Precariously Quotes & Sayings

Calvinist believers were psychologically isolated. Their distance from God could only be precariously bridged, and their inner tensions only partially relieved, by unstinting, purposeful labor. — Max Weber

Empathy is always perched precariously between gift and invasion ... Empathy isn't just remembering to say 'that must be really hard'
it's figuring out how to bring difficulty into the light so it can be seen at all. Empathy isn't just listening, it's asking the questions whose answers need to be listened to. Empathy requires inquiry as much as imagination ... Empathy means realizing trauma has no discreet edges.p7 — Leslie Jamison

Magic begins in superstition, and ends in science ... At every step the history of civilization teaches us how slight and superficial a structure civilization is, and how precariously it is poised upon the apex of a never-extinct volcano of poor and oppressed barbarism, superstition and ignorance. Modernity is a cap superimposed upon the Middle Ages, which always remain. — Will Durant

Men have been barbarians much longer than they have been civilized. They are only precariously civilized, and within us there is the propensity, persistent as the force of gravity, to revert under stress and strain, under neglect or temptation, to our first natures. — Walter Lippmann

It was so unlikely that she should be there, standing on the far side of the ballroom, and yet there she was. Unlikely Lucy, gleaming, a jade flame burning bright in a sea of mere diamonds. Polished and disheveled at the same time, her fitted, elegant gown contrasted with hair that looked as if it had been precariously arranged and might escape its pins at any moment. — Jenny Holiday

Nowadays when a poet with one privately printed book can have his next three years taken care of by a Guggenheim fellowship, a Kenyon Review fellowship, and the Prix de Rome, it is hard to remember what chances the poet took in that small-town world, how precariously hand-to-mouth his existence was. And yet in one way the old days were better; [Vachel] Lindsay after a while, by luck and skill, got far more readers than any poet could get today. — Randall Jarrell

In which I prevail for a moment over the feelings which have bound me and come to realise that no matter how precariously close to the end it may feel, my life has really only just begun. — Phoebe Gloeckner

Lunch looks grand, Meg. You've really outdone yourself," James commented, loading his plate. He frowned down at an escaping carrot extending precariously over the plate edge and
eased it back with his fingertip, then grunted and promptly stuck the burnt digit in his mouth. "I've been trying to eat better, organic and all. Are these vegetables free range?" he asked with a straight face.
The table fell silent as several sets of eyes blinked owlishly back at him. With an equally straight face Beth speared a roasted wedge and studied it. "I don't think potatoes require much
grazing room, genius," she deadpanned. — Shannon MacLeod

There must be grounds for doubt as well as belief in order to render the choice more truly a choice, and therefore more deliberate and laden with more personal vulnerability and investment. An overwhelming preponderance of evidence on either side would make our choice as meaningless as would a loaded gun pointed at our heads. The option to believe must appear on one's personal horizon like the fruit of paradise, perched precariously between sets of demands held in dynamic tension. Fortunately, in this world, one is always provided with sufficient materials out of which to fashion a life of credible conviction or dismissive denial. We are acted upon, in other words, by appeals to our personal values, our yearnings, our fears, our appetites, and our egos. What we choose to embrace, to be responsive to, is the purest reflection of who we are and what we love. That is why faith, the choice to believe, is, in the final analysis, an action that is positively laden with moral significance. — Terryl L. Givens

Could she sense her life as she knew it hanging precariously in the balance? Could she feel his eyes on her? Did she have a sixth sense for monsters? The thought of it made him smile — C.J. Roberts

This is the way we fall. First we lose our balance, teetering precariously on the edge of uncertainty, until, mercilessly, gravity takes over. You can't outshine gravity. — Cassia Leo

Okay, now you really don't need to do that blushing virgin bit anymore - I got to ogle your body at my leisure for hours. Matter of fact, I had so long, I could have painted you, instead of just taking pictures with my sat-phone." He held up his phone with a wink.
"I loathe you," she said, precariously bending to collect her toiletries and clothes. As she headed for the bathroom, she gave him the evilest eye she could muster ... . — Kresley Cole

