Perilously Quotes & Sayings

Outside, with Labor Day having come and gone, summer is fighting a dying battle against the fall air. The leaves are hanging perilously on the trees, knowing full well they're going to make the plunge, clinging on as if they stand a chance not to. The garbage smell that has wafted around us for the better part of August is dissipating, ushered out with the humidity, and in its place a briskness is filtering in, like something you'd smell from a bottle of Tide. — Allison Winn Scotch

We are at the point in time and terror where nothing short of a strong uniform policy of domestic disarmament will alleviate the danger which is crystal clear and perilously present. Let us take the guns away from the people. — Patrick V. Murphy

Whatever power there is in the urban pictures is bound to the closeness with which they skirt banality. For a shot to be good - suggestive of more than just
what it is - it has to come perilously near being bad, just a view of stuff. — Robert Adams

I worry I am coming perilously close to violating both of those promises. But still. It is our third wedding anniversary and I am alone in our apartment, my face all mask-tight from tears because, well, because: Just this afternoon, I get a voice mail from Nick, and I already know it's going to be bad, I know — Gillian Flynn

Unbelief has put self where God should be, and is perilously close to the sin of Lucifer who said, "I will set my throne above the throne of God." Faith looks out instead of in and the whole life falls into line. — A.W. Tozer

I won't blame Nick. I don't blame Nick. I refuse - refuse! - to turn into some pert-mouthed, strident angry-girl. I made two promises to myself when I married Nick. One: no dancing-monkey demands. Two: I would never, ever say, Sure, that's fine by me (if you want to stay out later, if you want to do a boys' weekend, if you want to do something you want to do) and then punish him for doing what I said was fine by me. I worry I am coming perilously close to violating both of those promises. — Gillian Flynn

Alexander was in the grip of a passion for perfection. He was not aware of how closely, how perilously, perfectionism and fanaticism are related. — Tove Jansson

From my perch on the couch atop the truck I watched our wheels cross the town line, turn left on Highway 33, pick up some speed and head for the ocean breezes and new freedoms of the Shore. With the warm night whistling by me, I felt wonderfully and perilously adrift, giddy with excitement. This town, my town, would never leave me, and I could never completely leave it, but I would never live in Freehold again. — Bruce Springsteen

Has a control system so perilously close to intelligence that a government agent must be on hand at all times, ready to destroy the machine if it slips over the threshold into consciousness. — Alastair Reynolds

He was a visionary or a fool I have found the line perilously thin myself — Khaled Hosseini

And (b) Kissing someone so that you can get a free trip is perilously close to full-on hooking — John Green

The church works best as a force of resistance, a conscience to society that keeps itself at arm's length from the state. The closer it gets, the less effectively it can challenge the surrounding culture and the more perilously it risks losing its central message. — Philip Yancey

It is perilously possible to make our conceptions of God like molten lead poured into a specially designed mould, and when it is cold and hard we fling it at the heads of the religious people who don't agree with us. — Oswald Chambers

There are times in my 30 years in the theater that I have come perilously close to losing faith in the one form of action I have in this life. — Athol Fugard

any society or government that relies too heavily on technology will find itself perched perilously on a crumbling precipice over the valley of death and destruction. — Michael Bunker

Society, in fact, often holds it to be a virtue to adhere to certain beliefs in spite of evidence to the contrary. Belief in that which reason denies is associated with steadfastness and courage, while skepticism is often identified with cynicism and weak character. The more persuasive the evidence against a belief, the more virtuous it is deemed to persist in it. We honor faith. Faith can be a positive force, enabling people to persevere in the face of daunting odds, but the line between perseverance and fanaticism is perilously thin. Carried to extremes, faith becomes destructive - the residents of Jonestown for example, or the Heaven's Gate cult. In both cases, the faith of the believers was tested; in both cases, they passed the test. — Robert L. Park

In 2008 we came perilously close to killing money, exposing in the process how out of date money's infrastructure has become. — Douglas Coupland

The trick to this solution is that you'd have to be 100% honest. Meaning not just sincere but almost naked. Worse than naked - more like unarmed. Defenseless. 'This thing I feel, I can't name it straight out but it seems important, do you feel it too?' - this sort of direct question is not for the squeamish. For one thing, it's perilously close to "Do you like me? Please like me," which you know quite well that 99% of all interhuman manipulation and bullshit gamesmanship that goes on goes on precisely because the idea of saying this sort of thing straight out is regarded as somehow obsene. In fact one of the very last few interperonal taboos we have is kind of obscenely naked direct interrogation of somebody else. It looks pathetic and desperate. That's how it'll look to the reader. And it will have to. There's no way around it. — David Foster Wallace

mandating innovation is an oxymoron, maybe not as absurd as "scheduling spontaneity," but perilously close. I — Eric Weiner

How much more relevant could God be than to be a provider of food for life? What good is religion if it cannot feed the hungry? Satan was perilously and painfully close to a truth. But it was a half-truth, and a half-truth gets so interwoven with a lie that it becomes deadlier by the mix. Ask yourself this question: What kind of a following would result if the sole reason for the affection toward the leader is that he provides his followers with bread? Both motives would be wrong - for the provider and the receiver. These are the terms of reward and punishment that are mercenarily tainted and have diminishing returns, at best engendering compliance, but not love. Their appeal, too, is soon lost when offered as enticements or when withheld to engender fears. Dependence without commitment will ever look for ways to break the stranglehold. The — Ravi Zacharias

With her self-esteem perilously balanced on her excellence, she could only interpret failure as catastrophic. Lilly shamed herself when she made a mistake, becoming upset not only about her performance but about who she was as a human being ... She reached her heights at a steep internal price. Her Good Girl thinking forced her to walk an unforgiving line; one misstep would plummet her to the snapping jaws of failure ... Her unreasonable expectations kept her shackled to failure, preventing her from shaking off a mistake and moving forward quickly. — Rachel Simmons

I'm trying to illuminate how perilously narrow we draw the concepts of masculinity and sexuality in our male culture - particularly in black male culture - and to help people to see that there's room enough for everyone. — Charles M. Blow

It was clear, for example, in 1988 that the political process had already become perilously remote from the electorate it was meant to represent. — Joan Didion

Johnny Appleseed was revered . he was ... an evangelist (of a doctrine veering perilously close to pantheism). — Michael Pollan

So it was a crossroads summer, when the universe seemed to stand perilously still like an egg wobbling on a precipice, a regular rite of passage summer that saw us traverse the hazardous divide between the illusions of boyhood and the far more pernicious deceptions of maturity, et cetera. — Sol Luckman

He came for a moment perilously close to believing that he could fly, but a quick-thinking error-checking protocol cut in and told him not to be so silly. It — Douglas Adams

It's probably hard for anyone looking at my landscapes today to realize that I was once regarded as a rebel, a dangerous influence; that I've been told I was on the verge of insanity, that my painting was nothing but meaningless daubs. Lawren Harris, the man most responsible for drawing the Group of Seven together, was accused of something perilously close to treason - his paintings, said his severest critics, were discouraging immigration. — A. Y. Jackson

As your trusted Indian scout, it is important for me to warn you that you are now on perilously thin ice — Craig Johnson

More worryingly, my baby fangs were out, which usually happened only when I was perilously close to tipping over into Mr. Hyde territory. I quickly drew them back in. It didn't help much. I still looked like Dracula's daughter. Which was completely unfair, since he'd only been an uncle. — Karen Chance

Yet Aristotle's excellence of substance, so far from being associated with the grand style, is associated with something that at times comes perilously near jargon. — Irving Babbitt

It is perilously easy to have amazing sympathy with God's truth and remain in sin. — Oswald Chambers

In Freakonomics, we examined the causes of the rise and fall of violent crime in the United States. In 1960, crime began a sudden climb. By 1980, the homicide rate had doubled, reaching a historic peak. For several years crime stayed perilously high, but in the early 1990s it began to fall and kept falling. So what happened?
In Freakonomics, we identified one missing factor - the legalization of abortion in the early 1970s. The theory was jarring but simple. A rise in abortion meant that fewer unwanted children were being born, which meant fewer children growing up in the sort of difficult circumstances that increase the likelihood of criminality. — Steven D. Levitt

I came back into the room and excitedly said, "They love their hair." "Precisely!" she shouted. "Look on the top bunk." Perilously positioned on the thin wooden headboard of the bed, a bottle of STA-WET gel. "Kevin doesn't just wake up with that spiky bedhead look, Pudge. He works for it. He loves that hair. They leave their hair products here, Pudge, because they have duplicates at home. All those boys do. And you know why?" "Because they're compensating for their tiny little penises?" I asked. "Ha ha. No. That's why they're macho assholes. They love their hair because they aren't smart enough to love something more interesting. So we hit them where it hurts: the scalp. — John Green

I find myself most drawn to: art that has arisen from a deeply personal conversation between the artist and the work at hand. It is art that walks perilously close to the Edge, that crosses the river of blood into Faerie, that flies so high it is scorched by the sun, and then returns to tell the tale to us. It is art that needed to be written, or painted, or sung, or woven, or otherwise shaped. It is art gifted by the Mystery to the maker ... and then, in turn, gifted to us. — Terri Windling

The flat top of the hill was scattered with the bodies of dead men in the uniforms of Sounis and Eddis. The outposts of both armies had met here. As I stood staring, I thought, These are my dead. All of them. The battle hadn't been unanticipated or forced on me, as the raid in the villa had been. I had chosen it. These men, Eddisian and Sounisian alike, had died for my decisions.
When the magus stepped from the bushes toward the back part of the hill, I was more than horrified. I was perilously close to distraught.
...
When he pulled away and looked into my face, I knew that he would tell me that I was Sounis and that I needed to pull myself together.
"Your uncle," he said, "in all the years I saw him rule, never had a moment of self-doubt. Never a regret for a single life lost. Do you understand?"
I understood that I didn't want to be my uncle. — Megan Whalen Turner

To suggest that the merciful, longsuffering, gracious and loving God of the Bible would invent a dreadful doctrine like Calvinism, which would have us believe it is an act of 'grace' to select only certain people for heaven and, by exclusion, others for hell, comes perilously close to blasphemy. — Tim LaHaye

Much of our adult morality, in books and out of them, has a stuffiness unworthy of childhood. Our grown-up conclusions often rest on perilously soft bottom. — E.B. White

He held up a hand. "You've come perilously close to being written up for insubordination, Lieutenant. I expect better control from you, and have rarely had the need to remind you of it."
"Yes, sir."
"Moreover, I find myself insulted both on a personal and professional level that you assumed I had or would approve an asinine schedule that pulls you off a priority."
"I apologize, Commander, and can only offer the weak excuse that any and all contact with Lee Chang results in my temporary insanity."
"Understood." Whitney turned the disc over in his hand. "It surprises me, Dallas, that you didn't shove this down his throat."
"Actually, sir, I had another orifice in mind."
His lips quirked, just slightly. Then he snapped the disc in two, just as she had.
"Thank you, Commander."
"Let's get this damn circus over with, so we can both get back to work. — J.D. Robb

If toting the standard equipment is not what male or female, exactly what does?
well, duh, its barrettes.
At least thats what kids think it is your clothing, hairstyle, toy choice, favorite color.
Slippery stuff, that. You can see how perilously easy would be to err — Peggy Orenstein

Gentleness was sometimes perilously close to pity. — Julie Anne Long

We are already perilously close to killing off the top of the oceanic food chain - with catastrophic consequences that we can't begin to imagine. Let us not, in the heat of anger, reduce the already devastated population of great white sharks by one more member. — Peter Benchley

The greater a man's talents, the more marked his idiosyncracies. Yet in the provinces originality is considered perilously close to lunacy. — Honore De Balzac

the front seat with his alarm again ringing furiously. "Are you all right?" shouted Milo. "Umphh," grunted Tock. "Sorry to get carried away, but I think you get the point." As they drove along, Tock continued to explain the importance of time, quoting the old philosophers and poets and illustrating each point with gestures that brought him perilously close to tumbling headlong from the speeding automobile. — Norton Juster

He took one step out of her office cubical, turned, and said, "I'm not going to bite you, ya know."

She closed her eyes. Biting. An image of him nibbling at her neck took her by surprise and she dropped her pen. She startled and opened her lids. He was far more dangerous than she had first imagined. Even her thoughts weren't safe from the perilously handsome man. — Vicki Wilkerson

This is how I feel, I can't name it straight out but it seems important, do you feel it too?
this sort of direct question is not for the squeamish. For one thing, it's perilously close to 'Do you like me? Please like me,' which you know quite well that 99% of all the interhuman manipulation and bullshit gamesmanship that goes on goes on precisely because the idea of saying this sort of thing straight out is regarded as somehow obscene. — David Foster Wallace

The movies were wonderful because they took you out of yourself, and at the same time they gave you a sense of being whole. Things of the world might serve to remind you at every turn that your life was snarled and perilously incomplete, that terror would never be far from possession of your heart, but those perceptions would nearly always vanish, if only for a little while, in the cool and nicely scented darkness of any movie house, anywhere. — Richard Yates

His dreams were getting more frightful - rising black swirls of water, cars floating by like river bugs - but he didn't know much about how to build a boat. The steam box was a start, even if he couldn't tell Annie, even though the line between faith and becoming unhinged seemed perilously narrow. — Rae Meadows

What's the current price for a thought in these days of inflation?" Alan donwered aloud as he paused in the doorway. She'd looked so beautiful, he reflected. So distant. Then she glanced up with a smile that enchanced the first and erased the second.
"That was quick," Shelby complimented him and avoided the question with equal ease. "I'm afraid I admired your tea set a bit too strongly and made your butler nervous.He might be wondering if I'll slip the saucer into my bag." Setting down the cup, she rose. "Are you ready to go be charming and distinguished? You look as though you would be."
Alan lifted a brow. "I have a feeling distinguished comes perilously close to sedate in your book."
"No,you're lots of room yet," she told him as she breezed into the hall. "I'll give you a jab if you start teetering toward sedate. — Nora Roberts

His eyebrows drew together. He was perilously close to unibrow; I guess nobody had held him down and administered a good plucking to the caterpillar climbing across his forehead. — Lilith Saintcrow

The modern reader (or viewer, or listener: let's include everybody) is perilously overloaded. His attention is, to use the latest lingo,'targeted' by powerful forces? Our consciousness is a staging area, a field of operations for all kinds of enterprises, which make free use of it. — Saul Bellow

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

Though they were very dissimilar in character, they also shared many tastes and appetites, and those they didn't share they tolerated in each other with instinctive respect, as a necessary spice of difference. They knew each other very well indeed. Her natural tendency was to deplore human failings in others and ignore them in herself; his natural tendency was to understand and forgive human failings in others, and be merciless upon them in himself. She felt herself invincibly strong; he knew himself perilously weak. — Colleen McCullough

Playing the clown is not an easy task. Clowns, I have come to believe, are placed upon the earth solely to fill the needs of others, while running perilously close to "Empty" themselves. — Alan Bradley

After the assassination of my wife, our nation was perilously close to civil strife. If I, as the co-chairman of the Party, had asked my people to take to the streets, the very existence of the federation would have been threatened. — Asif Ali Zardari

Escape is a good novel, a gripping movie, a holiday - not something I can imagine being forced into. I am used to thinking of travel as an escape from security and predictability and stability, not a journey in search of these things. I am used to thinking of home as something that gets left behind at the start of a journey, not something you might be travelling perilously towards. — Adele Dumont

I think the membrane - I say that the membrane between life and death is perilously thin. And I do think the story of Jesus, this great mythical story, can have transforming value in our lives. — Jay Parini

We wore headlamps and the sight of us bobbing up the hill or zipping perilously down it had the look of busy stars, as if the night sky had come down to join us in our play. — Benjamin Percy

Now they were lawyers and investment bankers, with faces creased and drawn by the skirmish of daily life. Others I'd known well, and as we inched perilously closer to the casket, our talk evidenced a shared fondness for Rob but also something else shared in our own receding dreams. There was Ty and his dermatology career, me and my struggles to publish a second novel, former history majors who were doing their best to remain in school forever. Nobody, it seemed, was making the money he'd thought he would make, inhabiting the home he'd thought he would inhabit, doing the thing he'd thought he would do in life. Nobody was fulfilling the dreams harbored on graduation day almost ten years earlier. — Jeff Hobbs

Quentin found himself staring at the end of his Brakebills careers across the perilously slender gap of only two months of time. It was like he'd been wending his way though a vast, glittering city, zig-zagging through side streets and wandering through buildings and haunted de Chrico arcades and little hidden piazzas, the whole time thinking that he'd barely scratched the surface, that he was just seeing a tiny sliver of one little neighborhood. And then suddenly he turned a corner and it turned out that he'd been through the whole city, it was all behind him, and all that was left was one short street leading straight out of town. — Lev Grossman

If she had looked out the window, she might have seen a great, hoary old black owl alight on the branch of the oak tree. She might have seen the owl lean perilously forward on his green-black branch and, without taking his gaze from her window, fall hard - thump, bash! - onto the streetside. She would have seen the bird bounce up, and when he righted himself, become a handsome young man in a handsome black coat, his dark hair curly and thick, flecked with silver, his mouth half-smiling, as if anticipating a terribly sweet thing. — Catherynne M Valente

Picture, if you will, Tommy, the fuse of a cannon. Now, when one touches a flame to a fuse, what happens? It's consumed bit ... '
He stepped toward her, so close that his boot toes nearly touched the toes of her slippers.
She sucked in a breath. But she stood her ground when his knees brushed hers.
' ... by bit ... '
His voice had gone perilously soft. ' ... by bit. Until ... '
His breath fluttered her hair.
His mouth was next to her ear now. 'Boom. — Julie Anne Long