End Of My Tether Quotes & Sayings

I was at the end of my tether when my first book was published. For eight years I didn't make a penny, I worked so hard, didn't drink, didn't enjoy life. — Orhan Pamuk

Christian faith, as I understand it, is not primarily a matter of signing on for the proposition that there exists a Supreme Being, but the kind of commitment made manifest by a human being at the end of his tether, foundering in darkness, pain, and bewilderment, who nevertheless remains faithful to the promise of a transformative love. — Terry Eagleton

A big wind came up and I hoped a storm would break the heat. But it just blew a
lot of dust around, and at sunset we had to bar doors and windows against mosquitoes. It
didn't do much for our comfort level, but - here's where the Chemin takes you - we were
grateful. We were grateful because we had (albeit narrowly) escaped heatstroke; because
the shelter, though unbelievably hot, was clean and quiet; and most of all, because it slept
six but we had it to ourselves. No people to deal with at the end of your (and their)
tether; no sodden bathrooms. No snoring. Pilgrim camaraderie was all very well, but
sometimes it was too damn much. — Denise Fainberg

Submission reaches the end of its tether when it becomes destructive. — Richard J. Foster

sometimes I feel my tether is too short." "You will lose that tether soon enough, and then someday when you are in a heap of hurt and trouble, you are going to reach for it and wish your mama was on the other end. — Ronald Yates

Away from home. Young children stray from their parents and are never seen again. Housewives reach the end of their tether and take the grocery money and a taxi to the station. International financiers change their names and vanish — Diana Gabaldon

It is human nature to constantly reach out for something to tether oneself to, but it's the fool who cannot tell what he's trying to grasp. Is it a lifeline, or a length of rope just long enough to hang oneself with? And still he reaches out, in desperation and ignorance, taking hold of it with both hands, without ever wondering what the other end is attached to. — Northern Adams

Free yourself from one passion to be dominated by another and nobler one. But is not that, too, a form of slavery? To sacrifice oneself to an idea, to a race, to God? Or does it mean that the higher the model the longer the tether of our slavery? Then we can enjoy ourselves and frolic in a more spacious arena and die without having come to the end of the tether. Is that, then, what we call liberty? — Nikos Kazantzakis

Stonesnake had passed the rope around the smooth spike of rock he was waiting on, but as soon as Jon reached him he shook it loose and was off again. This time there was no convenient cleft when he reached the end of their tether, so he took out his felt-headed hammer and drove a spike deep into a crack in the stone with a series of gentle taps. Soft as the sounds were, they echoed off the stone so loudly that Jon winced with every blow, certain that the wildlings must hear them too. When the spike was secure, Stonesnake secured the rope to it, and Jon started after him. Suck on the mountain's teat, he reminded himself. Don't look down. Keep your weight above your feet. Don't look down. Look at the rock in front of you. There's a good handhold, yes. Don't look down. I can catch a breath on that ledge there, all I need to do is reach it. Never look down. — George R R Martin

'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold' was the work of a wayward imagination brought to the end of its tether by political disgust and personal confusion. — John Le Carre

For years afterward, I had dreams in which my mother appeared in strange forms, her features sewn onto other beings in combinations that seemed both grotesque and profound: as a slippery white fish at the end of my hook, with a trout's gaping, sorrowful mouth and her dark, shuttered eyes; as the elm tree at the edge of our property, its ragged clumps of tarnished gold leaves replaced by knotted skeins of her black hair; as the lame gray dog that lived on the Mueller's property, whose mouth, her mouth, opened and closed in yearning and who never made a sound. As I grew older, I came to realize that death had been easy for my mother; to fear death, you must first have something to tether you to life. But she had not. It was as if she had been preparing for her death the entire time I knew her. One day she was alive; the next, not.
And as Sybil said, she was lucky. For what more could we presume to ask from death - but kindness? — Hanya Yanagihara

Some days I'm only passing through. Some days are all hello; some days are all goodbye. Some days I have no idea what I am supposed to be doing, and other days it's abundantly clear, as if the person I am for a day has left me a note, left me instructions. Today I am meant to maintain the golden tether between two people. It doesn't take much strength to hold on to my end. It's good to hold on to something, to feel the pull of another person on the other end, to feel the attachment before I must let go and pass the golden tether back into the person who should really be here instead of me. — David Levithan