“
Oh, what a tangled web we weave...when first we practice to deceive.
”
”
Walter Scott (Marmion)
“
A spider lives inside my head
Who weaves a strange and wondrous web
Of silken threads and silver strings
To catch all sorts of flying things,
Like crumbs of thoughts and bits of smiles
And specks of dried-up tears,
And dust of dreams that catch and cling
For years and years and years...
”
”
Shel Silverstein (Every Thing on It)
“
Whoever he said he was, thought Marsh, he was not from the immigration department, and the web that he was convinced Walsh had been weaving was beginning to unravel with disastrous and dangerous consequences.
”
”
Michael Parker (The Devil's Trinity)
“
Oh, what a tangled web do parents weave when they think that their children are naive.
”
”
Ogden Nash
“
Oh, what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!
”
”
Walter Scott (Marmion)
“
Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does
to the web, he does to himself.
”
”
Chief Seattle
“
escape from the black widow spider
is a miracle as great as art.
what a web she can weave
slowly drawing you to her
she'll embrace you
then when she's satisfied
she'll kill you
still in her embrace
and suck the blood from you.
”
”
Charles Bukowski (Love Is a Dog from Hell)
“
Sapiens rule the world because only they can weave an intersubjective web of meaning: a web of laws, forces, entities and places that exist purely in their common imagination. This web allows humans alone to organise crusades, socialist revolutions and human rights movements.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow)
“
They will see the whore, the madwoman, the murderess, the female dripping blood into the grass and laughing with her mouth choked with dirt. They will say “Agnes” and see the spider, the witch caught in the webbing of her own fateful weaving. They might see the lamb circled by ravens, bleating for a lost mother. But they will not see me. I will not be there.
”
”
Hannah Kent (Burial Rites)
“
The spider is a repairer. If you bash into the web of a spider, she doesn’t get mad. She weaves and repairs it.
”
”
Louise Bourgeois
“
I think that when two people are able to weave that kind of invisible thread of understanding and sympathy between each other, that delicate web, they should not risk tearing it. It is too rare, and it lasts too short a time at best....
”
”
M.F.K. Fisher (The Art of Eating)
“
There she weaves by night and day, A magic web with colors gay. She has heard a whisper say, A curse is on her if she stay, To look down to Camelot. She knows not what the curse may be, And so she weaveth steadily, And little other care hath she, The Lady of Shalott.
”
”
Alfred Tennyson (The Complete Poetical Works of Alfred Tennyson Poet Laureate)
“
If I could control tomorrow's haze,
The darkened shore wouldn't bother me,
If I can't control the web we weave,
My life will be lost in the fallen leaves...
- No Control
”
”
David Bowie
“
Please let him come, and give me the resilience & guts to make him respect me, be interested, and not to throw myself at him with loudness or hysterical yelling; calmly, gently, easy baby easy. He is probably strutting the backs among crocuses now with seven Scandinavian mistresses. And I sit, spiderlike, waiting, here, home; Penelope weaving webs of Webster, turning spindles of Tourneur. Oh, he is here; my black marauder; oh hungry hungry. I am so hungry for a big smashing creative burgeoning burdened love: I am here; I wait; and he plays on the banks of the river Cam like a casual faun.
”
”
Sylvia Plath (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath)
“
The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Often, love is a tangled web of lies that only a broken heart would weave. Seldom is dishonesty the whole person, rather it's the pain.
”
”
Shannon L. Alder
“
They will say ‘Agnes’ and see the spider, the witch caught in the webbing of her own fateful weaving. They might see the lamb circled by ravens, bleating for a lost mother. But they will not see me. I will not be there.
”
”
Hannah Kent (Burial Rites)
“
All of my creation is an effort to weave a web of connection with the world: I am always weaving it because it was once broken.
”
”
Anaïs Nin (The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Volume 3: 1939-1944)
“
What is evil?" asked the younger man. The round web, with its black center, seemed to watch them both. "A web we men weave." Ged answered.
”
”
Ursula K. Le Guin (The Farthest Shore (Earthsea Cycle, #3))
“
A story is like something you wind out of yourself. Like a spider, it is a web you weave, and you love your story like a child.
”
”
Katherine Anne Porter
“
Good teachers possess a capacity for connectedness. They are able to weave a complex web of connections among themselves, their subjects, and their students so that students can learn to weave a world for themselves.
”
”
Parker J. Palmer (The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life)
“
But she—her life was cold as a garret whose dormer window looks on the north, and ennui, the silent spider, was weaving its web in the darkness in every corner of her heart.
”
”
Gustave Flaubert (Madame Bovary)
“
Man did not weave the web of life—he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.”1
”
”
Gregg Braden (The Divine Matrix: Bridging Time, Space, Miracles, and Belief)
“
The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth.
All things are connected like the blood that unites one family.
Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it.
Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.
The earth is sacred and men and animals are but one part of it.
Treat the earth with respect so that it lasts for centuries to come and is a place of wonder and beauty for our children.
”
”
Extract from Chief Seattle.
“
The stories that unfold in the space of a writer's study, the objects chosen to watch over a desk, the books selected to sit on the shelves, all weave a web of echoes and reflections of meanings and affections, that lend a visitor the illusion that something of the owner of this space lives on between these walls, even if the owner is no more.
”
”
Alberto Manguel (The Library at Night)
“
Man doeth this and doeth that from the good or evil of his heart; but he knows not to what end his sense doth prompt him; for when he strikes he is blind to where the blow shall fall, nor can he count the airy threads that weave the web of circumstance. Good and evil, love and hate, night and day, sweet and bitter, man and woman, heaven above and the earth beneath--all those things are needful, one to the other, and who knows the end of each?
”
”
H. Rider Haggard (She (She, #1))
“
But her life was as cold as an attic facing north; and boredom, like a silent spider, was weaving its web in the shadows, in every corner of her heart.
”
”
Gustave Flaubert (Madame Bovary)
“
It was about forgiving. I understood that forgiveness itself was strong, durable—like strands of a web weaving around us, holding us.
”
”
Jane Hamilton (A Map of the World)
“
O, the tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive.
”
”
Walter Scott
“
Men are under as strong a compulsion to invent an ethical setting for their behavior as spiders are to weave themselves webs.
”
”
John Dos Passos
“
The mycorrhizae may form fungal bridges between individual trees, so that all the trees in a forest are connected. These fungal networks appear to redistribute the wealth of carbohydrates from tree to tree. A kind of Robin Hood, they take from the rich and give to the poor so that all the trees arrive at the same carbon surplus at the same time. They weave a
web of reciprocity, of giving and taking. In this way, the trees all act as one because the fungi have connected them. Through unity, survival.
All flourishing is mutual. Soil, fungus, tree, squirrel, boy—all are the beneficiaries of reciprocity.
”
”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants)
“
But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror’s magic sights,
For often thro’ the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights,
And music, went to Camelot:
Or when the moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed;
“I am half-sick of shadows,” said
The Lady of Shalott.
”
”
Alfred Tennyson
“
The important thing for the remembering author is not what he experienced, but the weaving of his memory, the Penelope work of recollection. Or should one call it, rather, the Penelope work of forgetting? ... And is not his work of spontaneous recollection, in which remembrance is the woof and forgetting the warp, a counterpart to Penelope's work rather than its likeness? For here the day unravels what the night has woven. When we awake each morning, we hold in our hands, usually weakly and loosely, but a few fringes of the tapestry of a lived life, as loomed for us by forgetting. However, with our purposeful activity and, even more, our purposive remembering each day unravels the web and the ornaments of forgetting.
”
”
Walter Benjamin (Illuminations: Essays and Reflections)
“
That's how history unfolds. People weave a web of meaning, believe in it with all their heart, but sooner or later the web unravels, and when we look back we cannot understand how anybody could have taken it seriously. (p.175)
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow)
“
I may not have any power over it at the moment, but at some point that must change. I can be very patient. I am the end of all things, nephew mine. I shall be the last. When birth has ended, I wil cut Clotho's cord, and she will be no more. The time will come when every last thread has been measured, and I will snip Lachesis from the great weave. In the end only Death and I will remain. Then I will cut his thread, and it will be me alone. With my last strength I will close the shears on my own life. I am the end of everything, including you.
”
”
Kelly McCullough (WebMage (Webmage #1, Ravirn #1))
“
I’ve always been dishonestly yours. And it looks like that’s not changing.
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Dishonestly Yours (Webs We Weave, #1))
“
You’re not invited in, Rocky.” “And I’m not a fucking vampire. I don’t need an invitation.
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Dishonestly Yours (Webs We Weave, #1))
“
The chill, like scurrying spiders, worked deeper into him, weaving webs of ice in the hollows of his bones.
”
”
Dean Koontz (Tick Tock)
“
We do not weave the web of life, we are merely a strand in it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.
”
”
Chief Seattle
“
Live for a while in the books you love. Learn from them what is worth learning, but above all love them. This love will be returned to you a thousand times over. Whatever your life may become, these books -of this I am certain- will weave through the web of your unfolding. They will be among the strongest of all threads of your experiences, disappointments, and joys.
”
”
Rainer Maria Rilke
“
Lazy Lob and crazy Cob
are weaving webs to wind me.
I am far more sweet than other meat,
but still they cannot find me!
Here am I, naughty little fly;
you are fat and lazy.
You cannot trap me, though you try,
in your cobwebs crazy.
”
”
J.R.R. Tolkien
“
I watch them through the glass: specimens. Flies. I watch them. And I know. In ways normal men cannot: I know. I see thing: beyond things. I see the strands of fate that bind us: victims to victor. So let them scream; let them shout my name. My ears hear nothing but the weaving of the web.
”
”
J.M. DeMatteis
“
I found myself answering the same questions asked frequently of me by different people. It would be so much easier if everyone could just read my database.
”
”
Tim Berners-Lee (Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web)
“
I would have to create a system with common rules that would be acceptable to everyone. That meant as close as possible to no rules at all.
”
”
Tim Berners-Lee (Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web)
“
Every subject spins out, like the spider's threads, its relations to certain qualities of things and weaves them into a solid web, which carries its existence.
”
”
Jakob Johann von Uexküll (A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans: with A Theory of Meaning (Posthumanities))
“
Sometimes strands spend a long time seeking each other, fumbling without light, and interweave without knowing that it is exactly what the web wants.
”
”
Emmi Itäranta (Kudottujen kujien kaupunki)
“
There is no remedy against this reversal of the natural order. Man cannot escape from his own achievement. He cannot but adopt the conditions of his own life. No longer in a merely physical universe, man lives in a symbolic universe. Language, myth, art, and religion are parts of this universe. They are the varied threads which weave the symbolic net, the tangled web of human experience. All human progress in thought and experience refines and strengthens this net. No longer can man confront reality immediately; he cannot see it, as it were, face to face. Physical reality seems to recede in proportion as man's symbolic activity advances. Instead of dealing with the things themselves man is in a sense constantly conversing with himself.
He has so enveloped himself in linguistic forms, in artistic images, in mythical symbols or religious rites that he cannot see or know anything except by the interposition of this artificial medium. His situation is the same in the theoretical as in the practical sphere. Even here man does not live in a world of hard facts, or according to his immediate needs and desires. He lives rather in the midst of imaginary emotions, in hopes and fears, in illusions and disillusions, in his fantasies and dreams. 'What disturbs and alarms man,' said Epictetus, 'are not the things, but his opinions and fantasies about the things.
