"Specious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Sophists, or by Aristophanes in the full riot of his satire: but the total abnegation of principle here implied could never have been openly avowed by a responsible agent, speaking for the most polished community in Greece. Even the worst criminals seek to give some specious colour to their villainy; and the condemned felon, who will face death without a tremor, shudders at the cry of execration which greets his appearance at the scaffold. So hard it is, even for the most depraved, to stifle the last embers of the moral sense. We cannot suppose, ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... difference. Mr. Roosevelt himself was as much subject to serve at the call of the law, as were the policemen. He was not a dictator merely, he was part and parcel of the strength that he invoked. The reason for obedience rested on the same ground in each case—service in which each stood equal. It is a specious form of mistake to suppose that "men can legislate just what they wish to." They can legislate only what the majority decrees, and they can legislate effectively only what they have power to enforce. Had the saloon-keepers refused to obey Miss Willard, not she, but Mr. Roosevelt and ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... lad! That's the right principle. But now, think of it. Macassar Oil will defend itself; it is specious; the name is seductive. It is offered as a foreign importation; and we have the ill-luck to belong to our own country. Come, Popinot, have you the courage to kill Macassar? Then begin the fight in foreign lands. ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... Then, he looked again, for the boy's eyes were discomfortingly on his fat, black face, and the porter straightway decided to be polite. Yet, for all his specious seeming of unconcern, Samson was waking to the fact that he was a scarecrow, and his sensitive pride made him cut his meals short in the dining-car, where he was kept busy beating down inquisitive eyes with his defiant gaze. He resolved ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... a devilish and unnatural gain, Mowing the lean grass of a Golgotha! Sitting, like grinning Death, to clutch the toll Tortur'd from poverty, disease and crime; And this with Liberty upon their lips, Bland words, and specious, vulgar eloquence, And large oaths, with the tongue thrust in the cheek, And promises, as if they were as gods, And no God held the forked bolt above! Turning all ignorance, disaffection, hatred, Religion, and the peasant's ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
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