"Precipice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... only to you I can tell everything; because I must, because I need you, because to-morrow I shall fly from the clouds, because to-morrow life is ending and beginning. Have you ever felt, have you ever dreamt of falling down a precipice into a pit? That's just how I'm falling, but not in a dream. And I'm not afraid, and don't you be afraid. At least, I am afraid, but I enjoy it. It's not enjoyment though, but ecstasy. Damn it all, whatever it is! A strong spirit, a weak spirit, a womanish spirit—whatever it is! Let us praise ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... perils are understood; and no employer is so reckless as to urge him. The true variety of O. Hallii stands in much the same case. To obtain it the explorer must march in the bed of a torrent and on the face of a precipice alternately for an uncertain period of time, with a river to cross about every day. And he has to bring back his loaded mules, or Indians, over the same pathless waste. The Roraima Mountain begins to be regarded as quite easy travel for the orchid-hunter ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... perhaps take his glass of beer, or even something worse, with relative safety. But, as stupidly as stampeded animals pushing each other over a precipice, each insists on buying poison in his turn. And every one spends his money to make every other one, if possible, a hard-drinking and a wasted ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... quickly sucked under a low arch, where, if I had not fallen flat in my boat, having barely light enough to see my danger, I had undoubtedly been crushed to pieces or driven overboard. I could perceive the boat to fall with incredible violence, as I thought, down a precipice, and suddenly whirled round and round with me, the water roaring on all sides, and dashing against the rock ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... dazed, dreamy fashion, that this was the hunchback's declaration of love. The hurdy-gurdy tune and the unsung words had acted like a spell. For a space of seconds she gazed with a fixed look at Jonah, waiting for him to move or speak. She seemed to be slipping down a precipice without the power or desire to resist. Then, like a fit of giddiness, the sensation passed. She stumbled to her feet and ran wildly down the rocky path to the wharf where the ferry-boat, glittering with ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... it, as Gottlieb did, leaning on his staff of Church- truth, reading diligently in his book, and trimming ever and anon his lamp, such a light fell upon the narrow path, and the darkness so veiled the precipice, that the pilgrim did not know that there was any thing to fear. But not so when you stopped to look—then it became terrible indeed; you soon lost all sight of the path before you; for the brightest lamp only lighted the road just by your feet, and that seemed rising almost to an ...
— The Rocky Island - and Other Similitudes • Samuel Wilberforce
... loss of blood and the violence of the contest, showed signs of faltering. His adversary pursued his advantage; pressed on him, and as his strength relaxed, dashed him headlong from the precipice. He looked after him and saw him lying motionless among ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... end of the shaft on the moor beneath, while all the rest lay in shadow. I rubbed my eyes, and got out my glasses. Then I guessed the explanation. There was a rock tower close against the face of the main precipice and indistinguishable from it to anyone looking direct at the face. Only when the sun fell on it obliquely could it be discovered. And between the tower and the cliff there must be ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... curtains proclaimed the cheap middle-class lodging or boarding house of the humblest grade. Respectable undoubtedly; for the fitfully prosperous offenders against laws and morals insist upon better accommodations. Susan's heart sank. She saw that once more she was clinging at the edge of the precipice. And what hope was there that she would get back to firm ground? Certainly not by "honest labor." Back to the tenement! "Yes, I'm on the way back," she said to herself. However, she pulled the loose bell-knob and was admitted to a dingy, dusty hallway ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... to the edge of a precipice. The embryo plain leaped violently down a sheer three hundred feet directly into the lap of a foaming river ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... others, is going to be put to death! Whatever good I have done hath been to me a continual source of calamity and affliction; and I have only been raised to the height of grandeur, to be tumbled down the most horrid precipice of misfortune." Filled with these gloomy reflections, his eyes overspread with the veil of grief, his countenance covered with the paleness of death, and his soul plunged in an abyss of the blackest despair, he ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... four stood on the brink of a precipice, looking abroad upon one of nature's most singular caprices. Conceive if you can a segment of the table-land, in shape like a broad-bilged man o' war, sunk to a depth of, mayhap, six or seven hundred feet below the general level of the plateau. Give this ship-shaped chasm a longer dimension ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... last summer, when we were up in Argyleshire, how your cousin, Roy Callendar, walked, with ne'er the wink o' an eyelash, on a mantel-shelf hanging over a three-hundred-feet precipice? Roy had the trained eyesight and the steady nerve which made it lawfu' for him; for you or me it had been suicide—naething less sinfu'. Three or four glasses o' whiskey are safer for some men than twa for you. I hae been ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... are used to the monologues are better pleased to find the old ideas than new ones, which they could not understand so readily. When the later Browning takes us on one of those long afternoon rambles through his mind,—over moor and fen, through jungle, down precipice, past cataract,—we know just where we are coming out in the end. We know the place better than he did himself. Nor will posterity like Browning's manners,—the dig in the ribs, the personal application, and de te fabula of most of his talking. These unpleasant things are part of ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... steep, breakneck path leads directly to Toroczko, but is very seldom used. On the farther side of the gorge may be seen a cave in the rocks, popularly known as Csegez Cave. A rude stone rampart guards its mouth, and, as only a very narrow path along the brink of the precipice leads to this cavern, it could be easily held against ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... cement floor below. The mattress, though irregularly dented and bulged, was upon the whole convex, and not over two feet wide. A vertical fence or bastion, six or eight inches high, along the outer brink of this precipice would have averted the danger of rolling off in the night; but nothing of the sort had been provided. One must remember not to roll, even in the nightmare. Convicts educate the subliminal self to a surprising degree, and do not fall victims to this trap as often as one would expect; but occasionally ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... until they could no longer hear their own voices. Directly above the rapids the trail was narrow, scarcely eight feet in width, shut in on the land side by a mountain wall, on the other by the precipice. Philip looked behind, and saw Jeanne hugging close to the wall. Her face was white, her eyes shone with terror and awe. He spoke to her, but she saw only the movement of his lips. Then he put down his pack and went close to the edge ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood
... have to thank,—you, good, generous, noble Madeleine, I am sure it is!" said he, excitedly. "It is your hand which has saved me and my son from the precipice over which we were suspended! I could ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... sensible; but not render it sensible as a distance. Hence perhaps is explained, and not out of any self- oblivion from higher enthusiasm, a fact that often has occurred, of deer, or hares, or foxes, and the pack of hounds in pursuit, chaser and chased, all going headlong over a precipice together. Depth or height does not readily manifest itself to them; so that any strong motive is sufficient to overpower the sense of it. Man only has a natural function for expanding on an illimitable sensorium, the illimitable growths of space. Man, coming to the precipice, reads his danger; ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... one of the large stones which lie scattered near the base of the rock, with sea-weed growing amongst them. Above our heads the rock was perpendicular for a considerable height, nay, as it seemed, to the very top, and on the brink of the precipice a few sheep, two of them rams with twisted horns, stood, as if on the look-out over the wide country. At the same time we saw a sentinel in his red coat, walking backwards and forwards between us and ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... Wolfe landed, and saw the difficulty of ascending the precipice, he said to the same officer in a familiar strain, "I don't believe there is any possibility of getting up; but you must do your endeavour." The narrow path that slanted up the hill from the landing place the enemy had broken up, and rendered impassible by cross ditches, besides the intrenchment ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... it as a warning from Heaven, that Chevalier Menars had been led across his path to save him just as he was approaching the brink of the precipice; he vowed that he would withstand all the seductions ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... in behind a precipice that extends some miles like a wall, and exhibits no break to the ignorant stranger. It has a break in the middle, but it makes so little show that even Captain Cook sailed by it without seeing it. Near by that break is a false ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... full of boats and blazing with coloured fires and lights, Clive's historic home on the opposite side and, above and over all, the vast pyramidical pile, the Rock of Trichinoply, with its Temple of Ganesa crowning the famous precipice and ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... was a ruinous Romanesque chapel upon a rock, the polygonal apse being on the very edge of a precipice. At each exterior angle of the imperfect polygon was a column with a cubiform capital. The interior was all dilapidated; the floor of the sanctuary had fallen in, but the altar-stone—a block of granite—remained in its place. This chapel belonged to a ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... declaration of his sentiments,—and that the call would be one which all his wit would not enable him to answer with any comfort. It was very well jesting about milestones, but every jest brought him nearer to the precipice. He perceived that however ludicrous might be the image which his words produced, she was clever enough in some way to turn that image to her own purpose. He had called a woman a finger-post, and forthwith she had offered to come to him and be a finger-post to him for life! ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... very, very important. Especially going down hill. Did you ever, my dears, descend that precipice at the end of the Fillmore street line? What is it that keeps you from landing flat on your nose on Union street? Nothing but white magic. What is it that keeps you from shooting from the Fairmont, straight down into the ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... the perpendicular side of a mountain by some immense rocks, which had been thrown together in such a position as, when viewed at a proper distance, precisely to resemble the features of the human countenance. It seemed as if an enormous giant, or a Titan, had sculptured his own likeness on the precipice. There was the broad arch of the forehead, a hundred feet in height; the nose, with its long bridge; and the vast lips, which, if they could have spoken, would have rolled their thunder accents from one end of the valley to the other. True it is, that if the spectator approached too ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... estranged from his race, but now feeling himself man again, by virtue of the irrepressible instinct that possessed him. Had Clifford attained the balcony, he would probably have leaped into the street; but whether impelled by the species of terror that sometimes urges its victim over the very precipice which he shrinks from, or by a natural magnetism, tending towards the great centre of humanity, it were not easy to decide. Both impulses might have wrought on ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... else? Think what it means to me—your life. Think what will become of me if you should be killed in trying to open that hill—if you should fall over a precipice as Morris Blood has fallen and lies now probably dead. Don't go. Don't go, this time. You have promised me you would leave the mountains, haven't you? Don't risk all, dearest, all I have on earth, in an attempt that may utterly fail and add one more precious life to the lives now sacrificed. You ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... the topic: never play at counter-strokes with him. He will be certain to out-stroke you, and you will be driven further than you meant to go. They say we beat men at that game; and so we do, at the cost of beating ourselves. And if once we are started, it is a race-course ending on a precipice—over goes the winner. We must be moderately slavish to keep our place; which is given us in appearance; but appearances make up a remarkably large part of life, and far the most comfortable, so long as we are discreet at the right moment. He is a man whose pride, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... without one fleck of foam to mar it. He was just scanning for an instant that calm depth, and saying that there was after all the majesty of Niagara—there, where the great green flood approaches the awful precipice, impelled by a resistless force from above, but unruffled and untroubled by the approaching fate—bends gracefully and proudly at the verge, as some dusky Antoinette might do her proud neck when the axe of the executioner was impending—then, still without ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... for defence that could be found in the ancient world. It was built on an isolated cube of rock that towered above the vast cultivated tracts of the surrounding plain. At its eastern extremity the precipice made a sheer drop of six hundred feet, and was perhaps quite inaccessible on this side, although it threw out spurs, whether natural or of artificial construction, which formed a difficult and easily defensible communication with the lower land around. Its natural bastions were completed by ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... start, which discomposes 5 The drowsy waters lingering in your eye? And are you really able to descry That precipice ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... was confined between high and cragged rocks, one of which impended above the spot where the canoe rested. As these, again, were surmounted by tall trees, which appeared to totter on the brows of the precipice, it gave the stream the appearance of running through a deep and narrow dell. All beneath the fantastic limbs and ragged tree tops, which were, here and there, dimly painted against the starry zenith, lay alike in shadowed obscurity. Behind them, the ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... With this idea, without saying a word of her intentions, each of them rose early the next morning and ascended the mountains, and having reached the top, called upon Zephyr to receive her and bear her to his lord; then leaping up, and not being sustained by Zephyr, fell down the precipice and was dashed ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... a period of from six months to a year that I was terribly haunted by a feeling as if hung over a precipice. I was hanging only by a rope above my head held by a hand out of a cloud. At night or in the day, it was the same uneasy dread of falling. The precipice below was black and horrible. There were banks on each side. ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... all about us who are drifting into a hopeless eternity. The Church needs a vision like that of the little lad in Olive Schreiner's "Story of a South African Farm," who, waking at midnight, sees multitudes drifting over the precipice into eternal night, and throws himself on his face on the floor, crying out in the agony of his burdened heart to ...
