"Ladder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... condemned men in all ages to speak to the crowds assembled to witness their death. The dying speech used in this country to be a regular feature of executions. Even in ages of persecution the martyrs were usually allowed, as they ascended the ladder, to address the multitude; and these testimonies, some of which were of singular power and beauty, were treasured by the religious section of the community. It is nothing surprising, therefore, that Jesus should have addressed those who followed Him or ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... over it by the help of twelve locks, with six they mount the summit, and with six more descend to the former level; forgetting the great waste of water, and the small supply from the rivulets, and also, the amazing loss of of time in climbing this curious ladder, consisting of twelve liquid steps. It is worthy of remark, that the level of the earth, is nearly the same at Birmingham as at the pits: what benefit then would accrue to commerce, could the boats travel a dead flat of fourteen miles without interruption? The use of the ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... this torment the man kicked down the stool which had supported his feet, so that he hung upon the cords with his whole weight, which suddenly increased their tension, and gave indescribable aggravation to his pain. Next followed a new kind of torment. An instrument resembling a small ladder, consisting of two parallel pieces of wood, and five transverse pieces, with the anterior edges sharpened, was placed before him, so that when the tormentor struck it heavily, he received the stroke five times multiplied on each shin bone, producing ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... door was closed after him, the word was given to the escort, and off went the cavalcade at a thundering pace to the North-wall, where a government steamer, the "Shearwater," was lying with her steam up in readiness to receive him. He clambered the side-ladder of the steamer with some assistance; on reaching the deck, the chains tripped him and he fell forward. Scarcely was he on his feet again, when the paddles of the steamer were beating; the water, and the vessel was moving from the shores of that "Isle of Destiny," which he loved so well, ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... misgave her, and the hymeneal guests were quite alarmed: the servants declared that they had seen their master and the gentleman walk into the garden, from whence they were not returned. Now, a high brick wall, in which there was no outlet, and over which no person could climb except by a ladder, enclosed the garden, which, when searched, was empty, whilst, at the same time, Mr. Terry and his friend, "the gentleman," could not have walked out at the hall-door without being, from its situation, seen and heard by the servants in the kitchen. Time fled—and he did ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various
... again. "Take hold of this ladder. My master and I have imitated the birds, and formed a nest for ourselves up in a tree; no jaguars, snakes, or peccaries can reach us there, and the Gothos are not likely to search ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... loved the sky, the light, which the unformed little being would love some day. She loved the chilly dawn, the sultry noontime, the dreamy evening. The child would grow up, a saviour, to give life to everything again. Starting at the dark bottom he would ascend the ladder and begin life over again, life, the only paradise there is, the bouquet of nature. He would make beauty beautiful. He would make eternity over again with his voice and his song. And clasping the new-born infant close, she looked at all the sunlight she had given the ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... hardly come to a standstill when a curious-looking being, who had come to meet the steamer in a boat, climbed up the rope-ladder which had been let down on the starboard side and came on ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... the house where they wanted light to go on with something they were about. But I must return to my dream; for the most remarkable thing in it I have not yet told you. In one corner of the ceiling there was a hole, and through that hole came down a ladder of sun-rays—very bright and lovely. Where it came from I never thought, but of course it could not come from the sun, because there he was, with his bright coat off, playing the father of his family in the most homely Old-English-gentleman fashion ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... Viceroy's castle in Wales!' cried the other. 'We're going up the ladder hand over head, Mr. Kearney! A week ago his ambition was bounded on the south by Ship Street, and on the east by ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... went for the policeman. The boy with the shaking came back to consciousness, rubbed his eyes, and got back on his feet. What do you think he did? He staggered, half-blind, up the stairs. He climbed the ladder. He got on to the roof of the house. He gathered up his tools, put them into his basket, took them down, and when he got to the ground again fainted ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... place; I here on earth. He in the spirit; I in the flesh. The neutral ground lies there. So are carried the vibrations, and so the light of earth and heaven reflected back and forward—apaugasma, a wonderful though helpless engine, the ladder of Jacob, and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. Thanks, I'll take the key. Mysteries to those who will live altogether in houses of clay, no mystery to such as will use their eyes and read what is revealed. This candle, it is the longer, please; no—no ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... waterman's boat with my chest and bed, and was sent on board. On reporting myself, I was told by the commanding officer not to bother him, but to go to my mess, where I should be taken care of. On descending a ladder to the lower deck, I looked about for the mess, or midshipmen's berth, as it was then called. In one corner of this deck was a dirty little hole about ten feet long and six feet wide, five feet high. It was lighted by two or three ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... ladder's foot, 'I have set the Lord always before me.' The top round reaches the throne of God, and whoever begins at the bottom, and holds fast the beginning of his confidence firm unto the end, for him the great promise of the Master will come true, and Christ's 'joy will remain ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... However, I put myself into all the same postures for an attack that I had formerly provided, and was just ready for action, if anything had presented. Having waited a good while, listening to hear if they made any noise, at length, being very impatient, I set my guns at the foot of my ladder, and clambered up to the top of the hill, by my two stages, as usual; standing so, however, that my head did not appear above the hill, so that they could not perceive