"Specious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Sophists, or by Aristophanes in the full riot of his satire: but the total abnegation of principle here implied could never have been openly avowed by a responsible agent, speaking for the most polished community in Greece. Even the worst criminals seek to give some specious colour to their villainy; and the condemned felon, who will face death without a tremor, shudders at the cry of execration which greets his appearance at the scaffold. So hard it is, even for the most depraved, to stifle the last embers of the moral sense. We cannot suppose, ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... difference. Mr. Roosevelt himself was as much subject to serve at the call of the law, as were the policemen. He was not a dictator merely, he was part and parcel of the strength that he invoked. The reason for obedience rested on the same ground in each case—service in which each stood equal. It is a specious form of mistake to suppose that "men can legislate just what they wish to." They can legislate only what the majority decrees, and they can legislate effectively only what they have power to enforce. Had the saloon-keepers refused to obey Miss Willard, not she, but Mr. Roosevelt and ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... lad! That's the right principle. But now, think of it. Macassar Oil will defend itself; it is specious; the name is seductive. It is offered as a foreign importation; and we have the ill-luck to belong to our own country. Come, Popinot, have you the courage to kill Macassar? Then begin the fight in foreign lands. ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... Then, he 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 ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... a devilish and unnatural gain, Mowing the lean grass of a Golgotha! Sitting, like grinning Death, to clutch the toll Tortur'd from poverty, disease and crime; And this with Liberty upon their lips, Bland words, and specious, vulgar eloquence, And large oaths, with the tongue thrust in the cheek, And promises, as if they were as gods, And no God held the forked bolt above! Turning all ignorance, disaffection, hatred, Religion, and the peasant's ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... fatal period, in thine eyes A shrewd and unrelaxing witness lies; While, on the specious language of the tongue, Deceit has hateful, warning accents hung; And outrag'd nature, struggling with a smile, Announces nought but discontent and guile; Each trace of fair, auspicious meaning flown, All that makes man by man belov'd and known. Silence, indignant thought! ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... clear up the mystery. 'But,' thought Edward, 'suppose—and Heaven forgive me, I cannot help supposing it—that Manston is not that honourable man, what will a young and inexperienced fellow like Owen do? Will he not be hoodwinked by some specious story or another, framed to last till Manston gets tired of poor Cytherea? And then the disclosure of the truth will ruin and blacken ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... dragging matters from bad to worse, to engender ill feeling and finally desperation. This narrow, selfish policy had about as much soundness in it as the idea upon which it was based, so often brought forward with what looks very suspiciously like a specious effort to cover mental indolence with a glittering generality, "that the Filipino is only a grown-up child and needs a strong paternal government," an idea which entirely overlooks the natural fact that when ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... morals of Thucydides, the extensive knowledge of Xenophon, the sublimity and grandeur of Titus Livius; and to avoid the careless style of Polybius, I have borrowed considerable ornaments from Dionysius Halicarnasseus, and Diodorus Siculus. The specious gilding of Tacitus I have endeavoured to shun. Mariana, Davila, and Fra. Paulo, are those amongst the moderns whom I thought most worthy of imitation; but I cannot be so disingenuous, as not to own the infinite obligations I have to the Pilgrim's Progress of John Bunyan, and the Tenter Belly ...
— English Satires • Various
... values could not fail to exert a penetrating influence on human 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 importance of the human race was shown to be an illusion. Would ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... condemned to death.] But in spite of this specious pleading, all the other animals came crowding around with so many grievous charges that matters began to look very dark indeed for the fox. In spite of all Reynard's eloquence, and of the fluent excuses ever on his tongue, the council pronounced him guilty, and condemned ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... the heathen temples of Bacchus or Venus, &c., &c." But these sallies of religious frenzy must not extinguish the praise, which is due to Mr. William Law as a wit and a scholar. His argument on topics of less absurdity is specious and acute, his manner is lively, his style forcible and clear; and, had not his vigorous mind been clouded by enthusiasm, he might be ranked with the most agreeable and ingenious writers of the times. While the Bangorian ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... Maria, and in the morning the 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
... foundation. For what is commonly believed, to the effect that on account of unsteadiness of character they are generally hoodwinked, and that, therefore, it is right for them to be governed by the authority of a guardian, seems rather specious than true. As a matter of fact, women of mature age do manage their own affairs, and in certain cases the guardian interposes his authority as a mere formality; frequently, indeed, he is forced by the supreme ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... not in 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
... 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 ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... resisting me, has appeared so fraught with probable dishonour, that I still turn upon them, in spite of the greater or less success of final dissimulation, a rueful and wondering eye. These productions have in fact, if I may be so bold about it, specious and spurious centres altogether, to make up for the failure of the true. As to which in my list they are, however, that is another business, not on any terms to be made known. Such at least would seem my resolution so far as ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... and thankful, and regulate our tempers and behaviour, whatever good opinion we may form of our notions or state, we are but deceiving ourselves. The tree is known by its fruits [James. ii. 17,18.; Matt. vii. 20.]. In this way true believers are equally distinguished from profane sinners, and from specious hypocrites. The change in their hearts always produces a change in their whole deportment. Sin, which was once their delight, is now the object of their hatred. It was once necessary as their food, but now they avoid it as poison. They war, watch, and pray against it. And their ...
— An Address to the Inhabitants of the Colonies, Established in New South Wales and Norfolk Island. • Richard Johnson
... was thinking less of his hearers than of himself. It was at that point, Hastings thought afterwards, that he began to lose himself in the ugly enjoyment of describing his cruelty. It was as if the horrors to which he gave voice subjected him to a specious and irresistible charm, equipped him with a spurious courage, a ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... 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, is affected by the feelings. To draw out the ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... this, it had seemed that there was so much to be said: on his side all the eloquence of passion; on hers the specious arguments of a woman who thinks she may still be able to withhold and restrain. All these possibilities had fled. They looked at each other, almost antagonists, because of being so much the reverse. She drew back, holding herself apart, unwilling to accept that necessity of decision; ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... eternal dispute between Church and State. Throughout the quarrel, Henry and Elizabeth maintained that they were merely reasserting their ancient royal prerogative over the Church, which the Pope of Rome had usurped. English revolutions have always been based on specious conservative pleas, and the only method of inducing Englishmen to change has been by persuasions that the change is not a change at all, or is a change to an older and better order. The Parliaments of the seventeenth century regarded the Stuart pretensions, as Henry and ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... in dead earnest what Sterling had vaguely suggested as conceivable, that Shakspere meant Hamlet to represent Montaigne, but he strenuously argues that the poet framed the play in order to discredit Montaigne's opinions—a thesis which almost makes the Bacon theory specious by comparison. Naturally it has made no converts, even in Germany, where, as it happens, it ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... 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 savors of irrelevant impertinence. You do not know ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... show that the demon seeks only to deceive and corrupt even those to whom he makes the most specious promises, and to whom he seems to ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... some of the adherents of Charles the First, or the easy good-breeding for which the court of Charles the Second was celebrated. But, if we must make our choice, we shall, like Bassanio in the play, turn from the specious caskets which contain only the Death's head and the Fool's head and fix on the plain leaden chest which conceals ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... a sharp cut between the heroic age of imaginative literature and the classical age which presently succeeded it, and offer in this respect a tolerable parallel to the civil wars raging in England about the same time. It is specious, but convenient, to discover a date at which a change of this kind may be said to occur. In England we have such a date marked large for us in 1660; French letters less obviously but more certainly can be said to start ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... 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 ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... these and similar objects a great number of persons conspired together, being led by Modestus, the prefect of the praetorium, who was a complete slave to the wishes of the emperor's eunuchs, and who, under a specious countenance, concealed a rough disposition which had never been polished by any study of ancient virtue or literature, and who was continually asserting that to look into the minute details of private actions was beneath the dignity of the emperor. He ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... other point of view you like, and you must see you are making a mistake. A woman in your position sets an example whether she will or not, and even if all your best reasons for this step were made public, you would do harm by it, for there are only too many people apt enough as it is at finding specious excuses for their own shortcomings, who would be glad, if they dared, to do likewise. And you would not gain your object after all. You would neither be happy yourself, nor make Lorrimer happy. People like you are sensitive ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... critique of reason leads at last, naturally and necessarily, to science; and, on the other hand, the dogmatical use of reason without criticism leads to groundless assertions, against which others equally specious can always be set, thus ending ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... himself on the 1st of 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, Vol. 1, September 12, 1841 • Various
... worthless money; and in the course of their dealings the modern use of the word humbug took its rise, as in the phrases "that's a piece of uimbog (humbug)," "don't think to pass off your uimbug on me." Hence the word humbug came to be applied to anything that had a specious appearance, but which was in reality spurious. It is curious to note that the very opposite of humbug, i.e. false metal, is the word sterling, which is also taken from a term applied to the true coinage of the realm, as sterling ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various
... liberate the country from the yoke of tyrants. Although I could write volumes to illustrate my assertion, at this occasion I mention only a little of my experience in the Convention to overcome evil with good, and which was in the newspapers announced under the specious title: Philanthropic Convention to overcome evil with good, and which was held on the 10th, 11th and 12th days of September, 1858, in Utica of the State of New-York. The most influential persons in that Convention were Abolitionists of the Garrisonian and Gerrit Smith's parties and Spiritulists ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar
... civilization." she added. They were both young enough to be pleased with cleverness for its specious self. ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... brother's schemes can hardly be ranked with follies: you, who know what scheme it was, who know the intoxicating influence of a specious project, and, especially, the wonderful address and plausibility of Catling, the adventurer who was my brother's prime minister and chief agent in that ruinous transaction, will not consider their adopting ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... was delighted, and could hardly do enough for her imperial friend. She ruled the King, and could make and unmake ministers at will. They hastened to do her pleasure, disguising their subserviency by dressing it out in specious reasons of state. A conference at her summer-house, called Babiole, "Bawble," prepared the way for a treaty which involved the nation in the anti-Prussian war, and made it the instrument of Austria in the attempt to humble Frederic,—an attempt which if successful would give the hereditary ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... reply came promptly—'My dear son, you have no country, for Mr Tilley has sold us all to the Canadians for eighty cents a head.' Time and full discussion would have dissipated the forces of the anti-confederates. But constituencies worked upon by specious appeals to prejudice are notoriously hard to woo during an election struggle. There existed also honest doubts in many minds regarding federation. Enough men of character and influence in both parties joined ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... miracles, and next Paley's "argument from design" broke down before the law of natural selection; the suffering so manifest in nature is seen to be compatible rather with Natural Selection than with the goodness and omnipotence of God. Darwin felt to the full all the ignorance that lay hidden under specious phrases like "the plan of creation" and "Unity of design." Finally, he tells us "the mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... was poured, Like gathering clouds, full many a foreign band, And HE, their Leader, wore in sheath his sword, And offered peaceful front and open hand, Veiling the perjured treachery he planned, By friendship's zeal and honour's specious guise, Until he won the passes of the land; Then burst were honour's oath and friendship's ties! He clutched his vulture grasp, and called fair ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... the saddle was practically a new arm, of far greater efficiency than cavalry of the old type, and Jackson at once recognised, not only its value; but the manner in which it could be most effectively employed. He was not led away by the specious advantages, so eagerly urged by young and ambitious soldiers, of the so-called raids. Even Lee himself, cool-headed as he was, appears to have been fascinated by the idea of throwing a great body of horsemen across his enemy's communications, spreading terror amongst his supply trains, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... improved so well their Amusements into an Art, that the credulous and ignorant are induced to believe there is some secret Vertue, some hidden Mystery in those darling Toys of theirs: when all their Bustling amounts to no more than a learned impertinence and all they teach men is but a specious method of throwing ...
— The Present State of Wit (1711) - In A Letter To A Friend In The Country • John Gay
... Storm and rage as he might, and did, David could not discover his niece's whereabouts. He spent a wearying and tortured night, a harassed and miserable day, devoted to frantic inquiries in every possible direction with interludes of specious lying to the infatuated Bulmer. But enlightment came on Thursday morning. A letter arrived by the first ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... attractions, Littimer tried to occupy himself by looking at the people around him. The omnifarious assembly included pale, prim-whiskered young clerks; shabby, lonely, sallow young women, whose sallowness and shabbiness stamped them with the mark of integrity; other females whose specious splendor was not nearly so reassuring; old men, broken-down men, middle-aged men of every ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... satisfied enough. The work is rather too light, and bright, and sparkling; it wants shade; it wants to be stretched out here and there with a long chapter of sense, if it could be had; if not, of solemn specious nonsense, about something unconnected with the story; an essay on writing, a critique on Walter Scott, or the history of Buonaparte, or something that would form a contrast, and bring the reader with increased delight ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... with the fairest seeming and the most specious pretences, affirming time after time that, though he had deceived before, he now was honest, he that shall yet again and again repeat his acts of infamy cannot complain, if no man should be willing to trust his happiness to ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... crush me at last. 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 do good ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... faults in prose and verse. But how barbarously we yet write and speak your Lordship knows, and I am sufficiently sensible in my own English.[27] For I am often put to a stand in considering whether what I write be the idiom of the tongue, or false grammar and nonsense couched beneath that specious name of Anglicism, and have no other way to clear my doubts but by translating my English into Latin, and thereby trying what sense the words will bear in a more stable language." Tantae molis erat. Five years later: "The proprieties ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... or the Kaffir mentally and morally capable of self-government or of taking part in a self-governing State? The experience of Cape Colony tends to the affirmative view. American experience of the negro gives, I take it, a more doubtful answer. A specious extension of the white man's rights to the black may be the best way of ruining the black. To destroy tribal custom by introducing conceptions of individual property, the free disposal of land, and the free purchase of gin may be the handiest method for the expropriator. ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... 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 than itself, so that whatever ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... equal rights in the Territories is a specious fallacy. Concede the demand of the slavery-extensionists, and you give up every inch of territory to slavery, to the absolute exclusion of freedom. For what they ask (however they may disguise it) is simply this,—that their local law be made the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... speaking. The truth had died out of his tone when he mentioned the money, and his words were the specious wheedling of one who knows the generous kindliness of those with whom he is dealing. But Prudence gave no heed to anything but that which found an answering chord in the passionate emotion which swayed her. Hervey's appeal to get away drew from her some slight proportion ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... in art is good in literature also. Give the common people good models, and there is no danger but they will appreciate and understand them. Never stoop to pander to a depraved taste, no matter what specious pleas you may hear for tolerating the low in order to lead to the high, or for making your library contribute to ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... what Desired'st thou, what truly spurr'd thee on? Was policy of state, the ascendency Of the Heracleidan conquerors, as thou said'st, Indeed thy lifelong passion and sole aim? Or did'st thou but, as cautious schemers use, Cloak thine ambition with these specious words? I know not: just, in either case, the stroke Which laid thee low, for blood requires blood; But yet, not knowing this, I triumph not Over thy corpse—triumph not, neither mourn,— For I find worth in thee, and badness too. What mood of spirit, therefore, shall we call ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... seem both friendly and calculating, and hurried on with his specious explanation before the fellow should ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... whom she recounted the strange machinations of the count. The two women held a fresh council and had not considered, the time it takes to sing Alleluia, twice, these warlike appearances, watches, defences, and equivocal, specious, and diabolical orders and dispositions before they recognised by the sixth sense with which all females are furnished, the special danger which threatened ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... from this," pursued Lionel, and at the same time cursed the foul fiend that prompted him such specious words to cloak his villainy. "I would abstract him from it, and yet 'tis against my conscience that he should go unpunished for I swear to you, Master Leigh, that I abhor the deed—a ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... that the German government (October 27) addressed a note to the President of the United States asking him to intercede with our allies for an armistice and a conference for discussion of terms of peace. This led to four exchanges of notes, in which Germany's expressions were specious, and assumed a right to negotiate. The last of these notes was submitted by President Wilson to the allied council at Paris; and the council answered by referring the whole question of armistice to Marshal Foch and the allied ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... was to the emperors or popes of Rome. The only difference is, the sacrifice of domestic industry is now more disguised. The thing is done, but it is done not openly by public deliveries of the foreign grain at low prices, but indirectly under the specious guise of free trade. Government does not say, "We will import Polish grain, and sell it permanently at thirty-six or forty shillings a quarter;" but it says, "we will open our harbours to the Polish farmers who can do so. We will ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... Fashion for a few late Centuries is so scandalous to Christianity and common Understanding, and grounded upon none of those specious Occasions which at first made it warrantable, that it is high Time the Wisdom of Commonwealths should interpose to discountenance and abrogate a pernicious Liberty, whose Source springs alone from Folly and Intemperance. Sir Walter Raleigh has very wisely observ'd ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe
... ladies should share the blame—they think our admiration of beauty so great, that knowledge in them would be superfluous. Thus, like garden-trees, they seldom show fruit, till time has robbed them of the more specious blossom.—Few, like Mrs. Malaprop and the orange-tree, are rich ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... from my present state of purgatory."* (* Decaen Papers.) On Christmas Day he sent a letter suffused with indignant remonstrance, wherein he alleged that "it appears that your Excellency had formed a determination to stop the Cumberland previously even to seeing me, if a specious pretext were wanting for it," and reminded Decaen that "on the first evening of my arrival...you told me impetuously that I was imposing on you." He continued, in a strain that was bold and not conciliatory: "I cannot think that an officer of your rank and judgment to ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... Stockholm, where he anchored in the harbor and opened negotiations with the Swedish senate, then the great source of power in the land. He promised to govern the kingdom in the way they might decide upon and be to them a mild and merciful father. While some of them were seduced by his specious promises, the majority had no fancy to make him their "father." But they made a truce with him until the matter could be decided, the Danes being allowed to buy provisions in the town, and on their side selling salt to the citizens, this being at that time ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... usury, but hope to escape 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
... it,—"he would, by no means come to him, but sent his excuse." Behind the treacherous sunshine he saw a black cloud, ready to break. The Ninevites' remedy he felt was now called for. So he gathered his congregation together and appointed a day of fasting and prayer to avert the danger that, under a specious pretext, again menaced their civil and religious liberties. A true, sturdy Englishman, Bunyan, with Baxter and Howe, "refused an indulgence which could only be purchased by the ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... hand; a book of selected Bible stories on which Dr. Pound had set the seal of his approval, with a glazed picture cover, representing Daniel in the lions' den and an angel standing beside him. On the somewhat specious plea that Holy Writ might have a chastening effect, she was permitted to minister to me in my shame. The amazing adventure of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego particularly appealed to an imagination needing little ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... creation is not only a mere specious mask for our ignorance; its existence in Biology marks the youth and imperfection of the science. For what is the history of every science but the history of the elimination of the notion of creative, or other interferences, with the natural order of the phaenomena ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... to act a more important part upon the British scene. After having for some time indulged these prospects in secret, he determined to accommodate himself with the company and experience of the Tyrolese, whom, under the specious title of an associate, he knew he could convert into a very serviceable tool, in forwarding the execution ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... the price of retaining its religious constitution. The truth seems to be, that the king, in asserting his unlimited power, rather fell in with the humour of the prevailing party than offered any violence to it. Absolute power in civil matters, under the specious names of monarchy and prerogative, formed a most essential part of the Tory creed; but the order in which Church and king are placed in the favourite device of the party is not accidental, and is well ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... that Branwen should believe him. Tinsel, indeed! then here was yet more tinsel which she must receive as gold. He was very angry, because his vanity was hurt, and the pin-prick spurred him to a counterfeit so specious that consciously he gloried in it. He was superb, and she believed him now; there was no questioning the fact, he saw it plainly, and with exultant cruelty; then curt as lightning came the knowledge that what Branwen ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... to, had attracted great attention throughout the country, he availed himself of the opportunity of this preliminary meeting to reply to what he regarded as common misconceptions. "Anything," he said, "that argues me into the idea of perfect social and political equality with the negro is but a specious and fantastic arrangement of words, by which a man can prove a horse-chestnut to be a chestnut horse. I will say here, while upon this subject, that I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it now exists. I believe I have no lawful ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... words, and probably his wishes; for he had always lived under the constant visible profession of principles, directly opposite to those of his new friends. His vehement and frequent speeches against admitting the Prince of Orange to the throne are yet to be seen; and although a numerous family gave a specious pretence to his love of power and money, for taking an employment under that monarch, yet he was allowed to have always kept a reserve of allegiance to his exiled master; of which his friends produce several ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... Catholics on this matter is specious. In the first place, the early Christian martyrs were not Roman Catholics. The claim of the Roman Church that the papacy starts with Peter is a myth. In the second place, much patient labor has been expended in the ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... station, for example, is curiously remote from the city, and it is annoying on wintry nights to drive through six miles of level mud when you are anxious to reach home and dinner; so much so that, in my egoistical moments, I would have been glad if our administration had adopted the more specious British method. But come now! You cannot raise that objection against the ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... addressed, in the same hostile and peremptory manner, the daughters of China; and the pretensions of Attila were not less offensive to the majesty of Rome. A firm, but temperate, refusal was communicated to his ambassadors. The right of female succession, though it might derive a specious argument from the recent examples of Placidia and Pulcheria, was strenuously denied; and the indissoluble engagements of Honoria were opposed to the claims of her Scythian lover. [29] On the discovery ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... 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 ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... ought to be weakened or disarmed: if, being once reduced, it be disposed to renew the contest, it must from thenceforward be governed in form. Rome never avowed any other maxims of conquest; and she every where sent her insolent armies under the specious pretence of procuring to herself and her allies a lasting peace, which she alone would reserve the power ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... her, but she wouldn't hear it. Pursuit and continuation of the scene, with or without another specious semblance of apology and reconciliation such as had terminated their previous passage-at-arms, was out of the question; the corridor was lively with young women in gayest plumage, fluttering to and from the dressing-rooms, ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... 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 ...