— The Art of Soul-Winning • J.W. Mahood
... rich man plays the poulterer for himself, and statesmen seek the strenuous life in the slaughter of a scarcely edible rhinoceros. Let the conscripts of comfort take heart. They will run more risks in the galleries of the mines than on the mountain precipice, and one night's trawl upon the Dogger Bank would provide more weight of fish than if they whipped the ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... I shall not readily forget with what emotion he once told me an incident of their associated travels. On one of the mountain ledges of Madeira, Fleeming's pony bolted between Sir William. and the precipice above; by strange good fortune and thanks to the steadiness of Sir William's horse, no harm was done; but for the moment, Fleeming saw his friend hurled into the sea, and almost by his own act: it was ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the shore below, on looking upwards, the view appeared fearfully grand. In one part was a powerful steam-engine, which had to be lowered almost 200 feet down the cliffs. Here tall chimneys, pouring out dense volumes of smoke, were seen perched on the ledges of a tremendous precipice. Here and there also were the huts of the miners, disputing the ground with the wild sea-birds, while ladders of great length scaled the rocks in all directions, enabling them to ascend and descend to their work. In some parts were paths up which sure-footed mules, with ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston
... we gave up hope of reaching Verde that day. At four o'clock we crossed the "divide," and clattered down a road so near the edge of a precipice that I was frightened beyond everything: my senses nearly left me. Down and around, this way and that, near the edge, then back again, swaying, swerving, pitching, the gravel clattering over the precipice, the six mules trotting their fastest, we reached the bottom ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... still with its oily eddies and delicate wreaths of foam, just below the Falls they have in late years woven a web of wire high in air, and hung a bridge from precipice to precipice. Of all the bridges made with hands it seems the lightest, most ethereal; it is ideally graceful, and droops from its slight towers like a garland. It is worthy to command, as it does, the whole grandeur ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... same reason that a prudent mother would prefer to see a wayward daughter do a bad thing than a worse thing. What parent would not prefer to see a child sick than dead? There is some hope for the life of a man hanging over a precipice and clinging even to a handful of grass, but there is no hope when his brains are dashed out ...
— Vocations Explained - Matrimony, Virginity, The Religious State and The Priesthood • Anonymous
... Chinese pilgrims annually went their weary way to the top of Mount Omi in the province of Ssuch'uan, and gaze downward from a sheer and lofty precipice to view a huge circular belt of light, which is called the Glory of Buddha. Some see it, some do not; the Chinese say that the whole thing is a question of faith. In a somewhat similar sense, the dramatic enthusiast sees before ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... with reference to these all-important truths—the apostasy of man on the one hand, the love of God on the other. Of my duties to men as a social being, can any be so important as to tell them of the danger under which I believe them to lie, of the precipice to which I fear many are approaching, while thousands have already fallen headlong, and others again, even while I write, are continuing to fall in a succession of appalling rapidity? Of my duties to God as a rational and responsible being, especially as a being for whom ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... think you would prefer, the discipline of the goddess Fashion, or that of the good old mistress, which you may have wished to leave? The one kindly points out to you, and invites and warns you to avoid, every dangerous precipice, that may be before you. The other is not satisfied, but with your destruction. She will force you, for a single word, uttered in a thoughtless moment, to run the hazard of your life, or to lose what she calls your character. ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... sixty feet, upon the jagged rocks beneath. But not alone! Still retaining his fierce clutch upon the Italian's throat, the murderer, too, fell with him, and both were stretched in an instant, mangled and lifeless, at the bottom of the precipice. ...
— Facing the World • Horatio Alger
... and from her face I saw that she gave way in mortal dread. I sat her in the sledge, pale and trembling, put my arm round her and with her cast myself down the precipice. ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... determined to make one last effort above the town. He embarked his forces at one in the morning, and passed the French sentinels in silence that were posted along the shore. The current carried them beyond the destined spot. They found themselves at the foot of a precipice, esteemed so impracticable, that only a slight guard of one hundred and fifty men defended it. Had there been a path, the night was too dark to discover it. The troops, whom nothing could discourage, for these ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 272, Saturday, September 8, 1827 • Various
... where a Bouillabaisse lunch can be had. In the creek below are small boats for hire. Beaulieu is really a beautiful place. It is situated in one of the most sheltered nooks of the Riviera, at the foot of gigantic cliffs with patches of strata of reddish sandstone. The edges of this grand precipice are fringed with trees, which in the bright atmosphere look almost as if they were transparent; while below, groves of stately olive trees cover the base and struggle as far up as they can by the fissures in the rocks. ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... half-way up toward the top, we arrived at the entrance of a cave, into which we descended through a hole. It is fifty or sixty feet long, and the far end is supported on a colonnade of stalactites, and opens on a sheer precipice of 100 or 150 feet. Hence the spectator can overlook the distant scene; the forest lies at his feet, and only a few trees growing from the rock reach nearly to the level of the grotto. The effect is striking and panoramic; ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... itself, expands, and enjoys. The first bars break the seals and open the caverns of the great deep. The struggle begins. It is long. Life is born, and disports itself gay and careless as the butterfly which flutters above a precipice. Then it expands the realm of its conquests, and chants its successes. It founds a kingdom, it constructs a system of nature. But the typhon rises from the yawning gulf, and the Titans beat upon the gates of the new empire. A battle of giants begins. You hear the tumultuous ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... important item in her situation? His sincerity was unassailable, but—suppose, in fact, he had to judge the conduct of another man thus placed? Upon the heated pulsing of his blood succeeded a coolness, almost a chill; he felt as though he had been on the verge of a precipice, and had been warned to draw back only just in time. Every second showed him more distinctly what his duty was. He experienced a sensation of thankfulness that he had not spoken definitely on Saturday evening. His instinct had guided him aright; Jane was still too young ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... night. Cold and weather mattered little to him, still less did danger. But Fisher minor mattered very much. For Percy or any of the rest he might probably have stayed where he was; but for the one boy in Fellsgarth he oared about he would cheerfully go over a precipice. ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... appearing little by little above the retreating tide. The second level was separated by a perpendicular granite cliff, terminated at the top by an unequal edge at a height of at least 300 feet. It continued thus for a length of three miles, ending suddenly on the right with a precipice which looked as if cut by the hand of man. On the left, above the promontory, this irregular and jagged cliff descended by a long slope of conglomerated rocks till it mingled with the ground of the southern point. On the upper plateau of the coast not a tree appeared. ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... He it was who told me of his discovery of a seam of anthracite coal in the bed of a river near the Tanga railway. On picket he had wandered to the edge of the ravine and fallen over. Struggling for life to save himself by the shrubs and growing plants on the face of this precipice, he eventually found his way to the bottom of the ravine, on the top of a small avalanche of earth. Judge, then, of his astonishment when, looking up, he saw that his fall had exposed a fine seam of coal. This discovery ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... worked hard. They lost no opportunity of writing a note, or sending a Christmas card, or an economical funeral wreath. By daily toil and the amicable ignoring of casualness of manner or slights, they managed to cling to the edge of the precipice of social oblivion, into whose depths a lesser degree of assiduity, or a greater sensitiveness, would have plunged them. Once—early in Milly's career, when her ever-ready chatter and her superficial brightness were a novelty, it ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... trusts no one and fears everyone. Suspicion, fear, hatred, danger, desperation and passion are present in a more tense form in his life than in that of the average individual. He is restless, ill-humored, easily roused and suspicious. He lives on the brink of a deep precipice. This helps to explain his passionate hatred, his brutality, his fear, and gives poignant significance to the adage that dead men tell no tales. He holds on to his few friends with a strength and passion rare among people who live a more normal existence. His friends stand between him and discovery. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... The crosses of the past week, of the day before, of two days before, extended in a line down the slope; they glided along, plunged suddenly downward, and seemed to be taking long strides as if they were in danger of being carried over a precipice. ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... Dudley, that we could blame THEE for the folly of thy retainer—thee, whose thoughts we know to be far otherwise employed. He that would climb the eagle's nest, my lord, cares not who are catching linnets at the foot of the precipice." ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... between being dangerous and being dull. Society loves to feel itself upon the edge of a precipice, I assure you. To be harmless is the most deadly enemy to social salvation. Strict respectability would even handicap a rich American nowadays, and rich Americans are terribly respectable by nature. That is why they are always so anxious to get into the ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... constant peril from temptation. Not of the avowedly non-Christian only is this true, but of all. Yonder man, known for his respectability, his regular attendance at the sanctuary, falters, perhaps, this very day on the crumbling edge of a moral precipice. Ever and anon some one is missed from the means of grace. Where is he? Hush! Tell it softly and with tears. He has fallen who but recently bade so fairly to carry his cross to the summit of the hill. Can ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... upon his head. Other people look well to their ground, choose their position, and watch whether they are likely to be surprised there; but he, as if in the ostentation of his heart, builds upon a precipice, and encamps upon a mine, from choice. He seems to have no one actuating principle, but a steady, persevering resolution not to speak the truth or to tell ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... is lawful for anyone to restrain a man for a time from doing some unlawful deed there and then: as when a man prevents another from throwing himself over a precipice, or from striking another. But to him alone who has the right of disposing in general of the actions and of the life of another does it belong primarily to imprison or fetter, because by so doing he hinders him from doing not only evil ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... a little breathless laugh. They had reached the summit of the great headland, and it looked for the moment as if the car must leap over a sheer precipice into the clear green water far below. But even as she spoke, there came a check and a pause, and then they were standing still on a smooth stretch of grass not twenty ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... dislike of him rudely. He at once shrank into himself, and as soon as possible made some pretext to leave. Of course I went with him. I was more than sorry for him, but I felt as unable to help him as I should have been unable to hold him back if he had determined to throw himself down a precipice. ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... enter but must be within reach of their guns. It likewise defends half of the peninsula; for no guns from the other side of the harbour can touch it, and no ship carrying guns dare enter for the breastwork at the point. The other side of the peninsula is either a precipice, or defended against ships by shoals and breaches, so that there remains only the narrow neck that is naturally fortified; and if thirty leagues of a wilderness will not do that, it may be artificially fortified in twenty ways. In short, it may be made impregnable; ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 180, April 9, 1853 • Various
... into the river, after we had clambered up its sides like squirrels, he led the way across its spiky surfaced summit, and soon we were leaning forward over our horses' necks in danger of taking somersaults into space, as we peered over the sides of a precipice at the river away down beneath us. "Nothing like variety," Dan chuckled; and a few minutes later again we were leaning well back in our saddles as the horses picked their way down the far side of the ridge, old Roper letting himself down in his most approved style; dropping ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... a precipice sheered up eight hundred feet, a hard green crown of stunted spruces on its retreating brow, above the crown a stretch of soft green meadow steeply barred with greener willows, above the meadow jagged spires of blackened lava, thrust up from drifts of shining snow: a triple tiara crowning this ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... instances that might be mentioned are without number. When one loses its sight in a flock of sheep, it is rarely abandoned to itself in that hapless and helpless state. Some one always attaches itself to it, and by bleating calls it back from the precipice, the lake, the pool, and all dangers whatever. There is a disease among sheep, called by shepherds the Breakshugh, a deadly sort of dysentery, which is as infectious as fire, in a flock. Whenever a sheep feels ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... has been advanced to account for those barrier-reefs, which encircle islands of moderate dimensions. The great reef which fronts the coast of Australia has been supposed, but without any special facts, to rest on the edge of a submarine precipice, extending parallel to the shore. The origin of the third class or of fringing-reefs presents, I believe, scarcely any difficulty, and is simply consequent on the polypifers not growing up from great depths, and their not flourishing close to gently shelving ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... prairie for approaching Indians or returning comrades. At the second and third points were blockhouses—buildings of stone, each giving a view of the river below it. At the first point there was also a tower—a wooden lookout platform at the very edge of the precipice from which was visible the landscape surrounding ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen
... resolved to see this piece of service, and therefore joined myself to the volunteers. We were armed with partisans, and each man two pistols at our belt. It was a piece of service that seemed perfectly desperate, the advantage of the hill, the precipice we were to mount, the height of the bastion, the resolute courage and number of the garrison, who from a complete covert made a terrible fire upon us, all joined to make the action hopeless. But the fury of the Scots musketeers was not to be abated ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... from No-foo-gong and a rocky precipice towers up on the west shore, something like a thousand feet high. The crackling of fire-crackers innumerable and the report of larger and noisier explosions attract my attention as we gradually crawl up toward it; and coming nearer, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... soldier were fighting hand to hand with a dozen pirates who were forcing their way up the edge of the cliff. Half of the men dashed to their relief just in time to see the soldier go over the precipice locked in the arms of a giant Illanum. One volley from our muskets settled ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... of title who in his day was the best swordsman in Europe. He loved a scornful lady with great devotion. I read a hundred pages with dwindling attention and at last found that I had failed to be excited by the story of a prolonged duel fought on the brink of a precipice under the shadow of an ancient castle from the battlements of which the scornful lady was looking down. I was vexed with myself, for I ought to have enjoyed the scene. I turned back and read the ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... reply to any one, Ben rode away, wishing he could leap a yawning gulf, scale a precipice, or ford a raging torrent, to prove his devotion to Miss Celia, and his skill in horsemanship. But no dangers beset his path, and he found the doctor pausing to water his tired horse at the very trough ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... the edge of the precipice. He escaped by saying, 'Her Christian name was asked the other day, and I mentioned it. She is addressed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... full of wrinkles as a pat of butter. If ever a king could be justified in forgetting anybody, this king was justified in forgetting his sister, even at a christening. She looked very odd, too. Her forehead was as large as all the rest of her face, and projected over it like a precipice. When she was angry her little eyes flashed blue. When she hated anybody, they shone yellow and green. What they looked like when she loved anybody, I do not know; for I never heard of her loving anybody but herself, and ...
— The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories • George MacDonald
... a duty, Mr. Goldencalf," he said, "to admonish you of the precipice over which you hang. The love of money, which is the root of all evil, which caused Judas to betray even his Saviour and God, has taken deep root in your soul. You are no longer young, and although still proud in your strength and prosperity, are much nearer to your great account than you may be ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... dissolution." "I think," said his mother, ... "that you could wish better." "Yes," adjoined Arnaud, "for that wish should be that I ever had remained unborn."' He polishes the broken blade of a sword, and views himself therein; the sight so horrifies him that he determines to throw himself over a precipice, but draws back at the last moment. He goes to a cavern, and conjures up the prince of hell. "Arnaud knew himself to be interrogated. What he required.... What was that answer the effects explain.... There passed in liveliest portraiture the various ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... passed the waterfall D'Orli, and a few miles beyond we paused to admire the cataract of Arpenas. Its height is estimated at eight hundred feet. The water rushes with considerable volume over a tremendous precipice of dark and fantastic rocks. At first it divides into separate streams that in their fall resemble descending rockets, till at length, caught by the rocks beneath, they meet and mingle in one ...
— Scenes in Switzerland • American Tract Society
... childless, rather bitter, very clear-eyed, blighted youth. I have, in fact, lost the path that makes it easy and natural for you to descend the hill. I am going at it straight. And where I have to go down it is a precipice. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... visited Zermatt. There had been much rain, the rivers were greatly flooded, and much mischief was done to the roads. During the journey from Visp to Zermatt, near St Nicholas, in a steep part of the gorge, a large stone rolled from the cliffs and knocked their baggage horse over the lower precipice, a fall of several hundred feet. The packages were all burst, and many things were lost, but a good deal was recovered ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... trail rising gently with the land. Then it turned to the left and went up and over a rocky hill, and then it turned to the right again, and just about sunset it looked for all the world as if it were running right into the side of a great precipice of the mountain range. The light of the sinking sun fell clearly and brightly upon the grand masses of quartz and granite rocks, and showed him the very point where the pathway seemed to end. It looked so, but Two Arrows knew ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... to obstruct our further ascent were two high and perpendicular rocky cliffs; but I had observed before ascending those crevices and intervals between rocks where we might most easily effect an ascent; and through these we accordingly penetrated without much difficulty. The upper precipice consisted of cliffs about 140 feet in perpendicular height. Fortunately the ablest of the men with me was a house carpenter and, being accustomed to climb roofs, he managed to get up and ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... actions: if such an one, whom I have described, were at the helm; if he had risen by his merits, and were chosen out in the necessity and pressures of affairs, to remedy our confusions by the seasonableness of his advice, and to put a stop to our ruin, when we were just rolling downward to the precipice; I should then congratulate the age in which I live, for the common safety; I should not despair of the republic, though Hannibal were at the gates; I should send up my vows for the success of such an action, as Virgil did, on the like occasion, for his patron, when he was raising up his ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... I felt very thankful for our escape. On examining the spot more narrowly, we found that it lay close to the foot of a very rugged precipice, from which stones of various sizes were always tumbling at intervals. Indeed, the numerous fragments lying scattered all round might have suggested the cause of the sound had we not been too suddenly alarmed to ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... applauded. Silius was intoxicated with the emotions that the giddy elevation to which he had arrived so naturally inspired. He was not, however, wholly at his ease. He could not but be aware that lofty as his position was, it was the brink of a precipice that he stood upon. Still he shut his eyes in a great measure to his danger and went blindly on. The catastrophe, which came very suddenly at last, will form the subject of the ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... into darkness. I got down on my hands and knees and peered over the edge of a ridge of rock. I could see a tiny beam of light away down, and this beam grew and grew as it slowly moved up and up till it became a great triangular ray. It swept slowly along the top of what I now saw was a steep precipice sloping sheer down into blackness below. One step further and I should have gone hurtling into the sea. For, although I did not then know it, this was the topmost ridge of ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... northward, over a waste, though fertile plain. The mountains on our right made a grand appearance, with their feet mantled in myrtle, and their tops plumed with pine. They rise from the sea with a long, bold sweep, but each peak falls off in a precipice on the opposite side, as if the chain were the barrier of the world and there was nothing but space beyond. In the afternoon we left the plain for a belt of glorious garden land, made by streams that came down from the mountains. We entered a lane embowered in pomegranate, white rose, clematis, ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... distressed, while the men brought what remained of Sandy-haired Jim, and deposited it carefully on a wooden bench in the hall. There was little to be told. The men had found him at the foot of a precipice where he had fallen. Beside him was a heavy nugget of pure gold, which he was evidently carrying when he fell. He had not died immediately, for in his breast-pocket was found the bond, with ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... foxes and eagles; a man who never had been missed or inquired after. Remains of pencils and leather shoe strings among the bones proved that the man had been a pedlar, like James Stewart's messenger, who had fallen over the precipice in trying to cross from Coalisnacoan to the road through Glencoe. But he never was missed, nor is the date of his ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... hill which had once led up to Parson's barn, but now ended quite abruptly in a little precipice with a broad railing on its edge and a summer-house a little back, one could sit and look out over the stretch of bright green lawns, between two clumps of hemlocks, and over a hedge which concealed the ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... wait till the day, O good shepherd, I pray; For I shudder to go in the dark On the mountain so high And its precipice nigh 'Mong the wolves with their ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... prudent, and to speak low. It was therefore in a whisper, and such a low whisper that not even a vague murmur reached the little parlor, that the man uttered a few words. They were such that the baroness started back as if she had seen a precipice yawning at her feet; and by this action it was easy to understand ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... upon the journey of the morning, nor describe the beautiful fall of the river that they visited, or tell how it fell rushing over the precipice, or how the rocks dashed it into diamond sparkles, or how rainbows bannered the conflict of the waters, and boughs waved over the struggling stream like plumes. It was a sweet and pleasant sight, and full of meditation; and Mrs. Hazleton, judging perhaps of others by herself, imagined ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... us, with modest pride, her contribution towards the subject: that life is a Permanent Possibility of Sensation. Truly a fine result! A man may very well love beef, or hunting, or a woman; but surely, surely, not a Permanent Possibility of Sensation! He may be afraid of a precipice, or a dentist, or a large enemy with a club, or even an undertaker's man; but not certainly of abstract death. We may trick with the word life in its dozen senses until we are weary of tricking; we may argue in terms of all the philosophies on earth, ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... herself, silent, and looking out upon the sand. And Atirupa stood still, watching her with curious, half passionate, half meditative eyes. And he said within himself: She is standing on the very edge of the precipice, into which she is just about to fall, irresolute, and dizzy, and distracted by an arbitration which she dares not settle either way, not so much out of desire to go, or stay, but rather because she is ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... they rushed at each other; a terrible contest ensued; and then Jasper, with one blow of his palm, hurled his adversary over the precipice. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various
... poets must give a name to every object they love) 'Hederinda,' bearing ivy. At the foot of this grotto a stream of water ran along the walk, so that its level path had trees and water on one side, and a wild rough precipice on the other. In winter, this spot looked full of horror—the naked trees, the dark rock, and the desolate waste; but in the spring, the singing of the birds, the fragrancy of the flowers, and the murmuring of the ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... at once decide on taking so bold and sudden a leap as that to which he was urged, though conscious of the peril as well as misery of his present position at the court. As the deer, driven by wolves to the precipice's brink, hesitates on making the plunge down—though it give him the only chance of escape from the ravening jaws of his fierce ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... soon and with a vengeance. On a day in July (the date is not specified) a party of troopers were escorting sixteen prisoners to Dumfries. They were Claverhouse's men, but their captain was not with them. At Enterkin Hill, a narrow pass with a deep precipice on either side, a rescue was attempted by a considerable body of men,—English Borderers, it was whispered. Some of the prisoners escaped: others were killed in the scuffle or broke their necks over the precipice: only two were brought into Edinburgh: ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... hill we took our hands and knees for it, and even that comedown to a hillman was better than breaking our necks over the rocks on the low side, for the track was whiles no more than a scratch along a precipice. ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... the Drive, never without its pageant; the broad river thronged with craft; the high forest-fringed precipice and the houses that could be glimpsed beyond—all these played their part in Gwendolyn's pretend-games. She crowded the Drive with the soldiers of the General, rank upon rank of marching men whom he reviewed with pride, while his great bronze steed pranced tirelessly; and she, a swordless Joan of ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... after me, leap and bound, and crying out to one another. Ahead of me there might have been a floor or a precipice, as the ground looks level at night. I hurt my foot cruelly on a frozen clod of earth, slid down the washed bank of a run into the Wabash, picked myself up, scrambled to the top of the far side, and had gotten away again when my pursuer shattered the ice behind me. A hundred yards more, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... a daze, but a great sense of security was over her. She had not the slightest doubt of this strange little creature who was befriending her. She felt like one who finds a ledge of safety on a precipice where he had feared a sheer descent. She was content to rest awhile on the safe footing, even if ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... seems to be suspended like the floating island of Laputa. Conte Pepoli can sit in his castle and watch the half-tame ravens, with little silver bells on their necks, as they flit around the window and perch on the crazy wooden balcony where an old priest is asleep in a chair, over the edge of a precipice of many hundred feet, backed by leagues upon ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... her chin aggressively. "Why extraordinary, I wonder? Nothing could be more extraordinary than his death. Either he jumped over the precipice or she pushed him over when he wasn't looking. I ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... sea grows a peculiar kind of stringy reed, very strong and pliable. She tied several of these reeds together, made a noose at one end, and with the other end tied herself to a rock near the edge of the precipice, that she might not overbalance herself, and be dragged down in her endeavours to recover her kid. She then threw down the noose at the other end of the line, and after one or two attempts succeeded with great dexterity in getting it round the body of the kid, which she gradually ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... all trivial enough; but, dearest, I am in a rather feeble state; I was not well after the events of last month. So I let myself glide over the gentle slopes of my life. Suppose one comes to skirt a precipice? May Providence keep us away ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... passing through the judgment, gains The heart, and all its end at once attains. In prospects thus, some objects please our eyes, Which out of nature's common order rise, The shapeless rock, or hanging precipice. Great wits sometimes may gloriously offend, And rise to faults true critics dare not mend. But tho' the ancients thus their rules invade, (As kings dispense with laws themselves have made) Moderns, beware! or if you must offend Against the precept, ne'er ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... ever respect, as well as love. Oh, hereafter, when you see me at that height to which I feel that I am born to climb, let me think that to your generosity, your affection, your zeal, I owed the ascent. At present I am on the precipice; without your hand I fall forever. My own fortune is gone; the miserable forfeit due to me, if Evelyn continues to reject my suit, when she has arrived at the age of eighteen, is deeply mortgaged. I am ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... speed and the spray— The dark lakes that welter them forth, Tree and heath nodding over their way— The rock and the precipice grey, That bind the wild streams of ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... a troop of the enemy's cavalry compelled a peasant here to mount his horse and serve as a guide. Darkness came on; they found themselves already upon the high sand-banks. The peasant guided his horse toward a steep precipice; in a farm-house on the other side of the fjord they perceived a light. "That is Lemvig," said the peasant; "let us hasten!" He set spurs to his horse, the Swedes followed his example, and they were precipitated into the depth: the following morning their corpses were ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... gone forth among the new-dropp'd lambs, With two or three companions whom it chanc'd Some further business summon'd to a house Which stands at the Dale-head. James, tir'd perhaps, Or from some other cause remain'd behind. You see yon precipice—it almost looks Like some vast building made of many crags, And in the midst is one particular rock That rises like a column from the vale, Whence by our Shepherds it is call'd, the Pillar. James, pointing to its summit, over which They all had purpos'd to return together, ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... moment there came a blast which shook even Hammond's strong frame, and with a cry of fear he snatched Mary in his arms and carried her away from the edge of the hill. He folded her in his arms and held her there, thirty yards away from the precipice, safely sheltered against his breast, while the wind raved round them, blowing her hair from the broad, white brow, and showing him that noble forehead in all its power and beauty; while the darkness deepened round them so that they could see hardly anything except ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... carried the bodies, therefore, with him to Spezzia, and then prepared for that fatal interview, the commencement of which we first indicated. Yet it must be confessed that, though the bravest of men, his courage faltered as he entered the accustomed ravine. He stopped and looked down on the precipice below; he felt it utterly impossible to meet them; his mind nearly deserted him. Death, some great and universal catastrophe, an earthquake, a deluge, that would have buried them all in an instant and a common fate, would have been hailed ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... En-Nazirah, with the Nazareth of old on the following grounds: "It is on the lower declivities of a hill or mountain (Luke 4:29); it is within the limits of the province of Galilee (Mark 1:9); it is near Cana (John 2:1, 2, 11); a precipice exists in the neighborhood (Luke 4:29); and a series of testimonials reaching back to Eusebius represent the place as having occupied the same position." The same writer adds: "Its population is 3000 or 4000; a few are Mohammedans, the ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... meeting a friend, or at some political blow-out. On extreme occasions he will indulge until he becomes a helpless victim, and usually as he grows older occasions will increase, and step by step he will be lead nearer to the precipice of ruin. ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... rabbit-jumps to the side, straight ahead, or sits down on the lead-bar. All of which is quite disconcerting. Picture it yourself. You are swinging round a sharp, down-grade, mountain curve, at a fast trot. The rock wall is the outside of the curve. The inside of the curve is a precipice. The continuance of the curve is a narrow, unrailed bridge. You hit the curve, throwing the leaders in against the wall and making the polo-horse do the work. All is lovely. The leaders are hugging the wall like nestling doves. But the moment comes in the evolution when the leaders ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... reached the foot of the hill and halted to reconnoitre the slopes as far as was possible. After half an hour, since nothing could be seen, the advance was resumed up the side of a precipice and through a jungle so thick that we had to cut our road. It was eleven o'clock before we reached the summit of the ridge and emerged on to a more or less open plateau, diversified with patches of wood and heaps ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... had followed him from the small entrance finally vanished, and he went forward with the utmost caution, carefully planting each foot for the next step. At any moment, for all he knew, he might find himself on the brink of a precipice. ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... before the region of mystery comes. True mystery casts no shadows around. It is a sudden and awful gulf yawning across the field of knowledge; its form is irregular, but its lips are clean cut and sharp, and the mind can go to the very verge and look down the precipice into the ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... behold in you one of the foolish virgins whose light hath been extinguished for lack of the saving oil,—to see you wandering as a lost sheep in the paths of darkness and error, without a hand to rescue your steps from the near and dreadful precipice! Ay, truly! . . . my spirit yearneth for you as a mother for an own babe—fain would I save you from the devices of the evil one,—fain would I—" here the minister drew out his handkerchief and pressed it lightly to his eyes,—then, as if with an effort overcoming his ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... is high up on the ledge of some precipice, where hardly any enemy can come. Of course it is a very large nest; but it is not carefully or nicely built. It is a rough affair, like the rook's nest; a lot of sticks and twigs, and heath or ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... close at hand! You are sitting back to back with the Comtesse Marie Vandenesse, who was within an ace of committing the utmost folly for a more celebrated man than Lousteau—for Nathan—and now they do not even recognize each other. After going to the very edge of the precipice, the Countess was saved, no one knows how; she neither left her husband nor her house; but as a famous man was scorned, she was the talk of the town for a whole winter. But her husband's great fortune, great name, and high position, but for the admirable management ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... forgotten that after barely a year of married life you were standing at the very edge of a precipice?—that you forsook your house and home? that you ran away from your husband—yes, Mrs. Alving, ran away, ran away-and refused to return to him in spite ...
— Ghosts - A Domestic Tragedy in Three Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... the feelings of Colonel Clifford; but as for Robert Bartley his very character was shaken to the foundation by his crime and its terrible consequences. He was now like a man who had glided down a soft sunny slope, and was suddenly arrested at the brink of a fathomless precipice. Bartley was cunning, selfish, avaricious, unscrupulous in reality, so long as he could appear respectable, but he was not violent, nor physically reckless, still less cruel. A deed of blood shocked him ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... lord Clarendon gives in the first volume of his history, of the fall of this great favourite, which serves to throw a melancholy veil over the splendor of his life, and demonstrates the extreme vanity of exterior pomp, and the danger those are exposed to who move on the precipice of power. It serve[s] to shew that of all kind of cruelty, that which is the child of enthusiasm is the word, as it is founded upon something that has the appearance of principles; and as it is more stedfast, so does it diffuse ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... sensation of bodily faintness he advanced: at one point the rails were broken through, and there he saw the footprints of his ewes. The dog came up, licked his hand, and made signs implying that he expected some great reward for signal services rendered. Oak looked over the precipice. The ewes lay dead and dying at its foot—a heap of two hundred mangled carcasses, representing in their condition just now at ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... been told by her brother that the Prince earnestly desired to see her, knew well how dangerous it was to approach an inviting flower growing on the edge of a precipice. She was not, of course, insensible to his coming in such a manner, with an excuse for the sake of seeing her, but she did not wish to increase her dreamlike inquietude by seeing him. And again, if he ventured to visit her apartment, ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... have been drawn from constant and adverse experience; that the same confidence should have repeatedly grown from the same failures; that six succeeding generations should have rushed headlong down the precipice that was open before them; and that men of every condition should have staked their public and private fortunes on the desperate adventure of possessing or recovering a tombstone two thousand miles ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... determination, when we are told that, for five months, he marched through wildernesses, subsisting his immense army on the fortunes of the chase. In his invasion of Hindostan he had to pass over a high chain of mountains, and, in one stage of the passage, had to be lowered by ropes on a scaffold, down a precipice of 150 cubits in depth. He attempted the operation five times before he got ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... picturesquely crowning the summit of the rock, stood several hundred yards higher, at one side. The Castle of St. Louis, the main ornament of the place next to the cathedral, overlooked the cliff, resting on a series of tall buttresses ribbing the side of the precipice. ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... between high wooded mountains and a dark precipice rising from a sea intense as the blue of the gentian. The population was about 140,000, mostly Italian speaking. Nominally they were Catholics, and of genuine Catholics there might have been 20,000, chiefly women. "Trieste," said Burton, "is a town of threes—three quarters, three races ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... while he came to a great, smooth, flat stone that looked like a floor in a room, and was about forty yards wide: nothing grew on it except some small tufts of grey lichen; but on the further side, at the foot of a steep, rocky precipice, there was a thick bed of tall green and yellow ferns, and among the ferns he hoped to find a place to lie down in. Very slowly he limped across the open space, crying with the pain he felt at every step; but when ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... try and find my way to the edge of the precipice, father, and look down from the ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... a strong gust for a moment Dispersed the thick cloud from our sight, And revealed an astonishing prospect, Which filled not our hearts with delight: On our right was a precipice awful; On the left chasms yawning and deep; Glazed rocks and snow-slopes were before us, At an angle ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... pressed on to replace their slain comrades. Tucapel, impelled by his rash and unparalleled valour, threw himself into the fort, where he slew four of the enemy with his formidable mace, and then made his escape by leaping from a precipice ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr |
