A Ladder Quotes & Sayings

If we tread our vices under our feet, we make of them a ladder by which to rise to higher things. — Saint Augustine

Prophet pulled back a little, a wicked look in his eyes as he looked up at Tom. He licked slowly along the ladder of piercings, and then he paid special attention to each one, tugging the barbells between his teeth until Tom hissed or groaned and tightened his grip on Prophet's hair warningly. Each time, Prophet would comply, letting his dick go, and he'd wait patiently, and each time Tom brought his mouth back to his cock, he was rewarded with the tug and pull, lick-suck-twist motion. His pain-pleasure center intertwined to where Tom could barely pick out which was which. He knew he just wanted more. Prophet's — S.E. Jakes

Now you must cast aside your laziness,"
my master said, "for he who rests on down
or under covers cannot come to fame;
and he who spends his life without renown
leaves such a vestige of himself on earth
as smoke bequeaths to air or foam to water.
Therefore, get up; defeat your breathlessness
with spirit that can win all battles if
the body's heaviness does not deter it.
A longer ladder still is to be climbed;
it's not enough to have left them behind;
if you have understood, now profit from it. — Dante Alighieri

That is the great danger of meritocracy: the people who reach the top of the system are precisely the people who have most completely identified with the system and its demands, creating a vicious circle preventing any actual change. It is no accident that conservatives tend to employ the rhetoric of social mobility so readily, as social climbers generally do not ask questions about the ladder. — Adam Kotsko

If there's one thing white men have never had a problem with in this clubby, white marble enclave of Washington, it's getting pulled up the ladder by other men. — Maureen Dowd

The idols of modern culture have had a profound influence on the shape of our work today. In traditional societies people found their meaning and sense of value by submitting their interests and sacrificing their desires to serve higher causes like God, family, and other people. In modern societies there is often no higher cause than individual interests and desires. This shift powerfully changed the role of work in people's lives - it now became the way we defined ourselves. Traditional cultures tended to see people's place on the social ladder as assigned by nature or convention, each family having its "proper place." That view had put too little stock in the role of individual talent, ambition, and hard work for determining the outcome of one's life. But modern society responded by putting too much stock in the autonomous person. — Timothy Keller

I write that crime is an unlawful act of violence that can be committed by anyone, and that punishment is the consequence designed for criminals who don't have the economic means to cover it up. Throughout history, men of wealth and power have been exempt from facing the consequences of their evil deeds. Crime, therefore, can be defined as an offense committed by an individual of inferior status in society. Punishment is a consequence forced on the perpetrator of the crime only if he occupies one of the lower steps of the social ladder — Mahbod Seraji

I know that every difficulty we face in life, even those that come from our own negligence or even transgression, can be turned by the Lord into growth experiences, a virtual ladder upward. I certainly do not recommend transgression as a path to growth. It is painful, difficult, and so totally unnecessary. It is far wiser and so much easier to move forward in righteousness. But through proper repentance, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and obedience to His commandments, even the disappointment that comes from transgression can be converted into a return to happiness. — Richard G. Scott

To lunch with the important ... that should be the daily goal of those for whom life is not a playground but a ladder. — Rose Macaulay

As we ascend the social ladder, viciousness wears a thicker mask. — Erich Fromm

Truth is a matter of direct apprehension-you can't climb a ladder of mental concepts to it. — Lawrence Durrell

The right thoughts of the clever man are a ladder which takes you higher places. By climbing these ladders, one day you yourself become such a ladder itself! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

My dad was always busy. You would pop round for a cup of tea, and within minutes you would see him walking past with a step-ladder. He was always fixing things. — Rachel Joyce

Man of wisdom doesn't need a ladder, because he is the ladder itself! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

I stare at his forearms. I can make out a naked woman with a snake going up her vagina. She's holding a knife, slitting her own throat. There are three playing cards on the back of his right hand: the Queen of Spades, the Jack of Hearts and the Joker. Red flames lick his elbow.
There's a watch tattooed on his left wrist with 'Fuck Time' inscribed on its face. Fuck o'clock.
He's not that tall, but his body is carefully cut. The lines of his face, his cheekbones and jaw, are sharp and precise. I can see the tufts of his blond underarm hairs and under them the ladder of his ribs. He's beautiful, in the way that a knife is beautiful. — Kirsty Eagar

I was leaving this small Arizona town in a few weeks, and I felt less like someone preparing to climb a career ladder than a buzzing electron about to achieve escape velocity, flinging out into a strange and sparkling universe. — Paul Kalanithi

Saint Augustine! well hast thou said, That of our vices we can frame A ladder, if we will but tread Beneath our feet each deed of shame. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer's wife. Their house was small, for the lumber to build it had to be carried by wagon many miles. There were four walls, a floor and a roof, which made one room; and this room contained a rusty looking cookstove, a cupboard for the dishes, a table, three or four chairs, and the beds. Uncle Henry and Aunt Em had a big bed in one corner, and Dorothy a little bed in another corner. There was no garret at all, and no cellar - except a small hole dug in the ground, called a cyclone cellar, where the family could go in case one of those great whirlwinds arose, mighty enough to crush any building in its path. It was reached by a trap door in the middle of the floor, from which a ladder led down into the small, dark hole. — L. Frank Baum

I often would think about how we have built our society, and when you describe it out loud, it sounds rather insane. The idea of being funnelled through a conventional life progression of education, work, career, marriage, kids, divorce, retirement and then death doesn't seem that inspiring to me.
Then we're told we have to struggle to make a living, sacrifice enjoyment to have a family, delay our happiness until we're retired, fight the next person for a job, climb the ladder of success to get an even more stressful job,
spend more money than we earn, go into debt, live in fear of being blown up by some terrorist and then have TV passed off as the only way to escape it all. And when all of this gets too much and you can't keep up, you get prescribed antidepressants and made to feel like you've failed. — Josh Langley

Our life consists not in the pursuit of material success but in the quest for worthy spiritual growth. Our entire earthly existence is but a transitional stage in the movement toward something higher, and we must not stumble and fall, nor must we linger fruitlessly on one rung of the ladder. Material laws alone do not explain our life or give it direction. The laws of physics and physiology will never reveal the indisputable manner in which the Creator constantly, day in and day out, participates in the life of each of us, unfailingly granting us the energy of existence; when this assistance leaves us, we die. And in the life of our entire planet, the Divine Spirit surely moves with no less force: this we must grasp in our dark and terrible hour. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

If you build castles in the air, make sure you have a ladder to reach them. — Matshona Dhliwayo

In beautiful things St. Francis saw Beauty itself, and through His vestiges imprinted on creation he followed his Beloved everywhere, making from all things a ladder by which he could climb up and embrace Him who is utterly desirable. — Bonaventure

Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone's soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd. — Rumi

A man must make of his life a ladder that he never ceases to climb
if you're not rising, you are slipping down the rungs, my friend. — John Shirley

There is, I suggest, a strong positive correlation between a) the height of the rung occupied on the ladder of power, b) the strength of a sense of personal virtue, and c) the firmness of the conviction that those lower down could and certainly should act more responsibly. — David Smail

I have a wife and a son, but the gay rumors have started. I guess it's a sign that I'm moving up the ladder. — Hugh Jackman

Letter 84


An elephant with his trunk raised is a ladder to the stars.

A breaching whale is a ladder to the bottom of the sea.

My photographs are a ladder to my dreams.

These letters are ladders to you. — Gregory Colbert

In today's time, no other 'charity' is acceptable or practical than the 'wisdom' that can transform the human life... Meaning the knowledge which can teach a man to climb the ladder of success. — Deep Trivedi

I try to serve the character all the time; this one took a lot of work and was consuming. It's like climbing up a ladder and sometimes you're afraid to face yourself so you make excuses; you avoid going to the top of the ladder and look in the mirror. — Forest Whitaker

One thing I would like to see is a stronger ladder series for up-and-coming American drivers. — Michael Andretti

As a general rule, when something gets elevated to apple-pie status in the hierarchy of American values, you have to suspect that its actual monetary value is skidding toward zero. Take motherhood: nobody ever thought of putting it on a moral pedestal until some brash feminists pointed out, about a century ago, that the pay is lousy and the career ladder nonexistent. Same thing with work: would we be so reverent about the 'work ethic' if it wasn't for the fact that the average working stiff's hourly pay is shrinking, year by year ... — Barbara Ehrenreich

I thought Big Sur would be a great break after the tour. You'd walk down this rickety ladder to this not-very-pretty beach scene; crashing waves, moss-covered rocks, weird ocean life. It was scary. It summed up alot of things in my life, like 'I should be enjoying this, but I'm not. — Trent Reznor

From a most kind suggestion put to me by Mr Farraday himself one afternoon almost a fortnight ago, when I had been dusting the portraits in the library. In fact, as I recall, I was up on the step-ladder dusting the portrait of Viscount Wetherby — Anonymous

Rationally speaking, blaming one's behavior on alcohol or drugs is like blaming the ladder by which you descended into a pit, or the staircase that took you down to a cellar, for what you found there. — Graham Joyce

Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. — Rumi

Many of us don't even know what it means to have a Christian perspective on our work. Oh, we know that being a Christian means being ethical on the job- as Saly put it, "no lying and cheating." But the work itself is typically defined in secular terms as bringing home a paycheck, climbing the career ladder, building a professional reputation. — Nancy Pearcey

For suddenly it had changed into that gear when time is slower - as when, falling off a ladder, one has time to think: I shall land so, just there, and I must turn in the air slightly ... All this in a space of time normally too short for any thought at all. But we are wrong in dividing the mind's machinery from time: they are the same. It is only in such sharp emphatic moments that we recognize this fact. — Doris Lessing

There is a season for wildness and a season for settledness, and this is neither. This season is about becoming. Don't lose yourself at happy hour, but don't lose yourself on the corporate ladder, either. — Shauna Niequist

I got some pilot scripts and auditioned for a couple other ones, too. It was just a standard audition, where I kept going in to read and went up the ladder, in terms of people who you're performing for during those auditions. Each step of the way, I was happy with that level of audition. — Tim Kang

Ambition is putting a ladder against the sky. — Shannon L. Alder

If a young aspirant had a modicum of skill and a busy typewriter she or he would sooner or later get a foothold in one of the magazines and a leaping start on the ladder upward. — James A. Michener

Across the street, a clown picked up a ladder, turned, knocked the clown behind him into a bucket of water, then turned again to see what the commotion was, thus sending his rising victim into the bucket again with a surprising parping noise. The crowd watched silently. If it were funny, clowns wouldn't be doing it. The — Terry Pratchett

Wouldn't it be a tragedy to get to the top of the ladder and find you placed it against the wrong wall? — Henry Blackaby

I'm so short I tread water in the kiddie pool. I need a ladder to get to the bottom bunk. I hit my head on the ground when I sneeze. I need a running start to reach the toilet. And no, I'm not related to Tom Cruise. — Michael Robotham

The canyon is a ladder to the plain. The valley is pale in the end of July, when the corn and melons come of age and slowly the fields are made ready for the yield, and a faint, false air of autumn - an illusion still in the land - rises somewhere away in the high north country, a vague suspicion of red and yellow on the farthest summits. And the town lies out like a scattering of bones in the heart of the land, low in the valley, where the earth is a kiln and the soil is carried here and there in the wind and all harvests are a poor survival of the seed. It is a remote place, and divided from the rest of the world by a great forked range of mountains on the north and west; by wasteland on the south and east, a region of dunes and thorns and burning columns of air; and more than these by time and silence. — N. Scott Momaday

