to say something or not to

Image from Flickr user .faramarz used under a Creative Commons License

…the stones
Who, though they cannot answer my distress,
Yet in some sort they are better than the tribunes,
For that they will not intercept my tale:
When I do weep, they humbly at my feet
Receive my tears and seem to weep with me;
And, were they but attired in grave weeds,
Rome could afford no tribune like to these.
A stone is soft as wax,–tribunes more hard than stones;
A stone is silent, and offendeth not,
And tribunes with their tongues doom men to death.