He is not long soft and pathetick without some idle conceit, or contemptible equivocation.

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....

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.

It was one of those skillful equivocations, by means of which a man saves his character for consistency and judgment, without forfeiting his character for truth.