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Spurious   /spjˈʊriəs/  /spˈəriəs/   Listen
Spurious

adjective
1.
Plausible but false.  Synonym: specious.  "Spurious inferences"
2.
Born out of wedlock.  Synonyms: bastardly, misbegot, misbegotten.
3.
Intended to deceive.  Synonyms: inauthentic, unauthentic.



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"Spurious" Quotes from Famous Books



... can have a cure without a disease. You will never get a high morality from people who conceive that their misdeeds are revocable and pardonable, or in a society where absolution and expiation are officially provided for us all. The demand may be very real; but the supply is spurious. Thus Bill Walker, in my play, having assaulted the Salvation Lass, presently finds himself overwhelmed with an intolerable conviction of sin under the skilled treatment of Barbara. Straightway he begins to try to unassault the lass and deruffianize his ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw

... relative exemption from the devotional attitude is to be looked for. Those who best appreciate the merits of the higher creeds and observances would object to all this and say that the devoutness of the low-class delinquents is a spurious, or at the best a superstitious devoutness; and the point is no doubt well taken and goes directly and cogently to the purpose intended. But for the purpose of the present inquiry these extra-economic, extra-psychological ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... then they should wear soft lustrous dresses that were good to look at and touch and as carefully beautiful as pictures. But this blue thing was neither sturdy covering nor the brilliant fantasy it meant to be. It had the spurious glitter of an imitation jewel. He knew he felt this irritation about her partly because there was something base in him, half innate and half the abrasion his present circumstances had rubbed on his soul, which was willing to go on this stupid sexual journey suggested by such vain, ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... the sources of the spurious work: "Even in that part of the book which may be admitted with probability to represent some genuine experience, there are distinct traces that another work has been made use of, more or less, as an aid ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... strange affectation made her seek for a spurious confidence. She had at school a quiet, meditative, serious-souled friend called Ethel, and to Ethel must Ursula confide the story. Ethel listened absorbedly, with bowed, unbetraying head, whilst Ursula told her secret. Oh, it was so lovely, his gentle, delicate way of ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... had noted in his friend was only on the surface. Charnock had not really deteriorated in Canada; the qualities that had brought him down had been overlaid by a spurious grace and charm, but it now looked as if moral slackness might develop into active vice. On the whole, he thought Sadie would have trouble with Bob, but ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss

... felt in extracting long passages from Milton against the bishops. In this Life, his attack on the authenticity of the Eikon Basilike of Charles I. branched into another on supposititious writings; and this included the spurious gospels. Association of ideas is a nursing mother to the fertility of authorship. The spurious gospels opened a fresh theological campaign, and produced his "Amyntor." There was no end in provoking an author, who, in writing the ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... Hevaneva handled his wares with much familiarity, not to say irreverence, Babbalanja was minded to learn from him, what he thought of his trade; whether the images he made were genuine or spurious; in a word, whether he believed ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... is only a record of men's words and works; and Jesus of Nazareth, a man who only lived divinely some centuries ago. The popular religion is wrong in that it tells man he is an outcast, that he is but a spurious issue of the devil, must not pray in his own name, is only sure of one thing—and that is damnation. Man is declared to be immortal, but it is such immortality as proves a curse instead of a blessing. In fact this whole orthodox theology ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... as it was told, over and over again, as the crowd about the store increased, was that Big Pete had attempted to pass counterfeit money on Jim Huson. The latter refused it, accusing Ellis of having brought spurious coin to him at other times as well, and threatening to cause his arrest. Without warning Big Pete seized a heavy butter firkin and threw it squarely ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden

... your inviting scenes of philosophic solitude, whither the insatiate love of true-born Liberty had led me, I beheld her Genius ascending, not in the spurious character and habit of a blood-thirsty Fury, armed with daggers and instruments of murder, and followed by a frantic and intoxicated multitude, but under the placid and chaste aspect of Justice, holding with a pure and unsullied hand the sacred scales in which ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

... by constables and soldiers. In addition to a number of forged notes and L600 in counterfeit silver, the captors found 200 guineas in gold and nearly L3,000 in good notes, but they did not save Booth Irom being hanged. Booth had many hidingplaces for his peculiar productions, parcels of spurious coins having several times been found in hedgerow banks and elsewhere; the latest find (in April, 1884) consisted of engraved copper-plates for Bank of England L1 and L2 notes.—There have been hundreds ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

... hamper you in the least, when you begin to make coloured memoranda. If you want the form of the subject, draw it in black and white. If you want its colour, take its colour, and be sure you have it, and not a spurious, treacherous, half-measured piece of mutual concession, with the colours all wrong, and the forms still anything but right. It is best to get into the habit of considering the coloured work merely as ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... this note: "While this poem is printed in all the 'Reliques of Ye Good Knights' Poetrie,' and while the incident it narrates is thoroughly characteristic of that Knightly Sage, the versification is so different from that of the other ballads that there is little doubt that this fragment is spurious. Prof. Max Beeswanger (Book III., page 18, old English Poetry) says that these verses were written by Friar Terence, a learned monk ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... triumphantly how order and prosperity are not incompatible with a free Church, with free schools, with the payment of members, with manhood suffrage, and with the absence of a hereditary chamber. Neither are we misled by a spurious analogy between a colony ready for independence and a grown-up son ready to enter life on his own account; nor by Turgot's comparison of colonies to fruit which hangs on the tree only till it is ripe. We take our stand on Mr. Seeley's own ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 9: The Expansion of England • John Morley

... to." The two pioneers of the Hill, the preacher and the builder, were patriots as well. He denounces the rest as Tories all, the "Meriths," Akins, Wings, Kellys, Samuel Walker, the schoolmaster, and Samuel Downing, whom he declared a spurious Quaker and agent of the enemy; also the preacher, Lancaster, "the Widow Irish;" and many he called "half-Quakers," who were probably more zealous, and certainly more violent for Quaker and Tory ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson

... personal decoration on festive occasions, was smeared over the impassive faces, unchanged in the eternal calm of a thousand years, and fragrant flower petals were heaped on the myriad altars. Vigils were kept on the summit, and the sick were laid at the feet of favourite images. This spurious devotion, hereditary or instinctive, sprang up in responsive hearts with simultaneous fervour, though the forgotten doctrines of Buddhism were never reinstated. Sentiment survived dogma in the subconscious ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... anxious to have it truly valued, and carefully kept. The worldly-wise warnings are after all in the interests of true friendship. To condemn hypocrisy is not, as is so often imagined, to condemn religion. To spurn the spurious is not to reject the true. A sneer at folly may be only a covert argument for wisdom. Satire is negative truth. The unfortunate thing is that most men, who begin with the prudential worldly-wise philosophy, end there. They never get past ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black

... on which proverbs are based. You see, I grew tired of pictures when it got to be a question of bidding against millionaires for the possession of spurious old masters. The break came when Downes proved that my Velasquez was painted in 1896. His own, it turned out, was done in 1820; but even then, you see, he had the advantage over me. So I concentrated on books. But I could not resist the temptation of glancing through ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky

... imagination or no, I do not care about the name; but I would be understood when I speak of imagination hereafter, to mean this, the true foundation of all art which exercises eternal authority over men's minds; (all other imagination than this is either secondary and contemplative, or utterly spurious;) the base of whose authority and being is its perpetual thirst of truth and purpose to be true. It has no food, no delight, no care, no perception, except of truth; it is forever looking under masks, and ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin

... recess, a thousand feet deep, in the tallest of the Berkshire peaks, but it was formerly best known as Money Hole, and the stream that courses through it as Money Brook, for a gang of counterfeiters worked in that recess, and there some spurious coinage may still be concealed. The stream is also known as Spectre Brook, for late wandering hunters and scouting soldiers, seeing the forgers moving to and fro about their furnaces, took them ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... the printing-press played an all-important part. Medical books, hitherto practically inaccessible to the great mass of physicians, now became common, and this output of reprints of Greek and Arabic treatises revealed the fact that many of the supposed true copies were spurious. These discoveries very naturally aroused all manner of doubt and criticism, which in turn helped in the development of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... to know of such an injury.' BOSWELL. 'Would you tell your friend to make him unhappy?' JOHNSON. 'Perhaps, Sir, I should not; but that would be from prudence on my own account. A man would tell his father.' BOSWELL. 'Yes; because he would not have spurious children to get any share of the family inheritance.' MRS. THRALE. 'Or he would tell his brother.' BOSWELL. 'Certainly his elder brother.' JOHNSON. 'You would tell your friend of a woman's infamy, to prevent his marrying a whore: there is the same reason ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... character of the man, that I would rather have declined translating it, had I not observed it to be a good example of that technical and conventional insincerity which was invading Italy at this epoch. Varchi was really sorry to hear the news of Cellini's death; but for his genuine emotion he found spurious vehicles of utterance. Cellini, meanwhile, had a right to prize it, since it revealed to him what friendship was prepared to ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... pages. Fort Pulaski, which is near Savannah, is set down as near Charleston. Charleston, South Carolina, your printer has twice called Charlestown, which is the name of the town in Massachusetts in which Bunker Hill stands.—Bancroft told me that the letters of Montcalm are spurious. We always write and ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... ornament, unless they see beautiful incident and action in the world about them. Inform their minds, refine their habits, and you form and refine their designs; but keep them illiterate, uncomfortable, and in the midst of unbeautiful things, and whatever they do will still be spurious, ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin

... he was in the way, and to recognise the unmannerly fashion in which he, thin and artless, had tumbled into this world of fat people; and he frankly admitted to himself that his presence was disturbing the whole neighbourhood, and that he was a source of discomfort to the Quenus—a spurious cousin of far too compromising appearance. These reflections made him very sad; not, indeed, that they had noticed the slightest harshness on the part of his brother or Lisa: it was their very kindness, ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... evaporated until now scarcely a vestige of it remained. The little doctor's talk, above all the sight of his calm, thoughtful face and the aspect of his calm, satisfied room, gave the coup de grce to the uneasiness of a spurious and ill-omened excitement. When the power of wide medical knowledge is joined to the power of goodness and of umbrageous intellectuality, a doctor is, among all men, the man to lay the ghosts that human nature is perpetually at the pains to set walking in their shrouds to cause alarm. ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... prefixes to the names of flowers that the English country people have given for various and often most interesting reasons. Just as dog, used as a prefix, expresses an idea of worthlessness to them, so toad suggests a spurious plant; the toadflax being made to bear what is meant to be an odious name because before flowering it resembles the true flax, linum, from which the generic title ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... various circumstances which retarded the progress of this fine colony, without explaining how the patronage of the local government came formerly to be so exclusively bestowed on one class of the population,—thus creating a kind of spurious aristocracy which disgusted the colonists, and drove emigration from our shores to ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... REINAUD, Introd. to ABOULFEDA, sec. iii. p. ccc. See also REINAUD, Mem. sur l'Inde, p. 343. I have before alluded (p. 538, n.) to the treatise De Moribus Brachmanorum, ascribed to Palladius, one version of which is embodied in the spurious Life of Alexander the Great, written by the Pseudo-Callisthenes. In it the traveller from Thebes, who is the author's informant, states, that when in Ceylon, he obtained pepper from the Besadae, and succeeded in getting so near them as to be able to describe accurately ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... severity of these measures when they appeared to him indispensable, there is no doubt: but, on the one hand, it is certain that the letter, attributed to him, directing that no Christian should be punished for being a Christian, is spurious; it is almost certain that his alleged answer to the authorities of Lyons, in which he directs that Christians persisting in their profession shall be dealt with according to law, is genuine. Mr. Long seems inclined to try and throw doubt ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... upon a rim of azure mist. The brilliancy waxed golden and more golden still; the blending of the colours became indescribably beautiful; and, lastly, the sun's upper limb rose in brightest saffron above the dimmed and spurious horizon of north-east cloud. The panorama below us emerged dimly and darkly from a torrent of haze, whose waving convex lines, moving with a majestic calm, wore the aspect of a deluge whelming the visible world. Martin the Great might have borrowed an idea from this waste of waters, as ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... that in order to make a bid for the large Italian vote in the forthcoming Presidential elections in the U.S.A. a violent anti-British propaganda campaign is raging on the other side of the Atlantic, and that an enormous amount of spurious sympathy is being manufactured on behalf of the purveyors of rotary music and frozen confectionery in Soho. Beautiful Italian girls are daily besieging the British Embassy at Washington with placards bearing such ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, June 2, 1920 • Various

... of September last those whom we in Macedonia had come to regard as our deadly enemies became our would-be friends with a suddenness which was almost painful. Kultur is a leavening influence, and our spurious local Hun in Bulgaria is every bit as frightful in war and as oily in defeat as the genuine ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various

... fourth century B.C.). When a tributary sept became strong enough to resist the pressure of these imposts, exemption was claimed by a sort of legal fiction, by which they were genealogically affiliated to the ruling sept. This practice led to the fabrication of spurious links, ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous

... Travels, which Messrs. LONGMAN AND COMPANY of London proposed to publish. As they treated him, however, in a dishonorable manner, he withdrew his MSS. from them and came to America. In retaliation, they sent orders to this country to have a spurious edition published of his work on 'Etiquette,' which they had formerly brought out, and which they truly supposed he designed to reprint in New-York or Boston. It has passed through more than twenty editions in London; ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various

... was asserted, and believed, that all the noble families of Rome, the senate, and the equestrian order, with their innumerable attendants, had followed their emperor to the banks of the Propontis; that a spurious race of strangers and plebeians was left to possess the solitude of the ancient capital; and that the lands of Italy, long since converted into gardens, were at once deprived of cultivation and inhabitants. In the course of this history, such exaggerations ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... In all nations, a spurious, pretentious religion has been the avant-coureur of their destruction. In their inception and early progress this curse exercises but slight influence, and their growth is consequently healthy and vigorous. All nations have concealed this cancerous ulcer, sooner or ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... the dangers I had passed!" the artist mused, quoting Shakespeare, on his way home. "What a tragedy when she discovers him for a spurious Othello!" ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

... make up as far as possible for what had been lost. In Cumae nothing was discovered; but at Erythraea and Samos a large number of mystic verses, said to have been composed by the Sibyl, were found. Some of them were collected into a volume, after having been purged from all spurious or suspected elements; and the volume was brought to Rome, and deposited in two gilt cases at the base of the statue of Apollo, in the temple of that god ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... Brumighams. Bromingham was a slang term of the day for a Whig. Roger North says that the Tories nicknamed the opposite party 'Birmingham Protestants, alluding to the false groats struck at that place'. Birmingham was already noted for spurious coinage. cf. Dryden's prologue ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn

... "accepting" Christ (a term, incidentally, which is not found in the Bible) and we are not expected thereafter to crave any further revelation of God to our souls. We have been snared in the coils of a spurious logic which insists that if we have found Him we need no more seek Him. This is set before us as the last word in orthodoxy, and it is taken for granted that no Bible-taught Christian ever believed otherwise. Thus the whole testimony of the worshipping, ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer

... unless duly stamped—with good humour, good taste, and good jokes. Observe: "PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI, price Threepence," is on the cover. Several spurious imitations are abroad, at a reduced price, the effects of which are dreadful upon ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 25, 1841 • Various

... required to give the great commercial house the proper splendor in the sight of the world. Thus Tjaelde speculates in hospitality as in everything else, and when he virtually has nothing, makes the grandest splurge in order to give a spurious impression of prosperity. Though by nature an affectionate man, he neglects his family because business demands all his time. He defrauds himself of the happiness which knocks at his door, because business fills his head by night and by day, and absorbs all his energy. ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... inferior sherries, are manufactured, and sold in immense quantities. Of these the best are to be met with at the following places: San Lucar, Porto, Santa Maria, and even Malaga itself. The spurious sherry of the first-named place is consumed in larger quantities, especially in France, than the genuine wine itself. One reason for this may be, that few vessels go to take cargoes at Cadiz; whilst many are in the habit of doing ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various

... the high stations which they hold; who also, by holding those stations, are understood to obtain certain benefit of experience and of knowledge not otherwise to be gained; and who have a further claim to deference—founded upon reputation, even when it is spurious (as much of the reputation of men high in power must necessarily be; their errors being veiled and palliated by the authority attached to their office; while that same authority gives more than due weight and effect ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... themselves in a sort of lying, which they reckon innocent, and which in one sense is so; for it hurts nobody but themselves. This sort of lying is the spurious offspring of vanity, begotten upon folly: these people deal in the marvelous; they have seen some things that never existed; they have seen other things which they never really saw, though they did exist, only because they were thought worth seeing. Has anything ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... type-dentition being adhered to. In hipparion this tooth is smaller than in palaeotherium, but functional and permanent. The transitory and singularly small and simple denticle in the horse exemplifies the rudiment of an ancestral structure in the same degree as do the hoofless splint-bones; just as the spurious hoofs dangling therefrom in hipparion are retained rudiments of the functionally developed lateral hoofs in the ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various

... Orations, Epistles, purged from many false and spurious ones which had usurped his name. To which is added many never before printed or published, according to the Author's own Copies; with a Narrative of ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May

... roofing spaces with pointed arches, or gables. I need not, of course, in any way follow out for you the mode in which the Greek system of architecture is derived from the horizontal lintel; but I ought perhaps to explain, that by Roman architecture I do not mean that spurious condition of temple form which was nothing more than a luscious imitation of the Greek; but I mean that architecture in which the Roman spirit truly manifested itself, the magnificent vaultings of the aqueduct and the bath, and the ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin

... or United Empire loyalist, a kind of privileged being, whose very descendants were entitled to a free grant of two hundred acres of land. When the Separation Act was before the British Parliament, the public mind in England was to some not altogether inconsiderable extent contaminated by the spurious liberty-feeling of the French Revolution, and by the consequences of the American strike for independence. "The Rights of Man," as enunciated by Paine, had infected many among the lower orders in society, ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger

... unsatirical. Speech is genuine which is without silliness, affectation, or pretense. That character is genuine which seems built by nature rather than by convention, which is stuff of independence and of good courage. Nothing spurious, bastard, begotten out of true wedlock of the mind; nothing adulterated and seeming to be what it is not; nothing unreal, can ever get place among the nobility of things genuine, natural, of pure stock and unmistakable lineage. It is a prerogative of every truly human ...
— On Being Human • Woodrow Wilson

... material, we shall now address ourselves more particularly to the defects of Arrangement and Form, or, as an architect might term it, to the discussion of Plan and Elevation. The former task was ungrateful enough; for therein we had to attack the cupidity and meanness, and the desire for show and spurious display, which is the besetting sin of every Englishman who pays poor-rates; but, the present undertaking is hardly less hopeless, for we have to appeal to the intelligence, not only of architects and builders, but also of those who ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various

... will at least countenance a belief in the truth that we want to be true. If Adrian had seen his way to a concession that would have made matters pleasant, he would have jumped at the chance of making it. But false hope was so much worse than false despair. Better, surely, a spurious growth of the latter, with disillusionment to come, than a stinted instalment of the former with a chance of real despair ahead. Adrian took the view that Sir Coupland was really a weak, good-natured chap ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... Doctr. Christ. ii, 11): "If those who are called philosophers said by chance anything that was true and consistent with our faith, we must claim it from them as from unjust possessors. For some of the doctrines of the heathens are spurious imitations or superstitious inventions, which we must be careful to avoid when we renounce the society of the heathens." Consequently whenever Augustine, who was imbued with the doctrines of the Platonists, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... and General Pinckney appointed to succeed him.... General Washington's valedictory address to the people of the United States.... The Minister of France endeavours to influence the approaching election.... The President's speech to congress.... He denies the authenticity of certain spurious letters published in 1776.... John Adams elected President, and Thomas Jefferson Vice President.... General Washington retires to Mount Vernon.... Political situation of the United States at this period.... The French government refuses to receive General Pinckney as Minister.... ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall

... courier—buy my tickets, register my luggage; and then, when we reach our ultimate destination, resume his white cap and apron. My ultimate destination, you must know," she said, with a lightness which, I think, on the face of it was spurious, "is a little village in England—a little village called Craford; and"—she smiled convincingly—"I hear that the cuisine is not to be depended ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland

... expanding, while the blood in its veins is strong, then on this hope no scruples are felt. But when its energies begin to wither, when self-indulgence takes the place of self-sacrifice, when its sons and daughters become degenerate, then it is that a spurious and bastard humanitarianism masquerading as religion declares war to be an anachronism ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... spurious culture to stand aloof from common life, as it does, to extend its charities at the end of a pole, to make of religion a mere 'cultus,' to construct for its heaven a sort of Paris, where all the inhabitants dress becomingly, and where there ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... think, was the view that was taken by those present. The court it was—being composed of honest gentlemen—that felt the shame which she dissembled. There were the eyes that fell away before the spurious effrontery of her own glance. They were disconcerted one and all by this turn of events, without precedent in the experience of any, and none more disconcerted—though not in the same sense—than Sir Terence. To him this was checkmate—fool's mate indeed. An unexpected yet ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini

... said Lecoq. "The spurious soldier, being the last to die, had seen his companions fall. If he had supposed Lacheneur to be dead, he would not have spoken ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau

... which in urged in support of the claim to the discovery by Verrazzano is not of great amount. It is certain, however, that if the letter upon which the claim is founded, be spurious and fictitious, as for the reasons assigned, it is considered to be, any extraneous evidence, must either partake of the same character, or have originated in some misconception or error. What exists upon the subject consists principally of ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy

... Jameson is right in her assumption that all canvases bearing Giorgione's name are spurious which lack that look of pity, is a question. I think that Mrs. Jameson is more kind than critical, although my hope is that Renan is correct in his gratuitous statement, "At the Last Great Day men will be judged by women, and the Almighty will merely vise the verdict." ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard

... his last made the return of mediaeval despotism impossible. Dying, he bequeaths imperialism to France as Euphorion leaves his vesture in the hands of Faust and Helena. How fatal was that gift of a spurious imperialism Metz, Sedan, and Paris made ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb

... the king, complaining of his hard usage. But James was unmoved by his application, and granted the revenue of his see to the duke of Lennox. For the rest of his life Adamson was supported by charity; he died in 1592. His recantation of Episcopacy (1590) is probably spurious. Adamson was a man of many gifts, learned and eloquent, but with grave defects of character. His collected works, prefaced by a fulsome panegyric, in the course of which it is said that "he was a miracle of nature, and rather seemed to be the immediate production of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... what puts them out of court; for the letter was evidently concocted by men who had Crawford's report before them. The letter is spurious, and it is the only one that connects the queen with the death of Darnley. It does not follow that the others are spurious, for they add nothing to the case. The forgers, having constructed the damning piece, would not be likely to do more. Every additional forgery would increase the ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... worthy colleague in the Chamber. She said, for instance, that it was not true that the Marquis de Sallenauve was his father; that it was not even true that the Marquis de Sallenauve was still living; and moreover that the spurious Sallenauve was a man of no heart, who had repudiated his real parents,—adding that she could, by the help of the able man who accompanied her, compel him to disgorge the Sallenauve property and 'clear ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac

... the emotion it provokes, that works are more important than theories. Although attempts have been made to impose dogmas, to define the remote object and to direct the emotion, a single original artist has generally been strong enough to wreck the spurious orthodoxy. Dimly it has always been perceived that a picture which moves aesthetically cannot be wrong; and that the theory that condemns it as heretical condemns itself. Art remains an undogmatic religion. You are invited to feel an emotion, not to ...
— Art • Clive Bell

... the Bible Society. It used to be the fashion with those of them who pretended to learning, to affirm that it was made by the Council of Laodicea, in A. D. 364; because, in order to guard the churches against spurious epistles and gospels, that Council published a list of those which the apostles did actually write, which thenceforth were generally bound in ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... his ease (a great point), and is perfect in externals. But his good manners are—what shall I say?—coat deep. His politeness is not proof against temptation, however petty. The reason is, it is only a spurious politeness. Real politeness is founded and built on the golden rule, however delicate and artificial its superstructure may be. But, leaving out of the question the politeness of the heart, he has not in any sense the true art of good-breeding; ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... modern Hebrew. Therefore, the orthodox Jew has the neck of the chicken slit by a "Shochet" who allows the blood to drip to the ground—a modern blood offering to the Gods. The explanations given by the rabbis of our day are spurious. Similarly, the orthodox Jew of our time still persists in salting the meat before cooking, a process which is intended to remove the blood, which is the portion of ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... manna that the Israelites lived on for forty years in the wilderness was only a figurative word for farmers; and they kept up the practice to this day. And now,' says Andy, 'I am going to test my theory "Once a farmer, always a come-on," in spite of the veneering and the orifices that a spurious civilization has ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry

... original, the word is Fenster schweiss, window-sweat, i. e. (as the translator understands the passage) Monsieur Flitte was suspected of a design to swindle the company by exhibiting his two windows streaming with spurious moisture, such as hoar frost produces on the windows when melted by the heat of the room, rather than with the genuine and unadulterated rain which Mr ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... distinction was John Tibetot, earl of Worcester. This accomplished person, born in an age and nation where the nobility valued themselves on ignorance as their privilege, and left learning to monks and schoolmasters, for whom indeed the spurious erudition that prevailed was best fitted, had been struck with the first rays of true science, which began to penetrate from the south, and had been zealous, by his exhortation and example, to propagate the love of letters among his unpolished countrymen. It is pretended, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... are not only slanderous throats, but slanderous ears also; not only wicked inventions, which engender and brood lies, but wicked assents, which hatch and foster them. Not only the spiteful mother that conceiveth such spurious brats, but the midwife that helpeth to bring them forth, the nurse that feedeth them, the guardian that traineth them up to maturity, and setteth them forth to live in the world; as they do really contribute to their ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... they deserved, and that was speedy oblivion; and we contend and will maintain to the bitter end, that these lines are the only right and true lines written on the subject by our immortal Poet, and that the others which are falsely circulated as part and parcel of the original, are spurious, emanating, it is said, from a half-insane idiot who hung ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 39., Saturday, December 24, 1870. • Various

... published in 1766, under the title of Matinees du Roi de Prusse, purporting to be 'Morning Conversations' of Frederick the Great with his Nephew the Heir-Apparent, every line of which betrays itself as false and spurious to a reader who has made any direct or effectual study of Frederick or his manners or affairs,—it is set forth, in the way of exordium to these pretended royal confessions, that 'notre maison,' our Family of Hohenzollern, ever since the first ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle

... said, pointing to one of the notes, 'the shape of that "w" in the signature of the chief cashier. I am not an English police officer, but I could pick out that spurious "w" among a thousand genuine ones. You see, I have seen ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy

... interposed. She had made the most loving study of her child's character, and had faith in his fitness for the vocation he desired to adopt. She pleaded that his obvious gift might be tested, and proved spurious or genuine, before it was trampled under foot as unworthy of recognition; ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... Sackville, and the "mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease" threw off a few amatory trifles; but the age was not spontaneous or sincere enough for genuine song. Cowley introduced the Pindaric ode, a highly artificial form of the lyric, in which the language was tortured into a kind of spurious grandeur, and the meter teased into a sound and fury, signifying nothing. Cowley's Pindarics were filled with something which passed for fire, but has now utterly gone out. Nevertheless, the fashion spread, and "he who could do nothing ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... dead body of Hope, the spotless lamb Thou threwest into the high priest's slaughtering-room, And by the child Despair born red therefrom As, thank the secret sire picked out to cram With spurious spawn thy misconceiving dam, Thou, like a worm from a town's common tomb, Didst creep from forth the kennel of her womb, Born to break down with catapult and ram Man's builded towers of promise, and with breath And tongue to track ...
— Two Nations • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... This was not Timaeus the historian, but a native of Locri, who is said also in the De Finibus (c. 29) to have been a teacher of Plato. There is a treatise extant bearing his name, which is, however, probably spurious, and only an abridgment of ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... Gabirol's views—expositions of these so-called Empedoclean views and fragments from Empedocles's book have been found in Arabian and Hebrew writers[88]—it is sufficient for us to know that it has nothing to do with the real Empedocles, the ancient Greek philosopher; that it was another of the many spurious writings which circulated in the middle ages under famous names of antiquity; and that like the "Theology of Aristotle," and the "Liber de Causis," mentioned in the Introduction (p. xx), it ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik

... court revelled in gorgeous tournaments and luxury of dress; and the establishment in 1346 of the Order of the Garter which found its home in the new castle that Edward was raising at Windsor marked the highest reach of the spurious "Chivalry" of the day. But it was at this moment of triumph that the whole colour of Edward's reign suddenly changed. The most terrible plague the world has ever witnessed advanced from the East, and after devastating Europe ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green

... miscellaneous company, of acts of dishonesty which in England would have procured transportation for them. Mammon is the idol which the people worship; the one desire is the acquisition of money; the most nefarious trickery and bold dishonesty are invested with a spurious dignity if they act as aids to the attainment of this object. Children from their earliest years imbibe the idea that sin ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... true treasure had been there beside her, while she worshipped at the spurious shrine. Only her sorrow, her solicitude had gone out to her son; the answering love that should have cherished and encompassed him flowed towards its true goal only when it was too late. He could not love her ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... somewhat more formidably argued that the concluding cantos are spurious, that Kalidasa wrote only the first seven or perhaps the first eight cantos. Yet, after all, what do these arguments amount to? Hardly more than this, that the first eight cantos are better poetry than the last nine. As if a poet were always at his best, even when writing on a kind of subject ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa

... twenty-nine. He spells better than Clark, who is about as funny as Josh Billings, though he certainly spelled his best. Of one thing you can be sure, whenever you see anything of the Journal spelled correctly, it is false and spurious—that's not the original, for spelling was the one thing ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough

... difficult, or prevent them from snatching bread out of the hands of their weaker neighbours. For most such folk are gloomy and self-contained, with hearts that have turned to wood, and an outlook that ever reverts to the past; unless, indeed, they be folk of spurious good nature, an addition to talkativeness, and an apparent bonhomie which veils a frigid, grey interior, and conveys an impression of cruelty and greed of all ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... cases which have come under our observation, the theory of the purely physiological origin of the sounds has been sustained by the fact that the Mediums were invariably, and confessedly, cognizant of the rappings whenever they occurred, and could at once detect any spurious rappings, however exact and indistinguishable to all other ears might be the imitation. For the details of the investigation which guided us to this conclusion we refer to ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission

... alternative open to them is beggary or privation. Wherever the canon of conspicuous leisure has a chance undisturbed to work out its tendency, there will therefore emerge a secondary, and in a sense spurious, leisure class—abjectly poor and living in a precarious life of want and discomfort, but morally unable to stoop to gainful pursuits. The decayed gentleman and the lady who has seen better days are by no ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... good Homer not only nod, but snore. Thus does Teufelsdroeckh, wandering in regions where he had little business, confound the old authentic Presbyterian Witchfinder with a new, spurious, imaginary Historian of the Brittische Journalistik; and so stumble on perhaps the most egregious blunder ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... kept her room all the morning, and took no nourishment but one cup of spurious coffee Rose brought her. Towards evening she came down-stairs. In the hall she found two chaplets of flowers; they were always placed there for her on this sad day. She took them in her hand, and went into the little oratory that was in the ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade

... Indian warfare, but civil strife. For one morning as many as three Daniel Boones appeared on the playground at the same moment; and at once there was a fierce battle to ascertain which was the genuine Daniel. This being decided, the spurious Daniels submitted to be the one Simon Kenton, the other ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... drunk with sugar and milk, in the same way and instead of the cheaper kinds of teas, which are sold for foreign teas, but which are too often composed of some kind of leaf more or less resembling the real plant, without any of its genuine fragrance, and are, from their spurious and almost poisonous nature, calculated to produce evil to all who consume them, besides the drawback of their being ...
— A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes • Charles Elme Francatelli

... spread, and the palmiest days of the spoliation of the country are probably over. It must not, however, be thought that the peasant is always the under dog, the amateur the upper. A London dealer informs me that the planting of spurious antiques in old cottages has become a recognised form of fraud among less scrupulous members of the trade. An oak chest bearing every superficial mark of age that a clever workman can give it (and ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... none the less dangerous," Nigel insisted. "He is one of those free lances of diplomacy who have sprung up during the last ten or fifteen years, the product of that spurious wave of altruism which is responsible for the League of Nations. Immelan was one of the first to see how his country might benefit by the new regime. It is he who has been pulling the strings in Russia and China, ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... successful a gallant, he had not acquired the ruthless egotism of the sensualist; and his conduct to women often evinced the weakness of giddy youth rather than the cold deliberation of profligate manhood. Thus in his veriest vices there was a spurious amiability, a seductive charm; while in the graver affairs of life the intellectual susceptibility of his nature served but to quicken his penetration and stimulate his energies, and Hastings might have said, with one of his Italian contemporaries, ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Jambres, 'try it not till I have made experience thereof. Me it cannot harm; in me you see the original inventor; beware of spurious imitations. But it is a dread experience; let me work ...
— HE • Andrew Lang

... a bad lot about him, that's the worst—Polish counts, disreputable artists and poets, any one who has a spurious sort of fame, and knows how to flatter him. Edmund was ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... earth's orbital movement.—Aberration of a planet signifies its progressive geocentric motion, or the space through which it appears to move, as seen from the earth, during the time which light occupies in passing from the planet to us.—Crown of aberration is a spurious circle surrounding the proper disc of the sun.—Constant of aberration, or amount of displacement in the sun's longitude, arising from the progressive motion of light, is ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... have received his information respecting the original construction of the world from a priest of 'Jehovah,' named Jerombaal. He wrote in the Phoenician language; but we have only a translation of his works, by Philo Judaeus, which is by many supposed to be spurious. It is, however, very probable, that from him the Greeks borrowed their notions regarding Chaos, which they mingled with fables of their ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... in tracing her own portrait with a careful and elaborate pencil, told the world how shamefully she had been imitated by the spurious middle-class Saphos, who set up their salons, and vied with the sacred house of Rambouillet, and the privileged coterie of the ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... smart, spurious wisdom of the world which has the bitterness not of the salutary tonic but of mortal poison; and of this kind the master is Chamfort, who died during the French Revolution (and for that matter died of it), and whose little volume of ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley

... are not as represented," he whispered to me, after a while, "but a connoiseur can tell spurious goods. These are the ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... holiness is apart from love and faith; and when he thought about it he said that perhaps it is something counterfeiting holiness in outward appearance, either conventional or hypocritical; and that such holiness is kindled and sustained by spurious fire from the love of self and ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg

... battlements, donjons, loopholes, machine-gun emplacements, caltrops, portcullises, glacis, and all the other travaux de fantaisie that make life worth living for retired manufacturers. The general effect is emetic in the extreme. Hard by the castle is a spurious and richly gabled stable in the general style of the chateau de Chantilly. One brief strip of lawn constitutes a gulf of five hundred years in architecture, ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley

... a copy of "Erasmus Darwin." I have marked this too, so that the genuine and spurious passages can ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler

... sceptical he is, and to R.A.M. Stevenson's list of Velasquez pictures, two hundred and thirty-four, Beruete opposes the comparatively meagre number of eighty-nine. He reduces the number of sketches and waves away as spurious the Velasquez "originals" in Italy, several in the Prado, the very stronghold of the collection; and of the eleven in that famous cabinet of the Vienna Imperial Museum—to which we went as to a divine service of eye and ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... sixty-one speeches extant under the name of Demosthenes are certainly or probably spurious. The results to which the preponderance of opinion leans are given in the following table. Those marked a were already rejected or doubted in antiquity; those marked m, first ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... Pen!" cried the wife. " NOW are you satisfied?" Her tone implied that he had brought it all upon them; but at the sight of the swift passions working in his face to a perfect comprehension of the whole trouble, she fell to trembling, and her broken voice lost all the spurious indignation she had put into it. "O Silas! what are we going to do about it? I'm afraid ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells



Words linked to "Spurious" :   inauthentic, counterfeit, imitative, false, illegitimate



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