Precipice Quotes - Page 2

• You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth of falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn't you then first discover how much you really trusted it?

  C. S. Lewis

  Strong, Believe, Life And Death

  C.S. Lewis (2012). “A Grief Observed”, p.13, Faber & Faber

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• We think a flower on a cliff is beautiful Because we stop our feet at the cliff's edge Unable to step out into the sky Like that fearless flower --Sosuke Aizen,Flower on the Precipice

  Tite Kubo

  Beautiful, Flower, Thinking

  "Bleach". Manga series by Tite Kubo, August 20, 2001 – August 22, 2016.

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• There must be another life, she thought, sinking back into her chair, exasperated. Not in dreams; but here and now, in this room, with living people. She felt as if she were standing on the edge of a precipice with her hair blown back; she was about to grasp something that just evaded her. There must be another life, here and now, she repeated. This is too short, too broken. We know nothing, even about ourselves.

  Virginia Woolf

  Life, Dream, Hair

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.1819, Delphi Classics

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• If we don't want temptation to follow us, we shouldn't act as if we are interested. No one ever fell over a precipice who never went near one.

  Richard L. Evans

  Temptation, Want, Ifs

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• Minds fettered by this doctrine no longer inquire concerning a proposition whether it is attested by sufficient evidence, but whether it accords with Scripture; they do not search for facts as such, but for facts that will bear out their doctrine. It is easy to see that this mental habit blunts not only the perception of truth, but the sense of truthfulness, and that the man whose faith drives him into fallacies treads close upon the precipice of falsehood.

  George Eliot

  Men, Perception, Mind

  George Eliot (2016). “The Essays of George Eliot: Top Novelist Focus”, p.45, 谷月社

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• He who would study nature in its wildness and variety, must plunge into the forest, must explore the glen, must stem the torrent, and dare the precipice.

  Washington Irving

  Nature, Forests, Study

  Washington Irving (1840). “The Works of Washington Irving”, p.310

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• Precipices are the routine routes of the unroutine men.

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Men, Routine, Routes

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• We're left with so little to go on. Only the present is full enough to seem complete, and even that is an optical illusion. The moment is bleeding off the page. We live on the precipice of our perceptions. At the edge of every living instant, the world shears away like a cliff of ice into the sea of what is forgotten.

  Ivan Vladislavic

  Ice, Sea, Perception

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• The road of denial leads to the precipice of destruction

  John Bunyan

  Denial, Destruction

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• At times, we forget the magnitude of the havoc we can wreak by off-loading our minds onto super-intelligent machines, that is, until they run away from us, like mad sorcerers' apprentices, and drag us up to the precipice for a look down into the abyss.

  Richard Dooling

  Running, Intelligent, Mad

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• No one knows what capacities for doing and suffering he has in himself, until something comes to rouse them to activity: just as in a pond of still water, lying there like a mirror, there is no sign of the roar and thunder with which it can leap from the precipice, and yet remain what it is; or again, rise high in the air as a fountain. When water is as cold as ice, you can have no idea of the latent warmth contained in it.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Lying, Mirrors, Air

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2015). “Studies in Pessimism: Top of Schopenhauer”, p.30, 谷月社

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• Life is a picnic on a precipice.

  W. H. Auden

  Picnics, Life Is

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• And that, my friend, is how the world ends. On the edge of a precipice, with one foot over the edge, it stops, turns and goes back, leaving an empty earth of birds and insects, wind, rain and rusting weapons.

  Jack Finney

  Rain, Wind, Feet

  Jack Finney (2013). “About Time: 12 Short Stories”, p.54, Simon and Schuster

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• We cannot enter into alliance with neighbouring princes until we are acquainted with their designs. We are not fit to lead an army on the march unless we are familiar with the face of the country - its mountains and forests, its pitfalls and precipices, its marshes and swamps. We shall be unable to turn natural advantages to account unless we make use of local guides.

  Sun Tzu

  Country, Art, War

  Sun Tzu, Niccolo Machiavelli (2013). “The Complete Art of War”, p.65, Simon and Schuster

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• Life is the art of finding or building a bridge with a great determination every time you come across a precipice!

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Life, Art, Determination

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• When men have come to the edge of a precipice, it is the lover of life who has the spirit to leap backwards, and only the pessimist who continues to believe in progress.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Believe, Men, Progress

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• so, the whole idea, you see, is that everything's falling apart, so don't try and stop it. when you're falling off a precipice, it doesn't do you any good to hang onto a rock that's falling with you. see? but everything is doing that. and so, again, this is another case of our completely wasting our energy in trying to prevent the world from falling apart. don't do it. and then you'll be able to do something interesting with the free energy.

  Alan Watts

  Fall, Rocks, Ideas

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• Much-Afraid, don't ever allow yourself to begin trying to picture what it will be like. Believe me, when you get to the place which you dread you will find that they are as different as possible from what you have imagined, just as was the case when you were actually ascending the precipice. I must warn you that I see your enemies lurking among the trees ahead, and if you ever let Craven Fear begin painting a picture on the screen of your imagination, you will walk with fear and trembling and agony, where no fear is.

  Hannah Hurnard

  Believe, Agony, Imagination

  Hannah Hurnard, Darien Cooper (2015). “Hinds' Feet on High Places: The Original and Complete Allegory with a Devotional and Journal for Women by Darien Cooper”, p.192, Destiny Image Publishers

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• Do you ever dangle your toes over the precipice, dare the cliff to crumble, defy the frozen deity to suffer the sun, thaw feather and bone, take wing to fly you home?

  Ellen Hopkins

  Home, Wings, Suffering

  Ellen Hopkins (2013). “Burned”, p.2, Simon and Schuster

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• Greatness stands upon a precipice, and if prosperity carries a man never so little beyond his poise, it overbears and dashes him to pieces.

  Seneca the Younger

  Greatness, Men, Pieces

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• In the instant before the door opened, I could almost sense my life expanding just like a river whose waters have begun to swell; for I had never before taken such a drastic step to change the course of my own future. I was like a child tiptoeing along a precipice overlooking the sea. And yet somehow I hadn't imagined a great wave might come and strike me there, and wash everything away.

  Arthur Golden

  Children, Taken, Doors

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• Suppose one who had always continued blind be told by his guide that after he has advanced so many steps he shall come to the brink of a precipice, or be stopped by a wall; must not this to him seem very admirable and surprising? He cannot conceive how it is possible for mortals to frame such predictions as these, which to him would seem as strange and unaccountable as prophesy doth to others. Even they who are blessed with the visive faculty may (though familiarity make it less observed) find therein sufficient cause of admiration.

  David Berman

  Wall, Blessed, Knowledge

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• Training was a rite of purification; from it came speed, strength. Racing was a rite of death; from it came knowledge. Such rites demand, if they are to be meaningful at all, a certain amount of time spent precisely on the Red Line, where you can lean over the manicured putting green at the edge of the precipice and see exactly nothing.

  John L. Parker Jr.

  Meaningful, Racing, Training

  "Once a Runner: A Novel". Book by John L. Parker, Jr., www.huffingtonpost.com. 2009.

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• A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him. Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!

  Gautama Buddha

  Sweet, Men, Two

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• To love is to live on the precipice.

  Anne Desclos

  Love Is, Kinky

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