Ours is a precarious language, as every writer knows, in which the merest shadow line often separates affirmation from negation, sense from nonsense, and one sex from the other.
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Commerce flourishes by circumstances, precarious, transitory, contingent, almost as the winds and waves that bring it to our shores.
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The simplicity and uniformity of rural occupations, and their incessant practice, preclude any anxieties and agitations of hope and fear, to which employments of a more precarious and casual nature are subject.
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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 live as slaves.
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No wonder that, when a political career is so precarious, men of worth and capacity hesitate to embrace it. They cannot afford to be thrown out of their life's course by a mere accident.
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The thin and precarious crust of decency is all that separates any civilization, however impressive, from the hell of anarchy or systematic tyranny which lie in wait beneath the surface.
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[President Jacques Chirac ordered his government today to build more subsidized housing and to draw up a renovation plan for the most rundown apartment buildings in Paris.] Faced with this situation we must act, ... We urgently must ensure the safety of people living in precarious housing.
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All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.
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The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain - until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.
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A politician never forgets the precarious nature of elective life. We have never established a practice of tenure in public office.
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