”
”
Ernst Cassirer (An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture)
“
It did matter to get out of bed. There were webs to weave. Strings to grasp. Packages to deliver. Conversations to start. Thoughts to be expressed. Sams to slam into. Oceans to swim. And sad little men hiding in electrical sockets, waiting to be born of the human imagination.
”
”
Bud Macfarlane Jr. (Conceived Without Sin)
“
Get out of my head,
You've overstayed your stay,
This head no longer can spare more thoughts,
Leave my aching heart alone,
You weaved your web all over my heart,
Captured what was never yours,
The aching in my chest can't bare more,
Get out of here,
My soul is no longer a safe place.
”
”
Tanzy Sayadi (Better to be able to love than to be loveable)
“
a spider and a fly
i heard a spider
and a fly arguing
wait said the fly
do not eat me
i serve a great purpose
in the world
you will have to
show me said the spider
i scurry around
gutters and sewers
and garbage cans
said the fly and gather
up the germs of
typhoid influenza
and pneumonia on my feet
and wings
then i carry these germs
into households of men
and give them diseases
all the people who
have lived the right
sort of life recover
from the diseases
and the old soaks who
have weakened their systems
with liquor and iniquity
succumb it is my mission
to help rid the world
of these wicked persons
i am a vessel of righteousness
scattering seeds of justice
and serving the noblest uses
it is true said the spider
that you are more
useful in a plodding
material sort of way
than i am but i do not
serve the utilitarian deities
i serve the gods of beauty
look at the gossamer webs
i weave they float in the sun
like filaments of song
if you get what i mean
i do not work at anything
i play all the time
i am busy with the stuff
of enchantment and the materials
of fairyland my works
transcend utility
i am the artist
a creator and demi god
it is ridiculous to suppose
that i should be denied
the food i need in order
to continue to create
beauty i tell you
plainly mister fly it is all
damned nonsense for that food
to rear up on its hind legs
and say it should not be eaten
you have convinced me
said the fly say no more
and shutting all his eyes
he prepared himself for dinner
and yet he said i could
have made out a case
for myself too if i had
had a better line of talk
of course you could said the spider
clutching a sirloin from him
but the end would have been
just the same if neither of
us had spoken at all
boss i am afraid that what
the spider said is true
and it gives me to think
furiously upon the futility
of literature
archy
”
”
Don Marquis (Archy and Mehitabel)
“
Thanks for coming.” I smile dryly. “Coming is only enjoyable when I understand why I’m getting fucked.
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Dishonestly Yours (Webs We Weave, #1))
“
Truth and untruth weave the seamless web of human nature.
”
”
William Barrett (The Illusion of Technique: A Search for Meaning in a Technological Civilization)
“
E-mail allowed messages to be sent from one person to another, but did not form a space in which information could permanently exists and be referred to.
”
”
Tim Berners-Lee (Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web)
“
Illusion works impenetrable, Weaving webs innumerable; Her gay pictures never fail, Crowd each other, veil on veil; Charmer who will be believed By man who thirsts to be deceived.
”
”
Paramahansa Yogananda (Autobiography of a Yogi (Self-Realization Fellowship))
“
I will hold what I am inside, and keep my hands tight around all the things I have seen and heard, and felt. The poems composed as I washed and scythed and cooked until my hands were raw. The sagas I know by heart. I am sinking all I have left and going underwater. If I speak, it will be in bubbles of air. They will not be able to keep my words for themselves. They will see the whore, the madwoman, the murderess, the female dripping blood into the grass and laughing with her mouth choked with dirt. They will say ‘Agnes’ and see the spider, the witch caught in the webbing of her own fateful weaving. They might see the lamb circled by ravens, bleating for a lost mother. But they will not see me. I will not be there.
”
”
Hannah Kent (Burial Rites)
“
The truth, even more, is that life is perpetually weaving fresh threads which link one individual and one event to another, and that these threads are crossed and recrossed, doubled and redoubled to thicken the web, so that between any slightest point of our past and all the others a rich network of memories gives us an almost infinite variety of communicating paths to choose from.
”
”
Marcel Proust (In Search of Lost Time, Volume VI)
“
The ones who most shape the world are those who are not exposed, who can't be seen; unknown, opaque beings about whom almost no one knows anything. Like the hidden man in the story, except that instead of living a passive vegetable existence, they plot and weave webs in the shadows.
”
”
Javier Marías (Berta Isla)
“
*You have learned well,* Dragon said. *But heed me, little one. You must guard the webs you weave that make dreams into flesh. Many beings will cherish those webs because they are spun out of magic that lives in the heart. But there will be others who will want to destroy that heart-magic before it can touch the world. Guard the webs . . . Weaver of Dreams.* Dragon’s breath came out in a long sigh . . . and then there was silence.
”
”
Anne Bishop (Dreams Made Flesh (The Black Jewels, #5))
“
Where silver webs of spiders weave
and blighted lovers take their leave;
where curses lay the spirits low
and mortal footsteps fear to go.
Where death holds life in grim embrace
its line's etched on the sinner's face;
where e'er the march of time is flaunted
Voices cry- "this place is haunted.
”
”
Richard Jones
“
Meaning is created when many people weave together a common network of stories. Why does a particular action – such as getting married in church, fasting on Ramadan or voting on election day – seem meaningful to me? Because my parents also think it is meaningful, as do my brothers, my neighbours, people in nearby cities and even the residents of far-off countries. And why do all these people think it is meaningful? Because their friends and neighbours also share the same view. People constantly reinforce each other’s beliefs in a self-perpetuating loop. Each round of mutual confirmation tightens the web of meaning further, until you have little choice but to believe what everyone else believes.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow)
“
The Dream I Dream For You, My Child
...
I hope you search for four-leaf clovers,
grin back at Cheshire moons,
breathe in the springtime breezes,
and dance with summer loons.
I hope you gaze in wide-eyed wonder
at the buzzing firefly
and rest beneath the sunlit trees
as butterflies fly by.
I hope you gather simple treasures
of pebbles, twigs, and leaves
and marvel at the fragile web
the tiny spider weaves.
I hope you read poetry and fairy tales
and sing silly, made-up songs,
and pretend to be a superhero
righting this world's wrongs.
I hope your days are filled with magic
and your nights with happy dreams,
and you grow up knowing that happiness
is found in simple things.
The dream I dream for you, my child,
as you discover, learn, and grow,
is that you find these simple joys
wherever in life you go.
”
”
L.R. Knost
“
They weave a web of reciprocity, of giving and taking. In this way, the trees all act as one because the fungi have connected them. Through unity, survival. All flourishing is mutual. Soil, fungus, tree, squirrel, boy—all are the beneficiaries of reciprocity.
”
”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants)
“
Writing and weaving are both acts of creation by bringing together. A storyteller is a spinner of yarns, and the internet's founding metaphor is of a web.
”
”
Gretchen McCulloch (Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language)
“
The spiders weave a web to keep the stars in place, as guiding light in our darknesses. The stars are our ancestors, but the spiders are too. They are the weaving and the light.
”
”
Tommy Orange (Wandering Stars)
“
At his house I often met Henry James. I liked
to watch that ingenious spider weaving his
webs, but to me he had no appeal.
”
”
Jane Ellen Harrison (Reminiscences of a Student's Life)
“
So you’re going shopping with your ex-boyfriend to find an outfit to snare your next boyfriend? Oh, what a tangled web you weave.
”
”
Jillian Dodd (Stalk Me (The Keatyn Chronicles #1))
“
Out of the nameless and unfathomed weavings of billion-footed life, out of the dark abyss of time and duty, blind chance had brought these two together on a ship, and their first meeting had been upon the timeless and immortal seas that beat forever at the shores of the old earth.
”
”
Thomas Wolfe (The Web and the Rock)
“
Money. An instrument invented in ancient temple complexes, to keep track of debt: counters that acquired mobility and went a-walking, weaving webs of debt into vast and intricate meshes, enslaving and directing the labor of billions in service of the obligations created by its issuance. . . . Money: a shadow play projected on the walls of our minds by the dark sun of debt.
”
”
Charles Stross (Neptune's Brood (Freyaverse, #2))
“
1. The consciousness that created the universe dwells within us. 2. We exist in the energy web and are one with it. 3. Consciousness weaves and directs energy. 4. Everything exists for us as a possibility.
”
”
John Kehoe (Quantum Warrior: The Future of the Mind)
“
hypocrisy is natural to all creatures. The tiger crouches in the bush before pouncing on the unsuspecting deer. The chameleon changes colour as per the surroundings. Are these creatures not a part of nature? Spider weaves the web and waits for the prey. Nature is deception, nature is opportunistic. Hypocrisy is natural.
”
”
Anand Neelakantan (Vanara: The Legend of Baali, Sugreeva and Tara)
“
That’s how history unfolds. People weave a web of meaning, believe in it with all their heart, but sooner or later the web unravels, and when we look back we cannot understand how anybody could have taken it seriously.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow)
“
The gold had asked that he should sit weaving longer and longer, deafened and blinded more and more to all things except the monotony of his loom and the repetition of his web; but Eppie called him away from his weaving, and made him think all its pauses a holiday, reawakening his senses with her fresh life, even to the old winter-flies that came crawling forth in the early spring sunshine, and warming him into joy because she had joy.
”
”
George Eliot (Silas Marner)
“
Each religion makes scores of purportedly factual assertions about everything from the creation of the universe to the afterlife. But on what grounds can believers presume to know that these assertions are true? The reasons they give are various, but the ultimate justification for most religious people’s beliefs is a simple one: we believe what we believe because our holy scriptures say so. But how, then, do we know that our holy scriptures are factually accurate? Because the scriptures themselves say so. Theologians specialize in weaving elaborate webs of verbiage to avoid saying anything quite so bluntly, but this gem of circular reasoning really is the epistemological bottom line on which all 'faith' is grounded. In the words of Pope John Paul II: 'By the authority of his absolute transcendence, God who makes himself known is also the source of the credibility of what he reveals.' It goes without saying that this begs the question of whether the texts at issue really were authored or inspired by God, and on what grounds one knows this. 'Faith' is not in fact a rejection of reason, but simply a lazy acceptance of bad reasons. 'Faith' is the pseudo-justification that some people trot out when they want to make claims without the necessary evidence.
But of course we never apply these lax standards of evidence to the claims made in the other fellow’s holy scriptures: when it comes to religions other than one’s own, religious people are as rational as everyone else. Only our own religion, whatever it may be, seems to merit some special dispensation from the general standards of evidence.
And here, it seems to me, is the crux of the conflict between religion and science. Not the religious rejection of specific scientific theories (be it heliocentrism in the 17th century or evolutionary biology today); over time most religions do find some way to make peace with well-established science. Rather, the scientific worldview and the religious worldview come into conflict over a far more fundamental question: namely, what constitutes evidence.
Science relies on publicly reproducible sense experience (that is, experiments and observations) combined with rational reflection on those empirical observations. Religious people acknowledge the validity of that method, but then claim to be in the possession of additional methods for obtaining reliable knowledge of factual matters — methods that go beyond the mere assessment of empirical evidence — such as intuition, revelation, or the reliance on sacred texts. But the trouble is this: What good reason do we have to believe that such methods work, in the sense of steering us systematically (even if not invariably) towards true beliefs rather than towards false ones? At least in the domains where we have been able to test these methods — astronomy, geology and history, for instance — they have not proven terribly reliable. Why should we expect them to work any better when we apply them to problems that are even more difficult, such as the fundamental nature of the universe?
Last but not least, these non-empirical methods suffer from an insuperable logical problem: What should we do when different people’s intuitions or revelations conflict? How can we know which of the many purportedly sacred texts — whose assertions frequently contradict one another — are in fact sacred?
”
”
Alan Sokal
“
You will see such webs on the wet grass, maybe,
As a pixie-mother weaves for her baby,
You will find such flame at the wave's weedy ebb
As flashes in the meshes of a mer-mother's web,
But there comes to birth no common spawn
From the love of a priest for a leprechaun,
And you never have seen and you never will see
Such things as the things that swaddled me!
”
”
Edna St. Vincent Millay (A Few Figs from Thistles)
“
Vibrations caused by powerful turbines stirred Kathy from a dream centered around a funeral. Her eyes flicked open, face dry, and she had no idea where she was. In her dream, she saw crystalline silver spiders again, weaving their way through the graveyard, leaving trails of silver webs over corpses, binding them for some unknown purpose in the cold dark earth.
”
”
Michael Offutt (Slipstream)
“
A witch there was, who webs could weave
to snare the heart and wits to reave,
who span dark spells with spider-craft,
and as she span she softly laughed;
a drink she brewed of strength and dread
to bind the quick and stir the dead.
In a cave she housed where winging bats
their harbour sought, and owls and cats
from hunting came with mournful cries,
night-stalking near with needle eyes.
”
”
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun)
“
Sometimes it takes years for us to change. We build defenses around ourselves, putting brick after brick in a wall around our hearts. We weave a web of lies that hides who we really are. It takes time to create that armor. But when we meet the right person—the one who makes us realize what we’re missing, and what we need—we can change so much faster. The walls that took years to build come tumbling down in months.
”
”
Harper Dallas (Ride (The Wild Sequence, #1))
“
The inner lawyer, the rose-colored mirror, naive realism, and the myth of pure evil—these mechanisms all conspire to weave for us a web of significance upon which angels and demons fight it out. Our ever-judging minds then give us constant flashes of approval and disapproval, along with the certainty that we are on the side of the angels. From this vantage point it all seems so silly, all this moralism, righteousness, and hypocrisy. It’s beyond silly; it is tragic, for it suggests that human beings will never achieve a state of lasting peace and harmony.
”
”
Jonathan Haidt (The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom)
“
Oh! grief is fantastic; it weaves a web on which to trace the history of its woe from every form and change around; it incorporates itself with all living nature; it finds sustenance in every object; as light, it fills all things, and, like light, it gives its own colours to all.
”
”
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (The Last Man)
“
It is evident that while she was a devoted mother, she was always conducting her responsibilities as a mother with a sense of higher consciousness. It is almost like she is weaving the threads of her existence and those closest to her into the Web of Consciousness by her actions.
”
”
Reena Kumarasingham (The Magdalene Lineage: Past Life Journeys Into the Sacred Feminine Mysteries)
“
No one is Sighet suspected that our fate was already sealed. In Berlin we had been condemned, but we didn't know it. We didn't know that a man called Adolf Eichmann was already in Budapest weaving his black web, at the head of an elite, efficient detachment of thirty-five SS men, planning the operation that wold crown his career; or that all the necessary means for "dealing with" us were already at hand in a place called Birkenau.
”
”
Elie Wiesel (All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs)
“
Could I make tongue say more than tongue could utter! Could I make brain grasp more than brain could think! Could I weave into immortal denseness some small brede of words, pluck out of sunken depths the roots of living, some hundred thousand magic words that were as great as all my hunger, and hurl the sum of all my living out upon three hundred pages—then death could take my life, for I had lived it ere he took it: I had slain hunger, beaten death!
”
”
Thomas Wolfe (The Web and the Rock)
“
O woman, you are not merely the handiwork of God, but also of men; these are ever endowing you with beauty from their hearts. Poets are weaving for you a web with threads of golden imagery; painters are giving your form ever new immortality. The sea gives its pearls, the mines their gold, the summer gardens their flowers to deck you, to cover you, to make you more precious. The desire of men's hearts has shed its glory over your youth. You are one half woman and one half dream.
”
”
Rabindranath Tagore (The Gardener)
“
ennui, the silent spider, was weaving its web in the darkness in every corner of her heart.
”
”
Gustave Flaubert (Madame Bovary)
“
It requires but a few threads of hope, for the heart that is skilled in the secret, to weave a web of happiness.
”
”
Sarah Josepha Hale
“
I’m afraid of being someone’s burden. I don’t want to saddle him with another bag of weight. It’s better if he knows I can do this on my own.
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Dishonestly Yours (Webs We Weave, #1))
“
I just want answers to these human questions—why people look at me and see someone worthy to sleep with and not someone worthy to be with. That’s all.
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Dishonestly Yours (Webs We Weave, #1))
“
I weave Beauty and Light into my Dreams, offering them into the web of all things.
”
”
Catherine Veritas
“
Sapiens rule the world because only they can weave an intersubjective web of meaning: a web of laws, forces, entities and places that exist purely in their common imagination.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow)
“
At least the presence of Harry, her tabby cat, purring softly and weaving in and out of her legs was better than no company at all.
”
”
Juliet Ayres (Caught on the Web)
“
Here you've been, a spider in the corner, observing, weaving Charlotte's web of mystery.
”
”
Shannon Hale (Midnight in Austenland (Austenland, #2))
“
Thus does youth weave the web for his own capture and feigns surprise when ultimately he is caught!
”
”
Khwaja Ahmad Abbas (Inqilab)
“
O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive.
”
”
Walter Scott
“
Lazy Lob and crazy Cob are weaving webs to wind me. I am far more sweet than other meat, but still they cannot find me!
”
”
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Hobbit)
“
Such a fragile way to sustain a whole life: on a web one weaves for oneself.
”
”
Julie Anne Long (Like No Other Lover (Pennyroyal Green, #2))
“
Sapiens rule the world because only they can weave an intersubjective web of meaning:
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow)
“
He’ll take from your mind the answer best suited to lead you on, to enthrall you. He’ll weave a web of deceits so thick you won’t see the world through it. He wants your strength and he’ll say what he must say to get it. Break the chain, child! You’re the strongest of them all! Break the chain and he’ll go back
to hell for he has no other place to go in all the wide world to find strength like yours. Don’t you see?
He’s created it. Bred sister to brother, and uncle to niece, and son to mother, yes, that too, when he had
to do it, to make an ever more powerful witch, only faltering now and then, and gaining what he lost in one generation by even greater strength in the next. What was the cost of Antha and Deirdre if he could have a Rowan!
”
”
Anne Rice (The Witching Hour (Lives of the Mayfair Witches, #1))
“
People weave a web of meaning, believe in it with all their heart, but sooner or later the web unravels, and when we look back we cannot understand how anybody could have taken it seriously.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow)
“
I nod in the darkness. He embraces me and before long he's fast asleep, a man with clear consiense and an open heart. I stay awake, listening to his breath and thinking of the webs we weave.
”
”
Lizbeth Gabriel (The Theater of Dusk (A Short Story Collection))
“
She created the problem, and now she bargains to fix it! Royals weave traps for the likes of us. They watch while we squirm and expect gratitude when they deign to release a select few from their web.
”
”
Sara Hashem, The Jasad Heir
“
We have adopted the policy of Sorel of propaganda of the deed. The best rhetoric comes from building and testing models and running experiments. Let philosophers weave webs of words; such webs break easily.
”
”
Herbert A. Simon (Models of My Life)
“
That’s how history unfolds. People weave a web of meaning, believe in it with all their heart, but sooner or later the web unravels, and when we look back we cannot understand how anybody could have taken it seriously. With
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow)
“
I do not neglect myself, quite the contrary: this morning I took a bath and shaved. Only when I think back over those careful little actions, I cannot understand how I was able to make them, They are so vain. Habit, no doubt, made them for me. They aren’t dead, they keep on busying themselves, gently, insidiously weaving their webs, they wash me, dry me, dress me, like nurses. Did they also lead me to this hill? I can’t remember how I came anymore.
”
”
Jean-Paul Sartre
“
When two beings want the same thing, they can communicate. And when two beings want the same thing that neither can attain on their own, they can connect. A want held in common weaves life into one network, a worldwide web of feeling.
”
”
Kevin Behan (Your Dog Is Your Mirror: The Emotional Capacity of Our Dogs and Ourselves)
“
Words got me into trouble. They are the deadliest weapons of all, so that now the gun seems almost innocent by comparison. I fired the shot to stop the words; they were so busy eating everything up. You have no idea how I hate words, how i see them winding out of people's mouths like sticky strands of a web, infinitely elastic, linking the speaker to the listener forever, and finally weaving an impermeable cocoon around the mind and then the poor, fast-beating heart itself.
”
”
Susan Fromberg Schaeffer (The Madness of a Seduced Woman)
“
the network of stories they tell one another. Meaning is created when many people weave together a common network of stories. Why does a particular action – such as getting married in church, fasting on Ramadan or voting on election day – seem meaningful to me? Because my parents also think it is meaningful, as do my brothers, my neighbours, people in nearby cities and even the residents of far-off countries. And why do all these people think it is meaningful? Because their friends and neighbours also share the same view. People constantly reinforce each other’s beliefs in a self-perpetuating loop. Each round of mutual confirmation tightens the web of meaning further, until you have little choice but to believe what everyone else believes.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow)
“
Sloane is calculating, methodical. She waits and weaves a web and nets her prey. And while I like to stage a scene from time to time, to display some theatrics, this kill right here? This mess of torn flesh and exposed bone? This is in my soul. I'm fucking feral to the core.
”
”
Brynne Weaver (Butcher & Blackbird (The Ruinous Love Trilogy, #1))
“
If you are a dreaming woman you are at the beginning of the web of creation. This web is extremely elastic, like a spider web. The old stories describe the web like this: When Cloud-Dreaming Woman's daughter Spider Woman created this earth, it was left to her daughters to carry on the endless dream weaving. But Spider Woman started things. She dreamed and spun out the things of this world. She did not know she was dream weaving; only that she was dreaming ... something. So she gave birth to the ugly right along with the beautiful, the sweet natured and the misanthrope, the frog and the smooth-cheeked prince, atomic bombs and telephones along with every plant ad chemical to cure or kill.
If you are a dreaming woman, however, you know you and your sisters are together making this world.
- Queen of Dreams The Story of A Yaqui Dreaming Woman
”
”
Heather Valencia and Rolly Kent
“
In a ravine she lived, and took shape as a spider of monstrous form, weaving her black webs in a cleft of the mountains. There she sucked up all light that she could find, and spun it forth again in dark nets of strangling gloom, until no light more could come to her abode; and she was famished.
”
”
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Silmarillion)
“
She could do nothing. Djuna’s words illuminated her chaos, but changed nothing. What was it Djuna said: that life tended to crystallize into patterns which became traps and webs. That people tended to see each other in their first “state” or “form” and to adopt a rhythm in consequence. That they had greatest difficulty in seeing the transformations of the loved one, in seeing the becoming. If they did finally perceive the new self, they had the greatest difficulty nevertheless in changing the rhythm. The strong one was condemned to perpetual strength, the weak to perpetual weakness. The one who loved you best condemned you to a static role because he had adapted his being to the past self. If you attempted to change, warned Djuna, you would find a subtle, perverse opposition, and perhaps sabotage! Inwardly and outwardly, a pattern was a form which became a prison. And then we had to smash it. Mutation was difficult. Attempts at evasion were frequent, blind evasions, evasions from dead relips, false relationships, false roles, and sometimes from the deeper self too, because of the great obstacle one encountered in affirming it. All our emotional history was that of the spider and the fly, with the added tragedy that the fly here collaborated in the weaving of the web. Crimes were frequent. People in desperation turned about and destroyed each other. No one could detect the cause or catch the criminal. There was no visible victim. It always had the appearance of suicide.
”
”
Anaïs Nin (Ladders to Fire (Cities of the Interior #1))
“
That’s how history unfolds. People weave a web of meaning, believe in it with all their heart, but sooner or later the web unravels, and when we look back we cannot understand how anybody could have taken it seriously. With hindsight, going on crusade in the hope of reaching Paradise sounds like utter madness. With hindsight, the Cold War seems even madder. How come thirty years ago people were willing to risk nuclear holocaust because of their belief in a communist paradise? A hundred years hence, our belief in democracy and human rights might look equally incomprehensible to our descendants.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow)
“
There are lies you tell with your lips and lies you don't need your lips for. And once people start telling lies, then they become like spiders who weave their web about themselves. They become stuck-caught by the lies all about them. And then they can't get out of the web, no matter how hard they try.
”
”
Alexander McCall Smith (The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #12))
“
Sneaky and underhanded, the Federal Reserve has been sucking the life blood out of the United States since 1913. Like a black widow spider, it weaves a web of corruption and deceit. Unknown to its prey, the FED's bite is poisonous, deep, long-lasting and brings financial upheaval and misery to Americans.
”
”
Jim McCarthy (The Money Spiders, the Ruin-NATION of the United States by the Federal Reserve)
“
He knew no color-line, poor dear--and the Veil, though it shadowed him, had not yet darkened half his sun. He loved the white matron, he loved his black nurse; and in his little world walked souls alone, uncolored and unclothed. I--yea, all men--are larger and purer by the infinite breadth of that one little life. She who in simple clearness of vision sees beyond the stars said when he had flown, "He will be happy There; he ever loved beautiful things." And I, far more ignorant, and blind by the web of mine own weaving, sit alone winding words and muttering, "If still he be, and he be There, and there be a There, let him be happy, O Fate!
”
”
W.E.B. Du Bois (The Souls of Black Folk)
“
STOP WORRYING LONG ENOUGH to hear My voice. I speak softly to you, in the depths of your being. Your mind shuttles back and forth, hither and yon, weaving webs of anxious confusion. As My thoughts rise up within you, they become entangled in those sticky webs of worry. Thus, My voice is muffled, and you hear only “white noise.
”
”
Sarah Young (Jesus Calling, with Scripture References: Enjoying Peace in His Presence (A 365-Day Devotional) (Jesus Calling®))
“
This we know… the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected; like blood which connects one family. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the children of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life – but is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.” Chief Seattle, 1854
”
”
Doug Lamoreux (Apparition Lake)
“
You are a woman. You cannot understand loyalty to the father.” They were wrong, as always. She understands Justice, the ancient spirit that lives inside each of them, ready to burst forth for every crime. It is a web, each thread stained with the blood of mothers and fathers, daughters and sons. It grows and grows, the Furies always weaving more traps.
”
”
Costanza Casati (Clytemnestra)
“
It would not be an exaggeration if one called the mind a world; it is the world that man makes, in which he will make his life in the hereafter, as a spider weaves its web in which to live. Once a person thinks of this problem he begins to see the value of the spiritual path, the path in which the soul is trained not to be owned by the mind, but to own it; not to become a slave of the mind, but to master it.
”
”
Hazrat Inayat Khan (The Heart of Sufism: Essential Writings of Hazrat Inayat Khan)
“
I had argued that it was ridiculous for a person to have two separate interfaces, one for local information (the desktop of their own computer) and one for remote information (a browser to reach other computers). Why did we need an entire desktop for our own computer but get only a window through which to view the entire rest of the planet? Why, for that matter, should we have folders on our desktop but not on the web?
”
”
Tim Berners-Lee (Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web)
“
The processes of corporate power do not work in isolation. The economic and legal mechanisms that allow the privatization of the commonwealth, externalization of costs, predatory economic practices, political influence-buying, manipulation of regulation and deregulation, control of the media, propaganda and advertising in schools, and the use of police and military forces to protect the property of the wealthy-all of these work synergistically to weave a complex web of power.
Activists have dedicated lifetimes of necessary work to deal with the results of corporate power, by trying to mitigate the results of power: an ever-increasing disparity in wealth and power and continual economic, political, environmental, and human rights crises. For social justice campaigns to be strategic, it is also necessary to examine how privatization, externalization, monopoly, and other corporate power processes have been institutionalized. This institutionalization is exemplified in the structural adjustment programs of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, and in recent "free" trade agreements which have culminated in the creation of the World Trade Organization. An understanding of such institutions provides a necessary tool for achieving the long-term goals of environmental sustainability and social justice.
”
”
George Draffan
“
The writer's craft, explained!
I have stood on the shores of imagination, gazing at a sea of dreams.
It is a lonely place, for not many can stand on that shifting sand and call it home.
I can see others who also weave a web of dreams and will share them.
We are called storytellers and we alone have that gift that feed the needs of the many.
We are a strange family, united in our separate talents and bonded by our willingness to share.
The price we pay, is a dependence on others, reaching out to listen to our stories.
WE must never forget our need for the herd or they will forget us!
There is no savage punishment for such as we, than to be easily forgotten!
This is our greatest fear and all of us share that terror.
So write brothers and sisters, write and bare your souls without fear.
If you are good enough, they will listen and they will remember you.
Its all we can ask!
”
”
Barry Woodham
“
Within a few generations, he had explained to Rudgutter, the Weavers evolved from virtually mindless predators into aestheticians of astonishing intellectual and materio-thaumaturgic power, superintelligent alien minds who no longer used their webs to catch prey, but were attuned to them as objects of beauty disentanglable from the fabric of reality itself. Their spinnerets had become specialized extradimensional glands that Wove patterns in with the world. The world which was, for them, a web. Old stories told how Weavers would kill each other over aesthetic disagreements, such as whether it was prettier to destroy an army of a thousand men or to leave it be, or whether a particular dandelion should or should not be plucked. For a Weaver, to think was to think aesthetically. To act—to Weave—was to bring about more pleasing patterns. They did not eat physical food: they seemed to subsist on the appreciation of beauty.
”
”
China Miéville (Perdido Street Station (New Crobuzon, #1))
“
Willems walked on homeward weaving the splendid web of his future. The road to greatness lay plainly before his eyes, straight and shining, without any obstacle that he could see. He had stepped off the path of honesty, as he understood it, but he would soon regain it, never to leave it any more! It was a very small matter. He would soon put it right again. Meantime his duty was not to be found out, and he trusted in his skill, in his luck, in his well-established reputation that would disarm suspicion
”
”
Joseph Conrad (Joseph Conrad: The Complete Novels)
“
Tansi began to tell her, "Two Asante men went out into the forest one day. They were weavers by trade, and they had gone out to hunt for meat. When they got to the forest to collect their traps, they were met by Anansi, the mischievous spider. He was spinning a magnificent web. They watched him, studied him, and soon realised that a spider's web is a unique and beautiful thing, and that a spider's technique is flawless. They went home and decided to weave cloth the way Anansi weaves his web. From that, kente was born.
”
”
Yaa Gyasi (Homegoing)
“
He it is, the innermost one, who awakens my being with his deep hidden touches.
He it is who puts his enchantment upon these eyes and joyfully plays on the chords of my heart in varied cadence of pleasure and pain.
He it is who weaves the web of this maya in evanescent hues of gold and silver, blue and green, and lets peep out through the folds his feet, at whose touch I forget myself.
Days come and ages pass, and it is ever he who moves my heart in many a name, in many a guise, in many a rapture of joy and of sorrow.
”
”
Rabindranath Tagore (Gitanjali)
“
Poetry is the report of a nuance between two moments, when people say 'Listen!' and 'Did you see it?' 'Did you hear it? What was it?'
Poetry is a plan for a slit in the face of a bronze fountain goat and the path of fresh drinking water.
Poetry is a slipknot tightened around a time-beat of one thought, two thoughts, and a last interweaving thought there is not yet a number for.
Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly the air.
Poetry is any page from a sketchbook of outlines of a doorknob with thumb-prints of dust, blood, dreams.
Poetry is a type-font design for an alphabet of fun, hate, love, death.
Poetry is the silence and speech between a wet struggling root of a flower and a sunlit blossom of that flower.
Poetry is a fresh morning spider-web telling a story of moonlit hours of weaving and waiting during a night.
Poetry is a packsack of invisible keepsakes.
Poetry is the establishment of a metaphorical link between white butterfly-wings and the scraps of torn-up love letters.
Poetry is the achievement of the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.
”
”
Carl Sandburg (Selected Poems)
“
Even in a forest, there are loners, would-be hermits who want little to do with others. Can such antisocial trees block alarm calls simply by not participating? Luckily, they can't. For usually there are fungi present that act as intermediaries to guarantee quick dissemination of news. These fungi operate like fiber-optic Internet cables. Their thin filaments penetrate the ground, weaving through it in almost unbelievable density. One teaspoon of forest soil contains many miles of these "hyphae." Over centuries, a single fungus can cover many square miles and network an entire forest. The fungal connections transmit signals from one tree to the next, helping the trees exchange news about insects, drought, and other dangers. Science has adopted a term first coined by the journal Nature for Dr. Simard's discovery of the "wood wide web" pervading our forests. What and how much information is exchanged are subjects we have only just begun to research. For instance, Simard discovered that different tree species are in contact with one another, even when they regard each other as competitors. And the fungi are pursuing their own agendas and appear to be very much in favor of conciliation and equitable distribution of information and resources.
”
”
Peter Wohlleben (The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate: Discoveries from a Secret World)
“
Water droplets fell to earth whilst others embellished and baptised an abundance of webs. Their moistened silk threads resembled bridal veils as the sun fastened its gaze upon their shimmering fibres. Each possessed a weave unique to itself, intricate, though purposeful, strong yet submissive; delicate and melodious upon the eye.
As my senses trickled through the silvery gauze, I became liberated from the eggshell. All things became much more terrible and far more beautiful at once. A dragonfly emerging, wings a-glisten, from years of safe harbour below a dense and watery film. I beheld the texture of the world as would a blind man
”
”
Greg Howes
“
In his book Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, emphasizes the importance of the brain in the forming of connections (the italics are mine): A piece of information is really defined only by what it’s related to, and how it’s related. There really is little else to meaning. The structure is everything. There are billions of neurons in our brains, but what are neurons? Just cells. The brain has no knowledge until connections are made between neurons. All that we know, all that we are, comes from the way our neurons are connected. Berners-Lee
”
”
Richard Restak (Mozart's Brain and the Fighter Pilot: Unleashing Your Brain's Potential)
“
JULY 9 STOP WORRYING LONG ENOUGH to hear My voice. I speak softly to you, in the depths of your being. Your mind shuttles back and forth, hither and yon, weaving webs of anxious confusion. As My thoughts rise up within you, they become entangled in those sticky webs of worry. Thus, My voice is muffled, and you hear only “white noise.” Ask My Spirit to quiet your mind so that you can think My thoughts. This ability is an awesome benefit of being My child, patterned after My own image. Do not be deafened by the noise of the world or that of your own thinking. Instead, be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Sit quietly in My Presence, letting My thoughts reprogram your thinking.
”
”
Sarah Young (Jesus Calling, with Scripture References: Enjoying Peace in His Presence (A 365-Day Devotional) (Jesus Calling®))
“
The Labyrinth
Zeus himself could not undo the web
of stone closing around me, I have forgotten the men I was before; I follow the hated
path of monotonous walls
that is my destiny. Severe galleries
which curve in secret circles
to the end of the years. Parapets
cracked by the day’s usury.
In the pale dust I have discerned
signs that frighten me. In the concave
evenings the air has carries a roar
toward me, or the echo of a desolate howl.
I know there is an Other in the shadows,
whose fate it is to wear out the long solitudes
which weave and unweave this Hades
and to long for my blood and devour my death.
Each of us seeks the other. If only this were the final day of waiting.
- S.K.
”
”
Jorge Luis Borges (Selected Poems)
“
Affraig’s eyes moved to the oak tree that towered above her, its branches like antlers against the white sky. Her gaze travelled up to the weathered web that hung from one of the higher boughs, the slender noose swinging inside. In her mind she saw herself weaving it while she chanted words against Malachy’s wrathful curse. She remembered the lord’s hand settling on her shoulder, the hiss of the fire,
his breath on her neck and, outside, stars falling like fiery rain. Her gaze moved west towards Turnberry.
Her memory clouded with thoughts of the earl, but as she thought of his son her mind cleared. The stars had been falling too on the night he was born. She remembered seeing Mars, full and red, a bloody eye winking in the black.
”
”
Robyn Young (Insurrection (The Insurrection Trilogy, #1))
“
When you see someone attacking Plato – and many people do – you should understand that these people are defenders of psychopathy (especially of unrestricted libertarianism, a psychopath’s dream). They hate Plato and accuse him of being a totalitarian and fascist. Why? Because he was prepared to use the awesome power of the State to ensure that undesirables did not prosper, and certainly didn’t get to the top of society. All the opponents of Plato are extremist anti-Statists, whether they are anarchists, libertarians, predatory capitalists, free marketeers, liberals, or whatever. They are terrified of a designed, engineered society where the benevolent, wise State seeks to create the optimized State, and where psychos don’t get to weave their webs.
”
”
David Sinclair (The Wolf Tamers: How They Made the Strong Weak)
“
It is relatively easy to accept that money is an intersubjective reality. Most people are also happy to acknowledge that ancient Greek gods, evil empires and the values of alien cultures exist only in the imagination. Yet we don’t want to accept that our God, our nation or our values are mere fictions, because these are the things that give meaning to our lives. We want to believe that our lives have some objective meaning, and that our sacrifices matter to something beyond the stories in our head. Yet in truth the lives of most people have meaning only within the network of stories they tell one another.
Meaning is created when many people weave together a common network of stories. Why does a particular action – such as getting married in church, fasting on Ramadan or voting on election day – seem meaningful to me? Because my parents also think it is meaningful, as do my brothers, my neighbours, people in nearby cities and even the residents of far-off countries. And why do all these people think it is meaningful? Because their friends and neighbours also share the same view. People constantly reinforce each other’s beliefs in a self-perpetuating loop. Each round of mutual confirmation tightens the web of meaning further, until you have little choice but to believe what everyone else believes.
Yet over decades and centuries the web of meaning unravels and a new web is spun in its place. To study history means to watch the spinning and unravelling of these webs, and to realise that what seems to people in one age the most important thing in life becomes utterly meaningless to their descendants.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow)
“
Death Vision
I think it’s a multiplication of sight,
Like after a low hovering autumn rain
When the invisible web of funnel weaves
And sheetweb weavers all at once are seen
Where they always were, spread and looping
The grasses, every strand, waft and leaf-
Crest elucidated with water-light and frost,
completing the fullest aspect of field.
Or maybe the grace of death is split-second
Transformation of knowledge, an intricate,
Turning realization, as when a single
Sperm-embracing deep ovum transforms,
In an instant, from stasis to replicating,
Star-shifting shimmer, rolls, reaches,
Alters its plane of intentions, becomes
A hoofing, thumping host of purpose.
I can imagine not merely
The falling away of blank walls
And blinds in that moment, not merely
A shutter flung open for the first time
Above a valley of interlocking forests
And constellations but a sweeping,
Penetrating circumference of vision
Encompassing both knotweed bud
And its seed simultaneously, seeing
Blood bone and its ash as one,
The repeated light and fall and flight
Of hawk-owl and tundra vole
As a union of origin and finality.
A mathematics of flesh and space might
Take hold if we ask for it in that last
Moment, might appear as if it had always
Existed within the eyes, translucent,
Jewel-like in stained glass patterns
Of globes and measures, equations,
Made evident by a revelation of galaxies
In the knees, spine, fingers, all
The ceasings, all the deaths within deaths
That compose the body becoming at once
Their own symbolic perception and praise
Of river salt, blooms and breaths, strings,
Strains, sun-seas of gravels and gills;
This one expression breaking, this same
Expression healing.
”
”
Pattiann Rogers (Quickening Fields (Penguin Poets))
“
Things get themselves done, on their own initiative. People make believe to do them, go through the motions. But crimes, works of art, and love affairs shape themselves without our intervention and weave a web in which we get entangled, while pretending to be working on it. We should be hard put to it to bring to birth the simplest act if we, who are nothing, had only ourselves to count on. I said "the simplest act," but this holds for acts of every sort—for nothing's really simple. The mere fact that we call an act "simple" or "simpler" proves we are strangers to it. The real "units" are not men; the real actors, real authors have no human face. Everything takes place between beings that pass our comprehension. Thus Man, perhaps, is not the unit, the element to pick on, when it comes to thinking out the basic meaning of things . . . human things included.
”
”
Paul Valéry (The Collected Works of Paul Valéry, Vol. 14)
“
If we understand that we are dirt, that God is the ground of all that is, well, then, we might think twice about how we treat soil. If water is the river of spiritual and physical life, we will care about what we are doing to watersheds. If air sustains us and we are made of stardust, then the sky and what happens to it matters. Knowing our own roots is the first step in knowing ourselves and recognizing our common humanity. Making a home is a radical act of claiming a place in the world. Being neighborly is the path to empathy, of enacting the Golden Rule. Building the commons, the “we” of our world house, is to pull the vision of heaven out of the clouds to earth here and now. We are constantly creating a sacred architecture of dwelling—of God’s dwelling and ours—as we weave nature and the built environment into a web of meaning. Awe and action are of a piece.
”
”
Diana Butler Bass (Grounded: Finding God in the World-A Spiritual Revolution)
“
The Fairy Bride
The fairy bride picked the lock
And tiptoed through the summer wood
She gave no mind to life behind
Or shadows thrown by bad or good
She gave no mind to wrong or right
Or screeching call of owls at night
She listened for the haunting cries
That called her from her blushing bud
Ferns unfurl a tickled fronds
Laughing at her slightest brush
Dewdrops glisten with green eyes
Meadows sway with lightest hush
A captive note arrests her breath
Dreamers weave intricate maze
Lithe and quick she shines the light
Illuminating shadow glades
She gives no mind to life and limb
Or captor’s hiss from deep within
Her purity will seize the thread
Dangling loose from dreamer’s web
She spins a silver spool of light
To catch the rays of stars at night
Now innocence can spread its wings
Making haste for freedom flight
She gives no mind to where they fly
Or how tall grasses lift her high
She clicks the lock and in she glides
All nature hails the fairy bride
”
”
Collette O'Mahony (The Soul in Words: A collection of Poetry & Verse)
“
The gold had kept his thoughts in an ever-repeated circle, leading to nothing beyond itself; but Eppie was an object compacted of changes and hopes that forced his thoughts onward, and carried them far away from their old eager pacing towards the same blank limit - carried them away to the new things that would come with the coming years, when Eppie would have learned to understand how her father Silas cared for her; and made him look for images of that time in the ties and charities that bound together the families of his neighbours. The gold had asked that he should sit weaving longer and longer, deafened and blinded more and more to all things except the monotony of his loom and the repetition of his web; but Eppie called him away from his weaving, and made him think all its pauses a holiday, reawakening his senses with her fresh life, even tot the old winter-flies that came crawling forth in the early spring sunshine, and warming him into joy because she had joy.
”
”
George Eliot
“
Unchopping a Tree.
Start with the leaves, the small twigs, and the nests that have been shaken, ripped, or broken off by the fall; these must be gathered and attached once again to their respective places. It is not arduous work, unless major limbs have been smashed or mutilated. If the fall was carefully and correctly planned, the chances of anything of the kind happening will have been reduced. Again, much depends upon the size, age, shape, and species of the tree. Still, you will be lucky if you can get through this stages without having to use machinery. Even in the best of circumstances it is a labor that will make you wish often that you had won the favor of the universe of ants, the empire of mice, or at least a local tribe of squirrels, and could enlist their labors and their talents. But no, they leave you to it. They have learned, with time. This is men's work.
It goes without saying that if the tree was hollow in whole or in part, and contained old nests of bird or mammal or insect, or hoards of nuts or such structures as wasps or bees build for their survival, the contents will have to repaired where necessary, and reassembled, insofar as possible, in their original order, including the shells of nuts already opened. With spider's webs you must simply do the best you can. We do not have the spider's weaving equipment, nor any substitute for the leaf's living bond with its point of attachment and nourishment. It is even harder to simulate the latter when the leaves have once become dry — as they are bound to do, for this is not the labor of a moment. Also it hardly needs saying that this the time fro repairing any neighboring trees or bushes or other growth that might have been damaged by the fall. The same rules apply. Where neighboring trees were of the same species it is difficult not to waste time conveying a detached leaf back to the wrong tree. Practice, practice. Put your hope in that.
Now the tackle must be put into place, or the scaffolding, depending on the surroundings and the dimension of the tree. It is ticklish work. Almost always it involves, in itself, further damage to the area, which will have to be corrected later. But, as you've heard, it can't be helped. And care now is likely to save you considerable trouble later. Be careful to grind nothing into the ground.
At last the time comes for the erecting of the trunk. By now it will scarcely be necessary to remind you of the delicacy of this huge skeleton. Every motion of the tackle, every slightly upward heave of the trunk, the branches, their elaborately reassembled panoply of leaves (now dead) will draw from you an involuntary gasp. You will watch for a lead or a twig to be snapped off yet again. You will listen for the nuts to shift in the hollow limb and you will hear whether they are indeed falling into place or are spilling in disorder — in which case, or in the event of anything else of the kind — operations will have to cease, of course, while you correct the matter. The raising itself is no small enterprise, from the moment when the chains tighten around the old bandages until the boles hands vertical above the stump, splinter above splinter. How the final straightening of the splinters themselves can take place (the preliminary work is best done while the wood is still green and soft, but at times when the splinters are not badly twisted most of the straightening is left until now, when the torn ends are face to face with each other). When the splinters are perfectly complementary the appropriate fixative is applied. Again we have no duplicate of the original substance. Ours is extremely strong, but it is rigid. It is limited to surfaces, and there is no play in it. However the core is not the part of the trunk that conducted life from the roots up to the branches and back again. It was relatively inert. The fixative for this part is not the same as the one for the outer layers and the bark, and if either of these is involved
”
”
W.S. Merwin
“
Paint in several colors was squeezed out of tubes and mixed and applied to woven fabric stretched on a wooden frame so artfully we say we see a woman hanging out a sheet rather than oil on canvas. Ana Teresa Fernandez’s image on that canvas is six feet tall, five feet wide, the figure almost life-size. Though it is untitled, the series it’s in has a title: Telaraña. Spiderweb. The spiderweb of gender and history in which the painted woman is caught; the spiderweb of her own power that she is weaving in this painting dominated by a sheet that was woven. Woven now by a machine, but before the industrial revolution by women whose spinning and weaving linked them to spiders and made spiders feminine in the old stories. In this part of the world, in the creation stories of the Hopi, Pueblo, Navajo, Choctaw, and Cherokee peoples, Spider Grandmother is the principal creator of the universe. Ancient Greek stories included an unfortunate spinning woman who was famously turned into a spider as well as the more powerful Greek fates, who spun, wove, and cut each person’s lifeline, who ensured that those lives would be linear narratives that end. Spiderwebs are images of the nonlinear, of the many directions in which something might go, the many sources for it; of the grandmothers as well as the strings of begats. There’s a German painting from the nineteenth century of women processing the flax from which linen is made. They wear wooden shoes, dark dresses, demure white caps, and stand at various distances from a wall, where the hanks of raw material are being wound up as thread. From each of them, a single thread extends across the room, as though they were spiders, as though it came right out of their bellies. Or as though they were tethered to the wall by the fine, slim threads that are invisible in other kinds of light. They are spinning, they are caught in the web. To spin the web and not be caught in it, to create the world, to create your own life, to rule your fate, to name the grandmothers as well as the fathers, to draw nets and not just straight lines, to be a maker as well as a cleaner, to be able to sing and not be silenced, to take down the veil and appear: all these are the banners on the laundry line I hang out.
”
”
Rebecca Solnit (Men Explain Things to Me)
“
It is relatively easy to accept that money is an intersubjective reality. Most people are also happy to acknowledge that ancient Greek gods, evil empires and the values of alien cultures exist only in the imagination. Yet we don’t want to accept that our God, our nation or our values are mere fictions, because these are the things that give meaning to our lives. We want to believe that our lives have some objective meaning, and that our sacrifices matter to something beyond the stories in our head. Yet in truth the lives of most people have meaning only within the network of stories they tell one another.
Meaning is created when many people weave together a common network of stories. Why does a particular action – such as getting married in church, fasting on Ramadan or voting on election day – seem meaningful to me? Because my parents also think it is meaningful, as do my brothers, my neighbours, people in nearby cities and even the residents of far-off countries. And why do all these people think it is meaningful? Because their friends and neighbours also share the same view. People constantly reinforce each other’s beliefs in a self-perpetuating loop. Each round of mutual confirmation tightens the web of meaning further, until you have little choice but to believe what everyone else believes.
Yet over decades and centuries the web of meaning unravels and a new web is spun in its place. To study history means to watch the spinning and unravelling of these webs, and to realise that what seems to people in one age the most important thing in life becomes utterly meaningless to their descendants.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow)
“
Isis
Astarte
Diana
Hecate
Demeter
Kali
Inanna
Over and over their voices filled the
air calling in these Ancient ones,
their energies, magic and wisdom,
their rage and righteous anger as
shouts of No More and Never Again
filled the air.
Asherah
Erishkigal
Cerridwen
Brigid
Maat
Hathor
Freya
Skadi
Sigyn
Voices invoked the battle energies
as the Warrior Goddesses arrived.
Lilith
Andraste
Durga
Athena
Hel
Mami Wata
Pele
Ixchel
Freya
An’ Morrighan
Boudicca of the Iceni
Zenobia of Palmyra
Lakshmi Bai of Jhansi
Through the night they chanted
the invocation “show us another way”
to the ancient Mothers, Queens,
Warrioresses, Witches.
Voices raising power and
raised IN power as both
Queen Boudicca and
An’ Morrighan
held the circle, swords in hand
symbols of both peace and truth
as well as strength and protection.
Eyes of the night still held vigil
for this sacred activist work
as each woman plucked
her part of the web
weaving new threads of hope
and spinning the wheel of change.
Fox, wolf and coyote
opossum, turtle and deer
bear, raccoon and hare
held vigil as the
moths danced,
spiders wove webs,
and serpents shed skins
no longer needed,
all while the calls of the
owls and night birds echoed
in synchronous harmony.
As the darkness of night
gave way to the light
of a new dawn, the Ravens
and Crows and birds of the day
arrived calling out as the
women prayed their work
had been enough to alter
the events of this day...
They prayed it was enough
to alter the events
of the Coming Days.
As they walked back
through the woods,
sunlight streaming through
the trees and with eyes still
watching, the women held the
Rim of the Eternal Circle
safely in their hearts and womb space,
encased in a deep knowing that
Whatever this new day held...
Whatever and Whomever was to come...
Their work, the ancient ways and this
Rim of Power would always continue
For the Circle never ends and the
Weaver always weaves.
Excerpt from "Holding the Rim", featured in Asherah: Roots of the Mother Tree
”
”
Arlene Bailey
“
Tell me, sir, I said, the purport of what I have seen, for not yet have I understood how these happy people do their business and pass from hand to hand not a single coin I And he answered, Where greed and ambition and self-love rule, money must be: where there is neither greed nor ambition nor self-love, money is needless. And I asked, Is it then by the same ancient mode of barter that they go about their affairs? Truly I saw no exchange of any sort.—Bethink thee, said my guide, if thou hadst gone into any other shop throughout the whole city, thou wouldst have seen the same thing. I see not how that should make the matter plainer to me, I answered.—Where neither greed nor ambition nor selfishness reigneth, said my guide, there need and desire have free scope, for they work no evil.—But even now I understand you not, sir, I said.—Hear me then, answered my guide, for I will speak to thee more plainly. Wherefore do men take money in their hands when they go where things are?—Because they may not have the things without giving the money.—And where they may have things without giving money, there they take no money in their hands?—Truly no, sir, if there be such a place.—Then such a place is this, and so is it here.—But how can men give of their goods and receive nought in return?—By receiving everything in return. Tell me, said my guide, why do men take money for their goods?—That they may have wherewithal to go and buy other things which they need for themselves.—But if they also may go to this place or that place where the things are the which they need, and receive of those things without money and without price, is there then good cause why they should take money in their hands?—Truly no, I answered; and I begin, methinks, to see how the affair goeth. Yet are there some things still whereupon I would gladly be resolved. And first of all, how cometh it that men are moved to provide these and those goods for the supply of the wants of their neighbours, when they are drawn thereto by no want in themselves, and no advantage to themselves?—Thou reasonest, said my guide, as one of thine own degree, who to the eyes of the full-born ever look like chrysalids, closed round in a web of their own weaving; and who shall blame thee until thou thyself shinest within thyself? Understand that it is never advantage to himself that moveth a man in this kingdom to undertake this or that. The thing that alone advantageth a man here is the thing which he doth without thought unto that advantage. To your world, this world goeth by contraries.
”
”
George MacDonald (Thomas Wingfold, Curate)
“
I help myself to another slice of cake. No wonder Craig goes for younger women – they’ve had less time to pile on the pounds.
”
”
Michelle Morgan (The Webs We Weave)
“
First we molt,
then spin a web,
after this we weave,
until our food is dead.
Next dancing a jig,
And waiting for a meal,
Then we wrestle a bit
Til we sit and eat our fill.”
Captain Muntweight
”
”
Craig Froman (Of Secrets, Spiders & and the End of the World (Always Rune #1))
“
Okay, judged on raw brain power, humans do no better than our hairier cousins. So, then, what are we using our great big brains for? Maybe we’re more cunning. That’s the crux of the ‘Machiavellian intelligence’ hypothesis, named after the Italian Renaissance philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli, author of The Prince (1513). In this handbook for rulers, Machiavelli counsels weaving a web of lies and deception to stay in power. According to adherents of this hypothesis, that’s precisely what we’ve been doing for millions of years: devising ever more inventive ways to swindle one another. And because telling lies takes more cognitive energy than being truthful, our brains grew like the nuclear arsenals of Russia and the US during the Cold War. The result of this mental arms race is the sapien superbrain. If this hypothesis were true, you’d expect humans to beat other primates handily in games that hinge on conning your opponent. But no such luck. Numerous studies show that chimps outscore us on these tests and that humans are lousy liars.9 Not only that, we’re predisposed to trust others, which explains how con artists can fool their marks.10 This brings me to another odd quirk of Homo sapiens. Machiavelli, in his classic book, advises never revealing your emotions. Work on your poker face, he urges; shame serves no purpose. The object is to win, by fair means or foul. But if only the shameless win, why are humans one of the only species in the whole animal kingdom to blush?
”
”
Rutger Bregman (Humankind: A Hopeful History)
“
Promises are like spiderwebs we weave to trap our own dreams, but dreams have a way of thinning out until you’re left with nothing but the web.
”
”
V.C. Andrews (Tarnished Gold (Landry, #5))
“
…American men actually engage most in hunting and fishing. The desire of men in wealthy societies to re-create the food-gathering conditions of very primitive people appears to be an appropriate comment on the power of the hunting drives discussed earlier. Not only is hunting expensive in many places – think of the European on safari in Africa – but it is also time-consuming, potentially dangerous, and frequently involves considerable personal discomfort. Men do it because it is ‘fun’. So they say, and so one must conclude from their persistent rendition of the old pattern. What is relevant from our point of view is that hunting, and frequently fishing, are group activities. A man will choose his co-hunters very carefully. Not only does the relative intimacy of the hunt demand some congeniality, but there is also danger in hunting with inept or irresponsible persons. It is a serious matter, and even class barriers which normally operate quite rigidly may be happily breached for the period of the hunt. Some research on hunters in British Columbia suggests the near-piety which accompanies the hunt; hunting is a singular and important activity. One particular group of males takes along bottles of costly Crown Royal whisky for the hunt; they drink only superior whisky on this poignant re-creation of an ancient manly skill. But when their wives join them for New Year's celebrations, they drink an ordinary whisky: the purely formal and social occasion does not, it seems, merit the symbolic tribute of outstanding whisky.
Gambling is another behaviour which, like hunting and sport, provides an opportunity in countless cultures for the weaving of and participation in the web of male affiliation. Not the gambling of the London casino, where glamorous women serve drinks, or the complex hope, greed, fate-tempting ritual, and action of the shiny American palaces in Nevada, and not the hidden gambling run by racketeers. Rather, the card games in homes or small clubs, where men gather to play for manageable stakes on a friendly basis; perhaps – like Jiggs and his Maggie – to avoid their women, perhaps to seek some money, perhaps to buy the pleasant passage of time. But also to be with their friends and talk, and define, by the game, the confines of their intimate male society.
Obviously females play too, both on their own and in mixed company. But there are differences which warrant investigation, in the same way that the drinking of men in groups appears to differ from heterosexual or all-female drinking; the separation of all-male bars and mixed ones is still maintained in many places despite the powerful cultural pressures against such flagrant sexual apartheid. Even in the Bowery, where disaffiliated outcast males live in ways only now becoming understood, it has been noted that, ‘There are strong indications that the heavy drinkers are more integrated and more sociable than the light. The analytical problem lies in determining whether socialization causes drinking or drinking results in sociability when there is no disapproval.’ In the gentleman's club in London, the informally segregated working man's pub in Yorkshire, the all-male taverns of Montreal, the palm-wine huts of west Africa, perhaps can be observed the enactment of a way of establishing maleness and maintaining bonds which is given an excuse and possibly facilitated by alcohol. Certainly, for what they are worth in revealing the nature of popular conception of the social role of drinking, advertisements stress the manly appeal of alcohol – particularly whisky – though it is also clear that there are ongoing changes in the socio-sexual implications of drinking. But perhaps it is hasty to regard the process of change as a process of female emancipation which will culminate in similarity of behaviour, status, and ideals of males and females. The changes are still too recent to warrant this. Also, they have been achieved under sufficiently self-conscious pressure...
”
”
Lionel Tiger (Men in Groups)
“
This woman is not someone he would have forgotten. She is extraordinarily tall and slender, her body wrapped in overlapping fronds of shimmering blue silk. Silver bangles encircle her velvet-sheathed arms in serpentine coils. Her scalp is smoothly shaven save for a braided topknot that blooms out to cover her ears and shoulders in an indigo cascade. A web of fine black lines covers her face, weaving a ‘third eye’ upon her forehead, its spiral iris framed by widespread wings. The traveller cannot tell whether the pattern is tattooed or incised into her alabaster skin, nor decide upon her age, for she seems suspended between youth and maturity, but her allure is unquestionable. Timeless. The name he knows her by is Euryale, though he suspects that is only one of many and not the truest.
”
”
Peter Fehervari (The Reverie (Warhammer Horror))
“
Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.
”
”
Nicolas Cole (19 Tiny Habits That Lead To Huge Results (Quick Reads from Nicolas Cole Book 1))
“
With this in mind, let’s turn our attention to four specific elements that can inform and guide you as you’re weaving the strands of that web: biblical exploration, experiences, rituals and traditions, and relationships
”
”
Meredith Miller (Woven: Nurturing a Faith Your Kid Doesn't Have to Heal From)
“
It’s interesting, nevertheless, that there are very few European folk and fairy tales with older women as their main protagonists. I have found no stories that clearly teach us how to transition into a rich and meaningful elderhood, or which hold up a mirror of clarity to the nature of our life journey at this time. But still, there exist many different kinds of archetypal old women who play pivotal roles in the stories: characters who pull the strings, weave the webs, test or advise the heroes and heroines. These elders are usually presented as wise — though they manifest their wisdom in very different ways. What, then, is the nature of an elder woman’s wisdom, and how might myths and fairy tales offer us insight into the ways that each of us could uniquely embody it?
”
”
Sharon Blackie (Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life)
“
A defensive prickle climbed up Amelia’s spine, though she wasn’t sure who to defend. Poor handsome Michael? The man with his life together who was just trying to do his job? Or their mom, for weaving a web of secrets and promptly dying before a final showdown. “Michael’s just trying to help,” she started, trying again on her coffee, this time with more success. “And Mom was from a different time. A different era. She didn’t live her life online for the whole world to see. Of course we have to claw through some cobwebs.” Amelia involuntarily rested her gaze on Megan’s phone.
”
”
Elizabeth Bromke (House on the Harbor (Birch Harbor, #1))
“
We are the venomous spiders that weave webs of shining silk. We are the graceful hunter in the shadows, perfect in our ability to kill.
”
”
Kathryn Ann Kingsley (The Unseelie Prince (Maze of Shadows, #1))
“
HIC | JACET | FISCI LIBERATOR’, ‘here lies the Treasury’s Liberator’. However, in Senator Thomas Hart Benton’s fully documented account of the Bank war, in his Thirty Years’ View, or A History of the Working of the American Government (1854), the hero is unquestionably President Jackson, and Van Buren is not seen to play a leading role, in part because while Vice-President he chaired the Senate Debates and could have no voice in them. (That difference raises the question of historical accuracy to which I will return.) The first third of canto 37 weaves together thirty or more items, most of them things said by Van Buren or taken up by him over the many years from 1813 when he was a New York state senator to 1840 when he was President. The passage is a prime instance of Pound’s method of adding one detail to another without providing the conventional syntactical and logical connections, in order to allow a more complex web of relations to develop. Banks fraudulently failing, wealthy landowners and factory owners, high judges and the Chief Justice himself, senators, financial speculators, all are implicated in defrauding immigrants of the value of their banknotes, in driving settlers off the land they would cultivate, in denying workers the vote, in preventing local government of local affairs, and in ‘“decrying government credit. |…in order to feed on the spoils”’.
”
”
Anthony David Moody (Ezra Pound: Poet: Volume II: The Epic Years)
“
Let’s stop talking. The effort you make to talk tires me out...
The gap between what you think and what you say grieves me ... I can
feel in my skin my consciousness floating on the surface of my
sensations’ terrified stupor. I don’t know what that means, but it’s what I
feel ... I need to say longish, confusing sentences that are hard to say ...
Doesn’t all of this feel to you like a huge spider that between us is
weaving, from soul to soul, a black web we can’t escape?
”
”
Fernando Pessoa (The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa)
“
When lives entangle, webs will weave…
”
”
David B. Lyons (In the Middle of Middle America (The America Trilogy #1))
“
Scientists, according to [Francis] Bacon, should not be like ants, busy doing mindless practical tasks, nor like spiders, weaving tenuous philosophical webs, but like bees, mining nature for her goodness and using it to make useful things.
”
”
Philip Ball (The Devil's Doctor: Paracelsus and the World of Renaissance Magic and Science)
“
Each layer was a clean, crisp white. Marzipan over rich Vienna cream icing, edged with sugar lace, a delicate spidery web of lines, the perfect allusion of the bobbin lace that Princess Rose liked to weave. Or at least claimed she wove as a useful anecdote. His notes stated that she gave biannual speeches as patron of the City of London Arts and Crafts Guild.
Flowers wound up the side of the cake, the blooming vine of a fairy tale.
He studied the effect with distaste.
A tap of the leftmost flower, and the petals changed color from an iridescent pink to a deep, brooding blood purple, almost black in tone. He swept his hand in front of the cake. One after another, the edges of the peony poppies bled, thee dark color leaching over the celestial pink. Still fairy tale, but with the inevitable malevolent element.
Better.
Also better suited to a dungeon or coffin than a reception table, but from the impression he got of the bride, the Tim Burton vibe was strongly in her wheelhouse.
”
”
Lucy Parker (Battle Royal (Palace Insiders, #1))
“
His right eye is an inky orb, a burst of black capillaries webbed across the skin surrounding it. And his left one … It’s glass—just like the scribble of thin, glassy fractures that weave across his cheek and temple and stretch into his hairline. He’s a monstrous mix of flesh and translucent splits, some areas leaking threads of blood that drip to the floor.
”
”
Sarah A. Parker (To Flame a Wild Flower (Crystal Bloom, #3))
“
Men with fake love often orchestrate a toxic tale, weaving a web of dramatic deception, lies, and secrets to manipulate and control their victim, using affection as a disguise to exploit and harm, leaving a trail of shattered trust and emotional devastation in their wake.
”
”
Shaila Touchton
“
Third, sin quickly weaves its web throughout the social-corporate dimension of humanity.
”
”
Michael Lodahl (The Story of God: A Narrative Theology (updated))
“
Because I am not a monster or a goddess; I am not a prophet or a princess, a gorgon or a priestess. I am not Aphrodite or Athena, Arachne or Medusa. I did not emerge from a seashell, or the inside of a head; I do not have to weave my story, over and over again, and it is not--and never should be--told by other people.
My fate is not written in time, or sand, or stars, or in a tapestry, or a spider's web, and it never actually was.
I am Cassandra: the future was always in me.
”
”
Holly Smale (Cassandra in Reverse)
“
The earth grows white with harvest; all day long
The sickles gleam, until the darkness weaves
Her web of silence o'er the thankful song
Of reapers bringing home the golden sheaves.
The wave tops whiten on the sea fields drear,
And men go forth at haggard dawn to reap;
But ever 'mid the gleaners' song we hear
The half-hushed sobbing of the hearts that weep.
”
”
John McCrae
“
Not by weaving complex theories, not by building up speculative philosophies is Truth realized; but by weaving the web of inward purity, by building up the Temple of a stainless life is Truth realized.
”
”
James Allen (From Poverty to Power)
“
there’s anyone who could know how to spin a lie how to weave a web, hide a body, it would be someone who dances with the law
”
”
Cynthia Pelayo (Into the Forest and all the Way Through)
“
Mako owed me absolutely nothing when we first met. I was just another fly in his brother’s spider-web. Just like Alison had been. And instead of letting the flies be eaten alive, Mako went out of his way to untangle the web we were weaved in and help us get away. I owe my life to this man. To this day, Alison shares the same sentiment.
”
”
H.D. Carlton (Shallow River)
“
I Dance in The Dark (The Moths’ Song)
I dance in The Dark.
I fly through moonlit wings.
My heart beats loud
for every living thing.
Deep in the waters
all reflects clearly,
clearly, clearly, clearly.
I fly to the heart
and weave a web.
Through this fabric of sky
all once hidden is said.
My whisper enters your ear,
“Come dance, and you will know.
the gift of Love as not separate from Fear.
The thing you fought against
is waiting to be seen.
and set Free.
Free. Free. Free.
Come Dance with Me.
Come Dance with Me.
”
”
Gwen Juvenal ("The Seed" Journal: A Space for Recording Your Soul Experiences and Expansive Journeys (Journeys of Joy and Freedom))
“
Preparing a young girl for the
sacred journey of menstruation, creating a safe environment and weaving a web of support is crucial.
”
”
Nirmala Gowda Nayak (Menstruation: Moon, Men and More)
“
Because trees grown in isolation without competition from other trees for light, water, and nutrients usually grow more massive, achieve a larger crown, and present a grander aesthetic than trees that grow close to other trees, we almost always plant trees as isolated specimens. But this practice invites the very disasters we pray will never happen. In most treed areas of the country, trees grow in forests, not by their lonesome. Yes, each member of the forest is a bit smaller than it would be on its own, but it is also far more stable. Trees that grow at a spacing found in most forests interlock their roots, forming a continuous matrix of large and small roots that is extraordinarily difficult to uproot. When the big winds come, grouped trees may lose a branch or two, or in the extreme winds of a hurricane or tornado, their trunks may even snap off some feet up from the base, but they rarely blow over entirely. With this in mind, an easy way to reduce the risks from treefalls in your yard is to plant trees in twos or threes, maybe on a 6-foot center, creating small groves that the eye will take in as if it were a single tree. Trees planted in this fashion weave that stabilizing web of roots that will hold them upright even in extreme weather. There is a catch, however. You have to plant such trees when they are young. In fact, the smaller the better. This way your trees will have every opportunity to interlock their roots as they grow.
”
”
Douglas W. Tallamy (The Nature of Oaks: The Rich Ecology of Our Most Essential Native Trees)
“
I used to loathe spiders, something I learned from my mother’s arachnophobia. I was never scared of them as she is; I just found them creepy and gross. Then I took the time to observe them in their webs, watch their precision and their baffling ability to plan and weave such perfectly symmetrical patterns. I had never seen them for who they were and never bothered to understand them as beings in this universe who are just as important and deserving of a spot in the sunlight as me. I had a moment of feeling love as I watched the banana spiders living their lives, a feeling that you’ll know when you step outside your prejudices about the world and engage it with the wonder of a child.
”
”
Nathan M. Hall (Path of the Moonlit Hedge: Discovering the Magick of Animistic Witchcraft)
“
And she served none but herself, drinking the blood of Elves and Men, bloated and grown fat with endless brooding on her feasts, weaving webs of shadow; for all living things were her food, and her vomit darkness.
”
”
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Two Towers (The Lord of the Rings, Part Two))
“
When I say that your family needs to weave your own web, this is how you get there. It’s intentional and ordinary. It’s spiritual and also simple. Such is the power of weaving your own web. You get to partner with the Holy Spirit to craft a way of living life that is joyful, sustainable, and anchored to the character of God. Instead of trying to shove your family into a box, you let your web take on the unique shape and structure it needs to help you all know and trust God more and more. All the while, it feels like you, the way that weaving is ordinary for the spider. And ordinary is enough.
”
”
Meredith Miller (Woven: Nurturing a Faith Your Kid Doesn't Have to Heal From)
“
In a sense we can see network theory as a natural extension of statistical physics a kind of "sticky" version of many-particle systems in which encounters between individuals lead not simply to collisions but to the formation of permanent, elastic links. The network then becomes a kind of map of the history of the system, just as the expansion of the Internet over time is recorded in the growing web that it weaves. In networks the past matters: a memory of it is frozen in place and shapes the present. These networks provide a graphic image of the extent to which our lives become entwined in ways as innumerable as they are barely fathomable.
”
”
Philip Ball (Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another)
“
Outlaw Nation
[Verse]
There's a storm in D.C. now, can't see the light,
Biden's dropped the reins, runnin' from the fight,
Kamala's in the spotlight, dancin' on a stage,
Trump's rollin' back in, full of fury and rage.
[Verse 2]
Folks down in the heartland, feelin' all the strain,
Politicians playin' games, drivin' us insane,
Farmers in the fields, can't catch a break,
Factories closin' down, livelihoods at stake.
[Chorus]
Outlaw nation, we're fightin' to survive,
Caught in the crossfire, just tryin' to stay alive,
The rich gettin' richer, while we pay the price,
Outlaw nation, it's time to stand and rise.
[Verse 3]
Main street's empty now, dreams turned to dust,
Kids askin' questions, who can we trust?
Grandpa's on the porch, with a tear in his eye,
Reminiscin' 'bout the days, when the flag flew high.
[Bridge]
It's a tangled web they weave, in them fancy suits,
But out in the country, we're stickin' to our roots,
With a six-string guitar and a bottle of truth,
Outlaw nation, we're fightin' for the youth.
[Chorus]
Outlaw nation, we're fightin' to survive,
Caught in the crossfire, just tryin' to stay alive,
The rich gettin' richer, while we pay the price,
Outlaw nation, it's time to stand and rise.
”
”
James Hilton-Cowboy
“
She would crawl about on her knees with her tape measure like a female spider, rapidly weaving a mysterious web of measurements round her immobile prey.
”
”
Michela Murgia (Accabadora: A Novel)
“
I lay in my bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering what kind of creature Curzon Dax was, to weave so tangled a web.
”
”
Marco Palmieri (The Lives Of Dax (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine))
“
If I had to come up with a single metaphorical device to express what is missing in childhood now it would be something on the order of string: the tie that binds, the thread of connection, the weave of narrative, the web of life." NOAH'S CHILDREN
”
”
Sara Stein
“
The three Norns weave the web of wyrd blindly according to Orlog.
”
”
Sweyn Plowright (The Rune Primer: A Down to Earth Guide to the Runes)
“
Does she think she can keep fucking with my head and weaving her devious webs thinking I’ll always get caught in them? She’s toying with my lust for her, my obsession, and I keep letting her.
”
”
Shantaye Brown (Zel (Deviants & Saints, #1))
“
Descender Rings—These small metal rings are also borrowed from the climbing and rappelling community. Originally used to facilitate the recovery of rope on a rappel, you can use two descender rings together to adjust the length of long webbing between tree and hammock. Weave the webbing strap through both rings and then back through the top one. Descender rings require a safety knot (half hitch) to prevent the webbing from slipping.
”
”
Derek Hansen (The Ultimate Hang)
“
One of the primary barriers in this society to total freedom is economics. Suppressives have been weaving a web of economic entanglement for societies for some time using economic misinterpretations or ignorance to involve those societies which only recently struck off their chains of actual slavery. Today the chains are made of economic restrictions and, to be blunt, economic lies. An understanding of economics is a bold step forward toward total freedom in a society. Aberrations tend to blow when their lies are exposed.
”
”
L. Ron Hubbard
“
Oh, what a fucked-up web we’ve weaved.
”
”
Ella Fields (Frayed Silk)
“
Humans are well known for weaving intricate webs of thought and then ensnaring themselves in their own creations. Our universe functions as a powerful energy mirror. With every focused thought you are broadcasting waves of creative energy into your immediate environment. Few realize that their thoughts have a powerful impact upon the subtle energies around them.
”
”
William Buhlman (Adventures in the Afterlife)
“
Oh what a tangled web I weave, when I write a story to intrigue.
”
”
Erik Dean
“
Noticeable signs of living in a haunted house with negative energy will begin to show up in various aspects of your life as the negative energy weaves its web. You will find electric bills going through the roof, the house will be filthy no matter how many times you clean, plumbing will begin to have problems and the house itself will deteriorate. Personally, you may feel ill while in the house and better when you leave. You will notice a
”
”
Jackie Nevels (Out of the Darkness: Spiritual Insight in a Haunted House)
“
own incitements, have been changing. The global weaving continues; the orbital web grows. In 2014, the European Space Agency launched a rocket from its spaceport in French Guyana, carrying Sentinel 1A, the first satellite in its Copernicus project, which is in many ways the most ambitious Earth observation program to date. Copernicus will include a fleet of orbiting craft to be launched over the ensuing decade, which will obtain continuous coverage of the entire planet in unprecedented detail over multiple wavelengths. Sentinel 1A can monitor any location on the globe using radar imaging, a technique we’ve employed with great success elsewhere in the solar system,
”
”
David Grinspoon (Earth in Human Hands: Shaping Our Planet's Future)
“
All things are connected like the blood that unites us. We do not weave the web of life, we are merely a strand in it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.” Chief Seattle
”
”
Heather Harder (Dimensions & Awakenings of Divine Consciousness: Understanding Earth's Journey from 3rd to 5th Dimension (A Lightworker's Guide to Life))
“
Lazy Lob and crazy Cob are weaving webs to wind me. I am far more sweet than other meat, but still they cannot find me! Here am I, naughty little fly; you are fat and lazy. You cannot trap me, though you try, in your cobwebs crazy.
”
”
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Hobbit)
“
Birds have nests
Even the ants too
Cows live in a pen
Even the hogs do
Dogs have their kennels
And the roaming fowls, their roost
The spider weaves a knot of webs and calls it home
Flocks migrate seasonally
So they may have a place to call home
You see, the home is the nucleus of a society
And is a right
A God given innate right
That need not be taught
Fowls, beasts, insects, hedgehogs
Rabbits and bears were not schooled
Yet, they know the foundation
Of building a society, a home
People were battered, conquered
Their habitats destroyed, stolen and possessed
The loot fattened conquerors laughed and were merry
“Ha, Ha, Ha, what a loot,” they toot
Has this habit been buried and goodbyes read?
Or is it camouflaged under a piece of linen?
Crowing hellos every morning
This habit is rampant and purposefully legalized
Operating under a camouflaged linen
Conquerors, shouting hypocritical hellos daily
Destroying the nucleus of society, the home
Bank of America is one such culprit operating
Under such names as Specialized Loan Services
Taking people’s homes, relegating them
To less than dogs and insects
How dare this facetious beast
Continue its rampage of destruction?
Having their helpless cronies do their dirty work?
Whilst they appear as shining glory?
How dare you?
Hasten to make right your wrongs!
Or
May you find peace in Hell’s bosom
May your deficit grow higher than Mount Everest
May you be taken over by a conglomerate
May your gains be eroded like sand pebbles
May you never break even or see a profit
May all your spoils be dragged from under your feet
”
”
Maisie Aletha Smikle
“
Nader refused to bring her the feathery dream catcher – her asabikeshiinh – with its willow-web and invisible ‘lady spider’ apparently weaving her spells – an object Bea insisted always hung above her in bed.
”
”
Carla H. Krueger (Sleeping with the Sun)
“
Most of systems still depended on some central node to which everything had to be connected [...]. I wanted the act of adding a link to be trivial. If i was, then a web of links could spread evenly across the globe.
”
”
Tim Berners-Lee (Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web)
“
Orion's Tips for Sane Witchcraft (Ponder and Apply to Living) Know your boundaries. Find time for stillness. Look within! Do not confuse spirituality with egotism. Don't abuse power or give it to those who would abuse you with it. Live your life as an expression of conscious creation and divine revelation. Seek counsel daily with your source, your center, and your ancestors. Don't get lazy, crazy, or otherwise in your own way. Remember grace! It brings wisdom and unlocks more vast knowledge. Be sincere in all that you do. Never compromise (especially your integrity) or be compromised. If you lose yourself, you have nothing. Choose what matters and feed it. (Starve the bane, feed the blessing.) Get the lesson and get on with life. Too often life is what happens when you are busy doing something else. Maintain an attitude of thanksgiving. For in doing so, you give gratitude to source and maintain inner fertile space to receive more. Thank the source and its good spirits at the beginning and ending of each day. If you wake up in the morning, your day has already started out good . . . build from that position. Don't wait for a reason to be happy when it is right in front of you. Claim the direction of your spirit! Fall in love with being you. The seed of divinity is within you; live your truth. Give no enduring interest to what is not spirit while seeking spiritual truth in everything. Do not stray away from your faith in yourself and the source (for in truth they are one). You are guided by the source. Do not be bandied about by the waves of life or you will crash onto the rocks of doubt. Daily, reaffirm your connection with spirit. Renew yourself on the new moment and release the fetters of yesterday to their rightful home . . . yesterday. Weave your web to attract that which you desire . . . then seize it. A witch need not hunt when he or she can attract. If you fall down . . . move what tripped you, get up, dust yourself off, and above all, don't give up walking. In chaotic times, seek the eye of the storm, poise yourself there, and find the wisdom in the stillness. Give thanks for all opportunities to grow.
”
”
Orion Foxwood (The Flame in the Cauldron: A Book of Old-Style Witchery)
“
Man did not weave the web of life – he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.
”
”
Kristiane Backer (From MTV to Mecca)
“
In her growing years, Ammu had watched her father weave his hideous web. He was charming and urbane with visitors...He donated money to orphanages and leprosy clinics. He worked hard on his public profile as a sophisticated, generous, moral man. But alone with his wife and children he turned into a monstrous, suspicious bully, with a steak of vicious cunning. They were beaten, humiliated, and then made to suffer the envy of friends and relations for having such a wonderful husband and father.
”
”
Arundhati Roy
“
in your process of gaining awareness and awakening, you are being asked, or rather, you are being empowered to choose love and happiness in your now. For in your now, in every now moment, you are actively creating, manifesting, and drawing to you, your future experiences in life. In this now, the thoughts and beliefs of every member of humanity mix and weave together in an intricate web of creativity by design to create your physical realm. As you begin to shine, to project a more positive vision of tomorrow, releasing fear, focusing on and manifesting love, well-being and happiness in your life, the collective experience slowly begins to change. And this change accelerates as more individuals become empowered and step into their roles, claiming light, living in love, happiness, and joy, and through this, drawing to you more happiness and love.
”
”
Melanie Beckler (Channeling the Guides and Angels of Light)
“
If imagination is not set to the task of building a creative life, it busies itself with weaving a web of inner fears and doubts, blame and excuse. —LAURENCE G. BOLDT
”
”
Wil Wheaton (Still Just a Geek: An Annotated Memoir)
“
I was exhausted and in a state of shock
”
”
Don Desrosiers (Weave a Tangled Web: What Really Happened on Chappaquiddick?)
“
If she had just asked! But no. She pushes me into a corner where there’s no choice.”
“It’s what women do: weave the web, pull the strings, herd into the corner. It’s their only power. Unless they’re seers.
”
”
Nicola Griffith (Hild (The Hild Sequence, #1))
“
Most people's pasts can be viewed like cleaved water left in the wake of a boat. Hers? It's a tangled weave of spider webs and nightmares, never to make sense.
”
”
C.J. Cooke (The Lighthouse Witches)