Mariage à la Mode, Act ii, scene 1. 
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
                                    
        “Much like a subtle spider which doth sit
In middle of her web, which spreadeth wide;
If aught do touch the utmost thread of it,
She feels it instantly on every side.”
    
    
    
    
        
        
        
            
            
        
        
        
        
        
        
            The Immortality of the Soul (c. 1594). Compare: 
:"Our souls sit close and silently within / And their own webs from their own entrails spin; / And when eyes meet far off, our sense is such / That, spider-like, we feel the tenderest touch." John Dryden, Mariage à la Mode, act ii. sc. 1.; 
:"The spider’s touch—how exquisitely fine!— / Feels at each thread, and lives along the line." Alexander Pope, Epistle i. line 217.
        
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John Davies (poet) 9
English poet, lawyer, and politician, born 1569 1569–1626Related quotes
“Inside every widow there's a spider that weaves it's webs in the corners of her heart.”
"Voices Within the Ark", ibid.
                                        
                                        First Week, Sixth Day. Compare: "Much like a subtle spider which doth sit In middle of her web, which spreadeth wide; If aught do touch the utmost thread of it, She feels it instantly on every side", John Davies, The Immortality of the Soul. 
La Semaine; ou, Création du monde (1578)
                                    
                                        
                                        Letter Three (23 April 1903) 
Letters to a Young Poet (1934) 
Context: No experience has been too unimportant, and the smallest event unfolds like a fate, and fate itself is like a wonderful, wide fabric in which every thread is guided by an infinitely tender hand and laid alongside another thread and is held and supported by a hundred others.
                                    
The Art of Fiction http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/artfiction.html (1884)