You who come my grave to view,
A moment stop and think.
That I am in eternity,
And you are on the brink. [ Epitaph ]

'Tis a stern and a startling thing to think
How often mortality stands on the brink
Of its grave without any misgiving;
And yet in this slippery world of strife,
In the stir of human bustle so rife.
There are daily sounds to tell us that Life
Is dying, and Death is living! [ Hood ]

The flood of time is setting on; we stand upon its brink. [ Shelley ]

On the brink of the waters of life and truth we are miserably dying. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Will no superior genius snatch the quill, and save me on the brink from writing ill? [ Young ]

Every lie, great or small, is the brink of a precipice, the depth of which nothing but omniscience can fathom. [ Reade ]

To have a true idea of man or of life, one must have stood himself on the brink of suicide, or on the doorsill of insanity, at least once. [ Taine ]

There is before the eyes of men, on the brink of dissolution, a glassy film, which death appears to impart, that they may have a brief prospect of eternity when some behold the angels of light, while others have the demons of darkness before them. [ Cockton ]

A literary career is a more thorny path than that which leads to fortune. If you have the misfortune not to rise above mediocrity, you feel mortified for life; and if you are successful, a host of enemies spring up against you. Thus you find yourself on the brink of an abyss between contempt and hatred. [ Voltaire ]