Poison

For the rock band, see Poison (band).

Poisons are substances that can cause disturbances to organisms, usually by chemical reaction or other activity on the molecular scale, when a sufficient quantity is absorbed by an organism. In medicine (particularly veterinary) and in zoology, a poison is often distinguished from a toxin and a venom. Toxins are poisons produced via some biological function in nature, and venoms are usually defined as biological toxins that are injected by a bite or sting to cause their effect, while other poisons are generally defined as substances which are absorbed through epithelial linings such as the skin or gut.

Sourced

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 609-10.

• What's one man's poison, signior,
  Is another's meat or drink.
  • Beaumont and Fletcher, Love's Cure, Act III, scene 2. Same in Lucretius, IV. 627.

• Vipera Cappadocem nocitura mormordit; at illa Gustato peril sanguine Cappadocis.
  • A deadly echidna once bit a Cappadocian; she herself died, having tasted the Poison-flinging blood.
  • Demodocus, translation of his Greek Epigram.

• Un gros serpent mordit Aurèle.
  Que croyez-vous qu'il arriva?
  Qu' Aurèle en mourut? Bagatelle!
  Ce fut le serpent qui creva.
  • In a manuscript commonplace book, written probably at end of 18th Cen. See Notes and Queries. March 30, 1907, p. 246.

• Hier auprès de Charenton
  Un serpent morait Jean Fréron,
  Que croyez-vous qu'il arriva?
  Ce fut le serpent qui creva.
  • Imitation from the Greek. Found also in Œuvres Complèts de Voltaire, III, p. 1002. (1817). Printed as Voltaire's; attributed to Piron; claimed for Fréron.

• The man recover'd of the bite,
  The dog it was that died.
  • Oliver Goldsmith, Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog. Same idea in Manasses—Fragmenta. Ed. Boissonade. I. 323. (1819).

• While Fell was reposing himself in the hay,
  A reptile concealed bit his leg as he lay;
  But, all venom himself, of the wound he made light,
  And got well, while the scorpion died of the bite.
  • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Paraphrase of Demodocus.

• All men carry about them that which is poyson to serpents: for if it be true that is reported, they will no better abide the touching with man's spittle than scalding water cast upon them: but if it happen to light within their chawes or mouth, especially if it come from a man that is fasting, it is present death.
  • Pliny the Elder, Natural History, Book VII, Chapter II. Holland's translation.

• In gährend Drachengift hast du
  Die Milch der frommen Denkart mir verwandelt.
  • To rankling poison hast thou turned in me the milk of human kindness.
  • Friedrich Schiller, Wilhelm Tell, IV. 3. 3.

• Venenum in auro bibitur.
  • Poison is drunk out of gold.
  • Seneca, Thyestes, Act III. 453.

• 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 discharg'd of breath
  As violently as hasty powder fir'd
  Doth hurry from the fatal cannon's womb.
  • William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (1597), Act V, scene 1, line 59.

• Talk no more of the lucky escape of the head
  From a flint so unhappily thrown;
  I think very different from thousands; indeed
  'Twas a lucky escape for the stone.
  • John Wolcot (Peter Pindar), On a Stone thrown at George III.