
Mariage à la Mode, Act ii, scene 1.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
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.
Mariage à la Mode, Act ii, scene 1.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“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)