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Poisons Quotes

Browse 16 quotes about Poisons.

Poisons Quotes

“A drop of the bloodred liquid of the blusher mushroom , which causes potentially lethal paralysis. A petal of deathsweet, which can cause a sleep that lasts a hundred years. A sliver of wraithberry, which makes the blood race and induces a kind of wildness before stopping the heart. And a seed of everapple- faerie fruit- which muddles the minds of mortals.”

“For decades, chalk and alum have been added to bread, and burnt corn and peas ground up to make coffee. Vinegar is rendered sharper by the addition of sulphuric acid, arrowroot is added to milk to thicken it, mustard is eked out with flour, strychnine is added to beer for bitterness and green vitriol to encourage a foaming head. And these are but the harmless manipulations.”

“Good heavens!” I said. “Strychnine and vitriol in beer?” “And in gin too. Enough to impart hallucinations and a nasty disruption of the bowels. And I have seen far worse: indianberry – very toxic – added to beer to make it more intoxicating. Custard flavoured with laurel – a mortal poison; pepper made from floor sweepings, comfits from china clay. Double Gloucester cheese coloured with red lead. Lead, copper, mercury, arsenic – deadly, all – they are everywhere. I myself can attest that lead salts taste quite delicious.”

“There were herbs in the Waters of Massasauga Swamp that could be rendered into medicine for just about every affliction: yarrow and plantain for bleeding wounds, elderberries and boneset for flu, willow bark for fever, and foxglove and dandelion for too much pressure in the body. Mullein for eliminating mucous, slippery elm for sore throats, honey for ulcers, and turkey tail for the old cancers, if you caught them early. And if you asked Herself to make a potion or tonic to fix you, she would study the veins in your hand and the whites of your eyes while considering what kinds of poison to add in minuscule amounts. Bloodroot? Snakeroot? Rattlesnake venom, if she had it?”

“Likewise, when she sometimes found arrows stuck in the roots of trees, she quietly unscrewed the shafts and used them to stake plants in the poison garden, where Herself grew hemlock, tall thimbleweed, white snakeroot, swamp milkweed, poison sumac, and bloodroot. Poison ivy with its white berries was ubiquitous on the island and didn't need any special place. This morning the island was alive with flowery and moldy fragrances, alive with the urgent trills and chirps of birdsong, while more quietly, down low, sounds of scurrying and munching. The island was bursting with spring things to count and measure and eat--- ramps and wild onion sprouts, three-leaved trillium and speckled trout lily, dandelions, horse tails, tender new nettles for tea, pokeweed shoots to boil, fiddlehead ferns to fry.”