had enter'd; when behold! my path Was bounded by a rill, which to the left With little rippling waters bent the grass That issued from its brink. ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... Leipziger Volkszeitung contains these lines in a leading article: "To-day we may not repeat that which we wrote about the ultimatum in our issue of July 24th, 1914. But there was no doubt in any section of the Press, that Europe stood on the brink of war from the moment ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... under King Hezekiah; in the time of Jeremiah, under King Josiah; and last and worst of all, in the time of Jesus Christ. At each of these three times the Jews were high religious professors, and yet at each of these three times they were abominable before God, and on the brink of ruin. In Isaiah's time their eyes seemed to have been opened at last to their own sins. Their fearful danger, and wonderful deliverance from the Assyrians of which you heard last Sunday, seem to have done ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... breast—feelings of hate mingled up with shame—scorn of herself, scorn of all—feelings of defiance and terror, striving at mastery; and, in one corner, a brooding image of despair, kept from the brink of the precipice only by the entreaties of some fiercer principle of hate. She felt life to be insupportable. Why did she live? This question came to her repeatedly. The demon was again at work ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... beside them, they run toward the disguised Indian or decoy, who leads them on at full speed toward the river; when, suddenly securing himself in some crevice of the cliff which he had previously fixed on, the herd is left on the brink of the precipice. It is then in vain for the foremost buffaloes to retreat or even to stop; they are pressed on by the hindmost rank, which, seeing no danger but from the hunters, goad on those before them till the whole are precipitated, and ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... 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
... forty, was marrying beneath her. But he has been a good brother to Clara, and a careful guardian of her estate. Ah, young gentleman, you cannot appreciate, except in imagination, what it means, to one standing on the brink of eternity, to feel sure that he will live on in his ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... 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 my son to my heart. Affliction has ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... child, she hid him three months. 3. And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river's brink. 4. And his sister stood afar off, to wit what would be done to him. 5. And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river; and her maidens walked along by the river's side; and when she saw the ark among ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... Sandoval, who had been detached with seventy soldiers against a Captain Roxas, who served under Pedro Arias de Avila, against whom complaints had been made by the inhabitants of Olancho, a district about fifty-five leagues from Truxillo. When the parties first met they were on the brink of proceeding to hostilities; but they were reconciled and parted amicably, Roxas and his men agreeing to evacuate the country. Sandoval was recalled in consequence of the arrival of Altamirano, and Cortes took measures to leave ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... o' my head there's been lurkin' a suspicion that once before, a long time ago, you an' me have had some business dealin's, but for the life o' me I couldn't place you. One minute I'd just be a-staggerin' on the brink of memory, as the feller says, an' the next it'd slip away from me. But just now, when you mentioned Bull McGinty an' the Brotherhood o' the South Seas—well, Gib, it all come back to me like a flash. Bull McGinty ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... his hand. Alexa was just rising from her seat and the lamplight fell on the deep roll of hair that overhung her brow like the eaves of a temple. Her face had often the high secluded look of a shrine; and it was this touch of awe in her beauty that now made him feel himself on the brink of sacrilege. ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... through yesterday. The mare held up very well until we were close to the camp, when she gave in again; but we had to somewhat severely persuade her to keep moving, and at last she had her reward by being left standing upon the brink of the water, where she was [like Cyrus when Queen Thomeris had his head cut off into a receptacle filled with blood] ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... that she should draw him on to a reconciliation: between whiles she failed not to send Octavio the kindest, impatient letters in the world, and received the softest replies that the tongue of man could utter, for he could not write yet. At last, Philander having reduced Sylvia to the very brink of despair, and finding, by her passionate importunity, that he could make his peace with her on any terms of advantage to himself, resolved to draw such articles of agreement as should wholly subdue her to him, or to stand it out to the last: the conditions ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... breath. "You have been on the brink of committing a terrible crime, my man," he said, looking at him sternly. "Let this be a warning to you not to take vengeance into your ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... Bharadvaja(45) by his side He turned in ecstasy, and cried: "See, pupil dear, this lovely sight, The smooth-floored shallow, pure and bright, With not a speck or shade to