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More "Specious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... "Specious enough to satisfy the Convention itself if ever I should be called to task," answered Charlot, with heat. "Do you propose to draw the attention of ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... of the campaign was the expulsion of the Ghorkas from a large tract of country, which was subsequently annexed to British India. Attempts at negotiation were then made, which ultimately proved futile, and after the usual amount of delay, specious professions, and deceit common to native Courts generally had been practised by the Nepaul Durbar with a view to gain time, open hostilities broke out with redoubled vigour on both sides. General Ochterlony assumed the command of an army of 36,000 men, and commenced ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... of this when the philosophers, Diogenes and Carneades, were sent ambassadors to the senate by the Athenians; for perceiving with what earnest admiration the Roman youth began to follow them, and knowing the evils that might result to his country from this specious idleness, he enacted that no philosopher should be allowed to enter Rome. Provinces by this means sink to ruin, from which, men's sufferings having made them wiser, they again recur to order, if they be not overwhelmed by some extraordinary force. ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... ghost at a series of funeral feasts appears at first sight, as Dr. Codrington observes, inconsistent with the theory that the ghosts live underground.[579] But the objection thus suggested is rather specious than real; for we must always bear in mind that, to judge from the accounts given of them in all countries, ghosts experience no practical difficulty in obtaining temporary leave of absence from the other world and coming to this one, so to say, on furlough for the purpose of paying a surprise visit ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... untrustworthy tests. Upon due protest by the American minister, and it appearing that the act was a virtual discrimination against our product, the shipments in question were admitted. In these, as in all instances, wherever occurring, when American products may be subjected in a foreign country, upon specious pretexts, to discrimination compared with the like products of another country, this Government will use its earnest efforts to secure fair and equal treatment for its citizens and their goods. Failing this, it will not hesitate ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... possess them are admired much less than those who, having the opportunity to acquire them, through greatness of soul neglect it. Now let us apply this principle to the Sublime in poetry or in prose; let us ask in all cases, is it merely a specious sublimity? is this gorgeous exterior a mere false and clumsy pageant, which if laid open will be found to conceal nothing but emptiness? for if so, a noble mind will scorn instead of ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... the modern writers, who smile at the vulgar credulity. They appeal with confidence to the Persian history of Sherefeddin Ali, according to which has been given to our curiosity in a French version, and from which I shall collect and abridge, a more specious narrative of this memorable transaction. No sooner was Timur informed that the captive Ottoman was at the door of his tent than he graciously stepped forward to receive him, seated him by his side, and mingled with just reproaches ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... his warfare or resign his appointment as Prime Minister and go into retirement. He did neither. In a thoroughly characteristic manner he sought a middle course, after having vaguely advocated a national convention to settle the matter. By specious misrepresentation the widow of the Emperor Kwanghsu—the Dowager Empress Lung Yu who had succeeded the Prince Regent Ch'un in her care of the interests of the child Emperor Hsuan Tung—was induced to believe that ceremonial retirement ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... 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
... sure, fastidious taste must be repressed, and, as it were, brought under control, if you spare that expense in which one consults rather his own gratification than the feelings of others. But why all this? I write, so that the luxury of some under the specious guise of economy may not impose upon you as a well-disposed youth. And so, out of pure good-will to you, I draw instances from my experience to advise or warn you. There is nothing to be more carefully ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... not know if my readers were checked, as I wished them to be, at least for a moment, in the close of the last chapter, by my talking of thistles and dandelions changing into seaweed, by gradation of which, doubtless, Mr. Darwin can furnish us with specious and sufficient instances. But the two groups will not be contemplated in our Oxford system as in any ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... no movement and no answer, sahib. We did not think; we waited. If he had coaxed us with specious arguments, as surely a liar would have done, that would probably have been his last speech in the world. But there was not one word he said that did not ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... summon people to their lodgings for direction and advice in the case of infection. These had specious titles also, ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... pretended to the 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 ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... purpose. The manner of contention was either with the caestus, or by wrestling. And as the priest appointed for the trial was pretty sure of coming off the conqueror, the whole was looked upon as a more specious kind of sacrifice. Amycus, who was king of Bithynia, is represented as of a [746]gigantic size, and a great proficient with the caestus. He was in consequence of it the terror of all strangers who came upon the coast. Cercyon of [747]Megara was equally famed for wrestling; by ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... Indulgence. For a time hopes were entertained at Whitehall that his known respect for the rights of conscience would at least prevent him from publicly expressing disapprobation of a policy which had a specious show of liberality. Penn sent copious disquisitions to the Hague, and even went thither, in the hope that his eloquence, of which he had a high opinion, would prove irresistible. But, though he harangued on his favourite theme with a copiousness which tired his hearers out, and though he ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... land the works of the Lord are not obscured by what the hands of men have made. The twofold vision ranges free and far. Here are no brick walls, no unnatural need or circumstance, no confusing inventions, no gasping haste, no specious distractions, no clamour of wheel and heartless voices, to blind the soul, to pervert its pure desires, to deaden its fears, to deafen its ears to the sweeter calls—to shut it in, to shrivel it: to sicken it in every part. ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... anxiety for the loyalty of the French province was much increased by the intrigues of revolutionary agents, he soon perceived their plans to be fatuous and their enterprise devoid of importance. While the forward spirits in Quebec were leavening the mass of the habitants with specious reports of a French fleet ready to co-operate with them, a force composed for the most part of ill-disposed Americans was to percolate into Canada from Vermont. This so-called fleet consisted of a ship, ironically called the Olive Branch, ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... 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 ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... younger brother, who, against my advice, had gone to Munich to study, at the feet indeed of a great master, the art of portraiture in oils. The near relative who made him an allowance had threatened to withdraw it if he should, under specious pretexts, turn for superior truth to Paris—Paris being somehow, for a Cheltenham aunt, the school of evil, the abyss. I deplored this prejudice at the time, and the deep injury of it was now visible—first in the fact that it had not saved the poor boy, ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... mankind has owed inestimable obligations had not the lofty elegance which distinguished 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 ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... therefore never admissible for any purpose whatsoever. He sees truthfulness to be a duty growing out of man's primal relation to God, and therefore binding on man while man is in God's sight. He strikes through the specious arguments based on any temporary advantages to be secured through lying, and rejects utterly the suggestion that man may do evil that good ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... with every good and pious thought in us, that God spake to Moses, and gave him the law as our rule of life; but as for this fellow, we know not from whence he is. His works may be wonderful, his words may be specious; but we never heard of him before, and we cannot tear up all the holiest feelings of our nature to receive a new doctrine. We will hold to the old way in which, we were taught by our fathers to walk, and in which ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... deceits of travel, and that he was now inherited by his widow, who in turn was absent, and temporarily represented by their son. The boy, in supplying Basil with an advertisement of the line, made a specious show of haste, as if there were a long queue of tourists waiting behind him to be served with tickets. Perhaps there was, indeed, a spectral line there, but Basil was the only tourist present in the flesh, and he shivered in his isolation, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... by the Governor's ruse of establishing a State Camp at this time? Stephen, as he gazed at him, was sure that he would not. This man could see to the bottom, through every specious argument. Little matters of law and precedence did not trouble him. Nor did he believe elderly men in authority when they told gravely that the state troops were there ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... must, for the benefit of the servants, and talk they did after an uneasy fashion, making specious arrangements for Lanyard's departure on the morrow, when Eve was to drive him to Millau to catch the afternoon ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... unknown author. I will, in the Second Edition, repeat them, and with just severity animadvert upon them: that they, into whose hands that work comes, may know it to be rather patched up of many distinct pieces; how much soever the author bears himself upon the specious title of Verulam. Unless, perhaps, I should particularly suggest in your name, that these words were there inserted, by way of caution; and lest malignity and rashness should any way blemish the fame of so ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... 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 ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... shaded and secluded life which Agnes had led with the specious and fatal brilliancy which had been the lot of her mother,—her simple peasant garb with those remembered visions of jewelry and silk and embroideries with which the partial patronage of the Duchess or the ephemeral passion of her son had decked out the poor Isella; and then came ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... the end, dele. and add— , which latter deals with certain specious arguments adduced by these writers against the a priori possibility of ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous
... world as they really are. You have not," added he, "been so much in high and noble life as I have been; but if you had fully entered into it, and seen what was going on, you would have felt convinced that it was time to unmask the specious hypocrisy, and show it in ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... Dr. Johnson would have hated for his birth, and have knocked down with his Dictionary for his assaults upon the English language, has usurped the chair of the sturdy old dogmatist. The specious impertinence and shallow assumptions of the English sage find their counterpart in the unworthy platitude of the Scottish seer, not lively enough for "Punch," a mere disgrace to the page which admitted it; whether a proof of a hardening ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... pounding and chopping at the ice on cable, blocks, and rigging, when the galley was as red-hot as the fort's shot, and men drank cocoa by the bucket. Tom Platt had no use for steam. His service closed when that thing was comparatively new. He admitted that it was a specious invention in time of peace, but looked hopefully for the day when sails should come back again on ten-thousand-ton frigates with ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... entertain other hopes, which I confess appear more specious than those by which at first so many were deluded and disarmed. They flatter themselves that the extreme misery brought upon the people by their folly will at last open the eyes of the multitude, if not of their leaders. Much the contrary, I fear. As to the leaders ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... useless to pretend that such articles as those published in the Dearborn Independent and the London Morning Post are not really anti-Semitic propaganda, but merely a legitimate discussion of a great and serious problem. Such specious pleading will not deceive any intelligent, honest person. The only possible object of the articles is to convince the people who read them that civilized society is threatened by a great world-wide secret conspiracy of the Jews; that this virile and highly ...
— The Jew and American Ideals • John Spargo
... handled and framed, might be life in Paris, perhaps; but he could not accept them as life here at home, within a mile or two of his own study. What this evening offered him seemed to require a considerable touch of refining before it could reach acceptance. It was all only an imperfectly specious substitute for life, only a coarse parody on life. The town, he told me the next day, made him think of a pumpkin: it was big and sudden and coarse-textured. "I've had enough of it," he added; "I want something different, and something a ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... or by degrees I do not know. Inwardly he may have had his scheme matured in embryo, but outwardly he was still the accomplished hypocrite. He was the soul of honour—outwardly. He was the essence of sympathetic tact as far as his specious exterior went. Then came the 27th of May. On that date the first of James Orlebar ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... before his neighbours all the horrors of a situation, which armed them all one against another, which rendered their possessions as burdensome as their wants were intolerable, and in which no one could expect any safety either in poverty or riches, he easily invented specious arguments to bring them over to his purpose. "Let us unite," said he, "to secure the weak from oppression, restrain the ambitious, and secure to every man the possession of what belongs to him: Let us form rules of justice and peace, to which all may be obliged to conform, which shall not except ...
— A Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of - The Inequality Among Mankind • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... began preparations for the expedition that was to make both Egypt and himself rich beyond computation. Then followed a conversation with Haji Wali, whom age—he was 77—"had only made a little fatter and a little greedier," and the specious old trickster promised to accompany the expedition. As usual Burton began with a preliminary canter, visiting Moilah, Aynunah Bay, Makna and Jebel Hassani, where he sketched, made plans, and collected metalliferous specimens. He returned to Egypt with native stories of ruined ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... if a nation IS to be ruined, this method is, perhaps, as good as any. It is, at least, more humane than the slow, lingering process of exclusion, disappointment, and degradation, by which their hearts are worn out under more specious forms of tyranny; and that talent of despatch which Moliere attributes to one of his physicians is no ordinary merit in a practitioner like Cromwell: —"C'est un homme expeditif, qui aime a depecher ses malades; et ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... all this it is persistently alleged that even if He had the power He could not have performed miracles, because miracles are violations of law, and the Lawgiver cannot violate even mere physical laws; but this specious fallacy is refuted by the simple assertion that He introduced a new power or force to counteract or modify others, which counteraction or modification of forces is no more than what is taking place in every part of the world at ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... present day, and come to life again in the Church, we praise with studied eulogies, we honour with professorships, and stipends, and chairs, the incomparable men that they are, the highly-learned and saintly. If it comes to the censuring of one of them, if the mask and specious skin of one of them are dragged off, if he is shown to be base within, or even publicly and openly criminal, there are some who, for what purpose or through what timidity I know not, would have him publicly defended by testimonies in his favour rather than marked with due animadversion. ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... friends, his kingdom, and his life, in the bloody battle of Benevento. Naples and Sicily were immediately peopled with a warlike race of French nobles; and their aspiring leader embraced the future conquest of Africa, Greece, and Palestine. The most specious reasons might point his first arms against the Byzantine empire; and Palaeologus, diffident of his own strength, repeatedly appealed from the ambition of Charles to the humanity of St. Louis, who still preserved a just ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... conversation overheard in Washington between Frank and Melinda, Ethelyn's unfinished letter, to which she had never referred, and the clause in Aunt Van Buren's letter relating to Frank's first love affair. He could not any longer put the truth aside with specious arguments, for it stood out in all its naked deformity, making him cower and shrink before it. It was a very different man who went up the stairs of the Stafford House to room No—from the man who two hours before had gone down them, and Ethelyn would hardly have known him for ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... Mankind[45]. Whilst out of a groundless Charity, they do in a manner put all Men upon the Level, as to the Means of Salvation. Which Opinion of theirs, however plausible at first sight, upon the account of that specious Shew of Universal Charity to Mankind, does most certainly tend to the undervaluing and lessening those inestimable Benefits which our Blessed Saviour has purchas'd for, and promis'd to his Church; and ought no more to be receiv'd, than that charitable Opinion of Origen's who believ'd ...
— The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan • Ibn Tufail
... specious allegations in defence of the measure is, that the extraordinary favor which Lord Shelburne enjoyed at court, and the arbitrary tendencies known to prevail in that quarter, portended just then such an overflow ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... Specious as this mode of reasoning might sound, it would not perhaps have taken so complete a hold of Boxtel, nor would he perhaps have yielded to the mere desire of vengeance which was gnawing at his heart, had not the demon of envy been joined ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... too true, indeed, ma'am;—yet I fear our 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 in ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... for the amelioration of a race, but in order to satisfy the idiotic ambitions of a handful. Let not this fact be forgotten. Democracy will not forget it. And foreign policy in the future will not be left in the hands of any autocracy, by whatever specious name the autocracy may call itself. Ruling classes have always said that masses were incapable of understanding foreign policy. The masses understand it now. They understand that in spite of very earnest efforts in various Cabinets, the ruling ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... have been inspired by a leader of genius to perform acts more than human. Plato does not appear to have analysed the complications which arise out of the collective action of mankind. Neither is he capable of seeing that analogies, though specious as arguments, may often have no foundation in fact, or of distinguishing between what is intelligible or vividly present to the mind, and what is true. In this respect he is far below Aristotle, who is comparatively ...
— The Republic • Plato
... the ways is much the most specious, but nevertheless it is the most mistaken of all: for indeed this way has no more truth in it than the rest, alleging as it does that the Nile flows from melting snow; whereas it flows out of Libya through the midst of the Ethiopians, and so comes out into Egypt. How ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... representatives had met in council, character and intelligence would assume their natural sway, and mere artificial rank and dignity would be little regarded. Atotarho and his people, however, yielded either to these specious offers or to the pressure which the combined urgency of the three allied nations now brought to bear upon them. They finally accepted the league; and the great chief, who had originally opposed it, now naturally became eager to see it as ...
— Hiawatha and the Iroquois Confederation • Horatio Hale
... of motion it can impart to the body, nor how quickly it can move it. Thus, when men say that this or that physical action has its origin in the mind, which latter has dominion over the body, they are using words without meaning, or are confessing in specious phraseology that they are ignorant of the cause of the said action, and ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... episode in the 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 ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... plausible. Hence we see that the very essence of a fallacy is its speciousness. We may very properly say that a fallacy is more or less specious, but we can not properly say that a fallacy is specious, since without speciousness we ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... 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 and playing ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... by Count Boniface from the walls of Marseilles, they soon extended their quarters from the Mediterranean to the ocean. The oppressed provincials might exclaim that the miserable remnant which the enemy had spared was cruelly ravished by their pretended allies; yet some specious colors were not wanting to palliate, or justify, the violence of the Goths. The cities of Gaul, which they attacked, might perhaps be considered as in a state of rebellion against the government of Honorius; the articles of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... eccentricity. They called themselves free, and boasted of their freedom; but their conception of liberty was that of all old nations, a freedom which not only allowed of discipline, but which grew out of it. No people had less wish to exalt the kingly power into that specious tyranny, a paternal Government; the king was with them, and always had been, both formally and really, subject to their choice; bound by many oaths to many duties; the minister, not the master of the people. But their whole conception of political life was, nevertheless, shaped ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... his oration by saying: "Such, my lord, is the statement you will probably hear from my brother on the opposite side of the case. I shall now show your lordship how utterly untenable are the principles and how distorted are the facts upon which this very specious statement has proceeded." And so he went over the same ground and most angelically refuted himself from the beginning of his former ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... the dying king to dispose of the crown by will in favor of the lady Jane. The animosity against his sister Mary, to which their equal bigotry in opposite modes of faith had given birth in the mind of Edward, would naturally induce him to lend a willing ear to such specious arguments as might be produced in justification of her exclusion: but that he could be brought with equal facility to disinherit also Elizabeth, a sister whom he loved, a princess judged in all respects worthy of a crown, and one with whose religious profession he had every reason to be ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... to believe without arguing, and I shudder, my dear Yusuf, when I think that, through some specious reasoning, I might be led to renounce the creed of my fathers. I first must be convinced that they lived in error. Tell me whether, respecting my father's memory, I ought to have such a good opinion of myself as to sit in judgement over him, with ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... often in lecturing, was to compile his ideas as they came to him on a general subject, in scattered notes, and when on the platform, to trust to the mood of the occasion, to assemble them. This seems a specious explanation, though true to fact. Vagueness, is at times, an indication of nearness to a perfect truth. The definite glory of Bernard of Cluny's Celestial City, is more beautiful than true—probably. Orderly reason does not always have to be a visible ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... 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
... to me more specious than sound. Man, in order to enjoy the advantages of a social state, must no doubt sacrifice a part of his natural rights, and his original independence; but, if the sacrifice imposed on him be not compensated by the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... concealed this outward show of feeling, too unformed and indefinite for thought. She spoke not; but the knight, under cover of his errand, continued the discourse without awakening her alarm. He excelled in that specious, though apparently heedless raillery, which is so apt to slip without suspicion into a lady's ear; and he could ply his suit, under this disguise, with such seeming artlessness and unconcern, that a lodgement in the citadel was sometimes effected ere the garrison ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... feared in any stranger, but the sheer might and unright that their Regency enabled the House of Albany to exercise over the orphans of the royal family, whose head was absent; and a captive knight could be no mischievous person. Still this might be only a specious pretence to impose on the chaplain, and gain admittance to the castle; and Patrick was resolved to be well on his guard, though he replied courteously to the graceful bow with which the stranger greeted ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... now to be submitted to the tortures of that diabolical institution known as the Inquisition, because they were not enthusiastic in their support of the Catholic religion. Isabella tried to oppose the introduction of these barbarous practices into Castile, but by specious argument her scruples were overcome and she was made to bow to the will of the pope and his legates. In the workings of the Inquisition little distinction was made between men and women, and both seem to have suffered alike at the hands of these ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... hypothesis of special 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 which are the subject-matter ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... whole knave," subjoined the Varangian. "With the mask of apparent good-humour he conceals his pandering to the vices of others; with the specious jargon of philosophy, he has argued himself out of religious belief and moral principle; and, with the appearance of the most devoted loyalty, he will, if he is not checked in time, either argue his too confiding master out of life and empire, or, if he fails in ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... down for plain propositions; now, then, let us consider further, whether, if I will take upon me to contradict the government, any specious pretence that I shall put upon it, shall dress it up in another form and give it a better denomination? And truly I think it is the worse, because it comes in a better dress; for by that rule, every man that can put on a good vizard, may be as ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... have? That she should be called by some other more specious name? By that of some quality to which writers and other men do aspire, and under the semblance of which Dulness is actually found to mask itself—as Gravity, Dignity, Solemnity? Why, two losses would thus be incurred. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... 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 ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... 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 ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... underestimation of the filled space is, I think, again due to a combination of two illusions. When the finger-tip leaves the filled space, part of it, because of its length, has already, as it were, left the specious present, and has suffered the foreshortening effect of being relegated to the past. And, on the other hand, after the short distance of the open space has been traversed the sensations of muscular strain become very pronounced, and cause a premature ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... best thoughts and give our second best."... "We do a good deal of shirking in this life on the ground of not being geniuses. The truth is, there is an immense amount of humbug lurking in the folds of those specious theories about genius. Let a man or woman go to work at a thing, and the genius will take ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... them alone. But, indeed, the most "respectable" trusts and public-service corporations are often most culpable, and the greatest power behind the throne. Their interest in the personnel of the Government is far keener than that of the average citizen; they can usually succeed, by cleverly specious presentations of the situation, in dividing the forces against them, and often, by "deals," in effecting secret alliances of the "rings" in control of supposedly opposing parties. The poor are right in supposing that these powerful "interests" are their ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... 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 in ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... is always specious to the beginner, and Blount thought he had sufficiently justified himself by the time he was pushing through the revolving doors into the Inter-Mountain lobby. But when he saw his father quietly smoking his bed-time ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... is your native city, and his appointment of capelmeister is owing to you, and the kindly reception of my father's ideas—if they have been received as he thinks—is also owing to you. You will not be deceived, as he would easily be, by specious appearance, and will support him in the struggle that may be preparing under cover. I know you will. "His letter is entirely concerned with music; he does not tell me about his daily life, and, knowing how neglectful he is of material things, thinking only of his ideas, I am not ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... violent opposition and ridicule. The undertaking was thought wonderfully bold, and, joined to its great extent, the sandy, spongy nature of the ground, the high banks necessary to prevent the inundation of the Stour on the canal, furnished its opponents, if not with sound argument, at least with very specious topics for opposition and laughter.[10] Yarranton's plan was to make the river itself navigable, and by uniting it with other rivers, open up a communication with the Trent; while Brindley's was to cut a canal parallel with the river, ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... of the water-colours of Forain, Huysmans attributes to them 'a specious and cherche art, demanding, for its appreciation, a certain initiation, a certain special sense.' To realise the full value, the real charm, of A Rebours, some such initiation might be deemed necessary. In its ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... the greatest charm of environment, and is 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 to the admiring eye.... I sat outside of my hotel and the sweet groaning thunder of ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... 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 eyes ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... of your salvation; doubt it still, though the testimony of the Lord has been often confirmed in you. Live not by faith, but by sense; and when you can neither see nor feel, then fear and mistrust, then doubt and question all. This is the devilish counsel of unbelief, which is so covered over with specious pretences, that the wisest Christian can hardly shake ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... his profound disagreement with the methods of the Socialists in practically every State but his own. He and his associates were at one moment so far from the national and international principle that they sought to support a non-Socialist candidate for judge—on the specious ground that no Socialist was nominated. But the National Congress condemned and forbade such action by an overwhelming majority. Mr. Berger's unwillingness to act with his organization even went so far at one point that he was punished by a temporary suspension from the National ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... 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
... indignant thought—and he made the criticism as of a mere external fact from which he stood aloof—to be so friendly with Margaret? How was it that she should show such little insight as to be imposed upon by so specious a personality? No doubt ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... 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 the changes to which you may be ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... 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 man, stripped of his cosmic ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... secret. The Committee on Foreign Affairs made a like request, with the same results. The entire Chamber next expressed a similar wish, which elicited a firm refusal. The French Premier, it should be added, alleged a reason which was at least specious. "I should much like," he said, "to communicate to you the text you ask for, but I may not do so until it has been signed by the President of the Republic. For such is the law as embodied in Article 8 of the Constitution." Now nobody believed that this was the true ground for his refusal. ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... 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 ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... may not hope for balm to his hurt. Love is a privy wound within the heart, and none knoweth of that bitterness but the heart alone. Love is an evil which may last for a whole life long, because of man and his constant heart. Many there be who make of Love a gibe and a jest, and with specious words defame him by boastful tales. But theirs is not love. Rather it is folly and lightness, and the tune of a merry song. But let him who has found a constant lover prize her above rubies, and serve her with loyal ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France
... he denied; 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
... a certain specious semblance of truth, is yet, we believe, radically and fundamentally false. It is true that both the male and the female problems of our age have taken their rise largely in the same rapid material changes which during the last centuries, and more especially the ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... Its genesis was reported in Constantinople nearly a week ago: then at intervals we learnt that these mysterious airmen, one of whom with artful artlessness had adopted the plain, respectable, and specious name of Smith, had manifested themselves at Karachi, Penang, and Port Darwin successively. The curtain then dropped, and the world waited with suspense for the opening of the next act, though there were some who suspected that the performers had slipped away with the cash-box during the interval, ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... of the laws, with the comments and arguments in our Conventions, gradually appealed to the understanding of sensible men and women, and opened the eyes of the community to the wrongs of woman, perpetrated under the specious name of justice. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... for my infatuated idolatry. I myself had not loved Pauline because she was poor; and had not the wealthy Foedora a right to repulse Raphael? Conscience is our unerring judge until we finally stifle it. A specious voice said within me, 'Foedora is neither attracted to nor repulses any one; she has her liberty, but once upon a time she sold herself to the Russian count, her husband or her lover, for gold. But temptation is certain to enter into her life. Wait till that moment ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... 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
... prostrate but not conquered Ireland, relates the following anecdote in a speech delivered by him in the Conciliation Hall, Dublin, before the Loyal National Repeal Association, March 31, 1845. "No matter," said Mr. O'CONNELL, "under what specious term it may disguise itself, slavery is still hideous. It has a natural, an inevitable tendency to brutalize every noble faculty of man. An American sailor, who was cast away on the shore of Africa, where he was kept in slavery ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... chaffing of his chronies, partly on account of it, Opdyke lent himself more and more to the assimilating process. He sought out Scott more often, had him in his room, taught him to fill a pipe and smoke it after the fashion of a gentleman, dropped into his ears specious hints regarding manners, and about the efficiency of one's mattress as frugal substitute for a tailor's pressboard. To be sure, upon that latter count Scott took him with unforeseen literalness; and, in his zeal to carry out his teacher's dictum, subjected his coat to the mattress treatment, ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... business-like. They covered receipt for twenty thousand dollars, designating certain numbered bonds indicated, but one phrase which exonerated the village magnate from blame or crooked dealing in the affair Ralph did not at all like. He believed that there was some specious scheme under this matter and ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman
... kind, than that which warms the heart and elevates the feelings. There was, indeed, about Winterblossom, nothing that was either warm or elevated. He was shrewd, selfish, and sensual; the last two of which qualities he screened from observation, under a specious varnish of exterior complaisance. Therefore, in his professed and apparent anxiety to do the honours of the table, to the most punctilious point of good breeding, he never permitted the attendants upon the public taste to supply the wants of others, until all his own private comforts ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... of a yard like Slocum's would be four thousand or five thousand dollars in the city. It doesn't cost Slocum two hundred dollars. It is no more than just that the laborer should have a share—he only asks a beggarly share—of the prosperity which he has helped to build up." This was specious and taking. Then there came down from the great city a glib person disguised as The Workingman's Friend,—no workingman himself, mind you, but a ghoul that lives upon subscriptions and sucks the ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... 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. It seems that Macassar is really in the Indies. ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... 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 ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... can only admire. Men say that mind moves body, but how it moves it they cannot tell, or what degree of motion it can impart to it; so that, in fact, they do not know what they say, and are only confessing their own ignorance in specious language. They will answer me, that whether or not they understand how it can be, yet that they are assured by plain experience that unless mind could perceive, body would be altogether inactive; they know that it ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... throw you off your guard with any of his specious talk," replied his mother, in a cautious tone. "To quote from Morris, he is a mighty ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... invented to avoid the legal obstructions placed in the way of play-acting. "Histrionic academies" tried to sneak in on the stage; and in 1762 a clever manager gave an entertainment whose playbill I present as the most amusing example of specious and ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... that I was doing very wicked and sinful acts in helping to further the grocery iniquity. I was, in a manner, forced to work, yet I was uneasy and troubled in my mind. Others may think I was blameless; that I was a slave and not accountable for acts my master commanded me to do. This seemed very specious reasoning, but still I felt guilty, and sent fervent and prayerful petitions to the throne of grace for forgiveness and fortitude to withstand temptation, which enable me to do the will of my great Master regardless ...
— Biography of a Slave - Being the Experiences of Rev. Charles Thompson • Charles Thompson
... be, for a large 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 apparent thought ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... might have proved of good avail, For Aquilant believed him easily; And, save in taking Gryphon's horse and mail, He to the knight had done no injury; But that he wrought so high the specious tale, As manifested plainly, 'twas a lie. In all 'twas perfect, save that he the dame Had for his sister vouched ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... not trouble you with specious pretences—either of how we have a right to our empire because we overthrew the Mede, or are now attacking you because of wrong that you have done us—and make a long speech which would not be believed; and in return we hope that you, instead of thinking ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... crossed the 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, in such a life as this, such ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... known and thought, and by making it a part of oneself. The relation of the critic to culture thereupon becomes evident. He is the appointed apostle of culture. He undertakes as his duty in life to seek out and to minister to others the means of self-improvement, discriminating the evil and the specious from the good and the genuine, rendering the former contemptible and the latter attractive. But in a degree all seekers after culture must be critics also. Both pursue the same objects, the best that is thought and known. Both, too, must propagate it; ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... 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
... where selfishness put on a guise of honesty, all these specious interests were struggling and contending. His first scruples yielded to ingenious reasoning, then came to the top again, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... Hagerman. These names afford sufficient evidence that full justice was done to the case on both sides. Hagerman was a counsel of remarkable ability, and he fought very hard. His argument was a masterpiece of clever, specious reasoning, well calculated to produce an effect upon uneducated or half-educated jurymen. He took an enlightened stand, admitting the advantage to a community of a free and unfettered press. He then proceeded to argue away all the consequences of the admission, alleging that ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... did it secure permanent control of Palestine. The degenerate house of the Ptolemies made several ineffectual attempts to win back their lost province, but henceforth Palestine remained under the rule of Syria. The personal attractions of Antiochus the Great, the specious promises which he made, and disgust because of the corrupt rule of Egypt inclined the Jews of Palestine to welcome this change of rulers. The court at Antioch, however, soon became almost as corrupt as that of Egypt, and the Jews were the victims of ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... 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 foundation, and that collapse ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... of Jesus Christ. This opinion appears to me without any better foundation than another of the conversion of the Abyssins to the Jewish rites by the Queen of Sheba, at her return from the court of Solomon. They, however, who patronise these traditions give us very specious accounts of the zeal and piety of the Abyssins at their first conversion. Many, they say, abandoned all the pleasures and vanities of life for solitude and religious austerities; others devoted themselves ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo
... this incident of his life must make him appear to the reader, still nursed in his conscience a reserve of specious virtue, to keep him in peace with himself. It was his design to plead, to argue, to implore, nay even to threaten, long before he put his threats in force; and with this and the following reflection, he reconciled—as most bad men can—what ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... tradition. It seemed to palliate the too flagrant contradiction which existed between ecclesiastical justice and the teaching of Christ, and it gave at least an external homage to the teaching of St. Augustine, and the first Fathers of the Church. Moreover, as it furnished a specious means of evading by the merest form of prohibition against clerics taking part in sentences involving the effusion of blood and death, aud the irregularity resulting therefrom, the Inquisitors used it to ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... Susan Halstead might have been led into pursuing a subject of village gossip, by so specious a trap as that set by Josephine; and it is not strange that she fell at once into the line of conversation that ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... emotions and mentality directly associated with it, and you cannot get beyond that; it isn't in human nature to do so. The Self is limited by this corporeal phenomenon and doubtless it perishes when the body perishes." But here again the conclusion, though specious at first, soon appears to be quite inadequate. For though it is possibly true that a man, if left alone in a Robinson Crusoe life on a desert island, might ultimately subside into a mere gratification of his ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... many more Strong on the people's side and friends of his, Eliot that's dead, Rudyard and Hampden here, But for these Wentworth cared not; only, Pym He would see—Pym and he were sworn, 'tis said, To live and die together; so, they met At Greenwich. Wentworth, you are sure, was long, Specious enough, the devil's argument Lost nothing on his lips; he'd have Pym own A patriot could not play a purer part Than follow in his track; they two combined Might put down England. Well, Pym heard him out; One glance—you know Pym's eye—one word was all: "You leave us, Wentworth! while your ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... virtue to set him about extirpating them as fast as he could? And yet each of these manifest contradictions to nature has been laid down by men of speculation as a discovery in moral philosophy; which they, it seems, have found out through all the specious appearances to the contrary. This reflection may be extended further. The extravagances of enthusiasm and superstition do not at all lie in the road of common sense; and therefore, so far as they ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... submissive subjects, who live on hopes and delusions, but neither do I wish to soil my hands in their barbarous exploitation. I don't wish it ever to be said that, the slave-trade abolished, Spain has continued to cloak it with her banner and perfect it under a wealth of specious institutions. No, to be great Spain does not have to be a tyrant, Spain is sufficient unto herself, Spain was greater when she had only her own territory, wrested from the clutches of the Moor. I too am a Spaniard, but before being a Spaniard I am a man, and before Spain and above ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... rare beauty and a singular aptitude of acquiring various accomplishments, was added a seductiveness all the more dangerous, because she possessed a mind unbending and calculating, a disposition cunning and selfish, a deep hypocrisy, a stubborn and despotic will—all hidden under the specious gloss of a generous, warm, and impassioned nature. Physically her organization was as deceptive as it was morally. Her large black eyes—which, by turns languished and beamed with beauty beneath their ebon lashes—could feign ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... which her husband held to his prerogative of sole control was merely typical. These other men of a humbler class were like unto him. Evidently, then, she must contrive some other strategy, if she would save her husband from the pit he had digged for himself by yielding to the specious processes of Morton and Carrington. Yet, she could imagine no scheme that offered any promise of success.... She grew thinner, so that her loveliness took on an ethereal quality. Her nights were well nigh sleepless; her days became long hours of ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... 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 ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... say he alluded to the legend of "Little Jack Horner"? (Cheers.) Some commentators are of opinion that "HORNER." was a typographical error for "HOMER." But the prefix; and the epithet combined to militate against this ingenious and plausible, but specious, theory. "HOMER" was not in any sense "Little," nor was his Pagan name "JACK." Again, "Corner," in the second line, could not in any language have ever rhymed with "HOMER." He knew that "Cromer" furnished them with a rhyme for ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 10, 1891 • Various
... 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 ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... willing to 'help the Lord against the mighty;' for if she has no care of the liberty of mankind she deserves not her own. But because in this you may be deceived by pretences, which, continuing for a while specious, may afterward vanish; the other is more certain, and that is if she be capable of an equal agrarian; which that it was not observed by excellent AEmilius in his donation of liberty, and introduction of a ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... especially if we dispose of them in a quiet and painless way, so as to spare them the fears and agonies of death!" But here again my heart prevailed. My natural, unreasoning, instinctive horror of injustice and murder rendered the specious pleadings of Atheistic utilitarianism powerless. And so on ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... another popular idea of emancipation, which is unjust, fallacious, and impossible of application. It is known by the specious though plausible appellation of gradual or prospective emancipation; by which it is proposed to destroy, by legislation, the productiveness and the value of this species of property, after a limited ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... and it found Ranald's heart, but with pain blanching his cheek Ranald stood up determined to end the fight. It was by no means easy for him to strike. Before him he saw not this man with his ingenious and specious pleading—it would not have been a difficult matter to have brushed him aside—but he was looking into the blue eyes of the woman he had for seven years loved more than he loved his life, and he knew that when his blow fell it would fall upon the face that, only ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... age and times of the world wherein we are fallen is so much given to verbal profession, as well of religion as of all commendable royal virtues, but wanting the actions and deeds agreeable to so specious a profession; as it hath bred such an unsatiable curiosity in many men's spirits, and such an itching in the tongues and pens of most men, as nothing is left unsearched to the bottom both in talking and writing. For from the very highest mysteries in the Godhead and the most inscrutable ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... by a noble hand. I have since examined the originals with a more discerning eye, and shall not hesitate to pronounce, that Bossuet is indeed a master of all the weapons of controversy. In the 'Exposition,' a specious apology, the orator assumes, with consummate art, the tone of candour and simplicity; and the ten-horned monster is transformed, at his magic touch, into the milk-white Hind, who must be loved as soon as she is seen. In the 'History,' a bold and well-aimed ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... the crew's dastardly trick to save themselves, frustrated by Paul's insight and promptitude. The pretext for getting into the boat was specious. Anchoring by the bow as well as by the stern would help to keep the ship from driving ashore; and if once the crew were in the boat and pulled as far as was necessary to lay out the anchors, it would be easy, under cover of the darkness, to make good their escape on shore ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... 