"Brink" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her eyes as if on the brink of an abyss. In the long silence that followed was heard all over the park the falling of the leaves in the breeze, some still heavy with sap, dropping in bunches from bough to bough, others stealing down with a scarcely audible sound, like the rustling of a dress. Round the little hut, under ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... is a wide diversity in social situations, from rock-ribbed stability, to entire communities teetering on the brink or plunging over the brink into the maelstrom of revolution. Such diverse situations have existed again and again during the 1750-1970 ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... rude strife, That anguish and resentment have not life Within the heart that ye so quiet deem: In this forc'd stillness only, I sustain My thought and feeling, wearied out with pain! Floating as 'twere upon some wild abyss, Whence, silent Patience, bending o'er the brink, Would rescue them with strong and steady hand, And join again, by that connecting link, Which now is broken:—O, respect her care! Respect her in this fearful self-command! No moment teems with greater woe than this, Should she but pause, ...
— Poems • Matilda Betham
... I arrived in due course after considerable struggling, dysentery laid me up again, and threatened to pull me nearer to the last great brink. For weeks, as the guest of my friend, Mr. C.A. Fleischmann, I stayed here recuperating, and subsequently, on the advice of my medical attendant, Dr. A. Feray, I went back to Tong-ch'uan-fu, among the mountains, and spent several happy months with ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... can intoxicate, and your feet stand at the very brink of the ocean of intemperance. Its briny waters are composed of human tears. Its winds, the sighs of those made poor and wretched by the inebriation of husbands, fathers, sons. Its billows, ever tossing, are overhung with black and lowering clouds, and illuminated only ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... black days, rendered blacker by my morbid fear of the physical weakness that made me liable to cry at any moment, sometimes even without in the least knowing why. I was often on the brink of disaster, but my fear of the boys' ridicule prevented me from publicly disgracing myself. Once the headmaster called a boy into his study, and he came out afterwards with red eyelids and a puffed face. When they heard that his mother had died ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... the 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 Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... years of age, suffered from typhoid fever. So great were the fears entertained for his life that the Queen was prevented from opening Parliament in person. Already Princess Alice in her letters had referred to her youngest brother as having been three times given back to his family from the brink of the grave. ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... in the purely agricultural regions that families officially classed as belonging to the peasantry may be regarded as on the brink of pauperism because they have no live stock, and even with regard to them I should hesitate to make such an assumption, because the muzhiks, as I have already had occasion to remark, have strange nomadic ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... may be something in your suggestion. Suppose we make the stipulation that she must carry the sieve of water from the brink of the river to the ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... Then towing took the place of rowing, and the party became very quiet. The boat cut steadily through the still waters, the slight ripple at the bows being the only sound which marked its progress. Dr Levitt pointed with his stick to the "verdurous wall" which sprang up from the brink of the river, every spray of the beech, every pyramid of the larch, every leaf of the oak, and the tall column of the occasional poplar, reflected true as the natural magic of light and waters could make them. ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... and the waving of sabres gradually slackened the onward rush of the conquerors and brought them to a halt on the brink of a narrow stream. It seemed to Prince Louis like waking from a dream, as he patted the neck of his gallant horse and, panting for breath, gazed around him. On the opposite side batteries were seen ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... pity," he said presently. "You're on the brink of the most stupendous discovery of our day. The submarine was a wonderful invention, and there's no limit to the possibilities of its development—or abuse. Until an effective counter can be devised it ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... and turned away, and the mate, scenting a little excitement, took him gently by the coat-sleeve and led him from the brink. Sympathy begets confidence, and, within the next ten minutes, he had learned that Arthur Heard, rejected by Emma Smith, was contemplating the awful crime ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... the Peers and the restoration of the Bill to its original shape. A minority of the Cabinet was said to be opposed to this course. Whether that was true or false, the Prime Minister must by this time have realised that he had allowed the country to drift to the brink of civil war, and that some genuine effort must be made to arrive at ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... returned from the deck. The trunk is standing upon the extreme brink of the wharf, but the old gentleman is nowhere to be seen. The watchman is not sure whether he went down or not, but promises to drag for him the first thing to-morrow morning. May his ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... chases ranged herds of deer, protected by the terrible forest-laws, then in full force: and the hardier huntsman might follow the wolf to his lair in the mountains; might spear the boar in the oaken glades, or the otter on the river's brink; might unearth the badger or the fox, or smite the fierce cat-a-mountain with a quarrel from his bow. A nobler victim sometimes, also, awaited him in the shape of a wild mountain bull, a denizen of the forest, and a remnant ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... those who love me, And a smile to those who hate, And whatever sky's above me, Here's a heart for every fate. Were't the last drop in the well, As I gasped upon the brink, Ere my fainting spirit fell, 'Tis to thee ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... in their hands to arrest the execution. He forces his way into the presence of the Consuls, but the sight of his father inspires him with awe; he staggers back; at this moment a Lictor at the command of the other Consul plunges a spear into his breast. The Vestal is hurried to the brink of the vault, into which she is forced to descend to the accompaniment of mournful music, while her dying lover vainly endeavours to crawl towards ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... whole course of existence and judges it soberly. Hitherto he had scarcely so much as shaken off the spell of the fresh and gracious influences that envelop a childhood in the country, like green leaves and grass. He had hesitated on the brink of the Parisian Rubicon, and in spite of the prickings of ambition, he still clung to a lingering tradition of an old ideal—the peaceful life of the noble in his chateau. But yesterday evening, at the sight of his rooms, those scruples ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... sword-edged grass brought our explorers to the edge of a cliff, down which they gazed with awe-hushed breath. Below them, at a depth of a hundred and fifty feet, the thunderous waves beat upon the foot of the cliff over whose brink they peered, and which, stern and impassive as it had stood for ages, frowned back with the mute strength of endurance upon the furious, eager waves, which now and again dashed themselves fiercely against ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... the stranger turned with the trail that now began to skirt its edge. This was no easy matter, as the undergrowth was very thick, and the foliage dense to the perilous brink of the precipice. He walked on, however, wondering why Bradley had chosen so circuitous and dangerous a route to his house, which naturally would be some distance back from the canyon. At the end ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... of his reign he managed to reduce government to a shadow, and to turn the loyalty of his subjects at home into disaffection. Before twenty years were over he had forced the American colonies into revolt and independence, and brought England to what then seemed the brink of ruin. Work such as this has sometimes been done by very great men, and often by very wicked and profligate men; but George was neither profligate nor great. He had a smaller mind than any English king before him save James the Second. He was wretchedly educated, and his natural ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... had left her, she herself rode, with all speed, to a mere hard by. Sullen and still it lay, without even a ripple on its surface. No animal ever drank of its waters nor bird sang by it, and it was so deep that none might ever plumb it. And when the Queen had come to the brink, she dismounted. From the folds of her dress she drew the scabbard, and waving it above her head, she cried, "Whatsoever becometh of me, King Arthur shall not have this scabbard." Then, whirling it with all her might, she flung it far into the mere. The jewels glinted as the scabbard flashed ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay
... of Evening, Splendor of the West, Star of my Country! on the horizon's brink Thou hangest, stooping, as might seem, to sink On England's bosom; yet well pleas'd to rest, Meanwhile, and be to her a glorious crest Conspicuous to the Nations. Thou, I think, Should'st be my Country's ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... and then. A mouse away off in the southwest. You throw things at the mouse. That encourages the mouse. But I couldn't stand it, and about two o'clock I got up and thought I would give it up and go out in the square where there was one of those tinkling fountains, and sit on its brink and dream, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... were filled, and Lizzy declared victor: and down we sat, on the brink of the stream, under a spreading hawthorn, just disclosing its own pearly buds, and surrounded with the rich and enamelled flowers of the wild hyacinth, blue and white, to make our cowslip-ball. Every one knows the process: to nip off the tuft of flowerets ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... to Rome. For twenty years his life had been filled with labors and perils. His armies had been wasted and his treasuries drained by a long and fruitless struggle; and now, after reigning one year, he died, leaving his kingdom on the brink of civil war, and bequeathing to posterity a name branded ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... after his arrival at Harrison's Landing, McClellan wrote Lincoln a long letter. It was a treatise upon Lincoln's political duties. It was written as "on the brink of eternity." He was not then in fact in any danger, and possibly he had composed it seven days before as his political testament; and apprehensions, free from personal fear, excuse, without quite redeeming, its inappropriateness. ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... skirted near the river's brink Is thrown down by the sudden inundation 190 Of the Euphrates, which now rolling, swoln From the enormous mountains where it rises, By the late rains of that tempestuous region, O'erfloods its banks, and hath destroyed ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... you love, and who loves and trusts you, for it is now no one's business but hers and yours. Or, rather, because you would never do yourself justice, let me tell her how, once a poor, motherless boy, left to himself, lost his way in the world and strayed even to the very brink of perdition. And how nobly since that he has, by the grace of Heaven, redeemed and consecrated his life. And then see if she will not place her hand in ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... by the hand, and led him to the brink of the river, and then pointing to the stream and to the wagon, and motioning in the direction across the river, he seemed to comprehend ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... is a ahem! an excellent woman, but it is her hobby to believe that everyone is tottering on the brink of the grave; and, upon my life, I believe she is offended if people don't fall into it! We will show her how to make constitutions and turn pale-faced little ghosts into rosy, hearty girls. That's my business, ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... growing, Until the thing to birth is brought; Nor know I then what next will come From out the gulf of silence dumb. I am the door the thing did find To pass into the general mind; I cannot say I think— I only stand upon the thought-well's brink; From darkness to the sun the water bubbles up— I lift it in my cup. Thou only thinkest—I am thought; Me and my thought thou thinkest. Nought Am I but as a fountain spout From which thy water welleth out. Thou art the only ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... sent me to the brink of the Styx, is now preparing me by night light to take the 33d degree of happiness. You have heard of him I know, Carlton Somerville, the Wall Street broker. I forget what it was his wife did that got on his nerves, ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... when the only other choice for invalids who wished to take the cure was to share the hardships, dirt, bad food, and carelessly prepared kumys of the tented nomads of the steppes. The grounds of the one which we had elected to patronize extended to the very brink of the Volga. In accordance with the admonitions of the specialist physicians to avoid many-storied, ill-ventilated