— 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 his feet in the combat, held fast to the rock, leaning against sophism, dragged in the dust, now getting the upper hand of his conscience, again overthrown by it! How many times, after an equivoque, after the specious and treacherous reasoning of egotism, had he heard his irritated conscience cry in his ear: "A trip! you wretch!" How many times had his refractory thoughts rattled convulsively in his throat, under the evidence of duty! Resistance ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... reverence prone; and as a God Extoll him equal to the highest in Heav'n: Nor fail'd they to express how much they prais'd, 480 That for the general safety he despis'd His own: for neither do the Spirits damn'd Loose all thir vertue; least bad men should boast Thir specious deeds on earth, which glory excites, Or close ambition varnisht o're with zeal. Thus they thir doubtful consultations dark Ended rejoycing in thir matchless Chief: As when from mountain tops the dusky clouds Ascending, while the North ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... barrack-yard a few minutes later to visit the incarcerated pratique. "On my life, civilization develops comfort, but I do believe it kills nobility. Individuality dies in it, and egotism grows strong and specious. Why is it that in a polished life a man, while becoming incapable of sinking to crime, almost always becomes also incapable of rising to greatness? Why is it that misery, tumult, privation, bloodshed, famine, beget, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... crowded mass-meeting last evening, Calvin Ross Shelby, congressional candidate for the suffrages of an intelligent people, stultified alike his hearers and himself. We shall not dignify his specious appeal to local pride with the easy exposure of its fallacy; the victory were too cheap; but since he glibly sought to establish a parallel between his own questionable political methods and the legendary deeds of the founders of our community, we too will frame ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... being reminded of their former intimacy; but he had not told her how its discontinuance after they had left Heavy Tree Hill had affected her son, and how he still cherished his old admiration for that specious rascal. Nor had he told her how this had stung him, through his own selfish greed of the boy's affection. Yet now that it was possible that she had met Van Loo that evening, she might have become aware of Van Loo's power over ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... people go to Government House who cannot be considered to be in society. To have been to a Government House ball is no more, mutandis mutatis, than to go to a Court ball at home. Neither will give you admission into the inner circle; and though that circle may not offer any but specious advantages and have but little to recommend it in preference to three or four other societies in the town, admission into it is coveted, and inclusion within its boundaries is as much a reality as if its walls ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... study either the body or the mind of man, very often find the most specious and pleasing theory falling under the weight of contrary experience: and instead of gratifying their vanity by inferring effects from causes, they are always reduced at last to conjecture causes from effects. That ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... was held in connection with the Allabahad Exposition, with his Highness the Maharaja of Darbhanga as the presiding officer. In the course of his "Presidential Address" the Maharaja delivered a lengthy eulogy of the caste system, resorting in part to so specious ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... disaster of Ulm. In regard to strategy and the theory of war he displayed much ability; and his administrative talents and energy as Quarter-Master-General in 1793 should have screened him from the criticism that he discoursed brilliantly on war in salons, and in the council rhetorically developed specious and elegant plans.[345] ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... school board must be obtained. This ought not to be granted if those seeking permission are either cranks or quacks. The Viavi people are said to be obtaining such permission for use of schoolhouses under the specious plea of social hygiene. Others, well intentioned but with extreme purist ideas and unwise methods, occasionally volunteer their services. The school authorities should be cautious. But when those who apply ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... leave the period of Pope, we can see the dull inadequacy of a worn-out collection of rules giving way before the honest, individual approach of Cowper. "Many a fair precept in poetry," says Dryden apropos of Roscommon's rules for translation, "is like a seeming demonstration in the mathematics, very specious in the diagram, but failing in the mechanic operation."[461] Confronted by such discrepancies, the theorist has again and again had to modify his "specious" rules, with the result that the theory of translation, though a small, is yet a living ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... was so romantic;" and thereupon they named him as executor to their wills and guardian to their sons. None but he could, in carrying the lawsuit against Mordaunt, have lost nothing in reputation by success. But there was something so specious, so ostensibly fair in his manner and words, while he was ruining Mordaunt, that it was impossible not to suppose he was actuated by the purest motives, the most holy desire for justice; not for himself, he said, for he was old, and already ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... modified rapture. He was grateful for financial independence, but the idea of taking up the bathtub business struck him with dismay. So with prudent forethought he sought out Amory Carruth, a lawyer of his acquaintance; and to him explained his dilemma. It required some measure of specious ingenuity to explain his errand as he wished; but Mr. Carruth, being used to squirming legatees, understood and came to the point with a candor which made Pelgram wince. After first flippantly suggesting that the plumbing ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... percentage of the divorce cases; for, if you desire very heartily to see anything of another member of a house-party, this lax-minded and easy-going providence will somehow always bring the event about in a specious manner, and without any ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... suddenly charged with it, denied his hand and seal with a coolness that could only belong to one long practised in the arts of dissimulation, and demanded time to prove his innocence. Arch-deceiver as the English king himself was, he yet allowed himself to be duped by this specious effrontery, and Bruce escaping into Scotland, murdered Comyn in the church of the Grey Friars, at Dumfries. Soon afterward he was crowned at Scone, and the revolution spread far and wide; upon hearing which, Edward sent an invading army into Scotland. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... hostage. While they are talking, she will remain in Caesar's palace. Afterward she will be removed quietly to thy house, and that will be the end. Bronzebeard is a cowardly cur. He knows that his power is unlimited, and still he tries to give specious appearances to every act. Hast thou recovered to the degree of being able to philosophize a little? More than once have I thought, Why does crime, even when as powerful as Caesar, and assured of being beyond ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... demands. But the searching pencil of Mr. Raemaekers brings home to every seeing eye the true and unvarying character of Teutonic "frightfulness." All instincts of humanity are cynically defied on the specious ground of military necessity. Mr. Raemaekers is at one with Milton in ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... his genuine colours wear, That specious False-One, by whose cruel wiles I lost thy amity; saw thy dear smiles Eclips'd; those smiles, that us'd my heart to cheer, Wak'd by thy grateful sense of many a year When rose thy youth, by Friendship's pleasing toils Cultur'd;—but DYING!—O! for ever fade ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... woodcock, well aware that the sportsman's eye is upon it, and shrewdly guessing that thunder and lightning is about to follow, changes his tactics, and lowering its flight, so as to avoid the mortal aim, suddenly plunges down behind a bush. The sportsman, who, not aware of this specious manoeuvre, fires at this juncture, thinks the bird has fallen dead, and forthwith runs to pick it up, but no woodcock can he find; for on raising his eyes, lo! and behold, he sees the provoking bird some five hundred paces distant, cleaving the air with sails full set; ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... how thoroughly understood by the common people were the principles of liberty, and with what keen penetration they saw through all shams and specious reasoning, than the decided, nay, fierce, stand they took against the stamp act. This was nothing more than our present law requiring a governmental stamp on all public and business paper to make it valid. The only difference is, the former ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... millions; it will fall straightway. A man must conform himself to Nature's laws, be verily in communion with Nature and the truth of things, or Nature will answer him, No, not at all! Speciosities are specious—ah me!—a Cagliostro, many Cagliostros, prominent world-leaders, do prosper by their quackery, for a day. It is like a forged bank-note; they get it passed out of their worthless hands: others, not they, have to smart for ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... thing to note? We begin by the assumption, "this is a practical body of men," the words invariably used to cover the putting by of some great principle that we ought all endorse and uphold. But, first, by one of the many specious reasons now approved, we put the principle by, and before long we are at one another's throats about things involving no principle. It is not necessary to particularise. Note any meeting for the same general conditions: a chairman, indecisive, ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... dimensions in North America; such as the Great Canyon of the Colorado, which is at least 300 miles in length, and in places 2000 yards in depth, with perpendicular or even overhanging sides; but the analogy, at first sight specious, utterly breaks down under closer examination. Some selenographers consider them to consist of long-extending rows of confluent craters, too minute to be separately distinguished, and to be thus due ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... And made the charming Annabell[67] his bride. What faults he had (for who from faults is free?) His father could not, or he would not see. Some warm excesses which the law forbore, Were construed youth that purged by boiling o'er; And Amnon's murder by a specious name, Was call'd a just revenge for injured fame. 40 Thus praised and loved, the noble youth remain'd, While David undisturb'd in Sion reign'd. But life can never be sincerely blest: Heaven punishes the bad, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... People, is self-evident from every Circumstance. The Beginning of the Prose is altogether Philosophical, and hardly intelligible to any, that have not been used to Matters of Speculation; and the running Title of it is so far from being specious, or inviting, that, without having read the Book it self, No body knows what to make of it, whilst at the same Time the Price is Five Shillings. From all which it is very plain, that if the Book contains any dangerous Tenets, I ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... 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, and the "word of ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... insignificant being. If any of the noblesse, men or women, calling upon Nais, found Lucien in the room, they met him with the overwhelming graciousness that well-bred people use towards their inferiors. Lucien thought them very kind for a time, and later found out the real reason for their specious amiability. It was not long before he detected a patronizing tone that stirred his gall and confirmed him in his bitter Republicanism, a phase of opinion through which many a would-be patrician passes by way of prelude to his introduction to ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... 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 ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... solemnly. Evidently he was much impressed with himself. If I had not been so miserable I could have smiled at the idea of Harry Underwood trying on the elder Mrs. Graham the silly specious flatteries he addressed to most women. My mother-in-law did not deign to answer him. Her manner was superb in its haughty reserve, although I could not say much for her courtesy. As he released her hand she let it drop quietly to her side and stood still, gazing at him with a quiet, disdainful ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... publishing the Virginia Resolutions proved an alarm-bell to the disaffected. "We read the resolutions," said Jonathan Sewell, "with wonder. They savored of independence; they flattered the human passions; the reasoning was specious; we wished it conclusive. The transition to believing it so was easy, and we, almost all America, followed their example in resolving that the Parliament had no such right." And the good patriot John ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... psychologico-materialist, a Jayasthalian. In investigating the vestiges of creation, the cause of causes, the effect of effects, and the original origin of that Matra (matter) which some regard as an entity, others as a non-entity, others self-existent, others merely specious and therefore unexistent, he became convinced that the fundamental form of organic being is a globule having another globule within itself After inhabiting a garret and diving into the depths of his ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... 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 is sometimes ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... attempted to be accomplished. Men of speculative and sanguine dispositions, and others, either from ignorance of the subject, or with views of recommending themselves to your favor, may confidently hold forth specious grounds to encourage you to hope that a great and immediate accession to that branch of your revenue might be practicable. My public duty obliges me to caution you, in the most serious manner, against listening to propositions which recommend this ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... says, "We 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
... "For shame!" You are forsooth entitled to exclaim; We to chaste ears it seems must not pronounce What, nathless, the chaste heart cannot renounce. Well, to be brief, the joy as fit occasions rise, I grudge you not, of specious lies. But long this mood thou'lt not retain. Already thou'rt again outworn, And should this last, thou wilt be torn By frenzy or remorse and pain. Enough of this! Thy true love dwells apart, And all to her seems flat and tame; Alone thine ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... him prisoner, as he had been from the beginning, in spite of all pretences and persuasions to the contrary, was another thing to which Baumgartner had been thoroughly alive all along. He had regarded it from the first as 'the certain beginning of the end'; from the first, he had been prepared with specious explanations for any such inquisitor as the one who had actually arrived no later than the Saturday afternoon. He wrote without elation of his interview with Thrush, whose name he knew; the doctor had not been deceived as to the transitory ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... latter—for indeed you know not the value of a virtuous mind in that sex; and how preferable such a mind is to one distinguished by the more dazzling flights of unruly wit; although the latter were to be joined by that specious outward appearance which too—too often attracts the hasty eye, and ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... theologians seek to justify rationally—or in other words, ethically—the dogma of the eternity of the pains of hell, they put forward reasons so specious, ridiculous, and childish, that it would appear impossible that they should ever have obtained currency. For to assert that since God is infinite, an offence committed against Him is infinite also and therefore demands an eternal punishment, ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... there 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 Church on earth, no matter whether they say these ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... with abundant flow of words, striking and vivid in his language, his harangues were perfect treatises on the subjects he discussed. The only rival of Mirabeau, he needed but a cause more natural and more sterling to have become his equal: but sophistry could not deck abuses in colours more specious than those with which Maury ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... Rasputin? 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, uncouth, illiterate ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... too many in that district at that time, was very superstitious. Thomas took her by the weak side, and usually arrested her "light-horse gallop of clish ma-claver" by some specious story of ghost or hobgoblin adventures, with which ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 475 - Vol. XVII, No. 475. Saturday, February 5, 1831 • Various
... faith was thus 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 ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... the corner, Roland was to some extent consoled by the praise bestowed upon him by Miss Verepoint. She said it was much better to buy a theater than to rent it, because then you escaped the heavy rent. It was specious, but Roland had a dim feeling that there was a flaw somewhere in the reasoning; and it was from this point that a shadow may be said to have fallen upon ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... the loftiest summit of cold intellect, is the embodiment of cruelty, malice, and scorn, pervaded and interfused with grim humour. That ideal Mr. Irving made actual. The omniscient craft and deadly malignity of his impersonation, swathed in a most specious humour at some moments (as, for example, in Margaret's bedroom, in the garden scene with Martha, and in the duel scene with Valentine) made the blood creep and curdle with horror, even while they impressed the sense of intellectual power ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... in his face as only a dog can," and causes him to follow her and to retrace his steps against his will. There are her puppies. Is she to leave them to their fate? He tells her to choose between the ties of family and duty: it is a specious form of appeal. To her, duties begin with the family; the puppies cannot be left behind. Nor can she carry them herself. She takes Raphael by the skirt, after bringing the puppies to him one by one. He must carry them, she tells him; ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... agent of a tyrant and felon, or a pair of them, and I shall respect you more. Confess that it was the voice of Basil Bainrothe I heard at my cabin-door, and that Captain Van Dorne was imposed upon by that specious scoundrel, even to the point of being conscientiously compelled ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... of itself in every way a pleasing and satisfying example of what should most truly inspire and impress us in a cathedral. Stevenson describes it as being "the happiest inspiration of mankind, a thing as specious as a statue at the first glance, yet, on examination, as lively and interesting as a forest in detail. The height of its spires cannot be taken by trigonometry: they measure absurdly short, but how tall they are ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... on which the glorious fabric of our independence and national character must be supported. Liberty is the basis, and whoever would dare to sap the foundation, or overturn the structure, under whatever specious pretext he may attempt it, will merit the bitterest execration and the severest punishment which can be ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... Borgert's specious eloquence succeeded in a short while in dispelling the clouds from Kolberg's face, for to his callous perceptions all that the other had said was true. That there were heartless and vulgar sentiments contained in Borgert's words he neither understood ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... itself with society. We have witnessed the most dazzling exploits of the spirit of conquest, the most impassioned efforts of the spirit of armed propagandism; we have seen territories and states molded and re-molded, unmade, re-made, and unmade again, at the pleasure of combinations more or less specious. What survives of all these violent and arbitrary works? They have fallen, like plants without roots, or edifices without foundation. And now, when analogous enterprises are attempted, scarcely have they ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... penetrated to the royal antechamber with the knife under his waist-band, having passed the stairs-guard by a specious official envelope. As it was late, he thought it must be about the Regent's bedtime, having the vaguest ideas as to royal ways and bedtimes, Hogarth being then in a consultation with three of the Cabinet destined to last till morning. ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... to us as a fond New-Yorker; but why leave out of the reach of sublimity the region of the sky-scrapers, and the spacious, if specious, palatiality of the streets ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... beneath some specious patriot cloke, Or flaunting a time-honour'd name,— Athwart the flood he held an even stroke; Between extremes on her old compass straight Aiding to ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... about this Forefathers' Day? In Brooklyn they say the Landing of the Pilgrims was December the 21st; in New York you say it was December the 22d. You are both right. Not through the specious and artful reasoning you have sometimes indulged in, but by a little historical incident that seems to have escaped your attention. You see, the Forefathers landed in the morning of December the 21st, but about noon that day a pack of hungry wolves swept down the bleak American ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... what is specious than true in your distinction," said my companion. "Did we form ourselves, choosing our dispositions, and our powers? I find myself, for one, as a stringed instrument with chords and stops—but I have no power to turn the pegs, or pitch ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... spying on naval defences was an idea he dreaded and distrusted. It was not the 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 Memmert theory. ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... 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 grounds, from a grave and serious charge. This, however, was no ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... 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, the awakened imagination of a girl of sixteen seeing nothing in the rose-tinted ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... The last worst traitor triumphed—triumph'd long, Secur'd by matchless villainy—by turns Defending and deserting each accomplice As interest prompted. In the goodly soil 195 Of Freedom, the foul tree of treason struck Its deep-fix'd roots, and dropt the dews of death On all who slumber'd in its specious shade. He wove the web of treachery. He caught The listening crowd by his wild eloquence, 200 His cool ferocity that persuaded murder, Even whilst it spake of mercy!—never, never Shall this regenerated country wear The despot yoke. Though myriads round assail, And with worse fury urge this ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... 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 ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... Rodin, and to relate to him everything that should occur in the house. I ought to acknowledge, honored madame, that these infamous proposals were as much as possible disguised and dissimulated under sufficiently specious pretexts; but, notwithstanding the aspect which with more or less skill it was attempted to give to the affair, it was precisely and substantially what I have now had the honor ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... mixed motives. He would willingly serve two masters, God and Mammon. He is a person of many excellent and admirable qualifications, but he has made a mistake in wishing to reconcile those that are incompatible. He has a most winning eloquence, specious, persuasive, familiar, silver-tongued, is amiable, charitable, conscientious, pious, loyal, humane, tractable to power, accessible to popularity, honouring the king, and no less charmed with the homage of his fellow-citizens. ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... one gentleman was allowed to play his favourite instrument whenever he chose, for his own but no one else's gratification, he could not see why he (Mr. Bouncer) might not also, whenever he pleased, play for his own gratification his favourite instrument - the big drum. This specious excuse, although logical, was not altogether satisfactory to Mr. Slowcoach; and, with some asperity, he ordered Mr. Bouncer never again to indulge in, what he termed (in reference probably to the little gentleman's bald head), "such an indecent exhibition." ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... cannot but feel what they lie under, and see whither they are going; it is not to be wondered, that they should then rouze themselves, and endeavour to put the rule into such hands which may secure to them the ends for which government was at first erected; and without which, ancient names, and specious forms, are so far from being better, that they are much worse, than the state of nature, or pure anarchy; the inconveniencies being all as great and as near, but the remedy farther off and more difficult. Sec. 226. Thirdly, I answer, that ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... have learned the art of subjecting their senses as well as reason to hypothetical systems, can be persuaded by the most specious rhetorician that the lots of life are equal; yet it cannot be denied that every one has his peculiar pleasures and vexations, that external accidents operate variously upon different minds, and that no man can exactly judge from his own sensations, what another ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... had a specious, reckless, go-ahead way with him that suited well the tone and temper of Humbert's mind. He never looked too far into consequences, but trusted that the eventualities of the morrow would always suggest the best course for the day after; and this alone ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... threads and to discover its sources and causes, he concluded that his previous mode of living was derived from the education he had received. Thus, his tendencies towards artificiality and his craving for eccentricity, were no more than the results of specious studies, spiritual refinements and quasi-theological speculations. They were, in the last analysis, ecstacies, aspirations towards an ideal, towards an unknown universe as desirable as that promised us by ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... immature apples could be had in summer," all this wisdom is thrown away. We can assure Mr. Weber, on the authority of Ford himself, that "hot codlings" are not apples, either mature or immature. Steevens is a dangerous guide for such as do not look well about them. His errors are specious: for he was a man of ingenuity: but he was often wantonly mischievous, and delighted to stumble for the mere gratification of dragging unsuspecting innocents into the mire with him. He was, in short, the very ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... destroy is murder by the law; And gibbets keep the lifted hand in awe; To murder thousands takes a specious name, War's glorious art, and gives immortal fame. Love of Fame, Satire ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... 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
... built 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 throne, ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... their respective causes, among their own immediate contemporaries. Norman's powers of argument, his eloquence, readiness, and clearness, were thought to rank very high, and, in the opinion of Mr. Everard, had been of great effect in preventing other youths from being carried away by the specious brilliancy of ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... being honest, ended in conviction. He found that religion was true, and what he had learned he endeavoured to teach (1747) by "Observations on the Conversion of St. Paul," a treatise to which infidelity has never been able to fabricate a specious answer. This book his father had the happiness of seeing, and expressed his pleasure in a letter ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... and for their natural lives to continue so. But these are men that have been once fooled, most of them, and discovered, and slighted at Court, so that till some turn of State shall let them in their adversaries' place, in the mean time they look sullen, make big motions, and contrive specious bills for the subject, yet only wait the opportunity to be the instruments of the same counsels which they ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... natives, whether right or wrong, make the distinction. 2d. The immense size of the hand in my possession, the height of the animal killed on the coast of Sumatra, and the skull in the Paris Museum, can scarcely be referred to an animal such as we know at home; though by specious analogical reasoning, the great disparity of the skulls has been pronounced the ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel |
