"Specious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... favourite domestic. My principles, whatever might be their rectitude, were harmonious and flexible. I had devoted my life to the service of my patron. I had formed conceptions of what was really conducive to his interest, and was not to be misled by specious appearances. If my affection had not stimulated my diligence, I should have found sufficient motives in the behaviour of his mother. She condescended to express her reliance on my integrity and judgment. She was not ashamed to manifest, at parting, ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... those days so blase to this sort of allocution as they are now; Monsieur de Grandville's appeal had the power of things new, and the jurors were evidently shaken. After this passionate outburst they had to listen to the wily and specious prosecutor, who went over the whole case, brought out the darkest points against the prisoners and made the rest inexplicable. His aim was to reach the minds and the reasoning faculties of his hearers just as Monsieur de Grandville had aimed at the heart and the imagination. ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... is a very specious one. By Government taking to itself each branch of business in succession till all was in Government hands we should arrive at Communism. For each successive interference of Government a reason from economy can generally be found: as ...
— Speculations from Political Economy • C. B. Clarke
... seem to give the distinction of art to the natural thoughts and feelings of cultivated people. Culture is far more dangerous than Philistinism because it is more intelligent and more pliant. It has a specious air of being on the side of the artist. It has the charm of its acquired taste, and it can corrupt because it can speak with an authority unknown in Philistia. Because it pretends to care about art, artists are not indifferent to its judgments. ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... Governor, he nevertheless considered as an insult; but especially the advice, which he deemed both highly derogatory to his integrity as a man, and his fidelity as a governor. The bait thrown out to appearance was specious and flattering, yet the Governor had too much penetration, not to see under its false colours the naked hook. The letter, however, served to give him notice of the association, and the resolution of the people, which it was his duty by all means possible to defeat. For this purpose ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... exclusively of paper, and we ought not on that account to be surprised at the facility with which laws were obtained to carry into effect the paper system. Honest and even enlightened men are sometimes misled by the specious and plausible statements of the designing. But experience has now proved the mischiefs and dangers of a paper currency, and it rests with you to determine whether the proper ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... do not rise superior to this ignorance concerning the health of their bodies that they become the prey of the unscrupulous charlatans who thrive upon the maladies of humanity, and the patent medicine vendors whose specious advertisements beguile them of their money. The humiliating part of it is that these same imposters (in a large majority of cases) possess but little more knowledge of these subjects than their dupes, but are absolutely devoid of conscientious scruples. It behooves every intelligent individual ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... spreading through all {312} the powers of the soul and bringing it into a Divine Life."[27] There are many close imitations of this real Gospel which on the outside look exactly like it, but they only assume "the garish dress and attire of religion," they put on "the specious and seemingly-spiritual Forms" without the inward Life and Power which are always the mark of true religion. These "mimical Christians" reform their looks, instruct their tongues, take up the fitting set of duties and system of opinions, underprop their ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... minds of superficial observers, the air of casuistry from the nicety of its distinctions and the earnest desire of the speaker to present truth in its finest shades— in Follett, the advocate, applied indiscriminately to the development of the specious shows of things as of their essences, wore all the semblance of sincerity; and, in one sense, deserved it. No fears, no doubts, no scruples shook him. Of the license which advocacy draws from sympathy with ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... present happy state, it is requisite, not only that you steadily discountenance irregular oppositions to its acknowledged authority, but also that you resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles, however specious the pretexts. One method of assault may be to effect, in the forms of the constitution, alterations which will impair the energy of the system, and thus to undermine what cannot be directly overthrown. In all ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... bore a specious appearance, and seemed well calculated for the end which they professed to be the object of all these innovations; they ordered that four knights should be chosen by each county; that they should make inquiry into the grievances of which their neighborhood had reason to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... or States would be formed, which would increase the political power of the South—especially in the United States Senate, where she greatly needed representation to counterbalance the influence of the small States of the North in that body. These arguments were specious, but it was well understood they were only meant to justify a vote for the ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... secured, and when the whole of that which I so much court, and which I will have, is in my possession, I will take his life, or you shall. Ay, you are just the man for such a deed. A smooth-faced, specious sort of roan are you, and you like not danger. There will be none in taking the life of a man who is chained to ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... whithersoever she would, Sir Morgan would not have felt much surprise at seeing her at this time or in this place: but there was something unusual in her appearance which excited his attention. Her eyes were fierce and glittering; but her manner was unnaturally soft and specious: and she seemed bent on some mission of peculiar malignity. Sir Morgan motioned to her to take a chair: but she was always rigidly punctilious in accepting no favor or attention in Walladmor Castle; and at present she seemed not to observe his courtesy, but leaned forward ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... must, however, be regarded as having commenced in his reign. His Eastern conquests were more specious than solid, resulting in a nominal rather than a real subjection of Palestine and Syria to his yoke. His subjects grew unaccustomed to the use of arms during the last twenty, or five and twenty, years of his life. Above all, luxury, intrigue, and superstition invaded ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... a different thing zoology has become in our generation from what it was, for example, when young Haeckel was a student at Jena back in the fifties. At that time the science of zoology was a conglomeration of facts and observations about living things, grouped about a set of specious and sadly mistaken principles. It was held, following Cuvier, that the beings of the animal kingdom had been created in accordance with five