"Brink" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... De Ruyter's armament. There was no thought however of retreat, and a fight at once began, the longest and most stubborn that the seas have ever seen. The battle had raged for two whole days, and Monk, left with only sixteen ships uninjured, saw himself on the brink of ruin, when on the morning of the third he was saved by the arrival of Rupert. Though still greatly inferior in force, the dogged admiral renewed the fight on the fourth day as the Dutch drew off to their own ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... Well, he dreamed—I use his own words as nearly as possible—that again he heard those accursed death-hounds in full cry. Nearer and nearer they came, following our spoor to the edge of the river—all the pack that had run down the horses. At the water's brink they halted and were mute. Then suddenly a puff of wind brought the scent of us upon the island to one of them which lifted up its head and uttered a single bay. The rest clustered about it, and all at once they made ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... might have given me a disastrous fall. But I was careful with all my speed, and got safely to the bottom, where there were patches of coarse grass, and an attempt here and there at brushwood: what was below this I could not see. I advanced a few hundred yards farther, and found that I was on the brink of a frightful precipice, which no one in his senses would attempt descending. I bethought me, however, to try the creek which drained the coomb, and see whether it might not have made itself a smoother way. In a few minutes ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... and cloudlets pink, And water-lilies just in bud, With iris on the river brink, And white weed garlands on the mud, And roses thin and pale as dreams, And happy cygnets born in May, No wonder if our country seems Drest out for Freedom's ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... lifted them both up the twenty remaining yards of the cliff, and left them standing on a sheltered crag at the extreme brink. ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... and the young man was very good-looking. Indeed, arriving at the brink, I myself had qualms. But Tish has a will of iron, and was, besides, still rankling with insult. She merely glued her eye again to the sight of the gun on my ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... directors of the greatest mill in Kilburn—the very one which I had seen the night before surrounded by armed sentinels. It was thrilling to me, this knowledge, for it seemed to plump me down at once in the middle of things—and soon, indeed, brought me nearer to the brink of great events than ever I was before in all ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... of my predecessors carefully, and humbly acknowledge my indebtedness to such authorities as Ten Brink and Ward. From Mr. Pollard's edition of certain English Miracle Plays I have borrowed one or two quotations, in addition to information gathered from his admirable introduction. Particularly am I under an obligation to Mr. Chambers, upon whose Mediaeval Stage my first chapter is chiefly based. ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... and Juana. Both had always regarded the French as their natural enemies. It was necessary to have recourse to religious terrors; and Porto Carrero employed those terrors with true professional skill. The King's life was drawing to a close. Would the most Catholic prince commit a great sin on the brink of the grave? And what could be a greater sin than, from an unreasonable attachment to a family name, from an unchristian antipathy to a rival house, to set aside the rightful heir of an immense monarchy? The tender conscience and the feeble intellect ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... we have a damn better chance than you may think," he said, in a tone as changed as his looks. "This country lies wide open to any attack that is sudden and unexpected. Labor is in a state of ferment. I predict that within a year we shall find ourselves upon the brink of a civil war, with labor and capital lined up against each other. Unless the government takes some definite step toward placating organized labor, the whole standing army will not be sufficient to keep the peace. That is the present internal condition, ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... a faith that will not shrink Though pressed by every foe, That will not tremble on the brink Of any earthly woe!— ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... April 11. Widor's "Ouverture Espagnol," Rameau's opera ballet "Les Indes Galantes," and Ten Brink's "Premiere Suite d'Orchestre," given by the Orchestral ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... Sam balanced himself on the edge of the quay, and executing a double shuffle on the very brink of it by way of showing his complete mastery over his feet, fell into the rigging and descended. He was followed by Dick and the cook, both ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... went on to others. Presently he saw the son of Tydeus, noble Diomed, standing by his chariot and horses, with Sthenelus the son of Capaneus beside him; whereon he began to upbraid him. "Son of Tydeus," he said, "why stand you cowering here upon the brink of battle? Tydeus did not shrink thus, but was ever ahead of his men when leading them on against the foe— so, at least, say they that saw him in battle, for I never set eyes upon him myself. They say that there was no man like ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... functionaries of the law made any objection, although both insisted if they did not forthwith bring the culprit to the last stages of preparation, they might lose their places. They did not see, however, but a man might pause for a moment on the brink of the grave. It would seem that there had been a little misunderstanding between the executioners themselves on the point of precedency, which had been one cause of the delay, and which had been disposed of by an arrangement ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... I confess, as I neared the dyke, I heartily wished myself well over it, for the very possibility of a "mistake" was maddening. Sir Roger came on at a slapping pace, and when within two yards of the brink, rose to it, and cleared it like a deer. By the time I had accomplished this feat, not the less to my satisfaction, that both ladies had turned in the saddles to watch me, they were already far in advance; they held on still at the same pace, round a small copse which concealed ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... sun begins to sink, And soon is on the very brink Of setting in the quiet sea; The ploughing horses leave the lea, The weary workman homeward goes Thinking of supper and repose; And darkness closes o'er the scene, Where late the murderous sport had ...
— CAW! CAW! - The Chronicle of Crows, A Tale of the Spring-time • RM
... to say that the noise made by the bubbling lava is not great, heard as we heard it from our lofty perch. It makes three distinct sounds—a rushing, a hissing, and a coughing or puffing sound; and if you stand on the brink and close your eyes it is no trick at all to imagine that you are sweeping down a river on a large low-pressure steamer, and that you hear the hissing of the steam about her boilers, the puffing from her escape-pipes and the churning rush of the water abaft ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... as I came to the brink of the river, I looked back and saw the wolf close at my heels, so I dropped suddenly, and the wolf tumbled right over me into the water, but next moment it came up in the shape of another monster with a fish's tail, which made straight at me. Then it all at once came into ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... front ranks of your 'competing industrial thousands of America,' Milton Caukins; I see clear over 'em to the very brink, and I see a struggling wrestling mass of human beings slipping, sliding to the bottomless pit of national destitution, helped downwards by just such darned boomers of what you call 'industrial efficiency' as you are, Milton Caukins." ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... through a thicket of stunted thorns and over a chaos of shattered rocks, Capitola approached as near as she safely could to the brink of this awful pit. So absorbed was she in gazing upon this terrible phenomenon of natural scenery that she had not noticed, in the thicket on her right, a low hut that, with its brown-green moldering colors, fell so naturally in with the hue of the surrounding scenery as easily ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... they were, perhaps, nowhere so abundant as in the very city where the new machinery had been first set up for their suppression. Towards the close of the second century their multitude was one of the standing reproaches of Christianity. What was called the Catholic Church was now on the brink of a great schism; and the very man, who aspired to be the centre of Catholic unity, threatened to be the cause of the disruption. It was becoming more and more apparent that, when the presbyters consented to surrender any portion of their privileges to the bishop, they betrayed ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... soon saw my trusty adherent spanning the chasm like a Colossus, one foot on one bank, the other on the opposite—each of which appeared to me to be resting, so to say, on nothing—tugging away at a long twig that grew on the brink of the precipice, and exceedingly likely to resolve the inquiry as to the source of the Loddon, by plumping souse into the fountain-head. I, of course, called out to warn him; and he equally, of course, went on with his labour, ...
— The Ground-Ash • Mary Russell Mitford
... what appeared to be the mouth of an old chalk-pit, stretching dark and unfathomable right across our path, about 300 yards before us. The mare perceives it when too late, attempts to stop, but from the impetus with which she is going is unable to do so. Another moment, and we shall be over the brink! With the energy of despair I lifted her with the rein with both hands, and drove the spurs madly into her flanks;—she rose to the leap, there was a bound! a sensation of flying through the air! a crash! and I found myself stretched in safety on the turf beyond, and Mad Bess lying, ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... to rescue from the faction M. Lieutaud and his friends, who, accused of lese-nation, confined without a shadow of proof, treated like mad dogs, put in chains,[2410] shut up in privies and holes, and obliged to drink their own urine for lack of water, impelled by despair to the brink of suicide, barely escape murder a dozen times in the courtroom and in prison.[2411] Against the decree of the National Assembly ordering their release, the municipality makes reclamations, contrives delays, resists, and finally stirs up its ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... rock upon which she had been seated and followed him down to the brink of the little stream. "I would I had a cup of gold," he said, "and here is not even a great leaf. Will you drink from ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... the Count stood on the brink of ruin and the Kaiser stepped forward as his saviour, something like a cheer went up from the British public at this theatrical episode. Little did the audience realize what was to be the outcome of the association between these callous and ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... inhabitants are round holes dug in the ground, from the brink of which they raise rafters, or piles, shelving towards the middle, where they all meet, and are crammed together; they lie upon rushes, with the fire in the midst, and let the smoke fly out ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... animated. The landscape, indeed, seemed to improve upon us as we advanced; every mile was as charming as the preceding, but every mile began to have a new character. Sometimes the river ran through a plain in which the peasants were gathering in their harvest, to the very brink of the water. Sometimes, the banks on each side were covered with forests, from the centre of which were visible steeples, villas, windmills, and abbeys. At Chousay, I saw the cleanly way in which the Vignerons of the Loire bruise their ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... ended, rose cheerfully above the rippling murmurs of the waters, and the mysterious rustling of the herbage rejoicing to drink up the copious dew; and heard by fits and starts from the thick clumps of arbutus on the hills, or the thorn bushes on the water's brink, the liquid notes of the nightingale gushed out, charming the ear ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... Upon his stately old black mare Will recollect a horseman rare. Christopher Carlton, where art thou? Come here, old friend, I want thee now To ramble back with me again To where of old McPherson and Crane, And Francis Clemow, too, I think, Did business at the Basin's brink. And Bindon Burton Alton, who Has vanished from terrestial view; The poet with the flashing eye— The true born son of minstrelsy! Who sang so sweetly, memory still Trembles with the undying thrill. Which throbbed in melting tones ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... St. John an extraordinary grace of healing the spiritual disorders of souls. Among others, a monk called Isaac, was brought almost to the brink of despair by most violent temptations of the flesh. He addressed himself to St. John; who perceived by his tears how much he underwent from that conflict and struggle which he felt within himself. The servant of God commended his faith, and said: "My son, let ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... to that dark chasm whose steep black walls and upstanding boulders lead one precariously into the caves with which we were familiar, he turned aside to another narrower gash in the tumbled rocks, and we stood on the brink wondering where he would take us. For, well as we knew the nooks and crannies thereabouts, we had never ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... to his wife had recently been published, and were often quoted. He was a scholar and a gentleman, upright in all ordinary dealings, and strongly impressed with a sense of duty to God. Yet he had been deeply concerned in the plot for blowing up King, Lords, and Commons, and had, on the brink of eternity, declared that it was incomprehensible to him how any Roman Catholic should think such a design sinful. The inference popularly drawn from these things was that, however fair the general ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Gascon vaunt! You know the scarf Lies with the enemy, upon the brink Of the stream,. . .the place is riddled now with shot,— No one can fetch ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... the brink of dissolution, while actually holding the cup which is to launch them both into eternity, ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... moon rose, the silver disc lighting up the hills and the plains; the wind fell, and the night was calm and delightful. We rode about six miles to a pretty little chapel with a cross, that gleamed amongst the trees in the moonlight, by the side of a running stream. Here we dismounted, and sat by the brink of the little sparkling rivulet, while the deep shadows came stealing over the mountains, and all around was still, and cool, and silent; all but the merry laughter of our noisy cavalcade. We returned about eleven o'clock, few ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... trying at first. The Montenegrin loves money—it is his curse, or rather the curse of every country on the brink of civilisation—but he also loves to play the gentleman, who hates sordid money transactions. He will often make you a present and afterwards send ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... feet. One of the fellows stopped and severed the bonds that held my ankles. I could scarcely stand alone. The two pulled and hauled me through the low doorway and along the trench. A party of forty or fifty warriors were awaiting us at the brink of the excavation some hundred ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a month ago! And I myself—I can speak about it now, for I am happy now and feel secure—I can tell you now why I have been so long about it. For a long time I did nut dare to trust myself; because I too have been on the brink of being deceived. ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... I thought to myself, if all those who were on the brink of great sin or crime could only be brought to feel beforehand what I felt when facing the spectral dread of unknown evil, then surely sins would be fewer and crimes never committed. And I murmured softly, "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... fire. They ferry over this Lethean sound Both to and fro, their sorrow to augment, And wish and struggle, as they pass, to reach The tempting stream, with one small drop to lose In sweet forgetfulness all pain and woe, All in one moment, and so near the brink; But Fate withstands, and, to oppose th' attempt, Medusa with Gorgonian terror guards The ford, and of itself the water flies All taste of living wight, as once it fled The lip of Tantalus. Thus roving on In confused march forlorn, th' adventurous bands, With shuddering horror ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... by the river brink on sunny days, or on the greensward under the yews in our old garden, we are always telling ancient Celtic romances, and planning, even acting, new ones. Francesca's mind and mine are poorly furnished with facts ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... would not shrink, Tho' pressed by every foe; That would not tremble on the brink Of any earthly woe. That faith that shone more bright and clear When trials reigned without; That, when in danger, knew no fear, In ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... animal had fallen into a crevasse 1000 feet deep. When they bent over the edge of the dark chasm they could not hear a sound below. Fortunately the front cross-piece of the sledge had come away, so that the sledge and man were left on the brink of the chasm. If the precious provisions had gone down with the horse into the bowels of the ice, Shackleton would have ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... Conniston with his intentions, so it is no secret. No, I did not slap him for that. But you, father, and you, too, Mr. Conniston, since you are one of us in our work, ought both to know what he threatened. He says that we are upon the very brink of failure; that Swinnerton has almost sufficient strength to ruin us and our hopes. And he threatened, if I did not marry him, to turn his back upon us and join the opposition. And I slapped ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... soon as the pang was over, so was the remembrance of her precarious situation. Wan and wasted as a spectre, she indulged in anticipation of again mixing with the fashionable world, and talked of chaperoning Isabel to private parties and public amusements, when she was standing on the brink of eternity. Isabel sighed as she listened to her mother, and observed her attenuated frame; occasionally she would refer to her mother's state of health, and attempt to bring her to that serious state of mind which her awful situation demanded; but in vain: Mrs Revel ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... a long red woollen cravat and opened the door. The night in all its fulness met her flatly on the threshold, like the very brink of an absolute void, or the antemundane Ginnung-Gap believed in by her Teuton forefathers. For her eyes were fresh from the blaze, and here there was no street-lamp or lantern to form a kindly transition between the inner ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... brink of the bush I dismounted and turned the Schimmel loose. I had brought no halter, and I left him to graze and roll. The light was sufficient to let me see the great rock face rising in a tower of dim purple. The sky was still picked out with stars, but the moon had long gone down, ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... God I ever saw. Man seemed but an atom against Him, when the waters rushed and roared in their strong surges over the ledges that made the Falls of St. Anthony; the long logs that had been, but a few months before, proud monarchs of the pine forests, sailed along toward this brink like sticks, then with their long ends balancing out over the rushing fall would tilt over and down into the rushing, curling, foaming torrent out of sight. But little else was thought of just then for we who were near were watching, watching the grandeur ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... mortals is impervious to love, and so the discovery that he is in it suddenly alters his views of his own mechanism. It is thus not unlike a rap on the funny-bone. Did Gavin make this discovery when the Egyptian left him? Apparently he only came to the brink of it and stood blind. He had driven her from him for ever, and his sense of loss was so acute that his soul cried out for the cure rather than for ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... guest may not have lost his appreciation of the charms of German womankind, which the guest in question here and now, and frankly admits; but not a word of coarseness, not a hint that totters on the brink of an indiscretion, and what higher praise can one give to speech-making on such ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... the base, a young gentleman from Edinburgh, who had left Rowardennan before us, and we commenced ascending together. It was hard work, but neither liked to stop, so we climbed up to the first resting place, and found the path leading along the brink of a precipice. We soon attained the summit, and climbing up a little mound of earth and stones, I saw the half of Scotland at a glance. The clouds hung just above the mountain tops, which rose all around like the waves of a mighty ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... of this unlooked-for obstacle made Mr. Clinch doubt the full restoration of his faculties. He stepped to the brink of the flood to bathe his head in the stream, and wash away the last vestiges of his potations. But as he approached the placid depths, and knelt down he again started back, and this time with a full conviction of his own madness; for reflected ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... on, I used to come down from the high ground and sit on the beach at the water's brink in some hidden sheltering place. There the murmur of the waves and their agitation, charmed all my senses and drove every other movement away from my soul; they plunged it into delicious dreamings, in which I was often surprised ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... Row,— Are they not written in the boke of Carr? Green Erin's Knight, and Europe's wandering star. Then listen, readers, to the Man of Ink, Hear what he did, and sought, and wrote afar: All these are coop'd within one Quarto's brink, This borrow, steal (don't buy), and tell us ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... On the right was the great camp of Montcalm, stretching from the Saint Charles, at the foot of the city walls, to the gorge of the Montmorenci. From the latter point to the village of Beauport, in the centre of the camp, the front was covered with earthworks, along the brink of a lofty height; and from Beauport to the Saint Charles were broad flats of mud, swept by the fire of redoubts and intrenchments, by the guns of a floating battery, and by ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... when it is detected, is the proper act of vindictive justice; but to prevent frauds, and make punishment unnecessary, is the great employment of legislative wisdom. To permit Intromission, and to punish fraud, is to make law no better than a pitfall. To tread upon the brink is safe; but to come a step further is destruction. But, surely, it is better to enclose the gulf, and hinder all access, than by encouraging us to advance a little, to entice us afterwards a little further, and let us perceive our ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Tom Thumb had been awake, and he had overheard all the conversation. He lay awake a long while thinking what to do. Then, slipping quietly out of bed, he ran down to the river and filled his pocket with small white pebbles from the river's brink. ...
— Favorite Fairy Tales • Logan Marshall
... this reason, the old man, my father, sent me to tend his flocks. One night I arrived at the brink of the river to water the flock. There I discovered that a sheep was missing. I was heartbroken over this, and, not wishing to return home without my little sheep, I searched everywhere, but in vain. The sheep could not be found. I sat down and began to weep. Behind me was a ...
— Pinocchio in Africa • Cherubini
... drew himself up, bit his lips, and seemed, for a moment, on the brink of some angry reply. Then suddenly his expression changed and he burst out laughing. The colonel, grasping his gold piece still in his hand, ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... inspired with hope from these words, cried out in a transport of joy, "My heart, my soul, you shall soon be restored to your health, for I will immediately do as you command me." Accordingly she went that instant, and when she came to the brink of the lake, she took a little water in her hand, and sprinkling it, had no sooner pronounced some words over the fish and the lake, than the city was immediately restored. The fish became men, women, and children; Mahummedans, Christians, Persians, or Jews; freemen or slaves, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.
... agony of his soul was in his face. And then, in a moment of tortured desperation he rose from his seat, tall, gaunt, disordered, and clasped his hand to his forehead as if driven to the utmost bound of his endurance and to the outer brink ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... come to the brink of the water's edge. The flagging seemed to drop away. I fell. Dimly I heard the splash as I struck the water; and felt a grateful cooling sense as it closed ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... few moments that followed. She felt as though she were on the brink of some crisis in her life which had been slowly drawing nearer and nearer to her and was now acutely imminent, and instinctively she sought to gather all her energies together to meet it. What it might ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... under the appearance of anxiety after the critical moment was past. Neither does care ever seem to wrinkle their brow. On the contrary, even the approach of death does not appear to alter their usual vivacity. I have seen them when brought to the brink of the grave by disease, and when preparing to go to battle; but in neither case ever observed their countenances overclouded with ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... that fatal plunge! The last line of sheep, pressing close to those gone before, and yet impelled by the strange instinct of life, turned their eyes too late on the brink, carried over by ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... clambered fully eighteen miles, and had attained an elevation of eighteen hundred feet. The lake itself was not visible until they stood upon its shores, as it lies bosomed in a deep hollow, among lofty and precipitous mountains which descend with startling abruptness to the very brink of its dark, deep waters. To cross the lake it is necessary to put one's trust in one's swimming powers, or in a curiously frail kind of boat, which the natives prepare with equal rapidity and skill. Madame Pfeiffer, however, was nothing if not adventurous. Whatever ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... prejudice, I cannot imagine; and yet some evil reports have gone out against me; as I find by some hints in a very severe letter written to me by my uncle Antony. Such a letter as I believe was never written to any poor creature, who, by ill health of body, as well as of mind, was before tottering on the brink of the grave. But my friends may possibly be better justified than the reporters—For who knows what they may ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... serious." She had never been in love in her life, except with herself, and to that one affection she was most constant. She accepted all, but gave none. Once or twice her flirtations had been on the verge, but Lady Amelie was one of those who can look very steadily over the brink ...
— The Coquette's Victim • Charlotte M. Braeme
... throwing himself back into them with all his might. And still, as he read, forgotten words of wise comment, and strange thoughts of wonder and longing, came back to him. The great truth which he had been led to the brink of in those early days rose in all its awe and all its attractiveness before him. He leaned back in his chair, and gave himself up to his thought; and how strangely that thought bore on the struggle ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... we ne'er can rest upon, Adown the narrow stream, at first, we glide Thro' fruits and flowers that fringe the grassy side. The playful murmurings of its windings seem Soft, as the far-off music of a dream, Over our heads the trees their blossoms shed, Flowers on the brink their mingled odours shed. Beauty around, above us, Hope within; Eager we grasp each dazzling charm to win. But hurried on and on, we ne'er can stay Our little bark to anchor or delay. For now, how full, how deep, how vast the river On which we glide, that stays its journey never! As ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 390, September 19, 1829 • Various
... between different classes of men, it is due less to exterior conditions than to an interior fatality. Conflicting interests and differences of situation dig ditches between us, it is true, but pride transforms the ditches into gulfs, and in reality it is pride alone which cries from brink to brink: "There is nothing in ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... phantom, gliding along, almost crawling, bent double, slinking by in the shadow, with that appearance of illness and insanity and of utter aberration which sets the thoughtful man's heart and the physician's mind at work on the brink of deep abysses ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... were bewildered, for, on the brink of the ravine, one of them had caught sight of several Texan soldiers in the distance. If they fired on Dan, they would betray themselves, and, if they did not, ...
— For the Liberty of Texas • Edward Stratemeyer
... shoulders, flattening him on the ledge and nearly sending his face on top of the live coal. 'Twas so sudden that, before he could so much as think, my fingers were about his windpipe, and the both of us struggling flat on the brink of the precipice. For he had a bull's strength, and heaved and kicked, so that I fully looked, next moment, to be flying over the edge into the sea: nor could I loose my grip to get out a pistol, but only held on and worked my fingers in, and thought how he had strangled ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... is a believer in force, and a believer in the utilization of all the Empire's resources; but he sees that these things are not enough. Why, man, humanly speaking, we stand on the brink of a volcano.' ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... at Selenginsk, a third near Verkne Udinsk, and a fourth near Lake Baikal. There are several at other points, but I believe the whole number of the Decembrists now in Siberia is less than a dozen. Forty-two years have brought them to the brink of the grave, and very soon the active spirits of that unhappy revolt ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... what we all knew to be the truth, but still we would rather have shut our eyes to the unpleasant fact. It is extraordinary that men should be able to disregard the future, even when on the very brink of the grave. Is it apathy, or stolid indifference, or disbelief in a future existence that enables them to do so? I speak of those without the Christian's hope—men who lead profligate lives; men stained with a thousand crimes; ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... bones by attempting the rash deeds of old ski-runners. Reaching an embankment, he would retire a little distance, and then rush forward to the brink and leap over into the air, lighting on the ground below far out, steadying himself quickly, and shooting on ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... small, delicate bodies. But in such instances, the great size of the brain, and the acuteness of the mind, are the results of morbid growth. Even with the best of management, the child passes the first years of its life constantly on the brink of active disease. ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... within bounds, in a manner, after a fashion, so to speak. almost, nearly, well-nigh, short of, not quite, all but; near upon, close upon; peu s'en faut[Fr], near the mark; within an ace of, within an inch of; on the brink of; scarcely, hardly, barely, only just, no more than. about[in an uncertain degree], thereabouts, somewhere about, nearly, say; be the same, be little more or less. no ways[in no degree], no way, no wise; not at all, not in the least, not a bit, not a bit of it, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... That last perfection Phidian chisels gave. Dimly the soft and musing Form is seen In the hush'd, shelly, shadowy, lone concave.— As sleeps her pure, tho' darkling fountain there, I love to recollect her, stretch'd supine Upon its mossy brink, with pendent hair, As dripping o'er the flood.—Ah! well combine Such gentle graces, modest, pensive, fair, To aid the ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... halted on the brink of the kloof. Little birds of gay and brilliant plumage, blue and crimson and emerald-green, rose in flocks from the bush and grasses that clothed the sides of the coomb; the hollows were full of the tree-fern; the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... Alice went on, after a short pause. "But at first without knowing that I suffered. There comes a time in every woman's life, Lesley, when she is in need of help and counsel, when, in fact, she is in danger. As soon as a woman loves, she stands on the brink ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... of disgust used to describe a program. The connotation in this case is that the program works as designed, but the design is bad. Said, for example, of a program that generates large numbers of meaningless error messages, implying that it is on the brink of imminent ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... Panmure, entered upon his duties with energy, and proposed, February 16th, his remedy for existing evils; but on the 19th of February Mr. Layard in the House of Commons said, "the country stood on the brink of ruin—it had fallen into the abyss of disgrace and become the laughing-stock of Europe." He declared that the new ministry differed little ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... speechless, for she was talking a great deal to the boy. Then Hoskuld went to her and asked her her name, and said it was useless for her to hide it any longer. She said so it should be, and they sat down on the brink of the field. [Sidenote: Of Melkorka's family] Then she said, "If you want to know my name, I am called Melkorka." Hoskuld bade her tell him more of her kindred. She answered, "Myr Kjartan is the name of my father, and he ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... gossiped, or merely sat still and stared away the day's fatigue; while the little ones raced in and out among them, crying and laughing, quarrelling and kissing. Sometimes a mother darted forward and caught her child from the brink of the basin; another taught hers to walk, holding it tightly up behind by its short skirts; another publicly nursed ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... was gone, I walked to where, ten feet away, the bank dipped to a clump of reeds and willows planted in the mud on the brink of the river. Dropping on my knees I leaned over, and, grasping a man by the collar, lifted him from the slime where he belonged to ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... into the atmospheric eddy above. As soon as we saw that the grapple was well over the edge we pulled upon the rope. The balloon instantly shot into view with the anchor dancing, but, under the influence of the wind, quickly returned to its former position behind the projecting brink. The grapple ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... 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 she was gone. And she ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Maid did shrink; Swift thro' the night's foul air they spin; They took her to the green well's brink, And, with a souse, they ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... turn to fling the ball, instead of flinging it the way he ought to have done, he threw it into a deep muddy ditch. The little boys ran in a great hurry to see what was become of it; and as they were standing together upon the brink, he gave the outermost boy a violent push against his neighbour; he, not being able to resist the violence, tumbled against another, by which means they were all soused into the ditch together. They soon scrambled ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... bush stood on the brink of the stream and after poking about this as usual, the German stood upon tiptoe, apparently looking down into it, then kneeled at its base while Tom watched from ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... days of Darius, such a brilliant train of camp-followers as hung round the train of the Duke of Wellington's army in the Low Countries, in 1815, and led it dancing and feasting, as it were, up to the very brink of battle. A certain ball[22] which a noble duchess gave at Brussels on the 15th of June in the above-named year is historical. All Brussels had been in a state of excitement about it; and I have heard from ladies who were in that town at the period, that the talk and interest of persons ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... theology, politics, is required; every page should be alive with intelligence and glistening with facts. But then I have remembered that this is only as it were the preface, or forerunner, of a body of literature, which the events and wants of our times will call forth. We have come to the brink of a great intellectual change. Much of the frivolous reading of the present will be supplanted by a thoughtful and austere literature, vivified by endangered interests, and ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... creeping under certain shrubs which grow in that place, and none but devils know with what terror I, a strong, full-grown man, tracked the footsteps of that baby as he approached the water's brink. I was close upon him, had sunk upon my knee and raised my hand to thrust him in, when he saw my shadow in the stream and ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... but little indeed that at our court so many hearts contended for her, preferring her to us! It was not enough that she was there worshipped night and day by a crowd of lovers. When we were comforting ourselves with seeing her on the brink of the grave by the sudden order of the oracle, she thought fit to display before us the miracle of her new destiny, and has chosen our eyes to be witnesses of that which at the bottom of ...
— Psyche • Moliere
... earth and rotten brick-work. After having first listened, to be sure that the slight noise caused by this event had not reached the ears or excited the suspicions of the careless sentinels, Ulpius crept into the cavity he had made, groping his way with his bar, until he reached the brink of a chasm, the depth of which he could not probe, and the breadth of which ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... clear water out of the spring The little maid Margaret ran; From the stream to the castle's western wing It was but a bowshot span; On the sedgy brink where the osiers cling Lay a ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... 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 ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... probably moved sluggishly. He had noticed little tracks of five-toed, webbed feet on the thin drift of powdery snow that led to the bank above this pool. Last of all, he had seen a smooth incline worn by these webbed feet down to the brink of the pool. ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... Were how to die, while full life thrills His bounding blood? To plan and dare, To use life is life's proper end: Let death come when it will, and where!"— "You prattle on, as babes that spend Their morning half within the brink Of the bright heaven from which they wend; But what I am you dare not think. Thick, brooding shadow round me lies; You stare till terror makes you wink; I go not, though you shut your eyes. Unclose again the loathful lid, And lo, I sit beneath the skies, As Sphinx beside the pyramid!" ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... shuddering, by the water brink, she was subconsciously aware of a strong arm in hers. Subconsciously also she was aware that the arm belonged to Dan Vernon, but she had no time for look or word; her whole being was strung to one agonising thought. Mr Percival supported his half-fainting ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... trucking is always carried on at night. A wild scene is presented while the trucks are moving from the forest, each accompanied by several men carrying torches, the drivers cracking their whips and uttering their shouts. Thus they go on till they reach the river's brink, when the logs—each marked with the owner's initials—are thrown into the water, and the trucks return for a fresh load. When the rains commence, the roads are impassable, and all ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... find there is a world to know, a life to lead, men and women to form a thousand relations with. It all lies there like a great surging sea, where we must plunge and dive and feel the breeze and breast the waves. I stand shivering here on the brink, staring, longing, wondering, charmed by the smell of the brine and yet afraid of the water. The world beckons and smiles and calls, but a nameless influence from the past, that I can neither wholly obey nor wholly resist, seems to hold ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James
... are easily broken at the brink, and if the slippery streams thence flowing are not judiciously checked, they merge into a harsh flood that sweeps away all grace, like the magic fountain in the German myth, whose fairy tricklings, uncovered for a single night, burst into a curbless flood, that drowned ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... into the back shop by Mr. Smallweed the younger, they, fresh from the sunlight, can at first see nothing save darkness and shadows; but they gradually discern the elder Mr. Smallweed seated in his chair upon the brink of a well or grave of waste-paper, the virtuous Judy groping therein like a female sexton, and Mrs. Smallweed on the level ground in the vicinity snowed up in a heap of paper fragments, print, and manuscript which would appear to be the accumulated compliments that have been ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... in the firs and walked to the brink of the plateau. Just under us lay a rock-rimmed lake. More zig-zag earthworks surmounted it on all sides, and on the nearest shore was the branched roofing of another great mule-shelter. We were looking down at the spot to which the night-caravans ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... 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 instantly stepped ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... cascade, steeped as it is in the softness, and glowing with the brightness of a cloudless spring morning? See how the wreathes of foam come bounding along, like a pack of ravenous wolves chasing each other, and stop suddenly in their mad career, for an instant equipoising upon the very brink, as if they had shrunk back and feared to take the awful leap, then, pushed on by the rush of the waters behind, descend like a shower of diamonds, and come whirling and dashing through the narrow ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... his physicians, however, and the yet greater care his tender consort took to see their prescriptions obeyed with the utmost exactitude, at length recovered Natura from the brink of the grave.—He was out of danger from the disease which had so long afflicted him; but though it had entirely left him, the attack had been too severe for a person at the age to which he was now arrived, to regain altogether the former man.—He ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... gone out with a fishing party at about ten o'clock at night to spear trout. We supplied ourselves with an eel spear and a lantern, and visited Cannon's "beck." We drew the light gently over the water near the brink. Immediately the light appeared, both trouts and eels were splashing about the lantern in great quantities. We then took the spear, and as they approached, thrust it down upon them, sometimes bringing up with it three or four together. One night ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 12, Issue 328, August 23, 1828 • Various
... stream had got hold of him. Bravely he struggled, and lifted the child breast-high out of the water in his powerful efforts to stem the current. In vain. Each moment he was carried inch by inch down until he was on the brink of the fall, which, though not high, was a large body of water and fell with a heavy roar. He raised himself high out of the stream with the vigour of his last struggle, and then fell back into ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... Doubly distrest, what author shall we find Discreetly daring, and severely kind, The courtly(6) Roman's shining path to tread, And sharply smile prevailing folly dead? Will no superior genius snatch the quill, And save me, on the brink, from writing ill? Tho' vain the strife, I'll strive my voice to raise, What will not men attempt for sacred praise? The love of praise, howe'er conceal'd by art, Reigns, more or less, and glows, in ev'ry heart: The proud, to gain it, toils on toils endure; The modest shun ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... most zealous and able defenders of the violated rights of his country. He seemed already to have filled a full measure of public service, and attained an honorable fame. The moment was full of difficulty and danger, and big with events of immeasurable importance. The country was on the very brink of a civil war, of which no man could foretell the duration or the result. Something more than a courageous hope, or characteristic ardor, would have been necessary to impress the glorious prospect on his belief, if, at that moment, before the sound of the first shock of actual ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... earth's pleasures overleaps. He shall through life's wild scenes be driven, And through its flat unmeaningness, I'll make him writhe and stare and stiffen, And midst all sensual excess, His fevered lips, with thirst all parched and riven, Insatiably shall haunt refreshment's brink; And had he not, himself, his soul to Satan given, Still ...
— Faust • Goethe
... to the door and watched them. There was a look on the face of Jethro Bass that was new to it as he listened to the child talk of the wondrous things around them that summer's day,—the flowers and the bees and the brook (they must go down and stand on the brink of it), and the songs of the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... into the hand of the head gardener of "The Place" of the village, so that we might have the grass mowed from that lawn. Alas for frail human nature! It seems that he disappeared from view about once in so often, and that his feet at that moment were trembling on the brink. So he slid over the edge, and the next man in charge had other friends with other cows. I tried the vegetable man next. He was a pleasant Greek, and promised me all his beet-tops and wilted lettuce. That was good as far as it went, but Poppy would go through a crate of lettuce as ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... the hand of the "Man of Ross" again appears in a row of noble elms around the churchyard which he is said to have planted, some of them of great size. The view from the Prospect, however, is the town's chief present glory. It stands on the brink of the river-cliff, with the Wye sweeping at its feet around the apex of the long horseshoe curve. Within the curve is the grassy Oak Meadow dotted with old trees. On either hand are meadows and cornfields, with bits of wood, ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... here, that three gentlemen had been long in eager pursuit of an object which but two of us can obtain. I found that they had all met with encouragement. A contested election in such a city as this is no light thing. I paused on the brink of the precipice. These three gentlemen, by various merits, and on various titles, I made no doubt were worthy of your favor. I shall never attempt to raise myself by depreciating the merits of my competitors. In the complexity and confusion of these cross pursuits, I wished to take ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... but you have other duties, which are, to look after your father and mother, and be a comfort and solace to them. Your life is more valuable than mine. I am an old man on the brink of the grave, and a year or two makes no difference, but your life is, ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... passengers. The chaplain's heart was touched at the sight of the wan, wasted Maori sitting dull-eyed, wrapped in his blanket, coughing and spitting blood. His kindness drew back Ruatara from the grave's brink and made him a grateful and attached pupil. Together they talked of the savage islands, which one longed to see and the other to regain. Nor did their friendship end with the voyage. More adventures and disappointments awaited ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... be mistaken by observers for death, yet some part of this interval was haunted by a fearful dream. I conceived myself lying on the brink of a pit, whose bottom the eye could not reach. My hands and legs were fettered, so as to disable me from resisting two grim and gigantic figures who stooped to lift me from the earth. Their purpose, methought, was to cast me into this abyss. My terrors were unspeakable, and I struggled ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... half an hour. I'll send for Wu Fang. He speaks English. Not a job he may care about; but he's a good sport. The hard work will be his, until we yank this young fellow back from the brink. Run along now; but return ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... with letters of confirmation; Sir Edward Karne and Dr. Revett following leisurely, with a more ample commission. The stone which had been laboriously rolled to the summit of the hill was trembling on the brink, and in a moment might ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... away; Till, scandal, indigence, and scorn my lot, The dreary jail entombs me, where I rot! Is there, ye varnish'd ruffians of the state! Not one among the millions whom ye cheat, 50 Who, while he totters on the brink of woe, Dares, ere he falls, attempt the avenging blow,—A steady blow, his languid soul to feast, And rid his country of one curse ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... and took with him great store of food and many horses; but these he left behind him on the river's brink, as the lad had said. And the old ferryman took him upon his back; but when they had come a bit out into the stream, he cast him into the midst ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... 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 and archers poured down upon them. More than one white robe ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... glorious resistance he acquired from that moment, and it was forced upon him to maintain, the importance of a rival of Conde. Mazarin grew from day to day more emboldened; royalty, which had been on the very brink of ruin, again rose erect, and the Court drew towards Paris; whilst, prompted by his evil genius, quitting the field of battle wherein lay his veritable strength, Conde went away to waste his precious time in a labyrinth of intrigues ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... 1477,' the date Professor Logeman proposes, if the author was only born in 1454, for it does not read like the work of a very young man. Professor Logeman was, perhaps, influenced in proposing this date by a desire to get in front of the critics of English literature (including ten Brink), who have assigned the English play to the reign of Edward IV., i.e. not later than 1483. As in the Miracle Plays, so in the Moralities, an original purely didactic purpose was gradually influenced by a desire to render the didacticism more ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... cried, "in the name of Heaven, do not speak! God is my witness I was not born such as you see me; during my life I have been neither suspicious nor distrustful, I have been undone, my heart has been seared by the treachery of others. A frightful experience has led me to the very brink of the precipice, and for a year I have seen nothing but evil here below. God is my witness that up to this day I did not believe myself capable of playing the ignoble role I have assumed, the meanest role of all, that of a jealous lover. God is my witness ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... on the very brink of tears, refused to leave her post until a quarter to four, and, when that hour arrived, slow-treading but coalless, it was only my promise to take her to see Charlie Chaplin forthwith that could coax the ghost of a smile to ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... On the brink of a rock-rimmed, flashing basin she stopped. Down into this, from a shelf twenty feet in height, fell the brook in a bright, fire-tinted cascade. Fear-inspired as she was, she could not but pause and wonder at the strange beauty of the scene,—the ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... quiet water, start From their aerial sunny arch, and pant Entangled mid each other's flowery wreaths, And each pursuing is in turn pursued. Here came at last, as ever wont at morn, Charoba: long she lingered at the brink, Often she sighed, and, naked as she was, Sat down, and leaning on the couch's edge, On the soft inward pillow of her arm Rested her burning cheek: she moved her eyes; She blushed; and blushing plunged into the ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... described my first long walk on the plains, when two of my brothers took me to a river some distance from home, where I was enchanted with my first sight of that glorious waterfowl, the flamingo. Now, as we stood on the brink of the flowing water, which had a width of about two hundred yards at that spot when the river had overflowed its banks, one of my elder brothers pointed to a long low house, thatched with rushes, about three-quarters of a mile distant on the other side of the stream, ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... reader, whom I cannot help considering as my guest in the Old Manse and entitled to all courtesy in the way of sight-showing,—perhaps he will choose to take a nearer view of the memorable spot. We stand now on the river's brink."... "Here we are, at the point where the river was crossed by the old bridge."... "The Old Manse! We had almost forgotten it, but will return thither through the orchard."... "What with the river, the battle-field, the orchard, and the garden, the reader ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... singing that music, and it was showed to him that the children of Lir were singing it. And on the morning of the morrow he went forward to the Lake of the Birds, and he saw the swans before him on the lake, and he went down to them at the brink of the shore. "Are you the children of ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... in such a cause. True, thanks to the generosity of our supporters, we patriots receive a very comfortable stipend; I myself, of course, touch a salary which puts me quite beyond the reach of any peddling, mercenary thoughts; M'Guire, again, ere he joined our ranks, was on the brink of starving, and now, thank God! receives a decent income. That is as it should be; the patriot must not be diverted from his task by any base consideration; and the distinction between our position and that of the police is too obvious ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... few minutes later, he stood up, Herne knew that the end had come; knew, too, by the look in the Arab's eyes that they stood themselves on the brink of that great gulf into which the boy's life had but that ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... "SAVED FROM THE BRINK OF RUIN.—A young man of notoriously bad character, yet connected with one of our first families, recently attempted to draw aside from virtue an innocent but thoughtless and unsuspecting girl, the daughter of a respectable citizen. He ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... us,—agonies of that kind we do not brood over as we do over the death or falsehood of beloved friends, or the train of events by which we are reduced from wealth to penury. No one, for instance, who has escaped from a shipwreck, from the brink of a precipice, from the jaws of a tiger, spends his days and nights in reviving his terrors past, re-imagining dangers not to occur again, or, if they do occur, from which the experience undergone can suggest ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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 present ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... adopted formally the Christian faith, but he was already on the brink of it. He already participated the doctrines of Olinthus—he already imagined that the lively imaginations of the heathen were the suggestions of the arch-enemy of mankind. The innocent and natural answer of Ione made him shudder. He hastened to reply vehemently, and yet so confusedly, that Ione ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... travel for hours and days amidst vast forests and hills without the slightest sensation of pleasure or sense of admiration for the scene, till suddenly your path leads you out on to the dizzy brink of an awful precipice—a sheer fall, so exaggerated in horror that your most stirring memories of Mont Blanc, the Jungfrau, and the hideous arete of the Pitz Bernina, sink into vague insignificance. The gulf that divides ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... the others were loading the wagon and yoking the oxen on the other side. The lads could hear the cheery sounds of the men talking, although they could not see them through the trees that lined the farther bank of the river. The flow of the stream made a ceaseless lapping against the brink of the shore. A party of catbirds quarrelled sharply in the thicket hard by; quail whistled in the underbrush of the adjacent creek, and overhead a solitary eagle circled slowly around as if looking down to watch these rude invaders of the privacy of the dominion that had existed ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... utter carelessness and grace Of pure abandon in the slumb'rous scene,— As if the June, all hoydenish of face, Had romped herself to sleep there on the green, And brink and sagging bridge and sliding stream Were just romantic ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... Upon the brink of that abyss of shame into which his father had just tumbled, he thought he could see, not the inevitable woman, that incentive of all human actions, but the entire legion of those bewitching courtesans who possess unknown ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... have met in, What melons icy-cold Piled on a dish of gold Too huge for me to hold, What peaches with a velvet nap, Pellucid grapes without one seed: Odorous indeed must be the mead Whereon they grow, and pure the wave they drink, With lilies at the brink, And ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... vanquished the patience of the angel, who, on the brink of eternity, gave utterance to the only reproach she had ever spoken ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... human Prometheus that he has stolen the fire of heaven to be his servant, and that the spirits of the earth and of the air obey him, if the vulture of pauperism is eternally to tear his very vitals and keep him on the brink of destruction? ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... flat strand Of Oxus, where the summer floods o'erflow When the sun melts the snow in high Pamere;[173-3] Through the black tents he pass'd, o'er that low strand, And to a hillock came, a little back From the stream's brink—the spot where first a boat, Crossing the stream in summer, scrapes the land. The men of former times had crown'd the top With a clay fort; but that was fall'n, and now The Tartars built there Peran-Wisa's tent, A dome of laths, and over it felts were spread. And Sohrab came there, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... The very irony of fate could not have devised a more trying and awkward position for any man. To say he felt himself on the brink of a volcano conveys but a faint idea of his ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... white with mould, was fast crumbling into earth, and a little farther off stood a disorderly group of chicken coops before which lay a couple of dead nestlings. On the soaking plank ledge around the well-brink, where fresh water was slopping from the overturned bucket, several bedraggled ducks were paddling with evident enjoyment. The one pleasant sight about the place was the sturdy figure of Jim Weatherby, still at work upon the giant body ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... my glittering hearth With guiltlesse mirth, And giv'st me wassaile bowles to drink, Spiced to the brink: Lord, 'tis Thy plenty-dropping hand That soiles my land; And giv'st me for my bushell ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... bells; the cure, Richard, attempting to ring them himself, the people threaten him with ill-treatment if he runs the risk.—September 8, 1791. Letter from the cure of Fau, district of Saint-Chely. "That night I was on the brink of death through a troop of bandits who took my parsonage away from me, after having broken in the doors and windows."—December 30, 1791. Another cure who goes to take possession of his parsonage is assailed with stones by sixty women, and thus pursued beyond the limits of the parish.—August ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... 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 the country in good order, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... watched 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 ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... few minutes, as I well knew, Plinny would be coming in search of me, to persuade me back to the house to breakfast and bed. I stepped down to the streamside, where the beehives stood in a row on the brink, paused for a moment to listen to the hum within them, and note that the bees were making ready to swarm, crossed the bridge, and tried the rusty hasp of the door. It yielded stiffly; but as I pulled the door ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... though his lips moved, most probably in prayer. It was a melancholy sight to see a man in the vigour of his manhood, whose voice was strong, and whose heart was still beating with vigour and vitality, standing, as it were, on the brink of a precipice, down which all knew he was to be so speedily hurled. But the decree had gone forth, and no human skill could arrest it. Shortly after the confession and lamentation we have recorded, the decay reached ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper |
