"Equivocate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Don't equivocate, man!" Superintendent Galloway produced the pocket-book Colwyn had recovered from the pit, and held it at arm's length in front of the innkeeper. "I mean the L300 in Treasury notes in this pocket-book, which Mr. Glenthorpe ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... Murder was done, or nearly done, within those walls last night. Within those walls no good was ever done; but daily, unmitigated evil, whose results were reaching on to torture unborn generations. He had consented to it all! He could not falter, or equivocate, or evade, or excuse. His dead friend's words rang in his conscience like the trump of the ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... first number of the Liberator. In it he said: "I shall strenuously contend for the immediate enfranchisement of our slave population. I will be as hard as truth and as uncompromising as justice. I will not equivocate; I will not excuse; I will not retreat a single inch; and I will be heard." This was the beginning of the new Abolitionist movement. The Abolitionists, in the main, were impracticable people; Garrison in the end proved otherwise. Under the existing Constitution, they had nothing to ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... Spain bosom friends lie to one another with complete freedom; no man would take his wife's word, but would believe only what he thought true, and think no worse of her when he caught her fibbing. Mendacity is a thing so perfectly understood that no one is abashed by detection. In England most men equivocate and nearly all women, but they are ashamed to be discovered; they blush and stammer and hesitate, or fly into a passion; the wiser Spaniard laughs, shrugging his shoulders, and utters a dozen rapid falsehoods to make up for the first. It is always said that a good liar needs an excellent ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... I could not equivocate with this woman, I could no more lie to her sorrow than to the Judgment. Why had ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... catch, string, strings attached; exemption; exception, escape clause, salvo, saving clause; discount &c 813; restriction; fine print. V. qualify, limit, modify, leaven, give a color to, introduce new conditions, narrow, temper. waffle, quibble, hem and haw (be uncertain) 475; equivocate (sophistry) 477. depend, depend on, be contingent on (effect) 154. allow for, make allowance for; admit exceptions, take into account; modulate. moderate, temper, season, leaven. take exception. Adj. qualifying &c v.; qualified, conditioned, restricted, hedged; conditional; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... words let me shroud a tale of horror. Harriet was my victim! Ask not how. I triumphed! She fell! An angel might have fallen as she did, and lost no purity. But her stainless heart was too proud in virtue to palter and equivocate with circumstances. She never rose from what she deemed her bridal bed. And ere twenty summers had fanned her cheek, the grave-worm ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, No. - 361, Supplementary Issue (1829) • Various
... all equivocations are, after all, a kind of lying, faint lies or awkward lies, but still lies; and some of these disputants infer, that therefore we must not equivocate, and others that equivocation is but a half measure, and that it is better to say at once that in certain cases untruths are ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... Panther: grant such presence were, 40 Yet in your sense I never own'd it there. A real virtue we by faith receive, And that we in the sacrament believe. Then, said the Hind, as you the matter state, Not only Jesuits can equivocate; For real, as you now the word expound, From solid substance dwindles to a sound. Methinks an AEsop's fable you repeat; You know who took the shadow for the meat: Your Church's substance thus you change at will, 50 And yet retain your former figure still. I freely grant you spoke to save your ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... I equivocate?" demanded David coldly. "You are in possession of all the facts. What do you intend ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon |
