Verge Quotes

• If you are scared to go to the brink, you are lost.

  John Foster Dulles

  Encouraging, Scared, Arms Race

  In 'Life' 16 January 1956

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• Every day of our lives we are on the verge of making those slight changes that would make all the difference.

  Mignon McLaughlin

  Differences, Helping, Seizing

  Mignon McLaughlin (2014). “Aperçus: The Aphorisms of Mignon McLaughlin”, p.59, BookBaby

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• The metaphor is perhaps one of man's most fruitful potentialities. Its efficacy verges on magic, and it seems a tool for creation which God forgot inside one of His creatures when He made him. All our faculties keep us within the realm of the real, of what is already there. The most we can do is to combine things or break them up. The metaphor alone furnishes an escape; between the real things, it lets emerge imaginary reefs, a crop of floating islands.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Real, Men, Islands

  "The Dehumanization of Art and Ideas about the Novel". Book by Jose Ortega y Gasset. Chapter "Taboo and Metaphor", 1925.

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• Love is on the verge of hate each time it stoops for pardon.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Hate, Love Is, Pardon

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• Here, on the river's verge, I could be busy for months without changing my place, simply leaning a little more to right or left.

  Paul Cezanne

  Artist, Rivers, Littles

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• Goodness was not a trait you acquired; it was a value you practiced when you were on the verge of doing evil.

  Julius Lester

  Evil, Goodness, Traits

  Julius Lester (2005). “The Autobiography of God: A Novel”, p.219, Macmillan

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• I had nightmares about what Poseidon might turn me into if I were on the verge of death-plankton maybe." -Percy Jackson

  Rick Riordan

  Might, Nightmare, Poseidon

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• A life that is without problems may literally be more hopeless, than one that always verges on despair.

  Thomas Merton

  Despair, May, Hopeless

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.21, Shambhala Publications

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• one must verge on the unknown, write toward the truth hitherto unrecognizable of one’s own sincerity, including the avoidable beauty of doom, shame, and embarrassment, that very area of personal self-recognition,(detailed individual is universal remember) which formal conventions, internalized, keep us from discovering in ourselves and others

  Allen Ginsberg

  Writing, Self, Recognition

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• A favorite Wired icon for the information feedback loop, a dragon curling in a circle to swallow its own tail, could become more apt as a symbol of the timeless libertarian paradox: Monopoly verging on feudalism emerges from unregulated competition to bite libertarianism in the posterior.

  Jedediah Purdy

  Dragons, Circles, Icons

  "The God of the Digerati". Essay in the American Prospect Magazine, prospect.org. March-April 1998.

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• I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.

  Walt Whitman

  Mistake, Usual, Leaves Of Grass

  Walt Whitman (2016). “Song of Myself: With a Complete Commentary”, p.131, University of Iowa Press

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• such incidents brought me to the verge of despair, but little more and I would have put an end to my life - only art it was that withheld me, - ah, it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had produced all that I had felt called upon to produce.

  Ludwig van Beethoven

  Art, Despair, Littles

  Ludwig van Beethoven (1957). “Heiligenstädter Testament”

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• When the moon shall have faded out from the sky, and the sun shall shine at noonday a dull cherry red, and the seas shall be frozen over, and the icecap shall have crept downward to the equator from either pole . . . when all the cities shall have long been dead and crumbled into dust, and all life shall be on the last verge of extinction on this globe; then, on a bit of lichen, growing on the bald rocks beside the eternal snows of Panama, shall be seated a tiny insect, preening its antennae in the glow of the worn-out sun, the sole survivor of animal life on this our earth - a melancholy bug.

  William Jacob Holland

  Life, Animal, Moon

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• We're on the verge of civil war in Northern Ireland. Why? Because if you take away the forums of democracy you don't have anything left.

  Ian Paisley

  War, Democracy, Forums

  "1986: Ian Paisley's Battle Cry Condemned". "On This Day" page on BBC, news.bbc.co.uk.

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• I have a soul that like an ample shield Can take in all, and verge enough for more.

  John Dryden

  Soul, Shields, Enough

  John Dryden (1759). “Don Sebastian, King of Portugal, etc”, p.14

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• We don't want to lose you Lord Rahl. We don't want to go back to way things were." She sounded on the verge of tears. "We like being able to do simple things, like make a joke, and laugh. We could never do such things before. We always lived in fear that if we said the wrong thing we would be beaten, or worse. Now that we have seen another way, we don't want to go back to that. If you throw your life away for the Midlands, then we will.- Cara

  Terry Goodkind

  Simple, Laughing, Tears

  Terry Goodkind (2015). “Blood of the Fold”, p.207, RosettaBooks

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• Whatever fighting words you hear from the bargaining table, the reality is that with the new TV contract about to take effect and the incredibly lucrative ancillary revenue streams, both sides know we are on the verge of ushering in the most lucrative payday in the history of professional sports. The history of professional football is that nothing happens until the very last moment.

  Leigh Steinberg

  Sports, Football, Fighting

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• Wherever there is one job on the verge of being lost, I will fight to save it. Wherever there is one company looking to grow in West Virginia, I will fight to make that growth a reality.

  Joe Manchin

  Jobs, Fighting, Reality

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• Our country also hungers for leadership to ensure the long-term survival of our Social Security system. With 70 million baby boomers in this country on the verge of retirement, we need to take action to shore up the system.

  Kay Bailey Hutchison

  Country, Baby, Retirement

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• A man who is ill-adjusted to the world is always on the verge of finding himself. One who is adjusted to the world never finds himself, but gets to be a cabinet minister.

  Hermann Hesse

  Success, Men, World

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• The turkey's eyes are such that he can see a bumblebee turn a somersault on the verge of the horizon.

  Archibald Rutledge

  Eye, Hunting, Turkeys

  Archibald Rutledge, James A. Casada (1994). “America's Greatest Game Bird: Archibald Rutledge's Turkey Hunting Tales”, p.9, Univ of South Carolina Press

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• Beside the two wars he inherited in Iraq and Afghanistan, and promised to end, a financial crisis at home had pushed the United States to the brink of another Great Depression. When we spoke with the new president in March of 2009, the economy was losing 800,000 jobs a month, the government was throwing hundreds of billions of dollars at failing banks, and the auto industry was on the verge of collapse. Politically pummeled from all sides, Obama did his best to keep a sense of humor.

  Barack Obama

  Jobs, War, Home

  Source: www.cbsnews.com

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• I think California is playing a game of brinkmanship that's very dangerous. Why is it 50 or 60 years ago we had the capacity to lay down the physical, psychological, cultural, public infrastructure of a global mega-state, and today we are on the verge of being Honduras?

  Kevin Starr

  Thinking, Years, Games

  Source: www.chicagotribune.com

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• The writer must be in it; he can't be to one side of it, ever. He has to be endangered by it. His own attitudes have to be tested in it. The best work that anybody ever writes is the work that is on the verge of embarrassing himself, always.

  Arthur Miller

  Fun, Attitude, Writing

  Richard Isadore Evans, Arthur Miller (1969). “Psychology and Arthur Miller”, Praeger Publishers

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• In our public life, California is on the verge of being a failed state, and no state has failed in the history of this country.

  Kevin Starr

  Country, California, States

  Source: www.chicagotribune.com

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