C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Equivocation

There is no possible excuse for a guarded lie. Enthusiastic and impulsive people will sometimes falsify thoughtlessly, but equivocation is malice prepense.

Hosea Ballou.

To doubt the Equivocation of the fiend,
That lies like truth: Fear not, till Birnam wood
Do come to Dunsinane.

Shakespeare.

A sudden lie may be sometimes only manslaughter upon truth; but by a carefully constructed equivocation, truth always is with malice aforethought deliberately murdered.

Morley.

But yet,—
I do not like but yet, it does allay
The good precedence; fye upon but yet;
But yet is as a gaoler to bring forth
Some monstrous malefactor.

Shakespeare.

Faith, here’s an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale; who committed treason enough for God’s sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven.

Shakespeare.

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