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 the truth." There are even men of narrow minds and dishonest natures, who pride themselves upon their jesuitical cleverness in equivocation, in their serpent-wise shirking of the truth and getting out of moral back-doors, in order to hide their real opinions and evade the consequences of holding and openly professing them.

Institutions or systems based upon any such expedients must necessarily prove false and hollow.

"Though a lie be ever so well dressed," says George Herbert, "it is ever overcome." Downright lying, though bolder and more vicious, is even less contemptible than such kind of shuffling and equivocation.
Untruthfulness exhibits itself in many other forms: in reticency on the one hand, or exaggeration on the other; in disguise or concealment; in pretended concurrence in others opinions; in assuming an attitude of conformity which is deceptive; in making promises, or allowing them to be implied, which are never intended to be performed; or even in refraining from speaking the truth when to do so is a duty.

There are also those who are all things to all men, who say one thing and do another, like Bunyan's Mr.Facing-both-ways; only deceiving themselves when they think they are deceiving others--and who, being essentially insincere, fail to evoke confidence, and invariably in the end turn out failures, if not impostors.
Others are untruthful in their pretentiousness, and in assuming merits which they do not really possess.

The truthful man is, on the contrary, modest, and makes no parade of himself and his deeds.