buildings with long corridors, the hotel consists of numerous wooden structures, of moderate size, chiefly in Moorish style, ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... German leaders at Versailles, offering to take no part in the war for three months if permitted to withdraw. But Bismarck and Moltke would listen to no terms other than unconditional surrender, and these terms were finally accepted, the besieged army having reached the brink of starvation. It was with horror and despair that France learned on the 30th of October, that the citadel of Metz, with its fortifications and arms of defense, had been yielded to the Germans, and its army of more than 150,000 men had surrendered ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... self-gratulation and boasting. Here we have the Americo-Anglican church, just as it has finished a blast of trumpets, through the medium of numberless periodicals and a thousand letters from its confiding if not confident clergy, in honour of its quiet, and harmony, and superior polity, suspended on the very brink of the precipice of separation, if not of schism, and all because it has pleased certain ultra-sublimated divines in the other hemisphere, to write a parcel of tracts that nobody understands, themselves included. ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... head he realised that he did not want Paolo to die. Standing on the sharp edge of the precipice where life ends and breaks off, close upon the unfathomable depths of eternity, himself firmly standing and fearing no fall, but seeing his brother slipping over the brink, he would put out his hand to save him, to draw him back. He would not ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... on the brink of the giant hollow and clapped their hands for the very joy of seeing it all; and there—a little man stepped up to them and doffed his cap. The queen wanted them—she was waiting for them by the throne that ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... the burro to the cabin. Mr. Marshall led the way over to the mill, which was abandoned and idle, and paused on the brink of a wide ravine that extended ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... exclaimed,—"You certainly mean the thievish propensity. I know I have it by nature, for I continually feel its suggestions." What a picture is presented by this confession! A pure, honest, and honorable life, won by a battle with evil desires, which, commencing with birth, ceased their assaults only at the brink of the grave! A daily struggle, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... disheartens me, and deprives me of all my strength. What is the object of our dispute? To console our unhappy existence. Who consoles it—you or I? You yourself own, in some passages of your work, that the belief in a God has withheld some men on the brink of crime; for me this acknowledgment is enough. If this opinion had prevented but ten assassinations, but ten calumnies, but ten iniquitous judgments on the earth, I hold that the whole earth ought to embrace it.' "—Voltaire's ...
— The Christian Foundation, February, 1880
... to be comfortably off, Peter! That is something one learns to value, when one has been on the brink of starvation, as ...
— An Enemy of the People • Henrik Ibsen
... of my selves are dead, That, bending here above the brink Of my last grave, with dizzy head, I find my spirit comforted, For all the idle things I think: It can but be a peaceful bed, Since all my other ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... China ought to be judged, their opinion is the one which will finally be accepted as authoritative. The situation is admittedly dangerous; and it is imperative that a speedy remedy be sought; for the heirs and assigns of an estate which has been mismanaged to the brink of bankruptcy must secure at all costs that ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... it without losing any more time then," cried Buck. "We might see an ugly row of Kachins any minute now along the brink of the gully ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... brink of eternity, gazing into the unknown, and as the drowning man reviews his whole life in a second, we in like manner saw our past, and peered into ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... easy for the British to bring up their heavy guns; and on the same day their trusted leader, Sir Edward Packenham, arrived to take command in person, and his presence gave new life to the whole army. A battery was thrown up during the two succeeding nights on the brink of the river opposite to where the Carolina lay; and at dawn a heavy cannonade of red-hot shot and shell was opened upon her from eleven guns and a mortar. [Footnote: Gleig, 307. The Americans thought the battery consisted of 5 18- and 12-pounders; ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... let him know about the larger enterprises of Blacklock & Co. I could have spoken a dozen words, and he would have been floundering like a caught fish in a basket. There are men—a very few—who work more swiftly and more surely when they know they're on the brink of ruin; but not Joe. One glimpse of our real National Coal account, and all my power over him couldn't have kept him from showing the whole Street that Blacklock & Co. was shaky. And whenever the Street begins ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... Angelo, the quays, which were to imprison the river within high, white, fortress-like walls, had not yet been raised, and the bank with its remnants of the old papal city conjured up an extraordinary vision of the middle ages. The houses, descending to the river brink, were cracked, scorched, rusted by innumerable burning summers, like so many antique bronzes. Down below there were black vaults into which the water flowed, piles upholding walls, and fragments of Roman stone-work plunging ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... ever consent to unite herself to anyone, it would be to him, to him alone, to the hero of her country, to him whose chivalrous devotion she had admired long before she knew him, and that now—And here she stopped short, just on the brink of an avowal. ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... discussed their neighbours, and sipped their coffee or stronger drink, as the case might be. He must have laughed in his sleeve many a time as he heard the know-it-alls predicting that the British nation was on the brink of perdition or announcing, in the most confidential of manners, the secret policies of his Christian Majesty, Louis XIV. of France. Probably Joe agreed with Steele, who, in speaking of a certain coffee-house, observed that in it men differed rather in the time of day ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... subdues the mind, and makes the steps we take fall as in a dream. It was not easy to fix a basis for memory with the pencil, and recollection shapes a vast sensation of strangeness, a feeling as if one had trod for a moment beyond the brink of time, rather ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... I am standing on the brink of the grave. I have now grasped your hand. I have clasped it, as people at prayer are wont to clasp their hands. Can you let me go down to the grave without teaching me one prayer. This night the murderer's knife has pierced my heart ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... in the length of time that it takes a heavy body to totter on the brink of a precipice or a cat to regain its feet after a fall. After the voice of Diaz there was a sway through the room, a pulse of silence, and then three hands shot for their ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... Baptist chapel, of which Rev. Mr. Kingdon is pastor. The chapel, which is a part of Mr. K.'s dwelling-house, is situated on the summit of a high mountain which overlooks the sea. As seen from the valley below, it appears to topple on the very brink of a frightful precipice. It is reached by a winding tedious road, too rugged to admit of a chaise, and in some places so steep as to try the activity of a horse. As we approached nearer, we observed the people climbing up in throngs by various footpaths, and halting in the thick ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... the mud-flats and sandbars, and among the green rushes of the bays and inlets, were stately water-fowl; crimson flamingoes and rosy spoonbills, dark- colored ibis and white storks with black wings. Darters, with snakelike necks and pointed bills, perched in the trees on the brink of the river. Snowy egrets flapped across the marshes. Caymans were common, and differed from the crocodiles we had seen in Africa in two points: they were not alarmed by the report of a rifle when fired at, and they lay with the head raised instead ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... they sat about the brink staring at one another in a stunned fashion. There seemed no joy in that ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... Papa on the brink of—let us say, his twentieth precipice, it was next necessary to stay a few days longer and reconcile him to the hardship of being rescued in spite of himself. You would have been greatly shocked, if you had seen how he suffered. He gnashed his expensive teeth; he tore his ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... at the brink of the grave. In May, an alarming change for the worse occurred in the condition of his heart muscles. He was ordered to Franzienbad for six weeks, but the rest did him no good. On June 3, he left with his wife and several friends for Edlach in ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... the same antecedent, the same relative ought, generally to be used in them all. In the following sentence, this rule is violated: 'It is remarkable, that Holland, against which the war was undertaken, and that, in the very beginning, was reduced to the brink of destruction, lost nothing.' The clause ought to have been, 'and which in the very beginning.'"—Murray's Gram., 8vo, p. 155. But both the rule and the example, badly as they correspond, were borrowed from Priestley's Grammar, p. 102, where the text ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... a brief instant Cyril did not exist for Constance. Samuel alone obsessed her, and yet Samuel seemed a strange, unknown man. It was in Constance's life one of those crises when the human soul seems to be on the very brink of mysterious and disconcerting cognitions, and then, the wave recedes as inexplicably as ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... letter from Dr. Wream last night. A pitiful letter, for he's getting near the brink. Dennie—these funds I hold—I have never quite understood, but I had felt sure there was no other claimant. There was a clause in the strangely-worded bequest: 'for V. B. and his heirs. Failing in that, to the nearest related V. B.' It was a thing for lawyers, ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... has been pouring her gifts in handfuls. Here is a mother who is thinking of her son who has just left his home and is sailing on the sea; and there a girl whose heart is rejoicing in the happy dreams of youth. On the right may be a young man who is trembling on the brink of the great temptation of his life, and on the left another who is reeking from some orgy of secret sin. There is endless variety; yet none are uninteresting; and probably there is no one but, if ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... original singleness of form a variety of weighty and unattractive organs to keep pace with the satisfaction of this oppressive appetite, until to-day the entire organic world stands upon the imminent brink of destruction if food should be withheld from it for ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... years in his hall. I don't wonder; I have no notion that one could keep in good humour with one's wife for a year and a day, unless one was to live on the very spot, which is one of the sweetest scenes I ever saw. It is the brink of a high hill; the Trent wriggles through at the foot; Litchfield and twenty other churches and mansions decorate the view. Mr. Anson has bought an estate close by, whence my lord used to cast many a wishful eye, though without the least pretensions ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... Then I desired that the army should go back to the town, but the Maid came to me and bade me wait a little longer. Next she mounted her horse and rode into a vineyard, and there prayed for the space of seven minutes or eight. Then she returned, took her banner, and stood on the brink of the fosse. The English trembled when they saw her, but our men returned to the charge and met with no resistance. The English fled or were slain, and Glasdale, who had insulted the Maid, was drowned' (by the burning of the drawbridge between the redoubt and Les ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... revealed herself as the dangerous Enchantress that she was. Hung with millions of electric bulbs, crowned and diademed, and laced with jewels of white flame, she signaled to them out of the mystery and immensity of the night. For a moment they were dumb, they stood still, as if they paused on the brink and struggled, protesting against this ravishing of their souls by the Exhibition. Straight in front of them, monstrous yet fragile, its substance withdrawn into the darkness, its form outlined delicately in beads of light, in brilliants, in crystals strung on invisible threads, the Water ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... public calamity been arrested on the very brink of ruin by the seasonable energy of a single man! Have we no such man amongst us? I am as sure as I am of my being, that one vigorous mind, without office, without situation, without public functions of any kind, (at a time when the want of such a thing is felt, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... swollen by heavy rains and by the melting of the snow on the sides of Mount Olympus; and it thundered so loudly and looked so wild and dangerous that Jason, bold as he was, thought it prudent to pause upon the brink. The bed of the stream seemed