"Brink" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... receive me. I found him seated in an unusual manner, so that I knew not what place to occupy, and not willing to mix among the great men, as was offered me, and doubting whether I might go into the apartment where the king was, which was cut down in the bank of a river, I went to the brink and stood alone. There were none near the king, except Etiman Dowlet his father-in-law, Asaph Khan, and three or four others. The king observed me, and having allowed me to stay a while, he called me in with a gracious smile, and pointed with his hand for me to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... brink of a sea of blue. All around them the bluebells lay glowing in the sunshine. The colour and sparkle of them was a physical delight; and with occasional lingering tufts of primroses among them and the young ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Parnassus' brink, Rivin' the words to gar them clink; Whyles daez't wi' love, whyles daez't wi' drink, Wi' jads or masons; An' whyles, but ay owre late, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... contingent obligations. It was Darrow's instinct, in difficult moments, to go straight to the bottom of the difficulty; but he had never before had to take so dark a dive as this, and for the minute he shivered on the brink...Well, his first duty, at any rate, was to the girl: he must let her see that he meant to fulfill it to the last jot, and then try to find out how to square the fulfillment with the other problems ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... From Calpe starts the intolerable flash, Skies burst in flames, and blazing oceans dash;— Or bids in sweet repose his shades recede, 180 Winds the still vale, and slopes the velvet mead; On the pale stream expiring Zephyrs sink, And Moonlight sleeps upon its hoary brink. ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... the brink with a sensation of affright. "What an awful place!" she said, drawing a long breath. "Do you suppose any one ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... On the brink of an extraordinary passage, I pause to make no fewer than three remarks in my own person: 1st. Let no reader of mine allow himself to fancy Rhoda Gale and her antecedents are a mere excrescence of my story. She was rooted to it even before the first scene of ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... fallen, by slow degrees, into his way of thinking and feeling; until I have grown dissatisfied with my position. Temptation has come, as a natural result; and, before I dreamed that my feet were wandering from the path of safety, I have found myself on the brink of ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... I knew my error; I learned why Maria had been so kind, and why she had said she was sorry. It was for me, proud disdainful girl that I was, that she was sorry; she knew, though I did not, that my father was on the brink of ruin; and it came to pass, as she had feared it would, that in a few days my play-room was as empty as Maria's closet, and all my grandeur ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... silence in the little town. Birds sang; a shallow river rippled; breezes ruffled green grain into long, silvery waves across the valley; sunshine fell on quiet streets, on scented gardens unsoiled by war, on groves and meadows, and on the stone-edged brink of brimming pools where washerwomen knelt among the wild flowers, splashing amid floating pyramids ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... from time to time through an opening. On a sudden we found ourselves enveloped in a thick mist; the compass alone could guide us; but in advancing northward we were in danger at every step of finding ourselves on the brink of that enormous wall of rocks, which descends almost perpendicularly to the depth of six thousand feet towards the sea. We were obliged to halt. Surrounded by clouds sweeping the ground, we began to doubt whether we should reach the eastern peak before night. Happily, the negroes who carried ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... many-voiced reply, and hastening on past a heterogeneous collection of soldiery—couriers, cavalry-men, malingerers, stragglers, a few of the slightly wounded, and camp followers of all sorts—we quickly reached the river's brink. The boat was lying close below. Twenty feet down the crumbling bank, slipping, or swinging down by the roots and twigs of friendly bushes, the regiment lost but little time in embarking. The horses of our field officers were somehow got on board, and, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... time. Wherefore the upshot of his resolve was noticeable neither by its object nor by the passengers at large. Holmes, indeed, who, having recovered from his consternation, had been secretly watching his friend, was anticipating the fun of seeing the latter fall headlong into the pit whose brink he had so boldly skirted, so openly derided. But he was disappointed. Laurence, if he referred to Lilith again, did so in the same casual, indifferent way as before, nor did he ever terminate any of his dreamy and seaward-gazing meditations in order to open converse with her, even ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... poetry's sake, marks it off once for all from the photographic or 'plain' realism of Crabbe. But it is also clearly distinct from the no less poetic realism of Wordsworth. Wordsworth's mind is conservative and traditional; his inspiration is static; he glorifies the primrose on the river brink by seeing its transience in the light of something far more deeply interfused which does not change nor pass away. Romance, in a high sense, lies about his greatest poetry. But it is a romance rooted in memory, not in hope—the 'glory of the grass and splendour of the flower' which he had ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... efforts to find employment and earn money had failed. She felt herself slipping down, and with all her courageous determination to save herself from social chaos she was like a bird fluttering at the brink of a chasm, unable to wing itself steadily out of danger. The Reddons, she knew, would soon need their apartment, for Marion was coming north in the first warm weather. Then there would be for herself and Virginia nothing but a boarding-house, from which she shrank. And after that, what? Mornings ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... thing-to wit, to keep us from thinking so, is the Lord Jesus become our Advocate-"If any man sin, we have an Advocate." Christian, thou that hast sinned, and that with the guilt of thy sin art driven to the brink of hell, I bring thee news from God-thou shalt not die, but live, for thou hast "an Advocate with the Father." Let this therefore be considered by thee, because it yieldeth ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and, turning, I shoot back upon its current with the speed of a projectile. I am shaken and buffeted until I gasp for breath. I swerve, I dance, I caracole—I pirouette on a wing tip, catching my side slips on the rudder as one plays cup and ball. I dangle myself at the end of a single wire on the brink of eternity, crying defiance to the winds! C'etait de la folie—the madness of battle. Far below me I could see an occasional spectator running like a rabbit, grotesquely ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... stern faces of the Willamettes and the loyal tributaries, upon the sullen faces of the malcontents, upon the fierce and lowering multitude beyond. Over the throng he looked, and felt as one feels who stands on the brink of a volcano; yet his strong voice never rang stronger, the grand old chief never looked ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... will spring up. If you are anxious to walk in a right path, and to minister to those who have claims upon you, the way will be made plain. This encouragement I can give you with confidence; for twelve months ago, I trembled on the brink of ruin, as you have just been trembling. I was once a slave to the same wild infatuation that has held you in bondage. Hope, then, with a vigorous hope, and that hope will be a guarantee ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... man cultivates independence and autocratic ideas, just so in proportion is he nearing the brink over which many have fallen to destruction. When an independent man has a fall, his enemies glory and loud are the shouts that arise from them, and if we listen closely we will hear the multitude say: ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... senseless form of the Tinker; 'you had better go yourself, if you think water will do him good.' I had by this time somewhat recovered my exhausted powers, and, taking the can, I bent my steps as fast as I could to the pit; arriving there, I lay down on the brink, took a long draught, and then plunged my head into the water; after which I filled the can, and bent my way back to the dingle. Before I could reach the path which led down into its depths, I had to pass some way along its ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... call in love," Jerome said to himself. He turned very pale, and looked away from Lucina. He felt as if suddenly he had come to the brink of some dread abyss ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... surroundings, it flashed on him that, to need such adroit handling, the situation must indeed be desperate. She was on the edge of something—that was the impression left with him. He seemed to see her poised on the brink of a chasm, with one graceful foot advanced to assert her unconsciousness that the ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... the cottage, closing the window through which she had entered, and turned her steps towards the Mountain; and approaching the brink of the precipice, she took the apparel that she had worn from the village in making her escape, and which she had also taken with her on her departure from the cottage, and casting it into the waters beneath the Mountain, hastened ...
— Fostina Woodman, the Wonderful Adventurer • Avis A. (Burnham) Stanwood
... mean to be caught. Being a fast runner for a boy of his size, he bade fair to out-distance his pursuer. But directly in his path was an excavation of considerable size and depth. Ernest paused on the brink to consider whether to descend the sloping sides or to go round it. The delay was fatal. The tramp saw his advantage, and, pushing forward, seized him ...
