Then, looking straight ahead of her, her eyes glistening, she broke out with: "Golly, it jest lifts you right up by your bootstraps to think of it, don't it?"
"The Girl of the Golden West"
David Belasco
Perhaps Gilgamesh deserved more credit; its people had undergone two centuries of darkness and pulled themselves out of it by their bootstraps.
"Space Viking"
Henry Beam Piper
The concept of telepathy is not a completely new or alien one to you, but the concept of a nontelepathic civilization was dismissed by the Challon ages ago as a simple contradiction of terms, a self-evident absurdity such as lifting oneself by one's bootstraps.
"The Short Life"
Francis Donovan