Talent is like a ladder, it'll take you up to God or down to Hell. It depends on how you use it. — Guy Johnson

For a woman, love is the highest dream, and if a man promises to build a ladder tall enough to reach it, she believes him, hikes up her skirt, and follows him to the stars. Now — Adriana Trigiani

I do not need to hear people tearing into Lisa Lampanelli for liking to have sex only with black men. I'm sad that this is her famous running gag. I'm sad that I now know this. I'm sad that a legitimate rung on the ladder of making it in comedy is writing hateful stuff about total strangers. I don't know. — Mindy Kaling

Surely it is one of the requisites of a tasteful garb that the expression of effort to please shall be wanting in it; that the mysteries of the toilet shall not be suggested by it; that the steps to its completion shall be knocked away like the sculptor's ladder from the statue, and the mental force expended upon it be swept away out of sight like the chips on the studio floor. — Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

Heat rushes up my neck and I fall off a ladder holding a paintbrush dipped in red. — Tahereh Mafi

Each job requires a conscious choice of career path, and a different plan of development. — Auliq Ice

If you're like most people, you'll do one thing for two to three years, then something else for two to three years, and then - somewhere in that five- to seven-year distance from Yale - you'll see a need to fully commit to something that's a longer-term project: graduate school, for example, or a job you need to stick with for some real time. The question is: where do you need to be with yourself such that when the time comes to 'cast your whole vote,' you're reasonably confident you're not being either fear-based or ego-driven in your choice . . . that the journey you're on is really yours, and not someone else's? If you think of your first few jobs after Yale in this way - holistically and in terms of your growth as a person rather than as ladder rungs to a specific material outcome - you're less likely to wake up at age forty-five married to a stranger." Yikes! — Marina Keegan

At a national political convention, you have hundreds of people who consider themselves at least as important as the Secretary of Commerce. If it's a Democratic convention, you also have dozens of A-list Hollywood and music celebrities. (If it's a Republican convention, you have Bo Derek.) Also you have swarms of lower-ranking Washington minions with titles like Deputy Assistant to the Associate Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff who are trying to move up the ladder to Deputy Associate to the Assistant Acting Deputy Assistant Understudy. — Dave Barry

My mom believed that you make your own luck. Over the stove she had hung these old, maroon painted letters that spell out, "MANIFEST." The idea being if you thought and dreamed about the way you wanted your life to be
if you just envisioned it long enough, it would come into being.
But as hard as I had manifested Astrid Heyman with her hand in mine, her blue eyes gazing into mine, her lips whispering something wild and funny and outrageous in my ear, she had remained totally unaware of my existence. Truly, to even dream of dreaming about Astrid, for a guy like me, in my relatively low position on the social ladder of Cheyenne Mountain High, was idiotic. And with her a senior and me a junior? Forget it.
Astrid was just lit up with beauty: shining blonde ringlets, June sky blue eyes, slightly furrowed brow, always biting back a smile, champion diver on the swim team. Olympic level.
Hell, Astrid was Olympic level in every possible way. — Emmy Laybourne

We are members of a strange species that devotes its energies to climbing the ladder of success in order to make money to buy things we don't like. — Laurence J. Peter

Success is like a ladder and no one has ever climbed a ladder with their hands in their pockets. — Zig Ziglar

Plot these days is anti-intellectual and verboten, the mark of the Philistine, the huckster with a pen. There mustn't be too much story and that should be fog-bound and shrouded in heavy symbolism, including the phallic, like a sort of covoluted charade. Symbolism now carries the day, it's the one true ladder of literary heaven. — Robert Traver

Within people there is a longing and a desire such that, even if a hundred thousand worlds were theirs to own, still they would find no rest or comfort. They try every trade and craft, studying astronomy, medicine and every other subject, but they reach no completion, for they have not found their true desire. Poets call the Beloved "heart's ease," because there the heart finds ease. How can we find peace and rest in anything but the Beloved?
All these pleasures and pursuits are like a ladder. The rungs of a ladder are not a place to make one's home; they are for passing by. Fortunate are those who learn this. The long road becomes short for them, and they do not waste their lives upon the steps. — Rumi

When you're a coach you've got to go up the ladder, you've got to be ready to travel. That's the nature of coaching — Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

I got stuck up a tree when I was about seven, and my dad had to come and get the ladder to get me down. I loved to climb all the way up to the top. I must have been a koala in my past life. — Miranda Kerr

Petyr 'Littlefinger' Baelish: The realm. Do you know what the realm is? It's the thousand blades of Aegon's enemies, a story we agree to tell each other over and over, until we forget that it's a lie.

Lord Varys: But what do we have left, once we abandon the lie? Chaos? A gaping pit waiting to swallow us all.

Petyr 'Littlefinger' Baelish: Chaos isn't a pit. Chaos is a ladder. Many who try to climb it fail and never get to try again. The fall breaks them. And some, are given a chance to climb. They refuse, they cling to the realm or the gods or love. Illusions. Only the ladder is real. The climb is all there is. — George R R Martin

If US per capita income continues to grow at a rate of 1.5 percent a year, the country will have plenty of money to finance comfortable retirements and high-quality healthcare for all citizens, including those at the bottom of the wage ladder. — William Greider

Since our first, furry ancestor scraped flint on stone and banished night with fire, we have climbed heavenward on a ladder made of our own arrogance. — Justin Cronin

I did Star 80, which was a magnificent experience as well, but still, I was at the height of my career at the beginning. Then I had to jump down the ladder and climb back up again, which I didn't understand. That was very hard. — Mariel Hemingway

In the Eucharist, priest and people together come to concelebrate. Here the ladder Jacob saw only as a dream becomes for us a reality, the medicine that cures our souls. — Arthur Middleton

When you're at a public pool or in your friend's backyard, knowing that your kids can get in and out of the water and protect themselves can make all the difference in the world. Something as simple as being able to flip over and get to the ladder can save a life. You can start your kids in lessons as early as you want - it's never too soon. — Summer Sanders

Like success, failure is many things to many people. With a positive mental attitude, failure is a learning experience, a rung on the ladder, a plateau at which to get your thoughts in order and prepare to try again. — W. Clement Stone

Education is not only a ladder of opportunity, but it is also an investment in our future. — Ed Markey

His hands were the first thing she saw. Callused and blunt, they grasped the sides of the ladder as he raised himself the final few rungs. He was grinning by the time he cleared the base of the roof. "Hello, Liberty Sawyer," he said casually. She nodded in his direction, mimicking his nonchalant air. "Michael." He was about to step onto the roof when he paused to sniff the air. The expression on his face was sheer masculine satisfaction. "You are wearing my perfume." "Every day." His grin deepened. "Good." For a big man, he was surprisingly graceful as he stepped onto the roof. With an agile twist he turned and sat beside her. "I have traveled nine hundred miles to see that smile again. It was worth every step. — Elizabeth Camden

The mountain is not something eternally sublime; it has a great historic and spiritual meaning to us. It stands for us as the ladder of life. Nay, more; it is the ladder of the soul and in a curious way the source of religion. From it came the Law, from it came the Gospel in the Sermon of the Mount. We may trul say that the highest religion is the Religion of the Mountain. — Jan Smuts

Spiritual meditation is the pathway to Divinity. It is a mystic ladder which reaches from earth to heaven, from error to Truth, from pain to peace. — James Allen

The thing about the Lexington International Bank ladder was that it was very long, and climbing it was very exhausting, and so Andrew Brown didn't have a lot of time to think about whether he really wanted to get to the top of it - and besides, since so many other people were climbing too, the view from the top must be worth it.
So he kept going. He worked hard. He put his heart and mind and soul into it. There was an opening for a position half a rung higher than he already was. With a promotion, he might get two hours a week of a secretary's time. He'd go to more important meetings, with more senior people, and have the opportunity to impress them, and if he did he might be promoted again and then ... well, of course eventually he'd be running the whole office. It's important to have a dream: otherwise you might notice where you really are. — Naomi Alderman

Government employees move up the ladder through educational credentials rather than merit. People are given jobs and promotions based on seniority, race and gender rather than ability or talent. Such a system often overlooks the deserving and rewards the incompetent. There is no payoff for achievement. — James Cook

A pity to survive night flights over St. Georges Channel only to crack my skull falling from a ladder. — Eoin Colfer

Training for a marathon is much like climbing a ladder. Each ring is a short-term goal that must be met in sequence in order to reach the long-term goal at the top of the ladder. — Richard Benyo

The acrobat practices: He steps on the edge of a chair and leaps to the floor, feeling the rush as the air flares up his face as he falls. Then he sets himself on something higher, like a table then jumps. He scales a ladder to the ceiling, climbs a tree, pole, watchtower. He keeps increasing the height until no one sees him and the fear to jump leaves him completely, layer by layer [. . .] The acrobat imagines there is a highest possible point in the sky where if he were to fall from it the fall would never end. — Wataru Tsurumi

A poet is a man who puts up a ladder to a star and climbs it while playing a violin. — Edmond De Goncourt

I believe that access to a university education should be based on the ability to learn, not what people can afford. I think there is no more nauseating a sight than politicians pulling up the ladder of opportunity behind them. — Charles Kennedy

There were periods of my life when a lot of people didn't believe in me. I still had faith in myself. I really had to ask myself life questions. Where do I see myself in five years? Create a ladder for yourself, and walk up the steps. Climb that ladder. — Fergie

There comes a time in every young girl's life when she is instructed by a complete stranger to scale a tall ladder for dinner atop a roof, and in almost every case the best thing to do is refuse and run home to call the asylum from which the stranger escaped. — Gina Damico

I really am a recluse. I just enjoy watching the wind blow through the trees. In America someone who sits around and does that is at the bottom of the ladder, but in Japan, say, someone who goes up into the mountains is accorded great respect. I guess I am somewhere in between. I enjoy reclusion: it clears my mind. — Robert M. Pirsig

Space is about 100 kilometers away. That's far away - I wouldn't want to climb a ladder to get there - but it isn't that far away. If you're in Sacramento, Seattle, Canberra, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Phnom Penh, Cairo, Beijing, central Japan, central Sri Lanka, or Portland, space is closer than the sea. — Randall Munroe

In real life, Snow White stays dead and Rapunzel grows old, alone in her tower. In real life, you gotta have enough sense to stay away from ugly bitches offering you shiny apples and have enough balls to cut off your own hair and use it as a ladder if needs be. In real life, you gotta save yourself and the only happy endings are the ones paid for in massage parlors. — Amy Sumida

You been forgetting Who's in charge and who ain't. So here's what I'm gone do: I'm gone send a storm so big it rips the roof off the shed where you keep that mule you so proud of. Then I'm gone send hail big as walnuts down on that mule, making it break its leg trying to bust out of there. Then, just so you know for sure it's Me you dealing with, the next morning after you put that mule down and buried it and you up on the ladder trying to nail the roof back onto the shed I'm gone to let that weak top rung, the one you ain't got around to fixing yet, I'm gone let it rot all the way through so you fall off and break your own leg, and I'm gone to send Florence and Lilly Mae to a birthing and the twins out to the far end of the field so you laying there half the day. That'll give you time to think real hard on what I been trying to tell you. — Hillary Jordan

To judge religion we must have it
not stare at it from the bottom of a seemingly interminable ladder. — George MacDonald

the car into gear and drives through the gate. Dede closes the gate behind them, taking another look across the street and seeing nothing. "That's the thing, though," she says when she reenters the car. "He wasn't walking. He was just watching us. I mean, I think. With the headlights, I couldn't really see. It could just be my eyes playing tricks." Annie pulls the Beetle onto the grass next to the massive detached garage, hidden from sight. She lets out a sigh. "Good to be home," she says. "There's no place like home. There's no place like - " "Would you shut up?" As they walk toward the back entrance, they see the ladder the hot tool-belt guy used yesterday, broken down and lying in the grass. "Noah was cute," Annie says. "Was he? Was he cute?" Dede throws another elbow. "Now, now, dearest, I only have eyes for you. — James Patterson

I have never watched property programmes. I watch Property Ladder, because I feel it's very rude for a director to work very hard on a programme and you can't be bothered to even watch it. So I do watch it, but I have to turn away when I'm on screen. It's quite unpleasant seeing myself up there. — Sarah Beeny

The text says that when the Lord saw that Leah was not loved, _he_ loved her. God was saying, 'I am the real bridegroom. I am the husband of the husbandless. I am the father of the fatherless.' This is the God who saves by grace. The gods of moralistic religions favor the successful and the overachievers. THe are the ones who climb the moral ladder up to heaven. But the God of the Bible is the one who comes down into this world to accomplish a salvation and give us a grace we could never attain ourselves. — Timothy Keller

The way to heaven is within. Shake the wings of love-when love's wings have become strong, there is no need to trouble about a ladder. — Rumi

After a few minutes, Molly came partway up the short ladder to the bridge and stopped. "Do I need to ask permission to come up there or something?"
"Why would you?" I asked.
She considered. "It's what they do on Star Trek? — Jim Butcher

Science is continually correcting what it has said. Fertile corrections ... science is a ladder ... poetry is a winged flight ... An artistic masterpiece exists for all time ... Dante does not efface Homer. — Victor Hugo

I work very slowly. It's like building a ladder, where you're building your own ladder rung by rung, and you're climbing the ladder. It's not the best way to build a ladder, but I don't know any other way. — Joyce Carol Oates

Meditation is the royal road to the attainment of freedom, a mysterious ladder that reaches from earth to heaven, darkness to light, mortality to Immortality. — Sivananda

When he had first met her, Royal had taken for granted her absolute self-confidence, but in fact the reverse was true - far from being sure of herself, Anne needed constantly to re-establish her position on the top rung of the ladder. By comparison, the professional people around her, who had achieved everything as a result of their own talents, were models of self-assurance — J.G. Ballard

The world has always needed human beings who refuse to believe that history is nothing but a dull, monstrous selfrepetition, a selfperpetuating, meaningless game, only varied in outer garb, who cannot be converted from their conviction that history signifies progress in morality, that our race is ascending on an invisible ladder from an animal nature towards divinity, from brutal violence to the wisely ordering intellect, and that the ultimate stage of complete understanding is already close at hand, indeed has almost been attained. — Stefan Zweig

She tries to turn too soon, and the ladder smacks into Fernando's shoulder.
"Oh! Sorry, Nando."
The jolt knocks his glasses askew. He smiles at Christina and takes the glasses off, shoving them into his pocket.
"Nando?" I say to him. "I thought the Erudite didn't like nicknames?"
"When a pretty girl calls you by a nickname," he says, "it is only logical to respond to it. — Veronica Roth

Being popular with an audience is a very rickety ladder to be on. — Louis C.K.

When you feel dissatisfied, or when you're working too hard, the problem could be a mismatch between your goals and actions. Write out your goal ladder and make sure it all lines up. First start with your actions and ask "Why?" to find your subgoals. Keep asking why until you map up to your larger-level goals, at least two or three levels. — Stever Robbins

I'm not trying to climb a ladder - I'm casting a bit of a net. — Neil Patrick Harris

As fire does not give birth to snow, so those who seek honor here will not enjoy it in heaven ... As those who climb a rotten ladder are in danger, so all honor, glory, and power are opposed to humility. — John Climacus