Ropes Quotes

A twisted, pale figure writhing in agony, chest bare and hideous. Tight, rigid cords of sickly green veins webbed across the boy's body and limbs, like ropes under his skin. Purplish bruises covered the kid, red hives, bloody scratches. His bloodshot eyes bulged, darting back and forth. ~ James Dashner

You look like a pagan. A pagan warrior queen." He scraped his teeth along her throat. "Naked, glowing, wearing nothing but ropes of diamonds."
"I want you inside me." Breath tearing, she bit at his ear. "Hot, hard inside me."
"My hands are busy at the moment." He filled them with her breasts. "I'll need help getting out of this shirt."
She reached up, tore it open, sending buttons flying.
"Well, that's one way."
"It's how it works when you're a pagan warrior queen. Take me." She gripped his hair, yanked his mouth to hers. "I want you to take me like there's nothing you need more."
"There isn't. It's you. It's always you. ~ J.D. Robb

Man, you're a regular Bonnie Parker."
"A dame that knows the ropes isn't likely to get tied up."
Jesse found that hysterical. "Did Willie say that?"
"Nope, Mae West. Now, how do I get on this thing in a skirt? ~ Ruta Sepetys

Delilah Bard had a way of finding trouble. She'd always thought it was better than letting trouble find her, but floating in the ocean in a two-person skiff with no oars, no view of land, and no real resources save the ropes binding her wrists, she was beginning to reconsider. The ~ V.E Schwab

As they walked, the subtle lamplight of a dirigible washed over them. Finley glanced up, watching the light grow closer, slowly descending from the sky in a whirl of propellers as the ship made its way into the London air dock just a few miles away. How amazing it must be to float so high, to travel so quickly.
Dandy followed her gaze, but they didn't stop walking. "I was up in one of them flyers once," he told her. "I climbed over the rail and hung on to one of the ropes. Freeing it was. I almost let go."
She whipped her head around to gape at him. "The fall would kill you."
He smiled ever so slightly. "Not afore I flew. Worse ways to go. ~ Kady Cross

Then eventually Westwood arrived. He looked nothing like Reacher expected, but the reality fit the bill just as well as the preconceptions had. He was an outdoors type, not a lab rat, and sturdy rather than pencil-necked. He looked like a naturalist or an explorer. He had short but unruly hair, fair going gray, and a beard of the same length and color. He was red in the face from sunburn and had squint lines around his eyes. He was forty-five, maybe. He was wearing clothing put together from high-tech fabrics and many zippers, but it was all old and creased. He had hiking boots on his feet, with speckled laces like miniature mountain-climbing ropes. He was toting a canvas bag about as big as a mail carrier's. ~ Lee Child

You didn't have to tie us up!" Shay shrugged the frayed ropes off.
"Yes, we did!" Adne's hands were on her hips. "You would have torn right through that portal to get to her. You were both acting like morons."
"She's right," Ren said. "They probably did have to tie us up."
Shay grinned. ~ Andrea Cremer

The universe is illusion merely, not one speck of it real, and we are not only its victims, falling always into or smashed by a planet slung by the sun-but also its captives, bound by the mineral-made ropes of our senses. ~ Annie Dillard

Darkis pointed toward the dwarf sitting btween them on the ground. "Uh, don't you think that's a bit much?"
Turi and Ethis each held separate ropes around the bound hands and feet of the dwarf. A gag was tied tightly over hi mouth.
Ethis considered the prisoner for a moment before replying. "No, it seems a resonable precaution." "Why? What did he do?" Darkis said. The chimera looked at each other, thier blank faces considering for a moment. "He kept promising not to escape," Thuri answerd at last. "He promised not to escape," Darkis asked, his brow furrowed with the puzzle, "and so you tied him up?"
"He wouldn't shut up about it," Ethis replied, his large eyes blinking indignantly. "He kept going on and on about how we could trust him and how he had nowhere to run and how he was glad it was us who took him as a slave captive of war."
"It was unnerving," Thuri finished. ~ Tracy Hickman

The modern bridge between the mind and physical objects is rickety and can sustain little weight. Idealists attempted to cut this bridge by positing that the mind is fundamental, while the materialists sawed the ropes off from the other end, in the constant quest to reduce, eliminate, or ignore the mental. The hard problem of consciousness, of unifying mind and body, and of correlating our mental grasp of the world with extramental objects is all but intractable within the modern paradigm. ~ John C. Wright

Desktop computers - boxes inside boxes - began appearing in those cubicles in the mid-eighties, electrical cords curling on the floor like so many ropes. ~ Jill Lepore

To become an executive chef, you have to start at the bottom, learn the ropes, know the kitchen, and know the basics. Be okay with having someone constantly telling you what to do. Be a team player. Oh, ~ Jane Bedell

It is a strange world, a sad world, a world full of miseries, and woes, and troubles. And yet when King Laugh come, he make them all dance to the tune he play. Bleeding hearts, and dry bones of the churchyard, and tears that burn as they fall, all dance together to the music that he make with that smileless mouth of him. Ah, we men and women are like ropes drawn tight with strain that pull us different ways. Then tears come, and like the rain on the ropes, they brace us up, until perhaps the strain become too great, and we break. But King Laugh he come like the sunshine, and he ease off the strain again, and we bear to go on with our labor, what it may be. ~ Bram Stoker

As with the first Nightmare, we shot a couple of interesting scenes that didn't make it into the final cut, most notably one featuring a female Freddy. One of the kids in the hospital has a Freddy dream in which he's being seduced by a sexy nurse. The nightmare evolves into a kinky S&M fantasy, but becomes less M and more S when the ropes that bind the kid to the bed become Freddy tongues, and the nurse's face morphs into Freddy's, but her topless torso, which features a pair of perfect Playboy breasts, remains smooth and inviting… that is, for a moment. All of a sudden, the veins in her areolas come to life and turn into Freddy-like burn scars and snake up her cleavage, past her neck, and onto her face. (I'm pretty sure Kevin enjoyed the four hours it took to apply makeup to those tits.) This troubling, erotic transformation didn't make the final cut for some reason. Occasionally I find myself signing bootleg stills from the missing sequence. Especially in Europe. Ooh la la! ~ Robert Englund

Great blunders are often made, like large ropes, of a multitude of fibers. Take the cable thread by thread, take separately all the little determining motives, you break them one after another, and you say: that is all! Wind them and twist them together, they become an enormity. ~ Victor Hugo

Without hope, Chöd practitioners are freed from the limits of hope and fear; having cut the ropes of grasping, definitely enlightened, where does one go? ~ Machik Labdrön

His eyes are cold and restless
His wounds have almost healed
And she'd give half of Texas
Just to change the way he feels
She knows his love's in Tulsa
And she knows he's gonna go
Well it ain't no woman flesh and blood
It's that damned old rodeo


Well it's bulls and blood
It's dust and mud
It's the roar of a Sunday crowd
It's the white in his knuckles
The gold in the buckle
He'll win the next go 'round
It's boots and chaps
It's cowboy hats
It's spurs and latigo
It's the ropes and the reins
And the joy and the pain
And they call the thing rodeo


She does her best to hold him
When his love comes to call
But his need for it controls him
And her back's against the wall
And it's So long girl I'll see you
When it's time for him to go
You know the woman wants her cowboy
Like he wants his rodeo ~ Garth Brooks

Keep it always with you that laughter who knock at your door and say, 'May I come in?' is not the true laughter. No! he is a king, and he come when and how he like. He ask no person; he choose no time of suitability. He say, 'I am here.' ... Oh, friend John, it is a strange world, a sad world, a world full of miseries, and woes, and troubles; and yet when King Laugh come he make them all dance to the tune he play. Bleeding hearts, and dry bones of the churchyard, and tears that burn as they fall - all dance together to the music that he make with that smileless mouth of him. And believe me, friend John, that he is good to come, and kind. Ah, we men and women are like ropes drawn tight with strain that pull us different ways. Then tears come; and, like the rain on the ropes, they brace us up, until perhaps the strain become too great, and we break. But King Laugh he come like the sunshine, and he ease off the strain again; and we bear to go on with our labour, what it may be. ~ Bram Stoker

Freedom starts in the mind, not by cutting ropes". ~ B

The more south we were, the more deep a sky it seemed, till, in the Valley of Mexico, I thought it held back an element too strong for life, and that the flamy brilliance of blue stood off this menace and sometimes, like a sheath or silk membrane, shoed the weight it held in sags. So when later he would fly high over the old craters on the plain, coaly bubbles of the underworld, dangerous red everywhere from the sun, and then coats of snow on the peak of the cones - gliding like a Satan - well, it was here the old priests, before the Spaniards, waited for Aldebaran to come into the middle of heaven to tell them whether or not life would go on for another cycle, and when they received their astronomical sign built their new fire inside the split and emptied chest of a human sacrifice. And also, hereabouts, worshipers disguised as gods and as gods in the disguise of birds, jumped from platforms fixed on long poles, and glided as they spun by the ropes - feathered serpents, and eagles too, the voladores, or fliers. There still are such plummeters, in market places, as there seem to be remnants or conversions or equivalents of all the old things. Instead of racks or pyramids of skulls still in their hair and raining down scraps of flesh there are corpses of dogs, rats, horses, asses, by the roads; the bones dug out of the rented graves are thrown on a pile when the lease is up; and there are the coffins looking like such a rough joke on the female form, sold in the open shops, bl ~ Saul Bellow

You're probably thinking the same thing we were: where did Jane get the rope to tie the prisoners? We researched this very conundrum thoroughly, and after two weeks we can say, without a doubt : nobody knows. It's a question that has baffled historians and archaeologists alike. Professor Herbert Halprin explains: "Ropes have been a mystery to scholars throughout the ages. The first ropes were thought to appear as far back as 17,000 BC and made of vines. Unfortunately, being made of vines, none of those early examples survived. Later, da Vinci drew sketches for a rope-making machine, but it was never built. In medieval times, there were secret societies, called Rope Guilds, whose rope-twisting practices were protected via a complicated series of handshakes and passwords -" Okay. Your narrators are interrupting the dear professor, for reasons of boredom. Plus, his English accent sounded sketchy and forced. We asked him where Jane could've gotten the rope, but maybe he thought we asked him where anyone could've gotten any rope at any given point in history. Trust us, we are as frustrated as you must be about the lack of a definitive answer. ~ Cynthia Hand

My fellow Republicans acted like they'd been punched in the stomach. "You have them on the ropes, go in for the kill!" they said. This was my first real taste of the new Republican ideology that any compromise is a sign of weakness. ~ Arnold Schwarzenegger

The whole glittering nebula of shapes was framed by midnight colors - black, bruised blue, indigo, all textured into intricacy by clouds and the reachless vaults between them. Here, darkness was not simple; it hinted at structures and meanings, hidden activity and watchful eyes. Beacons flickered, miles away, then disappeared behind fog banks. Half-glimpsed ropes twisted and contorted their way up, down, and to every side, synapses reaching to contact the outlier towns and factories of Sere's hinterland. One or two of those ropes, if you followed them far enough, would emerge into sunlight at other nations' borders. ~ Karl Schroeder

I don't mean to offend anybody, but I think that we get a lot of scientists now who are bent into a system, and we lose some of their boldness by that. Obviously, you have to learn the ropes, but I think it's important to do that without hammering out the radicalness that makes innovation happen. ~ Taylor Wilson

Music is a uniter, so anything that has to do with VIP and ropes and barriers is not my way. Sometimes I have to deal with it, and sometimes I'm put behind those barriers, but I do all I can to bring it down. ~ Eugene Hutz

She clung to the ropes. "I should go back. This was a stupid idea."

"Wait until you see Savannah from up here." He clasped her other wrist, too. "Let go, Skye. I won't let you fall."

She looked up into his eyes. "Putting my life in your hands is more trust than I intended on a first date."

His lips twitched into a tentative smile. "Didn't know we were on a date. ~ Lisa Kessler

Those who arrive at Thekla can see little of the city, beyond the plank fences, the sackcloth screens, the scaffoldings, the metal armatures, the wooden catwalks hanging from ropes or supported by sawhorses, the ladders, the trestles. If you ask, "Why is Thekla's construction taking such a long time?" the inhabitants continue hoisting sacks, lowering leaded strings, moving long brushes up and down, as they answer, "So that its destruction cannot begin. ~ Italo Calvino

Around existence twine, (Oh, bridge that hangs across the gorge!) ropes of twisted vine. ~ Matsuo Basho

Furbling v. Having to wander through a maze of ropes at an airport or bank even when you're the only person in line. ~ Steven Pinker

You could see the roads crisscrossing over the fields. When cars went by, far away, the beams were so bright they seemed to be ropes of light pulling the cars behind. ~ Cynthia Kadohata

Meanwhile, the sword
began to wilt into gory icicles,
to slather and thaw. It was a wonderful thing,
the way it all melted as ice melts
when the Father eases the fetters off the frost
and unravels the water-ropes. He who wields power
over time and tide: He is the true Lord. ~ Seamus Heaney

The third gentleman now stepped forth. A mighty man at cutting and drying, he was; a government officer; in his way (and in most other people's too), a professed pugilist; always in training, always with a system to force down the general throat like a bolus, always to be heard of at the bar of his little Public-office, ready to fight all England. To continue in fistic phraseology, he had a genius for coming up to the scratch, wherever and whatever it was, and proving himself an ugly customer. He would go in and damage any subject whatever with his right, follow up with his left, stop, exchange, counter, bore his opponent (he always fought All England) to the ropes, and fall upon him neatly. He was certain to knock the wind out of common sense, and render that unlucky adversary deaf to the call of time. And he had it in charge from high authority to bring about the great public-office Millennium, when Commissioners should reign upon earth. 'Very ~ Charles Dickens

But we are sailors - served on the Endeavor."

"Are you, now?" the ship's master asked skeptically. "Let me see yer hands."

The master examined Hadrian's palms, looking over the various calluses and rough places while grunting occasionally. "You must have spent most of your time in the galley. You've not done any serious rope work." He examined Royce's hands and raised an eyebrow at him. "Have you ever been on a ship before? It's certain you've never handled a sheet or a capstan."

"Royce here is a - you know - " Hadrian pointed up at the ship's rigging. "The guy who goes up there."

The master shook his head and laughed. "If you two are seamen, then I'm the Prince of Percepliquis!"

"Oh, but they are, Mr. Temple," a voice declared. Wyatt exited the forecastle and came jogging toward them. A bright white shirt offset his tawny skin and black hair. "I know these men, old mates of mine. The little one is Royce Melborn, as fine a topman as they come. And the big one is, ah …"

"Hadrian." Royce spoke up.

"Right, of course. Hadrian's a fine cook - he is, Mr. Temple."

Temple pointed toward Royce. "This one's a topman? Are you joking, Wyatt?"

"No, sir, he's one of the best."

Temple looked unconvinced.

"You can have him prove it to you, sir," Hadrian offered. "You could have him race your best up the ropes."

"You mean up the shrouds," Wyatt said, correcting h ~ Michael J. Sullivan

Bloody North," said Shev as she picked her way towards it and had a tentative drag at the ropes. "Even their bridges are shit."
"Their men are good," said Javre, clattering out with no fear whatsoever. "Far from subtle, but enthusiastic."
"Great," said Shev as she edged after, exchanging a mutually suspicious glance with a crow perched atop one of the posts. "Men. The one thing that interests me not at all."
"You should try them."
"I did. Once. Bloody useless. Like trying to have a conversation with someone who doesn't even speak your language, let alone understand the topic."
"Some are certainly more horizontally fluent than others."
"No. Just no. The hairiness, and the lumpiness, and the great big fumbling fingers and ... balls. I mean, balls. What's that about? That is one singularly unattractive piece of anatomy. That is just ... that is bad design, is what that is. ~ Joe Abercrombie

The bells gave tongue: Gaude, Sabaoth, John, Jericho, Jubilee, Dimity, Batty Thomas and Tailor Paul, rioting and exulting high up in the dark tower, wide mouths rising and falling, brazen tongues clamouring, huge wheels turning to the dance of the leaping ropes. Tin tan din dan bim bam bom bo--tan tin din dan bam bim bo bom--tan dan tin bam din bo bim bom--every bell in her place striking tuneably, hunting up, hunting down, dodging, snapping, laying her blows behind, making her thirds and fourths, working down to lead the dance again. Out over the flat, white wastes of fen, over the spear-straight, steel-dark dykes and the wind-bent, groaning poplar trees, bursting from the snow-choked louvres of the belfry, whirled away southward and westward in gusty blasts of clamour to the sleeping counties went the music of the bells--little Gaude, silver Sabaoth, strong John and Jericho, glad Jubilee, sweet Dimity and old Batty Thomas, with great Tailor Paul bawling and striding like a giant in the midst of them. Up and down went the shadows of the ringers upon the walls, up and down went the scarlet sallies flickering roofwards and floorwards, and up and down, hunting in their courses, went the bells of Fenchurch St. Paul. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

Khayyám, who stitched the tents of science,
Has fallen in grief's furnace and been suddenly burned,
The shears of Fate have cut the tent ropes of his life,
And the broker of Hope has sold him for nothing! ~ Omar Khayyam

Ten silos," Inej said. "Nine crossings."
"They're a lot taller up close," said Nina. "Are you ready for this?"
Inej couldn't deny they were intimidating. "No matter the height of the mountain, the climbing is the same."
"That's not technically true. You need ropes, picks - "
"Don't be a Matthias. ~ Leigh Bardugo

I'm telling you, you bastard, you're going to pay for that rum. In gold or goods, I don't care which."
"Captain Mallory." Gray's baritone was forbidding. "And I apply that title loosely, as you are no manner of captain in my estimation…I have no intention of compensating you for the loss of your cargo. I will, however, accept your thanks."
"My thanks? For what?"
"For what?" Now O'Shea entered the mix. "For saving that heap of a ship and your worthless, rum-soaked arse, that's what."
"I'll thank you to go to hell," the gravelly voice answered. Mallory, she presumed. "You can't just board a man's craft and pitch a hold full of spirits into the sea. Right knaves, you lot."
"Oh, now we're the knaves, are we?" Gray asked. "I should have let that ship explode around your ears, you despicable sot. Knaves, indeed."
"Well, if you're such virtuous, charitable gents, then how come I'm trussed like a pig?" Sophia craned her neck and pushed the hatch open a bit further. Across the deck, she saw a pair of split-toed boots tied together with rope.
Gray answered, "We had to bind you last night because you were drunk out of your skull. And we're keeping you bound now because you're sober and still out of your skull."
The lashed boots shuffled across the deck, toward Gray. "Let me loose of these ropes, you blackguard, and I'll pound you straight out of your skull into oblivion."
O'Shea responded with a stream of colorful profanity, which Captain Gra ~ Tessa Dare

I am Delilah Bard, she thought, as the ropes cut into her skin. I am a thief and a pirate and a traveler. I have set foot in three different worlds, and lived. I have shed the blood of royals and held magic in my hands. ~ Victoria Schwab

Neighbours watching neighbours, twisting ropes to bind us all. ~ Jessie Burton

I left him and went up on deck to look out at the slithering city, its glitter of street lamps fizzy under the rain. There's something wrong about a ship in dock, something pathetic, like a bird fluttering in a spill of oil. The Nova was tethered to her berth by ropes and chains, caught in a pool of greasy water. I could feel her shifting under my feet, tugging to be free. ~ Beryl Bainbridge

I don't know how I didn't kill any one of my sisters. For this one horror film we were making, I made my own harness for my sister. I wrapped her in all these ropes, but then also put a noose around her neck and hung her from a tree. Now I think, 'What if my harness didn't work?' I'm so lucky that nothing ever happened. ~ Alexa Vega

But the body fails us and the mirror knows, and we no longer insist that the gray hush be carried off its surface by the cloth, for we have run to fat, and wrinkles encircle the eyes and notch the neck where the skin wattles, and the flesh of the arms hangs loose like an overlarge sleeve, veins thicken like ropes and empurple the body as though they had been drawn there by a pen, freckles darken, liver spots appear, the hairah, the hair is exhausted and gray and lusterless, in weary rolls like cornered lint. ~ William H Gass

Algorithms are simplifications; they can't and don't take everything into account (like a billionaire uncle who has included the applicant in his will and likes to rock-climb without ropes). ~ Andrew McAfee

He needed a woman strong enough to accept that he would always need his ropes. They anchored him. Centered him. The moment he touched them, those dark shifting shadows inside him subsided. ~ Christine Feehan

For someone who hasn't done this before, you didn't need much help finding the ropes. If anything, i felt like I was trying to keep up."

"It was a hand job. It ain't like I don't have a dick of my own. I know what feels good."

"You know, I like the world the way you see it, Jacqs. It makes a lot more sense. ~ Lyn Gala

Understand, my own politics aren't necessarily interchangeable with what any of my characters believe. You could take each of the characters in On the Ropes, and I'd probably be in sympathy with a different one on any given day, depending on what's going on in the world. ~ James Vance

In the front was a man he knew only as "Samson," a big man that from all appearances was a former juice head gym rat with exquisitely defined muscles, stripped to the waist and carrying a huge nine foot cross hewn from raw timber and held together with nails and twine. Behind him in a rough line were the flagellates: five men also stripped to the waist, holding various chains, heavy corded ropes, and one with what looked like a leather whip from the S&M sex shop. They beat their backs as they slowly walked down the center of the street. ~ Joseph M. Chiron

A good teacher will show you the ropes in the world of power. They will give you the wisdom that is necessary to be able to use power. You just don't give a kid a new Ferrari. You teach him how to drive it. ~ Frederick Lenz

Letter 4

As I lay dreaming, Montezuma introduced himself and put his hand on my shoulder. The palm of the Aztec king felt like ancient papyrus.
When I looked up at him, I saw that his nose was chipped like that of a sphinx. His arms were like long ivory ropes that frayed into hands.
He led me down to the river, where we sat together and shared the river's silence. Then he spoke:
„Allow me to tell you my story. It may help you understand your own.
At dusk, in the year of one thousand rivers, the Spanish explorer Cortés arrived at the gates of my city. I welcomed him with open arms.
I showed Cortés hundreds of aviaries that had built in the city, and finally I took him to the most aviary of sighs. These birds carried only love letters.
Cortes laughed and said that all the bird songs made him feel like a virgin bride who is drunk with faith as she walks down the aisle of the church. On her wedding night, she undresses for her husband and he takes her in his arms. She believes everything is possible.
When Cortés stared straight into my eyes and said 'It is a night that is always colored in blood'." He paused for a long time before he spoke. Then he said, „Cortés returned with a small army of soldiers on horseback. When they ransacked the city, I was Cortes's own hand that lit the torch that set fire to the aviary of sighs.
The fires raged. The birds painted the blue sky black with the ashes of their wings. The gardens were redde ~ Gregory Colbert

I started making monkey bridges, like kids do, and climbing and rappelling with ropes. Very naturally, I needed some knots. At the very beginning, I didn't care, I didn't know, and then slowly I started to know, and I started to care. I wanted to know more knots or the right knot for the special action. ~ Philippe Petit

We are all fighters. It is basic human nature. We strive to get somewhere in life or we fight for survival. ~ Sarah Castille

It's right to trust in God; but, if you don't stand to your halliards your craft'll miss stays, and your faith'll be blown out of the bolt-ropes in the turn of a marlinspike. ~ George MacDonald

Engaged in a fiery dance, their bodies were linked and seperated by the flashing blades. At times they nearly touched, taut skin only a hair's breadth away, but then momentum would whirl them apart, and they would withdraw for a second, only to join again. Their sinuous forms wove together like twisting ropes of windblown smoke. ~ Christopher Paolini

My grandfather was a duck trapper
He could do it with just dragnets and ropes
My grandmother could sew new dresses out of old cloth
I don't know if they had any dreams or hopes
I had 'em once though, I suppose, to go along
With all the ring-dancin' Christmas carols on all of the Christmas eves
I left all my dreams and hopes
Buried under tobacco leaves ~ Bob Dylan

When I was young, I thought it was normal to go to sleep to the sounds of sirens. People on my block were in the biggest gang in the city. They were my close friends - they showed me the ropes, who to watch out for. ~ Emily Rios

Let people return to making knots on ropes, instead of writing. ~ Laozi

I very rarely saw Tom Kite around. I've talked to Tom about it. I don't think Michael Jordan needed to be on the captain's cart with Kite; he needed to be walking in the gallery, supporting them from outside the ropes. ~ Payne Stewart

If anyone attempted to rule the world by the gospel and to abolish all temporal law and sword on the plea that all are baptized and Christian, and that, according to the gospel, there shall be among them no law or sword - or need for either - pray tell me, friend, what would he be doing? He would be loosing the ropes and chains of the savage wild beasts and letting them bite and mangle everyone, meanwhile insisting that they were harmless, tame, and gentle creatures; but I would have the proof in my wounds. Just so would the wicked under the name of Christian abuse evangelical freedom, carry on their rascality, and insist that they were Christians subject neither to law nor sword, as some are already raving and ranting.

To such a one we must say: Certainly it is true that Christians, so far as they themselves are concerned, are subject neither to law nor sword, and have need of neither. But take heed and first fill the world with real Christians before you attempt to rule it in a Christian and evangelical manner. This you will never accomplish; for the world and the masses are and always will be unchristian, even if they are all baptized and Christian in name. Christians are few and far between (as the saying is). Therefore, it is out of the question that there should be a common Christian government over the whole world, or indeed over a single country or any considerable body of people, for the wicked always outnumber the good. Hence, a man who would venture to g ~ Martin Luther

Everton are now hitting the ropes running. ~ Glenn Hoddle

About a year before, Kitty and Lydia had embraced CrossFit, the intense strength and conditioning regimen that involved weight lifting, kettle bells, battle ropes, obscure acronyms, the eschewal of most foods other than meat, and a derisive attitude toward the weak and unenlightened masses who still believed that jogging was a sufficient workout and a bagel was an acceptable breakfast. ~ Curtis Sittenfeld

Songs are like ropes that you can kind of hang on to or pull yourself up on. ~ Sinead O'Connor

Sometimes I feel that life is passing me by, not slowly either, but with ropes of steam and spark-spattered wheels and a hoarse roar of power or terror. It's passing, yet I'm the one who's doing all the moving. I'm not the station, I'm not the stop: I'm the train. I'm the train. ~ Martin Amis

It had become a chimney poking from a vertical universe of bookshelves.
There was motion below her. There were people on the shelves.
They clung to the edges of the cases and moved across them in expert scuttles. They wore ropes and hooks and carried picks on which they sometimes hung. Dangling from straps they carried notebooks, pens, magnifying glasses, ink pads, and stamps.
The men and women took books from the shelves as they went, checked their details, leaning against their ropes, replaced them, pulled out little pads and made notes, sometimes carried the books with them to another place and reshelved it there.
...
I'm Margarita Staples. She bowed in her harness. 'Extreme librarian. Bookaneer. ~ China Mieville

I'd forgotten how challenging comics can be until I started working on Ropes. Yes, you're restricted by the boundaries of the page, but we all work within technical limitations of some kind. ~ James Vance

How did people come to chant rude poems while pulling certain ropes or gathering certain fruit, and why did nobody do anything of the kind while producing any of the modern things? Why is a modern newspaper never printed by singing in chorus? Why do shopmen seldom, if ever, sing?
If reapers sing while reaping, why should not auditors sing while auditing and bankers while banking? ~ G.K. Chesterton

Trust me, ... I know where my heart is and my heart's right here. I'm going to keep doing everything because I love to do it, but I will never sacrifice my time between the ropes. That's no shot to anybody. Everybody's got different career paths. This is mine. ~ John Cena

Zsoronga, Sorweel was beginning to realize, possessed the enviable ability to yoke his conviction to his need - to believe, absolutely, whatever his heart required. For Sorweel, belief and want always seemed like ropes too short to bind together, forcing him to play the knot as a result. ~ R. Scott Bakker

Victory is freedom of mind and body.' I believe that is true. I would go further and say that victory is freedom of mind from body. Separation from the thing that imprisons us. Flight. Perhaps freedom from life itself. That is victory. Life is brutal. It is like this whip and these ropes. It hurts. It scars. But we must take it. ~ Douglas Clegg

Her stomach was in ropes, her heart in tatters. ~ Marissa Meyer

Beautiful Hannah. If you were mine, I'd lay you on silk sheets and wrap you up in ropes of pearls, and feed you honey from a silver spoon. Of course, you wouldn't be able to make all your high-minded judgments if you were a fallen woman ... but you wouldn't care. Because I would pleasure you, Hannah, every night, all night, until you forgot your own name. Until you were willing to do things that would shock you in the light of day. I would debauch you from your head down to your innocent little toes-"
"Oh, I despise you ... ~ Lisa Kleypas

No connection can ever be broken if love holds tight at both ends. ~ Shannon L. Alder

I've been asked if I'd consider doing Ropes as a straight novel - which is flattering, I suppose - but I can't imagine why I'd want to limit myself that way. There's a certain immediacy we gain from that specific image of Fred being struck by a revelation, of those union workers appearing from the shadows in an alley, of a lonely woman wondering for just a moment if she should make a pass at this young man in her hotel room ~ James Vance

When he'd ordered the Aphrodite converted to accommodate passengers, the builder had given him an option. Did he want four gentlemen's cabins, similar to the ladies'? Or would he prefer to squeeze six smaller berths into the same space?
Gray's answer? Six, of course. No question about it. Two extra beds meant two extra fares. He hadn't dreamed he'd one day occupy one of these cramped berths.
Six feet of angry man, lashed into a five-foot bunk, in the midst of a howling gale-it wasn't a recipe for a good night's sleep. Gray craved the space and comfort of his former quarters aboard the Aphrodite-the captain's cabin. But as his brother had so officiously pointed out, Gray wasn't the captain of this ship anymore.
Throw his arse in the brig, had Joss threatened? Gray tossed indignantly, his chest straining against the ropes hat held him in the child-sized bed. The ship's brig didn't sound so bad right now. He'd put up with a few iron bars, the rancid bilgewater and rats, if it meant he could stretch his legs properly. Hell, this room was so damned small, he couldn't even get his blasted boots off.
He kicked the wall of his berth, no doubt scuffing the shine on his new Hessians. He hated the cursed things anyway. They pinched his feet. Why the devil he'd thought it a brilliant notion to get all dandified for this voyage, Gray couldn't remember. Just who was he trying to impress? Stubb? ~ Tessa Dare

Are you ready for this?"
Inej couldn't deny they were intimidating. "No matter the height of the mountain, the climbing is the same."
"That's not technically true. You need ropes, picks - "
"Don't be a Matthias."
Nina covered her mouth in horror. "I'm going to eat twice as much cake to make up for it. ~ Leigh Bardugo

Our brains dream lost ancient dreams as well as throw ropes in the air as though to catch what is uncatchable – the future. ~ Loren Eiseley

Overhead, the wild huntsman of the storm passed continuously in one blare of mingled noises; screaming wind, straining timber, lashing rope's end, pounding block and bursting sea contributed; and I could have thought there was at times another, a more piercing, a more human note, that dominated all, like the wailing of an angel; I could have thought I knew the angel's name, and that his wings were black. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

And why did I think that the notorious and often fatal obstacles that the pioneers faced - mountain passes strewn with lava rock, hellacious winds and dust storms, rattlesnakes, and descents so steep that the wagons could only be lowered by ropes - would miraculously vanish from the trail for me? ~ Rinker Buck

We didn't have the lane ropes, we had to get up higher in the water to avoid the little waves. ~ Johnny Weissmuller

Humankind, with its long history, is by now a corpse bound to a tree with the ropes of convention. If the ropes were cut, the corpse would simply fall to the ground. Prayer in one's mother tongue is a manifestation of that pathetic state."
-from "A Prayer in the Mother Tongue ~ Yasunari Kawabata

I don't think your dad is ever going to forget that the first time I met him I was holding ropes and a paddle he thought I was going to use on his daughter. ~ Rebecca Julia Lauren

Stay away from the ropes ~ Muhammad Ali

You were right. As you know. Other people may sail through lives of blue seas, with only the occasional squall, but for me life has always been a mountain
sheer faced and perilous. And, as I think I told you, I had clung on with the footholds and crampons and safety ropes of a safe job and flat and secure relationship. ~ Rosamund Lupton

Self leadership requires us to lead and motivate ourselves. But it looks a heck of a lot like schizophrenia during a ropes course. ~ Ryan Lilly

Yeah, well," Nico said, "not giving people a second thought ... that can be dangerous." "Dude, I'm trying to say thank you." Nico laughed without humor. "I'm trying to say you don't need to. Now I need to finish this, if you could give me some space?" "Yeah. Yeah, okay." Percy stepped back while Nico took up the slack on his ropes. He slipped them over his shoulders as if the Athena Parthenos were a giant backpack. Percy couldn't help feeling a little hurt, being told to take a hike. Then again, Nico had been through a lot. The guy had survived in Tartarus on his own. Percy understood firsthand just how much strength that must have taken. Annabeth walked up the hill to join them. She took Percy's hand, which made him feel better. "Good luck," she told Nico. ~ Rick Riordan

If there is anything that puzzles me in this game, it is that the longer that you are in the job of prime minister, the harder you have to work to do your job. With anything else ... you get to know the ropes pretty well and it becomes easy. I feel the more you know, the more you have to know and the more problems come at you. It is certainly not because I do not delegate. ~ Pierre Trudeau

I know you like me, Ara. You don't have to pretend, just because you think it's improper to fall for someone at first sight." His eyes lit up, shimmering green like a glass marble held up to the sun. "I can see that you feel the same way I do."
Oh, my God! Is this the point where I can jump off the swing and fall into his waiting arms? No. Don't do that. Don't read into it too much. I looked away from his gleaming, white-toothed grin, and clutched the ropes of the swing tighter. ~ Angela M. Hudson

I was surfing the Internet, and I came across a school in Atlanta where you could learn how to climb trees with ropes the way the pros do. It sounded terrific, and so I went down there, and I began to learn these kind of rarified techniques for how you get up and down trees while using special ropes and gear. ~ Richard Preston

He overheard the director talking to one of the cameramen. The cameraman was explaining that he couldn't get a good long shot on the exterior because someone had set up a fake graveyard right in the plaza.
"Kids just playing around, I guess, but it's morbid; we'll have to get rid of it, maybe bring in some sod to - "
"No," Albert said.
"We're almost ready for you," the director assured him.
"That's not a fake graveyard. Those aren't fake graves. No one was playing around."
"You're saying those . . . those are actually . . ."
"What do you think happened here?" Albert asked in a soft voice. "What do you think this was?" Absurdly, embarrassingly, he had started to cry. "Those are kids buried there. Some of them were torn apart, you know. By coyotes. By . . . by bad people. Shot. Crushed. Like that. Some of those kids in the ground there couldn't take it, the hunger and the fear . . . some of those kids out there had to be cut down from the ropes they used to hang themselves. Early on, when we still had any animals? I had a crew go out and hunt down cats. Cats and dogs and rats. Kill them. Other kids to skin them . . . cook them up."
There were a dozen crew people in the McDonald's. None spoke or moved.
Albert brushed away tears and sighed. "Yeah. So don't mess with the graves. Okay? Other than that, we're good to go. ~ Michael Grant

Venus of Willendorf carries her cave with her. She is blind, masked. Her ropes of corn-row hair look forward to the invention agriculture. She has a furrowed brow. Her facelessness is the impersonality of primitive sex and religion. There is no psychology or identity yet, because there is no society, no cohesion. Men cower and scatter at the blast of the elements. Venus of Willendorf is eyeless because nature can be seen but not known. She is remote even as she kills and creates. The statuette, so overflowing and protuberant, is ritually invisible. She stifles the eye. She is the cloud of archaic night. ~ Camille Paglia

A spider web is a natural structure that works by ultimate tension, and an eggshell is a structure that works by ultimate compression. Both use the minimum and the appropriate material with maximum efficiency. Just as we learn to build suspension bridges with ropes and cables in imitation of spider webs, we can learn to build domes in imitation of eggshells, building in maximum tension or compression. ~ Nader Khalili

Physically, emotionally, and spiritually I gave the ropes control, and then I understood what he meant. By giving up control, I became free. ~ Olivia Cunning

As the skipping rope hit the pavement, so did the ball. As the rope curved over the head of the jumping child, the child with the ball caught the ball. Down came the ropes. Down came the balls. Over and over again. Up. Down. All in rhythm. All identical. Like the houses. Like the paths. Like the flowers ~ Madeleine L'Engle

Quoyle bit at the squidburger as though at wrist ropes. ~ Annie Proulx

One day when he was digging, a loud shout came echoing up. Ma ran out of the house and Laura ran to the well. "Pull, Scott! Pull!" Pa yelled. A swishing, gurgling sound echoed down there. Mr. Scott turned the windlass as fast as he could, and Pa came up climbing hand over hand up the rope.
"I'm blamed if that's not quicksand!" Pa gasped, as he stepped onto the ground, muddy and dripping. "I was pushing down hard on the spade, when all of a sudden it went down, the whole length of the handle. And water came pouring up all around me."
"A good six feet of this rope's wet," Mr. Scott said, winding it up. The bucket was full of water. "You showed sense in getting out of that hand over hand, Ingalls. That water came up faster than I could pull you out." Then Mr. Scott slapped his thigh and shouted, "I'm blasted if you didn't bring up the spade!"
Sure enough, Pa had saved his spade. ~ Laura Ingalls Wilder

I am very proud of Jim Leiken. He has worked with me for six years and has been patient enough to learn the ropes. He's now matured into a true chef and is working on building his team. ~ Daniel Boulud

He sat her on the edge of the bed then stood in front of her. When he stripped off his shirt, her jaw dropped.

Dear. God.

Ropes of corded muscles, hard lines of strength, sex, and everything in between covered his body. He had some chest hair, enough to enhance the beauty of his ink, but not too much.

And, sweet baby Jesus, his ink. ~ Carrie Ann Ryan

Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think... and think... while you are alive.
What you call "salvation" belongs to the time
before death.

If you don't break your ropes while you're alive,
do you think
ghosts will do it after?

The idea that the soul will rejoin with the ecstatic
just because the body is rotten--
that is all fantasy.
What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment in the
City of Death.

If you make love with the divine now, in the next
life you will have the face of satisfied desire.

So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is,
Believe in the Great Sound!

Kabir says this: When the Guest is being searched for,
it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that
does all the work.
Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity. ~ Robert Bly

I feel like I'm still learning the ropes of how television works. Obviously I have good folks surrounding me on different shows. It's funny because sometimes in film I'm sort of the third guy to the left, you can be as insane as you want to be as that guy. ~ Paul Schneider

Now, half an hour later, adrenaline thrust him into overdrive. Storms of shale and spall burst from the ground. Ropes of sweat braided his skin. He swung again and again. The heavy pick shattered earth. Digby was in a rhythm, a digging trance, that rare state of archaeological ~ Shaun Morey