And he dreamed and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.

-Bible (Old Testament)
Genesis 28:12.

To write music is to raise a ladder without a wall to lean it against. There is no scaffolding: the building under construction is held in balance only by the miracle of a kind of internal logic, an innate sense of proportion.

-Honegger, Arthur
I Am a Composer.

Ayear passed; a year of art and dissipationöone part art, two parts dissipation.We mounted and descended at pleasure the rounds of society's ladder.

-Moore, George
  Confessions of aYoung Man (published1888).

My tea is nearly ready and the sun has left the sky; It's time to take the window to see Leerie going by; Foreverynight attea-timeand before youtakeyourseat, With lantern and with ladder he comes posting up the street.

-Stevenson, Robert Louis
  A Child's Garden ofVerses, no.30,'The Lamplighter', stanza1.

The business of a general is to kick away the ladder behind soldiers when they have climbed up a height.

-SunTzu
c.500  BC  Art ofWar, ch.10 (translated byYuan Shibang,1987).

Now that my ladder's gone, I must lie down where all the ladders start, In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.

-Yeats,W(illiam) B(utler)
^8  'The Circus Animals' Desertion', part 3, l.6^8. Collected in Last Poems (1939).

You can't climb up to the second floor without a ladder. When you set your aim too high and don't fulfil it, then your enthusiasm turns to bitterness. Try for a goal that's reasonable, and then gradually raise it. That's the only way to get to the top.

-Zatopek, Emil
Quoted in ColinJarmanThe Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).