Precarious Quotes

1. "Though anger seems a pessimistic response to a situation, it is at root a symptom of hope: the hope that the world can be better than it is. The man who shouts every time he loses his house keys is betraying a beautiful but rash faith in a universe in which keys never go astray. The woman who grows furious every time a politician breaks an election promise reveals a precariously utopian belief that elections do not involve deceit. The news shouldn't eliminate angry responses; but it should help us to be angry for the right reasons, to the right degree, for the right length of time – and as part of a constructive project. And whenever this isn't possible, then the news should help us with mourning the twisted nature of man and reconciling us to the difficulty of being able to imagine perfection while still not managing to secure it – for a range of stupid but nevertheless unbudgeable reasons."
Author: Alain De Botton

2. "Her jaw dropped. "You - you -"He chuckled and winked at her. Her ire evaporated like the steam from the pot--coiling and disappearing into the air. When he used his wiles on her, he was tantalizing. With that purely happy look on his face he was devastating."You do realize that I will have my revenge?" she said calmly, though her heart was racing. "I could hope for no less." He flashed her a grin, and she gripped the side of the table to keep from moving closer."I dislike you.""Always a comfort to know." He looked at the kitchen clock, a small mantel piece positioned precariously on a shelf. "Right on time for the night."She blinked. She supposed it was something of a nightly ritual. "Wouldn't want to disappoint you, your highness.""Your majesty, if you will."
Author: Anne Mallory

3. "Isn't it sad how some people's grip on their lives is so precarious that they'll embrace any preposterous delusion rather than face an occasional bleak truth?"
Author: Bill Watterson

4. "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"
Author: C.J. Roberts

5. "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."
Author: Cassandra Clare

6. "Luke opened the pizza box and, finding it empty, shut it with a sigh."Though you did eat allthe pizza." "I only had five slices," Simon protested, leaning his chair backward so itbalanced precariously onits two back legs. "How many slices did you think were in a pizza, dork?" Clary wanted toknow. "Less than five slices isn't a meal. It's a snack." Simon looked apprehensively at Luke. "Does thismean you're going towolf out and eat me?"
Author: Cassandra Clare

7. "Her endeavor was misguided and wrong and maybe plain crazy, akin to someone waking up one day and deciding he's going to scale Kilimanjaro because he can't stop imagining the view from the top, the picture so arresting and beautiful that it too soon delivers him to a precarious ledge, where he can no longer turn back. And while it's easy to say this is a situation to be avoided, isn't this what we also fear and crave simultaneously, that some internal force which defies understanding might remake us into the people we dream we are?"
Author: Chang Rae Lee

8. "It was a lone tree burning on the desert. A heraldic tree that the passing storm had left afire. The solitary pilgrim drawn up before it had traveled far to be here and he knelt in the hot sand and held his numbed hands out while all about in that circle attended companies of lesser auxiliaries routed forth into the inordinate day, small owls that crouched silently and stood from foot to foot and tarantulas and solpugas and vinegarroons and the vicious mygale spiders and beaded lizards with mouths black as a chowdog's, deadly to man, and the little desert basilisks that jet blood from their eyes and the small sandvipers like seemly gods, silent and the same, in Jeda, in Babylon. A constellation of ignited eyes that edged the ring of light all bound in a precarious truce before this torch whose brightness had set back the stars in their sockets."
Author: Cormac McCarthy

9. "The word I think of is precarious. I am struck by how precarious it all is. How the things that hold us are only as strong as the faith we have in them."
Author: David Levithan

10. "But it was reserved for Augustus to relinquish the ambitious design of subduing the whole earth, and to introduce a spirit of moderation into the public councils. Inclined to peace by his temper and situation, it was easy for him to discover that Rome, in her present exalted situation, had much less to hope than to fear from the chance of arms; and that, in the prosecution of remote wars, the undertaking became every day more difficult, the event more doubtful, and the possession more precarious, and less beneficial."
Author: Edward Gibbon

11. "I think in certain areas the demand is greater than it has ever been, and my business is better than it's been in 30 years. The music business is so precarious, as you know-you've got to make it while you can make it, and that's exactly what we're doing."
Author: George Shearing

12. "There's a lot going on I don't have a clue about, I wrote; I'll try my damnedest to figure it all out, but you've got to undertsand these things take time. I have no idea where I'm headed—all I know for sure is I don't want to get hung up thinking too deeply about things. The world's too precarious a place for that. Start me mulling over ideas and I'll en up forcing people to do things they hate. I couldn't stand that."
Author: Haruki Murakami

13. "When older people get together there is something unflappable about them; you can sense they've tasted all the heavy, bitter, spicy food of life, extract its poison, and will now spend ten or fifteen years in a state of perfect equilibrium and enviable morality. They are happy with themselves. They have renounced the vain attempts of youth to adapt the world to their desires. They have failed and now, they can relax. In a few years they will once again be troubled by a great anxiety, but this time it will be a fear of death; it will have a strange effect on their tastes, it will make them indifferent, or eccentric, or moody, incomprehensible to their families, strangers to their children. But between the ages of forty and sixty they enjoy a precarious sense of tranquility."
Author: Irène Némirovsky

14. "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!"
Author: J.K. Rowling

15. "The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life."
Author: Jane Addams

16. "[...] a morass of despair violence death with a thin layer of glass spread upon the surface where Love, a tiny crab with pincers and rainbow shell, walked delicately ever sideways but getting nowhere, while the sun [...] rose higher in the sky its tassels dropping with flame threatening every moment to melt the precarious highway of glass. And the people: giant pathworks of colour with limbs missing and parts of their mind snipped off to fit them into the outline of the free pattern."
Author: Janet Frame

17. "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."
Author: Jay Nichols

18. "Cold up there, huh?" Yeah, it kind of was. "Stupid down there, huh?" Seth's brows flew up. "For one in such a precarious position, you sure don't know how to talk yourself out of it." "That's because it's hard to reason with idiots." I gave him a cheeky grin. "Why bother?"
Author: Jennifer L. Armentrout

19. "I don't know if tea really helps when one feels precarious, but it does give one something warm to hold on to. A kitten would work just as well, but we don't have one at the moment. They will grow into cats."
Author: Joanna Bourne

20. "And how can poetry stand up against its new conditions? Its position is perfectly precarious."
Author: John Crowe Ransom

21. "Standing out there in th dark, I felt many different things. One of them was pride in my fellow Americans, ordinary people who rose to the moment, knowing it was their last. One was humility, for I was alive and untouched by the horrors of that day, free to continue my happy life as a husband and father and writer. In the lonely blackness, I could almost taste the finiteness of life and thus it's preciousness. We take it for granted, but it is fragile, precarious, uncertain able to cease at any instant without notice. I was reminded of what should be obvious but too often is not, that each today, each hour and minute, is worth cherishing."
Author: John Grogan

22. "There was the situation in Nicaragua where the Sandinistas had taken over a couple of years earlier. There was a civil war going on in El Salvador and there was a similar situation in Guatemala. So Honduras was in a rather precarious geographic position indeed."
Author: John Negroponte

23. "Anybody who has had a great treasure has always led a precarious existence."
Author: John Wyndham

24. "Because the egoic mind has led us to feel separate from our immortal Ground of Being over the millennia, we have invented a number of immortality symbols to give us a precarious sense of security and identity in life. Traditionally, these have been religious in character, such as the belief in everlasting life after death, in the West, and the belief in reincarnation, in the East. However, today, it is money that provides the primary immortality symbol. It is our obsession for money that is driving humanity to extinction. For when we do not face our fears with full consciousness and intelligence, these fears will eventually come along to haunt us."
Author: Ken Wilber

25. "Love may be able to force you into precarious situations, it may lead you into double-edged bonfires and you don't smell the smoke, you only see the temptation of a perfume."
Author: Laura Gentile

26. "A gull planed steeply over their heads, a precarious flash of white against the windy blue sky. The short, hacking cry of a baby seemed to merge seamlessly for a moment with the gull's repetitive wail, as if they were one species. One species, Falkender thought, raucous and scavenging; one species calling out in pain. To be human is to be mixed and miscegenated like this. To be lost."
Author: M. John Harrison

27. "My dear, I'm seldom sure of anything. Life at best is a precarious business..."
Author: Madeleine L'Engle

28. "Meantime do you see me as still working on the book, still trying to answer such questions as: Is there any ultimate reality, external, conscious and ever-present etc. etc. that can be realised by any such means that may be acceptable to all creeds and religions and suitable to all climes and countries? Or do you find me between Mercy and Understanding, between Chesed and Binah (but still at Chesed)—my equilibrium, and equilibrium is all, precarious—balancing, teetering over the awful unbridgeable void, the all-but unretraceable path of God's lightning back to God?...Though it is perhaps a good idea under the circumstances to pretend at least to be proceeding with one's great work on "Secret Knowledge," then one can always say when it never comes out that the title explains this deficiency."
Author: Malcolm Lowry

29. "It is the case that, albeit to a lesser extent, all fictions make their readers live "the impossible", taking them out of themselves, breaking down barriers, and making them share, by identifying with the characters of the illusion, a life that is richer, more intense, or more abject and violent, or simply different from the one that they are confined to by the high-security prison that is real life. Fictions exist because of this fact. Because we have only one life, and our desires and fantasies demand a thousand lives. Because the abyss between what we are and what we would like to be has to be bridged somehow. That was why fictions were born: so that, through living this vicarious, transient, precarious, but also passionate and fascinating life that fiction transports us to, we can incorporate the impossible into the possible and our existence can be both reality and unreality, history and fable, concrete life and marvellous adventure."
Author: Mario Vargas Llosa

30. "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."
Author: Max Weber

31. "Is goodwill so fragile, so precarious a thing, then? (Of course, dear fellow, of course)"
Author: Milan Kundera

32. "I kissed his forehead. "You don't have to thank me. I told you, I do anything for someone I care about."He pulled away and looked up at me. "You said you do anything for someone you love."I didn't know how to respond to that. We were in such a precarious place. I didn't want to say anything that might scare him away or let him know how I truly felt, because at the end of the day, I loved him. It was that simple. Instead I gave him a small smile. "I did say that, didn't I?"
Author: Monica Alexander

33. "In modern times, if the sole measure of what's out there flows from your five senses then a precarious life awaits you."
Author: Neil DeGrasse Tyson

34. "The point I want to make about methanogens is that they were the losers in the race through a bottleneck, yet nonetheless survived in niche environments. Similarly, on a larger scale, it is rare for the loser to disappear completely, or for the latecomers never to gain at least a precarious foothold. The fact that flight had already evolved among birds did not preclude its later evolution in bats, which became the most numerous mammalian species. The evolution of plants did not lead to the disappearance of algae, or indeed the evolution of vascular plants to the disappearance of mosses."
Author: Nick Lane

35. "Depletion and climate change. For the older generation it's easy to misunderstand the word ‘student' or ‘graduate': to my contemporaries, at college in the 1980s, it meant somebody engaged in a liberal, academic education, often with hours of free time to dream, protest, play in a rock band or do research. Today's undergraduates have been tested every month of their lives, from kindergarten to high school. They are the measured inputs and outputs of a commercialized global higher education market worth $1.2 trillion a year—excluding the USA. Their free time is minimal: precarious part-time jobs are essential to their existence, so that they are a key part of the modern workforce. Plus they have become a vital asset for the financial system. In 2006, Citigroup alone made $220 million clear profit from its student loan book.2"
Author: Paul Mason

36. "Perhaps your definition of your self-system lacks authentic boundaries. You've erected a precarious structure of personality on unconscious factors over which you have no control. That's why you feel threatened by me."
Author: Philip K. Dick

37. "You tread a precariously thin line between being charmingly headstrong and insufferably pigheaded."
Author: Ransom Riggs

38. "I think these are very precarious times for women, it seems. So many of your rights are under assault."
Author: Richard Hanna

39. "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."
Author: Richard K. Morgan

40. "Everything had felt so precarious since her mother's death, like she was walking on a bridge made of paper."
Author: Sarah Addison Allen

41. "Life is precarious and improbable, a flame in matter, easily snuffed out. Nature shows no regard for the individual spark, in this creature or that, but only for the spreading of the fire, like an ember passed from cell to cell."
Author: Scott Russell Sanders

42. "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 andeased 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 muchgrazing room, genius," she deadpanned."
Author: Shannon MacLeod

43. "What I do is put my characters into situations that are so precarious there is no way to get out. And then I figure how to get them out."
Author: Sidney Sheldon

44. "Human attempts to construct moral order are always precarious: If righteousness too often leads to self-righteousness, the demand for justice can lead to one guillotine or another."
Author: Susan Neiman

45. "Not wanting the girls to endure the shame of a crazy mother, I spent my days acting as normal as possible. I walked through life, an actor in a Leave it to Beaver episode, determined to disguise all clues of my real condition until... well, until I could find an appropriate moment to do away with myself." [...]"Yet even as my depression spiraled into ever more precarious territory, I retained an uncanny ability to disguise my true mental condition from everyone except Tom. He was my sole source of strength and he never stopped encouraging me."
Author: Suzie Burke

46. "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."
Author: Tahereh Mafi

47. "For Aristotle, goodness is a kind of prospering in the precarious affair of being human."
Author: Terry Eagleton

48. "And yet, in a touching, shrunken way, she was rather pretty - a prettiness marred by her seeing to be precariously balanced on the edge of pain."
Author: Truman Capote

49. "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."
Author: V.S. Naipaul

50. "Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."
Author: Winston Churchill

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