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Spurious   Listen
adjective
Spurious  adj.  
1.
Not proceeding from the true source, or from the source pretended; not genuine; counterfeit; false; adulterate.
2.
Not legitimate; bastard; as, spurious issue. "Her spurious firstborn."
Spurious primary, or Spurious quill (Zool.), the first, or outer, primary quill when rudimentary or much reduced in size, as in certain singing birds.
Spurious wing (Zool.), the bastard wing, or alula.
Synonyms: Counterfeit; false; adulterate; supposititious; fictitious; bastard.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Spurious" Quotes from Famous Books



... is, that men, finding in the raptures of the higher poetry a condition of exaltation, to which they have no parallel in their own experience, besides the spurious resemblance of it in dreams and fevers, impute a state of dreaminess and fever to the poet. But the true poet dreams being awake. He is not possessed by his subject, but has dominion over it. In the groves of Eden he walks familiar as in his native paths. He ascends ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... coining and circulation of money. He directed that the silver sou should exactly contain the twenty-second part by weight of the pound. He also directed that money should only be coined in the Imperial palaces. He forbade the circulation of spurious coin; he ordered base coiners to be severely punished, and imposed heavy fines upon those who refused to accept the coin in legal circulation. The tithe due to the Church (Fig. 260), which was imposed at the National Assembly in 779, and ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix

... Psalter incident "bears the stamp of spurious tradition"; so does the Longarad story; but it is curious how often sacred books play ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage

... one three-months (pronounced with the accent strongly resting on the numeral adverb, after the Hibernian). All others are spurious imitations. I refer to the early days of the war: the dark days that followed the first fall of Sumter, when our Southern friends had just finished the last volume of the lexicon of slavery, that for so long a time had defined away our manhood, our national ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... 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

... complete entity Greek antiquity has not yet been fully valued . I am convinced that if it had not been surrounded by its traditional glorification, the men of the present day would shrink from it horror stricken. This glorification, then, is spurious; gold-paper. ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche

... evening brown print and clean collar, from her warm spice-scented kitchen, to remark cheerily that "Lor bless his heart, what with all these telegrafts and things, time flew so fast nowadays that they'd be having him back again before they all knew where they were!" which had a certain spurious consolation about it, until one saw that, after all, it put the case ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey

... to join a noisy, excited party. Of Walter Babson she did not think. She stubbornly determined to snatch this time of freedom. Why, of course, she asserted, she could play by herself quite happily! With a spurious gaiety she patted her small black hand-bag. She skipped across to the Sixth Avenue Elevated and went up to the department-store district. She made elaborate plans for the great adventure of shopping. Bessie Kraker had insisted, with the nonchalant shrillness of eighteen, ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis

... Run, William fell, and broke his knee pan; 'which put a stop to my surveying; and with much difficulty I was able to get jim to abingdon, being obliged to get a sled to carry him on, as he could neither walk, stand or ride.'"—Washington's Diary. See Spurious Letters Attributed ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... to the Corinthians, 'as one of the oldest documents of Christian antiquity, might have passed without question as a writing of the Roman Clement,' had not this Clement become a legendary person and had so many spurious works palmed off upon him [Endnote 59:2]. But it is surely no argument to say that because a certain number of extravagant and spurious writings are attributed to Clement, therefore one so sober and consistent with his position, and one so well attested as this, ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday

... nature, look serene: From which ingredients first the dext'rous boy Pick'd the demure, the awkward, and the coy. The Graces from the court did next provide Breeding, and wit, and air, and decent pride: These Venus cleans'd from ev'ry spurious grain Of nice coquet, affected, pert, and vain. Jove mix'd up all, and the best clay employ'd; Then call'd the ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... reverend primate! art thou, canst thou be So simple-souled, or canst thou so dissemble? Are ye so credulous, my lords? My liege, Art thou so weak? Ye know not—will not know, Ye are the puppets of the wily Waywode Of Sendomir, who reared this spurious Czar, Whose measureless ambition, while we speak, Clutches in thought the spoils of Moscow's wealth. Is't left for me to tell you that even now The league is made and sworn betwixt the twain,— The pledge the Waywode's youngest daughter's hand? And shall our great ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... indeed—which "les convenances" do not permit him to translate; but still which the reader cannot but refer to "La Divinite."[8] No doubt also many of the Quatrains in the Teheran, as in the Calcutta, Copies, are spurious; such Rubaiyat being the common form of Epigram in Persia. But this, at best, tells as much one way as another; nay, the Sufi, who may be considered the Scholar and Man of Letters in Persia, would be far more likely than the careless Epicure to interpolate what favours ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam

... not why he is commended by Dr. Warburton for distinguishing the genuine from the spurious plays. In this choice he exerted no judgement of his own; the plays which he received, were given by Hemings and Condel, the first editors; and those which he rejected, though, according to the licentiousness of the press in those times, they were printed during Shakespeare's ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... Lopez, I thought it advisable to return to Madrid, more especially as my stock of Testaments was exhausted, we having in the course of little more than a fortnight disposed of nearly nine hundred Testaments—not in populous and wealthy towns but in highways and villages, not to the spurious Spaniards of Madrid and the coasts, but to the sun-blackened peasantry of Old Castile, the genuine descendants of those terrible men who subjugated ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow

... highly valued the Bible, said: 'With reference to things in the Bible, the question whether they are genuine or spurious is odd enough. What is genuine but that which is truly excellent, which stands in harmony with the purest nature and reason, and which even now ministers to our higher development? What is spurious but the absurd and the hollow ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson

... keep widows of their own class as concubines, and the spurious offspring of such connections are called Jausis. These, having betaken themselves to agriculture and commerce, have become exceedingly numerous, and are reduced to perform every kind of drudgery. Among the poor people whom I observed coming to the markets in the Gorakhpur ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton

... wickedly and traitorously printed and published this morning in the New York World and New York Journal of Commerce, newspapers printed and published in the city of New York, a false and spurious proclamation purporting to be signed by the President and to be countersigned by the Secretary of State, which publication is of a treasonable nature, designed to give aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States and to the rebels now at war against the Government ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... shown by Fonseca to Vespucci and his family. This is not, however, a satisfactory reason, since it does not appear that the bishop ever made any use of the fabrication. Perhaps some other means might be found of accounting for this spurious narration, without implicating the veracity of Vespucci. It may have been the blunder of some editor, or the interpolation of some book-maker, eager, as in the case of Trivigiani with the manuscripts of Peter Martyr, to gather together disjointed materials, and fabricate a work to gratify the ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... now followed him)—Ver. 414. "Hunc venientem sequor." Cooke has the following remark on this line: "This verse, though in every edition, as Bentley judiciously observes, is certainly spurious; for as Pamphilus has not disappeared since Byrrhia left the stage, he could not say 'nunc {hunc} venientem sequor.' If we suppose the line genuine, we must at the same time suppose Terence guilty of a monstrous absurdity." On these words Colman makes the following ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence

... to be apprehensive that his lordship, finding I had travelled, was afraid I might have been infected with this spurious and sordid desire abroad, and took this method of sounding my sentiments on the subject. Fired at this supposed suspicion, I argued against it with great warmth, as an appetite unnatural, absurd, and of pernicious consequence; and declared my utter detestation ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... people the power, they would tax themselves to death; but, however true this theory may be in the main, it certainly is not true quoad the good citizens of the great model republic. It was bad enough to be accursed with a spurious economy; but this was not the heaviest grievance that then weighed upon the national interests. The demon of faction, party spirit, was actively at work in the country; and it was almost as rare to find a citizen ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper

... 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 established ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... the spurious "lessons" and supposititious "problems" of this merry and mundane drama, we may recognize among its irregularities and audacities two main qualities of merit. Above everything else which we see in Peer Gynt we see its fun and its picturesqueness. Written at different times and in ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse

... and legends of [Greek: paidon athanaton]; and of [Greek: paidon]; who were mere foundlings; whose fathers could never be ascertained, though divine honours were paid to the children. This often puzzled the mythologists, who could not account for this spurious race. Plutarch makes it one of his inquiries to sift out, [444][Greek: Tis ho Paidon taphos para Chalkideusi]; Pausanias mentions, [445][Greek: Amphilukou paidon bomos]: and, in another place, [446][Greek: Bomoi de Theon te onomazomenon agnoston, kai Heroon, kai PAIDON tou Theseos, ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant

... recording: ''Tis the best security a poet can ask for to be sheltered under that great name which presides over one of the most famous Universities of Europe.' It contained all the plays in the fourth Folio in the same order, except that the seven spurious plays were transferred from the beginning to the end. The poems were ...
— The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] - Introduction and Publisher's Advertising • William Shakespeare

... great importance in the growth of Shakespeare's reputation. As we shall see, the plays as well as the poems, both authentic and spurious, were frequently printed and bought. With the passing of the seventeenth-century folios and the occasional quartos of acting versions of single plays, Shakespeare could find a place in libraries and could be intimately known by hundreds who had hitherto known him only in the theater. Tonson's ...
— Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespear (1709) • Nicholas Rowe

... that the significance of art depends chiefly on 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

... 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

... challenge to all men of hope and faith; but, although the cause of equality is a noble one, no one has yet picked up the gauntlet thrown down by the advocates of property; no one has been courageous enough to enter upon the struggle. The spurious learning of haughty jurisprudence, and the absurd aphorisms of a political economy controlled by property have puzzled the most generous minds; it is a sort of password among the most influential friends of liberty and the interests of the people that EQUALITY ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... whom these two different loves were now on their way to comfort, who excited so much artless curiosity, so much spurious sympathy and true solicitude, was lying on his prison pallet in one of the condemned cells. A spy watched beside the door to catch, if possible, any words that might escape him, either in sleep or in one of his violent furies; so anxious were the officers of justice ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac

... he could not know on whom he could depend. The Duke of Grafton was one of King Charles' sons by the Duchess of Cleveland. He had been some time at sea, and was a gallant but rough man. He had more spirit than anyone of that spurious race. He made answer to the King, about this time, that was much talked of. The King took notice of somewhat in his behavior that looked factious, and he said he was sure he could not pretend to act upon ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... the ebbs and flows of the money market. Engaged from day to day in their useful toils, they do not perceive that although their wages are nominally the same, or even somewhat higher, they are greatly reduced in fact by the rapid increase of a spurious currency, which, as it appears to make money abound, they are at first ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... commandment. All the emotional and the mystic, and the so-called higher parts of Christian experience, have to be content to submit to this plain test—do they help us to live as Christ would have us, and that because He would have us? Love to Him that does not keep His commandments is either spurious or dangerously feeble. The true sign of its presence in the heart and the noblest of its operations is not to be found in high-pitched expressions of fervid emotion, nor even in the sacred joys of solitary communion, but in its making us, while in the rough ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... not 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 ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... beginning of the world. Finally, they brought the Hebrew nation into contempt, that they might themselves appear comparatively less impious with regard to strangers. They confessed what was true, that they were the slaves, the scum, and the spurious and abortive offspring of our nation, while they overthrew the city themselves, and forced the Romans, whether they would or no, to gain a melancholy reputation, by acting gloriously against them, and did almost ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus

... would rather undergo all tortures, even death itself, than insult the Divine Majesty. At first the archpriest and the moderate Catholics, who did not consider that the political claims referred to in the oath were the true principles of the Papacy, declared that the brief was spurious; but after some time it was confirmed in all due form, and an address appeared from the pen of the most eminent apologist of the See of Rome, Cardinal Bellarmin, in which he reminded the archpriest that ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... a modern origin— arising and growing up within our own memories, unsupported by a grand traditional history of persecutions—conflicts—and martyrdoms, lurking moreover in blind alleys, holes, corners, and tabernacles, must appear spurious and mean in the eyes of him who has been bred up in the grand classic forms of the Church of England or the Church of Rome. But, because the bigotry of the Puritans was excessive and revolting, is that a reason for fastening upon them all the stray evils of omission ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... matter of fact, he had been anticipated by a paper, No. 49 of "little Harrison's" spurious Tatler, vol. v., where the writer reads a newspaper "in a direct Line" ... "without Regard to the Distinction of Columns,"—which is precisely ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson

... But my present friend (for such he is, because he renders himself altogether my equal) has no wish to seem great and sublime: he smiles at the endeavours of so many men to do so, and considers this of itself as an assurance that there is something spurious and hollow to be concealed; since a clear consciousness of worth would only wish to pass for what it feels itself to be, and the wisest of mortals must after all acknowledge that he too, as well as the most ignorant vagabond, is merely ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck

... that the latter are quite distinct from the former, may be made evident by abstracting in our imagination the morality of the characters of Mr. Shandy, my Uncle Toby, and Trim, which are all antagonists to this spurious sort of wit, from the rest of Tristram Shandy, and by supposing, instead of them, the presence of two or three callous debauchees. The result will be pure disgust. Sterne cannot be too severely censured ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... seeking the grocery-stores and butcher-shops. Loiterers were already gathering, in that slouching fashion characteristic of people out of work, about the doors of the drinking-saloons; buildings whose expensive up-fittings lent a touch of spurious grandeur to the pinched ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... difference between originals and copies, into the connection between master and pupil, makes us alive to the special qualities which can delight us. As long as we looked in a manner so slovenly that a spurious Botticelli could pass for a genuine one, we could evidently never benefit by the special quality, the additional excellence of Botticelli's own work. And similarly in the case of archaeology. Indeed, in the few cases where I have myself hazarded ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... 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, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... incomprehensible. The grossness of the flesh stifles and kills the subtle workings of the spirit. To you life is only a pleasure ground, and the more your own personal satisfaction is obtainable, the more you cling to its spurious enjoyments. If you once cut yourself adrift from such follies, your eyes would be opened, your senses quickened, and you would recognise possibilities and marvels that now are no more to you than sunlight to the blind worm that burrows in the ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)

... has kept good society, is at 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 ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... of the ancient Magi, the Hebrew Cabbalist, the Rosicrucian, or Templar, in the deserts of Africa, the forests of America, or on the wide-spread ocean, the symbols of recognition are known and received. Such have been its tendencies that spurious imitations for mere political purposes have been frequent. The Illuminati, the Carbonari, and other secret political societies have been supposed to be Masonic lodges. But it is a great mistake. The Kabbalists never interfered with, or acted in opposition to the Hebrew ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield

... 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 supplementary to your other studies; making your careful drawings of the subject first, and ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... Amusement. It was begun in January, 1799, and printed for Benjamin Davies, 68 High Street. In announcing this work, the editor alluded to the unsuccess that had attended all efforts to establish magazines in Philadelphia, and he believed the cause to be the spurious patriotism that led the editors to reject whatever was not of native production. The magazine was strongly "anti-Gallican" in character. It closed its career ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth

... the outer cave and had been taken inside and tied up. The boy Dode was overjoyed at his escape from the gang, and explained that they had captured him not far from Washington and forced him to accompany them, the idea being to use him in the future in getting rid of the spurious coins. ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson

... character of a very large proportion of the noticeable changes in the folio,—he failed to accomplish his conservative purpose at the expense of Mr. Collier's reputation. But although this insinuation of the spurious character Of the writing in Mr. Collier's folio fell to the ground, such antiquity as would give its readings the consequence due to their having been introduced by a contemporary of Shakespeare was shown not to pertain to them, in the course of two articles which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... your example in repudiating spurious sentiment, Mr. Dorrance. I believe you to be a good, true man and that the attachment you profess for me is sincere. I believe, moreover, that my chances of securing real peace of mind will be fairer, should I commit myself to your guardianship, than if I were to surrender ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... not classified among punishable offences at all. And then it is necessary to remember that many things that are indefensible when only a few do them, seem to become, by an extraordinary method of reasoning, regarded as allowable when so many people do them that a spurious public opinion and a decadent fashion is born, which shelters them and prevents the light of an unbiassed judgment from showing up their shortcomings in morality. One has only to read up old records of the eighteenth century to see how slavery flourished in England among otherwise honourable ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... testimony of eye-witnesses, nor to laws and ordinances handed down from generation to generation, even to that time. That Mahomet pretended not to the working of miracles, he tells us in the Koran. The ridiculous legends related by his followers are rejected as spurious by the scholars and expounders of the prophet; and even his converse with the moon, his night journey from Mecca to Jerusalem, and from thence to heaven, were not performed before witnesses. The same may be said of the absurd exploits related ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... insignia of Chinese nobility. As Caroline Julie Ling (nee Liegeois) denounced her lord for bigamy in 1873, and succeeded, as has been seen, in proving that he was husband of Quzia-Tom-Alacer, it may seem likely that she found out the spurious honours of the pretended title. But whatever may be thought of the deceitful conduct of Ling, there is little doubt apparently that Caroline is really his. He stated in court that by Chinese law a husband who has not heard of ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang

... solemn declaration that these letters, then republished by an American political party, were base forgeries, of English origin in a time of war. His own view of this performance is given in a letter to Benjamin Walker, in which he said: "Amongst other attempts, ... spurious letters, known at the time of their first publication (I believe in the year 1777) to be forgeries, are (or extracts from them) brought forward with the highest emblazoning of which they are susceptible, with a view ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge

... in which Dr. Solander's Tea is held, by the first circles of fashion, as a general beverage—the many cures it has effected—and the pleasantness of its flavor having induced several unprincipled persons to prepare and vend a base and spurious preparation under a similar title; the Proprietor, in justice to the known efficacy of this Tea, and to secure his property from further depredations, has thought proper to have an engraved copper-plate affixed to the canisters and packets of ...
— A Treatise on Foreign Teas - Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, - Entitled An Essay On the Nerves • Hugh Smith

... thing itself actually please? If it does, your taste is real; it may be different from that of others, but is equally justified and grounded in human nature. If it does not, your whole judgment is spurious, and you are guilty, not of heresy, which in aesthetics is orthodoxy itself, but of hypocrisy, which is a self-excommunication ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana

... ink inside the front cover as to what he has done. But occasionally some unscrupulous book-fiend—he is, of course, no true book-collector—substitutes for a damaged page a page from another copy, or perhaps of a later edition; sometimes he supplies his volume with a spurious title-page or other leaf; and, worst of all, substitutes in his copy of the second edition, whereof the title-page is damaged, the title-page of a first edition, of which he possesses ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan

... Plato belong to an age in which the power of analysis had outrun the means of knowledge; and through a spurious use of dialectic, the distinctions which had been already 'won from the void and formless infinite,' seemed to be rapidly returning to their original chaos. The two great speculative philosophies, which a century earlier had so deeply impressed ...
— Theaetetus • Plato

... the story of His work. The same ruling idea accounts for the uniform omission of the title 'Lord' which in Mark's Gospel is never applied to Christ until after the resurrection. There is only one apparent exception, and there good authorities pronounce the word to be spurious. Even in reports of conversations which are also given in the other Gospels, and where 'Lord' occurs, Mark, of set purpose, omits it, as if its presence would disturb the unity of the impression which he desires to leave. You will find ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren

... Edinburgh 1732, with a Life of the author, by the Rev. Matthew Crawfurd. Besides this and the two editions published in a more popular form by William M'Gavin, at Glasgow, there are numerous modernized and spurious republications, all of them taken from Buchanan's interpolated editions, and published at Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Dundee, between the years 1731 and 1832. Even at an early period, both Calderwood, who had made such copious extracts from the work, and Spottiswood, who expressed ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox

... cautiously and get what he could, Danglar could go the limit and get all. As it stood, then, Danglar and the gang had not found out the location of that hoard; but they had found out where Perlmer kept his spurious papers—stuffed in at the back of the bottom drawer of his desk in his office, practically forgotten, practically useless to Perlmer any more, for, having once shown them to Viner, there was no occasion to call them into service again ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard

... which prescribed his line of conduct for the first of the five days with unimpeachable accuracy. A faint smile of contempt hovered about Mrs. Lecount's lips while the story of Mr. Bygrave's attempt to pass off his spurious pictures as originals was in progress, but she did not trouble herself to utter a single word of remark when it had come to an end. "Just what I said!" thought Noel Vanstone, cunningly watching her face; "she doesn't believe ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... things about Mallard that are not spurious—two things that make up the real essence and tissue of him: One is his genius as a speaker and the other is his vanity; and the bigger of these, you take it from me, is his vanity. That's the thing he feeds on—vanity. It's the breath in his nostrils, it's the savour and the salt on his daily ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... to be considered next. The question of their genuineness does not affect the present inquiry; for the seven letters contained in what is commonly called the Short Greek recension, whether spurious or not, were confessedly the same which Eusebius read; and to these I refer. For the sake of convenience I shall call the writer Ignatius, without prejudging the question of authorship. Ignatius then presents some striking coincidences with our Synoptic Gospels (whether taken thence ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot

... preface to the first edition I expressed a strong opinion at variance with Mr. Grote's, that the so-called Epistles of Plato were spurious. His friend and editor, Professor Bain, thinks that I ought to give the reasons why I differ from so eminent an authority. Reserving the fuller discussion of the question for another place, I will shortly defend my opinion ...
— Charmides • Plato

... of the Tatler had been the signal for the appearance of several spurious papers purporting to be new numbers. One entitling itself No. 272 was published by one John Baker; another, purporting to be No. 273, was by 'Isaac Bickerstaff, Junior.' Then, on January 6th, appeared what purported to be Nos. 272 and 273 ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe

... office, which was sometimes entered upon even in early youth. The inscription has the same authority in its favour as every other part of the book; and it is hardly possible to understand the levity with which it has, in recent times, been pretty generally designated as spurious, or, at least, suspicious. [Pg 173] It is altogether impossible to sever it from the other parts of the book. There must certainly have been some object in view when, in ver. 2, it is expressly ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

... pleasant, no doubt, to be applauded by high churchmen and low churchmen, by the Sheldonian Theatre and by Exeter Hall. It was pleasant to be described as the champions of the Protestant faith, as the men who stood up for the Gospel against that spurious liberality which made no distinction between truth and falsehood. It was pleasant to hear your opponents called by every nickname that is to be found in the foul vocabulary of the Reverend Hugh Mcneill. It was pleasant to hear that they ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... against the Christians, of his anxiety to temper the 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

... there was a Methodist meeting at my house. After the Methodist services were through I invited King to speak. He talked about half an hour on the first principles of the gospel as taught by Christ and his apostles, denouncing all other doctrines as spurious. This put an end to other denominations ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee

... above alluded to. The text is often doubtful. But in so rambling a writer it has not seemed to me that the laborious transpositions of later German editors were important. I have rejected as probably spurious all of the fourth book but two short pieces. While I agree with those who find the third book doubtful, ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus

... and all the subsequent editors have bracketed this verse, as spurious, but the chief objection to this sense of [Greek: karpizesthai] seems to be obviated by ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus

... you should give some spurious version, I will translate it first for Miss Bloxam's benefit; a lady cannot be supposed to know the meaning of 'Loquaces si sapiat vitet.' Listen," continued Cottrell: "the Latin is a comprehensive language, ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart

... bore the title of Magnifico, and seemed thus designated for the lordship of the city. Ippolito, though only half a Medici, was of more authentic lineage than Alessandro; for no proof positive could be adduced that the latter was even a spurious child of the Duke of Urbino. He bore obvious witness to his mother's blood upon his mulatto's face; but this mother was the wife of a groom, and it was certain that in the court of Urbino she had not been chary of her favours. The old magnificence ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... apocryphal, unreal, ungrounded, groundless; unsubstantial &c. 4; heretical &c. (heterodox) 984; unsound; illogical &c. 477. inexact, unexact inaccurate[obs3], incorrect; indefinite &c. (uncertain) 475. illusive, illusory; delusive; mock, ideal &c (imaginary) 515; spurious &c. 545; deceitful &c. 544; perverted. controvertible, unsustainable; unauthenticated, untrustworthy. exploded, refuted; discarded. in error, under an error &c. n.; mistaken &c. v.; tripping &c. v.; out, out in one's reckoning; aberrant; beside the mark, wide of the mark, wide of the truth, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... take out a thin folio written on paper. This time it is a Greek book which we open; it has the works of the Christian apologists Athenagoras and Tatian, and a spurious epistle of Justin Martyr, copied in 1534 by Valeriano of Forli. A single MS. now at Paris, written in 914, is the ancestor of all our copies of these texts; but it has been shown that this Eton book is not an immediate copy of that, but of one now at Bologna. Obviously ...
— The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts - Helps for Students of History, No. 17. • M. R. James

... name of Mowbray, and by means of testimonials which on later investigation proved spurious, Mary Ann got herself a housekeeping job with a doctor in practice at Spennymore. Falling into error regarding what was the doctor's and what was her own, and her errors being too patent, she ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure

... recall, rose to great power and affluence as tutor and adviser to Nero. His works, many of which are lost, include tragedies, letters, and treatises on philosophy. The high ethical standard maintained by Seneca favoured the legend that he was influenced by the Apostle Paul, and a spurious correspondence between them was long accepted as genuine. Of the moral works there is, for insight into human nature and for generosity of impulse, no better representative ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... from us, Nor shall they be deceiv'd, unless We're slurr'd and outed by success; Success, the mark no mortal wit, Or surest hand can always hit: 880 For whatsoe'er we perpetrate, We do but row, we're steer'd by Fate, Which in success oft disinherits, For spurious causes, noblest merits. Great actions are not always true sons 885 Of great and mighty resolutions; Nor do th' boldest attempts bring forth Events still equal to their worth; But sometimes fail, and, in their stead, Fortune ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... 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 is sin—only when ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... pointed out that the first stanza contains a satirical allusion to the luxury of the popish clergy, while the second, which makes an apparently light reference to "seven bairns", is actually concerned with the seven sacraments, five of which were the spurious offspring ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols

... becomes a gem! We grasp at all the wealth it is to them; And by reflected light its worth is found. Yet for us still 'tis nothing! and that zeal Of false appreciation quickly fades. This truth is little known to human shades, How rare from their own instinct 'tis to feel! They waste the soul with spurious desire, That is not the ripe flame upon the bough. We two have taken up a lifeless vow To rob a living passion: dust for fire! Madam is grave, and eyes the clock that tells Approaching midnight. We have struck despair Into two hearts. O, look we like a pair Who for fresh ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... 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 of ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... children of degenerate parents. There is no variety in the country more badly mixed than the Wilson; and the trouble often arises from wild strawberries creeping in among them from the edges of the field. The spurious plants are taken up with the others, and the mixture is scattered up and down the land. The same is true with other varieties that have long been in cultivation. Indeed, I have found mixtures in new varieties obtained directly from the originators. Therefore the need that the ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe

... Hedin an obsession; they spoke a language he knew. He hated the grosser furs, as he loved the finer. He despised the trade tricks and spurious trade names by which the flimsiest of furs are foisted upon the gullible purchasers of "seal," "sable," "black fox," "ermine," and "beaver." He prided himself that no misnamed fur had ever passed over his counter, and ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx

... the genuine court plaster. It is pliable, and never breaks, which is far from being the case with many of the spurious articles which are sold under that name. Indeed, this commodity is very frequently adulterated. A kind of plaster, with a very thick and brittle covering, is often sold for it. The manufacturers of this, instead of isinglass, use common glue, which is much cheaper; ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various

... miscellaneous number of works ascribed to Philo, which all good scholars[84] now admit to be spurious: "On the Incorruptibility of the World," "On the Universe," "On ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich

... as accurately as possible, in accordance with the expression of his, and then wait to see what thoughts or sentiments arise in my mind or heart, as if to match or correspond with the expression.' This response of the schoolboy lies at the bottom of all the spurious profundity which has been attributed to Rochefoucault, to La Bougive, to ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... these Gentlemen may be thus disposed of, I would earnestly exhort them to take Care of those unfortunate Creatures whom they have brought into the World by these indirect Methods, and to give their spurious Children such an Education as may render them more virtuous than their Parents. This is the best Atonement they can make for their own Crimes, and indeed the only Method that is left them to repair ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... code is absolute on that subject.... Their challenge once made, to which you, Monsieur Chapron, have to reply by yes or no, these gentlemen should withdraw immediately.... It is not your fault, it is Ardea's, who has allowed that dabbler in spurious dividends to perform his part of intriguer.... But we will rectify all in the right way, which is the French.... And where is ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... thick cir culation of six days of pants-pressing and boiler-making, of cigarette-rolling and typewriting, of machine-operating and truck-driving, of third-floor-backs, congestion and indigestion, of depression and suppression, demanding the spurious kind of excitation that can whip the blood to foam. The terrific gyration of looping the loop. The comet-tail plunge of shooting the chutes; the rocketing skyward, and the delicious madness at the pit of the stomach on the downward swoop. The bead on the apple juice, the dash of mustard to the ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst

... they are "orphans"—a mournful word greatly beloved of the Russian masses under multiform circumstances, both material and spiritual—and orphaned in a peculiarly distressing and irrevocable way. They might even feel when their saints' days came around quite correctly the next year that some spurious adventurer—Angel of ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... which will subsist between the House of Representatives and the Senate. It is an inconvenience mingled with the advantages of our frequent elections even in single States, where they are large, and hold but one legislative session in a year, that spurious elections cannot be investigated and annulled in time for the decision to have its due effect. If a return can be obtained, no matter by what unlawful means, the irregular member, who takes his seat of course, is sure of holding it a sufficient time to answer his purposes. Hence, a very pernicious ...
— The Federalist Papers

... 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 ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... arguments which my will boldly preferred to my conscience, as coin which ought to be current, and which conscience, like a grumbling shopkeeper, was contented to accept, rather than come to an open breach with a customer, though more than doubting that the tender was spurious. ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... sloka or distich which I have been forced to expand into these nine lines is evidently spurious, but is found in all the commented MSS. which ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... But this spurious Spanish lady had no real knowledge of that which she professed. The whole affair was an imposture; and on the very night of her first appearance the truth exploded. On the discovery of the truth, I declined ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... responsibility to fulfill his own profoundest impulses, with reference to none but God or his own soul, not taking woman into count at all, in this primary responsibility to his own deepest soul; once man vacates this strong citadel of his own genuine, not spurious, divinity; then in comes woman, picks up the scepter and begins to ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence

... duty of all men, as Burke says, 'so to be patriots as not to forget that we are gentlemen, to mould our principles to our duties and our situations, and to be convinced that all (public) virtue which is impracticable is spurious.' I write to induce the people to leave politics to wiser heads, to consent to learn and not endeavour to direct ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 7: A Sketch • John Morley

... had been received with strong words at the Wickiup: but when summer fairly opened Callahan preferred snow to rain as strongly as he preferred genuine Lone Jack to the spurious compounds ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman

... which the herder had toiled on his grewsome errand. Chance climbed the sharp ascent with clawing reaches of his powerful forelegs and quick thrusts of his muscular haunches. Sundown followed as best he could. He was keyed to the strenuous task by that spurious by-product of ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs

... seen that the genuine Nicene Creed here given differs in almost every clause from the so-called Nicene Creed of our Communion Service. Leaving, however, the spurious Nicene Creed till we come to it, let us see how the genuine Nicene Creed dealt with Arianism. Its central phrases are the two which refer to essence. Now the essence of a thing is that by which it ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin

... wondrous tales of their predecessors, which they retailed to the public with such additions of their own as their acquired information supplied them with. Anachronisms became of course very common, and errors of geography, of locality, of manners, equally so. Spurious genealogies were invented, in which Arthur and his knights, and Charlemagne and his paladins, were made to derive their descent from Aeneas, Hector, or some ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... Greeley made the controversy the subject of a vigorous editorial in the "Tribune," and "Harper's Weekly," in which the poem had originally appeared, pointed out that although the verses were published in February, the spurious claim was not put forward until July. Writing of "Nothing to Wear" forty ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice

... 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 ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... understanding it is as lethal as poison. Many parents think they are showing love when they indulge their children, but instead they are putting them onto the road that leads to physical and mental decay. True love is helpful, kind and patient. The spurious kind is noisy, ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker

... Adonis" (1593) and "Lucrece" (1594), as well as in his "Sonnets" (1609), in the "Lover's Complaint" and in the almost certainly spurious "Passionate Pilgrim", containing two sonnets and three poems from Love's Labour's Lost, and which has been included in most collections of his works, there are perhaps relatively more frequent mentions of precious stones than in the plays, a ...
— Shakespeare and Precious Stones • George Frederick Kunz

... to be regretted that even in the new Breviary the lessons for the second nocturn of this feast are taken from the composition, Cogitis me, falsely attributed to St. Jerome, and rejected by critics, from the days of Baronius, as spurious (Baudot, op. ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley

... scarcely possible," 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

... They boasted that their hardware was highly esteemed, not indeed as now, at Pekin and Lima, at Bokhara and Timbuctoo, but in London, and even as far off as Ireland. They had acquired a less honourable renown as coiners of bad money. In allusion to their spurious groats, some Tory wit had fixed on demagogues, who hypocritically affected zeal against Popery, the nickname of Birminghams. Yet in 1685 the population, which is now little less than two hundred thousand, did not amount to four thousand. Birmingham buttons were just beginning to be known: of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... world-order, or, in religious language, of the wisdom and justice of God, which we cannot and will not surrender. It is authenticated by an instinctive assurance which is strongest in the strongest minds, and which has nothing to do with any desire for spurious "consolations";[67] it is a conviction, not merely a hope, and we have every reason to believe that it is part of the Divine element in our nature. This conviction, like other mystical intuitions, is formless: the forms or symbols under which we represent it are the best ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... cases this is doubtless due to natural perversity, but in others it certainly arises from the hollowness of the outward forms which pass current in society and at home for vital Christianity. These spurious forms, fortunately or unfortunately, soon betray themselves. How little there is in them becomes gradually apparent. And rather than indulge in a sham the budding sceptic, as the first step, parts with the form and in nine cases out of ten concerns himself no further to ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond

... 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 ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... you know." I informed my reflection in a small, strange-coloured glass, which allowed me to shave my face in greenish sections. "It is a kind of madness, this spurious ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... tradition." The Canon thinks the interval too short for these importations to be serious, but that any question of this kind is left open proves the Age of Reason fully upon us. Reason alone can determine how many texts are as spurious as the three heavenly witnesses (i John v. 7), and like it "serious" enough to have cost good men their lives, and persecutors their charities. When men interpolate, it is because they believe their interpolation seriously needed. ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... thus 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 in the compilation, we might almost say, as a framework to fill up. This is the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... which it was displayed was only part of the livery of potentates who flaunt what meaner folk would coyly hide. But always before my eyes was a picture of the girl on whom her jealousy had taken such a bitter vengeance, and to invent spurious lover's talk then was a thing ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne

... he had waited for his fortune fifteen years ago, and saw it in his mind's eye hastening towards him from the east in the person of Charles Aston. That was the true Fortune,—this spurious thing they were trying to harness to his back was evil to the core. Had not that been the very meaning of those painful steps that had struggled away from it along this very road—the meaning of the lonely grave amongst the broken-down ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant

... an increasing use of the typewriting machine for the production of spurious papers," he began, rattling the note significantly. "It is partly due to the great increase in the use of the typewriter generally, but more than all is it due to the erroneous idea that fraudulent typewriting cannot be detected. The ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve

... do you say to Lady J——, a plebeian, and a licensed dealer in money, keeping her shop by deputy in a lane somewhere behind Cornhill? Almack's, as every body knows who has been there, or who has talked with any observing habitue of the place, contains a great many queer, spurious people, smuggled in somehow by indirect influence, when royal command is not the least effectual: a surprizing number of seedy, poverty-stricken young men, and, in an inverse ratio, women who have any thing more than the clothes they wear: yet, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various

... New York and went to Washington I was congratulated on having quitted the false America for the real. When I came to Boston I received the sympathies of everybody in Boston on having been put off for so long with spurious imitations of America, and a sigh of happy relief went up that I had at length got into touch with a genuine American city. When, after a long pilgrimage, I attained Chicago, I was positively informed that Chicago alone was the gate of the United States, and that everything east of ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett

... as represented," he whispered to me, after a while, "but a connoiseur can tell spurious goods. These are the real ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... various artist, Mr. ROLAND PERTWEE, has contrived to put together a highly entertaining collection of diamond-cut-diamond yarns, adventure tales that have the great advantage (for these days) of being concerned, not with bloodshed and mysterious murders, but with the wiles of dealers in the spurious antique and the exploits of Lord Louis in defeating them. This Lord Louis is indeed a very pleasant as well as a very ingenious gentleman. From the rotundity of his conversational periods and a certain general suavity of demeanour ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various

... of character struggled with accidental depression, said: "Success, Mr. SPEAKER, is a mark no mortal wit of surest hand can always hit. For whatsoe'er we perpetrate, we do but row; we are steered by fate, which in success often disinherits, for spurious causes, noblest merits. Great occasions, Mr. SPEAKER, are not always true sons of great and mighty resolutions, nor, I may add, do the boldest attempts bring forth events still equal to their worth. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 5, 1890 • Various

... future style and title: "Antoine Francois de Cyrano Derues de Bury, Seigneur de Buisson-Souef et Valle Profonde." He is worthy of Thackeray's pen, this little grocer-snob, with his grand and ruinous acquaintance with the noble and the great, his spurious titles, his unwearied climbing ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving

... character, can fail of producing occasional good to those who yield it an implicit or even a partial faith. The argument founded on this occasional good would be as applicable in justifying the counterfeiter and giving circulation to his base coin, on the ground that a spurious dollar had often relieved ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... History of the Rebellion, and to add to it that of the Irish rebellion; but as it was suspected by one of the delegates of the press, that the edition from which they were printing the "Irish Rebellion" was spurious, as it attributed the origin of the rebellion to the Protestants instead of the Catholics; a much earlier copy was procured from Dublin, through the chaplain of the then Lord Lieutenant, which reversed the accusation which was contained in the copy from which the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 52, October 26, 1850 • Various

... 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

... made to center upon the initial act of "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, seeking, singing Church on that subject is ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer

... even in classical literature, which so exalts the idea of friendship, and is so 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 the sneer. Not so this wise ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black

... Journals, as in this passage: "The water we wash with never speaks of itself, nor does fire or wind or tree. Neither does a noble natural man," and so forth. If water and fire and wind and tree were in the habit of talking of anything else, this kind of a comparison would not seem so spurious. ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs

... was directed to take the vessel to Portsmouth, was the spurious progeny of the first-lieutenant of a line-of-battle ship, and a young woman who attended the bum-boat, which supplied the ship's company with necessaries and luxuries, if they could afford to pay for them. The class of people who obtain their livelihood by these ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... American design prejudiced the women against them. America never had designed good clothes, they argued: she never would. Argument availed naught. The Paris germ was deep-rooted in the feminine mind of America: the women acknowledged that they were, perhaps, being hoodwinked by spurious French dresses and hats; that the case presented by Bok seemed convincing enough, but the temptation to throw a coat over a sofa or a chair to expose a Parisian label to the eyes of some other woman was too great; there ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)

... still in tigerish itch to be cosmopolitan, the frou-frouishness of the flirting capital over the frontier. Wise old philosophers! Translating you in terms of your palaces of prostitution, your Palais de Danse, your Admirals-Casinos; translating you in terms of your purposely spurious Victorias, your Riche Cafes, your Fledermauses. As well render the spirit of Vienna in the key of the Kaerntnerstrasse at eleven of the Austrian night; as well play the spirit of Paris in the discords of its Montmartre, in the leaden pitch of its ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright

... the mandrake would remove sterility. With which purpose in view, Rachel said to Leah: "Give me, I pray thee, of thy son's mandrakes" (Genesis xxx. v. 14). In later times the Bryony has come into use instead of the true mandrake, and it has continued to form a profitable spurious article with mountebank doctors. In Henry the Eighth's day, ridiculous little images made from Bryony roots, cut into the figure of a man, and with grains of millet inserted into the face as eyes, the same being known as pappettes or mammettes, were ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... him 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

... 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 utter after ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... cannot see her—she is an invalid," replied the present representative of the spurious house; for this was Mr Alec, the only son of the lately deceased gentleman. "Cannot I answer your purpose? What is the business you wish to see ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... me the most scientific attitude. Time is the great revealer. But Dr. Munro, as we saw, prefers not to suspend his judgment, and says plainly and pluckily that the disputed objects in the Clyde controversy are "spurious"; are what the world calls "fakes," though from a delicate sense of the proprieties of language, he will not call them "forgeries." They are reckoned by him among "false antiquities," while, for my part, ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang

... must have a strong government, and make an example of some of them. I feel anxious to make amends to you—something more than a mere apology. Now an idea struck me as I came down-stairs. Will you oblige me by allowing me to buy the spurious dollars? Well, now, suppose I give you four good ones, it will be so much out of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... Skye Dog, in a commercial point of view, has, of course, given rise to the manufacture of a spurious article; whence it comes, that, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the animal palmed off on the unsophisticated as genuine has nothing of the real stuff in his constitution, but is simply a shallow imitation, compounded according to prescription,—one part common ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... eye, the same quick quiver of the lip, speaking of nervous susceptibility and haste of mood. The hateful fashion of that day which pervaded all ranks, from the highest to the lowest, was the prodigal use of paints and cosmetics, and all imaginable artificial adjuncts of a spurious beauty. This extended often even to the men, and the sturdiest warrior deemed it no shame to recur to such arts of the toilet as the vainest wanton in our day would never venture to acknowledge. But the Lady Bonville, proudly confident of her beauty, and possessing ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... restrain myself from sticking a hundred and eighty heads on the end of my pike!"[3180] Accordingly, they form in themselves a special, permanent, resident body, allowing no one to divert them from their adopted occupation. "They turn a deaf ear to the excitements of spurious patriotism";[3181] they are not going to be sent off to the frontier. Their post is at the capital; they have sworn "to defend liberty"; neither before nor after September make them deviate from this end. When, after having drawn ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... came to the name of Hannah More, by merely remarking, "She has written a great deal which I have never read." He looked upon most living writers through the eyes of the somewhat jaded reviewer, who, though susceptible to a romantic thrill from one or the other, is usually on his guard against spurious blandishments and reluctant to admit the claims of new pretenders. Even in poets of the first rank he slurred over a great deal; but what he loved he dwelt on with a kind of rapt inspiration until it became his second nature, its spirit and its language fused intimately with his own. ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... country scarcely counts," she protested. "After all, we came into being as a republic, and our aristocracy is only a spurious conglomeration of people who are too rich to need to work. But many of these people whom you see here to-night still possess feudal rights, vast estates, great names, and yet over their heads there is coming this Government, in which they will be wholly unrepresented. What ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... practical joke; and one does not wonder at his sinking before such a prospect, if he anticipated an age and a race of book-buyers among whom his great critical works are forgotten, and his name is known solely for the spurious volume, sacred to infamy, which may be found side by side with the works of the author of Trimalcion's ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... deprecate the spurious authenticity conferred by print upon isolated versions of shanties sung by individual old men. When the originals are available it seems to me pedantic and academic to put into print the comic mispronunciations of well-known words ...
— The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties • Richard Runciman Terry

... 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 two pieces, which have only recently been ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy

... difference. The public printer, conservative Joseph Royle of the Virginia Gazette, refused to publish the resolves at all. What went into print outside the colonies were the four true resolves, plus the three spurious ones, often made more radical in tone as they were reprinted. The effect was electric. If this was the expression of the Virginia House of Burgesses, long thought to be the most reasoned in its approach to constitutional issues, then a new day had arrived. No wonder ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education

... multiplicity of both genera and species. The Amazon and its tributaries, are supposed to contain at least three thousand distinct species; a fact upon which the American naturalist, Agassiz—somewhat of an empiric, by the way—has founded a portion of his spurious fame, on the pretence of being its discoverer. It was pointed out by a real naturalist, Alfred Wallace, ten years before Agassiz ever set eyes on the Amazon; and its record will be found in the appendix to Wallace's ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid

... thought that, knowing all this, it is strange that man does not himself manufacture these rare gems, such as the diamond, but so far he has only succeeded in making a few of microscopic size, altogether useless except as scientific curiosities. The manner in which these minute gems and spurious stones are manufactured, and the methods by which they may readily be distinguished from real, will be dealt with ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin

... made my obeisance in silence, ordered every one to leave the sick room, and, when I again called them in, announced that Ladice had given birth to a second girl. Amasis' real child received the name of Tachot, the spurious ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... trouble," replied Ela, as he sank wearily into the padded chair, "is to induce eyewitnesses to agree as to details; there is absolutely no clue as to the identity of the robbers, and nearly murderers. The number of the car was a spurious one, and was not traced beyond Limehouse. I am up against a blank wall. The only fact I have to go upon is the very certain fact that one of the robbers was either wounded or killed and carried to the car by his friend, and that his body ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace

... of a piece of rare crockery are able to throw me into a gibbering ecstasy; and I could forsake a drowning relative to help dispute about whether the stopple of a departed Buon Retiro scent-bottle was genuine or spurious. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... To distinguish the spurious passages, as a point of interest, in the present edition, the forgeries of Nodot are printed within round brackets, the forgery of Marchena within square brackets, and the additions of De Salas in italics {In this ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... plausible arguments to accept as logical the sophistry of self-love and greed. The word business was stretched to cover a multitude of sins; the new dictionary of self-aggrandizement concealed a spurious gospel ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable

... which is innocent and 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 ...
— On Being Human • Woodrow Wilson

... bring a fancy price. Where will this all lead at last, I ask as a careful scientist? Instead of eating apples, as Adam did, we work the fruit up into apple-jack and pie, while even the simple oyster is perverted, and instead of being allowed to fatten up in the fall on acorns and ancient mariners, spurious flesh is put on his bones by the artificial osmose and dialysis of our advanced civilization. How can you make an oyster stout or train him down by making him jerk a health lift so many hours every day, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various

... rubber preservatives in sealed envelopes tied with gold thread, butter scotch, pineapple rock, billets doux in the form of cocked hats, readymade suits, porringers of toad in the hole, bottles of Jeyes' Fluid, purchase stamps, 40 days' indulgences, spurious coins, dairyfed pork sausages, theatre passes, season tickets available for all tramlines, coupons of the royal and privileged Hungarian lottery, penny dinner counters, cheap reprints of the World's Twelve Worst Books: Froggy And Fritz (politic), Care of the Baby (infantilic), ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... trammels is a Democrat. And every man who permits old issues to stand in the way of a vigorous prosecution of the war cannot, in my opinion, have any claims on the party." By such men and such utterances will the Democratic party secure the respect and admiration of mankind; while those spurious Democrats, whose hearts are with the South while their homes are in the North, whose voice is the voice of Jacob while their hands are the hands of Esau, whose first slavish impulse is to kiss the rod which smites them, and who long for nothing so much as the triumph of their Southern masters, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various



Words linked to "Spurious" :   misbegotten, imitative, spuriousness, illegitimate, counterfeit, inauthentic, misbegot, unauthentic, spurious wing, specious, bastardly, spurious correlation, false



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