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Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught.
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Honoré de Balzac
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Have you no pity?' Glokta could only shrug. 'I did have. As a boy I was soft-hearted beyond the point of foolishness. I swear, I would cry at a fly caught in a spider's web.' He grimaced at a brutal spasm through his leg as he turned for the door. 'Constant pain has cured me of that.
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Joe Abercrombie (Last Argument of Kings (The First Law, #3))
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Written laws are like spiders’ webs; they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor, but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.
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Anacharsis the Scythian
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Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught.’” Alice
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Lee Child (Echo Burning (Jack Reacher, #5))
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Laws! We know what they are, and what they are worth! Spider webs for the rich and powerful, steel chains for the weak and poor, fishing nets in the hands of the government.
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Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
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The laws are like spiders’ webs: just as spiders’ webs catch the weaker creatures but let the stronger ones through, so the humble and poor are restricted by the laws, but the rich and powerful are not bound by them (Valerius Maximus Memorable Deeds and Sayings 7.2 ext. 14).
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J.C. McKeown (A Cabinet of Roman Curiosities: Strange Tales and Surprising Facts from the World's Greatest Empire)
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we’re equal before the law—if we pay the same amount.
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David Lagercrantz (The Girl in the Spider's Web (Millennium, #4))
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Laws are like spiders’ webs; the big flies get through, while the little ones are caught.
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Honoré de Balzac (Works of Honore de Balzac)
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We're equal before the law - if we pay the same amount
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David Lagercrantz (The Girl in the Spider's Web (Millennium, #4))
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Written laws are like spiders' webs; they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor, but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.
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Anacharsis
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The spires of the town below shimmer green, the roofs steam, and smoke rises silver from the chimneys. Georg points downward. “Like spiders they lurk there in their offices, their shops, their professions, each one of them ready to suck the other man dry. And then the rest hanging over each one of them—families, societies, authorities, laws, the State! One spider’s web over another! True, one may call that life, if one likes, and a man may even pride himself on crawling about under it his forty years and more; but I learned at the Front that time is not the measure of life. Why should I climb down forty years? I have been putting all my money for years now on one card and the stake has always been life. I can’t play now for halfpence, and small advances.
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Erich Maria Remarque (The Road Back)
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The residents of Wakarusa, Indiana, could spin gossip faster than a spider spins its web. Each time one of their own did something they shouldn’t—when Abby Schmuckers got caught shoplifting lipstick from the dime store; when the Becker kid dropped out of the 4-H volunteer club; when Jonah Schneider fell asleep and snored in church—the Wakarusa gossip chain would flap their jaws, chewing the tidbit over so thoroughly that by the time they’d finally spat it out again, the Truth was misshapen and unrecognizable, warped into the Story. And because the people of Wakarusa were churchgoing, law-abiding, capital-G God-fearing people, the Story was
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Ashley Flowers (All Good People Here)
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Why does he call you spider?"
"It’s a little out of date, actually. When I first met Engels — when I first fell in with that whole crowd, in fact — I would sit with a book in my lap, or something else that I wasn’t really paying attention to, so that I could pretend to be doing something else while I listened to the arguments. One evening someone said something particularly indefensible. And I’d got so comfortable that I objected out loud.”
James was smiling, too, his head a little to one side as if he were watching the past as I described it.
“In the awful silence that followed — no, don’t laugh, it really was awful at the time — Engels said, “I believe our spider has finished her web. Think before you speak, my friends. Fools are her lawful prey.”
“Sitting in corners, observing everything, catching everything, and never letting it get away.” James shook his head, still smiling. “You must be the only woman on the face of the earth who understands that that’s a compliment.
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Steven Brust (Freedom & Necessity)
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Balzac wrong when he wrote, ‘Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught.
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Lee Child (Echo Burning (Jack Reacher, #5))
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Thus, he is to show people that all their righteousness is as filthy rags and as reliable a leaning post as a spider’s web; and that, counterintuitive and countercultural as it may be, true righteousness, mercy, and grace are to be found in the filthy and broken corpse of a man condemned as a criminal to hang on a cross. This is the preaching of law and gospel, and it carries with it transformative power.
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Carl R. Trueman (Luther on the Christian Life: Cross and Freedom)
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Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught.
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Lee Child (Echo Burning (Jack Reacher, #5))
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Frenchman Honoré de Balzac wrong when he wrote, ‘Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught.
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Lee Child (Lee Child's Jack Reacher Books 1-6: With Prose Translations (Jack Reacher, #1-6))
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Descartes’s worldview makes us spiders at the center of an enormous web not of our making. Or in his other famous formulation, we are the ghosts in the machine: souls in a world machine that operates inexorably and impersonally according to the laws of geometry and mechanics, while we operate the levers and spin the dials.
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Arthur Herman (The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization)