"Baseless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... my roof, and laid myself down in my misery. My unhappy imagination suggested numberless baseless projects, and prescribed impossible resolutions. When a man is struggling in the wreck of his fortunes, he is not quite without resources, but I was engulfed. Ah, my dear fellow, we are too ready to blame the wretched. Let us be less harsh on the results ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... a sample of the sympathy he might expect at head-quarters, Moss's prognostications, after all, were not quite baseless. He made the best of his solitary dinner, and then sallied out in the dark to try to find the porter's lodge once more and rescue his luggage. That functionary was still absent, and Mark was compelled himself to haul ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... much for his own reputation. As the editor of the "National Gazette" in Philadelphia, he becomes involved in the bitter quarrel between his chief, Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton. His attachment to the cause of the French Revolution makes him publish baseless attacks upon Washington. By and by he retires to a New Jersey farm, still toying with journalism, still composing verses. He turns patriotic poet once more in the War of 1812; but the public has now forgotten him. He lives on in poverty and seclusion, and in ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... Duke of Orleans, who was now virtually ruler of the French kingdom, in vain proposed concession after concession. All negotiation indeed broke down when Henry formally put forward his claim on the crown of France. No claim could have been more utterly baseless, for the Parliamentary title by which the House of Lancaster held England could give it no right over France, and the strict law of hereditary succession which Edward asserted could be pleaded, if pleaded at all, only by the House of ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... Mirage-phenomena were familiar to him, but never had they dealt with natural objects beyond a range of a few miles. For the most part, the mirage of the desert is a baseless illusion, depending on the bending of light-rays by air strata of differing densities. The rarer "looming," witnessed occasionally in more northerly latitudes, shows scenes actually in existence, and the best authenticated instance of a long-range view is that testified to by the inhabitants ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... politics, he said, were those "of Shakespeare, Bacon, and every sane man." He was one of the Society of Apostles, and characteristically contributed an essay on Ghosts. Only the preface survives: it is not written in a scientific style; but bids us "not assume that any vision IS baseless." Perhaps the author went on to discuss "veridical hallucinations," but his ideas about these things must ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... shame and embarrassment, while your own brows are decorated with well-earned laurels. Do ye not already enjoy the bliss of the prophetic vision, until the bursting in of the reality? Ah, ye do! Now think it not over-officious in your cousin of low capacity to assure you that your hopes are but the baseless fabrics of vain minds. The day of examination will reveal to your astonished sensibilities that ye have dreamed the dream of fools. Those noble young men, who are the objects of your hatred, will soar above you triumphantly, and ...
— The Young Captives - A Story of Judah and Babylon • Erasmus W. Jones
... and guilty but abortive projects for retrieving his failure, by using his power in Ireland to make himself formidable to his enemies at Court, and even to the Queen herself. He intrigued with Tyrone; he intrigued with James of Scotland; he plunged into a whirl of angry and baseless projects, which came to nothing the moment they were discussed. How empty and idle they were was shown by his return against orders to tell his own story at Nonsuch, and by thus placing himself alone and undeniably in the wrong, ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... no interest in the conversation. It had to proceed all along on a baseless presumption, to deal with a state of things which did not exist. What might be wise for Harry—Harry Nothing-at-all—might be unwise for Tristram ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... ray, Swift as a falcon darting on its prey; No planet's swift career could match his speed, That seem'd the power of fancy to exceed. The courier of the sky I mark'd with dread, As by degrees the baseless fabric fled That human power had built, while high disdain I felt within to see the toiling train Striving to seize each transitory thing That fleets away on dissolution's wing; And soonest from the firmest grasp recede, Like airy forms, with tantalizing speed. O mortals! ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... write some long letters in connection with that business. After she had got into her own room, she was never sensible of how time was passing—never conscious of any feeling within her, except a baseless, helpless hope that the French police might yet be proved to have made some terrible mistake—until she heard a violent shower of rain come on a little after sunset. The noise of the rain, and the freshness it brought with it in the air, seemed to awaken her as if from a painful and a fearful ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... itself alone in a new world to weave fresh wreaths of such flowers as it might prove to bear, the old world's flowers being withered, would be grieved by those sorrowful jewels; and to what purpose? Why should it be? They were but a sign of broken joys and baseless projects; in their very beauty they were (as the unlikeliest of men had said) almost a cruel satire on the loves, hopes, plans, of humanity, which are able to forecast nothing, and are so much brittle dust. Let them be. He would restore them to her guardian when he came ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... imposed by God on man—namely, the cultivation of the soil. They leave this to the slaves, who are few and ill-fed, and know no more of agriculture than their masters do; ... their great laziness, together with a silly, baseless vanity, makes them look upon all manual labor as degrading, proper only for slaves, and so they prefer poverty to doing honest work. To this must be added their ambition to make rapid fortunes, as some of them do, by contraband trading, ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... larger world, it was only through the medium of the company in its relations to that world. I had formed some attachments,—ties which have lasted through life thus far, and will always last,—but these attachments were immediate only, and, so far as I felt, were almost baseless; for not directly could I see and feel what was felt by the men I loved. Outside the narrow bounds of the company my world was all abstract. I fought for that world, for it appealed to my reason; but it was with effort that I called before my mind that world, which was a very ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... inartificial style gets rid (at a blow) of all the trappings of verse, of all the high places of poetry: "the cloud-capt towers, the solemn temples, the gorgeous palaces," are swept to the ground, and "like the baseless fabric of a vision, leave not a wreck behind." All the traditions of learning, all the superstitions of age, are obliterated and effaced. We begin de novo, on a tabula rasa of poetry. The purple pall, the nodding plume of tragedy, are exploded as mere ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... reaction against the planters and their leadership followed. The illusion spread that they were not doing their share of the fighting; and as rich men were permitted to hire substitutes to represent them in the army, this really baseless report was easily propped up in the public mind with what appeared to ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... of the House of Representatives, and had for years assumed a censorious attitude toward Jackson, cast his influence for Adams and thereby secured his election on the first ballot. A few days later Adams offered Clay the secretaryship of state, which was accepted. The wholly unjust and baseless charge of "bargain and corruption'' followed, and the feud thus created between Adams and Jackson greatly influenced the history of the United ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... has now full time for thought. Numberless acts of the past life rise up to the recollection, many a deed, and thought, and word, which must bring either pain or fear; principles undergo a test which the wrong and baseless cannot bear. Death looks terribly near. What can stand a man in good stead on an occasion like this? One thing, and one thing alone—sound Bible religion; a firm faith in Him who took our nature upon Him, and died for our sins, and ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... please me better, nothing would afford my country greater pleasure and satisfaction, than to see this marriage consummated. It would nail that baseless lie which has so long ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... chapter of the last book was done, it occurred to me to wonder whether I might ever be able to afford to get for a week or two where the thermometer went below ninety degrees in summer. But this was a wild and baseless dream, whose irrationality I quickly recognized. For such books as those into which I had been coining a year of my young strength and heart, I received the sum of one hundred dollars apiece. The "Gypsy" publisher was more munificent. ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... aware that it may seem to some that these statements rest largely on assumptions, but they are not baseless assumptions. One other assumption must be made before we can proceed in our study, and that one is the truthfulness of the Christian teaching that death is not cessation of being, but only the decay of the ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... strange fancies of the squarers of the circle, the inventors of perpetual motion, and the rest of the moonstruck dreamers, most persons will confess to themselves that they have had notions as wild, conceptions as extravagant, theories as baseless, as the least rational of ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... to the Valley of Hinnom, by way of imagery; with the exception of the Dives parable, where is distinctly inferred a moral amendment beyond the grave. I speak of the unselfish desire of Dives to save his brothers. The more I see of the controversy the more baseless does the eternal punishment theory appear. It seems, then, to me, that instead of feeling aggrieved and shaken, you ought to feel encouraged and thankful that God is so much better than you were taught to believe him. You will have discovered by this time, in ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... the baseless attacks on myself and the colleagues of my Embassy in the columns of the Providence Journal impels me to ask whether your Excellency cannot see your way to make it clear that these attacks are not countenanced by the American Government. Such slanders against the representatives of a friendly Power ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... complement of officers. This measure, however agreeable it might have been to the horde of aspirants for commissions, was in itself calculated to destroy all self-respect in the soldiers, being based on the utterly baseless assumption that they required twice as many officers as whites, and was foredoomed to failure, because no esprit de corps can be created in a regiment which is from the first insignificant in respect to size. It is scarcely conceivable that any regular officer should have honestly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... my Sire, what mortal tongue can tell! No friendly bay thy shattered barque received; Ev'n when thy dust reposed in ocean cell, Strange baseless tales of hope thy friends deceived Which oft they doubted sad, or gay believed. At length, when deeper, darker, wax'd the gloom, Hopeless they grieved; but 'twas in vain they grieved: If God be truth, 'tis sure no voice ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... of our fears turned out to be baseless. For instance, one day Johnny Boatman, a little boy not quite four years old, was lost. His mother was almost crazed, for word went out that the Indians had stolen him. A day later the lad was found under a tree, asleep. He ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... "And like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capt Towers, the gorgeous Palaces, The solemn Temples, the great Globe itself, And all which it inherit, shall dissolve; And like this unsubstantial pageant faded, Leave not ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... height of his glory, his honours lie thick upon him, and now, if ever, he is the regal Cromwell that Victor Hugo has portrayed, the uncrowned King of England, trampling under foot that sacred liberty, the baseless ideal for which so many had fought and bled. He is soon to be Lord Protector. He is second to none upon earth. England is again at peace with herself, and takes her position as one of the great Powers of Europe; Cromwell is England's king. So much for our ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... with a very grave expression upon her face, while Alicia gently wiped her eyes and ardently wished that her honest Rudolph was here to defend his character and refute these baseless insinuations. At length her mother ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... This is a baseless and indefensible critical assertion. It is evidently to be ascribed to the fact that the metre of the ancient ballads is employed in both plays. But my tone is quite different from Hertz's; the language ...
