A garland of quotations 183

None dare stop you from buying a book!

On the other hand, affirming that the universe resembles nothing and is only formless amounts to saying that the universe is something like a spider.
•Bataille, Documents #7 (1929).

Indeed, what reason may not go to school to the wisdom of bees, ants, and spiders?
•Browne, Religio Medici (1643).

Nietzsche might well be a little lost in the web of his text, lost much as a spider who finds he is unequal to the web he has spun.
•Derrida, Spurs (1978).

The skill of the trompe l’oeil makes it look as if the daisies are scattered on the page. By a humorous twist the artist pretends that a dragonfly has been deceived and has settled on the flowers as if they were real. It takes us a moment to penetrate this second illusion and perceive that the insects too are painted.
•J.J.G. Alexander, The Master of Mary of Burgundy (1970).

A German entomologist reported that in 1807 the fire department was summoned when a huge swarm of gnats that formed over the steeple of St. Mary’s church in Neubrandenburg was mistaken for a cloud of smoke.
•Gilbert Waldbauer, Insects Through the Seasons (1996).

Amung this sort ove taverins…they keeps bugs in yer bed tu make yu rise in time fur them tu get the sheet fur a tablecloth.
•George Washington Harris, Sut Lovingood. Yarns Spun by a Nat’ral Born Durn’d Fool. Warped and Wove for Public Wear (1867).

It is said, that the foolish curiosity of Elagabalus attempted to discover, from the quantity of spiders’ webs, the number of the inhabitants of Rome.
•Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol. III (1781).

Oft like a winged Spider, I am entangled in a new Spun web—but never fear for me, ’tis but the flutter of my wings—and I am off again!
•Coleridge, letter to John Prior Estlin (March 1, 1800).

     Paracelsus:           …This kingdom, limited
Alone by one old populous green wall,
Tenanted by the ever-busy flies,
Grey crickets, and shy lizards, and quick spiders.…
Fancy the crickets, each one in his house,
Looking out and wondering at the world—or best,
The painted snail, with his gay shell of dew,
Travelling to see the glossy balls high up
Hung by the caterpillar, like gold lamps.
     Michal: In truth we have lived carelessly and well!
•Browning, Paracelsus (1835).

But in a vague dream a little worm saw
how the crescent moon split his being in two:
one was nothing,
the other one was everything and God himself.
•Edith Södergran, “There Is No One…” (1925).

Sources: Bataille: Allan Stoekl, ed., Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927–1939 (U MN P, 1985); Harris: quoted in Edmund Wilson, Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War (Norton, 1994); Coleridge: quoted in Willard L. Sperry, Wordsworth’s Anti-Climax (Harvard UP, 1935); Södergran: trans. Stina Katchadourian, Love and Solitude: Selected Poems 1916–1923 (Fjord, 1992); some of this material is copyrighted, and I plead only fair use.

A Garland of Quotations

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January 22, 2025

Even though the gods themselves willed it no such good fortune could befall me.