"For many men that stumble at the threshold Are well foretold that danger lurks within." (William Shakespeare, "King Henry the Sixth", cca. 1623)
"Earth is to me a tomb, the firmament a vault, shrouding mere corruption.Time is no more, for I have stepped within the threshold of eternity; each man I meet appears a corse, which will soon be deserted of its animating spark, on the eve of decay and corruption." (Mary Shelley, "The Last Man", 1826)
"Truly disappointment is the guardian deity of human life; she sits at the threshold of unborn time, and marshals the events as they come forth." (Mary Shelley, "The Last Man", 1826)
"The highest type of free men should be sought where the highest resistance is constantly overcome: five steps from tyranny, close to the threshold of the danger of servitude." (Friedrich Nietzsche, "Twilight of the Idols", 1888)
"Men who know themselves are no longer fools. They stand on the threshold of the door of Wisdom." (Havelock Ellis, Impressions & Comments, 1930)
"Only the man who has had to face despair is really convinced that he needs mercy. Those who do not want mercy never seek it. It is better to find God on the threshold of despair than to risk our lives in a complacency that has never felt the need of forgiveness. A life that is without problems may literally be more hopeless than one that always verges on despair." (Thomas Merton,"No Man Is an Island", 1955)
"It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion." (Bertrand Russell, "Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects", 1957)
"The door to the past is a strange door. It swings open and things pass through it, but they pass in one direction only. No man can return across that threshold, though he can look down still and see the green light waver in the water weeds." (Loren C Eiseley, "The Immense Journey", 1957)
"In sleep, fantasy takes the form of dreams. But in waking life, too, we continue to dream beneath the threshold of consciousness, especially when under the influence of repressed or other unconscious complexes." (Carl Jung, "The practice of psychotherapy", 1966)
"The fact is that thresholds exist throughout reality, and that things on their far sides are altogether different from things on their hither sides." (Poul Anderson, "The Saturn Game", 1981)
"Once we overcome our fear of being tiny, we find ourselves on the threshold of a vast and awesome Universe that utterly dwarfs - in time, in space, and in potential - the tidy anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors." (Carl Sagan, "Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space", 1994)
"Society is at this moment at the threshold of an undreamed of mastery of our material environment, for science, which provides that mastery, is in its Golden Age." (Edward Condon, "Selected Popular Writings of E.U. Condon, Science and the National Welfare" , 1991)
"The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire." (Malcolm T Gladwell, "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference", 2000)
"This possibility of sudden change is at the center of the idea of the Tipping Point and might well be the hardest of all to accept. [...] The Tipping Point is the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point." (Malcolm T Gladwell, "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference", 2000)
"Grief can have a quality of profound healing because we are forced to a depth of feeling that is usually below the threshold of awareness." (Stephen Levine, "Who Dies?: An Investigation of Conscious Living and Conscious Dying", 2012)
As an athlete, when you least expect it, you may find yourself standing on the threshold of an accomplishment so monumental that it strikes fear into your soul. You must stand ready, at any moment, to face the unknown. You must be ready to walk boldly thru the wall of uncertainty. (John Bingham, "The Courage To Start: A Guide To Running for Your Life", 2013)
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