Stairways Quotes

• There's this thing, they have in french: L'espirit d'escalier. The spirit of the stairway. I don't think we have a word for it in English. It means, well, the clever things to say that you only think to yourself when you're on the way out.

  Neil Gaiman

  Clever, Mean, Thinking

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• Faith goes up the stairs that love has built and looks out the windows which hope has opened.

  Charles Spurgeon

  God, Faith, Christian

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• You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Inspirational, Positive, Faith

  Mother Jones Magazine, Vol.16, No.3, p.77, May - June 1991.

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• When we got to the moron who was sitting in the only path to the stairway, Adam caught my waist and lifted me over before stepping over the man himself. “Scott?” Adam said as we headed upstairs. “Yeah?” “Unless someone shoots you, skins you, and throws the results on the floor, I don’t want to see you lying in the walkway again.” “Yessir!

  Patricia Briggs

  Lying, Men, Skins

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• Failures are the stairs we climb to reach success.

  Roy T. Bennett

  Stairs, Climbs

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• Nor count compartments of the floors, But mount to paradise By the stairway of surprise.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Paradise, Surprise

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.4360, Delphi Classics

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• The truth is that even big collections of ordinary books distort space, as can readily be proved by anyone who has been around a really old-fashioned secondhand bookshop, one that looks as though they were designed by M. Escher on a bad day and has more stairways than storeys and those rows of shelves which end in little doors that are surely too small for a full-sized human to enter. The relevant equation is: Knowledge = power = energy = matter = mass; a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.

  Terry Pratchett

  Truth, Book, Bad Day

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• All rising to great places is by a winding stair.

  Gautama Buddha

  Buddhist, Challenges, Rising

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• Success is not a doorway, it's a stairway.

  Dottie Walters

  Doorways

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• The stairway to the ministry is not a grand staircase but a back stairwell that leads down to the servants’ quarters.

  Edmund Clowney

  Ministry, Quarters, Staircases

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• I have watched this famous island descending incontinently, fecklessly, the stairway which lead to a dark gulf.

  Winston Churchill

  Dark, Islands, Fame

  Winston Churchill (2013). “Never Give In!: Winston Churchill's Speeches”, p.146, A&C Black

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• The scene fascinated me: a round straw hat; the funnel leaning left, the stairway leaning right; the white drawbridge, its railings made of chain; white suspenders crossed on the back of a man below; circular iron machinery; a mast that cut into the sky, completing a triangle.

  Alfred Stieglitz

  Art, Cutting, Men

  Alfred Stieglitz, J. Paul Getty Museum (1995). “Alfred Stieglitz: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum”, p.20, Getty Publications

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• There was a reason why there was only a single stairway to heaven, but an entire highway to hell.

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Heaven, Reason Why, Hell

  Sherrilyn Kenyon (2014). “Illusion: Number 5 in series”, p.168, Hachette UK

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• Stairway to Wisdom”) David Brooks detailed the needed ingredients to gaining a deep understanding of a social problem, beginning with the data and moving on to first-hand accounts. The highest rung on his stairway, though, went beyond those: “Empathy opens you up to absorb the good and the bad. Love impels you not just to observe but to seek union—to think as another thinks and feel as another feels.

  David Brooks

  Moving, Thinking, Hands

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• Theories are like a stairway; by climbing, science widens its horizon more and more, because theories embody and necessarily include proportionately more facts as they advance.

  Claude Bernard

  Science, Climbing, Horizon

  Claude Bernard (2012). “An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine”, p.185, Courier Corporation

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• A man doesn't borrow pieces of his body. A building doesn't borrow hunks of its soul. Its maker gives it the soul and every wall, window and stairway to express it.

  Ayn Rand

  Wall, Men, Giving

  Ayn Rand (1999). “Ayn Rand Reader”, p.21, Penguin

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• With the help of dedicated Americans from our party, every party, and no party at all, I intend to mount that stairway to preach peace for our nation and world.

  Theodore C. Sorensen

  Peace, Party, World

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• In order to weep, I had descended to the realm of the dead themselves, to their secret chambers, led by the invisible but soft hands of birds down stairways which were folded up again as I advanced. I displayed my grief in the friendly fields of death, far from men: within myself.

  Jean Genet

  Grief, Men, Hands

  Jean Genet, Bernard Frechtman (1994). “Funeral Rites”, p.46, Grove Press

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• I've been an atheist ever since I heard there was only a stairway to heaven

  Stella Young

  Atheist, Heaven, Heard

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• I am building a stairway to the stars. I have the authority to take the whole of mankind up there with me. That is why I write.

  Bessie Head

  Stars, Writing, Building

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• Dolly Parton's done 'Stairway to Heaven.' Anything's possible.

  Robert Plant

  Heaven, Done, Stairway To Heaven

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• I don't want to speak too disparagingly of my generation (actually I do, we had a chance to change the world and opted for the Home Shopping Network instead), but there was a view among the student writers I knew at that time that good writing came spontaneously, in an uprush of feeling that had to be caught at once; when you were building that all-important stairway to heaven, you couldn't just stand around with your hammer in your hand.

  Stephen King

  Home, Writing, Views

  "On Writing". Book by Stephen King, 1999.

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• It's great the way the old-time directors used to manipulate the hell out of you. You see someone dying and all of a sudden a ghost would come out and they go walking hand in hand up the stairway.

  Sylvester Stallone

  Hands, Walking Hand In Hand, Dying

  "New again: Sylvester Stallone". Interview with Pat Hackett, www.interviewmagazine.com. December 2, 2015.

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• I'd break out in hives if I had to sing (`Stairway to Heaven') in every show. I wrote those lyrics and found that song to be of some importance and consequence in 1971, but 17 years later, I don't know. It's just not for me. I sang it at the Atlantic Records show because I'm an old softie and it was my way of saying thank you to Atlantic because I've been with them for 20 years. But no more of `Stairway to Heaven' for me.

  Robert Plant

  Song, Years, Heaven

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• I guess the solo from 'Achilles Last Stand' is in the same tradition as the solo from 'Stairway to Heaven'...it is on that level to me.

  Jimmy Page

  Heaven, Levels, Lasts

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