Life should be lived on the edge of life. You have to exercise rebellion: to refuse to tape yourself to rules, to refuse your own success, to refuse to repeat yourself, to see every day, every year, every idea as a true challenge - and then you are going to live your life on a tightrope.
— Philippe Petit
Spectacular Life On The Edge quotations
If you're not living on the edge you're taking up too much space.

I am convinced that a good building must be capable of absorbing the traces of human life and taking on a specific richness... I think of the patina of age on materials, of innumerable small scratches on surfaces, of varnish that has grown dull and brittle, and of edges polished by use.


If you're not living a life on the edge you're taking up too much space! .
.. You learn the most when you're out of your comfort zone!
Until we consider animal life to be worthy of the consideration and reverence we bestow upon old books and pictures and historic monuments, there will always be the animal refugee living a precarious life on the edge of extermination, dependent for existence on the charity of a few human beings.
Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.

When you come to the edge of all that you know, you must believe one of two things: either there will be ground to stand on, or you will be given wings to fly.
Greatness lives on the edge of destruction
Only once in my life was I on the edge of incivility. I do not like to be unkind.

Life balances itself on a precarious ledge, we can stay safe up high or propel off the edge.
Keep your words. This pain is no life." "You only feel pain because you're alive, boy!" the keeper thundered. "This is the mystery of it. Life is lived on the ragged edge of the cliff. Fall off and you might die, but run from it and you are already dead!
What puppets we humans are - what puppets! Born without permission, dying when it is neither pleasant nor convenient, we are made to march or crawl through life on the edge of a precipice from which at any moment we may be knocked over. And we're told we should believe the experience is a privilege!

I believe that living on the edge, living in and through your fear, is the summit of life, and that people who refuse to take that dare condemn themselves to a life of living death.
If you're not living life on the edge, you're taking up too much space.
The best way to predict the future is to create it.
When you are thrown onto the stage at 17 in such an enormous way, it becomes living on the edge because every step you take, every word you speak, every action you do becomes headline news. And it became, for me, life or death.

Most days, I'm out there, I'm enjoying what I'm doing.
I love my job, I love my life, some days I get up, I'm sore, I'm on the edge of getting sick, I'm like, just beat up, and I don't want to go out. I just kind of make myself go out there and do it.
The Warrior lives a life full of adventure, living on the edge of opportunity.
Life on the edge keeps him in a space of heightened awareness and totally in the moment; therefore no matter what comes his way he is always prepared.
Well, for me, it's the relationship between comedy and life - that's the edge I live on, and maybe it's my protection against looking at the tragedy of it all. It's seeing life in balance. Comedy and tragedy co-exist. You can't have one without the other. I'm of the school that anything can be funny, if seen from a comedic point of view.

It’s walking the razor’s edge of the sacred moment where you don’t know, you can’t count on, and comfort yourself with any sure hope. All you can know is your allegiance to life and your intention to serve it in this moment that we are given. In that sense, this radical uncertainty liberates your creativity and courage.
I was literally living on the edge of life, to the point where I didn't know what was going to happen, not caring, taking chances and finally landing in prison and once there, all my lines were cut.
If monotony tries me, and I cannot stand drudgery;
if stupid people fret me and little ruffles set me on edge; if I make much of the trifles of life, then I know nothing of Calvary love.

Love: a single word, a wispy thing, a word no bigger or longer than an edge.
That's what it is: an edge; a razor. It draws up through the center of your life, cutting everything in two. Before and after. The rest of the world falls away on either side.
I argue in this paper that we are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth.
It's often difficult to slough off all that we've acquired, all the comforts and safety nets modern life provides for us, and realize that in those days, people were living very much on the edge - life was incredibly hard!

Humourists lead... an existence of jumpiness and apprehension. They sit on the edge of the chair of Literature. In the house of Life they have the feeling that they have never taken off their overcoats.
Joy and sorrow in this world pass into each other, mingling their forms and their murmurs in the twilight of life as mysterious as an overshadowed ocean, while the dazzling brightness of supreme hopes lies far off, fascinating and still, on the distant edge of the horizon
When I was a child, I had posters of James Dean in my room.
I was a big admirer of his work and was fascinated by him living on the edge. Looking back, my life was kind of the same.

I was just on the edge of getting married, and I was frenzied at the prospect of this great step in my life after having been a bachelor for so long. And I really wanted to take my mind off of the agony, and so I decided to sit down and write a book.
You may never reach that glorious moment until you die, so live life on the edge halfway between heaven and hell...and let's all dance in the middle in purgatory.
Life is lived on the edge.

...by bringing myself over the edge and back, I discovered a passion to live my days fully, a conviction that will sustain me like sweet water on the periodically barren plain of our short lives.
Life and death are balanced as it were on the edge of a razor
Beauty can be as dangerous as evil can be beautiful.
But that is just another aspect of the double edge of non-moral values. Both beauty and friends can be dangerous. If you want to avoid them on these grounds, be my guest. But I wonder what your life will then be like.
We say justly that the weak person is flat, for, like all flat substances, he does not stand in the direction of his strength, that is, on his edge, but affords a convenient surface to put upon. He slides all the way through life.... But the brave man is a perfect sphere, which cannot fall on its flat side and is equally strong every way.
I often wonder if you wrote your memoir today, if your life story would be lived on the edge of possibility, if you held wonder in one hand and courage in the other and truly believed that anything was possible.