Date: 1600

"The painter plays the spider, and hath woven / A golden mesh t' untrap the hearts of men / Faster than gnats in cobwebs."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1600

"[F]or in companions / That do converse and waste the time together, / Whose souls do bear an equal yoke of love, / There must be needs a like proportion / Of lineaments, of manners, and of spirit."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1600

"Grant him there; there seen, / Heave him away upon your wingèd thoughts / Athwart the sea."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1600

"For your own reasons turn into your bosoms, / As dogs upon their masters, worrying you."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1600

"Thou almost mak'st me waver in my faith / To hold opinion with Pythagoras / That souls of animals infuse themselves / Into the trunks of men."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1603

"There's something in his soul / O'er which his melancholy sits on brood, / And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose / Will be some danger."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1603

"O wretched state, O bosom black as death, / O limèd soul that, struggling to be free, / Art more engaged!"

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1603

"Haste, haste me to know it, that with wings as swift / As meditation or the thoughts of love / May sweep to my revenge."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1603

"Cudgel thy brains no more about it, for your / dull ass will not mend his pace with beating."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1704

"Erect your schemes with as much method and skill as you please; yet, if the materials be nothing but dirt, spun out of your own entrails (the guts of modern brains), the edifice will conclude at last in a cobweb; the duration of which, like that of other spiders’ webs, may be imputed to their be...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)