me by any means. Here I observed, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... father's office, I went there and through to the library "annex," where an unexpected picture met my gaze. Martin Cortright, the precise, in stocking feet, skull cap, and dressing gown, perched on top of the step-ladder, was clutching a book in one hand, within the other he held Miss Lavinia's slender fingers in greeting, while his face had a curious expression of surprise, pleasure, and a wild desire to regain his slippers that were down on the floor, a combination ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... order to indulge this whim, he requested me to dress myself in the identical clothes which the princess put off when she went to bed that night, and then to appear in them at my usual post in the balcony, and so let down the ladder as though I were her very self, and receive ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... incident, and I began to get very tired of doing nothing. There seemed to be little chance of escape, however. Every outlet was guarded by an armed sentry, and I was carefully watched. One day I dragged my bedstead under the window, and making a ladder of the table and chair, climbed to the bars. A single glance showed the folly of trying to escape that way without the aid of wings. That part of the fort stood on the brink of a frightful precipice which fell sheer away for hundreds of feet to ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... perchance she may hear some welcome sound. She looks down and she gazes up, and she sees that the tower is strong and high and thick. She is amazed to see no door or window, except one little narrow opening. Moreover, there was no ladder or steps about this high, sheer tower. For this reason she surmises that it was made so intentionally, and that Lancelot is confined inside. But she resolves that before she tastes of food, she will learn ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... platform, brought us down some five-and-twenty or thirty feet more; but then we arrived at a sheer descent of about twenty feet, at which Johnstone looked rather blank, though, on my suggesting a ladder, he took heart again, and, cutting two slim taper trees in the wood above, we flung them over the precipice into the sea; and then fishing them up with a world of toil and trouble, we squared and bored them upwards, and, cutting tenons for them in the hard gneiss, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... Irishman, while carrying a ladder through a crowded street had the misfortune to break a plate-glass window in a store. He immediately dropped his ladder and broke into a run, but he had been seen by the shopkeeper, who dashed after him in company with several salesmen, and was ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... agitated to tears; he came out wringing his hands, and urging upon us that any attempt on our part to enter would cause a rush that would break his house down. We listened to his entreaties on the condition that we should be allowed to mount to the roof with a ladder, to get away from the annoying curiosity of the crowd. There we sat through the evening twilight, while the crowd below, somewhat balked, but not discouraged, stood taking in every move. Nightfall and a drizzling rain came at last ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... frame of phlegmatic mould, occupied the seat and swung his whip with a bored and absent air. Two or three girls, clad in apotheosized organdie, and close hats, were already on top of the coach. An elderly beau was assiduously attending upon a young woman who was about to mount the ladder. She was a plain girl, with an air of refined health, and ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... waits upon wilful wrong-doing, by the sense of sin. Such an emotion can never be inspired by an impersonal order with which we have come into conflict, but only by a personal Will against which we are conscious of having offended. The man who disregards the law of gravitation and falls from a ladder, experiences one kind of painful sensation; but the man who disregards the law of righteousness and falls into sin, experiences quite a different kind of painful sensation—the sensation, not of self-pity, but of self-accusation and remorse, because it is God's ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... abundance, was used on Egdon in packing away stores of all kinds. The pigeons were flying about her head with the greatest unconcern, and the face of her aunt was just visible above the floor of the loft, lit by a few stray motes of light, as she stood half-way up the ladder, looking at a spot into which she was not climber enough ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... is set against the gate of Neis is called Eteoclus by name. He driveth a chariot with four horses, in whose nostrils are pipes making a whistling noise, after the fashion of barbarians. And on his shield he hath this device: a man mounting a ladder that is set against a tower upon a wall, and with it these words, 'NOT ARES' SELF SHALL DRIVE ME HENCE.' See that thou set ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church
... The ladder was fixed and they climbed up to the ledge. When they reached it they found that it was very rough and uneven, and consequently that the task was more difficult than it ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... deep pity for the pure-minded and excellent Philaemon. She was sure that it was his voice she had heard from the wall; and she rightly conjectured that, after his prolonged interview with Anaxagoras, he had partly ascended the ladder leading to the house-top, and looked through the fluttering grape-leaves at the dwelling of ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... control the expression of his being and every manifestation of life if he will only come close enough to the fountain-head of thinking and feeling. He must be willing to demonstrate on an humble plane, and, while striving for the highest ideal, take the simplest exercise as the first step of the ladder. ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... table and benches, too. But a chair de rare thing in a cabin. Dey make some with de split hick'ry or rawhide bottom. Dey have hay mattress. De tickin' am rice sacks. Us have mud chimney. Dey fix sticks like de ladder and mix mud and moss and grass in what dey calls 'cats'. Dey have rock backs, and, man, us have a sho' 'nough fire in 'em. Put a stick long as me and big as a porch post in dat fireplace. In cold weather dat last all ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... Anne climbed the ladder amid breathless silence, gained the ridgepole, balanced herself uprightly on that precarious footing, and started to walk along it, dizzily conscious that she was uncomfortably high up in the world and that walking ridgepoles was not a ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... stairs to such a height would, by its long angle with the floor, seriously contract the already small area of the chapel, the architect, it seemed, had acted upon the hint of Father Mapple, and finished the pulpit without a stairs, substituting a perpendicular side ladder, like those used in mounting a ship from a boat at sea. The wife of a whaling captain had provided the chapel with a handsome pair of red worsted man-ropes for this ladder, which, being itself nicely headed, and stained with ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... houses there are two channels of escape. A dark night, and a ladder thrown across from window to window, he is with us, or ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a high tower, which was reached by a long, narrow ladder leading up to the balcony, and Ivan told the old devil that from the top of the tower every ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... too weak, so that the very first heave I made broke it in two, and sent me staggering against the after-hatch, over which I tripped, and, striking against the main-boom, tumbled down the companion-ladder into the cabin. I was much bruised and somewhat stunned by this untoward accident. However, I considered it fortunate that I was not killed. In my next attempt I made sure of not coming by a similar accident, so I unreeved the ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... the ladder-stairs leading to the upper room. Violent sounds of wailing broke out overhead, and the murmur of his voice could ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... without. A moment later this somebody crawled out of the window, and with movements that in themselves were a sufficient indication of the questionable character of his proceedings, made for the ladder leading to the floor above, upon which many a time and oft had I too climbed to home and safety when an inconsiderate janitor had locked me out. Every step that he took was stealthy—that much I could see by the dim starlight. His lantern he had turned dark again, ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... respects—his father must have been wanting in energy and ambition, deficient in the qualities that would fit him to fight his own battle, and content to gain a mere competence, instead of struggling hard to make his way up the ladder. He had accounted for his going up as interpreter, with Hicks Pasha, by the fact that his work with the contractor was at an end, and that he saw no other opening ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... tossing them to and fro, he thought to himself: "If you are perishing down here by the fire, how those poor things up there must be shaking and shivering!" And because he had a tender heart, he put up a ladder, which he climbed unhooked one body after the other, and took down all the seven. Then he stirred the fire, blew it up, and placed them all round in a circle, that they might warm themselves. But they sat there and did not move, and the fire caught their ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... with your honor ten years, and you must know somewhat of my temper," said Jackson, with the self-satisfaction of an approving conscience; "but Sam Daniels is a man who is never easy unless he is left quietly at the top of the ladder; however," continued the host, with a chuckle, "I have given him ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity. A deed done is irrevocable, and its result coinciding in time with the actions of millions of other men assumes an historic significance. The higher a man stands on the social ladder, the more people he is connected with and the more power he has over others, the more evident is the predestination and inevitability of his ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Medical aid was at hand, the gash sewed up, but he did not revive. Two Catholic clergymen attended them on the scaffold, one a Spanish priest. They were executed in the rear of the jail. When the procession arrived at the foot of the ladder leading up to the platform of the gallows the Rev. Mr. Varella looking directly at Capt. Gilbert, said, "Spaniards, ascend to heaven." Don Pedro mounted with a quick step, and was followed by his comrades at a more moderate ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... ship's ladder they saw two torpedo boat destroyers crowd up alongside the ship. The captain leaned over the taff-rail ...
— The Boy Volunteers with the Submarine Fleet • Kenneth Ward
... the battlements, and were struck down by English swords and axes. Cannon-balls and great stones and arrows rained on them. "Fight on!" cried the Maid; "the place is ours." At one o'clock she set a ladder against the wall with her own hands, but was deeply wounded by an arrow, which pierced clean through between neck and shoulder. Joan wept, but seizing the arrow with her own hands she dragged it out. "Yet," says Dunois, "she did not withdraw from the battle, nor took any medicine ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... villagers. The houses were underground structures with an aperture like the mouth of a well by which to enter, but they were broad and spacious below. The entrance for the beasts of burden was dug out, but the human occupants descended by a ladder. In these dwellings were to be found goats and sheep and cattle, and cocks and hens, with their various progeny. The flocks and herds were all reared under cover upon green food. There were stores within of wheat and barley and vegetables, and wine made from barley in ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... buys patent hammers by the quarter dozen, as well as nails, tacks, screws, bolts, casters, brackets, and curtain poles. He brings home Japanese vases from the auction rooms. One day he acquired a step-ladder; it came by wagon because they refused to let him ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... heart beat as she eagerly, breathlessly, watched the passengers descend the ladder and take their places in the different boats. A keen breeze had got up, and even in the harbour ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... day of festival In the capital of Valladolid That their eyes met at a crossing And their two souls rushed together. By the greed of a bought duenna And the interchange of love-notes And the help of a hempen ladder They arranged a meeting ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson
... shafts which were in use during the sinking of the caisson, a large steel shaft with a T-head lock was built. This is illustrated in Fig. 2, Plate LXIV. The shaft was 8 ft. in diameter. Inside there was a ladder and an elevator cage for lowering and hoisting men and the standard 1-yd. tunnel cars. At the top, forming the head of the T, there ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • James H. Brace, Francis Mason and S. H. Woodard
... contrived to penetrate into the garden, by the rere, and some of them immediately rushed into the Turret. The Yeomen stationed there were upon an upper floor—they had the precaution to drag up the ladder by which they ascended;—the Rebels endeavoured to climb upon each other, so as to reach the upper story, but they were killed as fast as they appeared; others then ran their pikes through the cieling, and fired shots but without effect—the conflict was obstinate—twenty ...
— An Impartial Narrative of the Most Important Engagements Which Took Place Between His Majesty's Forces and the Rebels, During the Irish Rebellion, 1798. • John Jones
... frightened colt, because I use a word to which your Christianity ascribes a deprecatory meaning. You have a hierarchy of values; pleasure is at the bottom of the ladder, and you speak with a little thrill of self-satisfaction, of duty, charity, and truthfulness. You think pleasure is only of the senses; the wretched slaves who manufactured your morality despised a satisfaction which they had small means of enjoying. You would not be so frightened if I ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... ladder Patsy clasped around his arm a band bearing the insignia of the Red Cross. He watched her approvingly, with little amused chuckles, and then quickly disappeared in the direction of ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... restructuring, transforming New Zealand from an agrarian economy dependent on concessionary British market access to a more industrialized, free market economy that can compete globally. This dynamic growth has boosted real incomes (but left behind many at the bottom of the ladder), broadened and deepened the technological capabilities of the industrial sector, and contained inflationary pressures. While per capita incomes have been rising, however, they remain below the level of the four largest EU economies, and there is some ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... from the last hour of their victims the Priest, the Scripture, and the Cross! But Faith builds in the dungeon and the lazar-house its sublimest shrines; and up, through roofs of stone, that shut out the eye of Heaven, ascends the ladder where the ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the same. And beholding in many souls the traits of the divine beauty, and separating in each soul that which is divine from the taint which it has contracted in the world, the lover ascends to the highest beauty, to the love and knowledge of the Divinity, by steps on this ladder of created souls." ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... scattered everywhere and deep holes are worn out. Many of these pockets are filled with water. In one of these holes or wells, 20 feet deep, I find a tree growing. The excavation is so narrow that I can step from its brink to a limb on the tree and descend to the bottom of the well down a growing ladder. Many of these pockets are potholes, being found in the courses of little rills or brooks that run during the rains which occasionally fall in this region; and often a few harder rocks, which evidently assisted in their excavation, can be found in their bottoms. Others, ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... the lee side along the edge of the cabin floor. I got upon deck to see how matters stood with us; and the minister, easing off the vessel for a few points, gave instant orders to shorten sail, in the hope of getting her upper works out of the water, and then to unship the companion ladder, beneath which a hatch communicated with the low strip of hold under the cabin, and to bring aft the pails. We lowered our foresail; furled up the mainsail half-mast high; John Stewart took his station at the pump; old Alister and I, furnished with ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... point of view. Public sympathy would be with her throughout. He knew that, as it was, he was believed generally to owe much of his success to his handsome and high-born wife. Now it would be said that he had used her as a ladder and then thrown her over. With all this, however, he might cope; he could even bear with the vulgar attacks of a vulgar press, and the gibes and jeers of his political and personal enemies, but to lose Effie he could not bear. And if such a case were brought against ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... some of Bunsen's works will prove more mortal than others is their comprehensive character. Bunsen never worked for work's sake, but always for some higher purpose. Special researches with him were a means, a ladder to be thrown away as soon as he had reached his point. The thought of exhibiting his ladders never entered his mind. Occasionally, however, Bunsen would take a jump, and being bent on general results, he would sometimes neglect the objections ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... said, "the top of the ladder that rests on earth reaches to heaven, and we may ascend it as the angels ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... an upstairs shout the morning before, he decided to see what a down one would do; accordingly, he mounted the stairs and climbed the sort of companion-ladder that led to the servants' attics, where he kept a stock of gibbeys in the rafters. Having reached this, he cleared his throat, laid his head over the banisters, and putting an open hand on each side of his mouth to direct the sound, exclaimed ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... which done, Told him he was a gentleman of note, And that he had a very glorious coat. "Prithee, what is 't?" quoth he, "and take your fees." "Sir," says the herald, "'tis two rampant trees, One couchant; and, to give it further scope, A ladder passant, and a pendent rope. And, for a grace unto your blue-coat sleeves, There is a bird i' th' crest ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... dread the nationalism of the present time. It will pass away with the present time; it is passing, it has already passed. It is but a rung in the ladder. Climb to the top.... Every nation felt [before the war] the imperious necessity of gathering its forces and making up its balance-sheet. For the last hundred years all the nations have been transformed by their mutual intercourse and the immense contributions ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... CATHLEEN. Give me the ladder, and I'll put them up in the turf-loft, the way she won't know of them at all, and maybe when the tide turns she'll be going down to see would he be floating from ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... their easel painting into painted scenes. He was a parvenu, but a parvenu whose whole bearing proved that if he did dedicate every story in 'The House of Pomegranates' to a lady of title, it was but to show that he was Jack and the social ladder his pantomime beanstalk. "Did you ever hear him say 'Marquess of Dimmesdale'?" a friend of his once asked me. "He does not say 'the Duke ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... stealthily but in haste, leaving the place of tombs behind them in the midnight. And as they went they shivered, and each man as he shivered cursed the rain aloud. And so they came to the spot where they had hidden a ladder and a lantern. There they held long debate whether they should light the lantern, or whether they should go without it for fear of the King's men. But in the end it seemed to them better that they should have the light of their lantern, and risk being ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... at the back door, for the love of heaven, if you wouldn't be the ruin of me,' said the man of the house, setting a ladder to a corner of the shop. 'Phil, hoist me up the keg to the loft,' added he, running up the ladder; 'and one of YEES step up street, and give Rose M'Givney notice, for she's ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... say it. My Mr. Burnet's father began life at the bottom of the ladder, and ended it near the top; and my Mr. Burnet began life near the top, and is ending it quite at the top. Hard work, Mr. Rowles, hard work, perseverance, honesty, and temperance; that's what does it. Your little girl's father may get to the top of ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison
... and another of us. "You looked to be besieged! Why you, booby, there is the shoot of your kitchen midden, twenty feet above the roof of old Fretis' store! And open, I will be sworn! Do you think that I should have come this way while there was a ladder in Caylus! Did you take the wolf for ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... deign'd to drill The awkward squad, and could afford to squander His time, a corporal's duty to fulfil: Just as you 'd break a sucking salamander To swallow flame, and never take it ill: He show'd them how to mount a ladder (which Was not like Jacob's) ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... black against a whitish and in some places bare-swept beach. The ragged clouds chased each other across the sky. We were afraid a storm was coming on. Then one of the parsonage chimneys caught on fire, and most of the soldiers came rushing up to offer help. The great fire-ladder was brought from under the storehouse. It was unusually heavy and clumsy, so it was difficult to get it raised, till father broke into the midst of the crowd, ordered them all to stand back, and set it up ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... this moment to despair is the idea of perfection in your mistress, the idea that has been shattered. But when you understand that the first idea itself was human, small and restricted, you will see that it is little more than a round in the rotten ladder of ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... of the village street there was a bit of sharply sloping ground, with a ladder thrown on it to make descent easier. "This way," said ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... transepts are correspondingly narrow. Though somewhat stiff and formal, the general design derives a certain impressiveness from the lofty clerestory, the immense display of windows, and a profusion of flying buttresses. The fantastic reproduction of Jacob's Ladder, with its beetle-like angels, on the W. front, should be carefully observed, and note should also be taken of the elaborately carved wooden door and the figures above and on either side (Henry VII. ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... the person afflicted with "nerves" most certainly can do, and he can use this terrible "thing" as I myself and thousands of others have used it as a ladder to climb to the sunlit peaks where worry and clouds and storms cannot trouble. And, after all, no matter who we are, no matter how poor or how rich we are, and no matter where we live, life holds about the same general possibilities ...
— How to Eat - A Cure for "Nerves" • Thomas Clark Hinkle
... were four rooms, two downstairs and two above. All were bare and disorderly, because, as the woman explained, house-cleaning was in progress. It was needed. She showed us a winding stair, hardly better than a ladder, which led from the lower to the upper rooms. There was no view, no garden. But in Coleridge's day there was a small plot of ground belonging to the house and running back to the large and pleasant place of his friend ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... cats, and the king of the mice, in his chariot drawn by two dogs, is seen attacking the fortress of the cats. A picture which is worthy of Edward Lear shows a ridiculous hippopotamus seated amidst the foliage of a tree, eating from a table, whilst a crow mounts a ladder to wait upon him. There are caricatures showing women of fashion rouging their faces, unshaven and really amusing old tramps, and so forth. Even upon the walls of the tombs there are often comic pictures, in which one may see little girls fighting and tearing ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... "where the feebleness and ignorance of the workers and their isolation from each other render them an easy prey to the tyranny of bad masters and middlemen one step above them upon the lowest rungs of the ladder, and themselves held in the grip of the same relentless forces,"—where "you have a condition not of progress but of progressive degeneration." Mr. Churchill asked Parliament to regard these industries as "sick and diseased," and "to deal with ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... him. He stirred in his sleep as I drew near him for the second time; so I gave up the key as a bad job. The loft seemed to be my only chance; as there was only this one big locked double door upon the lower floor, I clambered up the steep ladder to the loft, hoping that my luck there might be better, but resolved, if the worst came, to hide there in the hay until the carter took the horses to work, leaving ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... enclosed in another building with large arched windows. The room was even then regarded as sacred. In the center stood the oaken table and the three wooden chairs which constituted the furniture when Peter occupied it. The loft was ascended by a ladder ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... special permission from the city authorities, and accompanied by a guide and protector, for which an extra ticket is required. The ascent is quite easy for some distance, but by and by the spire becomes too narrow to have stairs on the inside, so that we had to climb up on the outside along ladder-like steps. If one would become giddy in this place, he might fall from a hight of over four hundred feet into the street below! I cannot stop to speak of the world-renowned astronomical clock which is contained ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... are occasions of great hilarity, and mean a general frolic. The former began years ago with the gift of a rolling-pin and a step-ladder. The gifts are of those practical, useful articles that replenish the kitchen, though handsome gifts are of course easily selected. Carved wooden boxes, handsome picture frames, articles of furniture, are at the service of those who choose to ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... Again I covered it dead and pressed. Again as the gun exploded I saw that backward lurch of the bird, and heard the clap of the air upon its wings. Then—oh horror!—this aasvogel turned quietly, and began to mount the ladder of the sky in the same fashion as it had descended. I had missed ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... culverin's signal is fired, then on; Leave not in Corinth a living one— A priest at her altars, a chief in her halls, A hearth in her mansions, a stone on her walls. God and the prophet-Ala Hu! Up to the skies with that wild halloo! "There the breach lies for passage, the ladder to scale; And your hands on your sabres, and how should ye fail? He who first downs with the red cross may crave His heart's dearest wish; let him ask it, and have!" Thus uttered Coumourgi, the dauntless vizier; The reply was the brandish of sabre and spear, ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... jump," Garth said. "There's a ladder inside I should have brought, but it would be too much trouble to go back through the lock for it. Either of us can jump eight feet at home, and we'll get ...
— Out Around Rigel • Robert H. Wilson
... Nick departed at last; Cormick ascending the ladder to his bed in the loft; Mother Nolan brewed a dose of herbs of great virtue—she was wise in such things—and still the skipper sat by the stove and smoked his pipe. Never before had his life known another such day as this. Now he could have sworn that a whole month had ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... that sound was as a curfew, quenching rosy warm romance! Were it safe to wed a woman one so oft would wish in France? Oh, as she "cull-imbed!" that ladder, swift my mounting hope came down. I am still a single cynic; she is ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... bound he reached the rear window, and swung himself upon the fire escape. There was no one in sight. The gray surface of the ironwork showed not the slightest scratch, save those made by his own heels earlier in the day. The steps of the ladder leading up to the next floor were glistening, immaculate. Those of the one to the floor below were equally so. He re-entered the room, and going to the opposite window, threw it wide open. The three dormer windows of the adjoining house were ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... out, they reached the ship they sought. The "St. George" was a beautiful boat with three masts, and as we have said Willy had made more than one trip on it with his father. He was then the darling of the crew. Now as he climbed the ladder behind the Captain strange faces peered down at him over the railing; there were new officers, and officers and crew alike seemed rough fellows. Late in the evening as he stood on the rear deck watching the golden crosses of the Church of the Holy Saviour in the light of the setting ...
— The Shipwreck - A Story for the Young • Joseph Spillman
... vehemently to any system of national education. Condorcet had drawn up a marvellously complete project for universal compulsory education, with full liberty indeed for the teachers, whose technical competence alone the State would guarantee, and with a scheme of free scholarships, an educational "ladder" more generous than anything which has yet been realised in fact. Godwin objects that State-regulated institutions will stereotype knowledge and make for an undesirable permanence and uniformity in opinion. They diffuse what is known and ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... a little pityingly, that Lydia wanted everything. There was nothing in the old house for which Lydia did not expect to have immediate need in the new. This little table for the porch, this extra chair for the maid's room, this mirror, this mattress, this ladder. The older sister reserved enough furniture to fill the new house twice over; she would presently pack the new rooms with cumbersome, useless possessions, and go to her death believing herself the happier ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... a favorable omen that Miss Jewell descended the companion-ladder as though to the manner born; and her exclamations of delight at the cabin completed his satisfaction. The cook, who had followed them below with some trepidation, became reassured, and seating himself on a locker joined ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... Long Life or Length of Days. He has an enormously high forehead rounded at the top which makes his head look like a sugar-loaf. It is bald and shiny. A few stray white hairs sometimes sprout up, and the barber to reach them has to prop a ladder against his head to climb up and apply his razor. This big head comes from thinking so much. His eyebrows are cotton-white, and a long snowy beard falls down ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... The ladder used by one of the party being too short, the young man placed himself on the wall, as if in a saddle, to have a better opportunity of taking aim; when one of the wolves, the largest, strongest, and most exasperated, suddenly bounded at the wall, as if to clear it, but failed; subsequently ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... she repented very hard. Mother had said that very day that she never felt troubled about the baby when Betty had care of him, and that very day she had recklessly taken him up into the barn loft, climbing behind him and guiding his little feet from one rung of the perpendicular ladder to another, teaching him to cling with clenched hands to the rounds until she had landed him in the loft. There she had persuaded him he was a swallow in his nest, while she had taken her fill of the delight of leaping from ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... really a King and Queen, whom the Fairies were punishing for their ignorance and idleness. You may imagine that I was by this time half dead with fatigue, but Mirlifiche insisted upon my feeding her unicorn before I did anything else. To accomplish this I had to climb up a long ladder into the hayloft, and bring down, one after another, twenty-four handfuls of hay. Never, never before, did I have such a wearisome task! It makes me shudder to think of it now, and that was not all. In the same way I had to carry ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... repeated, with horrible crackings, tearings, yells and shouts. No one needed to tell us what it meant, and down came the call, 'Don't wait to save your things, only wraps, ladies! Up on deck! Life- belts if you can!' I remember Bernard standing at the top of the ladder, helping us up, and somehow, I understand from him, that we were on a reef, and might either remain there, and sink, or be washed off. The fog was clearing, and there was a dim light up high, somewhere, one of the lighthouses, I believe. I don't quite know how it all went; I think we kept ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... hiding-hole a ladder was nailed vertically. The feet of the man touched its lowest rung. Turning, Sir Roland began ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... is a pleasure, discipline a joy, improvement a self-wrought delight. All the duties and labors of Home, when rightly understood, are so many means of improvement. Even the trials of Home (for every Home must have its trials, and severe ones, too) are so many rounds in the ladder of spiritual progress, if we ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... above called to her, "Courage!" and she felt the flap of a twisted sheet lowered from an upper window against her face. She grasped it eagerly; it held firmly. Then she heard a cry from below, saw them carrying a ladder, and at last was lifted with her burden from the ledge by powerful hands. Then only did she raise her eyes to the upper window whence had come her help. Smoke and flame were pouring from it. The unknown hero who had sacrificed ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... the following description of the study of deacon John at that time. "His study is a small chamber about five feet by eight, entered by a ladder, built of mud, and plastered on the inside with the same material mixed with straw. It has two small windows covered with paper instead of glass, to let in the light. On the floor is a coarse woolen rug, but as yet no chair. His library is neatly ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... was, in truth, those ten thousand forebears. I was the race, the whole human race, in its superstitious infancy. Not until part way down the cabin-companionway did my identity return to me. I checked my flight and clung to the steep ladder, suffocating, trembling, and dizzy. Never, before nor since, have I had such a shock. I clung to the ladder and considered. I could not doubt my senses. That I had seen something there was no discussion. But what was ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... that part of the palace where his sire lay entombed, began to dig and to delve; nor had he worked a long while[FN19] ere, lo and behold! there appeared to him a ring bedded in a marble slab. He removed the stone and saw a ladder-like flight of steps whereby he descended until he found a huge souterrain all pillar'd and propped with columns of marble and alabaster. And when he entered the inner recesses he saw within the cave-like souterrain a pavilion which bewildered ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... confidence the whole history of his love, and how carefully they had concealed it from the duke her father, and told him, that, despairing of ever being able to obtain his consent, he had prevailed upon Silvia to leave her father's palace that night, and go with him to Mantua; then he showed Proteus a ladder of ropes, by help of which he meant to assist Silvia to get out of one of the windows of the ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... feet long, bending towards the earth, and extending all round in the form of an umbrella. The trunk is upright, and full of cavities, the vestiges of its decayed leaves, having a flat surface within, adapted to the human foot, and forming a kind of natural ladder, by which a person may easily ascend to the top. The lower part produces a number of stalks or suckers, which diffuse the tree considerably, and form a kind of bushy forest. This illustrates the scriptural term in the history of Deborah. "She ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... even society in this, its calumniated epoch yet retains its discrimination, its rules are not so arbitrary as its enemies declare them, and its heart is at times susceptible to the pleadings of misfortune for mercy. Woman, alas! has her fallen sister on every rung of the social ladder, though from general appearances one would be led to judge, that wealth and position and fame, claim virtue as all their own, it seems, that vice and error thrive only where poverty and ignorance and destitution ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... trouble is, that in several places you cannot stand upright: but this holds not long, before you come to descend in earnest by perpendicular Ladders, where the weight of on's body is found very sensible. At the end of each Ladder, there are boards a-cross, where we may breath a little. The Ladders, as we said, are perpendicular, but being imagined produced, do not make one Ladder, but several parallel ones. Being at the bottom, we saw ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... religion being represented by Chateaubriand's five volumes of Le Gene du Christianisme and two volumes of Les Martyrs. Corneille and Racine, among poets, had the honour of accessibility. When Monsieur Urbain wanted one of his own books, he had to fetch a little ladder from a cupboard in the hall. Angelot, from a child, was forbidden to use that ladder. The prohibition was hardly necessary. Angelot seldom opened a book at all, or read for more than five minutes at a time. He followed his uncle in this, as in so much else. The moors, ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... especially the post-offices, which were her greatest grievance. Her eyes were bright and quick as a bird's. She would peep and peer, and follow and watch, till at last, in some odd, unlikely place, the crotch of a tree, the middle of the asparagus bed, or, perhaps, on the very top step of the scuttle ladder, she spied the little paper box, with its load of notes, all ending with: "Be sure and not let Elsie know." Then she would seize the box, and, marching up to wherever the others were, she would throw it down, saying, defiantly: "There's your old post-office!" but feeling all the time just ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... from the House, a bald door without eyebrows, so to speak, like all the doors and windows in the House. But there is an unofficial way into the garden, and Jay found her Secret Friend there. This is the short cut to the sea. In other words, it is a wriggly ladder, one end of which you attach to a hook in the wall, and the other you throw over the balustrade down the cliff to the sea. It is a long way to walk round the House and along the cliff and down to the sea by the path. ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... goes off shakin' his head. I expect he's disappointed that I've stuck so long in one shop without climbin' further up the ladder. That's what he was always preachin' at me, this ladder-climbin' advice. But say, hod carriers do that. Me for an express ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... the hatch and stepped out into the passageway, blinking for a moment in the unaccustomed light and trying to shake away the remnants of his dream. Officers were boiling up the passageway and up the ladder, some eager ensigns dressed only in their shorts and their life jackets. It was more wise than funny, he thought slowly. Ships had gone down in a matter of seconds and anybody who spent precious moments looking for his pants or his wallet ...
— Decision • Frank M. Robinson
... greater or less quantity, and from this some may generally be found on the dump, or, in the vein of chlorite which I mentioned as a locality for the dogtooth spar, considerable may be obtained in it and on its western edge near the ceiling. A ladder about thirteen feet long is used for attending the lights, and may generally be borrowed, and access to the remainder of this pocket thus gained. Datholite is also very characteristic in appearance, and can only be confounded with some forms of calcite occurring ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... whose future is wrecked by a "Dot over the i." [2] He lashes furiously the orthodox spiders, the official leaders of the community, who catch the young pioneers of enlightenment in the meshes of Kabal authority, backed by police force. Climbing higher upon the ladder of history, the poet registers his protest against the predominance of the spiritual over the worldly element in the whole evolution of Judaism. He assails the prophet Jeremiah who in beleaguered Jerusalem preaches submission to the Babylonians ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... husband. Some bold and trusty conspirators were concealed in her most private chambers: in the darkness of a winter night, Zimisces, with his principal companions, embarked in a small boat, traversed the Bosphorus, landed at the palace stairs, and silently ascended a ladder of ropes, which was cast down by the female attendants. Neither his own suspicions, nor the warnings of his friends, nor the tardy aid of his brother Leo, nor the fortress which he had erected in the palace, could protect Nicephorus from a domestic foe, at whose voice every ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... see some of their names in the opposite category another year. "Better luck next time" is a good saying, but "Never say die" is perhaps a better. Try again, and yet again, and you will succeed. Many a man begins, and has begun in all times of the world, at the first rung of the ladder, who finds himself, if he will only give his own gifts their due, at the top at the end I do not know that I need recommend to you that most delightful book of history, "The Tales of a Grandfather," written by Sir Walter Scott. He describes, as few can, the despair of the Scottish ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... ye the stone or cleave the wood to make a path more fair or flat, Lo, it is black already with blood some Son of Martha spilled for that! Not as a ladder from earth to Heaven, not as a witness to any creed, But simple service simply given to his own kind in their ...
— The Years Between • Rudyard Kipling
... the wall, on the platform of which a sentinel walked, but instead of opposing them, he held his hand to La Jonquiere to assist him, and in three minutes they were on the platform, had drawn up the ladder, and placed it on the ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... fish the next day, and return by sunset; but unfortunately a heavy rain kept us at our anchorage off Spectacle Island for twenty-four hours. The old skipper got out of his berth and ate his breakfast about ten, and after going half way up the companion ladder, to smell the weather, turned in again, and slept till four, when he was called to partake of a greasy chowder. As soon as he had disposed of a reasonable allowance for four hearty men, he tumbled into his berth once more, and was ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... policy-player is hardly less so than his colored brother. The latter dreams a good deal, while the former divides his time between trying to guess the lucky numbers and avoiding evil omens. Bad luck walks arm in arm with him beneath every ladder, and below every safe that is being hoisted to a top-floor room. If he forgets anything when he is leaving home in the morning, and has to turn back, he is ruined for the day. If he washes with a piece of hard untractable soap, ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... sudden filled to the brim With a thousand thrown faggots, and with rolled trees stout and slim, Before all he ventured. On helmet and buckler poured floods of sulphurous fire. Yet scatheless he passed through the furnace of flame, And with powerful hand throwing the ladder high over the ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... one—Job had the opening almost large enough to crawl through. Then he struck the timbers—how was he to get through now? Well, just how, he never knew; but he did. He dropped down to the floor of the level, lit a little candle he had with him, ran along to the big shaft, and saw the ladder reaching down to the next level. Then he bethought himself that his light might be seen, so he blew it out. How could he get down the ladder in the dark? One misstep and—he shuddered at the thought. But he ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... acknowledged, we have an excellent opportunity of showing how worthy Christ is of being trusted as the Mediator, related as He is by His essential nature to the Most High, and to man by the nature He has assumed. A favourite figure with the Hindus is that the gods are a ladder by which they ascend to the Supreme; and we could not have a figure more adapted to our purpose, as it leads us to show that Christ is the very ladder we need—He by His Divine nature reaching heaven, and by His human nature being set upon the earth. His infinite excellence and His propitiatory ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... ladder down the hole and descended—Conn and his father, Kurt Fawzi, Jerry Rivas, then Shanlee and his two guards, then others—until a score of them were crowded in the room at the bottom, their flashlights illuminating ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... Grave senators in mulberry velvet and ermine kneel before the Child, or hold counsel on Paduan affairs under the patronage of S. Giustina. The "Crucifixion" (in S. Cassiano) is another triumph of the painter's imaginative conception. The bold lines of the crosses, the ladder, and the figures detach against a glorious sky, and the presence of the moving, murmuring throng, of which, by the placing of the line of sight, the spectator is made to form a part, is conveyed by the ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... a slave if he is held rigidly in a pattern and not permitted to step out of that pattern. In ancient times, a slave was born at the bottom of the social ladder, and he remained there all his life. Only rarely did a slave of exceptional merit manage to ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett
... Gaertner, Moore's Diamond, the Green Mountain or Winchell, and so on. And currants, too, acres of them set under and between the rows of grapes, and Bartlett pears, and peaches. As I write, a picture comes to mind of Father up in a peach tree, on a high step-ladder, picking peaches, and of some girls with cameras taking his picture and all laughing and the girls exclaiming; "At the mercy of the Kodakers"— and Father enjoying the joke and picking out soft peaches for them. ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... Grand Hotel. A "breack" is its Gallicized English name. It has four white horses, with bells on the harness, and the driver is richly bedight in a scarlet-faced coat, blazing with buttons and silver lace; a black glazed hat, and very white duck trousers. We ascend, the ladder is removed, the porter bows, his thanks, the whip signals, and we roll out of the court-yard for a six-mile ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... in the way he willed.... But today it was a servant sullen, rebellious, recalcitrant. ... The letters remained unwritten. Nothing was sent back with the pilot. And Parks, wondering, puzzled—and, perhaps, a bit perturbed— watched the pilot swing down the Jacob's ladder, and make across the water toward his craft, with wonderment, ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... "with light hearts and heavy hands." But Gladsdale's men, encouraged by their bold and skilful leader, made a resolute and able defence. The Maid planted her banner on the edge of the fosse, and then, springing down into the ditch, she placed the first ladder against the wall and began to mount. An English archer sent an arrow at her, which pierced her corselet and wounded her severely between the neck and shoulder. She fell bleeding from the ladder; and the English were leaping ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... families always exists whose fortunes and importance are of ancient date. Even when, as in France in 1789, this class seems to be exclusive, each half century introduces into it new families; judges, governors, rich businessmen or bankers who have risen to the tope of the social ladder through the wealth they have acquired or through the important offices they have filled; and here, in the medium thus constituted, the statesman and wise counselor of the people, the independent and able politician is most naturally developed.—Because, on the one hand, thanks ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... which a reason, always so lovely even in its errors, has been restored, are yet fulfilled. It seems to me as if your union, as yet so imperfect, has still for its end that holy life on earth by which two mortal beings strengthen each other for a sphere of existence to which this is the spiritual ladder. Through yourself I have hope yet for her. Gifted with powers that rank you high in the manifold orders of man,—thoughtful, laborious, and brave; with a heart that makes intellect vibrate to every ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
