"Jacob's ladder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... done rare service for the people in his own way—no one better, for he was one of the first who eagerly advocated the education of the masses; but I fear he is now becoming "disillusionised." He talked once about erecting a Jacob's Ladder from the gutter to the university; and he has found that the ladder—such as it is—has merely been used to connect the tradesman's shop and the artisan's dwelling with the exalted place of education. The poor gutter-child ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... I to get that handkerchief?' cried he; 'why I should need Jacob's ladder!' But the ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... from the dining-room irritated him. He would be better off up-stairs, where he could not hear it. The noise in his ears was all he could stand. He attained the foot of the stairs and the flight of steps seemed as long and as misty as Jacob's Ladder. And ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... bogh!" she said, with the pin between her teeth. "She's off again. Do you really think, now, the angels in heaven are as sweet and innocent, Kirry? I don't. They can't if they're grown up. And having to climb Jacob's ladder, poor things, they must be. Then, if they're ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... day's work had been hard, it was child's play compared to the second. The track, leading over a vast plain, had recently been traversed by a number of camel caravans, which had transformed it into a kind of Jacob's ladder formed by holes a couple of feet deep in the snow. As long as the horses trod into them all went well, but a few inches to the right or left generally brought them blundering on to their noses. The reader may imagine what a day of this work means. The ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... singin' them chants dat her could pipe so pretty at St. Johns, in Winnsboro. You see they was 'Piscopalians. Dere was no hard shell Baptist and no soft shell Methodist in deir make up. It was all glory, big glory, glory in de very highest rung of Jacob's ladder, ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... chop the roots: up they'll come, treble strong. Throw 'em over hedge; there they'll grow, staring me in the face like a hungry dog driven away, and creep back again in a week or two the same as before. 'Tis Jacob's ladder here, Jacob's ladder there, and plant 'em where nothing in the world will grow, you get crowds of 'em in a month or two. John made a new manure mixen last summer, and he said, "Maria, now if you've got any flowers ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... couple that has the sense and poise to allow passion just enough mulberry-leaves, so it will spin a beautiful silken thread, out of which a Jacob's ladder can be constructed, reaching to the Infinite. Most lovers in the end wear love to a fringe, and there remains no ladder with angels ascending and descending—not even a dream of a ladder. Instead of the silken ladder on which one can ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... the screen he did not see the approaching figure of Mr. Stonehouse, and was astonished when he saw his head rise above the edge of the tank as he climbed the straight Jacob's ladder behind the wheelhouse. The elder man paused as he saw him and said ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... last longer, and little or no smoke. There is a drawback to these advantages: there must be a live stoker to keep the automatic stoker up to its work; he has to keep the coals supplied to the "Jacob's Ladder"; he has to regulate the supply of coals to the boxes over each boiler, and regulate the supply of coals dropping down into the fireplace, regulate the speed of the travelling furnace by means of the ratchet, clean out the ash-hole of clinkers every two hours and wheel ...
— The Stoker's Catechism • W. J. Connor
... Systematic Development. The Development Circle. The Aspirational Attitude. Natural Unfoldment. Persistent Watchful Waiting. Building Lines of Communication. Developing Concentration. The Call for Illumination. The Jacob's Ladder of Communion. What a Development Circle Is. Forming the Development Circle. The Sitters in the Circle. The Spirit Communication Code. The Matter of Time Conditions. Opening the Seance. Developing a Medium. ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... yellow juice that runs in the veins of this plant to anoint the eyes of her fledgelings! And with the disappearance of the anemones as the season advances, their place is taken by blood-red poppies, by golden hawkweeds and by masses of tall magenta-coloured blooms of the wild gladiolus, the "Jacob's Ladder" of our own English gardens. Strange enough amongst these familiar homely flowers appear the sub-tropical clumps of prickly pear, and the hedges of aloe which here and there have thrown up a gigantic spike of blossom eight or ten feet in height, a triumphal favour of Nature that the plant itself ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... I had rushed down the staircase and the Jacob's ladder, the man was no longer hanging ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... nor Saint Catherine nor Saint Margaret appeared during the examination. In retirement, in the oratory, and in the lonely fields the heavenly visitants came to her in crowds; angels and saints, descending from heaven, flocked around her. But when the doctors came, immediately the Jacob's ladder was drawn up. Besides, the clerks were theologians, and she was a saint. Relations are always strained between the heads of the Church Militant and those devout women who communicate directly with the Church Triumphant. She realised that the revelations ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... animals as a means of killing time, and then, of course, ate them to save the long and difficult labor of agriculture. I ask you to contemplate our fathers as they came crashing down all the steps of this Jacob's ladder that reached from paradise to a hell on earth in which they had multiplied the chances of death from violence, accident, and disease until they could hardly count on three score and ten years of life, much ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... one of the signs by which you can tell a man-of-war from a merchantman, for in war-ships the catch ratline is on the aftermost shroud instead of on the foremost. In a man-of-war, too, the topgallant-rigging is never rattled down, as a Jacob's ladder leads from the topgallantmast-head down to the crosstrees; but this Jacob's ladder arrangement is found in ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... Immaculate paid me my fee with punctilious courtesy, waiving the customary receipt; followed me to the cloak-room, helped me on with my coat, picked up one of the bags,—an auditor the other, and the two followed me down Jacob's ladder into the night. Outside stood a sleigh shaped like the shell of Dr. Holmes's Nautilus, its body hardly large enough to hold a four-months-old baby. This was surrounded by half the audience, anxious, I afterward learned, for a closer view of the man ...
— Forty Minutes Late - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... and let it be A Jacob's ladder unto thee, Down which the Angels come, To bring thee ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... mortality's stern screen, A reconciling vision could be told, Brighter than western clouds or shapes of gold That change in amber fires,—or the demesne Of ever mystic sleep. Mists intervene, Which then would melt, to show our eyesight bold From God a perfect chain throughout the skies, Like Jacob's ladder light with winged men. And as this world, all notched to terrene eyes With Alpine ranges, smoothes to higher ken, So death and sin and social miseries; By God fixed as His bow ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... house intended for his own residence: he also gave the name of Paradise to a portion of ground which had been cleared to form a garden for the use of the colony, and changed the appellation of Glover's Stairs for that of Jacob's Ladder. This consists of a flight of 150 steps, leading from the beach to the acclivity on which Clarence is situated that had been constructed, since our arrival, by Mr. Glover, and his body ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... sea and shore in her island. Ramsgate was a favourite resort of the Duchess's. The little Thanet watering-place, with its white chalk cliffs, its inland basin of a harbour, its upper and lower town, connected by "Jacob's Ladder," its pure air and sparkling water, with only a tiny fringe of bathing-machines, was in its blooming time of fresh rural peace and beauty when it was the cradle by the ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... or habits of thought appears on every page. He was, as Novalis said of Spinoza, "A God-intoxicated man," but it was God as containing humanity in himself. His theology was a veritable Jacob's ladder, on which the angels of God ascend and descend; and if in his thought they descended before they ascended, it was because he conceived of humanity as existing in God before it was manifest in creation; and if his head was among the stars, his feet were ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... earth is round. He believed it was flat, although He made it Himself, and at that time heaven was just up there beyond the clouds. There was where the gods lived, there was where the angels were, and it was against that heaven that Jacob's ladder was that the angels ascended and descended. It was to that heaven that Christ ascended after His resurrection. It was up there where the New Jerusalem was, with its streets of gold, and under this earth ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... looked back, and dropped off from the pursuit, to return to the easy route, giving his companion a parting hint concerning Paula. Whereupon De Stancy went on alone. He soon saw Paula above him in the path, which ascended skyward straight as Jacob's Ladder, but was so overhung by the brushwood as to be quite shut out from the sun. When he reached her side she was moving easily upward, apparently enjoying the ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... sad-eyed mother. Let the whole world condemn, deride, and despise us; but only your own lips shall teach me to doubt you. Everything else may crumble beneath me, all may drift away; but faith and trust in mother shall stand fast—as Jacob's ladder, linking me with the angels who will surely come down its golden rounds and comfort me. Oh, mother I the time has come when you and I must clasp hands and fight the battle together; and God will be merciful ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... me when I would conceive of any noble humanity, and the sweep of Orgagna's great arches give me an idea of vastness like the sea; in the Pitti palace only giants should abide; the Campanile goes up to heaven as beautiful as Jacob's ladder, and in the perpetual twilight of the Duomo I was not of half the stature I believed when ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... spot where Ichi and Asoki stood waiting. They handed their loads over the rail to the waiting hands below. Then they followed, by way of a Jacob's ladder. ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... smiled as they ascended to Saturn, Dante would have perished as did Semele, from excess of light. In Saturn dwelt the spirits of the contemplative, the monks and hermits, and here was Jacob's ladder, up and down whose bars of gold sparkled the spirits of the saints, silent for the same reason that Beatrice smiled not. By divine election, Saint Peter Damian descended and spoke with Dante, accusing the churchmen ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... age. There are two principal forms of this doctrine; one asserting an ascent of souls from a previous existence below the rank of man, the other a descent of souls from a higher sphere. Generation is the true Jacob's ladder, on which souls are ever ascending or descending. The former statement is virtually that of the modern theory of development, which argues that the souls known to us, obtaining their first organic being out of the ground life of nature, have climbed up through a graduated series of births, from ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... careful, oh my dear friend!" was the last whisper of Clara as Thurstane quitted the tower. Then she passed the day in ascending and descending between heights of happiness and abysses of anxiety. Her existence henceforward was a Jacob's ladder, which had its foot on a world of crime and sorrow, and its top ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... Jacob's ladder I am climbin' Jacob's ladder I am climbin' Jacob's ladder For the work is ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration |
