"Foote," (said lord Sandwich) "I have often wondered what catastrophe would bring you to your end; but I think, that you must either die of the p-x, or the halter."
"My lord," (replied Foote instantaneously) "that will depend upon one of two contingencies; — whether I embrace your lordship's mistress, or your lordship's principles."

Percival Stockdale, The Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Percival Stockdale (1809), quoted in The Yale Book of Quotations, ed. Fred R. Shapiro, 2006, Yale University Press.