War and Peace vocabulary

So he paused for a second and temporized. "It's for your sake, Herminia," he said again; "I can't bear to think of your making yourself a martyr. And I don't see how, if you act as you propose, you could escape martyrdom."

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However, I temporized with myself, of course—for, was I not wavering between right and wrong, when the thing is always done?

Charles Dickens. Great Expectations (1861)

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“But they heard him at the council of war and will hear him when he talks sense, but to temporize and wait for something now when Bonaparte fears nothing so much as a general battle is impossible.”

Leo Tolstoy. War and Peace

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But alas, instead of making his move Abelard fretted and temporized and despaired.

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Only a few years before this Party hack would not have dared temporize with a senior KGB officer.

Tom Clancy. The Hunt for Red October, p.326 (1984)