Specious Present Quotes & Sayings

When abandoned babies were left out on the streets and back alleys, the Christians in North Africa organized baby runs and brought these babies to nursing mothers. The pagans were overwhelmed with the caring attitude of the Christians. Just as Peter predicted, unbelievers were led to faith in Christ and "glorified God" in the day of visitation. The excellencies of Christ are best revealed through the lives of those who are compassionate because they themselves are profoundly aware of their own shortcomings. The world can out entertain us; outnumber us; out finance us, but let it never be said that they can out-love us, for "God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us" (Romans 5:5). — Erwin W. Lutzer

Life is like being at the dentist. You always think that the worst is still to come, and yet it is over already. — Viktor E. Frankl

Nothing is given so profusely as advice. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

I am 26 and, and I don't recover as fast as I have in the past. — Michael Phelps

We do not advocate right to life for animals. — Ingrid Newkirk

I heard so many stories from Gaomi's peasants that I had an irrepressible urge to write them down. Today, Gaomi's peasants know that they have become famous around the world through my writings, but I think they are a little puzzled by this. — Mo Yan

It is to be lamented that the interested and designing have availed themselves so successfully of the present crisis, and under the specious pretence of having discovered a panacea for all the ills of the people, they are about establishing a system of government, that will prove more destructive to them than the wooden horse filled with soldiers did in ancient times to the city of Troy. This horse was introduced by their hostile enemy the Grecians, by a prostitution of the sacred rites of their religion; in like manner, my fellow citizens, are aspiring despots among
yourselves prostituting the name of a Washington to cloak their designs upon your liberties. — Samuel Bryan

On a Fine Morning
in Poems of the Past and the Present (1901)
WHENCE comes Solace?
Not from seeing
What is doing, suffering, being,
Not from noting Life's conditions,
Nor from heeding Time's monitions;
But in cleaving to the Dream,
And in gazing at the gleam
Whereby gray things golden seem.
This do I this heyday, holding
Shadows but as lights unfolding,
As no specious show this moment
With its iris-hued embowment;
But as nothing other than
Part of a benignant plan;
Proof that earth was made for man. — Thomas Hardy

I make it a policy not to second-guess my instincts. Life's more fun that way.
~Train Heartnet — Kentaro Yabuki

Our specious present as such is very short. We do, however, experience passing events; part of the process of the passage of events is directly there in our experience, including some of the past and some of the future. — George Herbert Mead

On the other hand, there is no more potent dwarfing of the present than by viewing it as a mere link between a glorious past and a glorious future. Thus, though a mass movement at first turns its back on the past, it eventually develops a vivid awareness, often specious, of a distant glorious past. Religious movements go back to the day of creation; social revolutions tell of a golden age when men were free, equal, and independent; nationalist movements revive or invent memories of past greatness. — Eric Hoffer

We're just recycled history machines, cavemen in faded blue jeans. — Jimmy Buffett

As the father of six children, I want to know that when my wife or I drop our kids off at school they will be safe from predators, crime and violence. — Mike Fitzpatrick

I go to the gym three times a week and do Pilates three times a week, but not for more than an hour. It's not healthy. — Brittany Snow