And so, it is always the case that the past is irreparably land-locked, and the future has yet to land. And here we are, living out our lives on the precariously thin line which separates the two. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

I can line up these moments of violence, precariously as dominoes. Sometimes I worry they will all fall; knocking each other down, knocking me down. Sometimes they do. Violence left me hollow. It left me enraged. It left me desperately needing to leave a body I couldn't trust. But most frustrating of all, violence left me too wounded to claim the space I needed in order to find fulfillment in the arms, heart, and body of a queer relationship. — Jennifer Patterson

Hello' said a vague and dreamy voice from behind them. Harry looked up: Luna Lovegood had drifted over from the Ravenclaw table. Many people were staring at her and few people openly laughing and pointing; she had managed to procure a hat shaped like a life-size lion's head, which was perched precariously on her head.
'I'm supporting Gryffindor' said Luna, pointing unnecessarily at her hat. Look what it does ... '
She reached up and tapped the hat with her wand. It opened its mouth wide and gave an extremely realistic roar that made everyone in the vicinity jump.
'It's good, isn't it?' said Luna happily. 'I wanted to have it chewing up a serpent to represent Slytherin, you know, but there wasn't time. Anyway ... good luck, Ronald! — J.K. Rowling

Those of us committed to a queer life know that forms of recognition are either precariously conditional, you have to be the right kind of queer by depositing your hope for happiness in the right places (even with perverse desire you can have straight aspirations), or it is simply not given. — Sara Ahmed

Eyeglasses and teeth: both breakable, valuable things that you have to carry with you all the time. Hanging there precariously like earrings without backings, threatening to fall out, chip off, crack to the quick because of some innocent nut or seed or beer bottle. — Ainslie Hogarth

In his original design the solicitor's clerk seemed to have forgotten the need for a staircase to link both the floors, and what he had provided had the appearance of an afterthought. Doorways had been punched in the eastern wall and a rough wooden staircase - heavy planks on an uneven frame with one warped unpainted banister, the whole covered with a sloping roof of corrugated iron - hung precariously at the back of the house, in striking contrast with the white-pointed brickwork of the front, the white woodwork and the frosted glass of doors and windows.
For this house Mr.Biswas had paid five thousand five hundred dollars. — V.S. Naipaul

On a nightstand in a teenager's room, a glass vase filled with violets leans precariously against a wall. The only thing saving the vase from a thousand-piece death on the hardwood floor is the groove in the nightstand's surface that catches the bottom of vase, and of course the wall itself. The violets, nearly a week old, droop in the light of a waning gibbous moon. Wrinkled petals are already piling up on the floor between the nightstand and the wall, and a girl only six days sixteen stares at the dying bouquet from her bed. — Jay Nichols

Have you ever watched a baby learning to walk? He totters, arms stretched out to balance himself. He wobbles - and falls, perhaps bumps his nose. Then he puts the palms of his little hands flat on the floor, hikes his rear end up, looks around to see if anybody is watching him. If nobody is, usually he doesn't bother to cry, just precariously balances himself - and tries again. Well, the baby can teach us. What you've undertaken ... isn't a state of perfection to be arrived at all of the sudden. It's a WALK, and a walk isn't static but ever-changing. We Friends say that all discouragement is from an evil source and can only end in more evil. Wallowing in self-condemnation or feeling sorry for yourself is worse than falling on your face in the first place ... So thee is human. — Catherine Marshall

So he bought tickets to the Greyhound and they climbed, painfully, inch by inch and with the knowledge that, once they reached the top, there would be one breath-taking moment when the car would tip precariously into space, over an incline six stories steep and then plunge, like a plunging plane. She buried her head against him, fearing to look at the park spread below. He forced himself to look: thousands of little people and hundreds of bright little stands, and over it all the coal-smoke pall of the river factories and railroad yards. He saw in that moment the whole dim-lit city on the last night of summer; the troubled streets that led to the abandoned beaches, the for-rent signs above overnight hotels and furnished basement rooms, moving trolleys and rising bridges: the cagework city, beneath a coalsmoke sky. — Nelson Algren

Each time he suggested they get married, she said no. They were too happy, precariously so, and she wanted to guard that bond; she feared that marriage would flatten it into a prosaic partnership. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Every species, except the human, chose immediate, short-range success by means of specialization. But specialization always leads into blind alleys. It is only by remaining precariously generalized that an organism can advance towards that rational intelligence which is its compensation for not having a body and instincts perfectly adapted to one particular kind of environment. — Aldous Huxley

I live precariously through my characters - so I want them to be loved passionately, live vibrantly, love unconditionally. Make friends they would die for - Explore unimaginable possibilities from all warps of life. And to never forget those that held their hands when life got scary. Wiped their tears away after a broken heart. Helped them back on their feet when others let them down. I want my characters to have family and friends - just like mine — Patti Roberts

Most teachers have little control over school policy or curriculum or choice of texts or special placement of students, but most have a great deal of autonomy inside the classroom. To a degree shared by only a few other occupations, such as police work, public education rests precariously on the skill and virtue of the people at the bottom of the institutional pyramid. — Tracy Kidder

I'm following hot on her heels, smarting from her latest rebuttal, and I can't contain my temper as the flood of rejection washes over me, tossing me precariously close to the edge. — Siobhan Davis

No kingdom can be secured otherwise than by arming the people. The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave. He, who has nothing, and who himself belongs to another, must be defended by him, whose property he is, and needs no arms. But he, who thinks he is his own master, and has what he can call his own, ought to have arms to defend himself, and what he possesses; else he lives precariously, and at discretion. — James Burgh

Could you just imagine? If every suicide rose--think of Faulkner's Quentin Compson as a vampire. I don't hate the South I don't I don't. She wondered how they'd have worked it out in Cambridge when Quentin threw himself off the Andersen bridge into the Charles amid the odor of the honeysuckle, not the beer, sweat, rum, and tainted magnolias of this city, precariously beneath the level of the water. The Compson blood had thinned out; at least this way, he's restore it after a fashion. — Susan Shwartz

Though you did eat all the pizza."
"I only had five slices," Simon protested, leaning his chair backward so it balanced precariously on its two back legs.
"How many slices did you think were in a pizza, dork?" Clary wanted to know.
"Less than five slices isn't a meal. It's a snack." Simon looked apprehensively at Luke. "Does this mean you're going to wolf out and eat me?"
"Certainly not." Luke rose to toss the pizza box into the trash. "You would be stringy and hard to digest. — Cassandra Clare

Luke opened the pizza box and, finding it empty, shut it with a sigh.
"Though you did eat all
the pizza."
"I only had five slices," Simon protested, leaning his chair backward so it
balanced precariously on
its two back legs.
"How many slices did you think were in a pizza, dork?" Clary wanted to
know.
"Less than five slices isn't a meal. It's a snack." Simon looked apprehensively at Luke. "Does this
mean you're going to
wolf out and eat me? — Cassandra Clare

According to Hindu cosmology, we're in the kali yuga, a dark period when the cow of history is balanced precariously on one leg, soon to topple. Then there are our new-age friends who believe that this December we're in for a global cage-rattling which, once the dust has settled, will usher in a great spiritual awakening. Most of this apocalyptic noise appears to be just wishful thinking on the part of people who find life too messy and uncertain for comfort, let alone for serenity and mirth. — Tom Robbins

I'd rather live precariously in my own office than comfortably in somebody else's. — Peter Mayle

I don't know that she can ever make you a proper wife," Tavis said in a low voice that sounded precariously close to pleading. "Don't force the issue. I wouldn't have her hurt or ill-treated for anything in the world. She is dear to all of us. You are receiving a gift, Laird. Whether you choose to believe so or not, you are receiving something more precious than gold — Maya Banks

These earthenware bowls are fragile and easily broken, they are only made of a little clay on which fortune has precariously bestowed a shape, and the same could be said of mankind. — Jose Saramago

