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

Bluntness

I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,
Nor actions, nor utterance, nor the power of speech,
To stir men’s blood: I only speak right on.

Shakespeare.

This is some fellow,
Who having been prais’d for bluntness, doth affect
A saucy roughness, and constrains the garb,
Quite from his nature: he can’t flatter, he!
An honest mind and plain,—he must speak truth!
And they will take it so; if not he’s plain.
These kind of knaves I know, which in this plainness
Harbor more craft, and far corrupter ends,
Than twenty silly, ducking observants,
That stretch their duty nicely.

Shakespeare.

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