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 invested ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... the shade. He wished to persuade Mr. Woodhouse, as well as Emma, to join the party; and he knew that to have any of them sitting down out of doors to eat would inevitably make him ill. Mr. Woodhouse must not, under the specious pretence of a morning drive, and an hour or two spent at Donwell, be tempted ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... speak as they ought. Upon the whole, however, I am quite vain enough and well 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 to the playfulness ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... however, shout that the assistance of the Holy Spirit is extenuated and diminished if even the least particle be attributed to the human will. Though this argument may appear specious and plausible, yet pious minds understand that by our doctrine— according to which we ascribe some cooperation to our will; viz., some assent and apprehension (qua tribuimus aliquam SYNERGIAM voluntati nostrae, videlicet qualemcumque assensionem et apprehensionem)— ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... never see London again; and, understanding I had fallen into good company, he threw no obstacle in the way of my profiting by it. So careful was he, indeed, as to get one of the consul's clerks to ascertain who the Mertons were, lest I should become the dupe of the thousands of specious rogues with which London abounds. The report was favourable, giving us to understand that the Major had been much employed in the West Indies, where he still held a moderately lucrative, semi-military appointment, being then in England to settle certain long and vexatious accounts, as well as to ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... before I was out of bed, the Abbe Fontanon was announced to me. When he entered he proved to be a tall old man with a bilious skin and a sombre, stern expression, which he tried to soften by a specious manner and a show of gentle but ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... of the senate the emperor ruled. It was from the senate that he received the ancient titles of the republic—of consul, tribune, pontiff, and censor. Even his title of imperator was decreed him, according to the custom of the republic, only for a period of ten years. But this specious pretence, which was preserved until the last days of the empire, did not mask the real autocratic authority of the emperor. The fact that he nominated citizens to the senate was proof, if proof were needed, that the independence of that body was destroyed; for the principles of a free constitution ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... the device were startling. By an act of January 4th, 1801, as many as 130 prominent Jacobins were "placed under special surveillance outside the European territory of the Republic"—a specious phrase for denoting a living death amidst the wastes of French Guiana or the Seychelles. Some of the threatened persons escaped, perhaps owing to the connivance of Fouche; some were sent to the Isle of Oleron; but the others were forthwith despatched to the miseries ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... this damning system of infidelity, under the specious name of philosophy, light, and science, spread with such untiring industry over the European mind, that unhinged the whole framework of society, and prepared it, like a vast magazine, for an awful explosion. All the principles that held society together ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... Such are the specious, but false arguments for a proposition which always will find numerous advocates, in a nation where men are every day starting up from obscurity to wealth. To refute them is needless. The general sense of mankind cries out, with irresistible ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... 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. ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... 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 their ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... moral lay And in these tales mankind survey; With early virtues plant your breast The specious ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... 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 ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... men, but actual imitation of men. These women said that since men had attained mastery in life, captured all the best things, and adopted the most successful methods of living, it was necessary for women to copy them at every point. That was a specious plea which even had in it a certain element of truth. But the fact remained that women and men are different, that the difference is based in fundamental natural functions, and that to place one sex in exactly the same position as the other sex is to deform its outlines ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... activities runs a risk of escaping at times the strenuous denunciation which Justice 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 ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... 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 ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... his waves by lab'ring art controll'd: Along his side a few small cots were spread, His finny brood their humble tenants fed; At op'ning dawn with fraudful nets supply'd The padding skiff would brave his specious tide, Ply round the shores, nor tempt the dangerous main, But seek ere night the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... He had been long enough on the Ohio to get the feeling of a great river. He saw the specious pleading of the wounded wretch, and his quick imagination pictured the woman alone in a vast, wild wood, at the edge of that ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... 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 terms. I reject ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... advancement of general knowledge, they have no scruple whatever in offering this to the American people; and so firm do they feel in the conviction of its utility, that they let it go into the world, unaided by any of those arts, or specious professions which are sometimes employed, in similar cases, to excite the attention, enlist the partialities, and seduce the ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... world is born to be a slave to public opinion. Now a private man in France has less opportunity of influencing the world than his wife, although he has ample occasion for ridiculing it. Women possess to a marvelous degree the art of giving color by specious arguments to the recriminations in which they indulge. They never set up any defence, excepting when they are in the wrong, and in this proceeding they are pre-eminent, knowing how to oppose arguments by precedents, proofs by assertions, and ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... day they all repaired to the palace, and he who was possessed of the warmest eloquence spoke. If the monarch would believe it, the wicked story-teller, whose talents were so specious, was indebted for his success to the art of magic, in which he was well skilled. But he ought to distrust an illusion which exposes at once the laws, religion, morals, the honour of the throne, and the ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... such circumstances were married, the better. But Furlong, with that affectation of propriety which belongs to his time-serving tribe, pleaded the "regard to appearances"— "so soon after the ever-to-be-deplored event,"—and other such specious excuses, which were but covers to his own rascality, and used but to postpone the "wedding-day." The truth was, the moment Furlong had no longer the terrors of O'Grady's pistol before his eyes, he had resolved never to take so bad a match as that with ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... kind of optimism which trusts that good luck will prevent the application of these theories to practical life. We are living in an age of wide-spread intellectual unsettlement, an age presenting the difficult problem of a vast half-educated public, ready to fall an easy prey to all manner of specious sophistries, especially when they are dressed up in the garb of a pseudo-mysticism; we must above all remember that human nature is habitually prone to welcome whatever will serve as an excuse for throwing off the irksome restraints of moral ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... presence, Feng 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 and ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... conferred this benefit on the Constitution, he withdrew himself from our applause. He conceived that the duties of a member of Parliament (which with the elect faithful, the true believers, the Islam of Parliamentary reform, are of little or no merit, perhaps not much better than specious sins) might he as well attended to in India as in England, and the means of reformation to Parliament itself be far better provided. Mr. Benfield was therefore no sooner elected than he set off for Madras, and defrauded the longing eyes of Parliament. We have ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... talents devoted their lives to the investigation; and in multiplied instances the discovery was said to have been completed. Vast sums of money were consumed in the fruitless endeavour; and in a later period it seems to have furnished an excellent handle to vain and specious projectors, to extort money from those more amply provided with the goods ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... question. It is easy to pretend a zeal for liberty. Those who think themselves not likely to be incumbered 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 intention, or may possibly be in their power to perform,—to those who are bound and principled no more to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... a Welsh girl about to elope with a specious rascal, and of the intervention of her old father, who is ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... Bramante, during his residence in Lombardy, developed a method of erecting piers with rubble enclosed by hewn stone or plaster-covered brickwork. This enabled an unconscientious builder to furnish bulky architectural masses, which presented a specious aspect of solidity and looked more costly than they really were. It had the additional merit of being easy and rapid in execution. Bramante was thus able to gratify the whims and caprices of his impatient patron, who desired to see the works of art he ordered rise like the fabric of Aladdin's lamp ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... 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 without ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... has brought this piety upon her, And she's a prude, now she can't help herself. As long as she could capture men's attentions She made the most of her advantages; But, now she sees her beauty vanishing, She wants to leave the world, that's leaving her, And in the specious veil of haughty virtue She'd hide the weakness of her worn-out charms. That is the way with all your old coquettes; They find it hard to see their lovers leave 'em; And thus abandoned, their forlorn estate Can find no ...
— Tartuffe • Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere
... paper and rubbish stuffed in here!" she exclaimed. "If we light it, there will be a bright blaze for a few minutes, and we shall feel as if it was a real fire." She struck a match and lighted it up with a great specious ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... 'the Queen is a woman, not a man. All your fairness shall not help you with her. Neither yet your sweet tongue nor your specious reasons. Nor yet your faith, for she is ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... and fleas have made their appeal in large number to the credulity of the public. Can any animal below man be educated in the proper sense of the word? Or is the animal mind susceptible of nothing more than a mechanical training, and only given the specious counterfeit of an educated intelligence when under the direct ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... boundaries of authority were not properly fixed. Committees exercised legislative, executive, and judicial powers. It is not to be doubted that in many instances these were improperly used, and that private resentments were often covered under the specious veil of patriotism. The sufferers, in passing over to the Loyalists, carried with them a keen remembrance of the vengeance of Committees, and when opportunity presented were tempted to retaliate. From the nature of the case, the original offenders were less frequently the objects of retaliation ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... 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 ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in the lore Of love deep learned to the red heart's core: 190 Not one hour old, yet of sciential brain To unperplex bliss from its neighbour pain; Define their pettish limits, and estrange Their points of contact, and swift counterchange; Intrigue with the specious chaos, and dispart Its most ambiguous atoms with sure art; As though in Cupid's college she had spent Sweet days a lovely graduate, still unshent, And kept his rosy terms ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... Alexander Hagerman. These names afford sufficient evidence that full justice was done to the case on both sides. Hagerman was a counsel of remarkable ability, and he fought very hard. His argument was a masterpiece of clever, specious reasoning, well calculated to produce an effect upon uneducated or half-educated jurymen. He took an enlightened stand, admitting the advantage to a community of a free and unfettered press. He then proceeded to argue away all the consequences of the ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... in we meet with tombs enclosing souls which denied their immortalities. But whether the virtuous heathen, who lived better than he spake, or erring in the prin- ciples of himself, yet lived above philosophers of more specious maxims, lie so deep as he is placed, at least so low as not to rise against Christians, who believing or knowing that truth, have lastingly denied it in their practice and conversation—were a query too sad ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... sell for promises or gifts, for sold it would be in that case, and if it could be bought, small indeed would be its value. Nor is it to be filched from me by wiles or artifices; rather will I carry it with me to my grave, and perhaps to heaven, than expose it to danger by listening to specious tales and chimeras. It is a flower which nothing should be allowed to sully, even in imagination if it be possible. Nip the rose from the spray, and how soon it fades! One touches it, another smells it, a third plucks its leaves, and at last the flower perishes in vulgar ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Heaven to the warm bosom of Earth and make them mingle. You would lift up Earth to Heaven! Ah, that is difficult! Even Christ came down! It is the chief thing I admire in Him, that He 'descended from Heaven and was made Man'. TRES CHER Felix, I shall bewilder you to death with my specious and frivolous reasoning,—and after all, I had much better come to the main fact of what I intended to tell you,—a sort of confession out of church. You know I have already told you I am going to die soon, and that ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... 