mar, And clear as good men's bosoms are. Here on the brink thy pitcher lay, And bring my zone of bark, I pray. Here will I bathe: the rill has not, To lave the limbs, a fairer spot. Do quickly as I bid, nor waste The precious ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... hogshead, he fell flat on his face, and dragged himself along on his belly until he reached it. Then seizing the hogshead with a hand on each chine he worked it backwards and backwards, like an alligator pulling a dog into the river, until he had fairly rolled his prize to the brink of the hill, where, giving it a sudden jerk by way of a start, and at the same time jumping up, he ran with all his might down the precipice, the hogshead hard after him, and was soon out of all danger. Numbers of shots were fired ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... which department I leave all as it is), yet in dealing with the nature of things I use induction throughout, and that in the minor propositions as well as the major. For I consider induction to be that form of demonstration which upholds the sense, and closes with nature, and comes to the very brink of operation, if it does not actually ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... despair seized on his soul, and he determined also to die. But as he was just about to throw himself down from a rock, his faithful dog sprang up to him, caressed him, and lamented in the expressive language of anguish. Halgrim bethought himself, and stepped back from the brink of the abyss; he embraced his dog; his tears flowed, and despair withdrew from his softened heart. He began his wandering anew. Thoughts of love led him towards the parish of Graven, where he had first seen and won ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... loyal love of a husband means less than the flatteries of a tame cat...." As suddenly as the eruption had come it subsided. He raised both hands. "Forgive me," he implored, "I didn't mean that. But I am distraught and financial affairs are very precarious, Loraine. We may stand on the brink of a disastrous panic. It lies in Hamilton Burton's power to make me or break me—absolutely. Don't ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... thee, to the end will praise; Goodwill thou lackest not, but yet forbear Thy further trouble! If thy heart be fain, Bethink thee that thy toil avails me not. Nay, rest thee well, aloof from danger's brink! I will not ease my woe by base relief In knowing others too involved therein. Away the thought! for deeply do I rue My brother Atlas' doom. Far off he stands In sunset land, and on his shoulder bears The pillar'd mountain-mass whose base is earth, Whose top ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... up. The road lay along the brink of a deep ravine, with the brook that made the waterfall tumbling along over the rocks at ...
— Rollo in Scotland • Jacob Abbott
... been written by St Lebuinus (Lebwin), the English apostle of the Frisians and Westphalians (d. c. 773); and the Bergkerk, dedicated in 1206, which has two late Romanesque towers. The town hall (1693) contains a remarkable painting of the town council by Terburg. In the fine square called the Brink is the old weigh-house, now a school (gymnasium), built in 1528, with a large external staircase (1644). The gymnasium is descended from the Latin school of which the celebrated Alexander Hegius was master in the third quarter of the 15th century, when the young ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... did he suffer it to travel higher up than the top of his knee, nor did he let it lower down than his ankle, and he drove it and held it between his two legs and not one of the boys was able to get a prod nor a stroke nor a blow nor a shot at it, so that he carried it over the [W.904.] brink of the goal away from them. [1]Then he goes to the youths without binding them to protect him. For no one used to approach them on their play-field without first securing from them a pledge of protection. ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... the greatest genius, one whom we know by name, Cynewulf, the only one whose works are authentic, being signed, who thus offered the best chance to critics, has caused as many disagreements among them as any stray leaf of parchment in the whole collection of Anglo-Saxon poetry. According to Ten Brink he was born between 720 and 730; according to Earle he more probably lived in the eleventh century, at the other end of the period.[42] One authority sees in his works the characteristics of the poetry of Northumbria, another ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... still shone through it. They were obliged to go around the little ponds which were dammed up by blocks of ice; during these wanderings they came too near a large stone, which lay tottering on the brink of a crevice in the ice. The stone lost its equilibrium, it fell, rolled and the echo resounded from the deep hollow paths of ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... face of the earth. In every foreign region of the globe the title of American citizen is held in the highest respect, and when pronounced in a foreign land it causes the hearts of our countrymen to swell with honest pride. Surely when we reach the brink of the yawning abyss we shall recoil with horror from ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... well-acted fears had led his father to expect, although he suffered severely from the blows. This battle commenced on the mountains. The West was forced to give ground. Manabozho drove him across rivers, and over mountains and lakes, and at last he came to the brink ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... himself, had been brought together in vain. We already know, when we begin to read the story, how it will be with them and with Caesar. On Caesar's side there is an ecstasy of hope carried to the very brink of certainty; on the other is that fainting spirit of despair which no battalions can assuage. We hear of no Scaeva and of no Crastinus on Pompey's side. Men change their nature under such leading as was that of Caesar. The inferior men become heroic by contact ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... story, a medley of all hues, all shapes, all heraldic devices, all signals, all confusion, up to the light chamber, making, in the storm, a gay riot of tatters about the blaze. That insolent light on the brink of the abyss showed like a defiance, and inspired shipwrecked men with a spirit of daring. But the Caskets light ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... signatures. These were of course only legitimate modes of expressing the wants of the people; but, unhappily, quite independent of the action of the popular leaders, the country in some parts was so disturbed, so closely on the brink of insurrection, that ministers found themselves obliged twice during the course of the year to resort to the almost unprecedented measure of suspending the Habeas Corpus Act, on the first occasion at the end of February, and ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... Du, and 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 ran ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... the Malini portrayed, Its tranquil course by banks of sand impeded; Upon the brink a pair of swans; beyond, The hills adjacent to Himalaya[95], Studded with deer; and, near the spreading shade Of some large tree, where 'mid the branches hang The hermits' vests of bark, a tender doe, Rubbing its downy forehead on the horn Of a ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... I am 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 ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... them, Waiting the unutterable moment of their loss Or utmost gain, as tho' the swinging earth Was emptied of all life, the very air Seemed hollow and unearthly, breathless pause On a great brink. They reached the pool, and Taka Gathered her senses till her eyes were clear As shining wells of truth. She leaned no more Helpless upon Malua, tho' his arm Circled her still. Before them on the path, Noble and dead, with mute hands pleading, eyes Subtle ...
— The Rose of Dawn - A Tale of the South Sea • Helen Hay
... kissed her—he had kissed her by force! 'My God! then the difference between us is only one of degree, and the vilest humanity claims kinship of instinct with me!' He clasped his hands across his eyes, and feeling himself on the brink of madness, he cried out to God to save him; and he longed to speak the words that would take him from the world. Life was not for him. He had learnt his lesson. Thornby Place should soon be Thornby Abbey, and in the divine consolation ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... is coming," she thought, and suddenly froze to a spectator of the marionette show. As the Hon. Reginald went through his performance, she felt with a shudder of horror over what brink she had nearly stepped. The man was merely a magnificent animal! She, with her heart, her soul, her brain, mated to that! Like a convict chained to a log. Not worthy of him forsooth! "There's a gulf between us," she thought, "and I nearly fell down it." And the Half-and-Half rose ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... mamma and Flora. Up through the windows came the twilight and the rumble of the vast heedless city. Carlisle snapped on the lights. And then all at once, without warning, there closed down upon her an enormous depression, a sense as of standing on the brink of irretrievable disaster. Or it was as if she had run away, indeed, but had not escaped. Or as if, in cutting herself off from the past, she had cut away something important, which something here gave notice that it would ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... a cruel cut; but seventeen years of flattery and smoothness had armed Nina in impregnable complacence. She gave a sneering laugh that trembled on the brink of tears, and tried to control a mouth that was shaking with anger. One look of utter scorn she did manage, then she shrugged not so much her shoulders as her whole body, and flung herself furiously into the water. ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... of his adventures with alligators. He had the most unbounded antipathy towards the monsters; which arose, he said, from once seeing a poor girl, who was stooping down to fill her pitcher with water at a river's brink, seized by one of them. The horrible saurian, darting out of the water and grasping her arm, dragged her off before he could go to her rescue. He fired, but his bullet glanced off the scaly head of the creature, which in an instant carried the unfortunate female, who was shrieking loudly, under ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... be the darkest hour, Robert? What have you or I, or our people, to do with the madmen who are driving the South over the brink of ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... extreme point of this horseshoe was a sand bar with no shelter except driftwood trees. Edwards and his squad were at their post across the river, in plain view of the advancing line. Suddenly they were seen to dismount and lie down on the brink of the cut-bank. A few minutes later chaos broke out along the line, when a band of possibly twenty wolves left their cover and appeared on the sand bar. A few rifle shots rang out from the opposite bank, when they skurried ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams |
