I want that glib and oily art,

To speak and purpose not.

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

Be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.

New Testament: James i. 19.

Men

Can counsel and speak comfort to that grief

Which they themselves not feel.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Much Ado about Nothing. Act v. Sc. 1.

I will speak daggers to her, but use none.

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

Where go the poet's lines?

Answer, ye evening tapers!

Ye auburn locks, ye golden curls,

Speak from your folded papers!

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894): The Poet's Lot.

Speak gently! 't is a little thing

Dropp'd in the heart's deep well;

The good, the joy, that it may bring

Eternity shall tell.

G. W. Langford: Speak gently.

Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak

Whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Macbeth. Act iv. Sc. 3.

Who so shall telle a tale after a man,

He moste reherse, as neighe as ever he can,

Everich word, if it be in his charge,

All speke he never so rudely and so large;

Or elles he moste tellen his tale untrewe,

Or feinen thinges, or finden wordes newe.

Geoffrey Chaucer (1328-1400): Canterbury Tales. Prologue. Line 733.

I'll speak in a monstrous little voice.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): A Midsummer Night's Dream. Act i. Sc. 2.

You 'd scarce expect one of my age

To speak in public on the stage;

And if I chance to fall below

Demosthenes or Cicero,

Don't view me with a critic's eye,

But pass my imperfections by.

Large streams from little fountains flow,

Tall oaks from little acorns grow.

David Everett (1769-1813): Lines written for a School Declamation.

Not to speak it profanely.

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

Her father loved me; oft invited me;

Still question'd me the story of my life,

From year to year, the battles, sieges, fortunes,

That I have passed.

I ran it through, even from my boyish days,

To the very moment that he bade me tell it:

Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances,

Of moving accidents by flood and field,

Of hair-breadth 'scapes i' the imminent deadly breach,

Of being taken by the insolent foe

And sold to slavery, of my redemption thence

And portance in my travels' history;

Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle,

Rough quarries, rocks and hills whose heads touch heaven,

It was my hint to speak,—such was the process;

And of the Cannibals that each other eat,

The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads

Do grow beneath their shoulders. This to hear

Would Desdemona seriously incline.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Othello. Act i. Sc. 3.

Oh no! we never mention her,—

Her name is never heard;

My lips are now forbid to speak

That once familiar word.

Thomas Haynes Bayly (1797-1839): Oh no! we never mention her.

Losers must have leave to speak.

Colley Cibber (1671-1757): The Rival Fools. Act i.

Speak low if you speak love.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Much Ado about Nothing. Act ii. Sc. 1.

Speak me fair in death.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): The Merchant of Venice. Act iv. Sc. 1.

And last of all an Admiral came,

A terrible man with a terrible name,—

A name which you all know by sight very well,

But which no one can speak, and no one can spell.

Robert Southey (1774-1843): The March to Moscow. Stanza 8.

I have done the state some service, and they know 't.

No more of that. I pray you, in your letters,

When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,

Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,

Nor set down aught in malice. Then, must you speak

Of one that loved not wisely but too well;

Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought

Perplex'd in the extreme; of one whose hand,

Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away

Richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdued eyes,

Albeit unused to the melting mood,

Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees

Their medicinal gum.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Othello. Act v. Sc. 2.

Under which king, Bezonian? speak, or die!

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Henry IV. Part II. Act v. Sc. 3.

'T is all men's office to speak patience

To those that wring under the load of sorrow,

But no man's virtue nor sufficiency

To be so moral when he shall endure

The like himself.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Much Ado about Nothing. Act v. Sc. 1.

I only speak right on.

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

The worst speak something good; if all want sense,

God takes a text, and preacheth Pa-ti-ence.

George Herbert (1593-1632): The Church Porch.

Words that weep and tears that speak.

Abraham Cowley (1618-1667): The Prophet.

Speak to me as to thy thinkings,

As thou dost ruminate, and give thy worst of thoughts

The worst of words.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Othello. Act iii. Sc. 3.

If I speak to thee in friendship's name,

Thou think'st I speak too coldly;

If I mention love's devoted flame,

Thou say'st I speak too boldly.

Thomas Moore (1779-1852): How shall I woo?

If I speak to thee in friendship's name,

Thou think'st I speak too coldly;

If I mention love's devoted flame,

Thou say'st I speak too boldly.

Thomas Moore (1779-1852): How shall I woo?

For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak

With most miraculous organ.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act ii. Sc. 2.