preconceived types: the vertebrate, with a spinal column; the articulate, with jointed body and members, as represented by the familiar crustaceans ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... missions, politically considered, was, however, that of the Duque de Feria,[70] who arrived in France with a brilliant suite, charged with the most specious and high-sounding professions and promises of Philip of Spain, who pledged himself to support the Regency under all circumstances, and to place at the disposal of the Queen whatever assistance she might require against ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... thus acquired the intelligent principle in them becomes enamoured of those evil ways, and they are filled with a desire to commit sins. And when, O good Brahmana, their friends and men of wisdom remonstrate with them, they are ready with specious answers, which are neither sound nor convincing. From their being addicted to evil ways, they are guilty of a threefold sin. They commit sin in thought, in word, as also in action. They being addicted ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... "Oh, you are specious, Mr. Boyce," the Pretender smiled at him. "Nay, if all my friends were such as you, I should not be in this queer plight." He put his hand on Harry's shoulder. "How am I to ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... that merit, even the rarest and the greatest, suffers at the hands of those of the same profession; the hatred of truth and great capacity; the ignorance of scholars in their own province; and the fact that true wares are almost always despised and the merely specious ones in request. Therefore let even the young be instructed betimes that in this masquerade the apples are of wax, the flowers of silk, the fish of pasteboard, and that all things—yes, all things—are toys and trifles; and that of two men whom he may see earnestly engaged in business, ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... so intolerable that you desire to commit suicide, under the specious plea of philanthropic martyrdom?" said Doctor Moffat, whose keen black eyes scanned her closely, from ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... palliate our sloth by the specious pretext of difficulty." Nothing, in fact, is too difficult to accomplish, which we set about, with a proper consideration of those difficulties, and pursue with perseverance. The Indian language cannot be acquired so easily as the Greek or Hebrew, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... and because!" replied Richard in his vivacious way. "I am not sure, my dear girl, but that it may be wise and specious to preserve that outward indifference. It may cause other parties interested to become lax about their interests; and people may die off, and points may drag themselves out of memory, and many things may smoothly happen ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... the most apparently artless, natural, purposeless manner! But the same end was always kept steadily in view. What I have witnessed this morning convinces me of your aims. Your movements were so skilfully managed that they scarcely seemed open to suspicion. The most specious coquetry has governed all your actions. You were always attired more simply than any one else; but by this very simplicity you thought to render yourself remarkable, and attract a larger share of attention. You always pretended to shun observation, that you might be brought into ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... largely a chronicle of stupendous noises, of pageants and tumults and shoutings, of strategies and manoeuvres, secret conclaves and cabals, of sinister intrigues and specious platitudes in parliament to cover them up, and of occasional great episodes when the leader feels called to vindicate himself and his followers. Most of these emotional experiences seem to have ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... the House of Shu, and had entered into correspondence with Chu-ko Liang, Prime Minister of that State. The Wei general Ssu-ma I was then military governor of Wan, and getting wind of Meng Ta's treachery, he at once set off with an army to anticipate his revolt, having previously cajoled him by a specious message of friendly import. Ssu-ma's officers came to him and said: "If Meng Ta has leagued himself with Wu and Shu, the matter should be thoroughly investigated before we make a move." Ssu-ma I replied: "Meng Ta is an unprincipled man, and we ought to go and punish him ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... Su would readily give vent to specious utterances, while, with others, and behind his back, he on the contrary expressed his indignation against his improvidence in his mode of living, and against his sole delight of eating ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... reduction of the governing body of the City is based upon a specious theory, which will soon be found to be utterly untenable. It is pretended that if the Courts of Aldermen and of Common Council were rendered more exclusive, it would be considered a greater distinction to belong ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... with Spain on very fitting conditions, that by such means the scandal of an impious war between "the very Christian" and "the very Catholic" King would cease, and a relief be afforded to France very much needed. Such was the policy of the Queen's old friends. It was at least specious, and reckoned numerous partisans among men the most intelligent and attached to the interests of their country. Mazarin, the disciple and successor of Richelieu, had higher views, but which it was not easy at first to make Anne of Austria comprehend. By degrees, however, ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... cousin Betty, there are lunatics endowed with a marvellous shrewdness to commit senseless villanies, and to put on a specious seeming. Depend upon it, my unfortunate brother-in-law's wanderings at night were not solely spent in communings with the trees and brooks. Who knows what might be discovered if he were under proper restraint? And it is to you, the only relation I have, that I must turn for assistance ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... No specious splendour of this stone Endears it to my memory ever; With lustre only once it shone, And blushes modest as ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... up with so fervent a welcome, was no small thing. If I did it, it would be at the cost of Hammerfeldt's confidence, perhaps of his services; he might refuse to endure such an open rebuff. And I knew in my heart that the specious justifications were unsound; I should not act because of them, they were the merest pretext. I should give what she asked to her. Should I not be giving her my honour also, that public honour which I had learned to ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... in the exercise of their religion; and that the honor of the women should be observed. Sir William agreed to the conditions, but declined signing the articles, pompously intimating that the "word of a general was a better security than any document whatever." The French governor, deceived by this specious parade of language, took the New England filibuster at his word, and formally surrendered the keys of the fortress, according to the verbal contract. Again was poor Acadia the victim of her perfidious enemy. Sir William, disregarding the terms of the capitulation, ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... the circulating currency was so much, of course, added to the nominal prices of commodities, and these prices, thus unnaturally high, seemed, to those who looked only at the appearance, to indicate great prosperity. But such prosperity is more specious than real. It would have been better, probably, as the shock would have been less, if prices had fallen sooner. At length, however, they fell; and as there is little doubt that certain events in Europe had an influence in determining the time at which this fall took ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... upon us; on the base, groveling, and atrocious character of the wretch to whom thou hast sold thy honor. But what is this? Is not thy effrontery impenetrable and thy heart thoroughly cankered? Oh, most specious and ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... irresponsible for his acts. These verdicts, undoubtedly, gave rise to a grave discussion, whether the law, as it now stands, was sufficiently stringent to have reached these cases; and though this question was decided in the affirmative, the mere entertaining of the doubt afforded another specious confirmation of the impression, that a singular fatality was attendant upon a state prosecution. This idea received another support from the case of Lord Cardigan, who, about this period, was unexpectedly acquitted, on technical ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... workingman trained in trades-union methods. He knows that the boy's natural development is arrested, and that the abnormal activity of his body and mind uses up the force which should go into growth; moreover, that this premature use of his powers has but a momentary and specious value. He is forced to these conclusions because he has seen many a man, entering the factory at eighteen and twenty, so worn out by premature work that he was "laid on the shelf" within ten or fifteen years. He knows very well that he can do nothing ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... September to bag a hundred leverets in the course of the day. He lost, of course; and upon being questioned as to his reason for making so preposterous a bet, he confessed that he had been induced to do so by the specious promise of an advertisement, in which somebody professed to have discovered "a powder for the removal ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... in your face and manners which authorises trust. Let us continue to be friends. You need not fear," she said, laughing, while she blushed a little, yet speaking with a free and unembarrassed voice, "that friendship with us should prove only a specious name, as the poet says, for another feeling. I belong, in habits of thinking and acting, rather to your sex, with which I have always been brought up, than to my own. Besides, the fatal veil was wrapt round me in my cradle; for you may easily ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... looked again, for the boy's eyes were discomfortingly on his fat, black face, and the porter straightway decided to be polite. Yet, for all his specious seeming of unconcern, Samson was waking to the fact that he was a scarecrow, and his sensitive pride made him cut his meals short in the dining-car, where he was kept busy beating down inquisitive eyes with his defiant gaze. He resolved after some thought upon a definite ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... legality of Slavery, as tolerated in some parts of the United States, and insist that the question of its abolition should be left to the decision of the people of the District, themselves. When we consider that slaves are, generally, viewed as property, this kind of reasoning assumes a specious appearance: yet it must be borne in mind, that the inhabitants of the District of Columbia are not represented in any legislative body; but that the sovereignty over that particular section of the country is vested in the people of the States—And when we reflect, that the question ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... form may bring about a contamination of meaning. The verb to gloss, or gloze, means simply to explain or translate, from Greco-Lat. glossa, tongue; but, under the influence of the unrelated gloss, superficial lustre, it has acquired the sense of specious interpretation. ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... been fairly continuous, while the literature of our nation exhibits a false start—a break, silence, repentance, then a renewal on right glorious lines—our students of literature have been drilled to follow the specious continuance while ignoring the actual break, and so to commit the one most fatal error in any study; that of mistaking the inessential for ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... bit of specious nonsense," returned the ghost, throwing a quart of indignation into the face of the master of Harrowby. "It may rank high as repartee, but as a comment upon my statement that you do not know what you are talking about, it ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... sent a line to Pasquale to ask him to join us. His gay wit will lend to the entertainment a specious air of revelry which Carlotta will ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... be regarded as connected with the Catholic worship. The Calvinists were masters of Caen, and, incited by the information of what had taken place at Rouen, they resolved to repeat the same outrages. Under the specious pretext of abolishing idolatrous worship, they pillaged and ransacked every church and monastery: they broke the windows and organs, destroyed the images, stole the ecclesiastical ornaments, sold the shrines, committed pulpits, chests, books, and whatever was combustible, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... alteration either in form or reality, respecting institutions formed for their security. The first kind of alteration leads to the last. As violations of the rights of the governed are commonly not only specious, but small at the beginning, they spread over the multitude in such a manner as to touch individuals but slightly. Every free state should incessantly watch, and instantly take alarm at any addition being made to the power exercised over them." Who are a free people? Not those over whom ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... had recourse on entering France, evinces consummate artifice of plan, and not a little adroitness and dexterity in the execution. The specious appearance of submission to papal authority, in the penance of wandering seven years without lying in a bed, combined three distinct objects. They could not have devised an expedient more likely to recommend ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... retorted, that when he had learnt to reason, he renounced Catholicism. The true fact is, that when Bayle had only studied a few months at college, some books of controversial divinity by the catholics offered many a specious argument against the reformed doctrines. A young student was easily entangled in the nets of the Jesuits. But their passive obedience, and their transubstantiation, and other stuff woven in their looms, soon enabled such a man as Bayle ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... enlightened communities are not yet wholly free. It is even now customary to heap abuse upon those persons who in a season of scarcity, when prices are rapidly rising, buy up the "necessaries of life," thereby still increasing for a time the cost of living. Such persons are commonly assailed with specious generalities to the effect that they are enemies of society. People whose only ideas are "moral ideas" regard them as heartless sharpers who fatten upon the misery of their fellow-creatures. And it ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... rung: My Lord, I'll prove, or I'm a liar— Whom interrupting then with ire, Thus check'd the Judge: Oh, proud yet mean! And canst thou hope from me to screen Thy foolish heart, and o'er it spread A veil to cheat th' omniscient dead? And canst thou hope, as once on Earth, Applause to gain by specious worth; Like those that still by sneer and taunt Would prove pernicious what they want; And claim the mastership of Art, Because ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... of Europe was aroused and concerted representations were urgently made at Constantinople. Midhat Pasha disarmed his opponents by summarily introducing the British constitution into Turkey, but, needless to say, Bulgaria's lot was not improved by this specious device. Russia had, however, steadily been making her preparations, and, Turkey having refused to discontinue hostilities against Montenegro, on April 24, 1877, war was declared by the Emperor Alexander II, whose patience had become exhausted; ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... The simple, specious argument to Lorey was convincing. "It air true," he admitted slowly. "Nobody else would a' gin ye th' word." The angry youth paused in black, murderous thought. "He air a-comin' hyar, to-night," he went ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... main-spring of the whole matter, we cannot put it off any longer. Mr. Gammon is a lawyer—that is quite enough; we need not say more. You all know that stage solicitors are more outrageous villains than even their originals. Mr. Gammon is, of course, a "fine speciment of the specious," as Mr. Hood's Mr. Higgings says. It is he who, finding out a flaw in Aubrey's title, angled per advertisement for the heir, and caught a Tittlebat—Titmouse. It is he who has so disinterestedly made that gentleman's fortune.—"Only just merely for the sake of the costs?" one naturally ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... five hundred years your family has run a slave pen. Your fortune is based upon it. And you have perpetuated this traffic in flesh on the specious reasoning that a court judgment of half a millennium ago is as good today as when it was handed down. Never once did anyone have the moral courage to re-examine that old decision. Never once did any ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... with their specious promises, have had much to do with this enterprise," Crosby retorted; and then, turning to Monmouth, he went on earnestly: "You have been deceived by lying agents, such men as Wildman and Danvers. By this ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... morality of the course that bothered him. He was far too clear-headed to blink at the essential fact that at heart we were spies on a foreign power in time of peace, or to salve his conscience by specious distinctions as to our mode of operation. The foreign power to him was Dollmann, a traitor. There was his final justification, fearlessly adopted and held to the last. It was rather that, knowing his own limitations, his whole nature shrank from the sort of action entailed by the ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... Ill feeling seeks to destroy—already it turns to wickedness. Gombei's face betrayed him. His talk was specious. At sight of the letter he read the doubting heart learns the truth. Burdensome the knowledge for one's heart. The mind tastes the bitterness of adversity. The hair of the head, behind the temples, ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... be, Angels either;)—I should experience a kind of generous sympathy with this bright-eyed enthusiast; even while I proceeded to test his wild dream by what I believed to be the standard of right Reason. Then, as the specious fabric was seen suddenly to collapse and melt away, should I not, with affectionate sorrow, secretly mourn that such brilliant parts had not been enlisted on the side of Truth? and feel as if I could have been content to go about for life maimed in body, or hopelessly impoverished in estate, ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... thought. The privileged position of the earth had been a capital feature of the whole doctrine, as to the universe and man's destinies, which had been taught by the Church, and it had made that doctrine more specious than it might otherwise have seemed. Though the Churches could reform their teaching to meet the new situation, the fact remained that the Christian scheme sounded less plausible when the central ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... is more tolerable to these carpet-warriors. There reigns over Barbusse's book a specious impersonality. Despite the multitude and the sharp outline of the figures on his stage, not one of them has a commanding role. We see no hero of romance. Consequently, the reader feels less intimately associated with the hardships recounted ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... the value of ethics in conduct. He truly wished to make practical in his dealings the high principles he admired. But his cupidity was strong and his will and courage were weak, so he oftentimes argued himself, by specious casuistry, into words and acts which were untruthful and dishonest. Oftentimes, indeed, they came dangerously near to actual crimes against the laws of the State. The other man had rather limited standards of honesty. His ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... shalt not kill!' 'Twas deeply traced In living stone, and thunder-sealed; It cannot be by man effaced, Or fashion's impious act repealed. And though we seek with thin deceit, To blind Jehovah's piercing gaze, Call murder, honor,—can we cheat The Omniscient with a specious phrase? Alas! 'tis adding crime to crime, To veil the blood our hands have spilt, And seek by words of softening chime, To lend blest virtue's charm to guilt. Oh, no! in vain the world may give The fearful deed a gentle name— I slew my friend, and now I live To feel perdition's glowing ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... theory would take no harm. The only question in my mind was how far I could afford to be misrepresented as laughing at that for which I have the most profound admiration. I am surprised, however, that the book at which such an example of the specious misuse of analogy would seem most naturally levelled should have occurred to no reviewer; neither shall I mention the name of the book here, though I should fancy that the ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... this matter," he said, plunging at once into the depths of the subject. "I have wealth which you desire. To obtain it you will sell your revenge on a helpless woman whose hand you have obtained, but whose love you have never sought. Your offer is specious, but to accept it would be wickedness in me, degradation to her. I know well that she would die rather than escape your vengeance on such ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... it through the three long, lonely years that followed, in all of which he never saw his darling. Half a continent was between them and Mrs. Adair had vetoed vacation visits, under some specious pretense. But every week brought its letter from Sara. Old Man Shaw had every one of them, tied up with one of her old blue hair ribbons, and kept in her mother's little rose-wood work-box in the parlour. He spent every Sunday afternoon re-reading them, with her photograph before him. He ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... horse merely tormented him, and only his sister could drag him out by specious pleas of need, to help in those Christmas works, where she had much better assistance in Anne and the curates—the one for clubs and coals, the ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... admitted against him that in Pamela he produced an essay in vulgarity—of sentiment and morality alike—which has never been surpassed. In these days it is hardly less difficult to understand the popularity of this masterpiece of specious immodesty than to speak or think of it with patience. That it was once thought moral is as wonderful as that it was once found readable. What is more easily apprehended is the contempt of Henry Fielding—is the justice of that ridicule he was moved to visit it withal. To him, a scholar ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... are many specious sayings invented by those who have reasons of their own for trying to prove that when the Son of God spoke these words He didn't mean what He said; and those who have invented these things are amongst the worst enemies of God and His ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... the end, dele. and add— , which latter deals with certain specious arguments adduced by these writers against the a priori possibility of a ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous
... neither did he wish to reject responsibility if he were consulted and trusted. Above all things he hoped to resist the temptation of taking soundings, of calculating his successes. Fame and renown allured him, none but he could say how much; but he knew in his heart that he contemned their specious claims, and he hoped that they would some day cease to trouble him. He knew that much depended upon health and vigour; but on the other hand he believed that the most transforming power in the world was the desire to be different; why he could not stride ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the express design of relieving the Jews, whose sufferings had already become a matter of European notoriety.[26] The Rumanians, however, were already strongly hostile to Jewish emancipation, and the reigning Prince of Moldavia misled the Powers with specious promises of a type which has since become bitterly familiar to the Jews all over the world.[27] The Report of the Bucharest Commission of 1858 accepted these promises and excluded all references to Religious Liberty from its scheme.[28] The first draft of the Convention submitted to the Conference ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... is cynical; all that refuses Trust in an altruist aim; Every specious plea that excuses Greed in necessity's name; Studied indifference; scorn that amuses; Cleverness, shifting the blame; Selfishness, pitying trust it abuses— Treason and these are the same. Finally, when the last lees ye shall turn from (E'en intellectuals flinch in the end!) Ashes of loneliness ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... some honest, timorous persons, and the credulous, whose imagination it inflames, without ever staying the hand of great rogues, without imposing on them more than the decency of civilization and a specious morality of life, restrained chiefly by ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... Here was an incurable passion, based upon the specious argument that galleries and museums had neither consciences nor stomachs. You could not hurt a wall by robbing it of a painting—a passion that would abide with him until death. Not one of these treasures in the casings was honourably his, but they were more to him than all his legitimate ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... unfortunately prove abortive; if I should fail to rouse the friends of peace and humanity to its succour and relief, I shall have experienced a sufficient mortification, without undergoing the additional one of being classed with a band of ruffian levellers, who under the specious pretext of salutary reform seek, like the jacobin revolutionists of France, the subversion of all order, and the substitution in its stead, of a reign of terror, anarchy, and rapine, amidst the horrors of which they may satiate their avarice, and glut their revenge. Let ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... to my own. In an instance where I remember to have tried to do as the good boys do in the story-books, by giving away my one cooky, the quick reaction into common sense sent me in grief to my mother, making use of natural tears and a specious plea of what I had done to get me another cooky, or perchance two. It was a dead failure. My mother knew too well the importance of the great moral lesson to let me reap material advantage from my good deed. She relegated me to the unfailing good dry bread, explaining how ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... acquaintance. Shun the idler, though his coffers overflow with pelf. Avoid the irreverent—the scoffer of hallowed things; and him who "looks upon the wine while it is red;" him too, "who hath a high look and a proud heart," and who "privily slandereth his neighbor." Do not heed the specious prattle about "first love," and so place, irrevocably, the seal upon your future destiny, before you have sounded, in silence and secrecy, the deep fountains of your own heart. Wait, rather, until your own character and ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... upon the first of men The apple pressed with specious cant, O, what a thousand pities then That Adam ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... they had been witnesses to some phenomenon, which it was very difficult to account for otherwise than by supernatural causes; but when I have questioned further, I have always found that these “staggering” wonders were not even specious enough to be looked upon as good “tricks.” A man in England who gained his whole livelihood as a conjurer would soon be starved to death if he could perform no better miracles than those which are wrought with so much effect in Syria ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... circumcised?" added he. "I have not the honour to be so," say I. "Well, friend," continues the Quaker, "thou art a Christian without being circumcised, and I am one without being baptised." Thus did this pious man make a wrong but very specious application of four or five texts of Scripture which seemed to favour the tenets of his sect; but at the same time forgot very sincerely an hundred texts which made directly against them. I had more sense than to contest with him, since there is no possibility of convincing an enthusiast. A man ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... real, undoubted land, swelling up from the bosom of the deep, with its plains, and hills, and forests, and rocks, and streams, and strange, new races of men;—these are incidents in which the authentic history of the discovery of our Continent excels the specious wonders of romance, as much as gold excels tinsel, or the sun in the heavens outshines the flickering ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... humanity, we are glad that the end of the Union seems more likely to be ridiculous than terrible.... But for our own benefit and the instruction of the world we wish to see the faults, so specious and so fatal, of their political system exposed, in the most effective way.... And the venerable Lincoln, the respectable Seward, the raving editors, the gibbering mob, and the swift-footed warriors of Bull's Run, are no malicious tricks of fortune played off on an unwary nation, ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... atrocities, and horrors, and disgusts of war have never been half enough insisted upon by the teachers of the people; but the worst of evils and the greatest of follies have been varnished over with specious names, and the gigantic robbers and murderers of the world have been holden up for imitation to the weak ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... unscrupulous adventurers, who hasten to take advantage of general public ignorance of the true inwardness of affairs. Basing their operations on this lack of knowledge, and upon the tendency of human nature to give credence to widely advertised and high-sounding descriptions and specious promises of vast profits, these men find little difficulty in conjuring money out of the pockets of the unsophisticated and gullible, who rush to become stockholders in concerns that have "airy nothings" for a ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... step toward the realisation of which involved an act of piracy. But when I came to talk to him I soon found that he was even worse to deal with than the boatswain; for although perhaps not quite so ignorant as the latter, he was still ignorant enough to be convinced by the specious arguments of the Socialist, to readily accept the doctrine of perfect equality between all men, and—like most of those whose labour is of an arduous character, and whose life is one of almost constant hardship and privation—to be dazzled by the alluring prospect of being able ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... every object. Woodbine Lodge was then a paradise. Now, there is scarcely a ray of this warm sunshine. Yet there had been no bereavement—no affliction; nothing that we refer to a mysterious Providence. No,—but the tempter was admitted. He came with specious words and deceiving pretences. He vailed the present good, and magnified the worth of things possessing no power to satisfy the heart. Too surely has he succeeded in the ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... palace walls, from one year's end to another, with his tigers, snakes, pigeons, priests, and women. He permits tourists to visit his grounds, but will himself see no one. It would not seem that he owes any affection to the English, who, under some specious pretense, seized his private property, including his valuable jewels, and sold them for the benefit of Queen Victoria's treasury. As was said by the British press at the time, the English had no more right to those precious ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... his father; you may call it Injustice, or by what other name you will; yet it can never be against Reason, seeing all the voluntary actions of men tend to the benefit of themselves; and those actions are most Reasonable, that conduce most to their ends. This specious reasoning is ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... of the historians of the future who will have the necessary material in hand to follow these immense reactions in their various fields and they will find their real point of departure not in dates but in the human attitudes and outlooks which then made a specious show of being final—and were not final ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... of Hugh Carnaby himself—fear which must last a lifetime; which at any moment, perhaps long years hence, might find its bitter fulfilment, and work her ruin. For Harvey Rolfe was not a man of the stamp of Hugh Carnaby: he would not be hoodwinked in the face of damning evidence, or lend easy ear to specious explanations. The very fact that she could explain her ambiguous behaviour was to Alma an enhancement of the dread with which she thought of such a scene between herself and Harvey; for to be innocent, and yet unable to force conviction of it upon his inmost mind, would cause her a deeper ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... said he, in that specious soothing we accord to children, "you lay right still, and I'll go out a spell and do a few chores, and then mebbe I'll come in ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... questioning of simple disciples (who knew not, as we do, how much had been indeed revealed), and measure with some justice the strength of the temptation which betrayed these teachers into adding to the word of Revelation. Together with this specious and subtle influence, we must allow for the instinct of imagination exerting itself in the acknowledged embellishment of beloved truths. If we reflect how much, even in this age of accurate knowledge, the visions of Milton have become confused in the minds of many persons ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... punishment or loss through the ignorance of their customers. The pitiful part of it is that the self-respecting poor often fall into their traps. A family in pecuniary straits for the first time is naturally attracted by the specious advertisements of the chattel-mortgage companies, which offer to lend money on goods that the borrower keeps in his possession, and promise that all negotiations shall be strictly confidential. This seems an easy way out of present difficulties without ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... to reasonably love it as a craft limitation, a necessity, a thing which places bounds and limits to what you can do in this art, and prevents tempting and specious tricks. ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... wanton licence being cloaked with the specious garb of religion could not easily be repressed, especially when the sovereign authorities introduced a sect of which they, were not the head; they were then regarded not as interpreters of Divine right, but as sectarians ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part IV] • Benedict de Spinoza
... upon more mature consideration MR. THORPE will see that it could not be a substantive that was intended; and, as he admits my conjecture to be specious, that he will, in the course of his very useful labours, ultimately find it not only specious but correct. Meanwhile, I submit to his consideration, that beside the analogy of the Gothic sprauto, we have in Icelandic spretta, imperf. spratt, "subito movere, repente salire, emicare;" and sprettr, "cursus citatus," and I do think ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 16, February 16, 1850 • Various
... pretend to present my Reader with a compleat Fabrick, or so much as Modell; but only to bring in Materials proper for the Building; And if I did not well know how Ingenious the Curiosity and Civility of Friends makes them, to perswade Men by specious allegations, to gratifie their desires; I should have been made to believe by persons very well qualify'd to judge of matters of this nature, that the following Experiments will not need the addition of accurate Method and speculative Notions ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... up, as alone the industry of a nation can be, under a system of protection, from time to time modified as experience has dictated; but never destroyed by specious abstractions or the dogmas of mere doctrinaires. Fifty years ago manufactures were unknown there, and the caravans trading to the interior and supplying the wants of distant tribes in Asia went laden with the products of British and other foreign workshops. When the present emperor mounted the ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... contrary, and obstructing the work of Reformation, and propagation of Religion out of false respects and creature interest. As this hath formerly abounded in the land, to the prejudice of the Cause and Work of God, so of late it is revived, spreading with specious pretences of vindicating wrongs done to his Majesty. We desire not to be mistaken, as if respect and love to his Majesty were branded with the infamous mark of Malignancy; But hereby we warn all who would not come under this soul stain, not onely in their speech and ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... been organized in the spring of 1893, had been incorporated under a State charter of its own, and had occupied a club room in the gymnasium building. This club obtained an early success in one of the political struggles in the ward and thus fastened upon itself a specious reputation for political power. It was at last so torn by the dissensions of two political factions which attempted to capture it that, although it is still an existing organization, it has never regained the prestige of ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... discerning view even of those who are placed at a secure distance from the flames of persecution. A reason has been assigned for the conduct of the emperors towards the primitive Christians, which may appear the more specious and probable as it is drawn from the acknowledged genius of Polytheism. It has already been observed, that the religious concord of the world was principally supported by the implicit assent and reverence which the nations of antiquity expressed for their respective traditions ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... I should leave," replied my father easily. "I am comfortable here for the moment. I would not be outside. Even the arguments you have given are specious. You got your furs back, and if I recall, they proved to be so badly moth eaten that they were not fit for ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... you it is possible to hoodwink the insane by any specious show of argument, don't believe them; my own experience is that demented persons can be quite perversely logical when it suits ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... With these specious arguments Frank tried to quiet his conscience, but he could not help feeling that Satan had possession of him, and as he hurried through the hall he said aloud, as if speaking ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... a multitude of authors; if people think the better of me for that, I will think the worse of them for their judgement. It beeing soe easyly a thinge to make this specious show, he must be a fool that cannot gain whatsoever repute is to be gotten by it. If people will admire him for this, they may; I shall admire such for nothing else but their good indexs. As long as books have these, on what subject may we not coat as many others as we please, and never ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... My pen fails me. He was one of a few great charlatans of saintly presence and of specious words, fascinators of women, and domineerers of men, who have been sent to the world at intervals through all the ages. Had he lived in the twelfth or thirteenth century of our era he would no doubt have been canonised. This rough, ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... independent, serving the state only for the love of his country, abhorring office and the task of governing, but wise and prudent, neither to be led by any art or trickery to do what is not just, nor even to entertain base suspicions of another, without some very specious cause to give them credibility. This is strange, Laura, and I do not understand it. Did your father express a wish that you should see me, so that I may act openly in the business ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... numbered years and undergone trial sufficient to be acquainted with true policy and the line of duty. Both bade me instantly reject the new solicitation, and pursue, with singleness of purpose, the occupation which fortune had mercifully vouchsafed to me. All this was specious and most just, and sounded well to the understanding that was not less able to look temperately and calmly upon the argument in consequence of the previous overflow of feeling. Reason is never so plausible ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... his skin and slept with them. Yet it is not as a sayer of particular good things that Athelred is most to he regarded, rather as the stalwart woodman of thought. I have pulled on a light cord often enough, while he has been wielding the broad-axe; and between us, on this unequal division, many a specious fallacy has fallen. I have known him to battle the same question night after night for years, keeping it in the reign of talk, constantly applying it and re-applying it to life with humorous or ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... common defense (or in the defense of the like conditions of life for their fellowmen elsewhere) that the citizens of such a commonwealth can without shame entertain or put in evidence a spirit of patriotic solidarity; and it is only by specious and sophistical appeal to the national honour—a conceit surviving out of the dynastic past—that the populace of such a commonwealth can be stirred to anything beyond a defense of their own proper liberties or the liberties of like-minded ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... and careless as the shepherd that carols to the rising day. I had not then been thus entangled in misfortune, thus every way closed in to remediless despair. I had not then been a monument of impotence and misery for the world to gaze at. Ye are all combined against me! Under a specious, smiling countenance you all conceal a heart of gall. But your hypocrisy and your mummery shall serve you to little purpose. Point me, this instant point me, to a path for the gratification of my wishes, or dearly shall you rue the shallowness of your invention and the treachery ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... By heaven but thou shalt!" burst fiercely and wrathfully from Stanley. "Is it not enough, that thou hast changed my whole nature into gall, made truth itself a lie, purity a meaningless word, but thou wilt shroud thyself under the specious hood of duty to another, when, before heaven, ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... faith. Faith is the soul's free assent to the living Word of God as, through amazing grace, it offers itself to man in the desperate straits of his life. Man is so made that he perpetually seeks some desired satisfaction and, in his restless search for this unattained good, he tries many false and specious trails, is endlessly baffled and deceived, and finally discovers, if he is fortunate enough to come to himself, that he is like a shipwrecked man on a single plank with sea everywhere about him and no haven in sight. In this strait the Light, which he has not ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... spoken like a chief with a large heart," was the specious response of the wily Mohawk, "moreover, the Good Spirit also appeared, and said, 'Let the Black Snake's son and the Bald Eagle's daughter become man and wife, that peace may be found to dwell among the lodges, and the war-hatchet be buried ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... of Bedford; and tells you "It is Pontius Pilate's wife's chambermaid's sister's hat." To my knowledge of this very hat, it may be added that the covering of straw was never used among the Jews, since it was demanded of them to make bricks without it. Therefore, this is nothing but, under the specious pretense of learning and antiquities, to impose upon the world. There are other things which I can not tolerate among his rarities, as, the china figure of the lady in the glass-case; the Italian engine, for the imprisonment of those who go abroad with it; both ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... to weaken the power of the Government in times past than any other cause whatever. The editor of the Constitution, they believed, had steadily lost his influence—an influence which he could never hope to regain unless some imprudent act of his enemies should once more create for him a specious sympathy and notoriety. Nothing, it was felt, would be so certain to give him a fictitious importance as to prosecute him for treason, at least until he should proceed to such lengths as to render a prosecution imperative. Sir Francis Head, Chief Justice Robinson, ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... poor man comes to the feast of Nature and finds no cover laid for him, and adds that "she bids him begone," for he did not before his birth ask of society whether or not he is welcome. This is now the pet theory of all genuine English bourgeois, and very naturally, since it is the most specious excuse for them, and has, moreover, a good deal of truth in it under existing conditions. If, then, the problem is not to make the "surplus population" useful, to transform it into available population, but merely to let it starve to death in the least objectionable way and ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... Schlegel, who insisted on the artist. To Schlegel we owe the famous image in which popular poetry is a tower, and the poet an architect. Hundreds may fetch and carry, but all are useless without the direction of the architect. This is specious argument; but we might reply to Schlegel that an architect is only wanted when the result is required to be an artistic whole. The tower of Babel was built by hundreds of men under no superintendence. Schlegel's intention, however, is no less clear than that of Jacob ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... in their muck, to settle down and live my life according to their bourgeois standards, to have grossness of soft flesh replace able sinews, to submerge mentality in favor of a specious craftiness of mind which passes in the "city" for brains—well, I'm on the road. And, oh, girl, girl, I wish you were ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... are simply high lights picked out by attention in this nebulous continuum, and identified by names. Ideas, in the original ideal sense of the word, are indeed the only definite terms which attention can discriminate and rest upon; but the unity of these units is specious, not existential. If ideas were not logical or aesthetic essences but self-subsisting feelings, each knowing itself, they would be insulated for ever; no spirit could ever survey, recognise, or compare them; and mind would have disappeared ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... Those who think themselves not likely to be encumbered with the performance of their promises, either from their known inability, or total indifference about the performance, never fail to entertain the most lofty ideas. They are certainly the most specious, and they cost them neither reflection to frame, nor pains to modify, nor management to support. The task is of another nature to those who mean to promise nothing that it is not in their intentions, or may possibly be in ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... interrupted in their progression, and that the principal event, being not advanced by a due gradation of preparatory incidents, wants at last the power to move, which constitutes the perfection of dramatick poetry. This reasoning is so specious, that it is received as true even by those who in daily experience feel it to be false. The interchanges of mingled scenes seldom fail to produce the intended vicissitudes of passion. Fiction cannot move so much, but that the attention ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... drawing and in the elements of practical law is, we believe, given in common to all. It is the first, we may say, unavoidable, characteristic of a scientific school, that its work is always well done. Other schools may or may not be specious contrivances, well or ill managed; but the very nature of science is to clear itself in whatever it touches, and be honest and practical. Its tendency is to classify and select, to cast away the obsolete and test and adopt ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... adherents of Cromwell, and yet it became increasingly clear to him that their support was even more valuable than that of some whose loyalty was of older date. The Presbyterians and the Roman Catholics had specious claims to advance for consideration; and even the Levellers, the Anabaptists, and the Independents had motives, which dexterous manipulation might foster, and which might make them ready to support the cause of the King, especially ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... Yet, if I surrendered in this matter of the tariff, I should be doing exactly what I had criticized so many of my colleagues for doing—for more than one man in the House and the Senate had given me the specious excuse that it was necessary to go against his conscience, here, in order to hold his influence and his power to ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... maintained in its purity by the Persian monarch, who did not allow himself to be imposed upon by the specious eloquence of the new teacher, but ultimately rejected the strange amalgamation that was offered to his acceptance. It is scarcely to be regretted that he so determined. Though the morality of the Manichees was pure, and though their religion is regarded ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... victim. Somewhere he had formed the acquaintance of my brother, which fact merely increased my confidence in him. I need not dwell in detail upon what followed—the advice of romantic girls, the false counsel of a favorite teacher, the specious lies and explanations accounting for the necessity for secrecy, the fervent pleadings, the protestations, the continual urging, that finally conquered my earlier resolves. I yielded before the strain, ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... the nuts when ripe, being lighter than water, rose to the surface, instead—as is the habit of supermarine arboreal produce—of falling to the ground. Scarcely could a more splendid illustration of the fallacies of hypothetical reasoning be found, than the pages that contain this specious and far-fetched argument. Even the celebrated Rumphius, who wrote so late as the eighteenth century, assures his readers that 'the Calappa laut,' the Malay term for the nut, 'is not a terrestrial production, which may have fallen by accident into the sea, and there become hardened, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... that love and faith can work wonders. And we also know that, in this mortal life, our means are exquisitely adapted to our ends; and that we can gain no solid comfort or advantage by striving to elbow our way a few inches further into the region of the occult and abnormal. Magic, however specious its achievements, is only a mockery of the Creative power, and exposes its unlikeness to it. "It is the attribute of natural existence," a profound writer has said, "to be a form of use to something higher ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... the church, retaining their veneration for the notions respecting the sacraments established as catholic in the primitive ages, have some specious ground of hope that the administration of the ordinance to their infants will be accompanied with a communication of grace, in consequence of the imagined occult connexion between the 'elements' and the grace of the ordinance, they have, with something ...
— The Baptist Magazine, Vol. 27, January, 1835 • Various
... Another specious fraud was the 'Distress Committee'. This body—or corpse, for there was not much vitality in it—was supposed to exist for the purpose of providing employment for 'deserving cases'. One might be excused for thinking that any man—no matter what his past may have been—who is willing to work for ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell |
