"Perilously" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... don't know," said Nina, coming perilously close to a pout; "but I see symptoms—indeed I do, Boots!—symptoms of shirking the winter's routine. It's to be a gay season, too, and it's only her second. The idea of a child of that age informing me that she's had enough ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... unquestionably sound. He affirmed, among other things, that the Persons of the Godhead were distinct in the same way as the persons of Peter, James, and John, or any other men. Such assertions were not unnaturally suspected of verging perilously near upon Tritheism, and his book was publicly censured by the Convocation of the University of Oxford. On the other hand, Dr. Wallis, Professor of Geometry, and the famous Dr. South, published treatises against Dr. Sherlock, which, ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... perilously near the truth that I was mightily incensed, and I felt that I did well to ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... roof in time to avoid falling half stunned between the front of the caboose and the rear of the logging-truck. The caboose had once been a box-car; hence there was no railed front platform to which Bryce might have leaped in safety. Clinging perilously on the bumper, he reached with his foot, got his toe under the lever on the side, jerked it upward, and threw the pin out of the coupling; then with his free hand he swung the axe and drove the great steel jaws of ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... early moments of my violence Boogles had protested weakly; then he began to quiver perilously. On this I soothed him, and at the precisely right moment I cajoled. I lured him to the bench by the corral gate, and there I conferred costly cigarettes on him as man to man. Discreetly then I sounded for the origins of a certain bad man who had a way—even ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... shorter than the other three. Sergeant O'Rorke, leaning on the table, rested most of his weight on the seat of the chair, thereby balancing Bates and preventing an upset. Miss Willmot sat on the corner of the table, so that it wobbled very little. Bates, perilously balanced, hammered a nail, the last necessary nail, into the wall through the topmost ray of a large white star. ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... those hideous shelves. Weigall let himself down upon a lower rock, braced his shoulder against the mass beside him, then, leaning out over the water, thrust the branch into the hand. The fingers clutched it convulsively. Weigall tugged powerfully, his own feet dragged perilously near the edge. For a moment he produced no impression, then an arm shot ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... should open suddenly and precipitate one into the very heart of it. Naples itself, strange to say, a city of more than five hundred thousand inhabitants, is built in great part within an old broken-down volcanic crater, and the proximity of its awful neighbour shows that it stands perilously on the brink of destruction, and may share at any time the fate of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Were it not for the safety-valves of Vesuvius and Solfatara, the whole intermediate region, with its towns and villages and swarming ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... boards of the little gig and gave way to gloomy thoughts. What else could be when we were alone and adrift on the broad Pacific, without food or water, in a tiny gig already perilously deep with the burden of eight of us? What a difference to the gay day when we manned the same little boat and set out in pride to the contest! Here was the same spare oar that we held up to the judges—the long ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... and terrifying, its reminiscences of Mendelssohn, Tchaikowsky and "Little Egypt." The lascivious and hieratic dance, the dance of the seven veils, is represented by a valse lente. Oftentimes the score verges perilously on circus-music, recalls the sideshows at county fairs. No doubt, in so doing it weakens the odor exuded by Wilde's play. But if we must have an operatic "Salome," it is but reasonable to demand that the composer in his music express the sexual cruelty and frenzy symbolized ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... Czar's behalf; so that, the Russian causes of complaint being removed, Alexander might without loss of honour leave the Greeks to be subdued, and resume the diplomatic relations with Constantinople which had been so perilously severed by Strogonoff's departure. It remained for the Czar to decide whether, as head of Russia and protector of the Christians of the East, he would solve the Eastern Question by his own sword, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... Ichabod, his long legs dangling over the dashboard, lifted up a voice untrained as the note of a loon, and sang lustily, until his companion on the wagon ahead,—boy-faced, man-bodied,—grinned perilously. ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... and his master are perilously near losing among neutrals the last shreds of reputation for ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... playful as it seemed to her lover, for something in the glow of his eyes and something vibrant in the tones of his voice had disturbed her profoundly. The fear of something which he seemed perilously near saying filled her with unrest, bringing up questions which had thus far been kept in the background ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... the great depths of all-moving wisdom and providence, that in the very self-same act it is in one aspect universal, and in another special and individual. The ordinary notion of a special providence goes perilously near the belief that God's will is less concerned in some parts of a man's life than in others. It is very much like desecrating and secularising a whole land by the very act of focussing the sanctity in some ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... man and beast is the first quarrel that religionist and humanist alike have with him. Neither of them sanctions this perversion of thought and feeling which either projects the impressionistic self so absurdly and perilously into the natural order, or else minimizes man's imaginative and intellectual power, leveling him down to the amoral instinct of the brute. "How much more," said Jesus, "is a man better than a sheep!" One of ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... moored. Farther out, on a rocky spit, was the mark of last night's beacon-fire. Here Waverley had to turn back. Cliffs shut him in on every side, and Edward was at a loss what to do, till he discovered, climbing perilously out in the rock above the cave mouth, some slight steps or ledges. These he mounted with difficulty, and, passing over the shoulder of the cliff, found himself presently on the shores of a loch about four miles long, surrounded on every side ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... hiding-places the paddles and the pretty triangular sails are fetched and fastened on the canoes; then the boats are pushed off and the whole crowd jumps in. The babies sit in their mothers' laps or hang on their backs, perilously close to the water, into which they stare with big, dark eyes. By twos and threes the canoes push off, driven by vigorous paddling along the shore, against the current. Sometimes a young man wades after a canoe and joins some ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... perilously into the cleft, and found the creature with its leg broken and bleeding. It was not a sheep but a young goat. He had no cloak to wrap it in, but he took off his turban and unrolled it, and bound it around the trembling animal. Then he climbed back to the path and strode on ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... Bramley and Wonersh, returning by Chilworth under St. Martha's. Shalford lies a mile to the south, and with its old mill, its inn, its white and green cottages, and its stocks, is a charming survival perilously near the Guildford builder. The stocks stand by the churchyard gates, side by side with a curious little shrubbery. Shrubberies are rare ornaments of a village, but this sets a pretty foreground to the low line of whitened cottages ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... showed yellow through the western sky, The Gap was growing purplish and dim, and just then, across a foot bridge over the river, a hurrying, bent form appeared. It swayed perilously—Jed heard ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... flagrant jobs, the revelation of abuses unsuspected, the point-blank refusal to effect any reasonable reforms had filled the Uitlanders' cup perilously full, and during the latter half of 1895 the prospect of any change for the better, except at the cost of fighting, was generally realized to ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... (in whose own hands it was always subordinated to an effort at larger completeness) does lead to the composition of a series or flock of isolated vignettes or scenes rather than to that of a great picture or drama. For it comes perilously close—though perhaps in Maupassant's own case it never actually reached—the barest and boldest (or baldest) individualising of impressions, and leaving them as they are, without an attempt at architectonic. For instance, once upon a time[512] I was walking ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... the whirl of things, Curtis Jadwin could not see how perilously well grounded had been his faint suspicion as to ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... diminish that long whity-brown interval between shoe and trowser: Mr. Jennings sits his steed with nose aloft, and a high perch in the general, somewhat loosely, and, had the pony been a Bucephalus rather than a Rozinante, not a little perilously. Simon is jogging hitherwards toward Roger Acton, as he digs the land-drain across this marshy meadow: let us see how it fares now with ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... again. Life, having for a little while drifted perilously near to the shores of dullness, again bobbed merrily on the waters of farce. What a lot of funny things there were, all waiting to be done! This that Urquhart suggested should certainly, if possible, ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... Colonel A.L. Corkran in the Chair of Justice. And while he flayed and rent and blistered, and wiped the floor with them, and while they looked for hiding-places and found none on that floor, I remembered (1) the up-ending of 'Dolly' Macshane at Dalhousie, which came perilously near a court-martial on Second-Lieutenant Corkran; (2) the burning of Captain Parmilee's mosquito-curtains on a hot Indian dawn, when the captain slept in his garden, and Lieutenant Corkran, smoking, rode by after a successful whist ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... and personal force, Stanton was unable to move his friend McClellan, with whom he soon quarreled. Each now sought in his own way to control the President, though neither understood Lincoln's character. From McClellan, Lincoln endured much condescension of a kind perilously near impertinence. To Stanton, Lincoln's patience seemed a mystery; to McClellan—a vain man, full of himself—the President who would merely smile at this bullyragging on the part of one of his subordinates seemed indeed a spiritless ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... dispatched to the Bermudas to seize there a supply of powder, of which the general, always listening, had heard. Thus the immediate and grinding pressure was presently relieved, but the staple of war still remained pitifully and perilously meagre ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... for, obsessed by his anxiety over Santry, the young ranchman was in no mood to spare either himself or his horse. His going was marked by a constant shower of stones, sometimes behind him, as the wiry cayuse climbed like a mountain goat; but as often in front, as horse and rider coasted perilously down some declivity. The horse sweated and trembled with nervousness, as a frightened child might, but never refused to attempt what its master demanded of it. One might almost say that there existed a human understanding between man and beast as ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... of the Episcopalian clergy in general as unconverted closed to him many hearts and pulpits that at first had been hospitably open to him. Being human, they came into open antagonism to him and to the revival. From the protest against extravagance and disorder, it was a short and perilously easy step to the rejection of religious fervor and earnestness. The influence of the mother church of that dreary period and the influence of the official rings around every royal governor were all too potent in the same ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... at her searchingly and uncomprehendingly. Rebecca's state of mind came perilously near to ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... I want to know," I said "We seem to be coming perilously near to Dennis's position, that what we call Evil ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... there came another upheaval of water, and a louder roar from the sea. The Shark and the Sea Lion both swayed perilously. Ned and Frank closed their hatch and clung to the railing around ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson
... travelling outside the well-trodden area immediately around the ship proved difficult and occasionally dangerous. On August 20, for example, Worsley, Hurley, and Greenstreet started off for the Rampart Berg and got on to a lead of young ice that undulated perilously beneath their feet. ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... called again. And Welch staggered weakly to his knees, the ice beneath him tilting perilously. Jerry's hands stretched down over the ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... setting directly on the Point, with a breeze dead in from seaward, forced the schooner perilously close to the bar that had been her undoing before; but, with the lead going, Peters speedily found that his previous mishap must undoubtedly have been due to clever misleading. After touching lightly ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... perilously sweet to her, said thus in Ralph's low voice, that once again her eyes met his in that full, steady gaze which tells heart secrets and brings either life-long joys or unending regrets. Nor—as we look—can ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... see, now, where we accomplished anything beyond killing time the following day. To be sure, we scouted faithfully, and once or twice came perilously near being caught by squads of Mounted Police appearing from unexpected quarters. Our scouting was so much wasted energy. We got nowhere near the Police camp; we failed to get a glimpse of any of our men; ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... no young companions. Was there some reason? Wasn't she happy? He felt vaguely troubled for her. She aroused his sympathy, as well as his curiosity. He couldn't forget that look he had surprised. It stayed in his memory, perilously. At night in his room, when he should have been studying, that astonishing glance came before him on his book, and cast a luminous ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... adolescent bodies, bent backward like two bows. He stood head downward on his hands that grasped and were supported by the locked arms of two solid athletes, Buist and Wauchope, themselves mounted gloriously and perilously ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... about eight miles further, and passing through some beautiful farms, with every peachtree a mass of glorious bloom, the column halted. The Imperial Yeomanry, who had been scouting far ahead, now found themselves perilously involved with a small body of the enemy. General Hart, with a portion of the column, including the artillery and naval gun, moved out to extricate them, and very soon we heard heavy fighting going on. He succeeded ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... modern society—a circumstance which some, of course, will place to their credit. On the whole, however, it is a dangerous symptom when the mind of a nation turns with preference to the study of the past. It is a sign of flagging strength, of decline and degeneration; it denotes that its people are perilously near to falling victims to the first fever that may happen to be rife —the political fever among others. Now, in the history of modern thought, our scholars are an example of this condition of weakness as opposed to all reformative and revolutionary activity. The mission they have ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Punch awaited his with gentlemanly patience, and even when purposely passed by in order to see what he would do, obtruded his claims by nothing more than a gentle movement of the head on his friend's knee; while Scamp, in like case, twisted himself into knots of anxiety and came perilously ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... bows was small, and, in spite of his praiseworthy efforts to imitate his great exemplar, the arrow only turned a feeble sort of somersault and descended perilously near ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... wake of the princes followed the chariots, the Egyptian cavalry, twenty thousand in number, each drawn by two horses and holding three men. They advanced ten in a line, the axletrees perilously near together, but never coming in contact with each other, so great was the address ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... there, perilously near the big grinding wheels; an almost imperceptible space, yet somehow long enough for her to decide quite calmly that it was impossible to scramble to her feet in time, so she had better draw her legs up and trust to the wheels missing ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... so-called Augustinians, that pure nature needs actual grace to save itself, and consequently has a claim to such grace at least ex decentia Creatoris and ex lege iustissimae providentiae, perilously resembles Baius' condemned proposition that the state ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... the top of the bench the Duke indicated, where the view broadened in every direction, that being the last barrier between the river and the distant hills. The ranchhouse appeared big even in that setting of immensities, and perilously near the edge of the crumbling bluff which presented a face almost sheer on the river more than ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... into the road,—perilously near the track of the approaching car,—wildly waving her hands. It stopped almost at her feet, and then she was in Dr. ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd
... corrupted—handsaw for hernshaw—a heron, the quarry of the hawk. He denies his madness as madmen do—and in terms themselves not unbefitting madness—so making it seem the more genuine. Yet every now and then, urged by the commotion of his being, he treads perilously ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... experiment nearly two thousand years ago, while Goethe had immediately anticipated him in his charming 'Der Junggesett und der Muehlbach'. There was certainly no novelty in such an attempt. The poem is in parts charmingly written, but the oak is certainly "garrulously given," and comes perilously near ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... her back turned, paid no attention to the warning—probably did not even hear him. The coping, poised on the wall's edge, swayed perilously. If it fell, there would be one less of the indigent and helpless for the relief committees to support. With a half angry exclamation ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... France up the river in midday, running perilously close to the batteries; and though they pounded at him petulantly, foolishly angry at his contemptuous defiance, he ran the gauntlet safely, and coming to the flagship, the Sutherland, saluted with his six swivels, to the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... taken till after Senators and Congressmen had made clear to him that Northern opinion would support him. It was the right decision, for it conspicuously avoided the appearance of provocation, while it upheld the right of the Union; but it was taken perilously late, and the delay exposed the Government to the risk of a ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... song writer who perilously grazed genius, but he rotted before he was ripe. Need we consider the respective positions of Bruckner or Mahler, one all prodigality and diffuseness, the other largely cerebral? And Mahler without Bruckner would hardly have been possible. Those huge tonal ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... devotees. Through Broadway the dingily glittering tide spreads itself over the sands of 'amusement.' Theatres and 'movies' are aglare. Cars shriek down the street; the Elevated train clangs and curves perilously overhead; newsboys wail the baseball news; wits cry their obscure challenges to one another, 'I should worry!' or 'She's some Daisy!' or 'Good-night, Nurse!' In houses off the streets around children are being born, lovers are kissing, people are dying. Above, in the midst of those coruscating ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... details. The carriage procured was of great size, and loaded like a furniture van with luggage. There was a day's delay in the start. Even the setting out was awkwardly managed; the queen leaving the palace on foot, losing her way, and keeping her companions perilously waiting. The detachments of troops on the road were sure to attract attention. Careful precautions for the defeat of the enterprise ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... He was glancing at his watch again, and changing the angle of his wings. "By heavens, we are just in time!" The craft dove perilously; he straightened its course. "Look closely, I tell you! It's something you've never seen before, and ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... English national church was not, unfortunately, merely a fad of the King, but became partly, and for one period, a fad of the church. But apart from all controverted questions, there is at least a human and historic sense in which the continuity of our past is broken perilously at this point. Henry not only cut off England from Europe, but what was even more important, he ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... knew that some of his charges must be perilously near the point of exhaustion. All the boys were not as robust and hardy as Paul and several others. He was becoming genuinely alarmed concerning them, knowing that unless shelter were quickly found they ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... glorious human boy', of course he frolicked and flirted, grew dandified, aquatic, sentimental, or gymnastic, as college fashions ordained, hazed and was hazed, talked slang, and more than once came perilously near suspension and expulsion. But as high spirits and the love of fun were the causes of these pranks, he always managed to save himself by frank confession, honorable atonement, or the irresistible power of persuasion which he possessed in perfection. In fact, he rather ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... St. George her hand he came perilously near telling her that he would follow her to Yaque; but he reflected that if he were to tell her at all, he would better do so on the way to the submarine. So he went blindly down the hall and rang the elevator bell for so long that the boy deliberately stopped on the floor below and waited, ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... case the axiom seemed, after the manner of all general rules, to bulwark itself with an exception. Colonel Musgrave continued to emanate an air of contentment which fell perilously short of fatuity; and that Patricia was honestly fond of him was evident to the most impecunious of ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... home out of a crazy shanty with a wobbly roof and a door facing the Boche. Many would have preferred to go elsewhere in case of shelling, but these two never left their papers, though more than once the roof came perilously near being whisked off by some whizz-bang. Philosopher James Lincoln was particularly imperturbable, as he sat surrounded by pipes and beautifully-sharpened pencils, discussing the weather and the crops with any who chanced to ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... embodiment of the mystery feminine is of great advantage to her; it often gets him for her as a husband. In this particular case of Margaret Severence and Joshua Craig, while his awe of her was an advantage, it was also a disadvantage. It attracted him; it perilously repelled him. He liked to release his robust imagination upon those charms of hers—those delicate, refined beauties that filled him with longings, delicious in their intensity, longings as primeval in kind as well as in force as those that set delirious ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... of the heavy boat made the frail canoe rock perilously, but its three occupants appeared not to notice it. Using wonderful skill, they always brought it back to the true level and maintained a steady course ahead. On board the larger boat the oarsmen, rowing hard, kept near, and for the third time the ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... by no means been free from anxiety. We are told that the fabric of the balloon repeatedly caught fire, which it took the aeronauts all their time to extinguish. At times, too, they came down perilously near to the Seine, or to the housetops of Paris, but after the most exciting half-hour of their lives they found themselves once ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... went to Dublin & saw the house & came back charmed with it. I know the Thayers of old—manifestly there is no lack of attractions up there. Mrs. Thayer and I were shipmates in a wild excursion perilously near ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... arrived upon the field of battle. He had made—at least he had thought so—considerable progress with Alice during the three weeks since her return from Washington, and once or twice Alice had been perilously near the tender stage. This visit had disturbed the situation and threatened to ruin his chances; but he did not mean to ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... plumpness so that the head might have a better pose. Meanwhile the sick woman, frowning prodigiously, and openly scoffing at the whole procedure, was, in spite of herself, beginning to tingle with a feeling perilously ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... went three hundred axemen to cut down trees and clear a passage. Behind them the long baggage train jolted slowly onwards, now floundering axle deep through mud, now rocking perilously over stumps or stones. On either side threading in and out among the trees marched the soldiers. So day after day the many-coloured cavalcade wound along, bugle call and sound of drum awakening ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... you'd approve every word of his silly tirade," she murmured. Mr. Evans, still above her, was perilously shaken by the softer note in her voice, but he controlled himself in time and sat in one of the chairs reserved for waiting clients. It was near Miss Sheridan, yet beyond reaching distance. He felt that he must be cool in this ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... ago, if the undergraduates of that day had been able to copy a Macaulay. The essayist has read the prose of that dangerous model until he has imitated the well-known and now hackneyed devices of the great rhetorician with a closeness which perilously brought to mind the show passages of the 'Essays' and the 'History.' Mr. Russell has caught the trick of cutting up his paragraphs into rolling periods, and short, sharp, and disjointed sentences; ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... and then Rick looked up. They were getting near the boat, he thought. Perilously near. The boat was anchored just inside the reef, and he could see activity on its deck. Apparently the frogmen had returned from their first dive and were ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... really dangerous; for the point of the weapon had been turned, and had touched no vital part. But the prodigious force with which the blow had followed on a scene of violent reproaches and insane threats (described by one of the young women) had affected most perilously a constitution already weakened by sickness and trouble. Mrs. St. John Deloraine, assisted by the most responsible of The Bun-house girls, announced her intention to, sit up all night with the patient. Barton—who ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... on the head and with whose writings he happens to be familiar. You have a flavour of Dostoievsky minus the Dickens taint; you remind him of Flaubert or Walter Scott or somebody equally obscure; in short, you are in a condition to be labelled—a word, and a thing, which comes perilously near to libelling. If, to this description, he adds a short summary of your effort, he has done his duty. What more can he do? He must not praise overmuch, for that might displease some of his own literary friends. He must not blame overmuch, else how shall his paper survive? It lives ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... tender appear to have passed the obstruction and then were hurled to the rocks below. Most fortunately the couplings between the tender and the coaches broke, and though the first carriage overturned, and lay perilously poised over the ledge, it did not fall. The next coach also overturned, but in safer position, and probably ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... on man-trapping and dinner-getting intent, two fresh young things that undeniably danced well and that were delightfully surprised when the music stranded them perilously near ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... are passed, one comes upon a very different thing. A little tower there, jutting out perilously from the wall, shows three courses of a small red brick set in a mortar-like stone. When I saw this kind of building I went close up and touched it with my hand. It was Roman. I knew the signal well. I had seen that brick, and picked it loose from an Arab stable on ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... morning's work and drove his big body at it relentlessly. And he took his own sort of joy from it, the joy of a fight against odds, the joy of action in the open. His body was wet with sweat, but neither his ardour nor optimism were dampened; his foot came perilously near frost-bite after he slipped into the hidden water of a small stream, but he considered the accident but a part of the day's work. So, prepared by common sense for disappointment, he looked hopefully to finding the horse. And as he pushed on he pondered other likely spots ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... the imagination. The fancy of being pinned down by even the lightest of these constructions was excruciating. You moved about in narrow alleys among upstanding, unyielding metallic enormities, and you felt fragile and perilously soft. ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... a charmed region where, if the statelier growths of philosophy die out and disappear, the flowers of poetry next the very edge of the chasm have a peculiar and mysterious beauty. "Uriel" is a poem which finds itself perilously near to the gulf of unsounded obscurity, and has, I doubt not, provoked the mirth of profane readers; but read in a lucid moment, it is just obscure enough and just significant enough to give the voltaic thrill which comes from the sudden contacts ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... be able to get up this place," murmured Laura, looking up at the sheer wall down which she had come so perilously. ...
— The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna - or, The Crew That Won • Gertrude W. Morrison
... have been glaring hungrily at each other, or perhaps drawing lots for a cannibal doom. Once again, as we were shooting a long rapid, a table-top rock caught us in mid-current. We were wrecked. It was critical. The waves swayed us perilously this way and that. Birch would be full of water, or overturned, in a moment. Small chance for a swimmer in such maelstroems! All this we saw, but had no time to shudder at. Aided by the urgent stream, we carefully and delicately—for a coarse movement ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... not say that you are sorry?" he pleaded, bending his fair head once more perilously near ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... to attend to the safety of both vessels, which were now perilously near the reefs ahead. Half a dozen men were sent on board the brigantine to assist those already there in working her, when the grapplings were cast off, the brigantine starboarded her helm while we ported ours, and the two ships separated, to haul ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... struggled madly to overcome or to escape. But having borne for so long, she could fight only like a cat, her head as it were turned aside, her fur upon end, stealthily moving paw by paw, always keeping her front to the foe, but seeking for escape—until the pride perilously supporting her temper gave way and she dissolved ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... obliged to bale away harder than ever. While we were at work, the clouds opened, the sky in the horizon cleared slightly, and there were evident signs of the gale breaking. In a little time more the gale lessened, and the sea no longer ran so perilously high as before. Still we were in much danger, for the leaks rather increased than lessened, and it required the utmost exertions of all hands to keep the vessel free of water. We hoped, however, when it grew calm, that the leaks would close, and that ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... hurricane fire. For the first time they saw that our own artillery was not only equal but even superior to anything the Germans could do. Our gunners telephoned asking me when they should stop, so that our men should not suffer from their fire. It seemed to me that our shells were bursting perilously near, and I asked them to cease fire. A half company then attacking 'Bald Hill' was immediately mown down by the German machine guns. I at once signaled to the gunners 'keep on firing' and only when our skirmishers were within 250 paces of the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... to the spot. Then a sudden movement of the dancer which brought her perilously near the water's edge recalled ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... her, with the fascination with which we watch a man performing some strange feat of skill—from whom first one support, and then another, and then another, falls away, until he is left with nothing to uphold him, perilously, ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... straight to the left. All at once the roar of the descending water sounded in Eleanor's ears, and to her horror it did not come from the left. But when she tried to tell from which direction it did come, she could not decide; it seemed to reverberate from all sides at once; it was perilously near and it grew louder and more terrible ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... made a witness. It would be derogatory to his royal character to put himself in a position where comments could be made, either by the opposing barrister or by the public outside, on his evidence. And, on the other hand, it would be perilously unfair to one litigant for his adversary to be able to produce a witness who was not subject to cross-examination, nor to remarks upon ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... passed since the vote in the House and we were perilously near the end of the session, when on the 16th of September, Senator Overman, Democrat, Chairman of the Rules Committee, stated to our Legislative Chairman that suffrage was "not on the program for this session" and that the Senate would ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... now approached within a few feet of Fred. A moment later and he was by his side. He made no move to help the boy who hung so perilously out into space. Instead he shouted something to Petersen which could not be heard on ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and the Treasure Cave • Ross Kay
... handkerchiefs and embroidered "art centres" in the vacant spaces left on the pink cambric wall by the departure of last night's purchases. A comely matron kept guard simultaneously over the useful but not perilously alluring wares of the "household table" and the adjacent temptations of the flower-stand and the candy-booth. The last was indeed fair to see, having a magnificent pyramid of pop-corn balls and entrancing heaps of bright-colored home-made French candy; and round and ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... tedium of the breakfast table, sped down the long avenue on her bicycle. Across the handle bars was tied a bundle, her towel and scarlet bathing dress. From the back of the saddle, wobbling perilously, hung a much larger bundle, a new lug sail, the fruit of hours and hours of toilsome needlework on the wet days of ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... coldly brilliant category of unattainable possessions. She was not the first woman for whom he had entertained an unpractical admiration. He had been in love with duchesses and countesses, and he had made, once or twice, a perilously near approach to cynicism in declaring that the disinterestedness of women had been overrated. On the whole, he had tempered audacity with modesty; and it is but fair to him now to say explicitly that he would have been incapable of ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... way; it grew imperiously louder, and there were clatterings and whizzings of metallic bodies at speed, while little blurs and glistenings in the distance grew swiftly larger, taking shape as a fire engine and a hose-cart. Then, round the near-by corner, came perilously steering the long "hook-and-ladder wagon"; it made the turn and went by, with its firemen imperturbable on the ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... Abstinence here is as obligatory as considerate care for our unfortunate fellow-men late in bonds, and, if observed, would equally prove to be wise forecast. The great qualities of the South, those attested in the War, we can perilously alienate, or we may make them nationally available ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... themselves they seemed to be clear and unhurt, except for the loss of their bowsprit; indeed, the little vessel was riding over the seas on the bar like any swan. Hans glanced at the slow-match which was smouldering away perilously near to the deck, whereon ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... however, that Ojeda was perilously situated, surrounded as he was by warlike enemies, led by so bold and persistent a chief. In the face of this peril he adopted an expedient as daring as any of those shown by Cortez, Pizarro, or any other of the Spanish caballeros of that age of conquest, ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... and the rose-colored machine would soon find themselves together on the twelve-mile circuit, allowing for their difference in starting time. But as the Mercury turned into the straight stretch of back road, on the second time around, there sounded a sharp report, the car staggered perilously, and a tire tore itself loose from a rear wheel to hurtle, a vicious projectile of rubber and steel, far across the stubble fields. Reeling, but held to its course by the driver's trained hand, the Mercury slackened its flight and was brought to ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... shall certainly follow, be it even to the East Indies." The last allusion is interesting, for it shows the wide flight of his speculations, which had found utterance before in the casual remark that his ships were provisioned for a voyage to Madras; and, even as a guess, it struck perilously near one of Bonaparte's purposes. The splendid decision, formulated so long before the case arose, to follow wherever they went, held in its womb the germ of the great campaign of Trafalgar; while in the surmise that ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... cried Dot, perilously balancing a spoonful of mush and milk on the way to her mouth, in midair. "It was in 1492 at Thanksgiving time, and the Pilgrim Fathers found it first. So they called it Plymouth Rock—and you've got some of their hens ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... called in horror, "do sit down!" The boat was careening perilously. Before Phil could finish her speech Madge had tumbled over the side of the skiff and disappeared ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... to Pollyanna then. What to her was perilously near a second deluge—but according to Mrs. Carew was merely "the usual fall rains"—brought a series of damp, foggy, cold, cheerless days, filled with either a dreary drizzle of rain, or, worse yet, a steady downpour. If perchance ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... have told her that such a blush on such a cheek would almost atone for not being able to read at all, but I refrained. It is vexatious all the same, for, though one doesn't expect to find perfection here below, the 'nut-brown mayde,' externally considered, comes perilously near it. After she had gone I discovered a slip of paper which had blown under some stones. It proved to be an itinerary. I didn't return it. I thought they must know which way they were going; and as this was precisely what I wanted to know, I kept it ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Her eyes, which had already lost much of the dissipated look, were alight with exaltation. Her face bore evidence of the severity of the hour of conflict, and she was perilously near to tears. She handed Mr. Bentley ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... tree, still unconscious that a warmer sentiment than gratitude made his companionship the sunshine of her life. Pauline saw this, and sometimes owned within herself that she had evoked spirits which she could not rule, but her purpose drove her on, and in it she found a charm more perilously potent than before. Gilbert watched the three with a smile darker than a frown, yet no reproach warned his wife of the danger which she did not see; no jealous demonstration roused Manuel to rebel against the oppression of a presence so distasteful to him; no rash act ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott
... pause impressively upon the top step of the post-office those days, as he always had formerly, before he made his straight-backed descent with the pouches slung over one shoulder. There were mornings when he came perilously near to ignoring altogether the double line which, with a new deference, greeted his daily passage to the waiting buggy, and yet there was not one who dared so much as to whisper that there was anything in his air of preoccupation that savored ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... had killed Aaron Norman for Mrs. Krill, and she was paying him blood-money. But he did not dare to press the question, as Jessop was coming perilously near what the Irish call "the cross drop." He therefore proposed an adjournment to the sitting-room. Jessop agreed quite unsuspectingly, not guessing he was being trapped. The man was so large and uncouth that Hurd felt behind his waist ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... hope, I'm afraid; but, by George, I intend to go down fighting," and with the recollection came a like resolve on her part—to go down fighting, and so she struck out against the powerful waters that swirled her hither and thither, now perilously close to the rocky sides of the entrance, and now into the mad chaos of the channel's center. Would to heaven that Theriere were near her, she thought, for if any could save ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... understand. You are good. I want you to tell your mother, too." He slackened his pace. Both forgot that the hour for the "tournament" was drawing perilously near. "I lived with my grandfather, Colonel Jenison. My father was killed at Shiloh. My mother died when I was nine years old. I had one uncle, my father's younger brother. He was an officer in the Southern ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... the dilapidated dwellings. In the village itself the perilously inclined walls of the ruins threatened to fall into the roadway. Reimers stepped through a doorway into the courtyard of one of the largest houses. A rose-tree spread its branches over the wall. Everything was bathed in the red light of ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... winter that is hard to bear. The supplies begin to give out. The wood-pile that stood so high when the first snow came is getting lowered to very near the ground. The poor man's little hoard, that was to bridge him over till the season of good work, is perilously shrunken. Vitality, too, begins to run low. The body pines for the out-door life from which it has too long been shut off. Winter is a hard-fisted churl who does n't give just measure. He drives off the mellow and jolly Autumn before its ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... southward. Our fellows smartly pursued and cut off 1,600 men; in spreading along the other side of the Sandusky they fell on a flanking column of the enemy's Army of the West and sent it to the right-about with a loss of 800 left upon the field. This shows how perilously near to a junction these two formidable armies were, and should increase our joy at Napoleon's retreat. That movement is variously explained, but many suppose it is due to some ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... taken to get others removed."—Jewish Guardian, February 22, 1924. We wonder whether the Welsh would be able to obtain the removal of posters advertising literature of an anti-Celtic nature. This comes perilously near to a fulfilment ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... exclaimed the Hon. Bovine, "and I am getting perilously near to forty. We'll change the subject. I'm very sleepy. Don't expect to find me up when you come in, Arthur; to-morrow night, remember, we may be sleeping on the cold ground, I shall get all the rest I can to-night." Clarges and the other man ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... willy-nilly. It is the latent motherhood within her that has been denied its own. It was the secret of the soft wistfulness in Cornelia's eyes. So she sat until the minister came home. It was the sound of his big step on the walk that roused her and sent the color into her face and made it perilously beautiful. ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... agitations of the past. Despair was unnumbered among the emotions that grew round that child-like heart; shame, fear, and grief, however they might overshadow it for a time, left no taint of their presence on its bright, fine surface. Tender, perilously alive to sensation, strangely retentive of kindness as she was by nature, the very solitude to which she had been condemned had gifted her, young as she was, with a martyr's endurance of ill, and with a ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... name women clearly more suitable; but now dispassionateness was a professor's mean thumb-rule, too far below to consider. Of a sudden, as he watched her loveliness, all his instincts clamored that here and now was his worthy bride: one, too, still perilously not broken to his bit. But ... Was it, after all, possible? Was it conceivable that this unknown small-capitalist's daughter, rated so carelessly only the other day, was the destined partner of ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... a flirt,' thought Helen with something of disgust and utterly without realization that she herself had come perilously close to flirting with John Carr not so long ago—though of course with ample reason! 'She'd look like that at any man, were he in knee-breeches ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... thousand yards of brilliant ribbons suddenly fell from the ceiling; she looked at him with something perilously close to a sigh. Out of an old hat he produced a cage full of parrots; every parrot repeated her first name decorously, monotonously, until packed back into the hat and stuffed into a box which was ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... small spring of clear water. There was a halt; all hands fell to digging a trench across the gully; when it had filled, the animals were allowed to drink; in an hour more they had closely cropped all the grass. This was using up time perilously, but it had to be done, ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... authority, to the stripes and correction, which men of the lower class, under the promptings of jealousy, do not scruple to inflict on their wives! What career did society, as then organized, present to such a nature, so perilously gifted in body and mind? He has the answer. The Church has opened a career to woman which all the world ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... intellect and character which are perceptible in what he wrote, as well as in what he did. He had the Gallic wit in great measure, but he was absolutely devoid of any sense of humor. This is why, in both his prose and his poetry, his most tremendous pages often come perilously near to bombast; and this is why, again, as a man, his vanity was almost as great as his genius. He had good reason to be vain, and yet, if he had possessed a gleam of humor, he would never have ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... His bared head revealed a shock of exquisitely slicked-back red hair. His face was pleasantly ugly—nondescript, yet unmistakably the face of a gentleman and a sportsman. His brown suit was well cut, but perilously near the end ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... which has had a known historical existence of 1,500 years, must be reinstated in something resembling its old position; for Korea has always been the keystone of the Far Eastern arch, and it is the destruction of that arch more than anything else which has brought the collapse of China so perilously near. ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... under Washington, and on his return to England after the war he published The Rights of Man. He was indicted for treason and was outlawed to France. He was elected to represent Calais at the French convention, but his plea for moderation led him perilously near the guillotine. His Age of Reason (1794) was dedicated to Washington. He returned to America in 1802 and remained ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... imagination profoundly stirred by the enterprise, watched it in suspense. But until the meeting of the two giant highways was effected, everything depended upon an equable balance of forces, of which a touch might destroy the equilibrium. German possessions and German forces lay perilously near the meeting of the two lines. At any moment a spark from some other part of the world might be wafted to Africa and set the fierce flame of war ablaze in ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... they were perilously near the creek mouth. He turned to look at the incoming trawlers and saw the nearest one almost abeam of them a quarter mile out. "Watch for that inlet," he whispered. "And let's get into the next ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... of an olive, which their lamp illumined as they passed it. They travelled quickly, for this driver did not care how fast he went to the station, and would dash down each incline and scuttle perilously round the curves. ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... Julia found the theatricals perilously delightful; the grease paint and the ornate costume seemed like old friends; she was intoxicated and enchanted by the applause. For several days after her most successful performance she was thoughtful: what if she had never joined ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... Mrs. Hathaway constantly prepared. The cold water numbed the men's hands. With difficulty could they manipulate the heavy chains through the auger holes; with pain they twisted knots, bored holes. They did not complain. Behind them the jam quivered, perilously near the bursting point. From it shrieked aloud the demons of pressure. Steadily the river rose, an inch an hour. The key might snap at any given moment, they could not tell,—and with the rush they knew very well ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... of the host, after the guest has refused a second helping, is overdoing the bounds of hospitality, and perilously borders on the ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... singularly lucky. The schooner in which he had escaped brought him to Acapulco, where, as a returning Californian, and a presumably successful one, his services and experience were eagerly sought by an English party engaged in developing certain disused Mexican mines. As the post, however, was perilously near the route of regular emigration, as soon as he had gained a sufficient sum he embarked with some goods to Callao, where he presently established himself in business, resuming his REAL name—the unambitious ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... of body, and doubtless short of vision, missed her way among the columns and passed perilously near to the Knight. With his long arm, he could have clasped her. How old Antony would have chuckled, could she but have known! "Sister Mary Rebecca embraced by the Knight of the Bloody Vest? Nay then; ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... in which the material welfare of a family had been so perilously near destruction was to the two notaries nothing more than ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... alone Henry might have been numbered among the princes with a title to be regarded almost with affection. It is only in the light of the later years that even his financial policy really assumes a mean aspect, though occasionally it came perilously near what may be called sharp practice—and the excuse was great, seeing that a full treasury was an absolutely necessary condition of establishing the new rule. The imprisonment of Warwick was an act of palpable ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... Hall are full of surprises even to those familiar with Crabbe's earlier poems. He can still allow couplets to stand which are perilously near to doggerel; and, on the other hand, when his deepest interest in the fortunes of his characters is aroused, he rises at times to real eloquence, if never to poetry's supremest heights. Moreover, the poems contain passages of description which, for ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... to credit all that my friends said, but others who had obtained the book from them were pleased with it and I lived for some months under intoxicating, but I trust not perilously pernicious, flattery. Several editions of the book were printed to meet the request for copies. Some notices of it and extracts got into the papers, and finally Charles Scribner's Sons asked to publish it for the market. So "Round the World"[36] came before the public ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... delighted at all this destruction; he also hated, but it was with a calm, reflective hate bred in the seminary, all positive and material sciences, for the sum total of his reasoning was that they came perilously near to the negation of God; those sons of the mountains in their blessed ignorance, had without knowing it done a great deed. Ah! if only the whole nation would imitate them! In former times there were none of these ridiculous ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... should not form a bar to the vital postulates of any of the Great Powers. It was only on the subject of the lesser states and the equality of nations that the debates were intense, protracted, and for a long while fruitless. At times words flamed perilously high. For months the solutions of the Adriatic, the Austrian, Turkish, and Thracian problems hung in poignant suspense, the public looking on with diminishing interest and waxing dissatisfaction. The usual optimistic assurances ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... there was no hope of a legitimate marriage with the house of Mecklenburg-Schwerein, but because of her association with the young Grand Duke and the fact that she had been betrothed to him, it was only right that the Duchy provide her with some means of assistance. The ice was perilously thin, for the lady is a high-spirited woman of ideals and I had to be careful to word my language so that it would not appear as though she were blackmailing. In justice to her, I believe that if she had taken that view of it she would have dropped the entire matter, and retired from ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves |
