"Verge" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cease playing, under pain of producing mere discord and disturbance in the scheme of tragic harmony. We imagine that the writer must himself have felt the scene of the roses to be pitched in a truer key than the noble scene of parting between the old hero and his son on the verge of desperate battle and certain death. This is the last and loftiest farewell note of rhyming tragedy; still, in King Richard II, and in Romeo and Juliet, it struggles for awhile to keep its footing, but now more visibly in vain. The rhymed scenes in these ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... from each projecting cape And perilous reef along the ocean's verge, Starts into life a dim, gigantic shape, Holding its ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... boldly onward in pursuit of wealth, were already in the enjoyment of a competency in their own part of the Country. They take their wives along with them, and make them share the countless perils and privations, which always attend the commencement of these expeditions. I have often met, even on the verge of the wilderness, with young women, who, after having been brought up amid all the comforts of the large towns of New England, had passed, almost without any intermediate stage, from the wealthy abode of their parents, to a comfortless hovel in a forest. ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... to escape from conscience, by connecting something of the ludicrous with them, and by inventing grotesque terms and a certain technical phraseology to disguise the horror of their practices. Indeed, paradoxical as it may appear, the terrible by a law of the human mind always touches on the verge of the ludicrous. Both arise from the perception of something out of the common order of things—something, in fact, out of its place; and if from this we can abstract danger, the uncommonness will alone ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... to myself, "and I should not have minded saying the same thing aloud to my brothers and some of my sisters, for we most of us were heartily tired of her interference with all family arrangements, and were frequently on the verge of rebellion, but my father paid her so much deference, that we were afraid of ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... adhered to the stone. This hall, dignified, grand, but happy, was open on all sides to the sun and air. From it I could see tamarisk- and acacia-trees, and far-off shadowy mountains beyond the eastern verge of the Nile. And the trees were still as carven things in an atmosphere that was a miracle of clearness and of purity. Behind me, and near, the hard Libyan mountains gleamed in the sun. Somewhere a boy was singing; and suddenly his singing died away. And I thought of the "Lay of the Harper" ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... reflect upon its origin, to investigate its source. He had to steel his nerves to face it because he dared not do otherwise. But its sudden effect on the nerve centres of his brain, previously strained almost to the breaking point, must have brought him to the verge of ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... the conversation, very often by reason of his defective hearing and his appalling habit of falsehood, bringing his companions to the verge of hysterics. ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... institutions, she would then possess a graded set of organisations for dealing with the young, which would cover the whole period of youthful life. The Truant School would catch the child on the first symptoms of waywardness, the Industrial School would arrest him standing on the verge of crime, the Reformatory School would dual with actual offenders against the law, and the Penal Reformatory would grapple with habitual offenders under the ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... I shall never forget the sight that met my gaze. I was just on the northern verge of the Great Kaap Basin. It is in extent probably thirty miles long by twenty wide, and is shaped somewhat like a pear the larger end being scooped out of the mighty mass of the Drakensberg. At the narrow end the hills dwindled somewhat, but straight across the widest ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... ground, with the motto TANDEM TRIUMPHANS. The few cavalry being chiefly Lowland gentry, with their domestic servants and retainers, formed the advanced guard of the army; and their standards, of which they had rather too many in respect of their numbers, were seen waving upon the extreme verge of the horizon. Many horsemen of this body, among whom Waverley accidentally remarked Balmawhapple, and his lieutenant, Jinker (which last, however, had been reduced, with several others, by the advice of the Baron of Bradwardine, to the situation of what he called reformed officers, or reformadoes), ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... asked him how he was. And he answered her, in the habit of more than thirty years: 'Well, I don't think I'm any the worse, dear.' But he was frightened of her, underneath this safeguard of habit, frightened almost to the verge ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... dying hours! Although we can merit nothing at the hand of God, yet I have a notion, that we cannot deserve more of one another, and in some sense, for that reason, of him, than in our charities on so trying an exigence! When the poor soul stands shivering, as it were, on the verge of death, and has nothing strong, but its fears and doubts; then a little balm poured into the wounds of the mind, a little comforting advice to rely on God's mercies, from a good person, how consolatory must it be! And how, like morning mists before the sun, must all diffidences and gloomy ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... available wealth. What had been possible during the decade preceding the war,—had the nation so willed,—was to place the navy on such a footing, in numbers and constitution, as would have made persistence in the course Great Britain was following impolitic to the verge of madness, because it would add to her war embarrassments the activity of an imposing maritime enemy, at the threshold of her most valuable markets,—the West Indies,—three thousand miles away from her ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... Torvested, and the attempts of his mother-in-law to convert him, are described, not with the merely superficial drollery to which the subject invites, but with a sweet and delicate humor, which trembles on the verge ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... little balcony at his command, and as he noiselessly stepped out upon it, between three and four o'clock, he felt himself the solitary comrade of the mist-veiled lake, of those high, rosy mountains on the eastern verge, the first throne and harbor of the light—of the lower forest-covered hills that "took the morning," one by one, in a glorious and golden succession. All was fresh, austere, and vast—the spaces of the lake, the distant hollows of high glaciers filled with purple shadow, the ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... certain number of eggs, five or six for instance, of which the lower ones are more or less developed, the middle ones half-way towards maturity, and the upper ones very rudimentary. Every stage of evolution is here represented, distributed regularly from bottom to top, from the verge of maturity to the vague outlines of the embryo. The sheath clasps its string of ovules so closely that any inversion of the order is impossible. Besides, an inversion would result in a gross absurdity: the replacing of a riper egg by another in ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... friend's new air of cold superiority, Zoie was now on the verge of tears. "Somebody must have a new baby," she faltered. "Somebody ALWAYS has a ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... palme, or suture de la verge of the French, is the name given to those examples of single cutaneous envelope for both the testicles and penis; the penis is adherent to the scrotum by its inferior face; the glans only is free and erection is impossible. Chretien cites an instance in ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... mystery was solved by the girls, and other members of the company—a mystery that involved the happiness of the old couple who owned Oak Farm, but were on the verge of ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
... lend themselves to sound slumber. All night the officers of the Wolverine slept on the verge of waking, but it was not until dawn that the cry of "Sail-ho!" sent them all hurrying to their clothes. Ordinarily officers of the U.S. Navy do not scuttle on deck like a crowd of curious schoolgirls, ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Steve Gadd and Joe Gibbons told me the time they took you to Washington County to the turkey shoot, that they'd all been down sick if it hadn't been for you. They say it rained a cold rain and you all got wet. Uncle Jake is subject to the quinsy and he was on the verge of it. They tried the drug store and everywhere and they couldn't get nothing. Steve said you went to the drug store and got all they wanted, only you didn't ask for whiskey; you called it fermenting spirits. Steve said the druggist ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... memory of one of those men had always power to drive her to the verge of madness. He was a handsome, brown-haired man of powerful physique. A man whose gentle manner and swift, hot temper she abhorred, and the memory of whose influence upon her life had still power to grind to ashes every gentle feeling ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... with the impulsive and often irresistible longings for food delicacies which are apt to overcome children, and in girls often persist or revive through adolescence and even beyond. Such sudden fits of greediness belong to those kind of normal psychic manifestations which are on the verge of the abnormal into which they occasionally pass. They may occur, however, in healthy, well-bred, and well-behaved children who, under the stress of the sudden craving, will, without compunction and apparently without reflection, steal the food they long for or even steal from their parents the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... out from thy still hour With eyes that know and bear His fire; Till kindling on thy wonder's verge The transient days immortal merge In Him fulfilled as worlds expire In nestled ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... not answer. He could see that she was trembling violently and on the verge of an hysterical crisis. He rather hoped she would break down. It would seem more natural. Women were privileged to cry and scream, not that it was possible to imagine her screaming. He dragged forward a chair from the ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... to haggle!" Cappy wailed. He was almost on the verge of tears. "It's the basic principle of all trading. Why, I've made my everlasting fortune by haggling. Drat your picture, don't you know that the very pillars of financial ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... moment to buy up the outstanding stock. The finances of the town and its citizens were at the lowest ebb—on the verge of collapse, in fact, if something did not turn up. Furthermore—he imparted the information in a voice lowered to a confidential pitch—he had it from a reliable source that the bank itself had been caught in a pinch and had been obliged to transfer its stock ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... fantasia on the old theme of Cinderella, both succeeded in hitting Parisian taste. No less fortunate was 'Griselidis' (1901), a quasi-mediaeval musical comedy, founded upon the legend of Patient Grizel, and touching the verge of pantomime in the characters of a comic Devil and his shrewish spouse. Of Massenet's later works none has been more successful than 'Le Jongleur de Notre Dame' (1902), which, besides winning the favour of Paris, has ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... brought to a crisis on account of the pressure on the part of the French and Italian governments for the payment of the claims of their citizens. The republic was on the verge of dissolution when President Roosevelt intervened. European governments were satisfied, for it signified the payment of their claims. An agreement was signed by representatives of the government of Santo Domingo and of the ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... of tenderness for so amiable a princess. The king's jealousy laid hold of the slightest circumstance; and finding no particular object on which it could fasten, it vented itself equally on every one that came within the verge ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... connivance of the indulgent, As we entreat thee to exempt us from exposure To the slight of the detractor or aspersion of the defamer: And we ask thy forgiveness Should our frailties betray us into ambiguities, As we ask thy forgiveness Should our steps advance to the verge of improprieties: And we beg thee freely to bestow Propitious succor to lead us aright, And a heart turning in unison with truth, And a language adorned with veracity, And style supported by conclusiveness, And accuracy ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... that she was on the verge of tears, and he kindly and quietly helped her to despatch her arrangements for Lance before any more was said; only as they turned to bid the tired boy goodnight, he said, 'Where does the uncle live? I shall telegraph to- morrow, ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the pistol and stepped delicately to the verge of the mud, her hand firmly closed on the butt, her mouth and left ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... Constance in her usual manner,—"you have lived up there among the solitudes till you have got morbid ideas of life—which it makes me melancholy to observe. I am very much afraid they verge towards stagnation." ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... morrow, till her great Dread eyes 'gan tell of other gifts than those, And her advancing wings gloomed like a pall; Her speech foretelling joy became a dirge As piteous as pitiless; and all My company had passed beyond the verge And lost me ere Fate raised her blinding wings.... Hark! through the dusk a bird "at heaven's ...
— Songs, Sonnets & Miscellaneous Poems • Thomas Runciman
... them who have seen the sight, that "them Persian dancin' girls carry dancin' clear to the very verge of ondecency, and drop ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... letters which may want my immediate attention, and I can call at the telegraph office on my way. May I give you my company so far?' he asked. There was a touch of the lackey about Purvis, and his voice was humble sometimes to the verge of irritation. ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... and contempt, the daily jeers, and the cut direct from his schoolfellows? All was soon made plain. This boy's parents were old and very poor—so poor, helpless, and friendless that they were often brought to the verge of starvation. In those days, remember, there was not the same attention paid to the poor of all classes, nor loving provision made for their wants, as there is now. So the noble son—for truly noble he was—submitted cheerfully to every trouble ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... troubled stream, and had struggled through many windings and many difficulties, was reposing there, and gaining strength for its last great leap over the dark precipice. As Oriana and Mailah approached the verge of the scattered forest, and stood to gaze on the magnificent scene before them, they perceived the canoe descend a narrow rapid, and then take up a position below an elevated mass of rock, where the water was perfectly still, and where the fishermen could quietly pursue ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... easy-going editor, or one of that kind which allows a certain number of privileged writers to send in what they like. We are told in many places that he "greatly improved" his contributors' articles; and I should say that if there is one thing which drives a contributor to the verge of madness, it is to have his articles "greatly improved." A hint in the Noctes (and it may be observed that though the references to Lockhart in the Noctes are not very numerous, they are valuable, for Wilson's friendship seems to have been mixed with a small grain ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... had reached the other verge of the forest of Beaumanoir. A broad plain dotted with clumps of fair trees lay spread out in a royal domain, overlooked by a steep, wooded mountain. A silvery brook crossed by a rustic bridge ran ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... what is the matter with me. I feel always just on the verge of becoming an absurd old hypochondriac, and as if it only wanted a touch to send ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... that second day, the boy, worn to the verge of exhaustion, staggered into his mother's kitchen, and almost frightened Peggy to death ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... go on. Cora held her close and the thought came to her that Freda herself was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The girl had changed very much from the happy, laughing chum of a ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... civilization, to the bright and beautiful Athens,—Athens, whose schools drew to her bosom, and then sent back to the business of life, the youth of the Western world for a long thousand years. Seated on the verge of the continent, the city seemed hardly suited for the duties of a central metropolis of knowledge; yet what it lost in convenience of approach, it gained in its neighborhood to the traditions of the mysterious East, and in the loveliness of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... Gentleman first proposed and promoted the establishment of the town of Alexandria, and was its first inhabitant. He was consoled on the verge of life, with the reflection of having acted his part well, and of having reared and leaving to represent him a numerous and amiable family, in possession of as much happiness as generally falls to the lot of humanity. Thus he met the ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... modest attitude, at her little timid airs of a young girl on the verge of matrimony; he had imagined nothing like it in such a connection as this, nor ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... ruined. For the rest, the inspection was made in silence. On the way back they found Uli standing gloomily in the front shed and took him in with them; but he remained down-cast the whole evening—indeed on the verge of tears whenever any ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... eaten into individual character; whence the tendency to fly off at tangents. We see the same thing in any decadent people; by which I mean, any people at the end of one of its manvantaras, and on the verge of a pralaya. And remember that a pralaya, like a night's rest or the Devachanic sleep between two lives, is simply a means for restoring ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... tender is the Son of God to his afflicted members?"-(Saint's Privilege, vol. 1, p. 674). The text here quoted forms the foundation of Bunyan's admirable Advice to Sufferers, in which he delightfully dwells upon the topics which Evangelist addresses to the Pilgrims, when on the verge of bitter persecution-(ED). ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... they were in exact response to their own, leaving the unfortunate sufferers uncertain whether, in the darkening twilight and increasing storm, they had made the persons who apparently were traversing the verge of the precipice to bring them assistance, sensible of the place in which they had found refuge. At length their halloo was regularly and distinctly answered, and their courage confirmed, by the assurance that they were within hearing, if not within ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... dead and buried; and the disease went creeping about the streets and lanes for weeks after—here striking down a strong man in the full vigour of middle life—there shortening, apparently by but a few months, the span of some worn-out creature, already on the verge of the grave. The visitation had its wildly picturesque accompaniments. Pitch and tar were kept burning during the night in the openings of the infected lanes; and the unsteady light flickered with ghastly effect on house and wall, and tall chimney-top, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... haunted by the demon of unrest which rode him, begged food and a cup of milk at a farmhouse by the road, and started on again. All that day he walked, a mere machine dominated by a force which would drive it forward to the very verge of dissolution; and in the late evening he reached Cunetio. Here he did not know when he stopped, for he went to sleep on his feet, and woke and found himself on his back by the roadside, with the sun at high noon. Desperate for the time he had lost, he hastened on, and in an ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... of a convent bell varied the monotony of the scene, as it called the faithful to prayer. A sudden sound, as of many riders riding briskly, and a band of lances—the avant garde of a mighty army—drew rein at the verge of the yawning and smoking furnace which had been the castle. There they paused abruptly, and one who seemed almost overwhelmed by surprise and disappointment, gazed as if stupefied upon the ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... brought along as a kind of scattering lunch. C. was descried, at length, climbing the broad, rocky ridge, the eastern point of which we had doubled on our passage from Torbay. Making haste up the crags by a short cut, I joined him on the verge of the promontory pretty well heated and out of breath. The effort was richly rewarded. The mist was dispersing in the sunny air around us; the ocean was clearing off; the surge was breaking with a pleasant ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... threw them on the ground. The sight of our Blessed Lord at this moment was, indeed, calculated to move the hardest heart to compassion; he stood or rather bent over the cross, being scarcely able to support himself; his heavenly countenance was pale and was as that of a person on the verge of death, although wounds and blood disfigured it to a frightful degree; but the hearts of these cruel men were, alas! harder than iron itself, and far from showing the slightest commiseration, they threw him brutally down, exclaiming in a jeering ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... any system of religion: but now here, now there, in his books, one comes upon the pure gold of religion, enshrined in exquisite jewelries of diction, which glimmer on (if I may say so) to the utmost verge of emotion, and more successfully than any formal harangue, work out their intended function. Such works as Unto this Last and Munera Pulveris, however keen the mental antagonism they may initially ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... they were, standing together on the very verge of the mound, beyond the firs, some ten yards in front of the last comers, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... French theorists and economists giving the world new ideas as to the function of the State; enlightened despots on the thrones of Prussia, Austria, Spain, and Russia; and the hatreds of the hundred years of religious warfare dying out; the world seemed to many, about 1775, as on the verge of some great and far-reaching change in methods of living and in government, and about ready to enter a new era and make rapid advances in nearly all lines of human activity. The change came, but not in ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... rocks, and torn by the brambles. Finally they reached the ranch at the head of the canyons and were found by a half-breed Indian, who cared for them. Their underwear had been made into bindings for their lacerated feet; they were nearly starved, and on the verge of mental collapse. After two weeks' treatment in the hospital at Green River City they were partially restored to health. Quite likely they spent many of the long hours of their convalescence on the river bank, or on the little island, watching ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... he battled fiercely with the seeming destroyer, while her suffering drove them all to the verge of despair. ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... in this way, they got under cover of a little clump near the water's edge, and near enough to the gigantic game. Upon their hands and knees they now approached the verge of the underwood; and, having parted the leaves, looked through. The mighty quadruped was right under their eyes, within twenty ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... to work. Hear my opinion. On the lake's left bank, As we sail hence to Brunnen, right against The Mytenstein, deep-hidden in the wood A meadow lies, by shepherds called the Rootli, Because the wood has been uprooted there. 'Tis where our Canton boundaries verge on yours;— ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... did not beam. It never had done so, but it brightened with a grin as he slowly and cautiously backed out of the shrubs on to the path, stepped across on to the grassy verge, and set off at a trot in true sailor fashion up the garden toward the ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... forgot to do anything about our trunks, which contained our evening apparel. During the run to the house we were both on the verge of hysteria owing to the speed at which we were driven—seventy miles an hour at the least. And at one corner we were thrown forward, clear of the seats and against the partition, by an unexpected ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... rather you didn't ask questions about the Bishop," his mother replied, and discerning that she was on the verge of one of those headaches that while they lasted obliterated the world for Mark, he was silent. Later in the afternoon Mr. Astill, the Vicar, came round to see the Missioner and they had a long talk together, the murmur of which now softer now louder was audible in Mark's ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... that," she exclaimed. "Forgive me, but you made me think—do you remember that night at Enton, when Lord Arranmore spoke of his work amongst the poor, how the hopelessness of it began to haunt him and weigh upon him till he reached the verge of madness. You had something of ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... suffered in his general character or reputation for an unconsidered trifle like this, nor otherwise to have declined in the favour of his chief, beyond the necessity of transporting himself to a situation somewhat nearer the verge of Cape Wrath than the bosom of the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... thoughts become bright like yon edging of Pines On the steep's lofty verge—how it blackened the air! But touched from behind by the sun, it now shines With threads that seem part ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... to her disconnected, incoherent words, drawing but one conclusion from them—"the lover who had cast her off was pursuing the child, as her relentless foe, to the very verge of ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... presence. After a few moments of silence, for after my exclamatory utterance of his name, neither of us had spoken, he turned his eyes, in which the light of disease painfully burned, and said,—'You do well not to reproach me; the time for that is past, for I am, as you may see, on the verge of the grave. I have striven with disease, that I might reach this place, and if possible, obtain your forgiveness 'ere my eyes shall close in death. I know I have darkened a life, which, but for me, might have been bright and joyous. It is too much for me to ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... his recollection, but on mention of the Portugal piece of gold, the whole returned upon his memory; he made an immediate search for the papers, and recovered them; so that Mr. R——d carried to Edinburgh the documents necessary to gain the cause which he was on the verge of losing. The author has often heard this story told by persons who had the best access to know the facts, who were not likely themselves to be deceived, and were certainly incapable of deception. He cannot therefore refuse to give it credit, however ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various
... troubled in a way by doubt and longing, but these had made no deeper impression than could be traced in a certain open wistfulness of glance and speech. The mouth had the expression at times, in talking and in repose, of one who might be upon the verge of tears. It was not that grief was thus ever present. The pronunciation of certain syllables gave to her lips this peculiarity of formation—a formation as suggestive and moving as ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... subtle pitch can be boiled down to, "Step right up folks and put a donation in the pot. I'm just on the verge of learning the spaceman's secrets and with a little money to carry out my work I'll give you ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... surround it on every side. It is, above all, rich in public walks and promenades, one of these, the Promenade Chamart—a corruption of Champ de Mars—possessing some of the finest plane trees in Europe—a gigantic bit of forest on the verge of this city—of wonderful beauty and stateliness. These veteran trees vary in height from thirty to thirty-five yards. The Promenade Micaud, so called after its originator, Mayor of Besancon, in 1842, winds along the river-side, and affords lovely views at every turn. Then there are ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... she revisited all these hallowed spots. She thrilled on the very verge of the river and quivered amid the waving corn. She scaled the sentinel hickory and turned her eyes upon the Southern city. It was nearly a week since she had been allowed to wander so far afield, and Camelot seemed more than ever wonderful ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... and Hydra of the lake Of Lerna, and the twi-form prancing throng Of Centaurs,—insolent, unsociable, Lawless, ungovernable:—the tusked pest Of Erymanthine glades; then underground Pluto's three-headed cur—a perilous fear, Born from the monster-worm; and, on the verge Of Earth, the dragon, guarding fruits of gold. These toils and others countless I have tried, And none hath triumphed o'er me. But to-day, Jointless and riven to tatters, I am wrecked Thus utterly by imperceptible woe; I, proudly named Alcmena's child, and His Who reigns ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... to me again: but say to Athens, Timon hath made his everlasting mansion Upon the beached verge of the salt flood: Who, once a day with his embossed froth ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... the fine gray sand of the verge to shake himself vigorously. Then the wolverine came upslope at a clumsy gallop to Shann. With an unknown feeling swelling inside him, the Terran went down on both knees, burying both hands in the coarse brown fur, warming to the uproarious welcome ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... to the period whereabout the whole mystery of the Red Triangle began to be cleared up if I say that at the time of Plummer's visit this country was on the very verge of war with a great European State. It is a State with which the present relations of England are of the friendliest description, and, since the dreaded collision was happily averted, there is no need to particularise in the matter ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... magnificent vantage-ground lies the valley of the Rio Las Animas Perdidas. On the other verge of the great depression rise the peerless, everlastingly snow-wreathed Spanish Peaks,[75] whose giant summits are grim sentinels that for untold ages have witnessed hundreds of sanguinary conflicts between the wily nomads of the vast plains watered ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... I had brought these people step by step to the verge of starvation. I had laid waste alike their happiness and their prospects in life. The least amends I could make was to see that at all events they did not want for the necessities ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... and not a word to say, By silence overborne, until at last The young man breathed, "Look how the end of day Falls heavily, as though the earth were cast Into a shapeless soundless pit, where ray Of heavenly light never the verge has past. Yet will the late moon's light anon shine here, And then gray light, and then the ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... now flat and straight, and putting his horse into a trot Scarlett covered the ground rapidly. After some ten miles of riding, he came to a ford where the track crossed the river, and entered rougher country. As he drew rein at the verge of the water to let his horse drink, he noticed that the heavens had suddenly become dark. Looking at the strip of sky revealed by the treeless stretch above the waters, he saw a phenomenon in the upper air. Across ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... thirsted to kill him for his treachery. It was only by his bold front and constant watchfulness that he kept the dusky demons at a distance. Some of them were seen when the three ventured out, and though the pirates dared not attack them in open daylight, they were on the verge of doing so more than once. But their fury was directed principally against Captain Fred Sanders, and there can be no doubt the youth spoke the truth when he declared that if he attempted to stay on land until morning, he would not live ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... dozen times did he softly turn the handle of some bedroom door, which resembled his own, when a gruff cry from within of "Who the devil's that?" or "What do want here?" caused him to steal away on tiptoe, with a perfectly marvellous celerity. He was reduced to the verge of despair, when an open door attracted his attention. He peeped in—right at last. There were the two beds, whose situation he perfectly remembered, and the fire still burning. His candle, not a long one when he first received it, ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... above half way up the lake, and the young gentleman was pointing to his attendants the spot where their intended road turned northwards, and, leaving the verge of the loch, ascended a ravine to the right hand, when they discovered a single horseman coming down the shore, as if to meet them. The gleam of the sunbeams upon his head-piece and corslet showed that he was in armour, and the purpose of the other travellers required that he ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... (intended) ends of his measures. That king of infirm soul, who, yielding to the influence of wrath and malice, does not love and honour those amongst his kinsmen that are possessed of good qualities, is said to live on the very verge of destruction. That king, who attaches to himself accomplished persons by doing good to them even though he may not like them at heart, succeeds in enjoying fame for ever. Thou shouldst never impose taxes ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... on being on the verge of success, for after the explanation I had had with the aunt, and having, as I thought, a friend in her, I did not doubt that I ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... cruel, and when they get a victim he is tortured with all the horrible rites of the true savage. They know that the moment they are caught that is the end for them, so that they are reckless to the verge of insanity. ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... other sex and fell out with his dearest and truest friends. A fifth showed signs of mental aberration and was brought into Court upon charges of discreditable conduct. A sixth shot himself to escape the consequences of criminality, on the verge of detection! And so we might go on and on. All these were apparently sincere searchers after truth, and passed in the world for respectable persons. Externally, they were fairly eligible as candidates for Chelaship, ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... 'Neath the heavens arching their heaven; o'er-hazing the eye of the soul. Then the vision is pure no longer; refracted above us arise The phantasmal figures of passion; earth's mirage exhaled to the skies. And they go as the castled clouds o'er the verge when the tempest is laid, Towering Ambition, and Glory, and Self as Duty array'd:— Idols no less than that idol whom lustful Ammon of yore With the death-scream of children, a furnace of blood, was fain to adore! So these, in the shrine ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... enjoyment of sensuous harmonies for their own sake, are lacking or subordinate. Glory and luxury are too often mere masks of ambition and appetite, and at best counterfeits of beauty. Nevertheless, the luxurious developments of ambition and appetite are ever on the verge of tending toward the aesthetic. For when ambition has no longer to struggle against the world and is satisfied, the imagination that served it may become free; and when appetite is cloyed, the instrumentalities ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... long and delightful experience, that I can never love any body better than my brothers. I have no expectation of ever finding their equal in worth and attraction, therefore—do not be alarmed; I am not on the verge of a vow of celibacy, nor have I the slightest intention of adding any rash resolutions to the ghosts of those that have been frightened to death by the terrors of maiden life; but therefore—I shall never change my condition until I change ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... savages closed round them. All was useless; not an enemy could they shoot, while the savages thrust them forward with wild yells to the very verge of a precipice five hundred feet high. Over it they were driven, hurled to destruction by the mass of Latookas pressing onward. A few fought to the last; but all were at length forced over the edge of the cliff, and met the just reward of their atrocities. No quarter had been given, and upwards ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... movement, the awe of Austria's military power hushed the rising tempest. A few weeks more revealed to an astonished world the secret that the Austrian State, so great and so formidable in the eyes of friend and foe, was itself on the verge of dissolution. ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... like living statues. In its pages you find the blood and flame, the ferocity and self-sacrifice of the French Revolution. In the bosom of the Vengeance is the heart of the horror. In 105, North Tower, sits one whom sorrow drove beyond the verge, rescued from death by insanity, and we see the spirit of Dr. Manette tremblingly cross the great gulf that lies between the night of dreams and the blessed day, where things are as they seem, as a tress ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... came up to the port of Algiers, June 12, 1830, the unity between the soldiers and their master, Hussein Pacha, was tottering on the verge of dissolution; a plot against his life had just been discovered, he had punished the ringleaders with death, and many who had been concerned in the conspiracy felt that there was no safety for them with him. Beaten constantly in every ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... had made him change—what do you mean?" she pressed, feeling herself on the verge of an explanation, but determined not to ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... into Cheshire; his approach had relieved Chester; he had then turned eastwards into Staffordshire, had crossed that county, entered Leicestershire, and (May 30) taken the town of Leicester by storm. He was thus on the very verge of the Parliament's own faithful Association of the Eastern Counties, and might be expected to break into that Association. Immediately, therefore, the plans of the Parliament were changed. On the very day on which the news ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson |
