"Verge" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... called it, would fail to cheer, to strengthen. Darker and darker grew the days, more hopeless the prospect, and soon Laurence Stanninghame found himself not merely face to face with poverty, but on the actual verge of destitution. Grim, fell spectres haunted his waking hours no less than his dreams. Did he return from a few hours of hard exercise with a fine appetite, that healthy possession served but to remind him how soon he would be without the means of gratifying it. He pictured ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... mother," she stammered brokenly. There was such real pain in her voice that Lucy looked at her in anxious surprise. "Don't you like it?" she asked, disappointed. She had hoped for a rapturous outburst of pleasure, and, instead, Mona stood silent, embarrassed, evidently on the verge of tears. ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... the shouts of the savages. Suddenly there was a dead silence, which continued for some time, while Bill and I involuntarily quickened our pace until we were running at the top of our speed across the narrow neck of land previously mentioned. As we reached the verge of the wood, we discovered the savages surrounding the large war-canoe, which they were apparently on the point of launching. Suddenly the multitude put their united strength to the canoe; but scarcely had the huge machine begun to move, when a yell, the most appalling that ever ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... think this case is dull," said Jennie; "because it has brought Austria and England to the verge of war." ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... breeze, and passed the Calumet bluffs; these are composed of a yellowish red, and brownish clay as hard as chalk, which it much resembles, and are one hundred and seventy, or one hundred and eighty feet high. At this place the hills on each side come to the verge of the river, those on the south being higher than on the north. Opposite the bluffs is a large island covered with timber; above which the highlands form a cliff over the river on the north side, called White Bear cliff; an animal of that kind being killed in one of the holes ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... up before the Beaulings post-office in the middle of the afternoon. David delivered the mail bags, and then led the team back to a stable on the grassy verge of the houses clustered at the end of tracks laid precariously over a green plain to a boxlike station. Beaulings had a short row of unpainted two-story structures, the single street cut into deep muddy scars; stores ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... cloud or two here and there only gave variety. The very air seemed fresher than it had been in the sheltered gardens of the palace, and the Prince said to himself: "What a delightful country this is, just on the verge of ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... build a temple for us, and on Wednesday I hear you are to provide the music. Tum-tum, ta-ta-ta . . ." He hummed a few bars of Gluck's "Paride ed Elenna," and paused, with the gesture of one holding a fiddle, on the verge of a reminiscence. "There was a time—but I no longer compete. And to whom, General, are we ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... government. Let it be told with bowed head, with eyes to the ground, and cheeks crimson with shame! Think of one of these hunted human beings—a beautiful young girl, just at that sweet and tender, almost holy period of life, the verge of womanhood, when every man of the land should start up with a noble impulse to throw the arm of protection ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... alas, not always trustworthy. It is only too true that your father stood on the verge of bankruptcy. His entire ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... the British officers being present. They were accordingly sent for, but in the meantime the Farmer's Brother and other British adherents were telling the Indians that Proctor proposed taking them to the "verge of the ocean" and that the treaty grounds were twelve months' ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... abroad. It was said that the trade was really on the eve of a complete and striking revolution in its whole conditions—could this labour war be only cleared out of the way. The smaller employers had been for long on the verge of ruin; and the larger men, so report had it, were scheming a syndicate on the American plan to embrace the whole industry, cut down the costs of ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... advise him to become practical, with a view to wealth and happiness! It was like the adulterous woman who, on eloping with her paramour, wrote to her husband enjoining him to be virtuous if he would be happy. The incongruity struck the prisoner so forcibly that for a moment he was on the verge of another explosion of sardonic laughter. Before leaving the dock he made one last attempt to draw attention to the treatment he had sustained while in prison. By way of heightening the effect of his narration, he informed the Court that ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... and is a rich man, whereas Minchin was then on the verge of bankruptcy, and that Minchin only found out that he was in England thirty-six hours before his own death, when he wrote to his ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... heroine is now hesitating on the verge of an act which, for good or ill, must influence her whole subsequent career. You wouldn't like her to decide in the middle of such a row that she ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... nearer to the verge Of realms where she is not—where love must wait. If Gelert, there, could hear, no need to urge That friend, so faithful, true, affectionate, To come and help me, or to share my fate. Ah! surely I see him springing ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... populous village on the eastern verge of Derbyshire upon the adjacent county of Nottingham; and but a short distance from the town of Chesterfield. The Castle occupies the plain of a rocky hill that rises abruptly from the meadows. The building is of great extent, and, from its ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 566, September 15, 1832 • Various
... he muttered; then fell to staring ahead of him, again heedless of his surroundings. This abrupt relapse into his former state of sullen and defiant silence tantalized the girl to the verge of anger, especially now that she had seen something of his true self. She was painfully conscious of a sense of betrayal at having yielded so easily to his pleasant mood, only to be shut out on an instant's whim, while a girlish curiosity to know the cause of the ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... the Wall where the steward of the Waldo had seated himself, after the wreck, Leopold placed his precious burden. He sat down by her side, utterly exhausted, and unable to speak. He breathed very hardly, groaning heavily at each respiration, for he had exerted himself to the verge of human endurance. ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... the aspect of a mocking Fury. It rose in contrast to her own ghastly and crime-stained life; it did not upbraid her conscience with guilt so loudly as it scoffed at her intellect for folly. These children, playing on the verge of life, how much more of life's true secret did they already know than she, with all her vast native powers and wasted realms of blackened and charred experience! For what had she studied, and schemed, and calculated, and toiled, ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is the boldest book ever written. There are no similitudes in Ossian or the Iliad or the Odyssey so daring. Its imagery sometimes seems on the verge of the reckless, but only seems so. The fact is that God would startle and arouse and propel men and nations. A tame and limping similitude would fail to accomplish the object. While there are times when He employs in the Bible the gentle dew and the morning cloud and the dove and the ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... got to the very verge of prudence, so far as the cover was concerned, when her steps were suddenly arrested by a most unexpected and disagreeable sight. An Indian was seated on a rock within twenty feet of the place where she stood. His back was toward her, but she was certain it could ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... on the very verge of humanity, for the man who sleeps is something more than a mere social being: the law protects, but does not ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... population, very important to the community and growing in power, which is not facile in the art of self-expression. That portion of the population was in evidence at the time of the great Coal Strike, when it seemed actually on the verge of rebellion, when it actually committed violence to the horror and surprise of our peaceful middle classes. The fact is that the very poor are never so far from the violent life as are members of other classes. Violent deaths are not infrequent in factories, in coal-mines, in ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... Most of them dragged themselves forward with stumbling footsteps. Their faces were haggard, their hands moving restlessly and their features twitching. They looked like men who had been for days undergoing severe mental and physical strain and were on the verge ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... and fat in the head. But as long as he is himself, and grumbles, it does not matter. Given a furious Opposition screaming for the disgrace of tyrannical and corrupt ministers, and a press on the very verge of inviting Napoleon to enter London in triumph and deliver a groaning land from the intolerable burden of its native rulers' incapacity and rapacity and obsolescence, and the departments will work as well as the enemy's departments (perhaps ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... Hear my opinion. On the lake's left bank, As we sail hence to Brunnen, right against The Mytenstein, deep-hidden in the wood A meadow lies, by shepherds called the Rootli, Because the wood has been uprooted there. 'Tis where our Canton boundaries verge on yours;— ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... sorely puzzled. Is your life all of a piece? Are your 'Memoirs' a pose? I can't think the latter, for you seem sincere and frank to the verge of brutality (or over). But what is your standard of conduct? Is there a right and a wrong? Is everything open to any man? Can you refer me now to any other book of yours in which you view life steadily and view it whole ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... something of the ludicrous with them, and by inventing grotesque terms, and a certain technical phraseology, to disguise the horror of their practices. Indeed, paradoxical as it may appear, the terrible by a law of the human mind always touches on the verge of the ludicrous. Both arise from the perception of something out of the common order of things—something, in fact, out of its place; and if from this we can abstract danger, the uncommonness will alone remain, and the sense of the ridiculous ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... as I have observed, as a rule gets up with reluctance, and begins with difficulty. Just as you are beginning to feel seriously anxious for him, you gradually discover that he is on the verge of saying some uncommonly good thing. Before you are fully prepared for it he says that good thing, and then to your infinite amazement he ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... and I will give you rest." Thank God, He does not sell it! If He did, some of us are so poor we could not buy; but we can all take a gift. That little boy there knows how to take a gift; that old man, living on borrowed time, and almost on the verge of another world, knows how to take a gift. The gift Jesus wants to bestow is rest: Rest for time, and rest for eternity. Every weary soul may have this rest if he will. But you must come to Christ and get it. Nowhere ...
— Sovereign Grace - Its Source, Its Nature and Its Effects • Dwight Moody
... stagnation, discomfort threatened to the indolent. O how sovereign and gracious has my God been in his dealings with me in this respect also. For a sluggard have I been in the days of youth and the prime of life; yet to me hath he given the comforts promised only to the diligent. Here I sit on the verge of threescore; my heart in some good measure loosened from the world, although in full possession of it. Health, ease, plenty, elegance, friendship, respectability; old age welcome, death unstung become a familiar friend, ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... darkness had fallen upon her. For the first time in her life she found herself brooding over the sin of one who had been her guide, her dearest friend, her hero. From the time when as a child she had learned to look up to him as the paragon of all perfection, until now, as a girl on the verge of womanhood, she had offered up to him a very pure and maidenly worship. There was no one else whom she could love as much; for her dumb and deaf father she loved in quite a different manner—with more of pity and compassion than of ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... the garden below. The sound of the falling stones was caught up in a long, low rumble, prolonged, swelling to a roar from the city below. Again the ground heaved, and beneath her—she had dropped on her knees, and hung, clutching the little dog, staring over a level verge where the balustrade had run—she saw Lisbon fall askew, this way and that: the roofs collapsing, like a toy structure of cards. Still the roar of it swelled on the ear; yet, strange to say, the roar seemed to have nothing to do with the collapse, which ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... above night too, like only the next, The second of a wondrous sequence, Reaching in rare and rarer frequence, Till the heaven of heavens were circumflexed, Another rainbow rose, a mightier, Fainter, flushier, and flightier,— Rapture dying along its verge. Oh, whose foot shall I see emerge, Whose, from the straining topmost dark, On to the keystone ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... verge of the stream. She loosed my arm and unceremoniously slid down, I can not say seated herself, upon the grass, throwing back the long curls depending from her chignon. The word chignon, in the language of society, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... delayed only until he had watered the stock. In an hour or two the sun was hidden by banks of leaden cloud, but the temperature did not fall and there was an oppressive heaviness in the air. The prairie had faded to a sweep of lifeless gray, obscured above its verge. The men made progress, however; and late in the afternoon a winding line of timber that marked the river's course appeared ahead. ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... presented by representatives of France and Great Britain. Bulgaria's reply to these ultimatums was described as bold to the verge of insolence. In substance she denied that German officers were on the staffs of Bulgarian armies, but said that if they were present that fact concerned only Bulgaria, which reserved the right to invite whomsoever she liked. The Bulgarian Government then issued a manifesto ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... the year round, to other tall plants, as lilies, &c. It looks well as a front specimen in the shrubbery, makes an effective and neat appearance at the angles of walks, or as an edging it may be cut and trimmed as a substitute for a grass verge; it thrives on sunny or almost sunless outhouse tops, and on rockwork it is superb; moreover, it grows fairly well in reeky towns, and though its white flowers may be soiled the day they open, its bright green leaves and dense habit render ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... and on he went, Till he attained the forest's verge, The garish day was well-nigh spent, Birds had already raised its dirge. Oh what a scene! How sweet and calm! It soothed at once his wounded pride, And on his spirit shed a balm That all ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... legacy, or perhaps an annuity, gave an additional spur to John's affectionate feelings, and that night he resolved to put the question. All this Mrs. Margaret had anticipated, and as she was now on the verge of forty, she very prudently thought there was no time to lose. "They are a pair of oddities," continued the waiting-maid; "I have sometimes surprised them both crying, as if their hearts would break, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... advanced, for each was required to provide a day's meals for the mighty host. For months those cities had been engaged in providing the food which this army consumed in a day. Many of the cities were brought to the verge of ruin, and all of them were glad to see the army march on. At length Xerxes saw before him Mount Olympus, on the northern boundary of the land of Hellas or Greece. This was the end of his own dominions. He was now about to enter the territory of his foes. With what fortune ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... had reached the other verge of the forest of Beaumanoir. A broad plain dotted with clumps of fair trees lay spread out in a royal domain, overlooked by a steep, wooded mountain. A silvery brook crossed by a rustic bridge ran through the park. In the centre was a huge cluster of gardens ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... refrained instinctively from saying more. For the first time since the beginning of their friendship they were on the verge of a disagreement, and that on the subject of the dream. Allan's good temper just stopped them on ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... being on the verge of success, for after the explanation I had had with the aunt, and having, as I thought, a friend in her, I did not doubt ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... door, and not too civilly put her in. She gasped a little for breath as she sat down. He had spoken to her as if she had been an impertinent servant who had taken a liberty. The poor girl was bewildered to the verge of panic. When he had ended his tirade and took his place beside her he wore his most ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Liquor, will not all of it be a vulgar and Dark, but in part a curiously Colour'd shadow, that edge of it, which is next the Body that makes it, being almost of a lively Golden Colour, and the remoter verge ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... ragged and saw-edged," said Emma. "We're getting on each other's nerves. What we need is a vacation from each other. This morning I found myself on the verge of snapping at you. At you! ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... a moment over Mrs. Sherwood, but finally let her go without protest. When the last guest had departed she sank into a chair. As she was already on the verge of hysterics, she easily kept ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... total Eclypse, in a suitable Hurry and Confusion, they broke up, leaving behind them most of their Cannon and Mortars, together with vast Quantities of all sorts of Ammunition and Provisions, scarce stopping to look back till they had left all but the very Verge of the disputed Dominion ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... to Harrigan: "And to you. Don't you see? I found you on the verge of a fight, and I knew that in it you would both be killed. What else could I do? I hoped that for my sake you would spare each other. Was it wrong of me, Dan? ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... swamp underfoot had given place to firmer ground, and the character of the trees themselves had changed. Evidently, the trail had its ending at that screen of vineleaves draped between two giant gumbo-limbo trees at the lawn's verge. ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... mud. The tide was rising. In a few minutes she was afloat and under way again, safely passing through the barrier of broken stakes and spars. But her brave commander was no more. A shot from one of the batteries had struck and killed him, when on the very verge of gaining the highest honor that man could attain,—that of saving his native town from the horrors of starvation ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... sole remained within, nor took her flight— Beneath the vessel's verge concealed from light; Issued the rest, in quick dispersion buried, And woes innumerous roamed the breathing world: With ills the land is full, with ills the sea; Diseases haunt our frail humanity; Self-wandering through ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... shade and fragrance his thoughts lay supinely; and, a prey to many floating and fanciful imaginings, he walked onwards through the darkness. In the lowering skies he saw the fair face that had led him to the verge on ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... are sometimes pleasing, and his temerities happy: he has many "verba ardentia" forcible expressions, which he would never have found, but by venturing to the utmost verge of propriety; and flights which would never have been reached, but by one who had very little fear of the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... is evident that the small blood vessels in the skin have contracted and are keeping the blood away, as during a chill, or that the heart is weak and is unable to pump the blood to the surface, and that the animal is on the verge ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... and associates in England say, if they could see me now? I have heard of them at different times and through various channels. Lady Malkinshaw, after living to the verge of a hundred, and surviving all sorts of accidents, died quietly one afternoon, in her chair, with an empty dish before her, and without giving the slightest notice to anybody. Mr. Batterbury, having sacrificed so much to his wife's reversion, profited nothing by its ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... lines are metaphorical of the once flourishing kingdom, which was now brought to the verge ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... it the wind Among the branches of the mind? Is it the sea against Time's shore Breaking and broken evermore? Is it the shore that breaks Time's sea, The verge of vast Eternity? And in the night is it the soul Sleep needs must hush, must needs kiss whole? Or does the soul, secure from sleep, Safe its bright sanctities yet keep? And oh, before the body's death Shall the confined soul ne'er gain breath, But ever to this serpent flesh Subdue its ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... chemise. Even this, and the word drawers, which was also once a most refined expression, are falling into disuse, and people talk vaguely of "underlinen" in speaking of these garments. The shops which are always refined to the verge of vulgarity only allow themselves to use ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... dignity of splendour more naturally than he. Whilst in his secret heart he loathed its pomp and extravagance, fixed in his memory was the impression of poverty and suffering that he had passed through in his boyhood days, when, in the streets of Paris, he was on the verge of starvation and at one time obliged to sell his meagre possession of books to find food for the mouth of his brother Louis, and went without himself. To his intimate friends he was accustomed to relate the story, not in a whining manner, but with a vividness and pathos that ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... were, standing together on the very verge of the mound, beyond the firs, some ten yards in front of the last comers, looking ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... characteristic, resembling his carriage in that it was slow and distinctive. He seemed deliberately to choose each word and to give to it all its value, syllable by syllable. His English was perfect to the verge of the pedantic; and his voice was metallic and harsh, touching at time, when his words were vested with some subtle or hidden significance, guttural depths which betrayed the Chinaman. He possessed uncanny dignity as of tremendous ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... one's friends from the outside. This iron system is as cruel as unphilosophical, for, pending trial, the inmates are more or less living in a perfect agony of mind, which drives many into insanity or to the verge of insanity, as it did me. How can one, then, when the past is remorse—and the present and future despair—find oblivion or raze out the written troubles of the brain save in absorption ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... difficult," he said, "for Netherlanders not to conquer on salt water. Our fathers have gained many a victory in distant seas, but it is for us to tear from the enemy's list of titles his arrogant appellation of Monarch of the Ocean. Here, on the verge of two continents, Europe is watching our deeds, while the Moors of Africa are to learn for the first time in what estimation they are to hold the Batavian republic. Remember that you have no choice between triumph and destruction. I have led you into a position whence ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... me as it would were I to check myself on the verge of asking a courteously disposed stranger ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... that the nineteenth century has revealed in the fields of chemistry and biology. At the very most the insight of those great Greeks and of the wonderful seventeenth-century philosophers who so often seemed on the verge of our later discoveries did no more than vaguely anticipate their successors of this later century. To gain an accurate, really specific knowledge of the properties of elementary bodies was reserved for the chemists of a recent epoch. The vague Greek questionings as ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... lieutenant then directed affairs, and in exactly the way that he had been carried out of the hold of the Everett on the verge of suffocation, so they carried poor Tom Rawle back to ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... qualities, affectation. Indeed, it is the peculiar characteristic of men of genius to be afraid of coldness and insipidity, from which they think they never can be too far removed. It particularly happens to these great masters of grace and elegance. They often boldly drive on to the very verge of ridicule; the spectator is alarmed, but at the same time admires their ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... evil genius that induced Lord Chesterfield to distinguish himself from his patient and good-natured countrymen, and ridiculously to afford the world an opportunity of examining into the particulars of an adventure which would perhaps never have been known without the verge of the court, and which would everywhere have been forgotten in less than a month; but now, as soon as ever he had turned his back, in order to march away with his prisoner, and the ornaments she was supposed to have bestowed upon him, God only knows what a terrible attack there was made ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... madcap was an electric element in our quiet, orderly life. He insisted on going to every picnic and church sociable, where he ate recklessly of all the indigestible dainties he could lay his hands on, stood in drafts, tired himself to the verge of fainting away by playing games with the children, and returned home, exhausted, animated, and quite ready to pay the price of a day in bed, groaning and screaming out with pain as heartily and unaffectedly as he had laughed with the ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... that slave property was more profitable than any other, and the system by which he had counted on almost limitless gain thereby, was not only overthrown by the universal emancipation which attended the issue of the war, but certain unlocked for contingencies placed him upon the very verge of bankruptcy. The location of his interests in different places, which he had been accustomed, during the struggle, to look upon as a most fortunate prevision, resulted most disastrously. As the war ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... a thousand tortured souls fleeing from Dante's Hades. And here I sit on, in that veritable "rock of ages" cleft for me, glad that no human touch save that of my own mean clay, that no human voice came between me and the voice of that Infinite beyond. I seemed to have been standing on the verge of another world, another great unknown. The heavens raged and the thunders thereof roared, and the wild wind hissed and moaned and wailed the hopeless wail of a lonely, tormented soul. The cold was intense, and through it all I ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... household was in a state of suppressed excitement. The German men servants, without the usual protection of a brilliant uniform, looked as if they would like to drop everything and hide themselves in the coal cellar. The maids were almost on the verge of tears. Mrs. Jones, with all the jewelry on that she possessed, was moving about with a flushed face seeing that ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... the mere beneath the moorside, still And glad of silence: down the wood sweeps clear To the utmost verge where fed with many a rill Low lies ...
— A Century of Roundels • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the handle of some bedroom door, which resembled his own, when a gruff cry from within of "Who the devil's that?" or "What do want here?" caused him to steal away on tiptoe, with a perfectly marvellous celerity. He was reduced to the verge of despair, when an open door attracted his attention. He peeped in—right at last. There were the two beds, whose situation he perfectly remembered, and the fire still burning. His candle, not a long ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... wide fertile and covered with fine grass from 9 inches to 2 feet high and possesses but a scant proportion of timber, which consists almost entirely of a few narrow leafed cottonwood trees distributed along the verge of the river. in the evening Capt. C. found the Elk I had left him and ascended a short distance above to the entrance of a large creek which falls in on Stard. and encamped opposite to it on the Lard. side. ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... I was on the verge of being a prig, and I'm not sure that she wasn't right, and it's a hateful thing to be. D'you think I'm priggish, Richard Plantagenet? Oh no, don't kiss me. I hate it.... Why do you want to behave like that? It ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... act ended and a storm of applause broke loose, she was on the verge of fainting. She bent her head and eagerly drank in those murmurs resembling lightning flashes and, like them blinding the soul. She breathed in those cries of the delighted public with her full breath and with all the might of her soul that craved for fame. She closed her eyes, ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... adventurer, traveller, statesman. I have been lover, husband, father—poor and opulent; obscure and conspicuous. There are few sensations of our nature, or circumstances of our life, which I have not undergone. Alternately suffering to the verge of ruin, and enjoying like an epicurean deity: I have been steeped in poverty to the lips; I have been surcharged with wealth. I have sacrificed, and fearfully, to the love of power; I have been disgusted with its possession. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... the faithful never missed their mark. One anecdote of Godfrey of Bouillon, related by Albert of Aix, is worth recording, not only as shewing the high opinion entertained of his valour, but as shewing the contagious credulity of the armies—a credulity which as often led them to the very verge of defeat, as it incited them to victory. One Turk, of gigantic stature, took his station day by day on the battlements of Nice, and, bearing an enormous bow, committed great havoc among the Christian host. Not a shaft he sped but bore death ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... said you were standing on the verge of a horrible precipice, that your life and soul were in danger, would you listen ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... different description; they jobbed and traded in Republicanism, and either parted with it, or at the present day are eager to part with it for a consideration. In order to get the Whigs into power, and themselves places, they brought the country by their inflammatory language to the verge of a revolution, and were the cause that many perished on the scaffold; by their incendiary harangues and newspaper articles they caused the Bristol conflagration, for which six poor creatures were executed; they encouraged the ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... rectum, and slightly turning backward; but in most cases such a normal pouch is not perceptible or observed through the speculum. The small pouch sometimes found on the anterior wall of the rectum I have thought due to a very acute inflammation on the verge of forming abscess, which often occurs in the triangular space. (See 4 in diagram in ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... the key, we have the wheat,—infinitely more than we ourselves can eat. Asia and Europe must look to America to be fed. What fatuous neglect of opportunity to continue to deluge Europe with our surplus food when the East trembles upon the verge of starvation!" ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... and I were in the middle of a great war with all his soldiers. I had just firmly established fire superiority and was actually on the verge of launching a huge offensive—the one that was going to win the war, in fact—when, as I said, in butted this great clumsy elephant and knocked ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various
... own powers can resound. If, then, at a moment when he finds himself placed on a pinnacle from which he is called upon to take a perspective survey of the range of science, and to tell us what he can see from his vantage ground; if at such a moment after straining his gaze to the very verge of the horizon, and after describing the most distant of well-defined objects, he should give utterance also to some of the subjective impressions which he is conscious of receiving from regions beyond; if he should depict possibilities which seem ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... Vallandigham had left a certain class of people in Dayton on the verge of violent outbreak. A mob had wrecked the publishing office of the Union party paper, and we had kept a small garrison at the city to preserve the peace, The "roughs" of the place were insolent to the soldiers and their officers, and it required firm discipline ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... moments later a delicious meal was spread before her, to which she did full justice, feeling by this time on the verge of starvation. ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... window on the next day, with no fresh incident whatever, except the single and transient misfortune arising out of the advantage given to the magician by the unpardonable stupidity of Aladdin in regard to the lamp. But, whilst my sister and I agreed in despising Aladdin so much as almost to be on the verge of despising the queen of all the bluestockings for so ill-directed a preference, one solitary section there was of that tale which was fixed and fascinated my gaze, in a degree that I never afterwards ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... Miss GLADYS COOPER, over her petit dejeuner, preserves a natural demeanour, even to the point of talking with her mouth full; the light humour of the First Act declines to the verge of buffoonery. The devastating confusions which ensue in the matter of identity and relationship (in our author's Ostend you assume, till corrected, that all couples are married); the intervention of the local ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 150, February 2, 1916 • Various
... the verge of toppling over upon him, boxes and barrels appeared to draw closer together to present a barrier against any means of escape; cords and ropes wriggled with life as he stared at them, serpentine things that kept on creeping toward ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... find some houses on the verge of ruin. If he explored far enough in the dark, narrow streets, where the rivers flow under the windows of empty dwellings; he might see them tottering, and threatening downfall upon each other—leaning over and casting shadows, ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... uncle glided away; then I heard a rustle as of paper; there was the faint glow of a match dipped in a phosphorus bottle, the illumination of a large loose piece of paper, and then a torch was lit, showing us Garcia standing upon the extreme verge of the rocky point over the gulf; and at the same moment he drew the trigger of a pistol, to produce only a flash of the pan, which revealed ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... good man meets his fate, Is privileged beyond the common walk Of virtuous life, quite on the verge of heaven.' ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... — N. end, close, termination; desinence^, conclusion, finis, finale, period, term, terminus, endpoint, last, omega; extreme, extremity; gable end, butt end, fag-end; tip, nib, point; tail &c (rear) 235; verge &c (edge) 231; tag, peroration; bonne bouche [Fr.]; bottom dollar, tail end, rear guard. consummation, denouement; finish &c (completion) 729; fate; doom, doomsday; crack of doom, day of Judgment, dies irae, fall of the curtain; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... motive was probably to assert himself. I doubt if Chu-bu understood or cared for his motive; it was sufficient for an idol already aflame with jealousy that his detestable rival was on the verge of a miracle. All the power of Chu-bu veered round at once and set dead against an earthquake, even a little one. It was thus in the temple of Chu-bu for some time, and ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... it is not difficult to understand the peculiar fascination which such a problem as he solved in Robinson Crusoe must have had for him. It was not merely that he had passed a life of uncertainty, often on the verge of precipices, and often saved from ruin by a buoyant energy which seems almost miraculous; not merely that, as he said of himself in one of his diplomatic appeals ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... he was seriously embarrassed. The hint thrown out by his little brother about the Koshare had struck him; for it led to the inference that the child had knowledge of secret arts and occult practices of which even he, Okoya, although on the verge of manhood, had never received any intimation. Far more yet than this knowledge, which Shyuote might have obtained through mere accident, the hint at unpleasant relations between Okoya and the Koshare ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... established and clearly borne in mind, we perceive the absurdity of the language which has been so freely used abroad and is even sometimes heard at home, since the suspension of specie-payments, that the United States are on the verge of bankruptcy. Let the expenses of the war in which we are now engaged against the "disappointed aspirants" of the South be estimated as high as six hundred millions of dollars. A loan to this amount implies, at the usual rate, the payment of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... navy came up to the port of Algiers, June 12, 1830, the unity between the soldiers and their master, Hussein Pacha, was tottering on the verge of dissolution; a plot against his life had just been discovered, he had punished the ringleaders with death, and many who had been concerned in the conspiracy felt that there was no safety for them with him. Beaten constantly in every skirmish ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... to a low grunt, half of satisfaction, half of suspicion. I knew that grunt well. When on the verge of any discovery he always emitted that ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... her last opportunity. So Mary told herself as she got out of the carriage at Mr Hall's front door. It was made manifest to her by such a speech that he did not expect that she should do so, but looked upon her doing so as within the verge of possibility. She could still do it, and yet not encounter his disgust or his horror. How terrible was the importance to herself, and, as she believed, to the other man also. Was she not justified in so thinking? Mr ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... are. Mrs. Heron has given them into my charge, and I am glad of it. Not that I care for all children," said Elizabeth, with the cool impartiality that was wont to drive Percival to the very verge of distraction. "I dislike some children very much, indeed, but, you see, I happen—fortunately for myself—to be fond ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... studied it. Many a man, capable of murder in heat of passion, could not have resisted the pathos of this letter. Many a Newgate thief, after reading it, would have felt such pity for the loving husband who had suffered to the verge of death, and then to the brink of madness, and for the poor bereaved wife, that he would have taken the letter down to Gravesend that very night, though he picked two fresh pockets to defray the expenses of ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... Swift departed, and, what's worse, With borrow'd money in his purse, Travels at least a hundred leagues, And suffers numberless fatigues. Suppose him now a dean complete, Demurely[8] lolling in his seat, And silver verge, with decent pride, Stuck underneath his cushion side. Suppose him gone through all vexations, Patents, instalments, abjurations, First-fruits, and tenths, and chapter-treats; Dues, payments, fees, demands, and cheats. (The wicked laity's contriving To hinder clergymen ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... the horizon's verge, No black smoke hid the star, no surge Came up to fret the silent sea, No answer came ...
— Daisy Dare, and Baby Power - Poems • Rosa Vertner Jeffrey
... and nonsense of Edinburgh.' When he left this romantic city his thoughts were not of the honour its citizens had done him, but of Jed's crystal stream and sylvan banks, and, above all, of Miss Lindsay, who brings him to the verge of verse. Thereafter he visited Kelso, Melrose, and Selkirk, and after spending about three weeks seeing all that was to be seen in this beautiful country-side, he set off with a Mr. Ker and a Mr. Hood on a visit to England. In this ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... Billy, "I declare one collar. I wish to bring one collar into the bosom of this family. I have in this suit-case one collar. I never travel without one extra collar. It is the two-for-a-quarter kind, with a name like a sleeping car, and it has been laundered twice, which brings it to the verge of ruin. How much do I have to pay ...
— The Cheerful Smugglers • Ellis Parker Butler
... the very verge of confession. She put her arm through his. When she touched him the impulse waned, but it did not ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... horse, which seemed now to be as quiet and peaceable as himself, this singular being turned and rode towards that part of the wood that lay nearest to the wild rocky masses that formed the outlet from the pass. On gaining the verge of the plain he turned his head full round, and fixed his clear blue eyes on the wondering artist. A quiet smile played on his bronzed features for an instant as he bestowed upon him a cheerful nod of farewell. Then, urging his steed ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... otherwise so charming and considerate, uncle Rutherford had the most exasperating way of exciting one's curiosity and interest to the verge of distraction, and then ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... and paced the floor with nervous, uneven strides. He plunged his hand into his coat pocket and drew out the letter again. He re-read it, with hot eyes and straining thought. Every word seemed to sear itself upon his poor brain, and drive him to the verge of distraction. Why? Why? And he raised his bloodshot eyes to the roof of his hut, and crushed the ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... upon John, who gazed back honestly puzzled. The Commandant seemed on the verge of an explosion, ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... all moments; white upon The verge it trembles; then like mists of flowers Break from the fairy fountain of the dawn The hues ...
— By Still Waters - Lyrical Poems Old and New • George William Russell
... and simpered at hearing his own praises. But Miss Browning had no notion of having any doctor praised, who had come to settle even on the very verge of Mr. Gibson's practice, so she ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... will deaden men's finer feelings, and with what apathy it enables them to look upon the sufferings of their fellow creatures! The third day after the fall of the town, I rode, with Colonel Cameron, to take a bathe in the Guadiana, and, in passing the verge of the camp of the 5th division, we saw two soldiers standing at the door of a small shed, or outhouse, shouting, waving their caps, and making signs that they wanted to speak to us. We rode up to see what they wanted, and found that the poor fellows had each lost a leg. They told ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... cloud that at sunset had been hovering on the verge of the western horizon, had been stealthily creeping zenith-ward, and at the same time spreading out north and south, with a look in it that seemed to portend more wind; so, as a measure of precaution, I went ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... throat and appeared to be on the verge of uttering a greeting when he encountered Stephen's scowl and lost courage to call the ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... now on the verge of one of the most important presidential campaigns. The party in power holds its reins by a very uncertain tenure. If the decision shall favor the one which has been on the anxious bench for lo! these twenty years, and in probation until hope has well-nigh departed, what ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... abrupt manner of proceeding, Louis followed Casson to the verge of the lane, and waited there ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... to excuse a crime, my son, but the merciful God who employs our poor passions to His own great purposes has used your acts to great ends. The world is trembling on the verge of unknown events and nobody knows what a day may bring forth. ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... my beloved child. After having been many years deprived of both bodily and mental vigour by his paralysis, my husband died. I was free; but wherefore should I live!... I had lost my faith in everything which makes life dear, and I stood alone, on the verge of old age, surrounded by darkness and bitter memories. Thus did I still feel but a few days ago, when I received a writing from the present Commandant of K——. Within lay an unsealed letter, which he said had been found in a drawer into which my husband ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... woman exclaimed, her voice shaking, "that we are on the verge of a precipice? Do you read the papers? There were questions asked last night in the House about what they called these fortune-telling establishments. Yet everything goes on without a change—by your orders, I am told. Oh, you fool! Huntley knows that he is being spied upon. In ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... have touched a drop. I can't stand it. Instead of soothing me it excites me to the verge of madness. I'm almost over the verge—for want of sleep—my trouble ever ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... in a very curious way. I should have supposed that she was on the verge of tears if there existed any record of her ever having shed tears. But no one, not even her most intimate friend ever heard of her crying; so I came to the conclusion that she wanted to laugh. I felt uneasy, for Lalage usually ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... now Miss Pritchard's mind should hark back to those former suspicions. All day she vacillated between the fear that Elsie was beset by some secret trouble or by the solicitations of some unscrupulous person, and the apprehension that she was on the verge of nervous exhaustion. Her face was anxious indeed as she left the ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... eleven years of age. Her father, Colonel John Donelson, was a planter and land surveyor, who possessed considerable wealth in land, cattle, and slaves. He was one of those hardy pioneers who were never content unless they were living away out in the woods, beyond the verge of civilization. Accordingly, in 1779, we find him near the head-waters of the Tennessee River, with all his family, bound for the western part of Tennessee, with a river voyage of ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... minutes spent in this way, they got under cover of a little clump near the water's edge, and near enough to the gigantic game. Upon their hands and knees they now approached the verge of the underwood; and, having parted the leaves, looked through. The mighty quadruped was right under their eyes, ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... discussion that could serve no scientific purpose now forgave him from the bottom of my heart. Unfortunately the Bishop, hurried along on the current of his own eloquence, so far forgot himself as to push his attempted advantage to the verge of personality in a telling passage in which he turned round and addressed Huxley: I forgot the precise words, and quote from Lyell. 'The Bishop asked whether Huxley was related by his grandfather's or grandmother's side to an ape.' (Lyell's ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... he entered, both hoping and fearing that Pepeeta would be asleep. He had a vague presentiment that he was on the verge of some great event. The guilty secret so long hidden in the depths of his soul seemed to have festered its way dangerously near to the surface, and he felt that if anything more should happen to irritate him ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... case is certainly sufficiently peculiar to deserve to be judged purely on its own merits. The conditions in Santo Domingo have for a number of years grown from bad to worse until a year ago all society was on the verge of dissolution. Fortunately, just at this time a ruler sprang up in Santo Domingo, who, with his colleagues, saw the dangers threatening their country and appealed to the friendship of the only great and powerful neighbor who possessed the power, and as they hoped also the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... roared the King, upon the verge of madness, as the Crown Prince, at the head of six Army Corps surrounded the building and captured me ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various
... usual health, saw their husbands in their rooms, when, in fact, they were in the drawing- room or study. Here then are eight cases of non-coincidental hallucination, some of people awake, some of people probably on the verge of sleep, which are wholly without 'coincidence,' wholly unveridical. None of the 'percipients' was addicted to seeing 'visions ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... detract from the dignity of extreme attitudes toward existence. Annie had taken an extreme attitude, yet here were the butcher and the grocer to reckon with. How could she communicate with them in writing without appearing absurd to the verge of insanity? Yet even that difficulty ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... two hazel fishing rods, tied a line and hook to each, baited the hooks with a scred of the pork, and then going down the stream, till we came to a pool at a bend, crept carefully up to the verge of the bank and gently ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens |
