Fiction About Poisonings

"Adversity's sweet milk, philosophy."

"Taking the measure of an unmade grave."

"Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day: It was the nightingale, and not the lark, That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear; Nightly she sings on yond pomegranate-tree: Believe me, love, it was the nightingale."

"It was the lark, the herald of the morn, No nightingale: look, love, what envious streaks Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east: Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops: I must be gone and live, or stay and die."

"It is the lark that sings so out of tune, Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps."

"Farewell, farewell, one kiss and I'll descend."

"All these woes shall serve For sweet discourses in our time to come."

"O fortune, fortune! all men call thee fickle."

"Some grief shows much of love, But much of grief shows still some want of wit."

"Villain and he be many miles asunder."

"Is there no pity sitting in the clouds, That sees into the bottom of my grief?"

"Tell me not, friar, that thou hear'st of this, Unless thou tell me how I may prevent it: If in thy wisdom thou canst give no help, Do thou but call my resolution wise, And with this knife I'll help it presently. God join'd my heart and Romeo's, thou our hands; And ere this hand, by thee to Romeo seal'd, Shall be the label to another deed, Or my true heart with treacherous revolt Turn to another, this shall slay them both: Therefore, out of thy long-experienced time, Give me some present counsel; or, behold, 'Twixt my extremes and me this bloody knife Shall play the umpire, arbitrating that Which the commission of thy years and art Could to no issue of true honour bring. Be not so long to speak; I long to die, If what thou speak'st speak not of remedy."

"O, bid me leap, rather than marry Paris, From off the battlements of yonder tower; Or walk in thievish ways; or bid me lurk Where serpents are; chain me with roaring bears; Or shut me nightly in a charnel-house, O'er-cover'd quite with dead men's rattling bones, With reeky shanks and yellow chapless skulls; Or bid me go into a new-made grave, And hide me with a dead man in his shroud; Things that to hear them told, have made me tremble; And I will do it without fear or doubt. To live an unstain'd wife to my sweet love."

"Thy eyes' windows fall, Like death, when he shuts up the day of life; Each part, deprived of supple government, Shall, stiff and stark and cold, appear like death."

"Hire me twenty cunning cooks."

"Not stepping o'er the bounds of modesty."

"I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins, That almost freezes up the heat of life."

"Death lies on her like an untimely frost Upon the sweetest flower of all the field."

"O woe! O woeful, woeful, woeful day! Most lamentable day, most woeful day, That ever, ever, I did yet behold! O day! O day! O day! O hateful day! Never was seen so black a day as this: O woeful day, O woeful day!"

"She's not well married that lives married long, But she's best married that dies married young."

"All things that we ordained festival, Turn from their office to black funeral: Our instruments to melancholy bells; Our wedding cheer to a sad burial feast; Our solemn hymns to sullen dirges change; Our bridal flowers serve for a buried corse, And all things change them to the contrary."

"If I may trust the flattering truth of sleep, My dreams presage some joyful news at hand: My bosom's lord sits lightly in his throne, And all this day an unaccustom'd spirit Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts."

"And her immortal part with angels lives."

"O mischief, thou art swift To enter in the thoughts of desperate men!"

"I do remember an apothecary, And hereabouts a' dwells, which late I noted In tatter'd weeds, with overwhelming brows, Culling of simples; meagre were his looks; Sharp misery had worn him to the bones: And in his needy shop a tortoise hung, An alligator stuff'd and other skins Of ill-shaped fishes; and about his shelves A beggarly account of empty boxes, Green earthen pots, bladders and musty seeds, Remnants of packthread and old cakes of roses, Were thinly scatter'd, to make up a show. Noting this penury, to myself I said, An if a man did need a poison now, Whose sale is present death in Mantua, Here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him."

"Being holiday, the beggar's shop is shut."

"Let me have A dram of poison; such soon-speeding gear As will disperse itself through all the veins, That the life-weary taker may fall dead, And that the trunk may be discharged of breath As violently as hasty powder fired Doth hurry from the fatal cannon's womb."

"The world affords no law to make thee rich; Then be not poor, but break it, and take this."

"There is thy gold, worse poison to men's souls, Doing more murder in this loathsome world, Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell: I sell thee poison, thou hast sold me none."

"Her beauty makes This vault a feasting presence full of light. Death, lie thou there, by a dead man interr'd."

"How oft when men are at the point of death Have they been merry! which their keepers call A lightning before death."

"Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath, Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty: Thou art not conquer'd; beauty's ensign yet Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks, And death's pale flag is not advanced there."

"Shall I believe That unsubstantial death is amorous, And that the lean abhorrèd monster keeps Thee here in the dark to be his paramour?"

"Eyes, look your last! Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O you The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss A dateless bargain to engrossing death!"

"O true apothecary! Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die."

"Yea, noise? then I'll be brief. O happy dagger! This is thy sheath; there rest, and let me die."

"Where be these enemies? Capulet! Montague! See, what a scourge is laid upon your hate, That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love! And I, for winking at your discords too, Have lost a brace of kinsmen: all are punish'd."

"A glooming peace this morning with it brings; The sun for sorrow will not show his head: Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things; Some shall be pardon'd and some punishèd: For never was a story of more woe Than this of Juliet and her Romeo."

"You come most carefully upon your hour."

"And I am sick at heart."

"Not a mouse stirring."

"And let us once again assail your ears, That are so fortified against our story, What we have two nights seen."

"When yond same star that’s westward from the pole Had made his course t’ illume that part of heaven Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself, The bell then beating one—"

"It harrows me with fear and wonder."

"What art thou that usurp’st this time of night, Together with that fair and warlike form In which the majesty of buried Denmark Did sometimes march? By heaven I charge thee speak!"

"But in the gross and scope of mine opinion This bodes some strange eruption to our state."

"A mote it is to trouble the mind’s eye. In the most high and palmy state of Rome, A little ere the mightiest Julius fell, The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets. As stars with trains of fire, and dews of blood Disasters in the sun; and the moist star Upon whose influence Neptune’s empire stands Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse. And even the like precurse of feared events As harbingers preceding still the fates And prologue to the omen coming on, Have heaven and earth together demonstrated Unto our climatures and countrymen."

"Stay, illusion! If thou hast any sound or use of voice, Speak to me. If there be any good thing to be done That may to thee do ease, and grace to me, Speak to me. If thou art privy to thy country’s fate, Which happily foreknowing may avoid, O speak! Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life Extorted treasure in the womb of earth, For which, they say, your spirits oft walk in death, Speak of it, stay and speak!"

"And our vain blows malicious mockery."

"And then it [the ghost] started like a guilty thing Upon a fearful summons. I have heard The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn, Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat Awake the god of day, and at his warning, Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air, Th’ extravagant and erring spirit hies To his confine."