"Tergiversation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... time been awakened to woman's privileges in tergiversation even when it involves another person's possible blight. That Bathsheba was a firm and positive girl, far less inconsequent than her fellows, had been the very lung of his hope; for he had held that these qualities would lead her to adhere to a ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... enter these shadows. They form a part of his laboratory. Philosophy is the microscope of the thought. Everything desires to flee from it, but nothing escapes it. Tergiversation is useless. What side of oneself does one display in evasions? the shameful side. Philosophy pursues with its glance, probes the evil, and does not permit it to escape into nothingness. In the obliteration of things which disappear, in the watching of things which vanish, it ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... to be curious. The heroine, a quadroon, is on the point of matrimonial union with her antagonist, and openly resents the tender advances of her ally. "Call ye this backing of your friends?" Vincent St. George, disgusted at such gross tergiversation, flies entirely away from the point at issue, and applies those remarks to Julie which all disappointed lovers seem to be bound to utter in such cases. Indeed, on the re-appearance of his rival, he challenges him—unblushingly forsaking every branch of the main point, by engaging in a long ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... by, and Mr. Hay did not appear. General Bugeaud, away on the frontier, was losing patience, and wrote me letter after letter, complaining of my tergiversation!" To which I replied, "Well, General, fire off your guns! If you will begin the fighting I'll follow your example at once." But the general turned a deaf ear to that. He answered that pacific overtures which he could not well ignore ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... contest in which the Peel administration have chosen to engage with the agricultural interest of England, has added to the mischief. Their unexampled political tergiversation has deprived them of the support of almost all their former adherents; and now, when they see the evil consequences of the vacillating policy which they have pursued with regard to Ireland, and are desirous ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... peremptory tripartite brethren arrived at Greenwich, wishing to aggrandize themselves by indulging in exemplary relaxation, indicatory of implacable detestation of integral tergiversation and exoteric intrigue. They fraternized with a phrenological harlequin who was a connoisseur in mezzotint and falconry. The piquant person was heaping contumely and scathing raillery on an amateur in jugular recitative, who held that ...
— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway |
