Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Slander
There are***robberies that leave man or woman forever beggared of peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer.
George Eliot—Felix Holt. Introduction.
I hate the man who builds his name
On ruins of another’s fame.
Gay—The Poet and the Rose.
A generous heart repairs a slanderous tongue.
Homer—Odyssey. Bk. VIII. L. 43. Pope’s trans.
If slander be a snake, it is a winged one—it flies as well as creeps.
Douglas Jerrold—Specimens of Jerrold’s Wit. Slander.
Where it concerns himself,
Who’s angry at a slander, makes it true.
Ben Jonson—Catiline. Act III. Sc. 1.
Cut
Men’s throats with whisperings.
Ben Jonson—Sejanus. Act I. Sc. 1.
For enemies carry about slander not in the form in which it took its rise.***The scandal of men is everlasting; even then does it survive when you would suppose it to be dead.
Plautus—Persa. Act III. Sc. 1. Riley’s trans.
Homines qui gestant, quique auscultant crimina,
Si meo arbitratu liceat, omnes pendeant,
Gestores linguis, auditores auribus.
Your tittle-tattlers, and those who listen to slander, by my good will should all be hanged—the former by their tongues, the latter by the ears.
Plautus—Pseudolus. I. 5. 12.
’Twas slander filled her mouth with lying words;
Slander, the foulest whelp of Sin.
Pollok—Course of Time. Bk. VIII. L. 725.
For slander lives upon succession,
Forever housed where it gets possession.
Comedy of Errors. Act III. Sc. 1. L. 105.
’Tis slander,
Whose edge is sharper than the sword, whose tongue
Outvenoms all the worms of Nile, whose breath
Rides on the posting winds and doth belie
All corners of the world; kings, queens and states,
Maids, matrons, nay, the secrets of the grave
This viperous slander enters.
Cymbeline. Act III. Sc. 4. L. 35.
One doth not know
How much an ill word may empoison liking.
Much Ado About Nothing. Act III. Sc. 1. L. 85.
Slander’d to death by villains,
That dare as well answer a man indeed
As I dare take a serpent by the tongue:
Boys, apes, braggarts, Jacks, milksops!
Much Ado About Nothing. Act V. Sc. 1. L. 88.
Done to death by slanderous tongues
Was the Hero that here lies.
Much Ado About Nothing. Act V. Sc. 3. L. 3.
I will be hang’d, if some eternal villain,
Some busy and insinuating rogue,
Some cogging, cozening slave, to get some office,
Have not devis’d this slander.
Othello. Act IV. Sc. 2. L. 130.
I am disgrac’d, impeach’d and baffled here,—
Pierc’d to the soul with slander’s venom’d spear.
Richard II. Act I. Sc. 1. L. 170.
That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect,
For slander’s mark was ever yet the fair;
****
So thou be good, slander doth but approve
Thy worth the greater.
Sonnet LXX.
If I can do it
By aught that I can speak in his dispraise,
She shall not long continue love to him.
Two Gentlemen of Verona. Act III. Sc. 2. L. 46.
Soft-buzzing Slander; silly moths that eat
An honest name.
Thomson—Liberty. Pt. IV. L. 609.