Mark all the verbs in the following quotations and note carefully their
use.
1. Speak properly and in as few words as you can but always plainly;
for the end of speech is not ostentation but to be
understood.--_Penn_.
2. "Freedom's battle, once begun,
Bequeathed from bleeding sire to son,
Though baffled oft, is ever won."
Note the use of _may_ and _can_ in this quotation:
3. Knowledge cannot be stolen from us. It cannot be bought or sold. We
may be poor, and the sheriff may come and sell our furniture, or
drive away our cow, or take our pet lamb and leave us homeless and
penniless; but he cannot lay the law's hand upon the jewelry of our
minds.--_E. Burritt_.
Note the use of _shall_ and _will_ and _would_ and _should_ in the
following. Richard Grant White says: "I do not know in English
literature another passage in which the distinction between _shall_ and
_will_ and _would_ and _should_ is at once so elegantly, so variously,
so precisely, and so compactly illustrated."
4. "How long I shall love him I can no more tell,
Than, had I a fever, when I should be well.
My passion shall kill me before I will show it,
And yet I would give all the world he did know it;
But oh how I sigh, when I think, should he woo me,
I cannot refuse what I know would undo me."
5. I want it said of me by those who know me best that I always
plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower
would grow.--_Abraham Lincoln_.