Source: If You're Afraid of the Dark, Remember the Night Rainbow/Add One More Star to the Night
“When you're at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on.”
“When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.”
“When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.”
The earliest citation yet found does not attribute this to Roosevelt, but presents it as a piece of anonymous piece folk-wisdom: "When one reaches the end of his rope, he should tie a knot in it and hang on" ( LIFE magazine (3 April 1919), p. 585 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/wu.89063018576?urlappend=%3Bseq=65).
Misattributed
Variant: When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.
“Alexandre the Great was unable to untie the Gordion Knot. He simply cut it.”
Oluşmak (To Become) Aphorisms (Pan Publishing House, Istanbul, 2011)
“Your hair has turned white
While your heart stayed
Knotted against me.
I shall never
Loosen it now.”
XXI, p. 23
Kenneth Rexroth's translations, One Hundred Poems from the Japanese (1955)
“If you don't break your ropes while you're alive, do you think ghosts will do it after?”