to be strewn with sharp and rugged rocks, some of which thrust themselves above the water. By and by an uprooted tree, with shattered branches, came drifting along the current and got entangled among the rocks. Now ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... and pushing Popanilla from one to another, until he was fairly hustled to the brink of the lagoon, they soon forgot the existence of this bore: in one word, he was cut. When Popanilla found himself standing alone, and looking grave while all the rest were gay, he began to suspect that he was ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... cloudy day, and had begun to "spit snow"; and as it drew toward noon, they stopped beside the road at a place where a large pine and several birches leaned out from the brink of the deep gorge through which the Little Androscoggin flows to join the larger stream. Here they fed their horses on the last of the three bagfuls of hay, but had nothing to cook or eat in the way of food themselves. The weather was chilly, and ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... 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 an Efreet ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... told a tale, How that a shepherd, sitting in a vale, Played with a boy so fair and kind, As for his love both earth and heaven pined; That of the cooling river durst not drink, Lest water nymphs should pull him from the brink. And when he sported in the fragrant lawns, Goat footed satyrs and upstaring fauns Would steal him thence. Ere half this tale was done, "Ay me," Leander cried, "th' enamoured sun That now should shine on Thetis' glassy bower, Descends upon my radiant Hero's tower. ...
— Hero and Leander • Christopher Marlowe
... to pieces and sloped, and the palace built upon it. Every house in sight is new. The very ground in front on which I look down has been raised, and the terrace on which I sit has been built. The ponds have been excavated, the mimic rocky hills have been piled up, and the water led to the brink of the tiny precipice from the artesian wells which supply this part ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... by their titles, and the first he read was The Lancashire Witches, and then he read The Admirable Crichton, and then many more. Whenever he started a book with two solitary travellers riding along the brink of a desperate ravine he ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... going on to that dark chasm whose steep black walls and upstanding boulders lead one precariously into the caves with which we were familiar, he turned aside to another narrower gash in the tumbled rocks, and we stood on the brink wondering where he would take us. For, well as we knew the nooks and crannies thereabouts, we had never found ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... church, were ready to minister to the spiritual wants of the unfortunate moribund, but retired in disgust when they found that some forty fishmongers had been engaged to purvey 'cod's head and lobsters' for a person professing to be on the brink of the grave. ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... the organs of crime; and taste and manners will gain. Can we believe that the action of two old blind people, man and wife, as they sought one another in their aged days, and with tears of tenderness clasped one another's hands and exchanged caresses on the brink of the grave, so to say—that this would not demand the same talent, and would not interest me far more than the spectacle of the violent pleasures with which their senses in all the first freshness of youth were ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... on my winding way with all practicable speed, careful not to betray my presence. Every step brought me nearer to the Indians, and, as I crept along, I occasionally stole a glance over the brink of the gully; but as yet I could not see the foe. I continued on my way, not daring to step on a stick or a stone, lest the noise should reveal my presence, until I had reached my objective point. A cautious glance then assured me that I was abreast of the savages. ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic
... from her foot her shoe did draw, Albeit death-sorrowful, and, looping up The long silk of her girdle, made a cup Of the heel's hollow, and thus let it sink Until it touched the cool black water's brink; So filled th' embroidered shoe, and gave a draught To the spent beast, which whined, and fawned, and quaffed Her kind gift to the dregs; next licked her hand, With such glad looks that all might understand He held his life from her; then, at her feet He followed close, all down the ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... walked up. The road lay along the brink of a deep ravine, with the brook that made the waterfall tumbling along over the rocks at the ...
— Rollo in Scotland • Jacob Abbott
... freshening nectar of the crystal creek; At night or morn the pard, with stealthy tread, Crept softly out upon the boughs o'erhead; A wanderer from rocky realms remote, Here laved the mountain bear his shaggy coat; And birds, bright-mirrored on the sedgy brink Of darkling pools, here paused to ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... not the tyrants shall rule for ever, Or the priests of the bloody Faith: They stand on the brink of that mighty river Whose waves they have tainted with death, It is fed from the depths of a thousand dells, Around them it foams and rages and swells, And their swords and their scepters I floating see Like wrecks in the surge ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... I slept that night. I felt confused and feverish, as though I were on the brink of some discovery that would overwhelm and alarm me. I could not understand myself or Mr. Hamilton. His words presented an enigma. I felt troubled by them, and ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... know that a mutual confession, that is, taking it for granted Brandon loved her, as she felt almost sure he did, must be avoided at all hazards. It was not to be thought of between people so far apart as they. The brink was a delightful place, full of all the sweet ecstasies and thrilling joys of a seventh heaven, but over the brink—well! there should be no "over," for who was she? And who was he? Those two dreadfully stubborn facts could not be forgotten, and the gulf between them could not be spanned; she ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... gripping bridle and saddle for some time, having enough to do to keep her seat without trying to direct her bearer, and then she saw before her a sudden descent, steep but not very long, and at its bottom a great puddle of dirty water. The pony paused only an instant on the brink and then began the descent. The girl cried out with fear, but managed to keep her seat, and the impatient animal was soon ankle deep in the ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... anything, the Cirissin closed the door. "Batter blan," he announced. "Wheeze india buck terth. Cup girlish ear. Torch herf youdon brink high dragon bump." ...
— High Dragon Bump • Don Thompson
... gestures of delight, and, perhaps reading my thoughts by that intuition of mind so wonderful in the Martians, pushed me toward her gently and moved away from us toward the brink of the river. ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... growing along the edge of the water were shedding their leaves, which floated hither and thither on the surface of the pond. By and by, Kotei's attention was attracted to a spider on the brink of the water. The little insect was trying to get on to one of the floating leaves near by. It did so at last, and was soon floating over the water to the other ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... street, where he found a crowd of people assembled to contribute their assistance in extinguishing the flames. Several members of the college followed his example, and happily accomplished their escape. The chairman himself, being unwilling to use the same expedient, stood trembling on the brink of descent, dubious of his own agility, and dreading the consequence of such a leap, when a chair happening to pass, he laid hold on the opportunity, and by an exertion of his muscles, pitched upon the top of the carriage, which was immediately overturned in the kennel, to the grievous ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... a river, which its softened way did take in currents through the calmer water spread Around: the wild fowl nestled in the brake And sedges, brooding in their liquid bed: The woods sloped downward to its brink, and stood With their green faces fixed upon ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... straightway be Remembered in what a haughtier guise He had flung an alms to leprosie, When he girt his young life up in gilded mail And set forth in search of the Holy Grail. The heart within him was ashes and dust; He parted in twain his single crust, He broke the ice on the streamlet's brink, And gave the leper to eat and drink, 'Twas a mouldy crust of coarse brown bread, 'Twas water out of a wooden bowl,— Yet with fine wheaten bread was the leper fed, And 'twas red wine he drank with his ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... dying thief, so near that he could have touched Christ if he had been free. Here yawned before him the very brink of hell, here was judgment for his sins, for he acknowledged that he was justly punished. I can see him struggle to decide whether he shall speak or not, and at last he cries, "Lord, remember me." And Jesus said, ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... considering the youngsters she had under her charge, and straightway decided upon a point that she had debated for several days—a visit to her aunt in Normandy. In London it had been a mere thought, but the Channel had looked so tempting from its brink that the journey was virtually fixed as soon as she reached Knollsea, and found that a little pleasure steamer crossed to Cherbourg once a week during the summer, so that she would not have to enter the crowded routes ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... my glittering hearth With guiltlesse mirth, And giv'st me wassaile bowles to drink, Spiced to the brink: Lord, 'tis Thy plenty-dropping hand That soiles my land; And giv'st me for my bushell ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... ever abroad, and the messengers of Light are never welcome unto them. Such a nuisance was the noblest of the Greeks to his countrymen, that they could not wait for his peaceful departure, even though he was already on the brink of the grave; and the old man of seventy had to drink the poison to rid his fellow-citizens of the burden of his presence. Of the two noblest sons of Boston, which it has yet produced in all the two hundred and fifty years of its existence, one was dragged through its streets with a rope round ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... Guy, I know she does, and God knows I forgive you—I, who, above all others, have most reason to curse you for ever. Think not that she can hate upon the brink of the grave. Her mind wanders, and no wonder that the wrongs of earth press upon her memory, her reason being gone. She knows not herself of the mood which her features express. Look not upon her, Guy, I pray you, or let me ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... to a river, intending to pass the river by a bridge which he expected to find there, and then to destroy the bridge as soon as he had crossed it, so as to prevent his enemies from following him. By this means he hoped to make his way to some place of safety. He found, on arriving at the brink of the stream, that the bridge had been carried away by the inundation. He, however, pressed forward into the water on horseback, intending to ford the stream. The torrent was wild, and the danger was imminent, but Alexander ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Natchez is built upon a bluff some three hundred feet in elevation above the Mississippi River, and immediately upon its brink. It receives its name from a tribe of Indians once resident in the country; and who were much further advanced in civilization than their more warlike neighbors, the Choctaws and the Chickasaws. The country around is hilly and beautiful, fertile and salubrious. The population was ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... vague murmurs were heard in society against the absolutistic regime which had led Russia to the brink of utter ruin. From the southern part of the Empire, where opinion, since the days of Cossack and Ukraine independence, had always been the most advanced, threatening tales came up of a spirit of rebellion among ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... but the forerunners. Mountain lions of uncommon size and ferocity appeared. An old woman was struck down in the night and devoured, and in broad daylight a child standing at the brink of the river was killed and carried away. Then the grizzly bears or other bears, huge beyond any that they had ever seen before, appeared. A group came in the night and attacked the pony herd, slaying and partly devouring at least a dozen. ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... brink of the mountain he saw a dense column of smoke against the sky, and a break in the woods showed the little town—the few log houses, the "gyarden spots" about them, and in the centre of the Square a great mass of coals, a flame flickering here and there, ...
— 'way Down In Lonesome Cove - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... Upon the brink of that abyss of shame into which his father had just tumbled, he thought he could see, not the inevitable woman, that incentive of all human actions, but the entire legion of those bewitching courtesans who possess unknown crucibles wherein to swell fortunes, and who have secret filtres ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... forming part of a dinner-party of thirteen. Where am I going? To that 'Sea of Serenity' which astronomers tell us is located in the left eye of the face known in common parlance as the man in the moon. Where am I going? To Western Ross-shire, to pitch my tent and smoke my cigar in peace, on the brink of that blessed Loch Maree, ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... and on recognizing the man who was bending over her, she was seized with terror. Sobbing with shame, she drew the bed-cover over her bosom. It seemed as though she had grown older by ten years during her short agony, and on the brink of death had attained sufficient womanhood to understand that this man, above all others, must not lay hands on her. She wailed out again in piteous entreaty: ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... can't come to-day, Johnnie; you know he's tendin' Elmer's funeral." The boy must have opened his eyes, for the man said, "Why, Johnnie, I thought you knew; yes; they found him dead that night—right under the reb—under the enemies' guns on the brink of the hill." ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... ravine below, and was, of course, killed on the spot. The farmer, when he saw the lad's danger, ran to his assistance, but was only in time to hear him cry out in Gaelic before disappearing over the brink of the precipice. This was predicted by the mother a month before. ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... the crowds pressing towards the chief bathing places. When I arrived at Raj Ghat the confused sound of a great multitude fell on my ear, but no sooner did the eclipse begin than the thousands on the river's brink and crowded on the ghats, as with one voice raised a shout so loud and prolonged, that I should think it must have been heard for miles. I was on a high bank of the river, and could see distinctly the people below rushing into the stream. I could not but think of what must ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... Choosing out, therefore, three of the noblest citizens as a deputation, they sent them in a vessel of war, well manned and sumptuously adorned. Storm and calm at sea may both, they say, alike be dangerous; as they at this time experienced, being brought almost to the very brink of destruction, and, beyond all expectation, escaping. For near the isles of Solus the wind slacking, galleys of the Lipareans came upon them, taking them for pirates; and, when they held up their hands as suppliants, forbore indeed from violence, but took their ship ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... parliaments and the obstinacy of kings, was roused from its long and dangerous sleep by the unparalleled exertions of the Opposition leaders, and spoke out with a voice, always awfully intelligible, against the men and the measures that had brought England to the brink of ruin. The effect of this popular feeling soon showed itself in the upper regions. The country-gentlemen, those birds of political omen, whose migrations are so portentous of a change of weather, began to flock in numbers to the brightening quarter ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... and worst of all, in the time of Jesus Christ. At each of these three times the Jews were high religious professors, and yet at each of these three times they were abominable before God, and on the brink of ruin. In Isaiah's time their eyes seemed to have been opened at last to their own sins. Their fearful danger, and wonderful deliverance from the Assyrians of which you heard last Sunday, seem to have done that for them; as God ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... baby, do you think you can seize that bright river and carry it home? No, it is the bright river that is going to seize you, unless somebody stops your little feet before they get to the brink! ...
— The Twin Cousins • Sophie May
... uncle was, and the kind of company the Abbey gave shelter to. It was worse than you have imagined—a whirlpool of vice and debauchery. Such vice is expensive, and a long run of bad luck at play might easily bring a man to the verge of ruin. Your uncle came to the brink of the precipice, his appetite for vice and play still insatiated. Your fortune was in his keeping, ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... used in such a work, but remembered that God hath chosen the weak things of this world to confound the wise. But I was truly miserable, believing my character was altogether gone among my dearest, most valued friends. I was indeed brought to the brink of despair, as the vilest of sinners. A little light dawned at last, as I remembered how often I had told the Lord if He would only prepare me to be, and make me, instrumental in the great work of emancipation, I would be willing to ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... nation on the face of the earth. In every foreign region of the globe the title of American citizen is held in the highest respect, and when pronounced in a foreign land it causes the hearts of our countrymen to swell with honest pride. Surely when we reach the brink of the yawning abyss we shall recoil with horror from ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan
... OF ALARM.] On reaching the brink of a most frightful precipice, we were instructed to crawl down by means of some rude steps cut in the surface of a sloping buttress or inclined plane of rock, which appeared to extend to the bottom. The sight of this horrible den acted as a "pretty considerable" sedative to ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... continually impeded by rocks and precipices. Often they had been obliged to travel along the edges of frightful ravines, where a false step would have been fatal. In one of these passes, a horse fell from the brink of a precipice, and would have been dashed to pieces had he not lodged among the branches of a tree, from which he was extricated with great difficulty. These, however, were not the worst of their difficulties ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... now and then to bark at the heels of the lagging ones, and, with the assistance of a bench and an acacia, we were rapidly arranged, the short ones standing up, the tall ones sitting down, everyone assuming his most pleasing expression, and the Misses Bingham standing alone, apart, on the brink, looking on under an umbrella that seemed to protect them from intimate association with the democracy in any form. We saw the guide approach them in gingerly inquiry, but, before simultaneous waves of their two black fans, he retired ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... the brink of eternity from which nothing can vanish—no hope, no happiness, no vision of a face ...
— Gitanjali • Rabindranath Tagore
... well as hungry, he pushed through the bushes,—not noiselessly, as a wild bear moves, but with crashing and tramplings, as if there were no need of secrecy in the wilds,—and lurched down to the gravelly brink. Here, as luck would have it, he found a big, dead sucker lying half-awash, which made him a meal. Then, when sharp streaks of orange along the eastern horizon were beginning to shed a mystic colour over the lake, he drew ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... past, 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 ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... England in the act of curing their own ills, of making good, by gigantic and self-sacrificing exertion in the present, the folly and selfishness and greed and soft slackness of the past. The fact that England, when on the brink of destruction, gathered her strength and strode resolutely back to safety, is a fact of happy omen for us in America, who are now just awaking to the folly and selfishness and greed and soft slackness that for some years we have ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... these, yet having an attraction of their own which many miss, are the Botanical Gardens hard by Magdalen Bridge. Their situation on the brink of the River Cherwell, and almost under the shadow of Magdalen Tower, is what probably appeals most strongly to the ordinary observer, while those who merely pass the gardens by will delight in the gateway, the work of Inigo Jones, with ...
— Oxford • Frederick Douglas How
... drove on alone to fetch her from her own house, not a quarter of a mile distant. It was pleasant to her to be led to the hymeneal altar by a belted earl, and pleasant to have his daughter as a volunteered bridesmaid. Mrs. Kirkpatrick in this flush of small gratifications, and on the brink of matrimony with a man whom she liked, and who would be bound to support her without any exertion of her own, looked beamingly happy and handsome. A little cloud came over her face at the sight of Mr. Preston,—the sweet perpetuity of her ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... to others. Presently he saw the son of Tydeus, noble Diomed, standing by his chariot and horses, with Sthenelus the son of Capaneus beside him; whereon he began to upbraid him. "Son of Tydeus," he said, "why stand you cowering here upon the brink of battle? Tydeus did not shrink thus, but was ever ahead of his men when leading them on against the foe— so, at least, say they that saw him in battle, for I never set eyes upon him myself. They say that there was no ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... us!" cried Imogene, rushing down to the brink. "I don't want to throw stones into it, but to get near it—to get near to any bit of nature. They do pen you up so from it in Europe!" She stood and watched Colville skim stones over the current. "When you stand by the shore of a swift river like this, ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... and a half from this place there is a view exceedingly well worth visiting. Following down a little valley and its tiny rill of water, an immense gulf unexpectedly opens through the trees which border the pathway, at the depth of perhaps 1500 feet. Walking on a few yards, one stands on the brink of a vast precipice, and below one sees a grand bay or gulf, for I know not what other name to give it, thickly covered with forest. The point of view is situated as if at the head of a bay, the line of cliff diverging on each side, and showing headland behind headland, as on a bold ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... atrophy or consumption; his complexion grew pale and livid, and his strength and flesh visibly wasted; and what was yet worse, the vigour of his mind decayed, in proportion with that of his external frame, insomuch that, falling into a deep melancholy, he considered himself as on the brink of the grave, and expected nothing but ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... faith that will not shrink Though pressed by every foe, That will not tremble on the brink Of any ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... I had gnawed my chain, Till I sharpened the stubborn link; But when I had pierced the swollen vein, And was writhing in death's last dreadful pain, While just on eternity's brink: ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... hackberry, the oaks, the linden, the locusts on the hill and the solitary old honey-locust down by the river's brink are as yet unresponsive to the smiles of spring. The plum, the crab apple, the hawthorn and the wild cherry are but just beginning to push green points between their bud scales. But the elms are a glory of dull gold; every twig is fringed with ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... his eye should sink, O'ercome of beauty, With heart impatience brimming to the brink Of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... times to gaze on the leaping surges and awful billows that raged in fury two hundred feet beneath them, or to listen, awe-struck, to the ceaseless thunder of falling waters, with which earth and air quivered. Now, within three miles of the cataract, they paused again on the brink of a lateral rent in the sheer wall of rock, so deep and black as to have won for itself the name of Devil's Hole. The road winding around the brink of this abyss was skirted on its further side by a steep and densely wooded slope. ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... for old Bromo, that giant volcano of Java. We had started at midnight and it would take us until daylight to reach the crater-brink of this majestic ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... were bewildered, for, on the brink of the ravine, one of them had caught sight of several Texan soldiers in the distance. If they fired on Dan, they would betray themselves, and, if they did not, ...
— For the Liberty of Texas • Edward Stratemeyer
... her, but however she did it, and some wonderful things happened in consequence. The tree was very old, and the trunk was quite hollow; but that Wishie did not know; so when she had clambered up to the top she suddenly found herself on the brink of a frightful abyss—there seemed a hollow deep down to the very roots of the tree. She peeped cautiously down to see what she could see, but somehow or other, whether she overbalanced herself, ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin |
