Meaning & Analysis
To physically hold the entire world or one's fortune attached to a string, implying the ability to manipulate and direct it with complete and effortless control, as one would a puppet or a kite.
Insights
Absolute Control and Mastery
The proverb signifies achieving a state of absolute mastery over one's circumstances, environment, or destiny. The 'string' symbolizes effortless command, allowing one to direct events and outcomes at will.
Unrestrained Power and Influence
It represents the possession of immense power and influence, enabling an individual to manipulate people, affections, or even abstract concepts like conscience, as suggested in the historical quotations.
Hubris and Overconfidence
The phrase is often used to describe a state of supreme confidence or arrogance, where an individual believes they have unassailable control over their life, sometimes hinting at a dangerous level of self-deception.
Effortless Success
It can denote the attainment of ultimate material success and abundance, a state where all of one's desires are easily fulfilled, and fortune seems entirely subject to one's command.
Psychology of Control
The image of a string evokes puppetry, suggesting the holder is a 'puppet master' of their own fate or of others. This reflects a deep-seated human desire for agency and control, transforming the vast, chaotic world into a manageable object directed by a single, powerful will.
Renaissance Ambition
Prominently featured in Elizabethan and Jacobean literature, the proverb captures the Renaissance fascination with individual ambition, social mobility, and the Machiavellian exercise of power. It reflects an era where the capacity to shape one's own destiny became a compelling cultural theme.
Warning Against Hubris
The proverb often carries a cautionary undertone against hubris. The belief that one has the world 'in a string' can signify dangerous overconfidence or a tyrannical impulse, suggesting that such absolute control is either an illusion or morally corrupting.
Rhetorical Devices
Metaphor
The central metaphor of holding the 'world' on a 'string' powerfully translates the abstract concept of absolute control into a simple, tangible image of manipulation.
Hyperbole
The notion of controlling the entire world with a mere string is a dramatic overstatement that effectively emphasizes the immense and absolute nature of the power being described.
Imagery
The proverb creates a vivid and memorable visual of a single person effortlessly directing the globe, making the complex idea of total command instantly understandable.
Transcription
Quotations
Al fire is not quenched by water, thou hast not loue in a string.
[They] walke as they will, wallowing in their beastly sensualitie, perswading themselues that they haue the worlde in a string.
They say she hath her thoughtes in a string, that she conquers affections, and sendeth loue vp and downe vpon arrandes.
I thinke you lead the worlde in a string, for every body followes you.
He thought Fortune had beene tied to his thoughtes in a string.
He'll lead the world in a string.
An old fellow . . should onely (for to enrich himselfe) lead the whole world in a string.
In a golden string a man may lead the world to any thing.
You hold yours [fortune] in a string though.
They have their conscience in a string and can stifle it at their pleasure.
To have had, and enjoyed, and still to enjoy the delights of this World, to have the World in a string.
To have what heart can wish for, to have the world in a string, at will.
To do what one lists .. and have the World in a sling.
Fortunes favorite. He has the world in a band.
He hath the world in a band; in a string; at will; all runs on his side.
[The tale of Atlas] the poet never believed would be so taken [i.e. literally] any more than we fancy .. a man [can] guide the world which way he pleased, as if he had the world in a string, as we phrase it.
Cross References
- See T. 717, p. 340.
- D116 Halcyon days.
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
Used under CC BY-NC 3.0.