Brink Of Death Quotes & Sayings

Often, on the brink of finding the recipe for immortality, I get distracted by the frightful presence of death. — Hector Abad Faciolince

I was behind in school, there were papers to write and exams were coming up but still I was young; the grass was green and the air was heavy with the sound of bees and I had just come back from the brink of Death itself, back to the sun and air. Now I was free; and my life, which I had thought was lost, stretched out indescribably precious and sweet before me. — Donna Tartt

In its basic form, nursing can be seen as a duty, but beyond the incessant operational activities that lay the foundation of our daily work, the profession is all about grace. Helping people is a noble calling. It is a privilege to serve my fellow human beings. Fifteen years has seen many ups and downs at the workplace, but I have enjoyed serving the many patients who come into my care, and have prayed for the souls of those who were on the brink of death. — Katherine Soh

One of the biggest lessons I learned from nearly dying of cancer is the importance of loving myself unconditionally. In fact, learning to love and accept myself unconditionally is what healed me and brought me back from the brink of death. — Anita Moorjani

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

Looking back, my greatest regret is not that I didn't love them enough (to the brink of insanity and back again), but that I couldn't save them from themselves. — Bailey Vincent

I told myself that in the country of my birth, from which I was disengaged in an increasingly irreversible way, there undoubtedly were many men and women like him, basically decent people who had dreamed all their lives of the economic, social, cultural, and political progress that would transform Peru into a modern, prosperous, democratic society with opportunities open to all, only to find themselves repeatedly frustrated, and, like Uncle Ataulfo, had reached old age - the very brink of death - bewildered, asking themselves why we were moving backward instead of advancing and were worse off now with more discrimination, inequality, violence, and insecurity than when they were starting out — Edith Grossman

We shouldn't expect popularity. What should we expect? Paul gave us the list: affliction, crushing, persecution, being knocked flat, and always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus. That doesn't describe some mystical asceticism; it simply means that He was always on the brink of death, always ready to die, always being pursued by some who were plotting death. He knew that every day He awakened could be the day He died. Death was working in Him as a daily experience, a constant anticipation. In His mind, He had to live daily through His own funeral because He could die any time. Yet this great truth never changed: "I believed and therefore I spoke." That's it, Christian. You believe, and you speak. — John F. MacArthur Jr.

While they were preparing the hemlock, Socrates was learning how to play a new tune on the flute. "What will be the use of that?" he was asked. "To know this tune before dying." If I dare repeat this reply long since trivialized by the handbooks, it is because it seems to me the sole serious justification of any desire to know, whether exercised on the brink of death or at any other moment of existence. — Emil Cioran

Even if you are on the brink of damnation, even if you have one foot in hell, even if you have sold your soul to the devil as sorcerers do who practice black magic, and even if you are a heretic as obstinate as a devil, sooner or later you will be converted and will amend your life and will save your soul, if-and mark well what I say-if you say the Holy Rosary devoutly every day until death for the purpose of knowing the truth and obtaining contrition and pardon for your sins. — Louis De Montfort

When you bring something back from the brink of death, it fights harder to thrive. — Chelsea Fine

When traveling in rural Africa, it's important to not actually *go* to a hospital until the patient is on the brink of expiration, otherwise things are apt to get worse. — Josh Gates

Betwixt me and the dreadful outer brink
Of obvious death, where I, who thought to sink,
Was caught up into love, and taught the whole
Of life in a new rhythm. — Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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

How do you hate someone who pulled you from the brink of death, not once, but twice? — A.G. Howard

The people who really thirst for life, who stand daily on the brink of every kind of death, who struggle desperately to distinguish some light in the seated mystery of human existence - these are the people to whom the Gospel of salvation is primarily and most especially addressed, and inevitably they all remain far removed from the rationalistically organized social conventionalism of established Christianity. — Christos Yannaras

If you're an alcoholic or a drug addict or something, we flirt with death. We pull ourselves to the brink of destruction and if we're lucky we pull ourselves back. We all have that in us. — Anthony Hopkins

Some critics of racing witlessly claim that spectators only attend to see someone die. This is utter and complete nonsense. I have been at numerous races where death is present. When a driver dies, the crowd symbolically dies, too. They come to see action at the brink: ultimate risk taking and the display of skill and bravery embodied in the sport's immortals like Nuvolari, Foyt, and thousands of others who operate at the ragged edge. — Brock Yates

Here lies a gentleman bold
Who was so very brave
He went to lengths untold,
And on the brink of the grave
Death had on him no hold.
By the world he set small store
He frightened it to the core
Yet somehow, by Fate's plan,
Though he'd lived a crazy man,
When he died he was sane once more. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

I already killed you once... And I bet you'll come back again and again... No matter how many times I slaughter you. Your tendency to come back from the brink of death has nothing to do with your healing factor. Your mutant power isn't regeneration. It's popularity. — Cullen Bunn

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

Odd, don't you think? I have seen war, and invasions and riots. I have heard of massacres and brutalities beyond imagining, and I have kept my faith in the power of civilization to bring men back from the brink. And yet one women writes a letter, and my whole world falls to pieces.
You see, she is an ordinary woman. A good one, even. That's the point ... Nothing [a recognizably bad person does] can surprise or shock me, or worry me. But she denounced Julia and sent her to her death because she resented her, and because Julia is a Jew.
I thought in this simple contrast between the civilized and the barbaric, but I was wrong. It is the civilized who are the truly barbaric, and the [Nazi] Germans are merely the supreme expression of it. — Iain Pears

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

Cease, man, to mourn, to weep, to wail;
Enjoy thy shining hour of sun;
We dance along Death's icy brink,
But is the dance less full of fun? — Richard Francis Burton

Korean feminism is on the brink of death. Korea has a less clear boundary between popular literature and serious literature than in other countries. I feel that feminism is abandoned like a product that was a craze in the past. — Kim Hyesoon

Eroticism is the brink of the abyss. I'm leaning out over deranged horror (at this point my eyes roll back in my head). The abyss is the foundation of the possible. We're brought to the edge of the same abyss by uncontrolled laughter or ecstasy. From this comes a "questioning" of everything possible. This is the stage of rupture, of letting go of things, of looking forward to death. — Georges Bataille

At that stage of my youth, death remained as abstract a concept as non-Euclidean geometry or marriage. I didn't yet appreciate its terrible finality or the havoc it could wreak on those who'd entrusted the deceased with their hearts. I was stirred by the dark mystery of mortality. I couldn't resist stealing up to the edge of doom and peering over the brink. The hint of what was concealed in those shadows terrified me, but I caught sight of something in the glimpse, some forbidden and elemental riddle that was no less compelling than the sweet, hidden petals of a woman's sex.
In my case - and, I believe, in the case of Chris McCandless - that was a very different thing from wanting to die. — Jon Krakauer

The flood of time is rolling on;
We stand upon its brink, whilst they are gone
To glide in peace down death's mysterious stream.
Have ye done well? — Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

How great inexperience and innocence is. On the authority of their parents they go to a place where they could meet their death; for the Zirder in flood is very dangerous and, given the ignorance of the children, can be incalculably dangerous. But they know nothing of death. Even if they speak its name, they do not know its essence and their aspiring life has no feeling for annihilation. If they were on the brink of death themselves, they would not know it and they would die before they found it out. — Adalbert Stifter

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

Motherhood is the one thing in all the world which most truly exemplifies the God-given virtues of creating and sacrificing. Though it carries the woman close to the brink of death, motherhood also leads her into the very realm of the fountains of life and makes her co-partner with the Creator in bestowing upon eternal spirits mortal life. — David O. McKay