Quotes About On The Brink

#1. Just five minutes, God, I chant like some hostage negotiator on the brink of a resolution. Five minutes alone. Please, please. Please.

Shannon Celebi

#2. You'll never truly know what alone is, until you're on the brink of death with no one to rely on. But after finding the strength to save yourself, you realize that the person you'll ever need is yourself.

Gabriel Common

#3. Everything was flame shades of tangerine and pomegranate, ripeness on the brink of decay, and when the wind rippled the leaves they looked like a mosaic of fire, like the walls of the Cathedral Basilica.

Leah Raeder

#4. I always think that good writers should be growing up on the brink of death - it really lets them see mortality very clearly.

Gary Shteyngart

#5. When men want to kiss you they act like they are just on the brink of doing something that's going to change the whole wide world.

Barbara Kingsolver

#6. Here I stand on the brink of war again, a citizen of no place, no time, no country but my own ... and that a land lapped by no sea but blood, bordered only by the outlines of a face long-loved.

Diana Gabaldon

#7. This is the story of an electrically alive young woman on the brink of her adult life. An artist equally attuned to the light as the shadows, with a limitless hunger for experience and knowledge, completely unafraid of life's more frightening opportunities.

Elizabeth Winder

#8. Whenever I hear that I'm on the brink of stardom, I feel like I want to run into a cave.

Kate Bosworth

#9. Europe is standing on the brink of the greatest tragedy in the history of the human race: a new world war, that may involve the doom of our entire civilisation.

Vidkun Quisling

#10. He is always on the brink of suicide ... because he seeks salvation through the routine formulas suggested to him by the society in which he lives.

Umberto Eco

#11. Beguiled by George S. Bush's easy smile and casual indifference to the details, we are on the brink of electing him to office. This isn't choosing a president, it's casting the lead in a sitcom about the presidency.

Roger Ebert

#12. No matter how far you go into the deep, you are always on the brink of another abyss.

Hamid Ismailov

#13. We stand poised on the brink of becoming true cyborgs, of having inorganic features that are inseparable from our bodies, features that modify our abilities, desires, personalities and identities.

Yuval Noah Harari

#14. Whatever Romney's failings, he certainly doesn't suggest that the United States is teetering on the brink of a moral cesspool.

John Podhoretz

#15. Hurtling back to town, in a red Porsche driven by a beautiful woman, with the song playing, I had the sense of standing on the brink of another world.

Graeme Simsion

#16. I laughed uneasily. "Jeez, you guys make it sound like I was on the brink of death or something. I just fainted." (Sabina)

Jaye Wells

#17. My heart is on a budget.
It keeps me on the brink.

Anne Sexton

#18. The light sprang up again, and there on the brink of the chasm, at the very Crack of Doom, stood Frodo, black against the glare, tense; erect, but still as if he had been turned to stone.

J.R.R. Tolkien

#19. Most of the scientists I know think civilization is teetering on the brink of a global disaster. They just don't know when it's going to hit. I don't have the answer to that either. I'm scared as hell.

Paul R. Ehrlich

#20. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and when the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.

St. George Tucker

#21. If I didn't think, I'd be much happier; if I didn't have any sex organs, I wouldn't waver on the brink of nervous emotion and tears all the time.

Sylvia Plath

#22. But one loves, and when one is on the brink of death, one turns around to look backward, and one says to oneself: I have often suffered, I have sometimes been wrong, but I have loved.

Alfred De Musset

#23. On the brink of being satiated, desire still appears infinite.

Jean Rostand

#24. That is the optimal creative vantage point: To stand on the brink of what is coming, feeling eager, optimistic anticipation-with no feeling of impatience, doubt, or unworthiness hindering the receiving of it-that is the Science of Deliberate Creation at its best.

Esther Hicks

#25. Our friends early appear to us as representatives of certain ideas, which they never pass or exceed. They stand on the brink of the ocean of thought and power, but they never take a single step that would bring them there.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#26. And in another year everything will be different yet again. It is always like that, and always will be; you are forever standing on the brink, in a place where you cannot see ahead; there is nothing of which to be certain except what lies behind. This should be terrifying, but somehow it is not.

Penelope Lively

#27. After all these years, his best friend is malaria.
Even on the brink of an Alaska summer, it comes calling: a bone-deep chill one night, a ministry of sweat the next. Calling him back to old battles.

Louis Bayard

#28. I know there was a time, when our country was new, when the assignment of these numbers helped organize something that was on the brink of not existing. But we are no longer that country. We are so much more now.

Kiera Cass

#29. We're forever teetering on the brink of the unknowable, and trying to understand what can't be understood.

Isaac Asimov

#30. She lives as if she is constantly on the brink of some great fulfillment. As if she were waiting for Prince Charming to take her away "from all this". All what? The solitude of living inside her own soul? The certainty of being herself instead of half of something else?

Erica Jong

#31. This day is not a sieve, losing time. With each passing minute, each passing year, there's this deepening awareness that I am filling, gaining time. We stand on the brink of eternity.

Ann Voskamp

#32. She was only the faint violet whiff and dead leaf echo of the nymphet I had rolled myself upon with such cries in the past; an echo on the brink of a russet ravine, with a far wood under a white sky, and brown leaves choking the brook, and one last cricket in the crisp weeds.

Vladimir Nabokov

#33. Obviously there was Keith Haring and Robert Mapplethorpe, but Howard was on the brink of becoming a famous director - it didn't happen because he died.

Aaron Brookner

#34. Man stands on the brink of hell. The forces building up in our world are so overwhelming that man everywhere is beginning to cry out in desperation: What must I do to be saved?

Billy Graham

#35. You are the promised kiss of springtime that makes the lonely winter seem long. You are the breathless hush of evening that trembles on the brink of a lovely song.

Frank Sinatra

#36. When men fear work or fear righteous war, when women fear motherhood, they tremble on the brink of doom; and well it is that they should vanish from the earth, where they are fit subjects for the scorn of all men and women who are themselves strong and brave and high-minded.

Theodore Roosevelt

#37. I will always vote what I have promised, and always vote the Constitution, as well as I will not vote for one single penny that isn't paid for, because debt is the monster, debt is what's going to eat us up and that is why our economy is on the brink.

Ron Paul

#38. tittering on the brink of a war.

Kelly St. Clare

#39. There are those times when a woman fears she is on the brink of extinction or that the dreams and wants she had for her life are endangered. It is then she must declare herself a refuge and take whatever measures to preserve her natural elements."--Portion of the Sea

Christine Lemmon

#40. The sun was trembling on the brink of the world, the shadows at their longest, and they still had several kilometers to go.

John Flanagan

#41. Put a man on the brink of the abyss and - in the unlikely event that she doesn't fall into it - he will become a mystic or a madman ... Which is probably the same thing!

Apostolos Doxiadis

#42. An arguing couple spiraling into negativity and teetering on the brink of divorce is actually mathematically equivalent to the beginning of a nuclear war.

Hannah Fry

#43. Small wars are always teetering on the brink of becoming big ones.

Max Lerner

#44. Today we are on the brink of another extraordinary revolution. The Information Age is already over and an exciting new epoch is taking its place. Remember, the key point is this: When wealth is derived from a new source - say information rather than industry - a new economic era is born.

Patricia Aburdene

#45. Yes, as Rhett had prophesied, marriage could be a lot of fun. Not only was it fun but she was learning many things. That was odd in itself, because Scarlett had thought life could teach her no more. Now she felt like a child, every day on the brink of a new discovery.

Margaret Mitchell

#46. It is not surprising that most Pakistanis do not support America's bombardment of Afghanistan. The Afghans are neighbours on the brink of starvation and devastated by war. America has shown itself to be untrustworthy, a superpower that uses its values as a scabbard for its sword.

Mohsin Hamid

#47. People of this teenager's age are on the brink of adulthood and have to be allowed a greater degree of responsibility. A consequence of this is a decrease in parental responsibility. Therefore to have criminal responsibility for what you don't know about seems rather extreme.

John Scott

#48. After months of the mindless elbow grease, incessant ship dusting, alarming drills, and rigid military bearing we were expected to uphold at all times, we were fully charged by each other's friction and on the brink of eruption.

Maggie Young

#49. To find a new world, maybe you have to have lost one. Maybe you have to be lost. The dance of renewal, the dance that made world, was always danced here at the edge of things, on the brink, on the foggy coast.

Ursula K. Le Guin

#50. Often, on the brink of finding the recipe for immortality, I get distracted by the frightful presence of death.

Hector Abad Faciolince

#51. In the morning he stepped from his tent looking haggard, fearful and guilt-ridden, an eaten shell of a human building rocking perilously on the brink of collapse.

Joseph Heller

#52. The wary fiend stood on the brink of hell, pondering his voyage

John Milton

#53. It was growing late, and though one might stand on the brink of a deep chasm of disaster, one was still obliged to dress for dinner.

Georgette Heyer

#54. We are living on the brink of the apocalypse, but the world is asleep.

Joel C. Rosenberg

#55. Fifteen and on the brink, that's what Mum says about me. On the brink. Like it's the continental shelf or something. On the brink of what? I want to yell. A rich and meaningful life? Disaster?

Kathryn Lomer

#56. It is perhaps fortunate that Sylvia was oblivious to the commotion behind the scenes. Apparently, Henry O. Teltscher had written a letter to Betsy Talbot Blackwell, warning her that one of her guest editors was on the brink of a nervous breakdown.

Elizabeth Winder

#57. Ryan Giggs will go down as the most successful British footballer of all time and I cannot see anyone ever overtaking him. He's on the brink of his 13th league title, after all.

Gary Neville

#58. When on the brink of complete discouragement, success is discerning that ... the line between failure and success is so fine that often a single extra effort is all that is needed to bring victory out of defeat.

Elbert Hubbard

#59. On the brink of sleep I have a gloomy thought: that saving yourself is only pushing yourself even deeper into the trap rather than getting out. Dying is the only way out.

Erri De Luca

#60. Be my friends against the day I shall be on the brink of hell, as I was once before

Alain-Fournier

#61. We both stood there, as if on the brink of a cliff, and I didn't know if I moved if I would fall to hell or soar to heaven.

Julianne Donaldson

#62. An arresting testimony to the haunting power of friendships, THE AFTER GIRLS is a story that understands what it is to be passionate, confused, and on the brink. I loved every resonant word.

Micol Ostow

#63. Theirs is a civilization of deprivation; ours of finely balanced satisfaction ever teetering on the brink of excess.

Iain M. Banks

#64. But to enjoy him we must know him. Seeing is savoring. If he remains a blurry, vague fog, we may be intrigued for a season. But we will not be stunned with joy, as when the fog clears and you find yourself on the brink of some vast precipice.

John Piper

#65. Her nerves stood on end and she knew she was on the brink of falling over the edge with Alexander. And the thought didn't scare her at that moment. Because she knew he was the type of person to catch her, no matter what.

T.K. Leigh

#66. We're on the cusp, on the brink, of enormous change in this country.

Jennifer Granholm

#67. As we live our precarious lives on the brink of the void, constantly coming closer to a state of nonbeing, we are all too often aware of our fragitlity.

Iris Murdoch

#68. A democracy that's constantly threatened by corruption is a democracy that's on the brink to fail.

Henry Johnson Jr

#69. I swim in a shaft of light, upside down, and I can see myself clearly, through and through, from every angle. Perhaps I stand on the brink of a great discovery.

Jamaica Kincaid

#70. If I had my way, if I was lucky enough, if I could be on the brink my entire life - that great sense of expectation and excitement without the disappointment - that would be the perfect state.

Cate Blanchett

#71. We hear every damn day about how fragile our country is - on the brink of catastrophe - torn by polarizing hate, and how it's a shame that we can't work together to get things done, but the truth is we do. We work together to get things done every damn day!

Jon Stewart

#72. Later that summer, as rain fell, such a moment shimmered and paused on the brink, and then began the ancient dance of numbers: two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, and a new life took root and began to grow. And thus the generations past were joined to the unknowable future.

Mary Doria Russell

#73. As the world stood on the brink of war in August 1914, the local paper of a small town in the west of Ireland took a stand: 'We give this solemn warning to Kaiser Wilhelm: The Skibbereen Eagle has its eye on you.

Robert Hutton

#74. The society with lots of open disagreement and social conflict is the one surging with power in art, science, commerce, constructive social reform, and (most of all) religious revival; the hushed-up society where everyone is afraid to say what he thinks is on the brink of violence and collapse.

Greg Forster

#75. When there were fears about the future of this nation's older cities ... when a few of the cities teetered on the brink of bankruptcy, all eyes were focused on Chicago for contrast.

Jane Byrne

#76. During the next four years ... unless drastic steps are taken by Congress, the U.S. will have nearly 8,000,000 unemployed and will stand on the brink of a deep depression.

Henry A. Wallace

#77. The condition of photographing is maybe the condition of being on the brink of conversion to anything.

Diane Arbus

#78. Come on, there's no one there. You want coffee?" Tess asked.
"Yeah, sure, why not? I'm only on the brink of a nervous breakdown. I don't imagine why caffeine wouldn't help this situation.

Frankie Rose

#79. No one in Brady had seemed even remotely aware that the world was teetering on the brink of a catastrophic depression. Perhaps the mountains kept the place isolated and secure. Or perhaps life there had been depressed for so long another crash wouldn't matter.

John Grisham

#80. We might be on the brink of an apocalypse if, instead of poor people with suicide bombs killing middle class guys, middle-class people with suicide bombs started killing rich guys.

Bruce Sterling

#81. With how many things are we on the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries.

Mary Shelley

#82. I feel like a person living on the brink of a volcano crater.

Agnes Smedley

#83. The EU is on the brink of becoming a European Federation by the year 2010 ... I feel sure that Britain will fall in line.

Joschka Fischer

#84. Whenever cannibals are on the brink of starvation, Heaven, in its infinite mercy, sends them a fat missionary.

Oscar Wilde

#85. I make lists to keep my anxiety level down. If I write down 15 things to be done, I lose that vague, nagging sense that there are an overwhelming number of things to be done, all of which are on the brink of being forgotten.

Mary Roach

#86. Every single day the world seems like it is on the brink of falling apart. But then I look outside my window, and things look about the same as they did a week ago. It's almost a form of cognitive dissonance.

Moby

#87. It's only on the brink that people find the will to change. Only at the precipice do we evolve.

John Cleese

#88. According to the papers, I'm miserable, alienated, and on the brink of resignation. But that's simply not where I am.

Vince Cable

#89. As a human being, I was born on the brink of personal destruction, and I have spent my life dancing along the edge of that cliff.

Brian Herbert

#90. Please, do not leave me, Will Henry. I would not survive it. You were nearly right. What Mr. Kendall was, I am always on the brink of becoming. And you - I do not pretend to know how or even why - but you pull me back from the precipice. You are the one ... You are the one thing that keeps me Human.

Rick Yancey

#91. Then too there was the irrepressible librarian in her who could not stand by and watch a human being in distress without leaping to her aid, whether that person could not find the coin slot on the copier or was on the brink of domestic destruction.

Jennifer Tseng

#92. Entrepreneurs can't forecast accurately, because they are trying something fundamentally new. So they will often be laughably behind plan - and on the brink of success.

Eric Ries

#93. Everyone here felt like they were on the brink of something, when in fact they were only on the brink of the end.

Lauren Kate

#94. And in the stillness before dawn, on the brink of a war that could tear us apart, our auras danced and twined in the darkness, coiling around each other until they finally merged, becoming one.

Julie Kagawa

#95. If I saw the gates of hell open and I stood on the brink of the abyss, I would not despair; I would not lose hope of mercy, because I would trust in you, my God.

Gemma Galgani

#96. There was something soul-burningly about being on the brink of losing control, tumbling over into the unknown, and I wanted to fall and never resurface.
- Jennifer L. Armentrout

Jennifer L. Armentrout

#97. I stood balanced on the brink of madness. Insanity and longevity are a truly terrifying combination; if I gave in now, I might pay the price for centuries to come.

C.S. Friedman

#98. If your life just falls apart early on, you can put it together again. It's the people who are always on the brink of crisis who don't hit bottom who are in trouble.

Anne Enright

#99. The middle class is teetering on the brink of collapse just as surely as AIG was in the fall of 2009 - only this time, it's not just one giant insurance company (and its banking counterparties) facing disaster, it's tens of millions of hardworking Americans who played by the rules.

Arianna Huffington

#100. When people tell you you're on the brink of death, you've got to dig pretty deep to get it together.

Nile Rodgers