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! ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... to-day was in a tense and excitable condition, now heightened to fever by the two cobwebbed mysteries standing against the wall, but the imperative rattle of Joel's cane on the desk quickly induced a specious show ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... not deceived! This man pretends to tell you what he is. He is blinding you—weaving a bandage of specious words across your eyes. But I will undeceive you. I will tear the bandage—" He ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... great wrath, and upbraided the Evil One for his deceit, in which denunciation he was heartily joined by de Retz. But so credulous was the Seigneur that he allowed himself to be persuaded to afford Satan another trial, which meant, of course, that Prelati led him on from day to day with specious promises and ambiguous hints, until he had drained him of nearly all his remaining substance. He was then preparing to decamp with his plunder when a ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... dignities and funds—to satisfy the ambition and greed of favourites or their friends—in the face of national bankruptcy, private ruin, and widespread disaffection, in the very death-throes of the Revolution, chose that time of all others to buy—under whatever specious pretext of exchange and indemnification—for him who had already so many hunting-seats, the fresh one of Rambouillet; for her, who had Little Trianon in its perfection, the new suburban ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... examples, cast a glance at the belief in 'free will,' demolished with such specious persuasiveness recently by the skilful hand of Professor Fullerton. [Footnote: Popular Science Monthly, N. Y., vols. lviii and lix.] When a common man says that his will is free, what does he mean? He means that there are situations of bifurcation inside of his life in which two futures seem to ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... from heaven are utterly depraved and abraded of their glory; but Zophiel has traces of his original virtue and beauty, and a lingering hope of restoration to the presence of the Divinity. Deceived by the specious fallacies of an immortal like himself, and his superior in rank, he encounters the blackest perfidy in him for whom so much had been forfeited, and the blight of every prospect that had lured his fancy or ambition. Egla, though ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... repression; and, what was worse, the ill-judged declarations of some unwise workers in the critical field were seized upon and used to discredit all fruitful research. Fortunately, a man now appeared who both met all this opposition successfully, and put aside all the half truths or specious untruths urged by minor critics whose zeal outran their discretion. This was a great constructive scholar—not a destroyer, but a builder—Wellhausen. Reverently, but honestly and courageously, with clearness, fulness, and convicting force, he summed up the conquests ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... that this politic damsel (who had been reading Machiavelli, beyond doubt), had a very ingenious little plot in her mind. On the night of the wedding, she contrived, upon I forget what specious pretence, to have her sister occupy a couch sufficiently near that of the royal pair to admit of easy conversation from bed to bed; and, a little before cock-crowing, she took care to awaken the good monarch, her husband (who bore her none the worse will ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... 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 beach looking for ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... Swedish crown, reserving, however, the two fortresses of Wurtzburg and Koenigshofen, which were to be garrisoned by the Swedes; and also engaged, in name of the Swedish crown, to secure these territories to the duke. His demand of the supreme authority was evaded on some specious pretext. The duke did not delay to display his gratitude for this valuable grant, and by his influence and activity soon restored tranquillity to the army. Large sums of money, and still more extensive estates, were divided among the officers, amounting ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... 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 apparent thought of ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... our institutions rest. Simplicity and economy in the affairs of state have never failed to chasten and invigorate republican principles, while these have been as surely subverted by national prodigality, under whatever specious pretexts it may have been ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... substituting our government for theirs. Therefore our cause, too, is the juster.' But therefore it is nothing of the sort. A dirty man may be in the right, and a clean man in the wrong; an ungodly man in the right, and a godly man in the wrong; and the most specious and well-intentioned system which allows justice to be confused with something else will allow it to be stretched, even by well-meaning persons, to cover theft, lying ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... distinguished 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 ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... benignly at his companion as he pronounced his concluding words. The Hon. Bunning-Ford looked, thought, and looked again. He began to think that Lablache was meditating a more rascally proceeding than he had given him credit for. His words were so specious. His pie was so delicately crusted with such a tempting exterior. What was the object of this magnanimous offer? He felt he must ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... that he is a follower of Frank Norris, and two or three facts lend it a specious probability. "McTeague" was printed in 1899; "Sister Carrie" a year later. Moreover, Norris was the first to see the merit of the latter book, and he fought a gallant fight, as literary advisor to ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... of yourself, won't you?" There was genuine concern in the big man's voice as he went on with specious flippancy. "Miss Copley left a dagger kicking around; let's hope she hasn't dropped an automatic or a machine-gun here and there. If Mr. Monk got the idea ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... of motives of 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 ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... that his essays were made from lecture notes. His habit, often in lecturing, was to compile his ideas as they came to him on a general subject, in scattered notes, and when on the platform, to trust to the mood of the occasion, to assemble them. This seems a specious explanation, though true to fact. Vagueness, is at times, an indication of nearness to a perfect truth. The definite glory of Bernard of Cluny's Celestial City, is more beautiful than true—probably. Orderly reason does not always have to be a visible part of all great things. Logic may possibly ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... not resist the human instinct for employing arguments such as would baffle and confound the unprincipled opponent, rather than such as would satisfy the mature Christian. If a man denied himself all specious arguments, and all artifices of dialectic subtlety, he must renounce the hopes of a present triumph; for the light of absolute truth on moral or on spiritual themes is too dazzling to be sustained by the diseased optics ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... 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 Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... is the crew's dastardly trick to save themselves, frustrated by Paul's insight and promptitude. The pretext for getting into the boat was specious. Anchoring by the bow as well as by the stern would help to keep the ship from driving ashore; and if once the crew were in the boat and pulled as far as was necessary to lay out the anchors, it would be easy, under cover of the darkness, to make good their escape on shore and leave ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... painted forms of other times,[273] 'Twas all they left of virtues or of crimes, Save vague tradition; and the gloomy vaults That hid their dust, their foibles, and their faults; And half a column of the pompous page, That speeds the specious tale from age to age; Where History's pen its praise or blame supplies, And lies like Truth, and still most truly lies. 190 He wandering mused, and as the moonbeam shone Through the dim lattice, o'er the floor of stone, And the ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... the visitation and of the scandalous reports to which it gave rise, was to secure some specious pretext that would justify the king in the eyes of the nation in suppressing the monasteries and in confiscating their possessions. The idea that the monastic establishments enjoyed only the administration of their lands and goods, and that these might be seized upon at any moment for the public ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... days of conservation and elimination of waste every subject that seeks admission to the course of study should be challenged at the door and be made to show what useful purpose it is to serve. Nor should any subject be admitted on any specious pretext. If there are subjects that are better adapted to the high purposes of education than the ones we are now using, then, by all means, let us ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... to what he had before he left England, his poor wife pleaded with him to return home, pointing out that there he would be able to lay his case before the British public. This course had attractions for him, but after a night's reflection and prayer, he rejected it as a specious temptation ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... world was startled in its traditional routine, and Berenguela's audacity became the talk of every court in Europe. Prayers and entreaties were in vain, so firmly did she stand her ground in spite of the countless specious arguments which were used to bend her will, and, finally, the matter was dropped and considered a closed incident. "Woman sees deep; man sees far. To the man the world is his heart; to the woman the heart is her world;" so ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... with an attack upon Spanish sovereignty, thereby 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 an impressionable subject comes within the influence of a stronger force ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... Germany by the alarming illness of my younger brother, who, against my advice, had gone to Munich to study, at the feet indeed of a great master, the art of portraiture in oils. The near relative who made him an allowance had threatened to withdraw it if he should, under specious pretexts, turn for superior truth to Paris—Paris being somehow, for a Cheltenham aunt, the school of evil, the abyss. I deplored this prejudice at the time, and the deep injury of it was now visible—first in the fact that it had not saved the poor boy, who was clever, frail and foolish, from ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... thought, A secret glance would tell me she could love, If I but gave encouragement. Before me She keeps some moderation; but is never Closeted with my wife, but in the end I find my Katherine in briny tears. From the small chamber, where she first was lodged, The gradual fiend by specious wriggling arts Has now ensconced herself in the best part Of this large mansion; calls the left wing her own; Commands my servants, equipage.—I hear Her hated tread. What ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... prerogative of sole control was merely typical. These other men of a humbler class were like unto him. Evidently, then, she must contrive some other strategy, if she would save her husband from the pit he had digged for himself by yielding to the specious processes of Morton and Carrington. Yet, she could imagine no scheme that offered any promise of success.... She grew thinner, so that her loveliness took on an ethereal quality. Her nights were well nigh sleepless; her days became ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... repose much faith in those striking synchronizations which apparently unrelated influences sometimes effect with related events, and which we are accustomed to term coincidences. She distrusted their specious seeming of spontaneity, she suspected a deep design behind ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... parley, did not doubt that she should also bring them to capitulate, especially when she saw the Queen was appeased, and had told his Royal Highness that she was infinitely obliged to him, and would do what her Council judged most proper and reasonable. This Council, which was only a specious name, consisted only of the Cardinal, the Keeper of ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... secularities, the nimble intellectualities, the specious animalism, the derisive skepticism, the snapping personalities, the witty worldliness, that interlace and constitute the successive cantos of "Don Juan," the passages just quoted and similar ones (they are not many) rise, ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... of 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 last centuries to collate ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... twelve years, and, like Clement of Alexandria, examined, first, the temple, and next the god. A passing glance at these is not sufficient; it was also necessary to understand the theology on which this cult is founded. This one, explained by a very specious theology, like most others, is composed of dogmas called the principles of 1789; they were proclaimed, indeed, at that date, having been previously formulated by ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... and discussion among the dominant class. For down deep in the heart of every man is a conception of right. He cannot extinguish it, or separate it from its comparative. What would I have others do to me? Pride, interest, adverse contact, all with specious argument may strive to dissipate the comparison, but the pulsations of a common humanity, keeping time with the verities of God never ceased to trouble, and thus the moral pebble thrown on the bosom ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... the theatric sky. This alludes to Leigh Hunt, who, in The Examiner, at this time kept the actors in hot water. Dr. Johnson's argument is, like many of his other arguments, specious, but untenable; that which it defends has since been abandoned as impracticable. Mr. Whitbread contended that the actor was like a portrait in a picture, and accordingly placed the green curtain in a gilded frame remote ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... is considered that enough has already been inflicted. Such punishments as pressing the knees to the ground, making prisoners kneel on chains, or burning their legs with hot irons, adopted under the specious pretence of not using the 'squeezing' torture, are among the most barbarous of prohibited practices, and are on ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... periods of control, for there are times when the mind wearies of rationality, and, as it were in self-defense, in obedience to the instinct of progressive life, craves a specious comfort. It seemed undeniable that Mr. Warricombe regarded him with growth of interest, invited his conversation more unreservedly. He began to understand Martin's position with regard to religion and science, and thus could utter himself more securely. At length he ventured to discourse with ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... affinity imagined betwixt the Egyptians and Chinese. On such subjects, it is certain, human ingenuity has been fruitful of extravagancies, and there is much less risk of absurdity if we abide by merely general inferences; but, on the other hand, it must be admitted, that these are often specious pretexts for avoiding the labours of enquiry, and have very rarely contributed any thing to the stock of useful knowledge. Besides, they are often as fundamentally theoretic, as those more specific ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... destruction is a virtue, especially if we dispose of them in a quiet and painless way, so as to spare them the fears and agonies of death!" But here again my heart prevailed. My natural, unreasoning, instinctive horror of injustice and murder rendered the specious pleadings of Atheistic utilitarianism powerless. And so on ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... his present course accordingly, he at length resolved to keep aloof, at present, from both parties, believing he had so adroitly managed thus far, that whichever side might triumph, he could put in a specious claim of having acted with it, ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... either the error or the criminality of some of her members, the church herself, in this, as in every other instance, has always inculcated the duty of sincerity and truth, and reprobated a deviation from them, even on the specious pretence of producing good. On this subject our author thus forcibly expresses himself, in one of his letters on Mr. Bower's History of the Lives of the Popes: "It is very unjust to charge the popes or the Catholic church with countenancing knowingly false legends; seeing all the divines ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... ascertain the true character of superstition, although it has prevailed so extensively in the world, and produced such extraordinary effects. Amongst other anomalies, this is observable, that it not only has led captive weak and ignorant minds, which being unable to detect a specious sophism, or to depart from a general practice, may easily be supposed incapable of resisting its fascination; but it has been known to seduce and enchain some of the noblest orders of intellect, and the most cultivated of human understandings. ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... Adrian, spite of warning voice, This specious gift decides thy choice, Slight not the counsel that would fain Preserve thee from remorse ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... quite vain enough, and well 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 Bonaparte, or something that would form a contrast, and bring the reader with increased delight to the playfulness and epigrammatism of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... 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 had ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... therefore, allow these things some influence: provided only that we understand how much we ought to allow them. It is, however, the part of a philosopher, who seeks not so much for what is specious as for what is true, neither utterly to disregard those things which those very boastful men used to admit to be in accordance with nature; and at the same time to see that the power of virtue, and the authority, if I may say so, of honourableness, ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... they had been cheated, and that this measure, disguised by specious representations, was in truth adopted only for the purpose of more effectually displacing the old functionaries of the nation. And, lastly, it was evident that this general dismission would carry off those authorities who were the natural ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... 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 ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... power begun; His noble stream, inglorious, Mersey roll'd, Nor felt his waves by lab'ring art controll'd: Along his side a few small cots were spread, His finny brood their humble tenants fed; At op'ning dawn with fraudful nets supply'd The padding skiff would brave his specious tide, Ply round the shores, nor tempt the dangerous main, But seek ere ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... generous sense, live as fully as at present. He is a fool who objects to luxuries; but he is also a fool who does not protest against the waste of luxuries on those who do not desire and cannot enjoy them. It remains to be seen, by each man who would live a true life to himself and not a merely specious life to society, how many luxuries he truly wants and to how many he merely submits as to a social propriety; and all these last he will immediately forswear. Let him do this, and he will be surprised to find how little money it requires to keep him ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hand belonged to his brother, who had bequeathed it to him; but as he had never heard of two brothers dying from a jungle fever taken by shooting jackals, he considered that the odds were strongly in his favour." This argument, however specious, did not prove good. The third morning he returned on board, complaining of a head-ache and shivering. He was bled and put into his bed, which ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of acquiring Cuba for the South: let them bring eight hundred thousand French and English Papists, under the name of acquiring Canada for the North: let them bring two millions of Mexican Papists—brown, tawny, red and black, being a mixture of all colors and all nations—under the specious pretence of "extending the area of freedom"—let all this be done—and your party, made up of native traitors, and foreign vagabonds, and Catholic paupers, are aiming at it—let it be done, I say, and farewell to liberty, and all that is sacred in this country! With five millions ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... of October Satturday 1804 Cold Wind from the N. Saw many large round Stones near the middle of the River passed an old Ricara village of 80 Lodges Picketed in those lodges in nearly an octagon form, 20 to 60 feet Diameter Specious Covered with earth and as Close as they Can Stand, a number of Skin Canoes in the huts, we found Squashes of 3 different Kinds growing in the Village Shields Killed an Elk Close by- The Magpy is common here, ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... His specious argument for the regulation of the evil "For some small matter for the license" is familiar to modern reformers in connection with other sins. He speaks of the reduction of the usury rates as a general good and believes "It will no whit discourage the lender." Wrong-doers in ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... transactions had afforded specious arguments for both nations to impeach the conduct of each other. The French court, conscious of their encroachments in Nova Scotia, affected to draw a shade over these, as particulars belonging to a disputed territory, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... 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 ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... I confess, appeared to me more specious than sound. Man, in order to enjoy the advantages of a social state, must no doubt sacrifice a part of his natural rights, and his original independence; but, if the sacrifice imposed on him be not compensated by the benefits of civilization, the savage, wise in his simplicity, retains ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... 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 really nothing, but under the specious pretence of learning and antiquity, to impose upon the world. There are other things which I cannot tolerate among his rarities; as, the china figure of a lady in the glass case; the Italian engine for the imprisonment of those who go abroad with it: both which ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... XIV. The Master said, 'Without the specious speech of the litanist T'o and the beauty of the prince Chao of Sung, it is difficult to escape in the present age.' CHAP. XV. The Master said, 'Who can go out but by the door? How is it that men will not walk according to these ways?' CHAP. XVI. The Master said, 'Where the ...
— The Chinese Classics—Volume 1: Confucian Analects • James Legge
... loyal, it was his duty either to resume his warfare or resign his appointment as Prime Minister and go into retirement. He did neither. In a thoroughly characteristic manner he sought a middle course, after having vaguely advocated a national convention to settle the matter. By specious misrepresentation the widow of the Emperor Kwanghsu—the Dowager Empress Lung Yu who had succeeded the Prince Regent Ch'un in her care of the interests of the child Emperor Hsuan Tung—was induced to believe that ceremonial retirement was the only course ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... pretended, to usurp upon the people.' This supposes the Norman usurpations to be rights in his successors. And again, (C. 159,) 'the Commons established a principle, which is noble in itself, and seems specious, but is belied by all history and experience, that the people are the origin of all just power.' And where else will this degenerate son of science, this traitor to his fellow-men, find the origin of just powers, if not in ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... the wavering will With specious words, and fair, And enters the beleaguered soul, And rules, ...
— Beechenbrook - A Rhyme of the War • Margaret J. Preston
... 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
... places in Guienne and Languedoc, after their defeat by King Clovis, on condition that they abjured their heresy, and kept themselves separate from all other men for ever. The principal reason alleged in support of this supposition of their Gothic descent, is the specious one of derivation,—Chiens Gots, Cans Gets, Cagots, equivalent to ...
— An Accursed Race • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the fact of the debt. Probably that fool Beaumont-Greene had applied to his father, and the father had written to Warde. It was unthinkable that Warde knew more than this. Having reached this conclusion, Lovell turned over in his mind two or three specious lies that ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... cities anti-Constitutional riots took place. Several States refused to ratify. The opposition had the support of the great name of Patrick Henry, who had been the soul of the resistance to the Stamp Act, and who now declared that under the specious name of "Federation" Liberty had been betrayed. The defence was conducted in a publication called The Federalist largely by two men afterwards to be associated with fiercely contending parties, Alexander Hamilton and ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... with their hangers-on. This, with a considerable business in the coolie trade—which consists in kidnapping wretched coolies, putting them on board ships where all the horrors of the slave-trade are reproduced, and sending them on specious promises to such places as Cuba—is the chief business of the 'foreign' merchants at Swatow. Swatow itself is a small town some miles up the river. I can only distinguish it by the great fleet ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... 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 ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... surrounded with sheets of foolscap folio paper, tied up with a red string; he has more books than one could read in a year, or comprehend in seven; he walks slowly, speaks hesitatingly, and receives fees from those who visit him, for giving "hypothetical answers" to "specious questions." ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... bolder things before now!" was my reply, and whatever the opinion of my comrades, the flattery ranged them on my side. Perhaps the corporal felt it beneath his dignity to discuss tactics with an inferior, or perhaps he felt unable to refute the specious pretensions I advanced; in any case he turned away, and either slept, or affected sleep, while I strenuously labored to convince my companions that my ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... drawn funds to the amount of more than a million sterling from provident people in [Sidenote: The "Liberator."] all classes of the population and all parts of the country by specious representations, and had applied those funds not to the legitimate purpose of a building society, but to the support of other undertakings in which the same persons were concerned who were the active managers of the society. The consequence was that the whole group of concerns became insolvent (Oct. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... 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 ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... doubt can erect all sorts of difficulties, and perhaps none is more common and specious than what is called by the sceptical men 'the logic of proportion'. This argument says, 'In a universe so vast, what is man? As a speck of dust is to a planet, and as a star is to the vast universe, so is man to the world in which he lives'. Well, it certainly is ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... his glory, as much as in 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 controversy was a fashionable theme, he entered the lists on the subject ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... "With his specious address he might have regained his old ascendancy over her had I not interfered. You know well, Agnes, his peculiar gift of fascination. I believe he could by some unexplainable psychological process make any great wrong appear ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... consequent agitation in Ireland, particularly those given by Sir W. Scott and Earl Stanhope, are taken from Coxe's "Life of Walpole." Monck Mason, however, in his various notes appended to his life of Swift, has once and for all placed Coxe's narrative in its true light, and exposed the specious special pleading on behalf of his hero, Walpole. But even Coxe cannot hide the fact that the granting of the patent and the circumstances under which it was granted, amounted to a disgraceful job, by which an opportunity was seized to benefit a "noble person" in England at the ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... quick in observing nor too firm in opposing the beginnings of 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 ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... in the flower of his age, Fritz Brunner had the pleasure of laying his stepmother in one of those charming little German cemeteries, in which the Teuton indulges his unbridled passion for horticulture under the specious pretext of honoring his dead. And as the second Mme. Brunner expired while the authors of her being were yet alive, Brunner senior was obliged to bear the loss of the sums of which his wife had drained his coffers, to say nothing of other ills, which had told upon a Herculean ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... again. After all, this outcast who had led him into the wilderness on a fruitless search was his comrade, and they had agreed to share and share alike. That Grenfell had at the most only a few years of indulgence still in front of him did not affect the question. The specious reasons which seemed to prove that he would be warranted in deserting his comrade would not fit in with his simple code, which, avoiding all side issues, laid down very simply the things one could ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... against those men so well as his being thoroughly knowing in business, having a judgment to weigh all the delusive schemes and the fine promises of the wheedling projector, and to see which are likely to answer, or which not; to examine all his specious pretences, his calculations and figures, and see whether they are as likely to answer the end as he takes upon him to say they will; to make allowances for all his fine flourishes and outsides, and then to judge for himself. A projector is to a tradesman ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... of men The apple pressed with specious cant, O, what a thousand pities then That ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... man's power to help and to amend. When the Holy Ghost comes upon men with great conviction of their state and condition, and of the use and excellency of the grace of sincerity and humility in prayer, then, and not till then, will the grace of prayer be more prized, and the specious, flounting, complimentary lips of flatterers, be more laid aside. I have said it already, and will say it again, that there is now-a-days a great deal of wickedness committed in the very duty of prayer; by words of which men have no sense by reaching after such conclusion ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... his insensate passion for revenge upon one who had all but murdered him, he had forgotten all else but the moment's specious opportunity. ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... almost turns my dangerous nature wild] [W: mild] This emendation is specious, but even this may be controverted. To turn wild is to distract. An appearance so unexpected, says Timon, almost turns my savageness to distraction. Accordingly he examines with nicety lest his phrenzy, ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... upon the minds of others, but their own thoughts expressed for them. That was one of the secrets of the unique confidence he inspired. The jury gave him their verdict because he always put the issue on a basis they could understand. His answer to the specious arguments of the learned is always an appeal to what it needs no learning to know. The critics of Pope's Homer are met by the unanswerable retort: "To a thousand cavils one answer is sufficient. ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... 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 which are the ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... bristling with fallacies, which have arisen like thistles out of the thinness of our life and the stoniness of our hearts. One of these mistaken views is perpetually being put forward by people who assert that the pleasantness of a gift lies in the good-will of the giver. The notion has a specious air of amiability and disinterestedness and general good-breeding; but the only truth it really contains is that, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, a present gives exactly no pleasure at all. For, if the pleasantness of a present depended solely on the expression of good-will, why ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... the specious compliments, and replied by similar protestations and by reminding Florence how he had curbed the hand of those very condottieri who had now rebelled against him as a consequence. He showed himself calm and tranquil at the loss ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... cloisters, has become so notorious throughout the world that people sing and talk about it, still the adversaries who have presented the Confutation are so blind and without shame that they defend the law of the Pope by which marriage is prohibited, and that, with the specious claim that they are defending a spiritual state. Moreover, although it would be proper for them to be heartily ashamed of the exceedingly shameful, lewd, abandoned loose life of the wretches in their abbeys ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... is a rock which might shipwreck our hopes. But if the people turn a deaf ear to the specious arguments used to dazzle them, and realize that new life needs new conditions, and if they undertake the task themselves, then expropriation can be effected without ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... little Pamela, and says, she shall be her sister indeed! "For, Madam," said she, "Miss is a beauty!—And we see no French beauties like Master Davers and Miss."—"Beauty! my dear," said I; "what is beauty, if she be not a good girl? Beauty is but a specious, and, as it may happen, a dangerous recommendation, a mere skin-deep perfection; and if, as she grows up, she is not as good as Miss Goodwin, she shall be ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... we shall not trouble you with specious pretences—either of how we have a right to our empire because we overthrew the Mede, or are now attacking you because of wrong that you have done us—and make a long speech which would not be believed; and in return we hope that you, instead of thinking to ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... of the equinoxes, and tides), this magnetic disturbance is the only one yet established as depending on an external body. Men in general, however, do not think so. It appears to be a law of the human mind, to love to trace an effect to a cause, and to be ready to assent to any specious cause. Thus all practical men of the lower classes, even those whose pecuniary interests are concerned in it, believe firmly in the influence of the moon upon the winds and the weather. I believe that every careful examiner of recorded facts (among whom I place myself as regards ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... seductiveness all the more dangerous, because she possessed a mind unbending and calculating, a disposition cunning and selfish, a deep hypocrisy, a stubborn and despotic will—all hidden under the specious gloss of a generous, warm, and impassioned nature. Physically her organization was as deceptive as it was morally. Her large black eyes—which, by turns languished and beamed with beauty beneath their ebon lashes—could feign to admiration all the kindling ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... that yield to no milder treatment. His successors proceed to use that machinery for personal ends. Richard I gilded his abuse of his father's power with the glory of his crusade, and the end afforded a plausible justification for the means he adopted. But John cloaked his tyranny with no specious pretences; his greed and violence spared no section of the community, and forced all into a coalition which extorted ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... garden path below them. The stiff, glazed, broad-brimmed black hat, surmounting a dark face of Quixotic gravity and romantic rectitude, indicated Don Juan Briones. His companion, lazy, specious, and red-faced, was Senor Brown, ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... insight and conscious resolve. To many people morality seems nothing but convention, or an arbitrary tyranny, or a mysterious and awful necessity, something extraneous to their own desires, from which they would like to escape. To be able to refute these skeptics, expose the sophisms and specious arguments by which they support their wrongdoing, and show that they have chosen the lesser good, is a valuable help to the community and to one's own integrity of conduct. Too often the people perish for lack of vision; an understanding ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... 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, ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... know if my readers were checked, as I wished them to be, at least for a moment, in the close of the last chapter, by my talking of thistles and dandelions changing into seaweed, by gradation of which, doubtless, Mr. Darwin can furnish us with specious and sufficient instances. But the two groups will not be contemplated in our Oxford system as ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... weak and sick; the tempter was again there—a messenger of Satan ready to overthrow the faith which until now had sustained him. "Finding is not stealing," was the specious whisper; "and many ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers
... 69, at the end, dele. and add— , which latter deals with certain specious arguments adduced by these writers against the a priori possibility of ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous
... they themselves are all by this time satisfied truth will come out, and I hope you will not be deceived by any specious pretences. Our forefathers have been deluded, but the deception I hope is now at an end. And I must needs say if all these witnesses that have freely discovered their knowledge, joined to that truth which is at length drawn from that Dunne, be worthy of any credit, it is as plain a proof ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... the duty of the ministry to discourage all republican tendencies and specious attempts to degrade the King to the rank of a mere superior chief, as calculated to undermine his influence and authority, and place the islands ...
— Speeches of His Majesty Kamehameha IV. To the Hawaiian Legislature • Kamehameha IV
... east. Its genesis was reported in Constantinople nearly a week ago: then at intervals we learnt that these mysterious airmen, one of whom with artful artlessness had adopted the plain, respectable, and specious name of Smith, had manifested themselves at Karachi, Penang, and Port Darwin successively. The curtain then dropped, and the world waited with suspense for the opening of the next act, though there were some who suspected ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... received the relations of resemblance, contiguity, and causation, as principles of union among ideas, without examining into their causes, 'twas more in prosecution of my first maxim, that we must in the end rest contented with experience, than for want of something specious and plausible which I might have displayed on that subject. 'Twould have been easy to have made an imaginary dissection of the brain, and have shown why, upon our conception of any idea, the animal spirits run into all the ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... of gold, which the favorite eunuch had furnished, to satisfy the demands of Edecon, and to corrupt the fidelity of the guards. The interpreter was instantly seized, and dragged before the tribunal of Attila, where he asserted his innocence with specious firmness, till the threat of inflicting instant death on his son extorted from him a sincere discovery of the criminal transaction. Under the name of ransom, or confiscation, the rapacious king of the Huns accepted two hundred pounds of gold for the life of a traitor, whom he ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
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