The individual in the ordinary circumstances of living may feel more unreal than real; in a literal sense, more dead than alive; precariously differentiated from the rest of the world, so that his identity and autonomy are always in question ... He may not possess an over-riding sense of personal consistency or cohesiveness. He may feel more insubstantial than substantial, and unable to assume that the stuff he is made of is genuine, good, valuable. And he may feel his self as partially divorced from his body. — R.D. Laing

The year of my birth, 1940, was the fulcrum of America in the twentieth century, when the nation was balanced precariously between the darkness of the Great Depression on one side and the storms of war in Europe and the Pacific on the other. — Tom Brokaw

I just think it's fortunate that Sir Isaac Newton didn't share the sense of humor of a member of the public, because had he done so, he would of been so amused by the simple effects of gravity, that he would of never gotten round making a comprehensive study of it's causes.
That's the punchline! 'a comprehensive study of it's courses'! I worked for that! Will you be telling this joke at work? I don't think so!
And yes, I am aware that I say this to you while hanging precariously of this art-deco balcony. And I do so deliberately in the hope that I will fall to my death, and that you will learn about the thin line between slap-stick and tragedy. — Stewart Lee

The power of kings is transitory, like everything else. Royal glory is difficult to climb, like a bamboo; it is hard to hold, being fidgety like a monkey on a treetop; it is balanced precariously, like drops of water on a lotus-leaf; it is changeable, like the path of the wind; it is undependable, like the friendship of a dishonest man; it is difficult to tame, like a serpent; it glistens only for a moment, like a cloud at sunset; it is fragile, like bubbles on the surface of a river; it is elusive, like the treasure attained in a dream. Remember all this, and enjoy your kingdom modestly. — V.S. Narvane

Canada regards herself as responsible to all mankind for the peculiar ecological balance that now exists so precariously in the water, ice and land areas of the Arctic archipelago. We do not doubt for a moment that the rest of the world would find us at fault, and hold us liable, should we fail to ensure adequate protection of that environment from pollution or artificial deterioration. — Pierre Trudeau

The press box at Wrigley Field in Chicago is an extended narrow shed, two rows deep, that is precariously bolted to the iron rafters just underneath the park's second deck. To gain access, one must climb a steeply angled ramp and clamber down a little starboard companionway, guarded at its foot by a uniformed minion and then proceed giddily along a catwalk that hangs directly above the tiered, circling rows of seats and spectators behind home plate. — Roger Angell

You tread a precariously thin line between being charmingly headstrong and insufferably pigheaded. — Ransom Riggs

At times young man, you tread a precariously thin line between being charmingly headstrong and insufferably pigheaded. ( ... ) Miss Bloom, would you fetch my flask of coca-wine? It seems I won't be sleeping tonight and I shall have to indulge if I am to keep awake. — Ransom Riggs

He shifts and my eyes shatter into thousands of pieces that ricochet around the room, capturing a million snapshots, a million moments in time. Flickering images faded with age, frozen thoughts hovering precariously in dead space, a whirlwind of memories that slice through my soul. — Tahereh Mafi

It makes no difference to me whether I shoot you or you fall to your death."
"It does make a difference," I said, my voice small but confident. "You and I share the same blood." I lifted my hand precariously, showing him my birthmark. "I'm your descendant. If I sacrifice my blood, Patch will become human and you'll die. It's written in The Book of Enoch. — Becca Fitzpatrick

My second meeting with Vincent Starrett began on a cool Sunday afternoon in May of 1962. After a short interlude, he returned from the kitchen precariously balancing a large cup of tea on a very small saucer. It was the largest tea cup I had ever seen, large enough to startle, I am inclined to suspect, even the Mad Hatter in 'Alice in Wonderland. — Peter Ruber

For all that we have done, as a civilization, as individuals, the universe is not stable, and nor is any single thing within it. Stars consume themselves, the universe itself rushes apart, and we ourselves are composed of matter in constant flux. Colonies of cells in temporary alliance, replicating and decaying and housed within, an incandescent cloud of electrical impulse and precariously stacked carbon code memory. This is reality, this is self knowledge, and the perception of it will, of course, make you dizzy. — Richard K. Morgan

I feared that if I let him, it would be the final push over a ledge I had been precariously hovering on since the day I had first laid eyes on him. — Nicole R. Locker

The Chinese enjoyed the grim spectacle of death, Jim had decided, as a way of reminding themselves of how precariously they were alive. They liked to be cruel for the same reason, to remind themselves of the vanity of thinking that the world was anything else. — J.G. Ballard

The dead did not call to me from the underworlds, but spoke to me from the rustling pine needles. They did not gaze down upon me from the skyworlds, but smiled up at me from a bead of dew trembling precariously upon a blade of grass. They told me I have never been alone. Not for one instant. Every soul is a thread in the fabric of the world. All I must do to see my relatives is gaze into the shining water that sleeps, — Kathleen O'Neal Gear

Thank you, Simon, I appreciate that." Luke opened the pizza box and, finding it empty, shut it with a sigh. "Though you did eat all the pizza."
"I only had five slices," Simon protested, leaning his chair backward so it balanced precariously on its two back legs.
"How many slices did you think were in a pizza, dork?" Clary wanted to know.
"Less than five slices isn't a meal. It's a snack." Simon looked apprehensively at Luke. "Does this mean you're going to wolf out and eat me?"
"Certainly not." Luke rose to toss the pizza box into the trash. "You would be stringy and hard to digest."
"But kosher," Simon pointed out cheerfully.
"I'll be sure to point any Jewish lycanthropes your way." Luke leaned his back against the sink. — Cassandra Clare

Maybe the truth of it all is that we're just too fearful to give our faith enough running room to realize that this precariously thin path that led us to the end of this life is dwarfed to obscurity by the infinitely vast byway that begins immediately on the other side. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

There are moments that define a person's whole life. Moments in which everything they are and everything they may possibly become balance on a single decision. Life and death, hope and despair, victory and failure teeter precariously on the decision made at that moment. These are moments ungoverned by happenstance, untroubled by luck. These are the moments in which a person earns the right to live, or not. — Jonathan Maberry

Teenagers are some of the most passionate, dynamic and creative people I know. Yet, too often, this creative spark is left to flicker precariously and sometimes fade entirely. — Malorie Blackman

The whole right side of his face was smashed in, concave forehead and crushed cheekbone and one eye bugging precariously from a broken socket. He was purplish-black, and dirty white: Maggots seethed from every pore and crawled across him in excited wriggly piles, blowflies waving and blooming and wilting, the bits of bone they'd scraped clean glinting like tiny mosaic tiles. Scraps of jeans and a leather jacket clung to the sticky seething mess of his flesh. He was big, big shouldered, a good foot taller; chit-chitter, he went, even standing still. — Joan Frances Turner

Look how men live, always precariously balanced between good and bad fortune. — Sophocles

If only I had known a year ago what I'd be facing now. Until last year I lived with the innocent arrogance that my life was a simple product of effort, will, and design. But now I am a house of cards, held precariously by the fragile conspiracy of wind, weight, and angle. Perhaps it is best we cannot see into our futures. — Martha Manning

The food which I get by begging is divine." After I had thought over what she said, I understood her meaning. When we get our food precariously as alms, we remember God the giver. But when we receive our food regularly at home, as a matter of course, we are apt to regard it as ours by right. — Rabindranath Tagore

Life is a house of cards, balanced on a tetter-totter,
precariously perched on a roller coaster.
The only thing that should surprise us about our surprises is that we are surprised by them.
Beth Cardall's Diary — Richard Paul Evans

I just don't like the idea of going down that hole tomorrow with this thing hanging over you and me like..." She stopped and struggled for a good simile.
"Like an open airplane storage locker?" I offered.
(...)
"I like the 'open airplane storage compartment' thing better. It means there's a journey with lots of baggage."
"And things being balanced precariously," I added.
"And a lack of closure," she said.
"Ok," I admitted. "I could start bullshitting about frequent flier miles or something, but I cant really think of any more good ones. — Elliott James