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.

Quotes

• What's one man's poison, signior,
  Is another's meat or drink.
  • Beaumont and Fletcher, Love's Cure (c. 1612–13; revised c. 1625; published 1647), Act III, scene 2. Same in Lucretius, IV. 627.

• If you persevere in your rancor, you do nothing but keep feeding yourself on poison.
  • Fausto Cercignani in: Brian Morris, Simply Transcribed. Quotations from Writings by Fausto Cercignani, 2014, quote 57.

• 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.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

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

• 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.

• 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.