"Spider's web" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and came down with a smash. You never saw such a ruin. The lamp and bell were lost completely, the handle-bars were twisted into corkscrews, the tires were cut to ribbons, the spokes looked like part of a spider's web, my hands and my knees were cut, and the worst of it was that the shepherd's dog mistook me for an enemy and I had to beat him off with the monkey-wrench, until the farmer heard the noise and came ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... hear some trig, compact-looking man, seemingly free, all girded and ready, speak of his "furniture," as whether it is insured or not. "But what shall I do with my furniture?"—My gay butterfly is entangled in a spider's web then. Even those who seem for a long while not to have any, if you inquire more narrowly you will find have some stored in somebody's barn. I look upon England today as an old gentleman who is travelling ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... He looked desperately at the sticky staircase and the spider's web swinging in the wind above the broken pane. He felt alone, lost in his misery. He looked at the gap in the banisters.... What if he were to throw himself down?... or out of the window?... Yes, what if he were to ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... the bonds of the universe. His legs were encircled with bands of iron, which, at their fastenings into the floor, were rusted. His hips and loins were bound with lead. A copper girdle held his breast. A silver band enthralled his tongue and hands, and what seemed like a spider's web of thin, light-blue wire encircled his body and gathered itself in a circlet of the same woven material upon his brows. Truly, if ever a man was fast bound, this man was; for, in addition to all these things, ...
— Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book - Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations • Edmund Dulac
... he was shortly afterwards removed to become Assistant Under Secretary of State at our Foreign Office. The author of Eminent Victorians is pleased to describe "poor Mr. Russell" as little better than a fly buzzing in Manning's "spider's web of delicate and clinging diplomacy." It is not in the memory of those who were behind the scenes that Odo Russell was such a cipher. Though suave in address, he was by no means deficient in decision or force of character, as was evidenced when, some months later, he explained to Mr. Gladstone ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... the south until this bridge was built. He then set out on a journey. 'As I went along the road by the side of the water,' said he, 'I could see no bridge. At last I came in sight of something like a spider's web in the air. If this be it, thought I, it will never do! But, presently, I came upon it; and oh! it is the finest thing that ever was made by ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... any historical necessity; but that it is merely a superstition, which is not in the least powerful or terrible, but weak and insignificant, in which we must simply cease to believe, as in idols, in order to rid ourselves of it, and in order to rend it like a paltry spider's web. Men who will labor to fulfil the glad law of their existence, that is to say, those who work in order to fulfil the law of toil, will rid themselves of that frightful ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... railways in France converge as surely to the capital as the threads of a spider's web lead to its centre, and in pursuing his route through the bye-ways of Normandy the traveller will be much in the position of the fly that has stepped upon its meshes—every road and railway leading to the capital where 'M. d'Araignee' the enticing, the alluring, the fascinating, ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... as they fixed themselves anxiously on the passenger's perch, to which the honoured guest must climb, above the conductor's seat, crawling through the wire stays, or whatever you call them, which were like a spider's web inviting a fly. Diana turned pale. Even her lips were white. The shadows under her eyes darkened as if ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... clothes were quite orthodox, and she was handsome as a leopard is handsome, but always she struck me as haunted by a vague fear, a fear of the house, perhaps, and of her mother's power to rule her. I used to fancy, watching her return to their sombre dwelling, that she was drawn back as to a spider's web by the fascination of its tragic silences. The story of her life is like a strange book read by lightning, with many leaves turned over unseen between ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... notches on the loom, when one evening, as the expanded sun touched the horizon's rim, a ship's uppermost spars were observed, traced like a spider's web against its crimson disk. It looked like a far-off ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville |
