C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Threats

Back to thy punishment,
False fugitive, and to thy speed add wings,
Lest with a whip of scorpions I pursue
Thy ling’ring.

Milton.

I pr’ythee take thy fingers from my throat;
Sir, though I am not splenetive and rash,
Yet have I something in me dangerous,
Which let thy wiseness fear: away thy hand.

Shakespeare.

For Christian shame, put by this barbarous brawl;
He that stirs next to carve for his own rage,
Holds his soul light; he dies upon his motion.

Shakespeare.

Set hills on hills betwixt me and the man
That utters this, and I will scale them all;
And from the utmost top fall on his neck,
Like thunder from a cloud.

Beaumont and Fletcher.

Hence,
Horrible villain! or I’ll spurn thine eyes
Like balls before me; I’ll unhair thy head;
Thou shalt be whipt with wire, and stew’d in brine,
Smarting in ling’ring pickle.

Shakespeare.

Leave wringing of your hands: Peace; sit you down,
And let me wring your heart: for so I shall,
If it be made of penetrable stuff;
If damned custom have not braz’d it so,
That it be proof and bulwark against sense.

Shakespeare.

I consider it a mark of great prudence in a man to abstain from threats or any contemptuous expressions, for neither of these weaken the enemy, but threats make him more cautious, and the other excites his hatred, and a desire to revenge himself.

Machiavelli.

Stand there, damn’d meddling villain, and be silent;
For if thou utt’rest but a single word,
A cough or hem, to cross me in my speech,
I’ll send thy cursed spirit from the earth,
To bellow with the damn’d!

Joanna Baillie.

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