For God's sake, hold your tongue, and let me love, Or chide my palsy, or my gout, My five grey hairs, or ruined fortune flout, With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve, Take you a course, get you a place, Observe his honour, or his grace, Or the King's real, or his stamped face Contemplate; what you will, approve, So you will let me love.

-Donne,John
c.1595^1605  'The Canonization', collected in Songs and Sonnets (1633).

Theartof painting cannot betrulyjudgedsave bysuchas are themselves good painters; from others verily it is hidden even as a strange tongue.

-Du« r er, Albrecht
c.1512  Quoted in William Martin Conway Literary Remains of Albrecht Du«  rer (1889).

O friend unseen, unborn, unknown, Student of our sweet English tongue, Read out my words at night, alone: I was a poet, I was young.

-Flecker,James Elroy
  'To a Poet  a ThousandYears Hence'.

Ye holyangels bright, Who wait at God's right hand, Or through the realms of light Flyat your Lord's command, Assist our song, Or else the theme too high doth seem For mortal tongue.

-Gurney,John Hampden
  'Ye Holy AngelsBright', basedon a poemby RichardBaxter (1615^91).

If, of all words of tongue and pen, The saddest are,'It might have been,' More sad are these we daily see: 'It is, but hadn't ought to be.'

-Harte, (Francis) Bret
  'Mrs.  Judge  Jenkins'.

O that thou shouldst give dust a tongue To cry to thee, And then not hear it crying!

-Herbert, George
'Denial', collected in The Temple, Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations (published posthumously,1633).

A tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use.

-Irving,Washington
^20  The Sketch Book,'Rip Van Winkle'.

An Englishman's never so natural as when he's holding his tongue.

-James, Henry
Isabel  Archer. The Portrait of a Lady, ch.10.

I'd have your tongue, sir, tipped with gold for this.

-Jonson, Ben
  Volpone, act 4, sc.6.

Such a morning it is when love leans through geranium windows and calls with a cockerel's tongue. 500

-Lee, Laurie
  'Day of these Days'.

   May it please your Majesty, I have neither eye to see nor tonguetospeak inthisplace, but asthis Houseispleased to direct me, whose servant I am.

-Lenthall,William
   To Charles I, on his arrival in the Chamber to arrest five Members, House of Commons, 4  Jan.

live so that you can stick out your tongue at the insurance.

-Marquis, Don(ald Robert Perry)
  archy and mehitabel,'certain maxims of archy'.

   A nation isthe universality of citizens speaking the same tongue.

-Mazzini, Giuseppe
In La Giovine Italia ('Young Italy').

He seemed For dignity composed and high exploit: But all was false and hollow; though his tongue Dropped manna, and could make the worse appear The better reason.

-Milton,John
  Of Belial. Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.2, l.110^14.

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

-Nabokov,Vladimir
  Humbert Humbert. Lolita, pt.1, ch.1.

He that is a traveller must have the back of an ass to bear all, atonguelikethetail ofa dog toflatterall, themouthof a hog to eat all what is set before him, the ear of a merchant to hear all and say nothing; and if this be not the highest step of thraldom, there is no liberty or freedom.

-Nashe,Thomas
  The Unfortunate Traveller, or the Life of  Jack Wilton.

I have crossed an ocean I have lost my tongue from the root of the old one a new one has sprung

-Nichols, Grace
  i is a long memoried woman, epilogue.

While I have a tongue I'll abuse you, you most inimitable periphery. Look at her, boys! there she standsöa convicted perpendicular in petticoats! There's contamination in her circumference, and she trembles with guilt down to the extremities of her corollaries. Ah! you're found out, you rectilineal antecedent, and equiangular old hag! 'Tis with you the devil will flyaway, you porter-swiping similitude of the bisection of a vortex!

-O'Connell, Daniel known as  the Liberator
Winning thrust in a vituperation contest with Dublin's champion virago, Biddy Moriarty, reported by Daniel Owen-Madden in Revelations of Ireland (1877). US  novelist,  originally  a  radio  announcer  and  producer,  best known   for   his   novel   The   Last   Hurrah   (1956).  The   Edge   of Sadness (1961) won a Pulitzer Prize.

You've got a sharp tongue in your head, Mr Essick. Look out it doesn't cut your throat.

-Perelman, S(ydney) J(oseph)
The Rising Gorge,'All Out†'.

If all the world and love were young, And truth in every shepherd's tongue These pretty pleasures might me move To live with thee and be thy love. See Marlowe 553:17.

-Raleigh, Sir Walter
c.1592  'The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd', a response to Marlowe's 'The Passionate Shepherd to His Love', attributed to Raleigh.