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More "Equivocation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... jury; that the witnesses against him should not be suffered to run on without a sufficient rigour of cross-examination. But certainly the judge thought it no part of his duty to make 'the worse appear the better reason'; to throw dust into the eyes of the jury; or to labour any point of equivocation for the sake of giving the prisoner an extra chance of escaping. And, if it is really right that the prisoner, when obviously guilty, should be aided in evading his probable conviction, then certainly ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... she have forced Maria into the most innocent equivocation, and she rattled on about her wonderful summer as people are expected to do after their first visit ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... classes, and I was asked whether I had written and published it. I at once answered "I did." Scarcely were these two words out of my mouth, when vehement applause resounded through the whole meeting. It was evident that the working people were so accustomed to expect equivocation and evasion from those who sought their suffrages, that when they found, instead of that, a direct avowal of what was likely to be disagreeable to them, instead of being affronted, they concluded at once that this was a person whom they could trust. A more striking ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... head is not the flesh of your body. No, I will not injure the hair!"—Pomp waited for his prisoner to take in all the horrible suggestiveness of this equivocation; then resumed. "Is not that what you would have said to me if you had found me in your power after making me such a promise? The black man has no rights which the white man is bound to respect! The most solemn pledges made by one of your race to one of mine ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... Southern market. As to the Southerners, their relation with this party has two distinct chapters. The first embraced the twenty years preceding the Compromise of 1850, and may be thought of as merging into the second during three or four years following the great equivocation. In that period, while the antislavery crusade was taking form, the aim of Southern politicians was mainly negative. "Let us alone," was their chief demand. Though aggressive in their policy, they were too far-sighted to demand of the North any positive course ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... throughout the law the term all white persons. In short, the Boer plainly and bluntly disdains to use the diplomatic phraseology of the British statesman. He shuts the door of hope in the native's face, without apology or equivocation. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... Lord, my Lord, this is mere cozenage[183], A vile equivocation; you well know Your doubts are certainties to all around you— 260 Your looks a voice—your frowns a sentence; you Are practising your power on me—because You have it; but beware! you know not whom ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... heresiarchs—this great revival of religious faith was essentially the triumph of profane feeling in the garb of religious: the sanctification, however much disguised, of all forms of human love. One is fully aware of the moral dangers attendant upon every such equivocation; and the great saints (like their last modern representatives, the fervent, shrewd, and kindly leaders of certain Protestant revivals) were probably, for all their personal extravagances, most fully prepared for every sort of unwholesome folly among their disciples. ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... loiter by the [way] when he is sent of an errand, but shall make hast and give a direct answer when he is asked who he is going [for]. No Freshman shall use lying or equivocation to escape going ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... pert but wholly inoffensive inquiry. He seemed to ask it as a matter of course and as one who had the right to be answered without equivocation. ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... in order to excite the laughter of their guests, and gain credit by their sayings, make use of great facetiousness in their conversation; at one time uttering their jokes in a light, easy manner, at another time, under the disguise of equivocation, passing the severest censures. For the sake of explanation I shall here subjoin a few examples. Tegeingl is the name of a province in North Wales, over which David, son of Owen, had dominion, and which had once been in the possession of his brother. The ...
— The Description of Wales • Geraldus Cambrensis
... A TREATISE OF EQUIVOCATION. Wherein is largely discussed the question whether a Catholicke or any other person before a magistrate, being demanded upon his Oath whether a Prieste were in such a place, may (notwithstanding his perfect knowledge to the contrary) without Perjury, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... not looked at Andres, Militona was guilty of a slight equivocation. She had not looked at him, perhaps, for women can see without looking, but she could have given a most minute description of his person. And out of respect to truth, we must here mention that she took Don Andres de ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... only been a heretic, like Egremont!" said Morley. Sybil burst into tears. Morley sprang to her. "Swear by the holy Virgin, swear by all the saints, swear by your hope of heaven and by your own sweet name; without equivocation, without reserve, with fulness and with truth, that you will never give your heart or hand to Egremont;—and I will ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... of her husband's affection. She thought it must have been the other sister, now in India, and that this gave the key to many allusions she had heard and which she marvelled at herself for not having understood. The equivocation had entirely deceived her, and she little thought she had been taking counsel with the rival who was secretly triumphing in Raymond's involuntary constancy, and sowing seeds of vengeance against ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... be able to persuade yourself that it is entirely free from sin. The injury, too, to our neighbour, of a direct lie, can be so much more easily guarded against, that, for the sake of others, I am far more earnest in warning you against equivocation than against decided falsehood. It is sadly difficult for the injured person to ward off the effects of a deceitful glance, a misleading action, an artful insinuation. No earthly defence is of any avail here, as the sorrows of many a wounded ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... the beetleheadedness of a domestic, or Baboo JALPANYBHOY'S incompetency in the art of equivocation, I am not to say—but the sequel of her inquiries was the unshakable conviction that I had not struck root in the habitation from which ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... but, nevertheless, I shall prove, by quotations, that the whole theory of our author is based upon this paltry equivocation. ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... account of his conduct and faith. Having succeeded in diverting suspicions about his orthodoxy, he returned to Bosnia, where he gave out that the Pope was well satisfied with his profession of faith,—a slight equivocation, which will hardly bear an enquiry,—and thus induced many more to join the Patarenes. Hearing of this, the Pope requested the King of Hungary to compel Kulin to eject them from the country, at the same time ordering Bernard, ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... satisfied, when they engaged the contending parties to use the same words and phrases, though their real difference in opinion remained the same. This could not be justified: it tended evidently to extinguish truth and honour, and to introduce equivocation. ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... whom they owed vast sums, exhilarated by the exuberant spirits and youthful freshness of her guests, declared that the sight of "them young things" did her good, and had even been known to shield them by shameless equivocation. ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... "What disgusting equivocation," Miss Trevor interrupted. "He asked me point blank to marry him, and of course I consented. He has never mentioned to me that he wished to break the engagement, and I ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... whether Hepsie could be had, but he meant to have her if she was not already at work somewhere else. He listened to the directions and promised without equivocation that Hepsie would come. He understood that for some reason the thing Elizabeth asked of him she could ask of him alone, but was careful to couch his replies so that that fact was not indicated even ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... represents God as being too dependent on circumstances. When we realize that Christ died not only for "all," but for "every man"; and when we realize that the invitations of mercy are extended to "every man," without equivocation, it does seem to me something like a failure of the divine plan if ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... staff understands me] This equivocation, miserable as it is, has been admitted by Milton in his ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... perfectly frank and exact with those to whom I make known the state of my soul. [4] Even my first impulses I wish them to know; and as for doubtful and suspicious matters, I used to make the most of them by arguing against myself. Thus, then, without equivocation or concealment, I laid before him the state of my soul. I saw almost at once that he understood me, by reason of his own experience. That was all I required; for at that time I did not know myself ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... supreme excellence, than when he seems fully resolved to sink them in dejection, and mollify them with tender emotions by the fall of greatness, the danger of innocence, or the crosses of love. He is not long soft and pathetick without some idle conceit, or contemptible equivocation. He no sooner begins to move, than he counteracts himself; and terrour and pity, as they are rising in the mind, are checked and blasted by ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... impertinent to inquire too curiously. The religion of a man is not to be paraded before the public like the manifesto of a party politician. After all, is there a single man who can sincerely, without equivocation or mental reservation, label himself Calvinist, Arminian, Socinian, or Pelagian? If there be, his mind must be a marvel of mathematical nicety and nothing more. All that we need know of Burns is that he was naturally and sincerely religious; that he worshipped an all-loving ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... not act upon a question which admits of doubt. We have passed along in our career for so many years that we have arrived at a point when we must understand each other distinctly and unequivocally, and I will not leave a single point open to equivocation. It must be expressly settled, and settled not only in express words, not only in unmistakable language; but I go further than that; it must emanate from the hearts of a people disposed to stand by it; and if they will not stand by it, I will not ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... he soon found that people who were not in the secret were attributing it to him. That would never do; so he set to work to repudiate it. The friends that knew he exhorted to know nothing; the rest he endeavoured to persuade that he was not the author, using many forms of equivocation. He rises to his greatest heights in addressing cardinals. To Campegio, then in London, he writes on ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... And again, having been in the habit of hearing all sorts of reflections on the "Irish," whom some mad abolitionists would gladly enslave in place of the blacks, poor Judy thought to save Alia from the mortification of finding herself "Irish," by her equivocation and falsehood. ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... would go to the fountain-head. I would call forthwith upon the General himself, and demand, in explicit terms, a solution of this abominable piece of mystery. Here, at least, there should be no chance for equivocation. I would be plain, positive, peremptory—as short as pie-crust—as concise ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... country that he had changed his mind, as Peel had changed his mind about the catholic question and about free trade, and as Mr. Disraeli was to change his mind upon franchise in 1867, and Mr. Gladstone upon the Irish church in 1868. Instead of this, all was equivocation. The Derbyite, as was well said, was protectionist in a county, neutral in a small town, free trader in a large one. He was for Maynooth in Ireland, and against it in Scotland. Mr. Disraeli did his best to mystify the agricultural ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... be true," he went on. "Have courage and be ugly. If you like bad music, then say so frankly. Show yourselves, see yourselves as you are. Kid your souls of the loathsome burden of all your compromise and equivocation. Wash it in pure water. How long is it since you have seen. yourselves in a mirror? I will show you yourselves. Composers, virtuosi, conductors, singers, and you, dear public. You shall for once know yourselves.... Be what you like: but, ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... i' faith, my lord, with lees would serve his turn. "Your sad imprisonment I 'll soon uncharm, And with a princely uncontrolled arm Lead you to Florence, where my love and care Shall hang your wishes in my silver hair." A halter on his strange equivocation! "Nor for my years return me the sad willow; Who prefer blossoms before fruit that 's mellow?" Rotten, on my knowledge, with lying too long i' th' bedstraw. "And all the lines of age this line convinces; The gods never wax old, no more do ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... this highwayman, were sagacious enough to discern something very villainous in his aspect; which (begging their pardon) is the very picture of simplicity; and the justice himself put a very unfavourable construction upon some of his answers, which, he said, savoured of the ambiguity and equivocation of an old offender; but, in my opinion, it would have been more just and humane to impute them to the confusion into which we may suppose a poor country lad to be thrown on such an occasion. I am still persuaded he is innocent; and, in this persuasion, I can do ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... trained, and so early taught the difference between right and wrong, that she could not look upon her prize without being reminded of the temptation to which she had so suddenly yielded, and the equivocation to which she had resorted in order to ...
— Ruth Arnold - or, the Country Cousin • Lucy Byerley
... exceeded the truth. His equivocation was not manly, and Ayres was deceived by it into the inference of a reason for his dismissal foreign ...
— Words for the Wise • T. S. Arthur
... unrecognizable form. But in far the plurality of instances the two parts of the plant's treasury are easily distinguishable, and must be separately studied, whatever their apparent closeness of relation, or, (as in all natural things,) the equivocation sometimes taking place between the one and the other. To me, the especially curious point in this matter is that, while I find the most elaborate accounts given by botanists of the stages of growth in each of these parts of the treasury, they never say of what use ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... authority, "let us have no equivocation; do you refuse, yes or no, to marry Monsieur ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... identity—if she knew it—she had been careful to conceal in the unsigned note to Mr. Galbraith? Broffin read the note again—"a deck-hand, whose name on the mate's book is John Wesley Gavitt," was the description she had given. It might, or it might not, be an equivocation; but the longer Broffin dwelt upon it the more he leaned toward the conclusion to which his theory and the few known facts pointed. The young woman knew the man in his proper person; she had been reluctant to betray him—that, he decided, was sufficiently proved ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... about this consistory without other assistance. But because on earth it is taught in your schools that the angelic nature is such that it understands, and remembers, and wills, I will speak further, in order that thou mayest see the truth pure, which there below is mixed, through the equivocation in such like teaching. These substances, from the time that they were glad in the face of God, have not turned their sight from it, from which nothing is concealed. Therefore they have not their vision interrupted by a new object, and ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... Essex, in the year 1738, that three horses (and no more than three) started for a L10 plate, and they were all three distanced the first heat, according to the common rules in horse-racing, without any quibble or equivocation; and the following was the solution:—The first horse ran on the inside of the post; the second wanted weight; and the third ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... with the leading idea of the play, and sufficiently absorbed in its progress, at the end of the second act, to permit Lady Dolly to capture him before it occurred to him that he had the use of his legs. Her enthusiasm was so great that it reduced him to something like equivocation. She wanted to know if anything could be more splendid than Mr. Bradley as Lord Ingleton; she confided to Stephen that that was what she called real wickedness, the kind that did the most harm, and invited him, by inference, to a liberal judgment ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... punning invective, whence, perhaps, nicknames have in a considerable degree sprung up;—or it is the language of suppressed passion, and especially of a hardly smothered personal dislike. The first and last of these combine in Hamlet's case; and I have little doubt that Farmer is right in supposing the equivocation carried on in the expression "too much ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... FRIEND—It will give you pleasure to hear that my father is likely to get his business speedily settled without any equivocation; and that all those prudential considerations which brought us to London were but the phantasms of our own inexperience. I use the plural, for I really share in the shame of having called in question the ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... sidereal astronomy, of which so little is yet known, I trust it will not be an intrusion to tell you of a new, extraordinary, and very unexpected fact, in the complete occultation of one "fixed" star by another, under circumstances which admit of no possible doubt or equivocation. ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... upon his knees, and gazed upon the Chevalier with an expression of countenance that plainly indicated the terror which froze his blood, and rendered him speechless—for the position in which he and the Duchess had been detected, would, he well knew, admit of no explanation—no equivocation. ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... and the light of the moon, that discovered the lock of the trap-door to thee? Tell me, audacious boy, who thou art, and how long thou hast been acquainted with the Princess—and take care to answer with less equivocation than thou didst last night, or tortures shall wring the truth ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... no more than I suspect now," was his easy equivocation. "And all that I suspect now is that some petty enemy is ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... find evasions for any purpose in a trickster's minute tortuosities of construction—exactly in the opposite direction, from mere excess of sincerity, most unwillingly I found, in almost every body's words, an unintentional opening left for double interpretations. Undesigned equivocation prevails every where; [10] and it is not the cavilling hair splitter, but, on the contrary, the single-eyed servant of truth, that is most likely to insist upon the limitation of expressions too wide or too vague, and upon the decisive election between meanings ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... its own meaning and here boycott has its own meaning. I not only do not disapprove but approve of the boycott of the councils that are going to be formed next year. And why do I do it? The people—the masses,—require from us, the leaders, a clear lead. They do not want any equivocation from us. The suggestion that we should seek election and then refuse to take the oath of allegiance, would only make the nation distrust the leaders. It is not a clear lead to the nation. So I say to you, my countrymen, not to fall into this trap. We shall sell our ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... put on our guard against this species of deceit in the highest matters, by observing how readily we glide into it, in things of smaller moment. Deceits of every shade, from the lie direct to the most attenuated equivocation, spring in the complicated intercourse of modern society, like weeds in a moist summer on a fallow field. Assuredly, unless our hand be diligent in digging out these bitter roots, we shall not grow rich in the graces of the Spirit. You are invited to a neighbour's house: you ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... note was transmitted to that country, Germany has given us no single reasonable cause of complaint." The Louisville (Ky.) Courier-Journal believes the German reply would carry more weight and persuasion "if it could be considered wholly and apart as an ex parte statement." "Without equivocation and with a politeness of offensively insinuating," the Boston Transcript concludes, "Germany rejects each and all of our demands and attempts to bargain with ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... was corrupted. The infection spread to the national conscience. Political double-dealings naturally grew out of verbal double meanings. The teeth of the new dragon were sown by the Cadmus who introduced the alphabet of equivocation. What was levity in the time of the Tudors grew to regicide and revolution in the age of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... If thou speak'st false. Upon the next tree shalt thou hang alive, Till famine cling thee: if thy speech be sooth, I care not if thou dost for me as much.— I pull in resolution; and begin To doubt th' equivocation of the fiend, That lies like truth: "Fear not till Birnam wood Do come to Dunsinane," and now ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... of her noble husband. She had been sacrificed, and now pitilessly did she sacrifice her husband to her lover. She saw but one duty before her—to reward the love of the man she adored with boundless devotion. No concealment, no disguise would she allow. Any attempt at equivocation she regarded as an act of treason to the great and holy feeling which possessed ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... preceded him and he saw that trouble was brewing. Jesse Brown wagged his head in a deprecating way and tried to side-step the entire situation. But Peter had reached a point where he was tired of equivocation. ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... it is true, was already in progress; and for that the gentleman had also voted. But there were, and are now, peculiarities about that particular expenditure which sometimes satisfy scrupulous consciences; but this bill of the gentleman's, without equivocation or saving clause, without if, or and, or but, occupied the whole ground at once, and announced internal improvement as one of the objects of this government, on a grand and systematic plan. The bill, Sir, seemed indeed too strong. It was thought by persons not esteemed extremely ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... language of national jurisprudence that can define it—no model in the records of ancient history, or in the political theories of Aristotle, with which it can be likened. It was introduced into the Constitution of the United States by an equivocation—a representation of property under the name of persons. Little did the members of the Convention from the free States foresee what a sacrifice to Moloch was hidden under the mask of this concession.'—'The House ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... contented, will only succeed in producing a South Africa which is poor and discontented. Those, too, who wish well for South Africa and are at the same time sympathizers of the present Government, let them also strive to induce the Ministry to cease its policy of dilly-dallying and of equivocation at the expense of the coloured tax-payers. So that the Dutch throughout South Africa, as did the Dutch of Cape Colony, under the able leadership of Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr, may pursue a fresh course — the course of political righteousness. When the Labour ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... This elaborate equivocation, which had all the force of an assertion, was Chase all over! Three other ministers agreed with him except that they did not equivocate. One evaded. Of all those who had stood with Seward on the sixteenth, only one was still in favor of evacuation. Seward stood fast. This reversal of the Cabinet's ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... "Answer me, senor, without equivocation; did, or did not this man, of whom we are now speaking, die as the result of your hellish torments?" rapped out George, suddenly becoming exasperated and heavily smiting the table with his ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... abuse us. Do you think that herbs or charms Can force the will? Some trials have been made In this foolish practice, but the ingredients Were lenitive poisons, such as are of force To make the patient mad; and straight the witch Swears by equivocation they are in love. The witch-craft lies in her rank blood. This night I will force confession from her. You told me You had got, within these two days, a ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... in common, but the second is the greater work of art, and indicates more fairly the scope and vigor of the author's mind. It is written in the same pure, hardy style, strong with Saxon words that admit of no equivocation or misunderstanding; it is illustrated with sketches of outward Nature and tranquil rural beauty, none the less vivid or truthful that they are drawn with the pen rather than the brush; and it is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... so mongrel in breed as the English, there is a fatal power of equivocation put into men's hands, almost whether they will or no, in being able to use Greek or Latin words for an idea when they want it to be awful; and Saxon or otherwise common words when they want it to be vulgar. What a singular and ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... foundations of religion and morality have been so boldly attacked, it seems necessary, in announcing a work of this nature, to be particularly explicit as to the path which the editor means to pursue. He, therefore, avows himself to be, without equivocation or reserve, the ardent friend and the willing champion of the Christian religion. Christian piety he reveres as the highest excellence of human beings, and the amplest reward he can seek for his labour is the consciousness of having, in some degree, however inconsiderable, contributed to recommend ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... honour of Pausanias, and for our weight with the allies, to hearken to the Ionian Embassy. It is a grave question, therefore, whether we should recall the Regent or refuse to hear these charges. Thou art fresh from Byzantium; thou must know more of this matter than we. Loose thy tongue, put aside equivocation. Say thy mind, it is for us to decide afterwards what is our duty to ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... may trust Herodotus, was careful to avoid debt. He had a keen sense of the difficulty with which a debtor escapes subterfuge and equivocation—forms, slightly disguised, of lying. To buy and sell wares in a market place, to chaffer and haggle over prices, was distasteful to him, as apt to involve falsity and unfairness. He was free and open in speech, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... Starbottle has a fault, it is frankness, sir. As Nelse Buckthorne said to me in Nashville, in '47, "You would infer, Col. Starbottle, that I equivocate." I replied, "I do, sir; and permit me to add that equivocation has all the guilt of a lie, with cowardice superadded." The next morning at nine o'clock, Ged, sir, he gasped to me—he was lying on the ground, hole through his left lung just here (illustrating with DON JOSE'S coat),—he gasped, "If you have a merit, Star, above others, ...
— Two Men of Sandy Bar - A Drama • Bret Harte
... living; the dead should be sacred. The contradictory promptings, not always crooked; the double constructions possible to men's actions; the intermingling of ambition and patriotism beneath the lash of party spirit; often wrong unconscious of itself; sometimes equivocation deceiving itself—in short, the tangled web of good and ill inseparable from great affairs of loss and gain made debatable ground for every step of the ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... under other circumstances might have met this imperative mode of questioning by dogged silence, or an evasive answer, was too uncertain as to what the doctor himself might have repeated to Jeanne-Marie, to attempt equivocation. ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... paus'd upon the sudden, And with a serious forehead plodding, Sprung a new scruple his head, Which first he scratch'd, and after said — Whether it be direct infringing 55 An oath, if I should wave this swingeing, And what I've sworn to bear, forbear, And so b' equivocation swear, Or whether it be a lesser sin To be forsworn than act the thing, 60 Are deep and subtle points, which must, T' inform my conscience, be discust; In which to err a tittle may To errors infinite make way; And therefore I desire to know 65 Thy ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... as diplomacy, expediency, and moral reservation; and, under one guise or another, it is found more or less pervading all classes of society. Sometimes it assumes the form of equivocation or moral dodging—twisting and so stating the things said as to convey a false impression—a kind of lying which a Frenchman once described as "walking round about ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... eyes, and addressed him alone. Twice he asked me questions, in so kindly a manner as to win instant reply, and once he checked Cassion when he attempted to interrupt, his voice stern with authority. I told the story simply, plainly, with no attempt at equivocation, and when I ceased speaking the room was as silent as a tomb. De Baugis sat motionless, but Cassion stared at me across the table, his face dark ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... downright beggars. Ay, Without equivocation, statute beggars, Couchant and passant, guardant, rampant beggars; Current and vagrant, stockant, ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... still more the propriety of insisting upon the instant punishment of the offenders, since the utmost that could be done at once was to institute judicial proceedings, which was the exclusive function of the State of Louisiana. The Italian public thought this equivocation, mean truckling to the American prejudice against Italians. Baron Fava, Italian Minister at Washington, was ordered to "affirm the inutility of his presence near a government that had no power to guarantee such justice as in Italy is administered equally in favor of citizens of all ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... surely as Man is determined to warp any of her blessings into curses, shall they become curses, and shall he suffer heavily. But, this is cant. Just as it is cant of the worst description to say to the London Corporation, 'How can you exhibit to the people so plain a spectacle of dishonest equivocation, as to claim the right of holding a market in the midst of the great city, for one of your vested privileges, when you know that when your last market holding charter was granted to you by King Charles the First, Smithfield stood IN THE SUBURBS ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... of which he was overseer an example of strict probity; that he had repeatedly sworn allegiance to the House of Brunswick; that he had assisted in placing the crown on the head of George I., and that he had abjured James III., "without equivocation or mental reservation, on the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the knave is! We must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us. By the Lord, Horatio, these three years I have taken note of it, the age is grown so picked that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier he galls his kibe.—How long ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... night between the 19th and 20th of January, 1771, musketeers knocked at the doors of all the magistrates; they were awakened in the king's name, at the same time being ordered to say whether they would consent to resume their service. No equivocation possible! No margin for those developments of their ideas which are so dear to parliamentary minds! It was a matter of signing yes or no. Surprised in their slumbers, but still firm in their resolution of resistance, the majority of the magistrates signed no. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... coming in at the moment to bring me some soda water, looked at his mistress with an expression of amazement and horror, which told me that he now saw Mrs. Roylake in the smoking-room for the first time. I involved myself in new clouds. If I suffocated my stepmother, her own polite equivocation would justify the act. She settled herself opposite to me in an armchair. The agonies that she must have suffered, in preventing her face from expressing emotions of disgust, I dare not attempt to imagine, even at this ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... of equivocation and delay ineffectual, the Araucanians flew to arms, and having united to the number of five hundred men under the toqui Curignancu, they proceeded to besiege Cabrito in his camp. Burgoa, who had been made prisoner and very roughly treated, was set at liberty in consequence ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... absence of reasoning.] [False or vicious reasoning; show of reason.] — N. intuition, instinct, association, hunch, gut feeling; presentiment, premonition; rule of thumb; superstition; astrology^; faith (supposition) 514. sophistry, paralogy^, perversion, casuistry, jesuitry, equivocation, evasion; chicane, chicanery; quiddet^, quiddity; mystification; special pleading; speciousness &c adj.; nonsense &c 497; word sense, tongue sense. false reasoning, vicious reasoning, circular reasoning; petitio principii ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... sea. "What shall I do?" I asked myself, and my heart was weary and hopeless. Literature? my heart did not answer the question at once. I was too broken and overcome by the shock of failure; failure precise and stern, admitting of no equivocation. I strove to read: but it was impossible to sit at home almost within earshot of the studio, and with all the memories of defeat still ringing their knells in my heart. Marshall's success clamoured loudly from without; every day, almost every hour of the day, I heard of the medals which he ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... the nervous child must grow up to respect; one is authority and the other is the rights and privileges of his associates. The nervous child needs early to learn to reach a conclusion and to render a decision—to render a decision without equivocation—to move forward in obedience to that decision without quibbling and without question; that is the thing the nervous man and woman must learn in connection with the later conquest of their own nerves; and a foundation for such a mastery of one's unruly nerves is ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... at denial or equivocation. He knew that this would be useless. He waited for an opportunity to excuse himself, and to explain rather than to deny. But every answer of his only served to increase the fury of Girasole, who seemed determined to visit upon the head ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... delicacy which easily becomes prudish and insincere. It is a direct move in favor of vulgar thinking to misname anything which involves the intimacies of life, or to do other than look it squarely in the eye, when necessity demands, without shuffling or equivocation. On this principle it is worth while to meet the problem of a disease like syphilis with an open countenance and straightforward honesty of expression. It puts firm ground under our feet to talk about it in the impersonal way in which we talk about colds and pneumonia and bunions ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... in thy senses, Annette?' said Madame Montoni; 'or is this a trick to deceive me? Tell me, this instant, what Ludovico DID say to thee;—no equivocation;—this instant.' ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... certain amount, be prevented from depositing his ballot on the application of a candidate? That by such a bye-law he may be disfranchised of his vote in electing officers, or of the right to hold office, will be freely admitted. But the words of the old regulation seem expressly, and without equivocation, to require that every member present shall vote. The candidate shall only be admitted "by the unanimous consent of all the members of that lodge then present when the candidate is proposed." This right of the members to elect or reject their candidates is subsequently called "an inherent privilege," ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... weakly, he will rob my support of its effectiveness. Speeches such as those of mine, to which you kindly allude, have their merit only if delivered for a man who is himself speaking uncompromisingly and without equivocation. I have just sent word to Hughes through one of our big New York financiers to make a smashing attack on Wilson for his actions, and to do it immediately, in connection with this Democratic Nominating ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... had a stormy interview with Berkins going up in the train, and Berkins had so upset him that he had not been able to get through any business in the City. Berkins admitted of no equivocation. He had told him that he would not allow the young lady that was going to be his wife to spend her days feasting and skylarking with a lot of vulgar and penniless young men from the Southdown Road. He had declared that it was time to settle definitely the terms and the day of the ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... this specimen of what Pope somewhere calls "pretty genteel equivocation." He was reconciled to Pope, and taught the poor poet by experience that his friendship was worse than his enmity. He wrote him letters of criticism; he forced poor Pope to negotiate for him with managers and to bring distinguished friends to ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... attitude of a reprover—that God had disowned him before men and left him unscreened to the triumphant scorn of those who were glad to have their hatred justified—the sense of utter futility in that equivocation with his conscience in dealing with the life of his accomplice, an equivocation which now turned venomously upon him with the full-grown fang of a discovered lie:—all this rushed through him like the agony of terror which fails ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... all the Glories of my Sex, and all that Nicety I've hitherto preserv'd.' There needed no more from a Maid of Isabella's Integrity and Reputation, to convince any one of the Sincerity of what she said, since, in the whole course of her Life, she never could be charg'd with an Untruth, or an Equivocation; and Katteriena assur'd her, she believ'd her, and was infinitely glad she had vanquish'd a Passion, that would have prov'd destructive to her Repose: Isabella reply'd, She had not altogether vanquish'd her Passion, she did not boast of so absolute a power over her soft Nature, but had resolv'd ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... he felt a sort of fear of the incalculable processes and changes in this woman's mind. Would she be angry if he said, he had thought she loved him? Would she be sure to recognize any equivocation, ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... that accompanied Steve's words was gently disarming. There was no equivocation. It was impossible for the boy to misread what he said. The capitulation had not waited for the passionate challenge Marcel had been ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... magnificence. As he stood on the scaffold in the cold morning air, he foiled James and Philip at one thrust, and conquered the esteem of all posterity. It is only now, after two centuries and a half, that history is beginning to hint that there was not a little special pleading and some excusable equivocation in this great apology which rang through monarchical England like the blast of a clarion, and which echoed in secret places till the oppressed rose up ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... trivial, is equally an offence against the law of the infinite God with the most terrible crime, and equally merits an infinite punishment. Thus, by a metaphysical quibble, the very basis of morals is overturned, and the child guilty of an equivocation through fear is put on a level with the pirate guilty of robbery and murder through cold blooded avarice and hate. In a hell where all are plunged in physical fire for eternity there are no degrees ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... my former condition; but to explain in what manner this bundle was lost, and how my intercourse with Clavering had taken place, was to violate this promise. It was possible, perhaps, to escape the confession of the truth by equivocation. Falsehoods were easily invented, and might lead her far away from my true condition; but I was wholly unused to equivocation. Never yet had a lie polluted my lips. I was not weak enough to be ashamed of my origin. This lady had an interest in the fate of Clavering, and might justly ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... cock-fighting, and other like vulgar expressions of the sporting temper. Whatever the latest authenticated schedule of detail proprieties may say, the accredited canons of decency sanctioned by the institution say without equivocation that emulation and waste are good and their opposites are disreputable. In the crepuscular light of the social nether spaces the details of the code are not apprehended with all the facility that might be desired, and these broad ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... circumstances were such as to render you that assistance you so much need; would that I could raise you from such unendurable misery! But to speak without equivocation, my condition is as ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... Justices at their next sittings, who forthwith summoned Jack before them to know why he refused performance of his contract with the Squire. Jack came on the day appointed, attended by the attorney—though for that matter he might have safely left him behind, being fully as much master of all equivocation or chicanery as if he had never handled anything but quills and quirks from his youth upward. This, indeed, was probably the effect of his old training in Peter's family, for whose hairsplitting distinctions and Jesuistical ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... displayed perhaps too much eagerness in doing so. Certain it is, that when the danger was past and the quietude of the country was restored, Leofric, on applying for the restitution of these "holy relics," found some difficulty in obtaining them; for the Abbot of Ely attempted by equivocation and duplicity to retain them. After several ineffectual applications, Leofric was compelled, for the honor of his monastery, to declare the "pious fraud" he had practised; which he proved by the testimony of several monks ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... blending of past, present, and future. All my pet pens are rusty, and must be replaced from the box of stubs, for a stub pen assists one to straightforward, truthful expression, while a fine point suggests evasion, polite equivocation, or thin ideas. Even Lavinia Dorman's letters, whose cream-white envelopes, with a curlicue monogram on the flap, quite cover the litter below, have been, if possible, more satisfactory since she has adopted a fountain stub that Evan ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... the first place, may I take the liberty of asking where you have concealed my daughter? I will have no equivocation, sir," he added, raising his voice—"no evasion, no falsehood, but in one plain word, or in as many as may be barely necessary, say where you have ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... know; and she knew that I knew it. To my shame be it said that I was weak enough to yield to an equivocation which I now see to have been disloyal, but which I then pretended to have been no more than delicacy to Ottilie. As, in point of fact, there had never been a word passed between us respecting our mutual feelings, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... words, logomachy, equivocation; theft could not be committed at Sparta, when everything was common property. What you call "theft" was ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... An equivocation of names also, probably, aided in originating the story. The island of Cyprus is surrounded with promontories which rise out of the sea, and whose pointed rocks appear at a distance like horns, from which it had the name of Cerastis, the Greek word keras, signifying a 'horn.' ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... small proceedings since he went away, or to relate the conclusions of half-accomplished projects. Cynthia was often on the point of some gay, careless inquiry as to where he had been, and what he had been doing; but Molly, who conjectured the truth, as often interfered to spare him the pain of equivocation—a pain that her tender conscience would have felt for him, much more than he would have felt ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... without bothering himself about its influence upon the lives of the vulgar populace. But he was neither humanist nor schoolman. He had a conscience which made indifference impossible, and a simplicity and directness of vision which compelled him to brush aside all equivocation and go straight to the heart of things. With it all he was at once a devout and believing son of the Church, and a practical preacher profoundly concerned for the spiritual and moral welfare of the common people." (p. 66f. 87.) Had Luther considered his personal ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... regard for the friendship of England,—if it has any hope that, in the hour of peril or of adversity, that protection which has more than once saved it from destruction, will be extended to it again, it must renounce absolutely, and without equivocation, the barbarous practice which has called forth the remonstrance now addressed to it. Your Excellency will require an early answer; and you will let the Turkish Ministers understand that if that answer does not fully correspond with the expectations which Her Majesty's Government entertain, ...
— Correspondence Relating to Executions in Turkey for Apostacy from Islamism • Various
... first love, the forsaken Lady Julia. She putting in (as one may say) a good word for herself, said she knew Julia; as well she might, being herself the Julia of whom she spoke; telling how fondly Julia loved her master, Proteus, and how his unkind neglect would grieve her. And then she with a pretty equivocation went on: "Julia is about my height, and of my complexion, the color of her eyes and hair the same as mine." And indeed Julia looked a most beautiful youth in ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... of the 'house' into the hands of the executive power, especially as the head-master might pursue Queen Anne's policy under the Tory ministers—and, by introducing the fencing-master—the dancing-master—the riding-master, &c. under the unconstitutional equivocation of the word 'teachers,' carry a favourite measure in the teeth of the patriotic party. Hitherto however the reigning sovereign has shown so laudable a desire to strengthen those checks upon his own authority which make him a limited monarch—that 'only one ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... you can, sir," said Jasper, in tones that were almost meek; "you, at least, can say nothing that I will not bear. But I am in my right when I ask you to tell me, without equivocation or reserve, if Sophy, though not actually within these walls, be near you, in this town or its neighbourhood?—in ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... disguised what he knows to be the facts about rent, I would ask him as one of the leading members of the Jamaica Committee, which is the greater crime, boldly to sign warrant for the sudden death of one man, known to be an agitator, in the immediate outbreak of such agitation, or, by equivocation in a scientific work, to sign warrants for the deaths of thousands of men in slow misery, for fear of an agitation which has not begun; and if begun, would be carried on by debate, not ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... not one a right to conceal facts which another has no right to know?* In such a case, concealment is undoubtedly a right; but falsehood, or equivocation, or truth which will convey a false impression, is not a right. This question has not unfrequently arisen with regard to anonymous publications. It might be a fair subject of inquiry, whether anonymous writing is not in all cases objectionable, on the ground that a sense of personal responsibility ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... strange text says. Without the least equivocation it says that God raised this man Pharaoh up that He might show forth His power in him. And that purpose He accomplished. This ghastly piece of royal rottenness has not been thrown upon this shore by the hand of man. As we look at him we see in him a monument of the power of God. And strange ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... wide The prince advanced, inflamed with passion: "To-morrow thou an oath," he cried, "Shalt swear without equivocation. ...
— Axel Thordson and Fair Valborg - a ballad • Thomas J. Wise
... type possess of course the merit of simplicity, transparency, and finality. The decrees, the punishments and rewards are given with some clearness and are easily understood; there is no appeal and little equivocation. They served a useful purpose in the earlier ages of civilisation, but cannot solve the problem for the complex civilisation and advanced culture of the present age. They place God too far from man, and attribute ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones
... is doing the utmost violence to themselves, acting in the most palpable contradiction to their very nature. But if there be any such thing in mankind as putting half-deceits upon themselves; which there plainly is, either by avoiding reflection, or (if they do reflect) by religious equivocation, subterfuges, and palliating matters to themselves; by these means conscience may be laid asleep, and they may go on in a course of wickedness with less disturbance. All the various turns, doubles, and intricacies ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... question without equivocation—do you love that man?" He must ask that, know that; all else ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... of the text, and if true, the date of the title-page (1630) must be either a misprint or an equivocation on the part of the author. Or this instance and the several others similar to it may have been added by Medina to his manuscript after he had completed it to the date of the title-page; or they may be due to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... with Commissioner Pett about his neglecting his duty and absenting himself, unknown to us, from his place at Chatham, but a most false man I every day find him more and more, and in this very full of equivocation. The fleete we doubt not come to Harwich by this time. Sir W. Batten is gone down this day thither, and the Duchesse of Yorke went down yesterday to meet ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... secrecy. She wore a plumed hat, and a dark cloth tailor-made suit that was unmistakably English. She still struggled with the key, unconscious of his presence. His tread on the thick carpet had been light; he had intended to catch her, beyond equivocation, in the act. But now something about the lines of her stooping figure caused Henry Keenan to remove his hat, respectfully, ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... /Address to the Nobles of Germany/, in his works /On the Mass/, /On the Improvement of Christian Morality/, and /On the Babylonian Captivity/, he proclaimed himself a political as well as a religious revolutionary. There was no longer any concealment or equivocation. The veil was lifted at last, and Luther stood forth to the world as the declared enemy of the Church and the Pope, the champion of the Bible as the sole rule of faith, and the defender of individual judgment as its only ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... from Pope Innocent III., Kulin repaired to Rome to give an account of his conduct and faith. Having succeeded in diverting suspicions about his orthodoxy, he returned to Bosnia, where he gave out that the Pope was well satisfied with his profession of faith,—a slight equivocation, which will hardly bear an enquiry,—and thus induced many more to join the Patarenes. Hearing of this, the Pope requested the King of Hungary to compel Kulin to eject them from the country, at the same time ordering Bernard, Archbishop ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... territories that Germany covets, or how they are to be obtained, or how the possession of tropical or subtropical colonies can solve the problem of her population. But he differs from his predecessors in that he clearly realizes and expresses, without ambiguity or equivocation, that the assertion of her claims must involve the establishment of German supremacy, and he admits that those claims are incompatible with the antiquated doctrine of the balance of power. And von Bernhardi also clearly realizes that, as other nations will refuse to accept German supremacy and ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... equivocation and delay ineffectual, the Araucanians flew to arms, and having united to the number of five hundred men under the toqui Curignancu, they proceeded to besiege Cabrito in his camp. Burgoa, who had been made prisoner and very roughly treated, was set at liberty in consequence ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... words was gently disarming. There was no equivocation. It was impossible for the boy to misread what he said. The capitulation had not waited for the passionate challenge Marcel had been prepared ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... divine grace, to make this new, unforeseen, and religious act of duty, support me in the day of trial. Support me, O Lord, in my confessions; give me strength and purity to speak freely the whole truth without any equivocation or attempt at justification. O Lord, help Thy servant when he is feeble and ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... this procedure. With each step, the hypnotist is guiding the subject along directed lines to get him to accept further suggestions without question or doubt. When the subject achieves the ultimate state in this procedure, he has been hypnotized. He then accepts suggestions without equivocation. ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers
... elements in common, but the second is the greater work of art, and indicates more fairly the scope and vigor of the author's mind. It is written in the same pure, hardy style, strong with Saxon words that admit of no equivocation or misunderstanding; it is illustrated with sketches of outward Nature and tranquil rural beauty, none the less vivid or truthful that they are drawn with the pen rather than the brush; and it is instinct with an honest, high-souled purpose. In these respects it resembles "Adam Bede," but ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... example of the mischief of equivocation is the beneficium (Ducange, tom. i. p. 617, &c.,) which the pope conferred on the emperor Frederic I., since the Latin word may signify either a legal fief, or a simple favor, an obligation, (we want the word bienfait.) (See Schmidt, Hist. des Allemands, tom. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... henceforth in doubt and fear," he says, "as much as any honest man can be, concerning every word Dr. Newman may write. How can I tell that I shall not be the dupe of some cunning equivocation? ... What proof have I, that by 'mean it? I never said it!' Dr. Newman does not signify, 'I did not say it, but ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... to his consideration. An English official who was a captive at Bokhara (or Khiva) was offered his life by the Khan if he would abjure the Christian faith and say he was a Moslem; but he preferred death rather than the advantage of a temporary equivocation. I do not suppose that he was a specially pious man at home or that he was a martyr to religious principle, but for the moment Christianity stood for England and English honor and civilization. I can ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... few years in this chronicle, began real litigation with earnestness, vigor, courage, zeal, and belief on the part of Biggs and Thatcher, and technicalities, delay, equivocation, and a general Fabian-like policy on the part of Garcia, Roscommon, et al. Of all these tedious processes I note but one, which for originality and audacity of conception appears to me to indicate more clearly the temper and civilization of the epoch. A subordinate officer ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... an increased responsiveness to the public will. The leaders of the one party for the time in the ascendancy govern the nation, by reason of the fact that, being the leaders of this party, they are selected without doubt or equivocation to fill ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... what this strange text says. Without the least equivocation it says that God raised this man Pharaoh up that He might show forth His power in him. And that purpose He accomplished. This ghastly piece of royal rottenness has not been thrown upon this shore by the hand ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... Besides, the notion of a city naturally precedes that of a family or an individual, for the whole must necessarily be prior to the parts, for if you take away the whole man, you cannot say a foot or a hand remains, unless by equivocation, as supposing a hand of stone to be made, but that would only be a dead one; but everything is understood to be this or that by its energic qualities and powers, so that when these no longer remain, neither can that be said to be the same, but something of the same ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle
... be put on our guard against this species of deceit in the highest matters, by observing how readily we glide into it, in things of smaller moment. Deceits of every shade, from the lie direct to the most attenuated equivocation, spring in the complicated intercourse of modern society, like weeds in a moist summer on a fallow field. Assuredly, unless our hand be diligent in digging out these bitter roots, we shall not grow rich in the ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... say a Rake-hell is your only Man of Bravery; he slights all the Force of Fortune, and sticks at no Hazard—plays away his hundred Pounds at sight, pays a Lady's Bill at sight, drinks his Bottle without equivocation, and fights his ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... not misrepresent anybody if I know it. Now, sir, I will not act upon a question which admits of doubt. We have passed along in our career for so many years that we have arrived at a point when we must understand each other distinctly and unequivocally, and I will not leave a single point open to equivocation. It must be expressly settled, and settled not only in express words, not only in unmistakable language; but I go further than that; it must emanate from the hearts of a people disposed to stand by it; and if they will not stand by it, I will ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... There was one resource left me yet. I would go to the fountain-head. I would call forthwith upon the General himself, and demand, in explicit terms, a solution of this abominable piece of mystery. Here, at least, there should be no chance for equivocation. I would be plain, positive, peremptory—as short as pie-crust—as concise as Tacitus ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... literary attainments. Moreover, he had given up a United States attorneyship to follow Greeley.[1447] Not less helpful was the platform, drafted by Seymour, which abounded in short, clear, compact statements, without buncombe or the least equivocation. It demanded the payment of the public debt in coin, the resumption of specie payment, taxation for revenue only, local self-government, and State supervision of corporations. It also denounced sumptuary laws and the ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... more than I suspect now," was his easy equivocation. "And all that I suspect now is that some petty enemy is ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... reasoning.] [False or vicious reasoning; show of reason.] — N. intuition, instinct, association, hunch, gut feeling; presentiment, premonition; rule of thumb; superstition; astrology^; faith (supposition) 514. sophistry, paralogy^, perversion, casuistry, jesuitry, equivocation, evasion; chicane, chicanery; quiddet^, quiddity; mystification; special pleading; speciousness &c adj.; nonsense &c 497; word sense, tongue sense. false reasoning, vicious reasoning, circular reasoning; petitio principii [Lat.], ignoratio elenchi [Lat.]; post hoc ergo ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... it, so I refer those that are interested to my former article. . . . They played it excellently," and he enumerated the entire cast, placing beside the name of each actress a sugary epithet, and an ingratiating remark, a polite description, a melancholy equivocation and an ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... Phillips, to whom they owed vast sums, exhilarated by the exuberant spirits and youthful freshness of her guests, declared that the sight of "them young things" did her good; and had even been known to shield them by shameless equivocation. ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... unintentional. Experience showed, he reminded the secretary, "that we cannot get enforcement of policies that permit of any possibility of misconstruction." Directness, he said, was required in place of equivocation based on delicacy. If the Gillem Board intended black officers to command white officers and men, it should have said so flatly. If it meant the Army should try unsegregated and mixed units, it should have said so. Its report, McCloy concluded, should have put these matters beyond ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... the consequence. And again, having been in the habit of hearing all sorts of reflections on the "Irish," whom some mad abolitionists would gladly enslave in place of the blacks, poor Judy thought to save Alia from the mortification of finding herself "Irish," by her equivocation and falsehood. ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... Then, I ask, how does a man acquire a right on this floor to speak, except by taking an oath to support and sustain the Constitution of the United States? And when he takes that oath, I do not understand that he has a right to have a mental reservation, or entertain any secret equivocation that he excepts that clause which relates to the surrender of fugitives from service. I know not how a man reconciles it to his conscience to take that oath to support the Constitution, when he believes ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... nor procure them to be taken by any one else, of any place or places in which he may be, while upon his parole, that shall now, or may hereafter give information to our enemies which can be injurious to us, or the common cause of America; but that without equivocation, mental evasion, or secret reservation, he pay the most exact and faithful attention to the intent and meaning of these conditions, according to the rules and regulations of war; and that he every day appear between ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... to the Ionian Embassy. It is a grave question, therefore, whether we should recall the Regent or refuse to hear these charges. Thou art fresh from Byzantium; thou must know more of this matter than we. Loose thy tongue, put aside equivocation. Say thy mind, it is for us to decide afterwards what is our duty ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... terms than of sentiments; and thus seemed satisfied, when they engaged the contending parties to use the same words and phrases, though their real difference in opinion remained the same. This could not be justified: it tended evidently to extinguish truth and honour, and to introduce equivocation. ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... she was to equivocation, this down-right falsehood cost Mrs. Livingstone quite an effort, but she fancied the case required it, and after a few twinges, her conscience felt easy, particularly when she saw how much satisfaction her words gave to ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... thrust, and conquered the esteem of all posterity. It is only now, after two centuries and a half, that history is beginning to hint that there was not a little special pleading and some excusable equivocation in this great apology which rang through monarchical England like the blast of a clarion, and which echoed in secret places till the oppressed rose up and ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... spectacle; and after the lying in state there was a funeral of as much ceremony as has been observed at the obsequies of many a queen. There were anthems and prayers and a sermon; and Dr. Parker, who officiated, remarked, when all was over, to a few particular friends, and with some equivocation, as it seems to me, that he 'buried her very ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... little more weakly, he will rob my support of its effectiveness. Speeches such as those of mine, to which you kindly allude, have their merit only if delivered for a man who is himself speaking uncompromisingly and without equivocation. I have just sent word to Hughes through one of our big New York financiers to make a smashing attack on Wilson for his actions, and to do it immediately, in connection with this Democratic Nominating Convention. Wilson was afraid of me. ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... for so is the influence of thought on muscular motion; so is life itself; so in short is every first truth of necessity; for to comprehend a thing, is to know its antecedent and consequent. But they affirm that it is against their reason. Besides, there seems an equivocation in the use of 'comprehend' and 'conceive' in the same meaning. When a man tells me, that his will can lift his arm, I conceive his meaning; though I do not comprehend the fact, I understand 'him'. But the Socinians say;—We ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... many a bank-counter. At first, so active, trustworthy, and trusted,—yet with the constant temptation of unemployed time and energies demanding supply of action. Little by little these are supplied,—supplied by the billiard-table and its concomitants. It is the same story,—first, rumors, then equivocation, then exposure. Perhaps a petty sum is all; but, to the austere justice of banking, this is as bad, nay, worse than millions. And then a brief paragraph in the newspaper, and one more ruined young man, sulking beside the family-hearthstone, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... not detect this specimen of what Pope somewhere calls "pretty genteel equivocation." He was reconciled to Pope, and taught the poor poet by experience that his friendship was worse than his enmity. He wrote him letters of criticism; he forced poor Pope to negotiate for him with managers and to bring distinguished ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... Giles answered indulgently. "Time will show, if such an entirely unimportant person as my nephew Arthur is likely to be assassinated. That allusion to one of the members of my family is a mere equivocation, designed to throw me off my guard. Rank, money, social influence, unswerving principles, mark ME out as a public character. Go to the police-office, and let the best man who happens to be off ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... with his father, subsequent to Caleb Brent's funeral, Donald McKaye realized full well that his love-affair, hitherto indefinite as to outcome, had crystallized into a definite issue. For him, there could be no evasion or equivocation; he had to choose, promptly and for all time, between his family and Nan Brent—between respectability, honor, wealth, and approbation on one hand, and pity, contempt, censure, and poverty on the other. Confronting this impasse, he was too racked with torment to face his ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... sufficiently round about this consistory without other assistance. But because on earth it is taught in your schools that the angelic nature is such that it understands, and remembers, and wills, I will speak further, in order that thou mayest see the truth pure, which there below is mixed, through the equivocation in such like teaching. These substances, from the time that they were glad in the face of God, have not turned their sight from it, from which nothing is concealed. Therefore they have not their vision interrupted by a new object, and ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... of strict probity; that he had repeatedly sworn allegiance to the House of Brunswick; that he had assisted in placing the crown on the head of George I., and that he had abjured James III., "without equivocation or mental reservation, on the true faith of ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the frank sincerity of a confession, which does not try to tell lies to God, and, attempting to deceive Him, really deceives only the self-righteous sinner. Whosoever opens his heart to God, makes a clean breast of it, and without equivocation or self-deception or the palliations which self-love teaches, says, 'I have played the fool and erred exceedingly,' to that man the Psalmist thinks pardon ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... habit became universal. The language was corrupted. The infection spread to the national conscience. Political double-dealings naturally grew out of verbal double meanings. The teeth of the new dragon were sown by the Cadmus who introduced the alphabet of equivocation. What was levity in the time of the Tudors grew to regicide and revolution in the age ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... against him should not be suffered to run on without a sufficient rigour of cross-examination. But certainly the judge thought it no part of his duty to make 'the worse appear the better reason'; to throw dust into the eyes of the jury; or to labour any point of equivocation for the sake of giving the prisoner an extra chance of escaping. And, if it is really right that the prisoner, when obviously guilty, should be aided in evading his probable conviction, then certainly in past times he had less than justice. ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... delivered upon creative artists by their contemporaries; yet to trim deftly one's convictions in the hope that they may elastically conform to any one of a number of possible verdicts to be expected from a capricious futurity, is probably as dangerous a proceeding as to avow, without equivocation or compromise, one's precise beliefs. It will therefore be understood that the critical estimates which are offered in the following pages have been set down ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... were inspired by one unconquered resolve, the aim of securing universally, alike in Church and in State, the recognition of the paramountcy of principles over interests, of liberty over tyranny, of truth over all forms of evasion or equivocation. His ideal in the political world was, as he said, that of securing suum cuique to every individual or association of human life, and to prevent any institution, however holy its ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... habitually assumed the attitude of a reprover—that God had disowned him before men and left him unscreened to the triumphant scorn of those who were glad to have their hatred justified—the sense of utter futility in that equivocation with his conscience in dealing with the life of his accomplice, an equivocation which now turned venomously upon him with the full-grown fang of a discovered lie:—all this rushed through him like the agony of terror which fails to kill, and leaves the ears still open to the returning ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... principle to violate oaths and to debase the currency of good faith in every possible way. There was also much untruth in private life. Unfortunately, lying in the interests of piety was justified by Luther, while the Jesuits made a soul-rotting art of equivocation. ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... things the nervous child must grow up to respect; one is authority and the other is the rights and privileges of his associates. The nervous child needs early to learn to reach a conclusion and to render a decision—to render a decision without equivocation—to move forward in obedience to that decision without quibbling and without question; that is the thing the nervous man and woman must learn in connection with the later conquest of their own nerves; and a foundation for such a mastery of one's unruly ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... of God, seemed to be in a slate of despair, and though he was often pressed to declare whether depositions he had given against the afore-mentioned street robbers were true or not, he either waived making an answer, or used so much evasion or equivocation that it still remained doubtful whether he ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... not of my friend, Phoenix's opinion but I am not with my friend Sapor either. I do not believe that the party is bound to embrace a cause as soon as we are told that that cause is just. That, I am afraid, is a grievous abuse of words and a dangerous equivocation. For social justice is not revolutionary justice. They are both in perpetual antagonism: to serve the one is to oppose the other. As for me, my choice is made. I am for revolutionary justice as against social justice. ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... was undoubtedly by Morus, for copies of it signed by himself were still extant. So far, therefore, Milton was right in saying that Morus's denial of the authorship of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor was an equivocation, resting on a tacit distinction between the body of the book and the additional or editorial matter. In several passages Morus himself had betrayed this equivocation, but in none so remarkably as in a sentence to the peculiar phrasing of ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... attempt at denial or equivocation. He knew that this would be useless. He waited for an opportunity to excuse himself, and to explain rather than to deny. But every answer of his only served to increase the fury of Girasole, who seemed determined ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... according to his sympathy with the one or the other. Douglas, as I have said, had the disadvantage of riding an ebb tide. But Lincoln encountered a disadvantage in riding a flood tide, which was flowing too fast for a man so conservative and so honest as he was. Thus there was not a little equivocation on both sides foreign to the nature of the two. Both wanted to be frank. Both thought they were being frank. But each was a little afraid of his own logic; each was a little afraid of his own following; and hence there was considerable hair splitting, involving accusations that did ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... Jesse Brown. The news of his encounter with Shad and the "Reds" had preceded him and he saw that trouble was brewing. Jesse Brown wagged his head in a deprecating way and tried to side-step the entire situation. But Peter had reached a point where he was tired of equivocation. ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... dozens of obscure heresiarchs—this great revival of religious faith was essentially the triumph of profane feeling in the garb of religious: the sanctification, however much disguised, of all forms of human love. One is fully aware of the moral dangers attendant upon every such equivocation; and the great saints (like their last modern representatives, the fervent, shrewd, and kindly leaders of certain Protestant revivals) were probably, for all their personal extravagances, most fully prepared for every sort of unwholesome folly among their ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... perfectly willing to do anything which would take away the edge of this thing for the family, but the truth's the truth, and I can't see any room for equivocation between you and me. As I've said before, these relationships are involved with things which make it impossible to discuss them—unfair to me, unfair to the woman. No one can see how they are to be handled, except the people that are in them, and ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... so carefully trained, and so early taught the difference between right and wrong, that she could not look upon her prize without being reminded of the temptation to which she had so suddenly yielded, and the equivocation to which she had resorted in ...
— Ruth Arnold - or, the Country Cousin • Lucy Byerley
... philosophaster with a turn for witchroasting. The lost armada is his jeer in Love's Labour Lost. His pageants, the histories, sail fullbellied on a tide of Mafeking enthusiasm. Warwickshire jesuits are tried and we have a porter's theory of equivocation. The Sea Venture comes home from Bermudas and the play Renan admired is written with Patsy Caliban, our American cousin. The sugared sonnets follow Sidney's. As for fay Elizabeth, otherwise carrotty Bess, the gross virgin who inspired ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... OF EQUIVOCATION. Wherein is largely discussed the question whether a Catholicke or any other person before a magistrate, being demanded upon his Oath whether a Prieste were in such a place, may (notwithstanding his perfect knowledge to the contrary) without Perjury, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... said Thuillier, with authority, "let us have no equivocation; do you refuse, yes or no, to ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... of your head is not the flesh of your body. No, I will not injure the hair!"—Pomp waited for his prisoner to take in all the horrible suggestiveness of this equivocation; then resumed. "Is not that what you would have said to me if you had found me in your power after making me such a promise? The black man has no rights which the white man is bound to respect! The most solemn pledges made by one of your race to one of mine are to be heeded ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... and at you sitting in the arm-chair. Her eyes are keener than yours, for she saw me peeping through the window, and told you so. When you left the room I came out among the trees to escape observation. I scorn all equivocation, and have no desire to conceal the truth, for ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... French, DROITE. Straight; direct; without equivocation. Ex. Klatawa delett, go straight; delett wauwau, ...
— Dictionary of the Chinook Jargon, or, Trade Language of Oregon • George Gibbs
... she had not looked at Andres, Militona was guilty of a slight equivocation. She had not looked at him, perhaps, for women can see without looking, but she could have given a most minute description of his person. And out of respect to truth, we must here mention that she took Don Andres ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... credit, and it was thought there was no man on the field so hard to handle, with the exception of Ben Kyley, whose showing against a professional of Bendigo's calibre set him on a plane above the mere amateur. Pete confessed himself beaten without equivocation. ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... morality have been so boldly attacked, it seems necessary, in announcing a work of this nature, to be particularly explicit as to the path which the editor means to pursue. He, therefore, avows himself to be, without equivocation or reserve, the ardent friend and the willing champion of the Christian religion. Christian piety he reveres as the highest excellence of human beings, and the amplest reward he can seek for his labour is the consciousness of having, in ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... meaning. I not only do not disapprove but approve of the boycott of the councils that are going to be formed next year. And why do I do it? The people—the masses,—require from us, the leaders, a clear lead. They do not want any equivocation from us. The suggestion that we should seek election and then refuse to take the oath of allegiance, would only make the nation distrust the leaders. It is not a clear lead to the nation. So I say to you, my countrymen, not to fall into this ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... beyond any other, the age of falsehood. Once, to be suspected of equivocation was enough to soil a gentleman's escutcheon; but now it has become a strange merit in a partisan or statesman, always and scrupulously to tell the truth. Lies are part of the regular ammunition of all campaigns and controversies, valued according as they are profitable and ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... was a failure. She was certainly willing, but Yolanda would have none of it, and with no equivocation gave every one to understand as much. Still, she held Max at a respectful distance. In fact, this Yolanda handled us all as a juggler tosses his balls. Max must not be too attentive to her, and he must not be at all attentive ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... tone and manner baffled equivocation. "What is it to you if he is?" she returned with a brave attempt to suggest cold displeasure. But her lip trembled and ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... that city, may swear that he did not come from London. It is argued, that such an answer would agree with their intention, who proposed the question simply with a view to ascertaining, whether their own city would be endangered by his entrance. Such was the doctrine of equivocation, under the plea of which Garnet sheltered himself when he denied many things which were proved against him, and which he had himself confessed. Even Sir Everard Digby resorted to this papal doctrine of equivocation, as will be seen from the following extracts from his letters ...
— Guy Fawkes - or A Complete History Of The Gunpowder Treason, A.D. 1605 • Thomas Lathbury
... perhaps, nicknames have in a considerable degree sprung up;—or it is the language of suppressed passion, and especially of a hardly smothered personal dislike. The first and last of these combine in Hamlet's case; and I have little doubt that Farmer is right in supposing the equivocation carried on in the expression "too much i' ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... 'twofold balls and treble sceptres' (iv. i. 20) plainly adverted to the union of Scotland with England and Ireland under James's sway. The allusion by the porter (ii. iii. 9) to the 'equivocator . . . who committed treason' was perhaps suggested by the notorious defence of the doctrine of equivocation made by the Jesuit Henry Garnett, who was executed early in 1606 for his share in the 'Gunpowder Plot.' The piece was not printed until 1623. It is in its existing shape by far the shortest of all Shakespeare's tragedies, ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... for equivocation, possibly for denial, but not for attack. His manner changed and showed distrust and I saw that I had lost rather than made by ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... he went on. "Have courage and be ugly. If you like bad music, then say so frankly. Show yourselves, see yourselves as you are. Kid your souls of the loathsome burden of all your compromise and equivocation. Wash it in pure water. How long is it since you have seen. yourselves in a mirror? I will show you yourselves. Composers, virtuosi, conductors, singers, and you, dear public. You shall for once know yourselves.... Be what you like: but, for any sake, be true! Be ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... his neck, and by the mere force of punning upon that long magical word, threw himself into a fine breathing sweat, and a quiet sleep. He is now in a fair way of recovery, and says pleasantly, he is less obliged to the Jesuits for their powder, than for their equivocation." ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... opposition to the maxims which are based on wants and inclinations, so that it may escape from the perplexity of opposite claims and not run the risk of losing all genuine moral principles through the equivocation into which it easily falls. Thus, when practical reason cultivates itself, there insensibly arises in it a dialetic which forces it to seek aid in philosophy, just as happens to it in its theoretic use; ...
— Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals • Immanuel Kant
... of course the merit of simplicity, transparency, and finality. The decrees, the punishments and rewards are given with some clearness and are easily understood; there is no appeal and little equivocation. They served a useful purpose in the earlier ages of civilisation, but cannot solve the problem for the complex civilisation and advanced culture of the present age. They place God too far from man, and attribute to ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones
... Let him answer fully, fairly, and candidly. Let him answer with facts and not with arguments. Let him remember he sits where Washington sat, and so remembering, let him answer as Washington would answer. As a nation should not, and the Almighty will not, be evaded, so let him attempt no evasion—no equivocation. And if, so answering, he can show that the soil was ours where the first blood of the war was shed,—that it was not within an inhabited country, or, if within such, that the inhabitants had submitted themselves to the civil authority of Texas or of the ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... detestable coward,) fell upon his knees, and gazed upon the Chevalier with an expression of countenance that plainly indicated the terror which froze his blood, and rendered him speechless—for the position in which he and the Duchess had been detected, would, he well knew, admit of no explanation—no equivocation. ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... a bitterly satirical tone. "Strange, that you should thus suddenly desire to return. Were you not the child of those to whom equivocation is unknown, I might well doubt that tale;—home, ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... is not confined to acts, but extends to speech and even to thought. We owe to others veracity. Even when the motive is good, there can be no greater social disservice than to fail in truthfulness. Falsehood, either in the form of hypocrisy or equivocation, and even of unsound workmanship, is not only unjust to others; it is unjust to ourselves, and a wrong to the deeper self—the ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... as I had answered the troopers at Mirepoix, that I was Lesperon. Then, bethinking me that there was no need for such equivocation here, I was on the point of giving her my name. But noting my hesitation, and misconstruing ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... as, e.g., prize-fighting, cock-fighting, and other like vulgar expressions of the sporting temper. Whatever the latest authenticated schedule of detail proprieties may say, the accredited canons of decency sanctioned by the institution say without equivocation that emulation and waste are good and their opposites are disreputable. In the crepuscular light of the social nether spaces the details of the code are not apprehended with all the facility that might be desired, and these broad underlying canons of decency are therefore applied ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... consequent habitual use of the word "Imperial" in two quite different senses. It is this last confusion which makes such a declaration as Mr. Asquith's about safeguarding "the indefeasible authority of the Imperial Parliament" a mere equivocation, for it affords no indication as to whether the supremacy retained is the effective and direct control maintained by Canada over Ontario, or the much slighter and vaguer supremacy exercised by the United Kingdom over the Dominions. It is this same confusion, too, which is responsible for the notion ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... unbearably sharp, a knife-like, regret that he had ever, with Fanny, departed from the utmost truth. Lee Randon had a sudden vision, born of that feeling returning from the shed, of the illimitable tranquility, the release from all triviality, of an honesty beyond equivocation or assault. Fanny, in her way, possessed it; but that, he saw, was made vulnerable, open to disaster, through her love for him. It was necessary, for complete safety, to be entirely insulated from the humanity of emotions. That condition he instinctively put from his thoughts ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... in sidereal astronomy, of which so little is yet known, I trust it will not be an intrusion to tell you of a new, extraordinary, and very unexpected fact, in the complete occultation of one "fixed" star by another, under circumstances which admit of no possible doubt or equivocation. ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... reasonable cause of complaint." The Louisville (Ky.) Courier-Journal believes the German reply would carry more weight and persuasion "if it could be considered wholly and apart as an ex parte statement." "Without equivocation and with a politeness of offensively insinuating," the Boston Transcript concludes, "Germany rejects each and all of our demands and attempts to bargain ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... who would degrade the more illustrious moiety-but, as if the laws of matrimony had no reference to the children to be thence propagated, the children of a left-handed alliance are not entitled to inherit. Shocking consequence of a senseless equivocation, that only satisfies pride, not justice; and calculated for an acquittal at the herald's Office, not at the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... being perceived; whereas a soul or spirit is an active being, whose existence consists, not in being perceived, but in perceiving ideas and thinking. It is therefore necessary, in order to prevent equivocation and confounding natures perfectly disagreeing and unlike, that we distinguish between spirit ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley
... of words, logomachy, equivocation; theft could not be committed at Sparta, when everything was common property. What you call "theft" ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... is to be remarked, moreover, that as this epithet civil is, through its ordinary signification, brought into connexion with what precedes it, so is it, through its unusual meaning of grave, brought into connexion with what follows, it thus furnishing that equivocation of sense of which our great dramatist is so fond, rarely missing an opportunity of "paltering with ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... the forsaken Lady Julia. She putting in (as one may say) a good word for herself, said she knew Julia; as well she might, being herself the Julia of whom she spoke; telling how fondly Julia loved her master, Proteus, and how his unkind neglect would grieve her. And then she with a pretty equivocation went on: "Julia is about my height, and of my complexion, the color of her eyes and hair the same as mine." And indeed Julia looked a most beautiful youth in her ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... wonder. She to claim the rank of a goddess! Besides, Gwen suspected that Adrian was only prevaricating. Trothplight was one thing, official betrothal another. It was almost too poor a shuffle to accuse him of, but she was always flying at the throat of equivocation, even when she knew she might be outclassed by it. "You are playing with words, Mr. Torrens," said she. "You mean that you and this young lady are not 'engaged to be married'? Perhaps not, but that has nothing to do ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... as a grey and sailless sea. "What shall I do?" I asked myself, and my heart was weary and hopeless. Literature? my heart did not answer the question at once. I was too broken and overcome by the shock of failure; failure precise and stern, admitting of no equivocation. I strove to read: but it was impossible to sit at home almost within earshot of the studio, and with all the memories of defeat still ringing their knells in my heart. Marshall's success clamoured loudly from without; ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... Forsyth received a letter from Mr. James Hamilton, of New York, making certain inquiries with regard to this move in Mr. Monroe's Cabinet. Mr. Forsyth appealed to Mr. Crawford, who responded, and in detail revealed the proceedings in council upon this matter, charging, without equivocation, Mr. Calhoun as being the secretary who had moved the arrest and trial of Jackson. At the time of this development, General Jackson was absent from Washington, on a visit to his home in Tennessee, and Mr. Calhoun was ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... stolen from his table. He had remembered me as near to the office. Did I know anything about it? I said, "How could I?" I was dreadfully scared, but I replied that I had certainly gone through his office and had left both doors open. Then he said, "It is too grave a matter for equivocation, and I ask, Did you take it?" I said I was insulted, and upon this he lost his temper and threatened ...
— A Diplomatic Adventure • S. Weir Mitchell
... Baugis' eyes, and addressed him alone. Twice he asked me questions, in so kindly a manner as to win instant reply, and once he checked Cassion when he attempted to interrupt, his voice stern with authority. I told the story simply, plainly, with no attempt at equivocation, and when I ceased speaking the room was as silent as a tomb. De Baugis sat motionless, but Cassion stared at me across the table, his face dark ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... been a heretic, like Egremont!" said Morley. Sybil burst into tears. Morley sprang to her. "Swear by the holy Virgin, swear by all the saints, swear by your hope of heaven and by your own sweet name; without equivocation, without reserve, with fulness and with truth, that you will never give your heart or hand to Egremont;—and I will ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... the light of the moon, that discovered the lock of the trap-door to thee? Tell me, audacious boy, who thou art, and how long thou hast been acquainted with the Princess—and take care to answer with less equivocation than thou didst last night, or tortures shall ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... condition; but to explain in what manner this bundle was lost, and how my intercourse with Clavering had taken place, was to violate this promise. It was possible, perhaps, to escape the confession of the truth by equivocation. Falsehoods were easily invented, and might lead her far away from my true condition; but I was wholly unused to equivocation. Never yet had a lie polluted my lips. I was not weak enough to be ashamed ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... first, "the complete re-establishment, in loyalty, as shown by an honest recognition of the unity of the Republic, and the duty of allegiance to it at all times, without mental reservation or equivocation of any kind." How Mr. Sumner could determine that "the recognition of the unity of the Republic" was honest, how he could know whether there was not, after all, a mental reservation on the part of the rebels ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... Adoremus. Floods of ink have been poured out in discussing this question, some affirming, while others—and not the least, by any manner of means—denying the existence of the famous chord. No equivocation is possible. It is a simultaneously played chord held by four voices for a whole measure. What is certain is that Palestrina, by putting aside the rules, made a discovery, the significance of ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... false. Upon the next tree shalt thou hang alive, Till famine cling thee: if thy speech be sooth, I care not if thou dost for me as much.— I pull in resolution; and begin To doubt th' equivocation of the fiend, That lies like truth: "Fear not till Birnam wood Do come to Dunsinane," and now a wood Comes ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... their reply; they hesitate, and look eagerly in your face, to discover by your countenance what they ought to think and feel, and what sort of answer you expect. All who are governed by any species of fear are disposed to equivocation. Amongst the lower class of Irish labourers, and under-tenants, a class of people who are much oppressed, you can scarcely meet with any man who will give you a direct answer to the most indifferent question; their whole ingenuity, and they have ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... Hathorn," the lawyer said briskly, "we want neither hesitation nor equivocation. We may as well have it from you, because if you don't like telling the truth I can put the thirty miserable lads under your charge into the ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... of lying is in deception, not in words; a lie may be told by silence, by equivocation, by the accent on a syllable, by a glance of the eye attaching a peculiar significance to a sentence; and all these kinds of lies are worse and baser by many degrees than a lie plainly worded; so that no form of blinded conscience is so far sunk as that which ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... ill-treatment of a missionary. We find him trying to ruin the commerce of Switzerland because the Diet arrested a French spy, and deposing Queen Pomare because she interfered with the sale of French brandies; and, as his last act, eluding an express promise by a miserable verbal equivocation, and sowing the seeds of a future war of succession in order to get for one of his sons an advantageous establishment ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... for gods; that their aerial and spiritual bodies are nourished by the smell and smoke of the blood and fat of the animals which are immolated to them; and that the office of uttering oracles replete with falsehood, equivocation, and deceit has devolved upon them. At the head of these demons he places Hecate and Serapis. Jamblichus, another pagan author, speaks of them in the same manner, and with as ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... Julia. She putting in (as one may say) a good word for herself, said she knew Julia; as well she might, being herself the Julia of whom she spoke; telling how fondly Julia loved her master Proteus, and how his unkind neglect would grieve her: and then she with a pretty equivocation went on: 'Julia is about my height, and of my complexion, the colour of her eyes and hair the same as mine': and indeed Julia looked a most beautiful youth in her boy's attire. Silvia was moved to pity this lovely lady, who was so sadly forsaken by the man she ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... accustoming the child to consider the human body, in all its parts and functions, as something natural of which one need not be ashamed, lastly by giving instruction on the relations of the sexes, in due time and in a serious manner, instead of replying to ingenuous questions by pious falsehoods, by equivocation, or ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... feeling may be. It is a sort of play acted by ourselves and others. No one is deceived by it, since both sides shrink from the word which might crack the plaster and bring the house about our ears. There is an inward equivocation which fears to see clearly in itself, wants to make the best of everything, to reconcile old instincts and new beliefs, mutually destructive forces, like the ideas of Country and Humanity, War and Peace.... We are not sure which side to take; we lean first one way ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... himself about its influence upon the lives of the vulgar populace. But he was neither humanist nor schoolman. He had a conscience which made indifference impossible, and a simplicity and directness of vision which compelled him to brush aside all equivocation and go straight to the heart of things. With it all he was at once a devout and believing son of the Church, and a practical preacher profoundly concerned for the spiritual and moral welfare of the common people." (p. 66f. 87.) Had Luther considered his personal interests as Erasmus ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... 100,000 pieces of gold, with a wish to know whether a letter had not been omitted. Alkader received the treasure, and took the hint, instantly dispatching letters patent in full form, creating him Uaely which signifies, without equivocation, a sovereign ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... Anne. He was now satisfied that she had not delivered herself into the confidence of Dr. Bates. She had kept her secret close. It was not for him to make revelations. The newly aroused fear that even this good old friend might attach an unholy design to their motives impelled him to resort to equivocation, if not to actual falsehood. This was a side to the matter that had not been considered by him till now. But he was now acutely aware of an ugly conviction that she had thought of it afterwards, just as he was ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... me with words of equivocation to gain my ear," replied the king, mustering all the strength that still remained to him, "and you ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... another clear allusion to the traffic of the witches with the devil. After the events recorded in Act IV. sc. i., Macbeth speaks of the prophecies upon which he relies as "the equivocation of the fiend,"[3] and the prophets as "these juggling fiends;"[4] and with reason—for he has seen and heard the very devils themselves, the masters of the witches and sources of all their evil power. Every point in the play that bears upon the subject at all tends to show ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... seem possible, but, nevertheless, I shall prove, by quotations, that the whole theory of our author is based upon this paltry equivocation. ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... let it end but as we hope, thy reward shall not be wanting.—And now to business.—Sir Henry Lee, undo me the secret spring of yonder picture of your ancestor. Nay, spare yourself the trouble and guilt of falsehood or equivocation, and, I say, undo ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... transgression of the law of God, you will never be able to persuade yourself that it is entirely free from sin. The injury, too, to our neighbour, of a direct lie, can be so much more easily guarded against, that, for the sake of others, I am far more earnest in warning you against equivocation than against decided falsehood. It is sadly difficult for the injured person to ward off the effects of a deceitful glance, a misleading action, an artful insinuation. No earthly defence is of any avail here, as the sorrows of many a wounded ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... refused performance of his contract with the Squire. Jack came on the day appointed, attended by the attorney—though for that matter he might have safely left him behind, being fully as much master of all equivocation or chicanery as if he had never handled anything but quills and quirks from his youth upward. This, indeed, was probably the effect of his old training in Peter's family, for whose hairsplitting distinctions and Jesuistical casuistries, notwithstanding ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... the Jews he became as a Jew; and to the uncircumcised as one uncircumcised, he was "all things to all men!" and for this conduct he gives you his reason, viz. "that he was determined at any rate to gain some." If this be double dealing, dissimulation, and equivocation, I cannot help it; it is none of my concern, I leave it to the Commentators, and the reconciliators, the disciples of Surenhusius; let them look to it; perhaps they can hunt up some "traditionary rules of interpretation among the Jews," ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... declare that I do make this Declaration and every part thereof in the plain and ordinary sense of the words read unto me as they are commonly understood by English Protestants, without any evasion, equivocation, or mental reservation whatsoever and without any dispensation already granted me for this purpose by the Pope or any other authority or person whatsoever, or without any hope of any such dispensation from any person or authority whatsoever, or without thinking that I am or can be acquitted before ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... formation of types in our mind, with reference to which examples are to be judged. I say the formation of them, for we can hardly consider the theory that they are eternal as a possible one in psychology. The Platonic doctrine on that point is a striking illustration of an equivocation we mentioned in the beginning;[7] namely, that the import of an experience is regarded as a manifestation of its cause — the product of a faculty substituted for the description of its function. ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... beginning to end! What else should it be?" And the woman, in the hurry of her passion, confirmed the equivocation with an oath; and then ran on, as if to turn her own thoughts, as well as Grace's, into commonplaces about "a poor old mother, who cares for nothing but you; who has worked her fingers to the bone for years to leave you a little money when she is gone! I wish I were ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... most palpable contradiction to their very nature. But if there be any such thing in mankind as putting half-deceits upon themselves; which there plainly is, either by avoiding reflection, or (if they do reflect) by religious equivocation, subterfuges, and palliating matters to themselves; by these means conscience may be laid asleep, and they may go on in a course of wickedness with less disturbance. All the various turns, doubles, and intricacies in a dishonest heart cannot be unfolded or laid open; but ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... spoke he whipped out from his bosom a long, keen Spanish knife that in its every appearance spoke without equivocation ...
— The Ruby of Kishmoor • Howard Pyle
... trickster's minute tortuosities of construction—exactly in the opposite direction, from mere excess of sincerity, most unwillingly I found, in almost every body's words, an unintentional opening left for double interpretations. Undesigned equivocation prevails every where; [10] and it is not the cavilling hair splitter, but, on the contrary, the single-eyed servant of truth, that is most likely to insist upon the limitation of expressions too wide or too vague, and upon the decisive election between meanings potentially ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... circumstances might have met this imperative mode of questioning by dogged silence, or an evasive answer, was too uncertain as to what the doctor himself might have repeated to Jeanne-Marie, to attempt equivocation. ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... me, if you can, sir," said Jasper, in tones that were almost meek; "you, at least, can say nothing that I will not bear. But I am in my right when I ask you to tell me, without equivocation or reserve, if Sophy, though not actually within these walls, be near you, in this town or its neighbourhood?—in ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to use it but in one, a writer, who corrects this lax usage, and forces them to maintain the unity of the meaning, will always appear obscure; because he will oblige them to deny or to affirm consequences from which they were hitherto accustomed to escape under a constant though unconscious equivocation between the two senses. Thus, for example, Mr. Ricardo sternly insists on the true sense of the word Value, and (what is still more unusual to most men) insists on using it but in one sense; and hence arise consequences which naturally appear at once obscure and ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... the words. "I am henceforth," he said, "in doubt and fear, as much as an honest man can be, concerning every word Dr. Newman may write. How can I tell, that I shall not be the dupe of some cunning equivocation, of one of the three kinds laid down as permissible by the blessed St. Alfonso da Liguori and his pupils, even when confirmed with an oath, because 'then we do not deceive our neighbour, but allow him to deceive himself?' ... How can I tell, that I may not in this Pamphlet ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... indignant with the leading idea of the play, and sufficiently absorbed in its progress, at the end of the second act, to permit Lady Dolly to capture him before it occurred to him that he had the use of his legs. Her enthusiasm was so great that it reduced him to something like equivocation. She wanted to know if anything could be more splendid than Mr. Bradley as Lord Ingleton; she confided to Stephen that that was what she called real wickedness, the kind that did the most harm, and invited him, by inference, to a liberal judgment of stupid sinners. He sat ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... create it. Voltaire, in spite of his genius, would not perhaps have reached posterity under his name of Arouet, especially amongst the French, who always give way so easily to their keen sense of ridicule and equivocation. How could they have imagined that a writer 'a rouet' could be a man of genius? And D'Alembert, would he have attained his high fame, his universal reputation, if he had been satisfied with his name of M. Le Rond, or Mr. Allround? What would ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... at once answered "I did." Scarcely were these two words out of my mouth, when vehement applause resounded through the whole meeting. It was evident that the working people were so accustomed to expect equivocation and evasion from those who sought their suffrages, that when they found, instead of that, a direct avowal of what was likely to be disagreeable to them, instead of being affronted, they concluded at once that this was a person whom they could trust. ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... destitute of a show of reason. It was impossible to deny that Roman Catholic casuists of great eminence had written in defence of equivocation, of mental reservation, of perjury, and even of assassination. Nor, it was said, had the speculations of this odious school of sophists been barren of results. The massacre of Saint Bartholomew, the murder of the first William of Orange, the murder of Henry the Third of France, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the man whose real identity—if she knew it—she had been careful to conceal in the unsigned note to Mr. Galbraith? Broffin read the note again—"a deck-hand, whose name on the mate's book is John Wesley Gavitt," was the description she had given. It might, or it might not, be an equivocation; but the longer Broffin dwelt upon it the more he leaned toward the conclusion to which his theory and the few known facts pointed. The young woman knew the man in his proper person; she had been reluctant ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... I thought that by affecting indifference I could manage you better. But you saw through me at once, and very rightly became angry. So I fling my cards upon the table, I no longer beat about the bushes of equivocation. It is Aille, the daughter of Cormac, whom I love, and who can blame me? Did you ever in your life behold a more enticing figure, Anaitis?—certainly I never did. Besides, I noticed—but never mind about that! Still I ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... Mohammedan. Lord Aberdeen, the British Secretary of Foreign Affairs, then demanded of the Turkish Sultan that the Porte should not insult and trample on Christianity, "by treating as a criminal any person who embraces it;" but should "renounce, absolutely and without equivocation, the barbarous practice which has called forth the remonstrance now addressed to it." To this communication the following answer was made early in 1844: "The Sublime Porte engages to take effectual measures to prevent, henceforward, the execution and putting to death of the Christian ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... that he should not deviate from his route to go there; and Mr. Flinders acknowledges in his journal that he deviated voluntarily, (for the Isle of France was not in his passage, as the author of the above cited letter says). In fine, the passport granted to Mr. Flinders did not admit of any equivocation upon the objects of the expedition for which it was given: but we read in one part of his journal, that he suspected the war; and in another, that he had resolved to touch at the Isle of France, as well in the hope of selling ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... matter how unflattering, is always far more agreeable to me than equivocation, or disingenuous-ness. Does my ward believe that it will conduce to her future happiness to leave my roof, and find ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... her husband's affection. She thought it must have been the other sister, now in India, and that this gave the key to many allusions she had heard and which she marvelled at herself for not having understood. The equivocation had entirely deceived her, and she little thought she had been taking counsel with the rival who was secretly triumphing in Raymond's involuntary constancy, and sowing seeds of ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... their looks; though none of them signified their disgust any other way except my Lord Quiverwit, who ventured to say, with a sneer, that I was in the right to establish my own character, of which he had now no longer any doubt. Nettled at this severe equivocation, which raised a laugh at my expense, I replied with some warmth, "I am proud of having in that particular got the start of your lordship." He made no answer to my repartee, but with a contemptuous ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
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