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Browse phrases beginning with:
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Stony-hearted
Cruel and unfeeling.
The phrase is first recorded in 1569, in Thomas Underdown's translation of the Æthiopian History of Heliodorus:
" There is no man so stoany harted, but he shal be made to yeelde with our flatteringe allurmentes."
Shakespeare picked it up and used it in Henry IV, 1596
FALSTAFF
I am accursed to rob in that thief's
company: the
rascal hath removed my horse, and tied him I know
not where.
If I travel but four foot by the squier
further afoot, I shall break my wind.
Well, I doubt
not but to die a fair death for all this, if I
'scape hanging
for killing that rogue. I have
forsworn his company hourly any time this two
and
twenty years, and yet I am bewitched with the
rogue's company. If
the rascal hath not given me
medicines to make me love him, I'll be hanged;
it
could not be else: I have drunk medicines. Poins!
Hal! a plague upon
you both! Bardolph! Peto!
I'll starve ere I'll rob a foot further. An 'twere
not as good a deed as drink, to turn true man and to
leave these rogues, I
am the veriest varlet that
ever chewed with a tooth. Eight yards of uneven
ground is threescore and ten miles afoot with me;
and the stony-hearted villains
know it well enough:
a plague upon it when thieves cannot be true one to another!
See other phrases and sayings from Shakespeare.
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