Careful Words

starve (v.)

Lest the bargain should catch cold and starve.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Cymbeline. Act i. Sc. 4.

A gulf profound as that Serbonian bog

Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old,

Where armies whole have sunk: the parching air

Burns frore, and cold performs th' effect of fire.

Thither by harpy-footed Furies hal'd,

At certain revolutions all the damn'd

Are brought, and feel by turns the bitter change

Of fierce extremes,—extremes by change more fierce;

From beds of raging fire to starve in ice

Their soft ethereal warmth, and there to pine

Immovable, infix'd, and frozen round,

Periods of time; thence hurried back to fire.

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book ii. Line 592.

  They are as sick that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): The Merchant of Venice. Act i. Sc. 2.