All that stands between the graduate and the top of the ladder is the ladder.
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I have never doubted the truth of signs, Adso; they are the only things man has with which to orient himself in the world. What I did not understand is the relation among signs . . . I behaved stubbornly, pursuing a semblance of order, when I should have known well that there is no order in the universe. But in imagining an erroneous order you still found something. . . . What you say is very fine, Adso, and I thank you. The order that our mind imagines is like a net, or like a ladder, built to attain something. But afterward you must throw the ladder away, because you discover that, even if it was useful, it was meaningless . . . The only truths that are useful are instruments to be thrown away.
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Four Lessons on Life 1. Never take down a fence until you know why it was put up. 2. If you get too far ahead of the army, your soldiers may mistake you for the enemy. 3. Don't complain about the bottom rungs of the ladder they helped to get you higher. 4. If you want to enjoy the rainbow, be prepared to endure the storm.
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Rather would I have the love songs of romantic ages, rather Don Juan and Madame Venus, rather an elopement by ladder and rope on a moonlight night, followed by the father's curse, mother's moans, and the moral comments of neighbors, than correctness and propriety measured by yardsticks.
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St Francis was led to love all things which he knew had the same origin as he, and in which he recognised the goodness of God. For he followed his Well-Beloved everywhere and in every trace of Him to be found in His creatures, he made of all things a ladder to reach His throne.
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The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a man's foot long enough to enable him to put the other somewhat higher.
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The road to success leads through the valley of humility, and the path is up the ladder of patience and across the wide barren plains of perseverance. As yet, no short cut has ever been discovered.
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The ladder of success is never crowded at the top.
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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.
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The sculptor will chip off all unnecessary material to set free the angel. Nature will chip and pound us remorselessly to bring out our possibilities. She will strip us of wealth, humble our pride, humiliate our ambition, let us down from the ladder of fame, will discipline us in a thousand ways, if she can develop a little character, Everything must give way to that. Wealth is nothing, position is nothing, fame is nothing, manhood is everything.
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We make ourselves a ladder out of our vices if we trample the vices themselves underfoot.
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As long as learning is connected with earning, as long as certain jobs can only be reached through exams, so long must we take this examination system seriously. If another ladder to employment was contrived, much so-called education would disappear, and no one would be a penny the stupider.
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From top to bottom of the ladder, greed is aroused without knowing where to find ultimate foothold. Nothing can calm it, since its goal is far beyond all it can attain. Reality seems valueless by comparison with the dreams of fevered imaginations; reality is therefore abandoned.
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Funny business, a woman's career the things you drop on the way up the ladder so you can move faster. You forget you'll need them again when you get back to being a woman. It's one career all females have in common, whether we like it or not being a woman. Sooner or later, we've got to work at it, no matter how many other careers we've had or wanted.
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Courage is the ladder on which all the other virtues mount.
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A poet is a man who puts up a ladder to a star and climbs it while playing a violin.
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I am always amused by Christians who try so very hard to defend their position with reason and logic. They are like standing on top of a ladder with their tools and gadgets, straining their necks looking skywards for the leaks, trying to fix the roof amidst the rain. What they do not realize, of course, is that the roof isn't leaking -- it isn't there.
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Like other parties of the kind, it was first silent, then talky, then argumentative, then disputatious, then unintelligible, then altogether, then inarticulate, and then drunk. When we had reached the last step of this glorious ladder, it was difficult to get down again without stumbling.
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If you're climbing the ladder of life, you go rung by rung, one step at a time. Don't look too far up, set your goals high but take one step at a time. Sometimes you don't think you're progressing until you step back and see how high you've really gone.
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Courage is the ladder on which all other virtues mount.
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We haven't won this game in a long time. Thinking anything beyond this ... we have a game coming up Saturday. ... This is a step in (the right) direction. We're climbing the ladder. I feel like we're moving our program in the direction that we're all very proud.
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If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather be elevating as a ladder, the means by which we are translated?
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There are some cases in which the sense of injury breeds -- not the will to inflict injuries and climb over them as a ladder, but -- a hatred of all injury.
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Some people are at the top of the ladder, some are in the middle, still more are at the bottom, and a whole lot more don't even know there is a ladder.
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The higher one climbs on the spiritual ladder, the more they will grant others their own freedom, and give less interference to another's state of consciousness.
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Mistakes are merely steps up the ladder.
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Ambition is putting a ladder against the sky.
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Life is like a ladder, the higher you climb, the more expansive your view is.
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Some people reach the top of the ladder of success only to find it is leaning against the wrong wall.
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There are some cases in which the sense of injury breeds not the will to inflict injuries and climb over them as a ladder, but a hatred of all injury.
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