— The Young Bank Messenger • Horatio Alger
... spaniel,—which had been Don Jose's, His father's, whom he loved, as ye may think, For on such things the memory reposes With tenderness—stood howling on the brink, Knowing (dogs have such intellectual noses!), No doubt, the vessel was about to sink; And Juan caught him up, and ere he stepp'd Off, threw him in, then after ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... of Wyat, had escaped into France, after the defeat and capture of his leader, whence he was still plotting the overthrow of Mary's government. By the connivance or assistance of that court, now on the brink of war with England, he was at length enabled to send over one Cleberry, a condemned person, whom he instructed to counterfeit the earl of Devonshire, and endeavour to raise the country in his cause. Letters and proclamations were at the same time dispersed ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... down with infinite pleasure, and swallowed a most cheering draught of the precious liquid; and, sitting on the brink, made a good meal of what I had with me, and then drank again. I had now got five-sixths of the lake's circumference to go back again to my boat, for I did not suspect any passage over the cavern's mouth where I came into the lake; and I could not, without much trouble, consider ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... with mighty clamor, their ends at times shooting a dozen feet into the air, the bark stripping in ragged lengths, displaying angry gashes along their flanks. It was from that great heap of logs above, on the brink of the steep bank, that ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... as the President of the United States, but I screwed up my courage and went in. I saw a kindly-looking gentleman seated before Webster's desk, but I was too much frightened to speak and just stood there like a bump on a log. Presently, Mr. Brink, the superintendent, turned to Webster and said, "I wonder why that ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... call upon you to pause. You stand on the brink of a precipice. You may go on in your precipitate career—you may pronounce against your Queen, but it will be the last judgment you ever will pronounce. Her persecutors will fail in their objects, and ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 496 - Vol. 17, No. 496, June 27, 1831 • Various
... aware that something was moving about the precipice, the brink of which seems the sill of the window. Although this precipice is sheer and insurmountable, a dark figure had risen from it, and stood plainly defined against the cliff, which presented a comparatively smooth surface to ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... is sufficiently dark to require candles. Introduced 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 ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... well favoured kine and fat-fleshed; and they fed in a meadow. And, behold, seven other kine came up after them out of the river, ill favoured and lean-fleshed; and stood by the other kine upon the brink of the river. And the ill favored and lean-fleshed kine did eat up the seven well favoured and fat kine. So ...
— The Dore Gallery of Bible Illustrations, Complete • Anonymous
... gleams of Dawn! When the bent Flower beneath the night-dew weeps And on the Lake the silver Lustre sleeps, Amid the paly Radiance soft and sad She meets my lonely path in moonbeams clad. 30 With her along the streamlet's brink I rove; With her I list the warblings of the Grove; And seems in each low wind her voice to float, Lone-whispering Pity in each soothing Note! As oft in climes beyond the western Main 35 Where boundless spreads the wildly-silent Plain, The savage Hunter, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... coldly, "has taken her goods to a poor market. Norris Vine is on the brink of ruin. If I turn the screw to-morrow, he ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 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 ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... given than that of the greatest tenant, who pays 55l. a year for some five hundred acres. In Innisbofin and Innishark are at least 1,500 individuals, nearly all very small tenants, either on the brink of starvation or pretending to be so. It is nearly as impossible to extract any rent from them as from the twenty-three families on Innisturk, an island belonging to Lord Lucan, whose rents are farmed, so far as Innisturk is concerned, by Mr. MacDonnell, the sub-sheriff, ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... she hovered on the brink of the grave, and nothing but the indomitable will to live saved her, the doctors said. On the third day she rallied wonderfully, and some purpose seemed to gift her with unnatural strength. Evening came, and the ...
— The Mysterious Key And What It Opened • Louisa May Alcott
... art the care of heaven, In thy youth to exile driven: Heaven thy ruin then prevented, Till the guilty land repented: In thy age, when none could aid thee, Foes conspired, and friends betray'd thee. To the brink of danger driven, Still thou art the ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... anchorage and headed for the mouth of the ditch. The water was rapidly widening the work of their hands, but in places the cut-off was barely wide enough to let the long slender floats by, and the water was rushing through with terrific force. The moon trembled on the brink of the jungle. Would they reach the other side in time to aid Kali? Suppose he was driven back before Piang and his men could attack from ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... in different terms). Professor Moore philosophizes as truly as does Bergson when he says "there must exist a whole world of living creatures which the microscope has never shown us, leading up to the bacteria and the protozoa. The brink of life lies not at the production of protozoa and bacteria, which are highly developed inhabitants of our world, but away down among the colloids; and the beginning of life was not a fortuitous event occurring ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... had struggled for a moment, desperately if weakly, but at the sound of his voice she lay still in his grasp, with her eyes upon his face. In the moonlight each could see the other quite plainly. Raising her in his arms, Haward bore her to the brink of the stream, laved her face and chafed ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... drama in which, through strange circumstances, I was destined to play my part, amid stirring scenes of Indian war, and in surroundings that would test my courage and manhood to the utter-most; yet, although I heard it not, the hour had already struck, and I stood on the brink of a tragedy beyond my power ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... would respond promptly to the returning flow of the financial tide, it now seemed stranded among more hopeless ventures. There was no escaping the conviction that Muir was in a perilous position, and that a little thing might push him over the brink. Therefore, he had returned fully beat upon using all his influence in behalf of Arnault, and was spurred to this effort by the fact that his finances, but not his expenses, were running low. His wife could give but a dubious ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... and river done, The prodigies of rod and gun; Till, warming with the tales he told, Forgotten was the outside cold, The bitter wind unheeded blew, From ripening corn the pigeons flew, The partridge drummed I' the wood, the mink Went fishing down the river-brink. In fields with bean or clover gay, The woodchuck, like a hermit gray, Peered from the doorway of his cell; The muskrat plied the mason's trade, And tier by tier his mud-walls laid; And from the shagbark overhead The grizzled squirrel ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... with astonishment; he did not know what to make of him. Was he in earnest? Would a son of Joseph Flint go out to ride—on Sunday, too—while his mother and his brothers and sisters were on the very brink of starvation? Our hero had some strange, old-fashioned notions of his own. For instance, he considered it a son's duty to take care of his mother, even if he were obliged to forego the Sunday ride; that he ought to do all he could for his brothers and sisters, ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic
... the maiden to a river's brink, near to where, as tradition still reports, now stand the Knott Mills. Having mounted her before him on his steed, she pointed out a path over the ford, beyond which he soon espied the castle, a vast and stately building of rugged stone, like a huge crown upon the hill-top, which ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... that "death is the end of a journey," but the aptness of the simile is realized most fully in Paris. Any arrival, especially of a person of condition, upon the "dark brink," is hailed in much the same way as the traveler recently landed is hailed by hotel touts and pestered with their recommendations. With the exception of a few philosophically-minded persons, or here and there a family secure of handing down a name to posterity, ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... gave this an absent smile. For long, now, she had been leading up to this talk and she felt herself upon the brink of revelations. . . . Perhaps this Johnny Byrd knew where Barry Elder was. Perhaps they were friends. ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... 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
... frowning gorge other than that rocky way which is fiercely held by the current? Yes, there is a narrow road, painfully grooved by the hand of man out of the mountain side, now running along like a gallery, now dropping down to the brink of the stream. But the glittering array winds on. There is the heavy tread of the foot-soldiers, the trampling of horse, the dull rumble of the guns, the waving and flapping of the colours, and the angry remonstrance of the Inn. But ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... called to him to stop but he seemed to lose my voice in the roar of the falling waters. Dashing about after the scattered animals, he whipped them all up to the brink of the precipice, and then quietly walked his own horse across on what looked to me like a streak of foam. The others followed, and in a few minutes they all stood safely on the opposite bank. I thought this was very ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... may have said then," replied Miriam, whose steady flight was not arrested by this ineffectual bolt; "I was no doubt already wonderful for talking of things I know nothing about. I was only on the brink of the stream and I perhaps thought the water colder than it is. One warms it a bit one's self when once one's in. Of course I'm a contortionist and of course there's a hateful side, but don't you see how that very ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... only need to take your gun', said Dapplegrim, 'and go down to the brink of the pond, and aim at the duck which lies swimming about there, ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... his captain's sleeve, and strove, sick at heart, to pull him back; but Chester stoutly stood his ground. In the few seconds more that they remained they saw his arms more closely enfold her. They saw her turn at the brink, and, in an utter abandonment of rapturous, passionate love, throw her arms again about his neck and stand on tiptoe to reach his face with her warm lips. They could not fail to hear the caressing tone of her every word, or to mark his receptive but gloomy silence. ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... first time the awful certainty flashed through his mind that he stood at the brink of a catastrophe against which there was no remedy unless a miracle intervened. But where under the sun should such a miracle come from? All faith, all hope, dissolved before his view in these few moments when the whole crushing weight of his guilt, the whole ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... dear father, I am at Lumberton, and within a few days of rest. I am sick, fatigued, out of patience, and on the very brink of being out of temper. Judge, therefore, if I am not in great need of repose. What conduces to render the journey unpleasant is, that it frets the boy, who has acquired two jaw teeth since he left you, and still talks of gampy. We travel in ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... see the Malini portrayed, Its tranquil course by banks of sand impeded; Upon the brink a pair of swans; beyond, The hills adjacent to Himalaya[95], Studded with deer; and, near the spreading shade Of some large tree, where 'mid the branches hang The hermits' vests of bark, a tender doe, Rubbing its downy forehead on the ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... Randy, when they had reached the brink of this split. "We'll have to go back into the woods ...
— The Rover Boys Under Canvas - or The Mystery of the Wrecked Submarine • Arthur M. Winfield
... this mysterious fear. The reckless girl, whose highest boast had always been that she feared nothing, now trembled, as in imagination she changed places with Emma, and stood where she saw her standing,—upon the brink of the tomb. ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
... soon became evident. The road was crowded with motors of all kinds, and it was by no means a joke to ride a restive horse while leading an obstinate mule, along the brink of a precipice! At 13.00 Enab was reached, where the Squadron was allotted its ground, rather stony, but next to the water troughs, which, however, ...
— Through Palestine with the 20th Machine Gun Squadron • Unknown
... trust themselves one hour in sleep) Condemn our course, and hold our caution cheap; When brave Occasion bids, for some great end, When Honour calls the poet as a friend, Then shall they find that, e'en on Danger's brink, He dares to speak what they scarce ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... was obstructed by a high ridge, of which we had nearly gained the highest point, when we left our horses, and running up a few yards of steep turf found ourselves all at once on the brink of the Curral. It is a huge valley, or rather crater, of immense depth, enclosed on all sides by a range of magnificent mountain precipices, the sides and summit of which are broken in every variety of buttress ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... place for lovers—above all for lovers who have turned the page on a dark preface, and have before them still the long bright volume of life. The girl has her arm linked in the man's, but as they walk she breaks often away from him, to dart into copses, to gather flowers, or to peer over the brink where the gulls wheel and oyster-catchers pipe among the shingle. She is no more the tragic muse of the past week, but a laughing child again, full of snatches of song, her eyes bright with expectation. ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... It could not measure less than twenty feet across, and the current whirled through it far below—thirty feet perhaps. He eyed his companions. Barboux leaned on his gun a few paces from the brink, where the two Indians stood peering down at the dim waters. John dropped on one knee, pretending to fasten a button of his gaiters, and drew a long breath while he watched for his chance. Presently Muskingon straightened himself up and, as if satisfied with his inspection, began to ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... at Colon, took train for Panama across the laborious path where a thousand little men were scratching endlessly, and on the brink of the Pacific began his search. No ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... an otter just under that bank,' cried Molly, who had been watching the obvious excitement of her bandy-legged hound; and she rushed down to the brink of the water, leaping lightly from stone to stone, and inciting the ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... could arrive there a huge rift opened in the earth, down which they madly precipitated themselves. Their descent, it is affirmed, lasted as many hours as Vulcan occupied in falling from Heaven to Lemnos; but when the last tail was over the brink, the gulf closed as effectually as the gulf in the Forum closed over Marcus Curtius, not leaving the slightest inequality by which any ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... alarming thought, and Jack recoiled as if again on the edge of the brink. But he was quick to see the absurdity of ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... the existence of Efreets," continued Cairn, "but neither you nor I can doubt the creative power of thought. If a trained hypnotist, by sheer concentration, can persuade his subject that the latter sits upon the brink of a river fishing when actually he sits upon a platform in a lecture-room, what result should you expect from a concentration of thousands of native minds upon the idea that ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... the other side, and as yet their pursuers had not reached the brink. For one moment Tom had a thought of working the black knob, and flooding the channel, but he could not doom even the head-hunters, much less the Fogers and Delazes, to such a death as ...
— Tom Swift in the City of Gold, or, Marvelous Adventures Underground • Victor Appleton
... with sacred love—these wanderers on the brink of a fearful abyss—have seen the look of her face then, they would have fled from each other for ever, rather than to have dared the desperation ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... but its remembrance is undying. The little cottage is inhabited by strangers. The grass grows rank near the brink of the fountain, and the mossy stone once moistened by my tears has rolled down and choked its gushing. My mother sleeps by the side of the faithful Peggy, beneath a willow that weeps over a broken shaft,—fitting monument for a ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... ago we stood on the brink of war without the people knowing it and without any preparation or effort at preparation for the impending peril. I did all that in honor could be done to avert the war, but without avail. It became inevitable; and the Congress ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... face, and instantly all other faces disappeared. From the opposite brink of a tremendous gulf she looked into his eyes, and their blended ray of love and despair pierced her to ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... cry of "Help, help!—the Lady Eveline is murdered!" the seeming statue, starting at once into active exertion, sped with the swiftness of a race-horse to the brink of the moat, and was about to cross it, opposite to the spot where Rose stood at the open casement, urging him to speed by ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... the drop was sheer, precipitate. Then realization superseded, and she flung herself full length upon the ground and pressed her way into the shelter of an adjacent bush. The path had not ended. It passed over the brink and continued its way zigzagging down the terrific slope to the valley below. It was this, and the sight of a distant spiral of smoke rising from below, which had flung her into the shelter of ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... perceived that it was the intention of the mob to push Him over a precipice that had been formed on the side of a hill just beyond the town limits. He waited patiently until they had urged Him to the very brink of the decline, and until it needed but one strong push to press Him over its edge and into the gorge below. And then He exerted His occult forces in a proper self-defense. Not a blow struck He—not a man did He ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... the Committee on Ways and Means. McKinley was a thorough-going protectionist whose attitude on the question had already been expressed somewhat as follows: previous Democratic tariffs have brought the country to the brink of financial ruin; without the protective tariff English manufacturers would monopolize American markets; under the protective system the foreign manufacturer largely pays the tax through lessened profits; under protection the American laborer is the best paid, clothed and ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... I commit myself to the dangerous depths of his Discourse which I am now upon the brink of, I would with his leave, make a motion; that instead of Author I may henceforth indifferently well call him Mr. Bayes as oft as I shall see occasion. And that first because he has no name, or at least will not own it, though he himself ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... she felt the oddest relief, as after one more escape, at the end of each of these afternoons with her new acquaintances, afternoons in which the three seemed perpetually gliding down a steep incline and as perpetually being arrested on the brink of some unexplained plunge, she found that their atmosphere had spoiled entirely her relish for the atmosphere of her home. The home supper-table seemed to her singularly flat and distasteful with its commonplace fare—hot chocolate and ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... petroleum prices driving Ecuador's economy into free fall in 1999. Real GDP contracted by more than 6%, with poverty worsening significantly. The banking system also collapsed, and Ecuador defaulted on its external debt later that year. The currency depreciated by some 70% in 1999, and, on the brink of hyperinflation, the MAHAUD government announced it would dollarize the economy. A coup, however, ousted MAHAUD from office in January 2000, and after a short-lived junta failed to garner military support, Vice President ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... came to the ravine and descended the deep shadowy hollow, they parted company, Prescott following the opposite brink, because Wandle would have to cross it lower down to regain the south trail. Once or twice he left it for a while when the gorge twisted in a big loop away from him, but he could see nothing of his companion. They had commanded a wide sweep of plain when they crossed the rise, but now that he ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... yet trembling upon the brink of the grave from pestilence, inhaled while nobly performing duties for which they were scarcely better paid than the commonest soldier—these were the men whom our city fathers were so blandly and pleasantly removing from their field of ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... staff in hand and tottering knee, Upon the slippery brink he stood, And watched, with doting ecstasy, Each wreath of ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... it crowns the summit of the plateau. Here 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, and the Welsh ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... and of a complication of diseases, in the spring of 1892. He lost his hair, he lost his teeth, he lost everything but his indomitable spirit; and when almost on the brink of the grave, he stood in the back-yard—literally, on the brink of his own grave—for eight hours in a March snow-storm, motionless, and watching a great black cat on the fence, whom he hypnotized, and who finally came down to be killed. The cat weighed more than Mop ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton
... Cora should not attend that ball, or any other place of amusement, for a long time. And he was just on the brink of discovering the impertinent interference of Fate in human affairs, and especially those of the ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... girls of her age were well up in assumed the most alarming proportions to poor Marjory, and she almost wished that her heart's desire had not been granted, that she could have been content with things as they were. She felt herself on the brink of a new world, and she feared to take the step across. She remembered Peter's story, and how the voice had called to young Malcolm that faith and a brave heart would carry him across the yawning chasm. She, too, must be brave and go to meet ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... the rust, and a ruin is come To the auld kirk bell—ance and ever it 's dumb; On the brink of the past 'tis awaiting a doom, For a wauf o' the wind may awaken its tomb, As, bearing its fragments, all dust-like, away, To blend with water, the wood and the clay, Till lost 'mid the changes of manners and men; Then ne'er ane ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... little. He had got a hundred, a thousand times more kindness than he would have dared to hope for, if he had ever dared to think of saying what he had really said. He had been forced to what he had done, as a strong man is forced struggling against odds to the brink of a precipice, and he had found not death, but a strange new strength to live. He had not found Heaven, but he had touched the gates of Paradise and heard the sweet clear voice of the angel within. It was well for him that his hand had not ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... many times that her mother had hovered at the brink of the grave. She and her step-father had shared the watch at the sick-bed. Up till that time the man had displayed no regard for herself but the treatment he would bestow upon an unwelcome burden on his life. There had been a bitter antagonism on his part, an antagonism that suggested ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... are standing to-day very near the brink of war, but I want to assure you that if we should be drawn into the conflict it will be only after our President has exhausted every means consistent with upholding the honour and dignity of the United States to keep us from war. I left Berlin with a clear ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... at all speak lies at the very brink of death, or hold any secret in his heart? It was at that time he had done with deceit, and he showed where his thought was, and had no word at all for me that had left the whole world for his sake, and that went wearing out my youth, pushing here and there as far as the course ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... unthinking Sots, that they do not prefer her who restrains all her Passions and Affections and keeps much within the Bounds of what is lawful, to her who goes to the utmost Verge of Innocence, and parlies at the very Brink of Vice, whether she shall be a Wife or a Mistress. But I must appeal to your Spectatorial Wisdom, who, I find, have passed very much of your Time in the Study of Woman, whether this is not a most unreasonable Proceeding. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... of the Nile, preceding closely the completion of his fortieth year, not unnaturally recalled the prediction to mind, where the singularity of the coincidence left it impressed; and now, standing as he did on the brink of great events, with half-acknowledged foreboding weighing on his heart, he well may have yearned to know what lay beyond that silence, within the closed covers of the book ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... and distrust the king. Men of science offer us health, an obvious benefit; it is only afterwards that we discover that by health, they mean bodily slavery and spiritual tedium. Orthodoxy makes us jump by the sudden brink of hell; it is only afterwards that we realise that jumping was an athletic exercise highly beneficial to our health. It is only afterwards that we realise that this danger is the root of all drama and romance. The strongest argument ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... his beloved landscape unchanged. Lofty elms drooped at the corners of the house; on the lawn billowed clumps of the lilac, which formed a thick hedge along the fence. There was a terrace part way down this lawn, and when a white-painted balustrade was set some fifteen years ago upon its brink, it seemed always to have been there. Long verandas stretched on either side of the mansion; and behind was an old-fashioned garden with beds primly edged with box after a design of the poet's own. Longfellow had a ghost ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the mother of the children, hearing piercing shrieks for help, flew to the pit, and, missing her footing, slipped over the brink, and falling some ten or more feet, broke one of her legs and otherwise bruised herself. For some seconds she was unconscious, and the first sight that met her eyes on coming to was Ivan kneeling ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... to frighten some herons by the river's brink into the air, Cousin Monica said confidentially ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... so horrified by the mishap that, without waiting to learn the result, he rushed blindly to the brink of a deep ravine, and threw himself headlong to death. But the injury to Cedric was only a trifling one after all. The bullet seemed merely to have grazed him in passing, and, beyond a ragged gash in the fleshy part of the thigh, he was not harmed ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... I am at the brink of the last page, and I have said nothing of the Apollo, the Invalides, or Les Sourds et Muets. What shall I do? I cannot speak of everything at once, and when I speak to you so many things crowd ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... Scarecrow, leaning over the brink, "this is called by our Oz people the Great Waterfall, because it is certainly the highest one in all ...
— The Scarecrow of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... grave citizens with ill-disguised obscenity. Lorenzo took part in them himself, and composed several choruses of high literary merit to be sung by the masqueraders. One of these carries a refrain which might be chosen as a motto for the spirit of that age upon the brink of ruin:— ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... behind him, looking out into the desolate garden, where a still, red sunset burnt behind the leafless trees. He was like a man who has made up his mind to a grave decision, and shrinks back upon the brink. When his food was served he could hardly touch it, and he drank no wine as his custom was to do, but only water, saying to himself that his head must be clear. But in the evening he went to his bedroom, and searched for something ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... chasm. I therefore set off after her, leaving Connie lying there in loneliness, between the sea and the sky. But when I got to the other side of the little tower, instead of finding her standing hesitating on the brink of action, there she was on the rock beyond. Mr. Percivale had risen, and was evidently giving an answer to my invitation; at least, the next moment she turned to come back, and he followed. I stood trembling almost to see her cross the knife-back of that ledge. If I had not been almost ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... 31st January they came upon this creek, which was called by them New Year's Creek, now the Bogan, and the next day they suddenly found themselves on the brink of a ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... little village the Whitbys take their second title, and had ourselves rowed round the cliffs to Staithes, which we reached just before sunset; Chips and his sister also taking an oar between them, and I another. There, on the brink of the little bay, with the singularly quaint and picturesque old village behind it, were fifty fishing-boats side by side waiting to be launched, and all the fishing population of Staithes were there to launch them—men, women and children; as we landed ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... are the woods, These are my starry solitudes; And there the river by whose brink The roaring lions come ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... as of a dog on the brink of starvation, seemed to gainsay her. Just then the door opened, and the ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... which stood Clustering like bee-hives on the low flat strand Of Oxus, where the summer-floods o'erflow When the sun melts the snows in high Pamere deg. deg.15 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 20 With a clay fort; but that was fall'n, and now The Tartars built there Peran-Wisa's tent, A dome ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... east foot of a rocky peak 13 miles by road from Waimea, at an elevation of more than 3,600 feet, is a small heiau almost on the brink of the canyon. Within the walls it is 30 feet across each way. On the south line are three large stones in line, one at each corner, the third about midway between them. No doubt their position determined the ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke |
