The time speedily arrived, however, when a persistence in this reticence would have involved me in an unworthy paltering with truth.
Sound her--an ounce of thorough work done now, Unquestionably thorough, will be worth A hundred weight of paltering by and by.
He was not given to paltering with himself, and nothing could utterly blind his strong common sense--a common sense that was so imperative to be heard, so difficult to answer, so impossible to evade.
But there was no paltering with the situation which arose in 724.
The Government, however, felt that there could be no paltering with the situation.
It must be confessed, however, that the shuffling and paltering among great men and little men, at that period, forms a somewhat painful subject of contemplation at the present day.
But this also assures that his struggle against temptation shall be weak and vacillating; and that when, through his palteringwith it, it culminates, he shall at once fall before it.
There is no paltering with that inward voice; no possibility but the acceptance of the present urgent right,--the instant fleeing from the wrong, though with it is bound up all of enjoyment life can know.
There is no paltering with temptation, such as brings the sister so near to hopeless fall.
What I had heard was, of course, of a nature to excite pity and terror, not to mention alarm and despondency, and it would be paltering with the truth to say that I was pleased about it.
To say that I had not resented this foul deed, which seemed to me deserving of the title of the crime of the century, would be paltering with the truth.
At length he hit on a plan, and then peace seemed to come to him, a poor paltering show of peace, and he went about no longer like a beaten and broken horse.
There was now not an instant's paltering between them--not a word of explanation.
Such paltering with principle was impossible to Harriet Martineau.
Far from her was that common paltering with the conscience by which so many men confuse their minds--the poor pretence that truth must not be spoken for fear that the speaker's influence for future worthy work may be injured by his boldness.
