“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 (poet)

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 1569–1626

Related quotes

“Our souls sit close and silently within,
And their own web 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 (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century

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.”

Avner Strauss (1954) Israeli musician

"Voices Within the Ark", ibid.

“for her, life was as cold as an attic with a window looking to the north, and ennui, like a spider, was silently spinning its shadowy web in every cranny of her heart.”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

“Or almost like a spider, who, confin'd
In her web's centre, shakt with every winde,
Moves in an instant if the buzzing flie
Stir but a string of her lawn canapie.”

Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas (1544–1590) French writer

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)

“Destiny itself is like a wonderful wide tapestry in which every thread is guided by an unspeakable tender hand, placed beside another thread and held and carried by a hundred others.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

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.

“Because the line between,
Wrong and right,
Is the width of a thread,
From a spider's web.
The piano keys are black and white,
But they sound like a million colours in your mind.”

Katie Melua (1984) British singer-songwriter

Spider's Web, from Piece By Piece (2005)
Lyrics

“Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web, of the finest silken threads, suspended in the chamber of consciousness and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue.”

Henry James (1843–1916) American novelist, short story author, and literary critic

The Art of Fiction http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/artfiction.html (1884)

“I came from a family of repairers. 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 (1911–2010) American and French sculptor

Louise Bourgeois: a web of emotions, 2010

“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.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Letter Three (23 April 1903)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

“She climbed out of the car, and instantly his entire body wakened to her proximity. he whispered, lifting a hand to touch her cheek.”

Kerrelyn Sparks (1955) American writer

“Much like a subtle spider which doth sitIn middle of her web, which spreadeth wide;If aught do touch the utmost thread of it,She feels it instantly on every side.”

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John Davies (poet)9

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“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.”