Antonie van Leeuwenhoek Quotes

The very first thing on the docket is to have the opportunity to travel to look at spiders in other parts of the world. I know there are really cool silks out there.

You can spread jelly on the peanut butter but you can't spread peanut butter on the jelly.

We're sticky at the ends and the middle is getting squeezed

On more than one occasion David, in his urge to explore the darker corners of the bookshelves, had found himself wearing strands of spider silk in his face and hair, causing the web's creator to scuttle into a corner and crouch balefully, lost in thoughts of arachnoid revenge.

I have drunk and seen the spider.

Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress.

Having a beard is a good way to make your face more susceptible to velcro.

Try squeezing a handful of water, and see how quickly it disappears. But relax and let your hand flow in the same water, and you have the experience of the water as long as you like.

You can't get away, you can't escape. You'll jump through a plate-glass window several times and end up being right back in the spider's web.

It's only a hunting spider, it won't hurt you." -Myrnin "So not the point!" -Claire "Oh, pish. It's just another living creature. Nothing to be frightened of, if handled properly. I think I'll call him Bob. Bob the spider." -Myrnin "You're insane." -Claire

Adhesion to one idea is monomania; to few, slavery.

Out of association grows adhesion, and out of adhesion amalgamation.

In early life I had felt a strong desire to devote myself to the experimental study of nature; and, happening to see a glass containing some camphor, portions of which had been caused to condense in very beautiful crystals on the illuminated side, I was induced to read everything I could obtain respecting the chemical and mechanical influences of light, adhesion, and capillary attraction.

Spider venom comes in many forms. It can often take a long while to discover the full effects of the bite. Naturalists have pondered this for years: there are spiders whose bite can cause the place bitten to rot and to die, sometimes more than a year after it was bitten. As to why spiders do this, the answer is simple. It's because spiders think this is funny, and they don't want you ever to forget them.

He planned to stick to her like pasties on a stripper.

Spiders so large they appear to be wearing the pelts of small mammals.

Do you understand how there could be any writing in a spider's web?" "Oh, no," said Dr. Dorian. "I don't understand it. But for that matter I don't understand how a spider learned to spin a web in the first place. When the words appeared, everyone said they were a miracle. But nobody pointed out that the web itself is a miracle." "What's miraculous about a spider's web?" said Mrs. Arable. "I don't see why you say a web is a miracle-it's just a web." "Ever try to spin one?" asked Dr. Dorian.

Something has got to hold it together. I'm saying my prayers to Elmer, the Greek god of glue.

Is there anything in the universe more beautiful and protective than the simple complexity of a spider's web?

Viscosity and velocity are opposites, yet they can look the same. Viscosity causes the stillness of disinclination, velocity causes the stillness of fascination. An observer can't tell if a person is silent and still because inner life has stalled or because inner life is transfixingly busy.

Time seems to pass. The world happens, unrolling into moments, and you stop to glance at a spider pressed to its web. There is a quickness of light and a sense of things outlined precisely and streaks of running luster on the bay. You know more surely who you are on a strong bright day after a storm when the smallest falling leaf is stabbed with self-awareness. The wind makes a sound in the pines and the world comes into being, irreversibly, and the spider rides the wind-swayed web.

It's not sticky unless it touches itself.

Experience unveils too late the snares laid for youth; it is the white frost which discovers the spider's web when the flies are no longer there to be caught.

But we have received a sign, Edith - a mysterious sign. A miracle has happened on this farm... in the middle of the web there were the words 'Some Pig'... we have no ordinary pig." "Well", said Mrs. Zuckerman, "it seems to me you're a little off. It seems to me we have no ordinary spider.