"Verge" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... who thus sadly ended his career when on the verge of an honored retirement, was in a way an old acquaintance of mine. It was he who had refused me a transfer to the Monongahela during the war; and he and my father, having been comrades when cadets at the ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... system: and to this policy he has adhered. Besides this, he spared no expense which he judged would add to the value of his publications, and his judgment has always set the bounds far off on the very verge of extravagance. Whatever machine promised to keep his office abreast of the times, and increase the capacity for good work, he has dared buy. Whatever man he has thought would brighten and strengthen his staff of assistants, he has gone for, and if possible ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... contrast, or actually scented with pinewoods. One seemed to breathe with it fancies of the woods, the hills, and water—of a sort of souls in the landscape, but cheerful and genial now, happy souls! A distant group of pines on the verge of a great upland awoke a violent desire to be there—seemed to challenge one to proceed thither. Was their infinite view thence? It was like an outpost of some far-off fancy land, a pledge of the reality of such. Above Cassel, the airy hills curved in one black outline ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... are. Mrs. Heron has given them into my charge, and I am glad of it. Not that I care for all children," said Elizabeth, with the cool impartiality that was wont to drive Percival to the very verge of distraction. "I dislike some children very much, indeed, but, you see, I happen—fortunately for myself—to be fond of Harry, ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... said. A shy man is never popular. His shyness passes for pride, and people hate him for it. Tiberius was very shy. So society was always anxious to take down his pride a little. The truth was, he was humble to the verge ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... approach had relieved Chester; he had then turned eastwards into Staffordshire, had crossed that county, entered Leicestershire, and (May 30) taken the town of Leicester by storm. He was thus on the very verge of the Parliament's own faithful Association of the Eastern Counties, and might be expected to break into that Association. Immediately, therefore, the plans of the Parliament were changed. On the very day on which the news of the storming ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... to be deprived of the management of their properties, or to be exempted from punishment if they have committed a crime, but who, in the common expressive phrase, 'are not all there'—whose eccentricities, illusions and caprices are on the verge of madness, whose judgments are hopelessly disordered; whose wills, though not completely atrophied, are manifestly diseased. In questions of property, in questions of crime, in questions of family arrangements, such persons cause the ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... case been different with men in the humbler walks of life. Multitudes are doomed to delve and dig. Three-fourths of the race live on the verge of poverty. The energies of most men are consumed in supporting the wants of the body. It is given to multitudes to descend into the coal mine ere the day is risen, to emerge only when night has fallen. Other multitudes toil ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... the French and Indians concealed by the prairie grass and timber, and from this situation, in almost perfect security, they fired down upon Braddock's men. The only exposure of the French and Indians, resulted from the circumstance of their having to raise their heads to peep over the verge of the cliff, in order to shoot with more deadly precision. In consequence, all of them who were killed in the early part of the action, were ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... language is everywhere that of men of honour, but their actions are those of knaves—a proof that he was perfectly well acquainted with human nature, and frequented what we call polite company. He was infirm and come to the verge of life when I knew him. Mr. Congreve had one defect, which was his entertaining too mean an idea of his first profession (that of a writer), though it was to this he owed his fame and fortune. He spoke of his works as of trifles that were beneath ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... and pearly shadowing,—rivers singing seaward behind curtains of arborescent reeds and bamboos,—and, perhaps, Pelee, in the horizon, dreaming violet dreams under her foulard of vapors,—and, encircling all, the still sweep of the ocean's azure bending to the verge of day. ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... while in the methodic unvarying note of her voice there was a rasping reiteration that began to affect the company. A slight gasping breath, uncontrollable, almost on the verge of hysterics, was heard, and a ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... claim the money lying in the Bank of Australia, which has been remitted by her trustees; nor can Olivia claim it without making herself known to him. It is accumulating there, while both of them are on the verge of poverty." ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... David Lynde was warm-hearted and generous to the verge of violence, but a man in every way unfitted by temperament, experience, and mode of life to undertake the guardianship of a child. To have an infant dropped into his arms was as excellent an imitation of a calamity as could well happen to him. I am told that no one could have been more sensible ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... The European financiers had managed admirably for their shareholders; but, having assumed the annual national income at a maximum, instead of a minimum, they had brought the goose of the golden eggs to the very verge of death. The actionnaires were to receive, with a punctuality hardly possible in the East, the usurious interest of six per cent., not including one per cent. for sinking fund. Meanwhile, the officers and officials, military, naval, and civil, had been in arrears of salary ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... to me again; but say to Athens Timon hath made his everlasting mansion Upon the beached verge of the salt flood, Who once a day with his embossed froth The turbulent surge shall cover. Thither come, And let my gravestone be your oracle. Lips, let sour words go by and language end: What is amiss, plague and infection mend! Graves only be men's works and death their gain! Sun, hide ...
— The Life of Timon of Athens • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... navy came up to the port of Algiers, June 12, 1830, the unity between the soldiers and their master, Hussein Pacha, was tottering on the verge of dissolution; a plot against his life had just been discovered, he had punished the ringleaders with death, and many who had been concerned in the conspiracy felt that there was no safety for them with him. Beaten constantly in every skirmish or battle, they conceived a high respect for the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... verge of apoplexy. His ruddy face turned purple, then black; he rose in his seat; he gave vent to smothered gasps; then he straightened up and clutched ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... blocks of Standard Oil stock which had long been held by this or that interest for investment," and no more was thought of the incident. Even the most alert financiers never suspected that the most important stock secret of the age had been on the verge of becoming public property. ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... Phebe watched for an opportunity for telling Felicita what she had done, no chance came. If Felicita had been reserved before, she inclosed herself in almost unbroken silence now. During her illness she had been on the verge of delirium; and then she had shut her lips with a stern determination, which even her weak and fevered brain could not break. She had once begged Phebe, if she grew really delirious, to dismiss all other attendants, so that no ear but hers might hear her wanderings; but this emergency ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... in the vault under the church there is still a large double coffin, in which, according to tradition, lies a chain of gold of incalculable value. Some twenty years ago, the owner of Mellenthin, whose unequalled extravagance had reduced him to the verge of beggary, attempted to open the coffin in order to take out this precious relic, but he was not able. It appeared as if some powerful spell held it firmly together; and it has remained unopened down to the present time. May it remain so until the last awful day, and may the impious hand ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... story of Jacob's wrestling at Peniel, says, first, that 'he had power with God, yea, he had power over the angel,' and then goes on to say that 'there He spake with us, even Jehovah.' And Malachi, on the last verge of Old Testament prophecy, goes furthest of all in seeming to run together the conceptions of Jehovah and the Angel of Jehovah, for he says, 'The Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to His temple; and the angel of the covenant ... behold, he cometh.' From this imperfect ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... The dogs were fast drawing on their victim, and nothing but despair and death stared him in the face. The ground now began to get irregular and varied, and a hope arose in his heart that he was getting on the verge of the moors. Still he was entirely ignorant as to the direction. The clouds then burst with a violence which their threatening aspect had long foretold, and in an instant Smyth was drenched to the skin; the ground became slippery, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... of his shirt-tail from his breeches and proceeded to knot the cornelian heart secure therein. Maisie fled rapidly on the verge of hysterics, After that the school treat had but one meaning for Paul. He fed, it is true, in Pantagruelian fashion on luscious viands, transcending his imagination of those which lay behind Blinks the confectioner's ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... looking down into a tilted well. A rope that hangs from the centre of the top touches the wall before it reaches the bottom. Standing on the summit, one does not feel altogether comfortable when he looks down from the high side; but to crawl on your breast to the verge on the lower side and try to stretch your neck out far enough to see the base of the tower, makes your flesh creep, and convinces you for a single moment in spite of all your philosophy, that the building is falling. You handle ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... with outstretched arms, and a look and gesture of utter yearning gave poignancy and spirit to the careless, sleepy grace of his face and figure. He seized the boy's arm. "See now," he cried, his voice trembling upon the verge of music, "it is nearly twelve years that I have been a wanderer, shorn of my strength and my glory! Look you, boy, at the line of hills yonder. Behind those hills lie the blue sea-ridges, and still ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... about to round the point which hid the Nut-hole from view, she heard the sounds of struggling feet and wrestling arms; and, regardless of danger to herself in her fears for Percival, she forced her way through some bushes, and beheld two men, in no friendly embrace, staggering on the very verge of the pool. Before she could look again the one had fallen on the earth; and the other, with a desperate blow of his stick on the head of the prostrate man, uttered an oath in a voice whose peculiar tones were well-known to Barbara, and in the twinkling of an eye ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... early period in his career, it must be conceded that Tom Verity's smile was an asset to be reckoned with. Mischievous to the verge of impudence; but confidential, too, most disarmingly friendly—a really vastly engaging smile, which, having once beheld, most persons found themselves more than ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... same day, Anna Vassilyevna was sitting in her drawing-room and was on the verge of weeping. There were also in the room her husband and a certain Uvar Ivanovitch Stahov, a distant cousin of Nikolai Artemyevitch, a retired cornet of sixty years old, a man corpulent to the point of immobility, with sleepy yellowish ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... she entered the shop and introduced herself. The introduction was needless. Mr Blurt recognised her at once, dropped his paper, extended both hands, gave her a welcome that brought even Jiggs back to the verge of sanity, and had her into the back shop, whence he expelled Mrs Murridge to some other and little-known region of ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... resembling his carriage in that it was slow and distinctive. He seemed deliberately to choose each word and to give to it all its value, syllable by syllable. His English was perfect to the verge of the pedantic; and his voice was metallic and harsh, touching at time, when his words were vested with some subtle or hidden significance, guttural depths which betrayed the Chinaman. He possessed uncanny dignity as of tremendous intellect and ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... think that if the really great man were to confess to the working of his mind, we should see him constantly besieged by inspirations ... inspirations! Ah! how human thought only turns in a circle, and how, when we think we are on the verge of a new thought, we slip into the enunciation of some time-worn truth. But I say again, let general principles be waived; it will suffice for the interest of these pages if it be understood that brain instincts ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... sage: inspired with pious awe, He hails the federal arch ; and looking up, Adores that God, whose fingers form'd this bow Magnificent, compassing heaven about With a resplendent verge, " Thou mad'st the cloud, " Maker omnipotent, and thou the bow; " And by that covenant graciously hast sworn " Never to drown the world again: henceforth, " Till time shall be no more, in ceaseless round, " Season shall follow season: day to night, " Summer to winter, harvest to seed ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... ministers was difficult. Peel himself has drawn the picture. By incompetent finance, by reckless colonial expenditure, by solving political difficulties through gifts or promises of cash from the British treasury, by war and foreign relations hovering on the verge of war and necessitating extended preparations, the whigs had brought the national resources into an embarrassment that was extreme. The accumulated deficits of five years had become a heavy incubus, and the deficit of ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... have become so numerous as to be on the verge of securing control of the government (by whatever means), it is unlikely that the privileged classes will permit peaceful political or constitutional procedures to continue and put them completely at the mercy of the non-privileged. ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... Castle, and there secured. Afterward he was brought to trial. He was accused of shameful indolence and incapacity, and also of cowardice, cruelty, and oppression, and of having brought the country, by his vices and maladministration, to the verge of ruin. He was convicted on these charges, and the queen, his ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... noted in the tiniest stalactite during fifty years. Mrs. Devar then grew genuinely alarmed, since even a designing woman may be a timid one. She bore with the pace until the car seemed to be on the verge of rushing full tilt against a jutting rock. She could endure the strain no longer, ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... was such real pain in her voice that Lucy looked at her in anxious surprise. "Don't you like it?" she asked, disappointed. She had hoped for a rapturous outburst of pleasure, and, instead, Mona stood silent, embarrassed, evidently on the verge of tears. ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... somewhat inquisitive, with none of those gentler qualities that we term polish. He spoke his mind, and spoke it bluntly, regardless of the feelings of others. Self-reliant and perfectly satisfied with himself, he sometimes irritated the girl to the verge of anger. But he was rarely angry, or, if he blazed out into sudden passion, returned speedily to his customary imperturbability, and he was always humorous. His mother he worshipped, and with her he was gentle as a woman; his father he jested with in an affectionate manner. Kathleen realised ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... the demand for French goods, and Portuguese wines came into the market. England and Holland retaliated and shut off the foreign markets from France. The wine and wheat growers of the latter country were ruined, and the rural population came to the verge of starvation. Colbert's last years were full of misfortune and disappointment; and a new illustration was given of the fallacy that the gain from international ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... many years deprived of both bodily and mental vigour by his paralysis, my husband died. I was free; but wherefore should I live!... I had lost my faith in everything which makes life dear, and I stood alone, on the verge of old age, surrounded by darkness and bitter memories. Thus did I still feel but a few days ago, when I received a writing from the present Commandant of K——. Within lay an unsealed letter, which he said had been found in a drawer into which my husband was wont ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... the bishop has no other effect than further to irritate the adversary. He is provoked at it, as furnishing a plea for preserving the thing which he wishes to destroy. His mind will be heated as much by the sight of a sceptre, a mace, or a verge, as if he had been daily bruised and wounded by these symbols of authority. Mere spectacles, mere names, will become sufficient causes to stimulate the people ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... there they were, standing together on the very verge of the mound, beyond the firs, some ten yards in front of the last comers, looking out into ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... t'other half worried with so many fine folks; and muddled with drinking things that he is not used to, and with late hours. Wagstaff has fled—as he always does on such occasions—to a farm-house on the verge of the estate. The hall, and the parsonage, and even the gardener's house, are all full of beds for guests, and servants, and grooms. Presently, the old gentleman, in his morning rides, sees some of the young bucks shooting ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... resources. A fine pulse is a talisman; a charmed life; a balance at our bankers. It is good luck; it is eternity; it is wealth. Nothing can withstand us; nothing injure us; it is inexhaustible riches. So felt Ferdinand Armine, though on the verge of a moral precipice. To-morrow! what of to-morrow? Did to-morrow daunt him? Not a jot. He would wrestle with to-morrow, laden as it might be with curses, and dash it to the earth. It should not be a day; he would blot it out of the calendar of time; he would effect a moral eclipse of ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... along as a kind of scattering lunch. C. was descried, at length, climbing the broad, rocky ridge, the eastern point of which we had doubled on our passage from Torbay. Making haste up the crags by a short cut, I joined him on the verge of the promontory pretty well heated and out of breath. The effort was richly rewarded. The mist was dispersing in the sunny air around us; the ocean was clearing off; the surge was breaking with a pleasant sound below. At the foot of the precipice were four or five whales, from thirty ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... sympathy with a style they will not take the pains to master. Nor, when the curtain lifted and the play began, was the vocalisation found in all parts satisfactory. The Contessa had a meagre mezza voce. Susanna, though she did not sing false, hovered on the verge of discords, owing to the weakness of an organ which had to be strained in order to make any effect on that enormous stage. On the other hand, the part of Almaviva was played with dramatic fire, and Figaro showed a truly Southern sense of comic fun. The scenes were splendidly mounted, and something ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... pearls appeared to us of little value, because we could have no expectation of returning to England for a considerable time. We observed, at a great distance, something like a smoke arising just over the verge of the horizon, and looking with our telescopes we perceived it to be a whirlwind tearing up the sand and tossing it about in the heavens with frightful impetuosity. I immediately ordered my company to erect a mound ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... affection for him as compelled me always to remember and think of him, though I had no intention of offending God: however, I was pleased to see him, to think of him and of his good qualities. All this was so hurtful, that it brought my soul to the very verge ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... was glorious. In one direction, an ocean of dark pines rolled westward in enormous billows. The silver surfaces of several lakes gleamed here and there like whitecaps on the rolling waves. Far off upon the verge of the horizon, fifty miles away, three snow-capped, sharply pointed mountains looked like a group of icebergs drifting from the Polar Sea. They did not move, however, nor will they move while this old earth shall last. They antedate by ages the Pyramids which they resemble. They ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... sea. There's shouting on the mountain-side, There's war within the blast— Old faces look upon me, Old forms go trooping past. I hear the pibroch wailing Amidst the din of fight, And my dim spirit wakes again Upon the verge of night. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... and was conscious of nothing but of being rapidly borne along in somebody's arms. When this hazy view of things passed away, her new sensation was, the intensely uncomfortable one of being on the verge of suffocation. She made one frantic but futile effort to free herself and scream for help, but the strong arms held her with most loving tightness, and her cry was drowned in the hot atmosphere within the shawl, and never passed ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... lingering on the verge of dissolution, news was brought him that the brave De Ruyter had made good his retreat with little loss, and meant once more to meet the enemy in battle. The closing eye of the old warrior kindled with martial fire ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... the Slavophil theory—have been displayed in the history of Russia. Throughout Western Christendom the principal of individual judgment and reckless individual egotism have exhausted the social forces and brought society to the verge of incurable anarchy and inevitable dissolution, whereas the social and political history of Russia has been harmonious and peaceful. It presents no struggles between the different social classes, and no conflicts between Church and State. All the factors have worked in unison, ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... with dazzled eyes. Such vim, such spirit, such knowledge, such loyalty!—and all for him, all in his service! He felt confusedly that he was upon the verge of taking her hand and saying in broken trembling tones that she was his guiding star, his ruling spirit, his steadfast hope—what lesser expressions could fitly voice his gratitude, his admiration, his devotion? Then he caught himself: things ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... the last her thought was for others, and for the services she could render. In this very letter, written, as it were, on the verge of the tomb, she speaks with gratitude and gladness of the advancement of her favourite attendant, Omar. This Omar had been recommended to her by the janissary of the American Consul-General, and so far back as 1862, when in Alexandria, ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... again." He smiled as a man of the world. He was on the verge of coquetry, now that he knew ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... detailed from Company D, for guard duty. The camp ground was a large, open plain, bordering on one side upon a dense forest. The night was dark and dismal, and at nine o'clock Richard found himself walking his lonely beat, on the verge of the forest. There was a novelty about the situation that was very attractive to him, and as he walked his solitary round, he actually enjoyed it. It was not to all probable that an enemy, or even a straggler, would disturb the quiet of the scene by attempting ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... and ill, with trudging about in search of work; he was lying exhausted on the bed while his wife sat crouched over the little bit of fire. This was how they had lived for fifteen years—the whole time on the verge of starvation. Well, they were taken away; they were persuaded to leave their quarters and to try anther place, where odd jobs were found for the man, and where the woman made friends in private families, for whom ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... a jar proportioned to their strength. These occupations are not conducive to the morality of either sex. If the well be far from the village, the girls usually form parties to go thither, and amuse themselves on the road by singing sentimental or love songs, which not unfrequently verge upon the obscene, and indulge in conversation of a similar description; while, during their halt at the well for an hour or so, they engage in romps of all kinds, in which parties of the other sex frequently join. This early license lays the foundation ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... I had got to about the lowest verge, vague rumors of an English visitor reached me. I thought of myself as the man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho; but neither priest, Levite, nor Samaritan could possibly pass my way. Yet the good Samaritan was ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... the epitaphs. Over all the sun was shining, as if everywhere and forever spring was the order of things. And is it not so? Is not the idea of the creation an eternal spring ever trembling on the verge of summer? It seemed so to the curate, who was not given to sad, still less to sentimental moralizing over the graves. From such moods his heart recoiled. To him they were weak and mawkish, and in him they would have been ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... long contest, involving several issues, in which a Secretary of War was finally removed from office with the consent of his own personal and political friends, a President was impeached and escaped removal from office by only one vote, and the country was brought to the verge of another civil war. As I had helped Evarts, Seward, and some others whose names I never knew, to "pour oil on the troubled waters" in the time of Grant and Stanton, and to get everybody into the humor to respond heartily to that great aspiration, ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... Manchester, still labouring at his machine. He had a model made for him by the eminent machine-makers, Sharpe, Roberts, and Company; but still he could not make it work satisfactorily, and he was at length brought almost to the verge of despair. He returned to France to visit his family, still pursuing his idea, which had obtained complete possession of his mind. While sitting by his hearth one evening, meditating upon the hard fate of inventors and the misfortunes in which their families ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... Talbot and Lieutenant-Colonel Hector St. Hilaire were among the officers who had gone with Jackson to the verge of the cliff, and now when they heard the impertinent but eager questions from the massed ranks they looked at each other and smiled. It was not according to West Point, but these were recruits and here was enthusiasm which was a pearl ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... under each was an oasis of grass and bushes, gayly colored by the fallen leaves. These trees, the dwelling-places of countless birds, alone broke the monotonous surface of the plain—these, and at the verge of the horizon, on all sides, the dark forest mentioned above. The sky was gray, the ground colorless, the trees and bushes that bordered the brook were bare, and the forest, with its promontories and bays, looked like a ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... on which many windows look out and smile upon the visitor as he enters. One tall dormer window, overarched with a high peak, comes out to the very edge of the roof to welcome the guest. Two, smaller and more retiring, stand upon the verge of the high-combed house-roof and look down in friendly greeting. There are tall trees in the yard, bending a little to touch ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... its burning rays on the fields, and under this shower of flame life burst forth in glowing vegetation from the earth. As far as the eye could see, the soil was green; and the sky was blue to the verge of the horizon. The Norman farms scattered through the plain seemed at a distance like little woods inclosed each in a circle of thin beech-trees. Coming closer, on opening the worm-eaten stile, one fancied that he saw a giant garden, for all the old ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... indifference towards the foot-bridge that shortened the walk to the Church, but he was still more than one hundred yards from it, when on the opposite side he beheld Sydney herself. She was on the very verge of the stream, below the steep, slippery clay bank, clinging hard with one hand to the bared root of a willow stump, and with the other striving to uphold the head and shoulder of a child, the rest of whose person ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a half they stared into each other's eyes, knowing themselves balanced upon the verge of an immense discovery. She did not doubt or question; she did not tell him he was only humbugging. Her heart thrilled with the right conditions—expectation and delight. Her dark-brown eyes ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... rise uppermost in me when I think of that ignominious day,—to be suddenly accosted by the man whom I held in the most peculiar veneration and who, I had believed, was never again to enter into my life—accosted by him on the verge of the lost battlefield—in the midst of darkness and the debris of the rout, while groping, as it were, on my lone way to security scarcely hoped for—it was too much; I sank down ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... vision cleared and he grew calmer he could just make out a faint line of light where the waves were breaking amongst the stones, for he had been within an inch of a terrible death. The little patch of turf upon which he had trod grew right on the verge of the cliff, and but for his spasmodic effort to throw himself back as the earth gave way, he must have pitched headlong on to the rocks a couple of hundred ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... my heart, my disposition, which thou hast so often censured as the inheritance of a tender-hearted Mother. To mould me into thine own likeness thou hast sent me hither. Thou dost compel me to behold this man on the verge of the yawning grave, in the grasp of an arbitrary doom, that I may experience the profoundest anguish; that thus, rendered callous to every fate, I may henceforth meet every event with ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... often invisible to Continentals. It was seldom seen by Frenchmen in the eighteenth century. This confusion of thought was a cause of many of the troubles of the French Revolution. We shall see that Rousseau, who had been carried by the love of liberty beyond the verge of the ridiculous in his Discourses, was brought back, in his "Social Compact," by his love of equality, so far as to become the advocate of an intolerable tyranny, yet was quite unaware that he was inconsistent. He composed, in fact, ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... never repealed, though the seal be changed; let them see what it is to have God in covenant with them to be the God of their seed; and, withal, let us correct, or modify, the intense anti-papal jealousy of the Christian rites, which makes us all, unconsciously, verge to the opposite extreme, thus missing the divinely-appointed intention and use which there is in our two simple ordinances; and then, with the revival of such spiritual views and feelings, and, as a consequence, with greater reference in the prayers of Christians, ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... wherein I have ventured to erect my theatre for these imperfect little dramas of country life and passions; and it lies near to, or no great way beyond, the vague border of the Wessex kingdom on that side, which, like the westering verge of modern American ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... the brink, like some full-breasted swan That, fluting a wild carol ere her death, Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood With swarthy webs. Long stood Sir Bedivere Revolving many memories, till the hull Look'd one black dot against the verge of dawn, And on the mere ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... is to-morrow into the Morea, where I shall probably remain a month or two, and then return to winter here, if I do not change my plans, which, however, are very variable, as you may suppose; but none of them verge ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... which is on the south side of the bay, several natives were seen upon it; one of them came to the verge of the rocks that overhang the extremity of the point, and made violent gestures, but, whether they were those of friendship or hostility, could not be ascertained. Boongaree answered him in the Port Jackson language, but they were ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... foreign alliance against us. So much for our domestic—now for our foreign condition and prospects. He would see Europe exhibiting serious symptoms of distrust and hostility: France, irritated and trifled with, on the verge of actual war with us: our criminally neglected differences with America, fast ripening into the fatal bloom of war: the very existence of the Canadas at stake. In India, the tenure by which we hold ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... the headlights had suddenly blazed forth. Either feeling that he was safe from Weir's gun or realizing that he was on the verge of a graver danger, Sorenson had chosen to make the light. He was going at headlong speed; even where they watched, Steele and Janet perceived that,—and only his fear of the peril behind which made him heedless ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... unpleasantly conscious that she had been on the verge of speaking as "one of the foolish women speaketh"—telling first and entreating silence after. But she had not entreated silence, and to prevent Caleb's blame she determined to blame herself and confess all to him that very night. It was curious what an awful tribunal the mild ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... man impelled by a huge enthusiasm, and seeing ahead of him something he had had no practical reason for aspiring to. He went out in all weathers and stayed out to all hours. Whatsoever rebuffs or difficulties he met with he never was even on the verge of losing his nerve. He actually enjoyed himself tremendously at times. He made friends; people began to like to see him. The Munsbergs regarded him as an ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... returned as she settled her extremely smart little person on Pilot's curveting back, and was instantly aware that there was nothing present that could touch either of them in looks or quality. Carnfother was at the extreme verge of the D—— Hounds' country; there were not more than about thirty riders out, and Mrs. Pat was not far wrong when she observed to Major Booth that there was not much class about them. Of the four or five women who were of the ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... ancestors in Coggeshall Church. In 1746 he sold the house to Robert Ludgater and it passed completely out of the Paycocke-Buxton connexion, and in the course of time fell upon evil days and was turned into two cottages, the beautiful ceilings being plastered over. It was on the verge of being destroyed some years ago when it was bought and restored to its present fine condition by Mr Noel Buxton, a direct lineal descendant of the Charles Buxton who sold it. See Power, op. ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... The ennobling of brute force; the feeling that it had its godlike side; the drawing of heroic breath amid the scenes of ordinary life, so that it seemed as if they had all been transfigured since yesterday. Oh, high, heroic, tremulous juncture, when man felt himself almost an angel; on the verge of doing deeds that outwardly look so fiendish! Oh, strange rapture of the coming battle! We know something of that time now; we that have seen the muster of the village soldiery on the meeting-house green, and at railway stations; and heard the drum and fife, ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... happy in the Arabian desert, and even in Tenerife, where others feel as if living perpetually on the verge of high fever. ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... Kathleen, once more breathing heavily on the verge of tears: "you wouldn't think everything could be so awful, and the sun shining like it ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... whither old Bevan had retired, stood high in such a desert as this, on the very verge of such a mountain-portal, (a bwlch, pronounced boolch, the Welsh call it,) an antique stone cottage, hanging like a nest on one of the side banks, dismal itself, but all that under world of pastoral pleasantness below, in full though dim perspective. A premature decay is always visible on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... exposure To the slight of the detractor or aspersion of the defamer: And we ask thy forgiveness Should our frailties betray us into ambiguities, As we ask thy forgiveness Should our steps advance to the verge of improprieties: And we beg thee freely to bestow Propitious succor to lead us aright, And a heart turning in unison with truth, And a language adorned with veracity, And style supported by conclusiveness, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... to Mattishall Burgh to see old Henry Hill's bees, and hear him expound their lore. It was perforce Sunday, there was no other day for the Norfolk farm-labourer of that generation, who seemed always to live on the verge of starvation. Borrow himself expressed regret to Henry Hill that it had not been possible to add the education of the academy to that of the land. He saw that the combination would have produced an even more ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... stood on the verge of a dark and precipitous ravine, the abrupt sides of which were studded with underwood, so completely interwoven, that all passage appeared impracticable. What, however, seemed an insurmountable obstacle, ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... nominally higher, but in the old times the labourer could get more for 8 d. or 10 d. than he can now get for 1 s. 6 d. or 2 s. Fuel is now three times as dear as it was, because the 'rules of the estate' will not allow the tenants to sell turf even on the verge of extensive bogs. Milk, which was formerly abundant and very cheap, is scarcely to be had at all now in the country towns and villages, because the land is devoted to feeding sheep and 'dry cattle.' Under the old ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... they jobbed and traded in Republicanism, and either parted with it, or at the present day are eager to part with it for a consideration. In order to get the Whigs into power, and themselves places, they brought the country by their inflammatory language to the verge of a revolution, and were the cause that many perished on the scaffold; by their incendiary harangues and newspaper articles they caused the Bristol conflagration, for which six poor creatures were executed; they encouraged the mob to pillage, pull down and burn, and then rushing into garrets ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... In both kinds, the majority of the stories come from the same mill, even though the minds that shape them may differ in refinement and in taste. Their range is narrow, and, what is more damning, their art seems constantly to verge upon artificiality. ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... made his way, to Max's horror, close to the verge, and, with a grin of delight, the young gillie followed him, to climb every now and then on the top of some projecting block right over the brink, and so that had he dropped a stone it would have fallen sheer ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... transport it to this city; as our ancestors by their study and industry have imported all their other arts which were worth having. Thus the praise of oratory, raised from a low degree, is arrived at such perfection that it must now decline, and, as is the nature of all things, verge to its dissolution in a very short time. Let philosophy, then, derive its birth in Latin language from this time, and let us lend it our assistance, and bear patiently to be contradicted and refuted; and although those men may dislike such treatment who are bound ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... and appealed to saints and angels, and to the holy Virgin, until Isabel was hysterically weeping, Antonia at a mental tension almost unendurable, and Thomas on the verge of one of those terrifying passions that mark the extremity of ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... not possess, or trouble himself to acquire. He was, to use his own phrase, "passionate of body," and his desires were stronger than his will. There are points of Byron's character with regard to which opinion is divided. Candid he certainly was to the verge of brutality, but was he sincere? Was [v.04 p.0904] he as melancholy as his poetry implies? Did he pose as pessimist or misanthropist, or did he speak out of the bitterness of his soul? It stands to reason that ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... suffered from such severe and distressing pains in his legs that he believed himself on the verge of paralysis. He was also bothered by a chronic emotional state which made him look like a "weepy" woman. His eyes were always full of tears and his chin a-quiver, and he had, as he said, a perpetual lump in his throat. Under re-education both lump and paralysis ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... driven twenty-one hundred miles at a walk. Standing by them were the six horses with the wagon, and its tunneled roof of canvas shone duskily on the empty verge of the wilderness. A dry windless air hung over the table-land of the Big Bend, but a sound rose from somewhere, floating voluminous upon the silence, ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... to them with feelings of regret, for my feet had only touched the dark waters and my lips had only tasted the cup from which I was to drink the very dregs. Early in the spring of 1858 I was seized with fever and acute inflammation of the stomach, which brought me to the verge of the grave. I could feel the warm tears of beloved ones upon my cheeks, as they bent tenderly over me; I could see the dark vale just ahead (though there was a light amid the darkness), but my sufferings were not to be so soon terminated. Gradually my disease assumed a chronic form, ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... men accustomed to great heights could have stood anywhere upon the outer reach of the overhang without a feeling of nausea and vertigo. Not only did the gigantic structure on the far side of the gap seem continually on the verge of toppling forward into the abyss, but the end of the south cantilever likewise quivered and swayed, and the mad flow of the roaring, ice-covered waters beneath added to the giddiness of height the terrifying illusion that the immense steel skeleton had torn ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... standing on the verge Of that unfathomed sea, Just waiting for the final surge That ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... upon them. These hardy and adventurous citizens, who have encountered the dangers and privations of a long and toilsome journey, and have at length found an abiding place for themselves and their families upon the utmost verge of our western limits, should be secured in the homes which they have improved by their labor. I refer you to the accompanying report of the Secretary of War for a detailed account of the operations of the various branches of the public service ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Polk • James Polk
... were bare-legged. Many of them had neither shoes nor sandals; a few had moccasons made of skins. In addition to all this, and hardest to be borne, their spirits were all broken, and they were sunk in despondency which led them to the very verge of despair. ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... loneliness promised to be unbroken; that faint flush faded which had crept into her cheeks in the course of her half-whimsical, half-serious harangue; she looked once more what life had made her—a work-worn shop-girl, of lack-lustre charm, on the verge ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... then weighted with a heavy stone, and the other tied round the waists of two men. But the force of the river had been underestimated. The stone fell short into the torrent, which rushed off with it so furiously that the men were flung upon their faces and trailed to the verge of the precipice. A score of persons sprang to their rescue, and the rope snapped. There was only one other rope, and its fate was not dissimilar. This time the stone fell into the water beyond the island, and immediately rushed down ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... have ended; distrustful, and struggling to see which could do the other the most harm. A reverend and holy monk, who knew my history, would have filled a soul with heaven that the wrongs of the world had already driven to, the verge of hell. The experiment failed. Homily and precept," Maso smiled bitterly as he continued, "are but indifferent weapons to fight with against hourly wrongs; instead of becoming a cardinal and the counsellor of the head of the church, I am the man ye see. Signor ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... cushions. She had the giddy feeling of a man who has slipped on the verge of a great height, and ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... arm was partially paralyzed, and my limbs so stiffened with cold as to be almost immovable. Fearing lest paralysis should suddenly seize the entire system, I literally dragged myself through the forest to the river. Seated near the verge of the great canon below the falls, I anxiously awaited the appearance of the sun. That great luminary never looked so beautiful as when, a few moments afterwards, he emerged from the clouds and exposed his glowing beams to the concentrated powers of my lens. I kindled a mighty flame, ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... your kind letter with the beautiful verses. May the Muse meet you often on the verge of the sea or among your own woods of Rokeby! May you have spirits to profit by her visits (and that implies all good wishes for the continuance of Mrs. M.'s convalescence), and may I often, by ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... had likewise written his word. It was discovered on the blank space of a bit of newspaper, and looked much as if a fat lobworm had plunged himself into a bowl of ink, and in his literary delirium had twisted uneasily to the verge of the paper. With difficulty ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in a tone of the greatest alarm, just as Mrs. Tibbs was on the extreme verge of a fainting ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... her responsive wheel, Her pennon stiffened like a swallow's wing; Yes, I was all her slope and speed and swing, Whether by yellow lemons and blue sea She dawdled through the isles off Thessaly, Or saw the palms like sheaves of scimitars On desert's verge below the sunset bars, Or passed the girdle of the planet where The Southern Cross looks over to the Bear, And strayed, cool Northerner beneath strange skies, Flouting the lure of tropic estuaries, Down that long coast, and saw ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... in a state of suppressed excitement. The German men servants, without the usual protection of a brilliant uniform, looked as if they would like to drop everything and hide themselves in the coal cellar. The maids were almost on the verge of tears. Mrs. Jones, with all the jewelry on that she possessed, was moving about with a flushed face seeing ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... even the meanest have it in them to love a leader more than themselves, and to prefer loyalty to rebellion. When he speaks of this trait in human nature Carlyle's tone invariably softens. We feel that for the moment he is kindled with admiration of mankind, and almost reaches the verge of Christianity. Whatever else was acid and captious about Carlyle's utterances, his hero worship was not only humane, it was almost optimistic. He admired great men primarily, and perhaps correctly, because he thought that they were more human than other men. The evil side of the influence ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... could deny that. In the small Yorkshire town where he usually had his abode, he came little short of being adored by the women of his own particular sect, who crowded to listen to his fervent discourses, and came away from them on the verge of hysteria, so profoundly moved were their sensitive souls by his damnatory doctrines. The men were more reluctant in their admiration, yet even they were always ready to admit "that he was an excellent fellow, with his heart in ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli |
