"Web" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... woven this web of cheerfulness while they waited in the court for Chad; he had sat smoking cigarettes to keep himself quiet while, caged and leonine, his fellow traveller paced and turned before him. Chad Newsome was doubtless to be struck, when he arrived, with the ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... and as I was already tired and hungry I would be in bad condition for such ice work. Many times I was put to my mettle, but with a firm-braced nerve, all the more unflinching as the dangers thickened, I worked out of that terrible ice-web, and with blood fairly up Stickeen and I ran over common danger without fatigue. Our very hardest trial was in getting across the very last of the sliver bridges. After examining the first of the two widest crevasses, I followed its edge half a mile or so up and down and discovered that its narrowest ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... held it by its back in his fingers, where it waved its six legs slowly in the air. We all crowded about him peering at it. Rolled around the middle section of its right foreleg was something that looked like a thin dried leaf. It was bound on very neatly with strong spider-web. ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... by vast flocks of geese, ducks, white ibis, and other wild-fowl. Indeed in the swamps the birds rose in such prodigious numbers as actually to obscure the face of the sun. Here for the first time I saw web-footed birds perched in trees. ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... of all the wonders appertaining to the ocean, the greatest, perhaps, is its transforming power on man. It unravels and weaves anew the web of his moral and social being. It invests him with feelings, associations, and habits, to which he has been an entire stranger. It breaks up the sealed fountain of his nature, and lifts his soul into features prominent as the cliffs ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... weaving themselves into the "sad-colored" web of daily life, the pattern taking on new aspects as the days went on. Four years after the landing of the Arbella and her consorts, one of the many bands of Separatists, who followed their lead, came over, the celebrated Thomas Parker, one of ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... of a neighbouring orchard; a stone-heap or quarry; ants' nests or earthworms' holes; the weeds of the school yard; buds; the vegetable or animal life of a pond; sounds of spring; tracks in the snow; a spider's web. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... he had closed, neither he nor she were thinking of that future world in which Herbert and Clarice had sealed those vows which they had kept so steadfastly and truly during life, but of the present world, bright with promise for each of them, in which there was but one shade of sorrow—that filmy web that shut out the beauties of nature from the sight of that most beautiful of God's creations, ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... fool's self-chosen snare, Fond fancy's scum, and dregs of scattered thought: Band of all evils; cradle of causeless care; Thou web of will, whose ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... and had got itself wrought in, where, if you know a Fourdrinier machine, you may have noticed a brass ring riveted to the cross-bar, and there this cursed little knife—for you see it was a knife, by that time—had been cutting to pieces the endless wire web every time the machine was started. You lost your bonds, Mr. Sisson, because some Yankee woman cheated one of ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... conspicuous men of the age were saddened and cast down just now—one by the natural kindly sorrow into which all men live for others, till others live into it for them; and one by the petulant turns of fortune, twisting and breaking his best-woven web. Lord Nelson arrived at Springhaven on Monday, to show his affection for his dear old friend; and the Emperor Napoleon, at the same time, was pacing the opposite cliffs in grief ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... echoes of the Island Sound Answer not vainly, nor in vain the moan Of the South Breaker prophesying storm. And thou hast listened, like myself, to men Sea-periled oft where Anticosti lies Like a fell spider in its web of fog, Or where the Grand Bank shallows with the wrecks Of sunken fishers, and to whom strange isles And frost-rimmed bays and trading stations seem Familiar as Great Neck and Kettle Cove, Nubble and Boon, the common names of home. So let me ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... than all her other fears. Sometimes she almost fancied a spell of enchantment had been put upon her, which would render all her efforts to escape her fate as unavailing as the struggles of a gnat in a spider's web. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... it is very necessary that we should exercise our highest and best. We are making character, building soul-fiber; and no rotten threads must be woven into this web of life. If you write a paper for a learned society, you are the man who gets the benefit of that paper—the society may. If you are a preacher and prepare your sermons with care, you are the man who receives ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... off in horror, for there flashed past him, as silent as the wind and swifter, a dark, bent figure, with flying cloak, under which, as the moonlight struck him, there whirled a web of glittering tissue whereon he seemed to ride. That uncanny tinkling floated back from this strange vision, confirming to the ear what otherwise might have appeared a mere ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... water bottle, a mess kit, a rifle, two hundred fifty rounds of ammo, a tin hat, two gas helmets, and a lot of miscellaneous small junk. All this is draped, hung, and otherwise disposed over his figure by means of a web harness having more hooks than a hatrack. He parallels the old-time knight only in the matter of the steel helmet and the rifle, which, with the bayonet, corresponds to the lance, sword, and battle-ax, ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... Cabul to Shah Bagh; cloudy weather, occasionally a very slight shower during the last few days, depending probably on the Punjab rains. To-day, observed a small green caterpillar, climbing up a fine thread, like a spider's web, which hung from the fly of the tent; its motions were precisely those of climbing, the thread over which it had passed was accumulated between its third pairs of legs; it ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... for one of the Essenes to answer, and his eyes falling on Mathias' face he read in it a web of argument preparing wherein to catch him, and he prayed that God might inspire his answers. At last Mathias, in clear, silvery voice, broke the silence that had fallen so suddenly, and all were intent to hear the silken periods with which ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... collisions, explosions, making a universal hell of matter. But the discords and perturbations grew ever less and less, regularity and order more and more, as suns and planets and moons took form and wheeled in their gleaming circles, till now the mazy web of worlds is weaving throughout space the perfect harmony of the creative design. The evolution of incarnate spiritual destinies began later, and is more complex than the material, each mind being as complicated as the whole galaxy. May we not trust that ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... beings, these oppressed ones, listened without much belief to the music of the new words,—the music for which their hearts had long been waiting. Little by little they lifted up their heads, and tore the meshes of the web of lies wherewith their oppressors had enwound them. In their existence, made up of silent and contained rage, in their hearts envenomed by numberless wrongs, in their consciences encumbered by the dupings of the wisdom of the strong, in this dark and laborious life, all penetrated ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... strange combination of paganism and Christianity—amid wreaths of flowers, and arabesques twining round the groups and over every vacant space, partly framing, partly hiding, the heraldic devices which commemorate Sixtus and his family:—a web of lovely forms and brilliant colours, combined in an intricate and ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... Within this narrow, dimly-lighted underground passage, with its musty walls sweating with dampness and thick with the tangled meshes of the spider's web, a brave girt and her lover struggled and ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... practical life was a blind, dull routine. Most men were toiling at tasks which they did not like, by rules which they did not understand. They never looked beyond the edge of their work. The philosophical life was a spider's web—filmy threads of theory spun out of the inner consciousness—it touched the world only at certain chosen points of attachment. There was nothing firm, nothing substantial in it. You could look through it like a veil and see the real world lying ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... along with his nose to the ground, but carelessly, as if thinking of something else. And then in the rocky gateway the shepherd himself appeared. He was a lean, upright old man, in a frieze coat that was covered with a web of tiny drops, velvet trousers tied under the knee, and a wide-awake with a folded blue handkerchief round the brim. One hand was crammed into his belt, the other grasped a beautifully smooth yellow stick. And as he walked, taking his time, he kept up a very soft light whistling, ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... follow; and not only the characters talk aptly and think naturally, but all the circumstances in a tale answer one to another like notes in music. The threads of a story come from time to time together and make a picture in the web; the characters fall from time to time into some attitude to each other or to nature, which stamps the story home like an illustration. Crusoe recoiling from the footprint, Achilles shouting over against ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... journeyed eastward from Eden, and go up each with his mate and young brood, like birds to old nesting places. The beginning of spring in Shoshone Land—oh the soft wonder of it!—is a mistiness as of incense smoke, a veil of greenness over the whitish stubby shrubs, a web of color on the silver sanded soil. No counting covers the multitude of rayed blossoms that break suddenly underfoot in the brief season of the winter rains, with silky furred or prickly viscid foliage, or no foliage at all. They are morning and evening bloomers ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... Brown's style could read a page without discerning him in the short snap-shot sentences of the story. On page 228 of the first volume three pages of the "Sky-Walk" are "extracted from Brown's MSS." The singular title of this unfinished story, which was afterward woven into the web of "Edgar Huntley," seems to have been as puzzling to readers then as now, and it is explained in a stray note on page 318 of the magazine as "a popular corruption of Ski-Wakkee, or Big Spring, the name given by the Lenni Lennaffee (sic) or Delaware Indians to the district ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... by the thought that the Prince is about to renounce all claims to one so caught in the web of scandal] You will remain with me, Elizabeth; I may need you. And now, Prince Yanko—I am steeled [tries to smile]—give me the worst. [The Prince making passes in the air, tierce and thrust with his cane at an imaginary foe] I ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... intention, which is effective in consequence of those beings' peculiar power—a fact vouchsafed by mantras, arthavadas, itihasas, and pura/n/as;—and as the spider emits out of itself the threads of its web; and as the female crane conceives without a male; and as the lotus wanders from one pond to another without any means of conveyance; so the intelligent Brahman also may be assumed to create the world by ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... unexpected splendours scale the fretted clouds, step over step, stealing along the purple caverns till the whole dome throbs. Or, again, after a fair day, a change of weather approaches, and high, infinitely high, the skies are woven over with a web of half-transparent cirrus-clouds. These in the after-glow blush crimson, and through their rifts the depth of heaven is of a hard and gem-like blue, and all the water turns to rose beneath them. I remember one such evening on the way back from Torcello. We were well out at sea between Mazzorbo and ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... store its retribution. God suffers no dropped stitches in the web of His universe, and the smallest truth evaded, the least wretch neglected, will surely be picked up again in the unending circle that is winding its certain thread around all beings, connecting by invisible links the most insignificant chances with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... yesterday, Luke, I'd only been suspecting till then. In politics I'm quite a fellow to judge the whole piece in the web by a sample. And I tell you Everett is going to make a dangerous ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... peculiar badge of honour, or laurel crown. Not that his crown, like those of the old Greek games, is a mere useless badge; on the contrary, his robe of state is composed of his fellow- servants. His whole back is covered with a little grey forest of branching hairs, fine as a spider's web, each branchlet carrying its little pearly ringed club, each club its rose-coloured polype, like (to quote Mr. Gosse's comparison) the unexpanded ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet must first become a little child, he must take to pieces the whole web of his mind. He must unlearn much of that knowledge which has perhaps constituted hitherto his chief title to superiority. His very talents will be a hindrance to him. His difficulties will be proportioned to his proficiency in the pursuits which are fashionable among ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... society, have Romanized our speech; the warp may be Anglo-Saxon, but the woof is Roman as well as the embroidery, and these foreign materials have so entered into the texture, that were they plucked out, the web would be torn ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... {1467} My king, my king, how shall I weep for thee? What shall I speak from heart that truly loves? And now thou liest there, breathing out thy life, In impious deed of death, In this fell spider's web! Yes woe is me! woe, woe! Woe for this couch of thine unhonorable! Slain by a subtle death With sword two-edged, which her ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... the other side it is dry. The Cascade range is a continuation northward of the Sierra Nevada; and here, as farther south, it stops the water-laden winds which rush up from the sea. Western Oregon, lying between the Cascades and the ocean, has so much rain that its people are called "Web-feet;" Eastern Oregon, a vast grazing region, has comparatively little rain. Western Oregon, except in the Willamette and Rogue River valleys, is densely timbered; Eastern Oregon is a country of boundless plains, where they irrigate their few crops, and depend mainly on stock-grazing. ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... away—it got worse, or, at least, she thought it did. Instead of ten eggs in the nest she seemed to see twenty, and they were of a strange, dull color, and their shape seemed all wrong. She blinked her eyes nineteen times, and even rubbed them with her web-feet, so that she might not see double, but it was all in vain. Before her dazzled eyes twenty little pointed eggs lay, and when she sat upon them they felt strange to her breast. And then she grew faint and was too weak even to call Sir Sooty, but when he came waddling along presently, ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... Canterbury poke, dear boys," he cried. "Let 'em have it, my lads. The beggars look like so many flies in a spider's web; and we ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... in alluding to his animadversions, the following remarks by the author of the 'Charcoal Sketches,' JOSEPH C. NEAL, Esq.: 'Gossip, goodly gossip, though sometimes sneered at, is after all the best of our entertainments. We must fall back upon the light web of conversation, upon chit-chat, as our main-stay, our chief reliance; as that corps de reserve on which our scattered and wearied forces are to rally. What is there which will bear comparison as a ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... up the thread of life where I had dropped it near a score of years before, and complete the web which fancy had embroidered with many a flower of memory and hope and love. I had forgotten that the loom weaves steadily and persistently whether my hand be on it or not, and that I can never mend the rent in the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... the capture of Prince Ember, but he took good care to repeat them silently, lest any, coming upon him unawares, should overhear them and learn his secret. As the ash fell to the ground from his fingers, it spread and ran together to form a thin and web-like ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... that she was sitting next to a convention hall of gigantic red ants and a number of the delegates had gone on sight-seeing excursions up her sleeves and into her low shoes, which naturally caused some commotion. Then a spider let himself down on a web directly in front of Margery's face and threw her into hysterics. And then the mosquitoes descended, the way the Latin book says the Roman soldiers did, "as many thousands as ever came down from old Mycaenae", and after that there was no peace. We slapped them away with leaves ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... the old house I could see that the mystic web had been spun, that the great moment of the sale was arriving. The auctioneer was leaning forward now upon the tall cupboard with an air of command, and surveying the assembled crowd with ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... manner all the while was infinite; for though she had no talent for conversation, she had, in the highest degree, the ability which enables one to succeed in certain little combinations, and when she had determined that such or such a great man should become her habitue, the web she spun round him on all sides was composed of threads so imperceptibly fine and so innumerable, that those who escaped were few, and gifted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... for both builders are conceived of as on the foundation, and both are saved. He gets wages. Yes, of course! The architect has to give his certificate before the builder gets his cheque. The weaver, who has been working his hand-loom at his own house, has to take his web to the counting-house and have it overlooked before he gets his pay. And the man who has built 'gold, silver, precious stones,' will have—over and above the initial salvation—in himself the blessed consequences, and unfold the large results, of his faithful service; while ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... was waiting in deep anxiety, and there came to me only foolery and laughter. Farewell, Marit Heidegards, I shall not look at you too much, as I did at that dance. May you both eat well, and sleep well, and get your new web finished, and above all, may you be able to shovel away the snow which lies in front of the church-door. ...
— A Happy Boy • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... his confiding partner and everybody else who will trust, and when success seems within his grasp is thwarted by the discovery of a man he had supposed to be dead. The woman he would have married to secure her fortune, around which he had woven the fine web of ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... Linton laid down her new feather fan on the ledge of the box. It was possibly the loveliest thing that existed in the world at that moment. No artist had ever dreamed of so wonderful a scheme of color—such miracles of color—combinations in every feather from the quill to the spider-web-like fluffs at the tips, each of which shone not like gold but like glass. It was well worth all the nudging that ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... they are to be of any value. Amiel truly says that habits are principles which have become instincts, and have passed over into flesh and blood. To change habits, he continues, means to attack life in its very essence, for life is only a web ...
— The Education of the Child • Ellen Key
... The lessee was at liberty to make improvements; but if the unhappy man did so, little Molineux thought night and day of how he could dislodge him and relet the improved appartement on better terms. He watched and waited and spun the web of his mischievous legal proceedings. He knew all the tricks of Parisian legislation in the matter of leases. Factious and fond of scribbling, he wrote polite and specious letters to his tenants; ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... romanticistic. Their whole lives deal with realities, the every-other-day as well as the every-day realities. But the lives of those others who make all life costly by refusing their share of its work dwell in a web of threadbare fictions which never had any color of truth in this country. They are trying to imitate poor imitations, to copy those vulgar copies of the European ideal which form the society-page's contribution to the history ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... locks of gold, And native brightness of thy lovely hue, Hidest grave thoughts, ripe wit, and wisdom old, More skill than I, in all mine arts untrue, To thee my purpose great I must unfold, This enterprise thy cunning must pursue, Weave thou to end this web which I begin, I will the distaff ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... And in this web of intrigue and mystery Bob Lanier had become deeply, even dangerously, involved. Ennis was sorely worried. It was to see Mayhew the two friends had come, and, lo, Mayhew had met them on the way, himself ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... whose smoke they had espied at a distance, was quite close to them now. A huge, black hull, with white passenger decks, rising tier on tier, four huge red funnels with black tops, and slender masts, between which hung the spider-web aerials of her wireless apparatus. Her bow was creaming up the ocean into foam, as she rushed onward at ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... I took up the letter post-marked Boston, and slowly drew out—ah, it was more than a mere letter that my hand touched that night. I had put my finger upon a thread in the web of fate! ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... the pattern: a web at once sensuous and logical, an elegant and pregnant texture: that is style, that is the foundation of the art of literature. Books indeed continue to be read, for the interest of the fact or fable, in which this quality is poorly represented, but still it will be there. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... can say that we have been very comfortable, because we have been able to wash daily and have a tub every second day, which things count much. I sent my Sam Browne belt, etc., home two days ago, as we are supposed to wear web equipment now like the men; and our swords have also been despatched. Mine has gone to Messrs. Cox's shipping agency through the Ordnance, with three labels on it addressed to you; it is well greased, ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... recent consideration, makes no difference. Let us discover what show of right is on the economist's side, and how far present conditions are a necessity of the time. It is women on whom the facts weigh most heavily, and whose fortunes are most tangled in this web woven from the beginning of time, and from that beginning drenched with the tears and stained by the blood of workers in all climes and in every age. As women we are bound, by every law of justice, to aid all ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... strange, incurious heart, Here the thin barrier—there reveal'd the truth!" Mildly return'd the priestly master: "Son, More mighty than thou dream'st of, Holy Law Spreads interwoven in yon slender web, Air-light to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... with large web feet and inflated body, fly from the top of a tall tree. It was about four inches long, the back and limbs of a shining black hue, with yellow beneath. Our friend had promised us a rich treat at supper, and he produced a fruit which ...
— The Mate of the Lily - Notes from Harry Musgrave's Log Book • W. H. G. Kingston
... he hardly knew. He had a dim memory of wandering through a labyrinth of sordid houses, of being lost in a giant web of sombre streets, and it was bright dawn when he found himself at last in Piccadilly Circus. As he strolled home towards Belgrave Square, he met the great waggons on their way to Covent Garden. The white-smocked carters, with their pleasant sunburnt ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... lover; still it betrays great admiration for the woman on account of her devices and her cunning. She has thwarted and fooled the whole band of unwelcome wooers for three years and more by her wonderful web, which she wove by day and unraveled by night. And even now when she has been found out, she holds them aloof but keeps them in good humor, though clearly at a great expense of the family's property, which fact has roused ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... them no heart for the occupations of amusement or gayety. It seems not to have been so in Matilda's case, however. She resumed her needle often during the years of her wedded life, and after William had accomplished his conquest of England, she worked upon a long linen web, with immense labor, a series of designs illustrating the various events and incidents of his campaign, and the work has been ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... it. Some believed in it so implicity that they saw in every experiment a hundred things which they did not see. Others were so sceptical and contradictory that they would not preceive what they did see. Those blended with each fact their own deductions, whilst these span round every reality the web of their own prejudices. Curious to say, the Jayasthalians, amongst whom the luminous science arose, hailed it with delight, whilst the Gaurians derided its claim to be considered an important addition ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... commenced reeling in his line, for the purpose of carrying his prey up among the branches, where he had his nest. The boys looked upward to discover the latter. There, sure enough, was the web, in a shaded corner, stretching its meshes from a large liana to the trunk of the tupelo; and towards this point the spider now slowly progressed with his ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... established in the contemporaneity of the original impressions, formed the basis of all true psychology; and that any ontological or metaphysical science, not contained in such (that is, an empirical) psychology, was but a web of abstractions and generalizations. Of this prolific truth, of this great fundamental law, he declared Hobbes to have been the original discoverer, while its full application to the whole intellectual system we owed to Hartley; who stood in the same relation to Hobbes as ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... his home in Brighton, but there he found Sylvia Custance. She weaved her web to enslave Denis, interesting herself in his career, asking him fairly intelligent questions, and doing her utmost to persuade him that he was the most important person in the world to her. Denis watched her as a scientist observes a remarkable organism. Once, after a prolonged silence ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... head despondently, and in a tone of profound discouragement, he replied: "But what can I do? How can I escape from the web which has been woven around me with such fiendish cunning? If I had possessed my usual presence of mind at the moment of the accusation, I might have defended and justified myself, perhaps. But now the misfortune is irreparable. How can I unmask the traitor, and what ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... full price, as many mad have known; they take too much out of a man, fret, wear, worry him,—to be irritable is the conditional tax laid of old upon an author's intellect; the crowd of internal imagery makes him hasty, quick, nervous, as a haunted, hunted man—minds of coarser web heed not how small a thorn rends one of so delicate a texture,—they cannot estimate the wish that a duller sword were in a tougher scabbard,—the river, not content with channel and restraining banks, overflows perpetually,—the extortionate exacting ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... selection of carpets. A man commits a sad mistake when he selects a wife that cuts too large a figure on the green carpet of life—in other words, makes much display. The attractions fade out—the web of life becomes weak—and all the gay figures, that seemed so charming at first, disappear like summer flowers in autumn. This is what makes the bachelors, or some of them. The wives of the present day wish to cut too large a figure in ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... design of advanced civilization; here a closely woven or a gauzy texture, there disclosing a great rent where a rocky peak or the ice-wrapped poles protrude through the warm human covering. This is the magic web whereof man is at once woof and weaver, and the flying shuttle that never rests. Given a region, what is its living envelope, asks anthropo-geography. Whence and how did it get there? What is the material of warp and woof? Will new threads enter to vary the color and design? If so, ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the center of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them. He does little himself. He only plans. But his agents are numerous and splendidly organized. Is there a crime to be done, a paper to be ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... order, nor dinners cooked fit for Mr. Froggatt, by Sibby single-handed. And Cherry made up her mind that they were like a family of caterpillars moving their cobweb tent; Angela, seeing such an establishment of young tortoise-shells, in their polished black, under their family web, had asked, 'Which was their brother Felix?' and the ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... plunge at the Casino entrance. The cab doors flew open. The fare stepped directly upon the floor. At once she was caught in a web of ravishing music and dazzled by a panorama of lights and colours. Some one slipped a little square card into her hand on which was printed a number—34. She looked around and saw her cab twenty yards away already lining up in its place among the waiting mass ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... fail, and the pen is unable To recount all the luxuries that cover'd the table. Each delicate viand that taste could denote, Wasps a la sauce piquante, and Flies en compote; Worms and Frogs en friture, for the web-footed Fowl, And a barbecued Mouse was prepared for the Owl; Nuts, grains, fruit, and fish, to regale every palate, And groundsel and chickweed served up in a salad. The Razor-bill[17] carved for the famishing group, And the Spoon-bill[18] obligingly ladled the soup; So they ...
— The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair • Catherine Ann Dorset
... past the long Slow smooth strong lapse of Lethe—past the toil Wherein all souls are taken as a spoil, The Stygian web of waters—if your song Be quenched not, O our brethren, but be strong As ere ye too shook off our ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... again the next moment from the bottom of his desperate heart. He had become tangled in yet another web ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... engagements is not so great; and ministers are allowed longer holidays than other professional men. A couple of hours a day given from a holiday to great reading may shoot threads of fresh colour through the whole web of a season's work. Nor have I said anything of the time necessary for thinking over the devotional portion of the service of the sanctuary, though in our churches, where free prayer prevails, this deserves as careful attention ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... sea span About the rocks a web of foam, I saw the ghost of a Cornishman Come home. I saw the ghost of a Cornishman Run from the weariness of War, I heard him laughing as he ran Across his unforgotten shore. The great cliff, gilded by the west, Received him as an honoured guest. The green sea, shining in the bay, ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... guilt. His quietness now was in the oddest contrast. It was as though he had been sobered by his realization of the difficulty of convincing an outsider of his innocence of a foul crime in which he was deeply entangled by an appalling web of circumstance. ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... fundamentally than he is distinguished today. Whenever in the course of organic evolution we see any function beginning as incidental to the performance of other functions, and continuing for many ages to increase in importance until it becomes an indispensable strand in the web of life, we may be sure that by a continuance of the same process its influence is destined to increase still more in the future. Such has been the case with the function of sympathy, and with the ethical feelings ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... walked home, thinking of Hilda. And he had sat by the sea, and come to the conclusion that he was a rotter, but in the web of Fate and much to be pitied, which is like a man. And then he had played auction till midnight and lost ten francs, and gone to bed concluding that he ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... fields. Everywhere in life—yes, even in the plainest, the dingiest ranks of society, as much as in those which are uniformly bright and presentable—a man may happen upon some phenomenon which is so entirely different from those which have hitherto fallen to his lot. Everywhere through the web of sorrow of which our lives are woven there may suddenly break a clear, radiant thread of joy; even as suddenly along the street of some poor, poverty-stricken village which, ordinarily, sees ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... that weaves; it is a multitude of small spiders. Here is one close to my face, out at the tip of a slender grass-stem, holding on with its fore legs and kicking out backward with its hind legs a tiny skein of web off into the air. The threads stream and sway and lengthen, gather and fill and billow, and tug at their anchorage till, caught in the dip of some wayward current, they lift the little aeronaut from his hangar and bear ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... how much the soul struggleth under these distresses, by so much the more doth Satan put forth himself to resist, still infusing more poison, that if possible it might never struggle more, for strugglings are also as poison to Satan. The fly in the spider's web is an emblem of the soul in such a condition—the fly is entangled in the web; at this the spider shows himself; if the fly stir again, down comes the spider to her, and claps a foot upon her; if yet the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... gigantic prehistoric animal, an alligator with a human-shaped foot. These Indians have lived in these mud bottoms so long, crossing the streams on rafts made of bundles of tules, and only going to the higher land when their homes are inundated by the floods, that they have become a near approach to a web-footed human being. ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... groups to stare down at the strange craft, then raced away again, darting in and out of their trap-door homes and streaking here and there across the twisted, tortured granite of the mountainside. The Queen's palace, a vast, raised cocoon of shimmering, silken web, was a veritable bee-hive. ...
— Loot of the Void • Edwin K. Sloat
... certificates which throng the folio of the book? or have they like one of the moral personages in Hudibras, "catch'd the itch on purpose to be scratch'd?" It now requires an eye less keen than that of a ministering spirit to pierce the cob web veil which ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector
... it undismayed: we take no interest in it, nor can we. In Richard there is scarce a glimmer of his better nature; yet we do not despise him, for his intellect and courage command our respect. But the fiend Iago,—who ever followed him through the weaving of his spider-like web, without perpetual recurrence to its venomous source,—his devilish heart? Even the intellect he shows seems actually animalized, and we shudder at its subtlety, as at the cunning of a reptile. Whatever interest may have been imputed to him should be placed to the account of his hapless ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... pairs of the sheathbill (Chionis alba) a bird whose place in the system has puzzled ornithologists. It has been variously considered as being one of the galinaceous birds, the pigeons, the waders, and even as belonging to the web-footed order. Its habits are those of the oyster-catchers,* however different the form of the beak, which in the sheathbill is short, stout, and pointed, and enveloped at the base by a waxy-looking sheath. Its feet are like those of a gallinaceous bird, yet one which I wounded took voluntarily ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... new, large, very clean house, and found him lying in a great hammock with his leg bound with cotton web, around him wives and chief men. He sat up to greet the Admiral and with a noble and affecting air poured forth speech and laid his ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... domesticated. The birds in this class are distinguished by two kinds of tissue—light meat on the breast and dark meat on the other parts of the body. In the second class are included those fowls which swim, such as ducks and geese. These are characterized by web feet and long thick bills, and their meat is more nearly the same color over the entire body. The third class is comprised of birds that belong to the family of doves. Pigeons, which are called squabs ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 3 - Volume 3: Soup; Meat; Poultry and Game; Fish and Shell Fish • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... not to know, for you have drawn me into your web of deceit also. He has talked to me about you and the book. I have not betrayed you. ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... painted snakes; Her down-parts in a scorpion's tail combined, Freckled with twenty colours; pied wings shined Out of her shoulders; cloth had never dye, Nor sweeter colours never viewed eye, In scorching Turkey, Cares, Tartary, 300 Than shined about this spirit notorious; Nor was Arachne's web so glorious. Of lightning and of shreds she was begot; More hold in base dissemblers is there not. Her name was Eronusis.[91] Venus flew From Hero's sight, and at her chariot drew This wondrous creature to so steep a height, That all the world she might command ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... the lofty standard towards which each Christian life is to aim, and to which it can indefinitely approximate. It is not enough to aim at the negative virtue of sincerity so that the most searching scrutiny of the web of our lives shall detect no flaws in the weaving, and no threads dropped or broken. There must also be the actual presence of positive righteousness filling life in all its parts. That lofty standard is pressed ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... stronger. He went about singing such passionate praises of Europe to his friends that he entangled them in the web of his feelings, and finally melted away even Mrs. ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... Furniture," and a brass milkcan served as a receptacle for sticks and umbrellas. Equally quaint was the dish of highly realistic stone fruit that stood beside the pot-pourri and the furry Japanese spider that sprawled in a silk web over ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... has heard it said, So Preciuse he bad his own be clept; Twas their ensign when they to battle went, His chevaliers'; he gave that cry to them. His own broad shield he hangs upon his neck, (Round its gold boss a band of crystal went, The strap of it was a good silken web;) He grasps his spear, the which he calls Maltet;— So great its shaft as is a stout cudgel, Beneath its steel alone, a mule had bent; On his charger is Baligant mounted, Marcules, from over seas, his stirrup held. That warrior, ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... is it for! Or, no, I cannot go to it so soon! That's one of many points my haste left out— Each day, each hour throws forth its silk-slight film Between the being tied to you by birth, And you, until those slender threads compose A web that shrouds her daily life of hopes And fears and fancies, all her life, from yours: So close you live and yet so far apart! And must I rend this web, tear up, break down The sweet and palpitating mystery That makes her sacred? You—for you I mean, Shall ...
— A Blot In The 'Scutcheon • Robert Browning
... notes of 'Lohengrin' indeed prove incontestably the increased power and facility with which Wagner had learnt to wield his orchestra since the days of 'Tannhaeuser.' The prelude to 'Lohengrin'—a mighty web of sound woven of one single theme—is, besides being a miracle of contrapuntal ingenuity, one of the most poetical of Wagner's many exquisite conceptions. In it he depicts the bringing to earth ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... sea, like a young web stretched at the foot of the hill, stole out of the darkness. On the horizon a thin line of dull yellow—wouldn't it be a fine sunrise?—the figures on the hill were gathering shape and form, and many of them ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... to add, and turned to where she stood. There was no one there. From an olive-branch a red-start piped to the morning; over the buds of a pomegranate a bee buzzed its delight; across the leaves of a myrtle a blue spider was busy with its web, but Mary was no longer there. He peered through the underbrush, and wandered to the grove beyond. There was no one. He looked to the hill-top: there was the advancing sun. He looked in the valley: there were the pilgrims' booths, the grazing ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... acquainted with Ashton, as they used to meet at old Tom's when on their drinking bouts. I will sound him, and, if I find he is all serene on the matter, Ashton must have become a more wary fly than he used to be if I do not induce him to enter my spider's web." ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... much as usual; but the next morning, as the sisters were at work, Hannah putting the warp for Mrs. Brudenell's new web of cloth in the loom, and Nora spinning, the elder noticed that the younger often paused in her work and glanced uneasily from the window. Ah, too well Hannah understood the meaning of those involuntary glances. Nora was "watching for the steps that ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... Hautin is shown working in the Swiss section, and is a great success. The web or cloth to be embroidered is stretched between horizontal rollers in a vertical frame which hangs suspended in the machine from the shorter end of a lever above. On each side of this floating frame is a track on which a carriage alternately approaches and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... they know on that morning, when their hearts were full and their heads light with the heady wine of Spring, that before three months had sped, they would feel the strands of the mighty web of nations tighten about them; that they would see the beginning of the greatest war the world has ever known? Perhaps it was just as well that they were not gifted with prophecy, for the grim shadow of war that hung menacingly over all Europe would have darkened this bright morning and would ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... straight the thing that is crooked—I mean doing right where he has been doing wrong, he withdraws from the entrance, gives way for the Master to come in. He cannot make himself pure, but he can leave that which is impure; he can spread out the 'defiled, discoloured web' of his life before the bleaching sun of righteousness; he cannot save himself, but he can let the Lord save him. The struggle of his weakness is as essential to the coming victory as the strength of Him who resisted unto ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... quaintly-clipped yews, and the old purple brick walls, where fruit trees were trellised, it lay fast, fast asleep. Without the walls, in the deep cool greenery of the park, there was a perpetual drip-drip of bird-notes. This was the web, upon which a chosen handful of more accomplished birds were embroidering and cross-embroidering and inter-embroidering their bold, clear arabesques of song. Anthony had a table and a writing-case before him, and was trying to write letters. But now he put down his pen, and, for the twentieth ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... to him). Fare you well! The debt of honest tears I will discharge After the battle—if I then survive. Now Fate doth call me hence, where on the field Her web she waveth, and dispenseth doom. We in another world shall meet again; For our long friendship, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... 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 ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... fire!" came back the level, placid voice of Vandersee, and then the completeness of the spider's web could be distinguished. For from up river and down, the silent line of naval seamen drew near, herding the trapped fugitives into a circle that always narrowed in diameter. Then, as the cordon seemed complete beyond escape, the two white ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... sight. The lamps still burned overhead, but beyond them lay the first pale streaks of the false dawn. The street that ran now straight to the old royal palace, uniting there, as at the centre of a web, with those that came from Westminster, the Mall and Hyde Park, was one solid pavement of heads. On this side and that rose up the hotels and "Houses of Joy," the windows all ablaze with light, solemn and triumphant as if to ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... a web o' the silken claith, Anither o' the twine, And wap them into our ship's side, And letna the sea ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... another spider, the Agelena labyrinthica, has been studied by Lecaillon ("Les Instincts et les Psychismes des Araignees," Revue Scientifique, Sept. 15, 1906.) The male enters the female's web and may be found there about the middle of July. When courtship has begun it is not interrupted by the closest observation, even under the magnifying glass. At first it is the male which seeks to couple and he pursues the female over her web till she consents. The pursuit may ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... but fondly beloved Helen, now that my tale of evil is fully disclosed, resolve at once the doom of my future being. Yet in mercy be prompt in your decision; and whether you determine to unfold to the whole world the measure of my guilt, or, since nothing can now extricate us from the web of sin and shame in which we are involved, to assist in shielding me from a discovery which would be fatal to the interests of our innocent child, let me briefly hear the result of your judgment. Of this alone it remains for me to assure you—that I will not one ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore
... Then, very important and confidential, his thick paw at the side of his mouth: "We are among ourselves; well, gentlemen, all I can say is, I don't you ever get mixed up with that Swede. Don't you ever get caught in his web." ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... Night. Like her, thou art majestic, pale and sad, And of a tender beauty: those bright curls That press thy brow, and cling about thy neck, Seem made of sunbeams, caught upon their way To earth, by some creative hand, and woven Into a fairy web, of light and life, Conscious of its high source, and proud to be A part of aught so beautiful as thou. I have seen many full, bright mortal eyes, That were a labyrinth of witching charms, In which the heart of him who looked was lost; But none like thine; ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... now. Consciousness, and ganglia, and suchlike, are after all but theories. And who knows? This God may not be cruel when all is done; he may relent and be good to us a la fin des fins. Think of how he tempers our afflictions to us, of how tenderly he mixes in bright joys with the grey web of trouble and care that we call our life. Think of how he gives, who takes away. Out of the bottom of the miry clay I write this; and I look forward confidently; I have faith after all; I believe, I hope, I will not have it reft from me; there ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... world over for us. It shows us in what a complex web of vital and far-reaching relations we stand. It gives us an outlook upon the past that is startling, and in some ways forbidding, yet one that ought to be stimulating and inspiring. If we look back with a shudder we should look forward with a thrill. If the past ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... of it. I laugh sometimes to think how important you think yourselves and how unimportant you really are. The Cathedral laughs too, and once and again stretches out a great lazy finger and just flicks you away as it would a spider's web. I hope you don't ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... plainly to drink water. Twice there came in small tributaries from the left or western side—the whole plateau having a smartish inclination to the east; one of the tributaries in a handsome little web of silver hanging in the forest. Twice I was startled by birds; one that barked like a dog; another that whistled loud ploughman's signals, so that I vow I was thrilled, and thought I had fallen among runaway ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... upstairs to his room to put his kit together. In the strong, firmly woven web spread by the Chief, he felt as helpless as a fly caught in a spider's mesh. He had no idea of what his plans were. He only knew that he was going back to France, and that it was his business to get on the ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... by another, she reflected how that friend of her youth would not fail to ask the blessing of the gods upon her, if ever, in his native home, he were to hear that she had acted a generous part, and, by a few simple and easily spoken words, had swept away the web of mischief which ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... cannot Die, Thro' evening shades I haste away To close the Labours of my Day. The Door of Death I open found, And the Worm Weaving in the Ground; Thou'rt my Mother, from the Womb; Wife, Sister, Daughter, to the Tomb: Weaving to Dreams the Sexual strife, And weeping over the Web of Life. ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... gets his living, he spins his web and waits for his daily bread,—or fly, rather; and it always comes, I fancy. By-and-by you will see that pretty trap full of insects, and Mr. Spider will lay up his provisions for the day. After that he doesn't care how soon his fine web ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... still— watchin' him closer— and I noticed a little guitar in his hand, Which he leant 'ginst a little dead bee— and laid His cigarette down on a clean grass-blade, And then climbed up on the shell of a snail— Carefully dusting his swallowtail— And pulling up, by a waxed web-thread, This little guitar, you remember. I said! And there he trinkled and trilled a tune—, "My Love, so Fair, Tans in the Moon!" Till presently, out of the clover-top He seemed to be singing to, came k'pop! The purtiest, daintiest Fairy face In all this ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... I have ever remarked, the spider is the most sagacious, and its motions to me, who have attentively considered them, seem almost to exceed belief.... I perceived, about four years ago, a large spider in one corner of my room making its web; and, though the maid frequently leveled her broom against the labors of the little animal, I had the good fortune then to prevent its destruction, and I may say it more than paid me by ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... marched south up the river to Tilotho (alt. 395 feet), through a rich and highly cultivated country, covered with indigo, cotton, sugar-cane, safflower, castor-oil, poppy, and various grains. Dodders (Cuscuta) covered even tall trees with a golden web, and the Capparis acuminata was in full flower along the road side. Tilotho, a beautiful village, is situated in a superb grove of Mango, Banyan, Peepul, Tamarind, and Bassia. The Date or toddy-palm and fan-palm are very abundant and tall: each had a pot hung under the crown. ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... shrouded, and dare not look upon the greatness of his glory, but you know where he strides overhead by the touch of his flaming sword. No words are spoken, but your Arabs moan, your camels sigh, your skin glows, your shoulders ache, and for sights you see the pattern and the web of the silk that veils your eyes and the glare of the outer light. Time labours on; your skin glows and your shoulders ache, your Arabs moan, your camels sigh, and you see the same pattern in the silk, and the same glare of light beyond, but conquering Time ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... hydrogen, neither of which apart has the thew and sinew of its offspring. Nay, it is this single element, which, acted on by heat or acting through machinery, fetches and carries for us over the wide globe, and is fast weaving into one living web the far-scattered interests ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... What a web of deceit he was planning to wind about himself. But he forcibly put this thought out of his mind whenever it obtruded itself. He would have time enough to ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... shoulders the gold fell, fine, soft, and shining as her own hair. And the AEsir and the Asyniur, the Gods and the Goddesses, and the Van and Vana, when they saw Sif's head covered again with the shining web, laughed and clapped their hands in gladness. And the shining web held to Sif's head as if indeed it had roots ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... he would lie perfectly still with his heels in the air and his chin resting in his hands, as he watched a spider weaving its web, breathless with interest to see how the delicate threads were turned in and out. The gaily painted butterflies, the fat buzzing bees, the little sharp-tongued green lizards, he loved to watch them ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... from the hands of Dupont. Djalma was not alone. Faringhea watched all the movements of the prince, with a subtle, attentive, and gloomy aspect. Standing respectfully in a corner of the saloon, the half-caste appeared to be occupied in unfolding and spreading out Djalma's sash, light, silky Indian web, the brown ground of which was almost entirely concealed by the exquisite gold and silver embroidery ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Squatting behind his wretched desk, Elias Droom peered across the litter of papers and books with snaky but polite eyes, almost as inviting as the spider who, with wily but insidious decorum, draws the guileless into his web. ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... in the faint moonlight against a dark background of blue; moon invisible; on the outside of web a star, in the center a spot of light, underneath a coffin filled ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... him, as in all other early epics, it is of no great account compared with the straightforward linking of incidents into a direct chain of narrative. The story of the Nibelungenlied, however, is not a chain but a web. Events and the influence of characters are woven closely and intricately together into one tragic pattern; and this requires not only characterization, but also the adding to the characters of persistent and ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie
... the steep room benches were split. In the beginning the sophomores had the advantage and the tug-of-war raged near the pit and all about it. But the superior numbers of the freshmen began to tell. The web of close-locked bodies slowly mounted up the room, smashing the benches, swaying downward now and then, yet irresistibly gaining ground. The yells of the freshmen increased with the assurance of victory. There was one more prolonged, straining struggle, then Ken was pulled away from the sophomores. ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... holy chants, and at times one would come forward and throw incense on the dead. So they came to Glastonbury, and the Bishop of Canterbury sang a Requiem Mass over the Queen, and she was wrapped in cloth, and placed first in a web of lead, and then in a coffin of marble, and when she was put into the earth ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... Nereus are there singing their song, and Portunus, and Salacia, and the tiny charioteer of the dolphin, with a host of Tritons leaping through the billows. And one blows softly through his sounding sea-shell, another spreads a silken web against the sun, a third presents the mirror to the eyes of his mistress, while the others swim side by side below, drawing her chariot. Such was the escort of Venus as she ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... particularly awake, is of pricking points; presenting a key-board of nerve-pulps, not as yet tanned or ossified, to the finger-touch of all outward agencies; knowing something of the filmy threads of this web of life in which we insects buzz awhile, waiting for the gray old spider to come along; contented enough with daily realities, but twirling on his finger the key of a private Bedlam of ideals; in knowledge feeding with the fox oftener than with the stork,—loving ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... the hearers have time to recover from their amazement, when once more the music changed: at first there were once more light and gentle hummings; a few thin strings complained together, like flies striving to free themselves from the spider's web. But more and more strings joined them; now the scattered tones were blended and legions of chords were united; now they advanced measuredly with harmonious notes, forming the mourrlful melody of that famous song of the wandering soldier who travels through woods and through forests, ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... scuttle, either for looks or for wear, or to wipe your hands on; next you belt on your sword; then you put your stove-pipe joints onto your arms, your iron gauntlets onto your hands, your iron rat-trap onto your head, with a rag of steel web hitched onto it to hang over the back of your neck—and there you are, snug as a candle in a candle-mould. This is no time to dance. Well, a man that is packed away like that is a nut that isn't worth the cracking, there is so little of the meat, when you get down to it, by comparison ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... masters my limbs, and shakes me, fatal creature, bitter-sweet." "Now Eros shakes my soul, a wind on the mountain falling on the oaks." "Sleep thou in the bosom of thy tender girl-friend." "Sweet Mother, I cannot weave my web, broken as I am by longing for a maiden, at soft Aphrodite's will." "For thee there was no other girl, bridegroom, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... particular time that a special event occurred which put its mark on Philip's work in Milton and became a part of its web and woof—a thing hard to tell, but necessary to ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
... spring dry flowers in their books; and of the ingratitude of wicked clerks, who admit into the library dogs, or falcons, or worse still, a two-legged animal, "bestia bipedalis," more dangerous "than the basilisk, or aspic," who, discovering the volumes "insufficiently concealed by the protecting web of a dead spider," condemns them to be sold, and converted for her own use into silken hoods and furred gowns.[238] Eve's descendants continue, thinks the bishop, to wrongfully meddle ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... Light whose smile kindles the universe, That beauty in which all things work and move, That benediction which the eclipsing curse Of birth can quench not, that sustaining love, Which through the web of being, blindly wove, By man and beast and earth and air and sea, Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of The fire for which all thirst—now beams on me, Consuming the last ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... momentarily her topic had been expressed, moreover, to her husband, and at her own table. She sat there, large, kind, serene—a protest might astonish but could not change her; and Russell, crumpling in his strained fingers the lace-edged little web of a napkin on his knee, found heart enough to grow red, but not ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... her first patient. In one of the dewy cobwebs hanging from a shrub near by sat a fat black and yellow spider, watching a fly whose delicate wings were just caught in the net. The poor fly buzzed pitifully, and struggled so hard that the whole web shook: but the more he struggled, the more he entangled himself, and the fierce spider was preparing to descend that it might weave a shroud about its prey, when a little finger broke the threads and lifted the fly safely into ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... Ermentrude—of selfish reserves. But this hateful smile cut her to the soul—one more prisoner at his chariot wheels, it proclaimed! Keroulan was as unconcerned as if he had written a poetic line. He had expected more of an outburst, more of a rebuff; the absolute snapping of the web he had spun surprised him. His choicest music had been spread for the eternal banquet, but the invited one tarried. Very well! If not to-day, to-morrow! He repeated a verse of Verlaine, and with his wife dutifully at his side bowed to the two ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... the Emperor, "the decree of fate is now accomplished by your own fault; it is the web which you have woven, the thorns of the tree which yourself have planted. I wished to spare, and even to assist, the champion of the Moslems. You braved our threats; you despised our friendship; you forced us to enter your kingdom with our invincible armies. Behold the event. Had you vanquished, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... lawn, that the light was still shining in Bellingham's window, and as he passed up the staircase the door opened, and the man himself looked out at him. With his fat, evil face he was like some bloated spider fresh from the weaving of his poisonous web. ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle |
