Careful Words

poison (n.)

poison (v.)

  All men possess in their bodies a poison which acts upon serpents; and the human saliva, it is said, makes them take to flight, as though they had been touched with boiling water. The same substance, it is said, destroys them the moment it enters their throat.

Pliny The Elder (23-79 a d): Natural History, Book vii. Sect. 15.

Sweet, sweet, sweet poison for the age's tooth.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King John. Act i. Sc. 1.

Bacchus, that first from out the purple grape

Crush'd the sweet poison of misused wine.

John Milton (1608-1674): Comus. Line 46.

What's one man's poison, signor,

Is another's meat or drink.

Beaumont And Fletcher: Love's Cure. Act iii. Sc. 2.

  I shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below the dignity of history.

Thomas B Macaulay (1800-1859): History of England. Vol. i. Chap. i.

Better be with the dead,

Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace,

Than on the torture of the mind to lie

In restless ecstasy. Duncan is in his grave;

After life's fitful fever he sleeps well:

Treason has done his worst; nor steel, nor poison,

Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,

Can touch him further.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Macbeth. Act iii. Sc. 2.

by simon sarris • about