— The Feast at Solhoug • Henrik Ibsen
... of the state to appoint the latter to the Senate. The propriety of this course of action depended somewhat on the question of Sherman's physical condition. Rumor declared that he was suffering from mental decay, due to his age, but McKinley believed the rumor to be baseless, summoned him to the cabinet, and Hanna was subsequently appointed to the Senate. When Sherman took up the duties of his office it appeared that the rumor had been all too true, and a serious lapse of memory on his part in a diplomatic matter forced his immediate replacement ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... said I, 'if, "exempt from public haunt," I could get something to do when this dross is gone. In London there are sermons in stones, certainly, but not "good in everything,"—an observation I should take the liberty of making to the Swan if he were not now, alas! "the baseless ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... by faith; it is based on vague and impalpable opinion that by some inscrutable process passes into will and action, and is made manifest in matter and in flesh: it is meteoric—suspended in mid-air; it is the baseless fabric of a vision so vast, so vivid, and so gorgeous that no base can seem more broad than such stupendous baselessness, and yet any man can bring it about his ears by being over-curious; when faith fails, a system based on ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... infer that these seventy-six slaves were to be transported into her, and carried to Cuba or elsewhere for sale. What a monstrous imagination! What a gross libel on that brig, her officers, her crew, her owners, all of whom are thus charged as kidnappers and pirates; and all this baseless dream got up for the purpose of influencing your minds against the prisoner! It marks, indeed, with many other things, the style in which this ...
— Personal Memoir Of Daniel Drayton - For Four Years And Four Months A Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) In Washington Jail • Daniel Drayton
... terror. They had charged him with sinning, on the strength of their hypothesis, and he has answered with a deliberate denial of it. Losing now all mastery over themselves, they pour out a torrent of mere extravagant invective and baseless falsehoods, which in the calmer outset they would have blushed to think of. They know no evil of Job, but they do not hesitate now to convert conjecture into certainty, and specify in detail the ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... were veiled in gloom. An unaccountable action on the part of the antelope had plunged the State into disgrace. That charmer, on the representation that the previous day was her birthday, and that vast treasures had been sent in a hamper for its celebration (both baseless assertions), had secretly but most pressingly invited thirty-five neighbouring princes and princesses to a ball and supper: with a special stipulation that they were "not to be fetched till twelve." ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... of wonder in that country-side, it was so neat and habitable; and to see it now, shamed by these incongruous additions, filled me with indignation and a kind of anger. In view of the errand I had come upon to Aros, the feeling was baseless and unjust; but it burned high, at the first ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... He saw how baseless his hope had been, and he exonerated her from all blame. She had been kind and helpful till he spoiled it all by a fool's presumption. He had always exaggerated her social position and her attainments, but in the depths of his self-abasement and despair every ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... The year was bad, the christening-fees were small, The weddings few, the parties paupers all: Desire of gain with fear of want combined, Raised sad commotion in his wounded mind; Wealth was in all his thoughts, his views, his dreams, And prompted base desires and baseless schemes. Alas! how often erring mortals keep The strongest watch against the foes who sleep; While the more wakeful, bold, and artful foe Is suffer'd guardless and unmark'd to go. Once in a month the sacramental bread ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... Christians had filled no large space in the eye of the world. Until the days of Domitian we do not hear of a single noble or distinguished person who had joined their ranks. That the Pudens and Claudia of Rom. xvi. were the Pudens and Claudia of Martial's Epigrams seems to me to be a baseless dream. If the "foreign superstition" with which Pomponia Graecina, wife of Aulus Plautius, the conqueror of Britain, was charged, and of which she was acquitted, was indeed, as has been suspected, the Christian religion, at any rate ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... a sore-footed dog whose rawhide boots had worn through—a long-legged, barefoot girl who had walked twelve hundred miles since spring, trudged Jed Wingate, now grown from a tousled boy into a lean, self-reliant young man. His long whip was used in baseless threatenings now, for any driver must spare cattle such as these, gaunt and hollow-eyed. Tobacco protuberant in cheek, his feet half bare, his trousers ragged and fringed to the knee, his sleeves rolled up over brown and brawny arms, ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... a region of the kingdom of Og, is a matter of much difficulty. It has been equated on philological grounds to the Lej[a]. But these arguments have been shown to be shaky if not baseless, and the identification is now generally abandoned. The confidence with which the great cities of Og were identified with the extensive remains of ancient sites in the Lej[a] and Hauran has also been shown to be without justification. All the so-called "giant cities ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... these principles had had the safety of Abraham Lincoln in his keeping; and these simple statements are the best refutation of the baseless ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... jewel in its head commonly known as "a toad-stone," although that "common knowledge" was really not knowledge at all, but—like an enormous mass of the accepted current statements in those times, about animals, plants and stones—was an absolutely baseless invention. Such baseless beliefs were due to the perfectly innocent but reckless habit of mankind, throughout long ages, of exaggerating and building up marvellous narrations on the one hand, and on the other hand of believing without any sufficient inquiry, and with delight and enthusiasm, such ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... all that it inherits shall dissolve, And, like the baseless fabric of a vision, Leave ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... disgusted by my interest in these people, who, he repeated, "are just dogs," referring to their legendary origin, of which they are not ashamed. His assertion that they have learned politeness from the Japanese is simply baseless. Their politeness, though of quite another and more manly stamp, is savage, not civilised. The men came back at dark, the meal was prepared, and we sat round the fire as before; but there was no sake, except in the possession of the old woman; and again ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... sweeps the shores 250 Of Cerne, and the green Hesperides, And long-renowned Atlantis,[172] whether sunk Now to the bottom of the "monstrous world;" Or was it but a shadow of the mind, Vapoury and baseless, like the distant clouds That seem the promise of an unknown land To the pale-eyed and wasted mariner, Cold on the rocking mast. The pilot plies, Now tossed upon Bayonna's mountain-surge, High to the north his ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... notice of our past errors. The law of Spirit may be more complex than that of electricity, because, as expressed in us, it is the law of conscious individuality; but it is none the less a purely natural law, and follows the universal rule, and therefore we may dismiss from our minds, as a baseless figment, the fear of any Divine power treasuring up anger against us on account of bygones, if we are sincerely seeking to do what is right now. The new causes which we put in motion now will produce their proper effect as surely as the old causes did; and thus by inaugurating ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... association enforced by their journey which had been so precious to Hilda. Here Lord Chetwynde of course drifted away, and she could not hope to see him except at certain stated intervals. Now more than ever she began to lose hope. The hopes that she had once formed seemed now to be baseless. And why, she asked herself bitterly—why was it so impossible for him to love her? Would not any other man have loved ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... name be told. How stoop to invoke malignant pity to the insult offered to a future queen? Dark in his grave must rest the secret no words could syllable, save by such vague and mysterious hint and comment as pass from baseless gossip into dubious history. [Hall well explains the mystery which wrapped the king's insult to a female of the House of Warwick by the simple sentence, "The certainty was not, for both their honours, ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... this ancient seat of learning, founded and endowed for the perpetuation and propagation of the doctrines of our denomination, I had never entertained the faintest shadow of doubt as to the infallibility of our creed; but now all faith in it vanished like the baseless fabric of a dream. Here at the fountain head of wisdom, from which streams were supposed to flow for the healing of the nations, my faith in the beliefs of my ancestors fled, nevermore to return; here, where lived the great high priests of the sect, I had expected to find the ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... the Western Front, and the increased activity of the German airmen, created some natural depression, which might have been more pronounced had not Mr. PEMBERTON-BILLING seized the occasion to reiterate his charges of "Murder" already condemned as baseless by two judicial tribunals. The House will do anything in reason, but it refuses to accompany Mr. BILLING ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, March 21, 1917 • Various
... As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted into air, into thin air; And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... evidence an unprejudiced mind would accept to sustain any belief of the sort. There is nothing to show that the children of racial admixture are, as a class, inherently either better or worse in any respect than either parent. There is an equally baseless theory that they are better, a theory displayed to a fine degree of foolishness in the article on Shakespeare in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Both theories belong to the vast edifice of sham science that smothers ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... expectations as to the present interview brought to humiliating discomfiture, but the influence of the disillusionment instantly retroacted with the effect of making the entire noble and romantic cult which had led up to this unlucky confrontation seem a mere farrago of extravagant and baseless sentiment. What on earth had Regnier been thinking of, to plan deliberately a situation calculated to turn a cherished sentiment into ridicule? If he had seriously thought his daughter capable of supporting the role ...
— A Positive Romance - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... pledging Merrill to reticence, he had gone home, written brief and hurried letters to Ray and to Gleason, told his wife that he had heard the stories, and that until Ray had a chance to explain would regard them as baseless rumors, or at the worst as exaggerations, for which Gleason was responsible; then he had slept the sleep of the just until the corporal of the guard came banging at the door at four A.M. to say the reveille had sounded out ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... the shrunken stream Spends its last water and runs dry; Clouds like far turrets in a dream Stand baseless in the burning sky. On such a day at every rod The toilers in the hay-field halt, With dripping brows, and the parched sod Yields to the ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... warden himself has placed himself on record numerous times to the effect that under no circumstances would he take the word of a prisoner over that of a guard. To be reported means to be punished, be the report baseless or not. It follows naturally that guards never scruple to give full rein to any animosity they may privately feel against a man, knowing that they will be able to "put it across" with the higher official to whom complaint ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... unanimity of politicians can uphold the baseless assumption, that a law, or any conglomerate of laws, under the name of compromise, or howsoever called, is final. Nothing can be plainer than this,—that by no parliamentary device or knot can any legislature tie the hands of a succeeding legislature, so as to prevent the full ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... in appearance," Georgina eight and Helen three! Nothing could better illustrate the clash between enthusiasm and despair that fills a Chestertonian while reading any of his literary biographies. For so much is built on this theory which the slightest investigation would have shown to be baseless. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... should have answered that "they were ignorant what manner of man he was." Foxe himself had betaken himself to foreign parts on Mary's accession, and may perhaps be pardoned for not knowing, although we find it hard to forgive him for the baseless fabrication by which he sought to discredit the queen and all ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... campaign. There was vigorous denial from Blake, his fellow candidates, and from the Clarion, which was supporting the Blake ticket. Again and again the Clarion denounced Bruce's charge as merely the words of a demagogue, a yellow journalist—merely the irresponsible and baseless calumny so common in campaigns. Nevertheless, it had the effect that Bruce intended. His stock took a new jump, and sentiment in his favour continued to grow at a rate that made him exult and that filled the ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... difficult to communicate on paper than this baseless ardour, this stimulation of the brain, this sterile joyousness of spirits. You wake every morning, see the gold upon the snow-peaks, become filled with courage, and bless God for your prolonged existence. The valleys are ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... perfectly characteristic of Nelson's habit of thought, and not merely an egotistic expression of baseless discontent with others, that he avowed his dissatisfaction with the results of the night's work, stupendous and wholly unparalleled as they were. But his own condition, prostrated and with disabled head, was doubly typical of the state of his fleet after the "Orient" blew up. Not ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... in our minds. I had imagined many things about the mysterious Hester, but never that she bore that name, as a matter of simple fact. The connection with Caliban had been too much for my overtrained imagination, and heaven knows what baseless theories I had woven around what was at best (or worst) a mere coincidence. For me the scarlet letter had flamed upon what I now know to have been a blameless breast, and in my excited fancy a stormy nature had suffered picturesque remorse where, ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... forgive me?" he said. "In your offices, I believe, it is not the custom, but I must confess that I find your atmosphere abominable. Last night I saw Fenella. She told me of your disagreement with her and your baseless suspicions. Really, Chetwode, I am surprised ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... looking-glass, was fostered partly by the jealousy of their beaten competitors, and partly by the pure, perverse, and hopeless ignorance of the whole body of art-critics, so called, connected with the press. No notion was ever more baseless or more ridiculous. It was asserted that the Pre-Raphaelites did not draw well, in the face of the fact, that the principal member of their body, from the time he entered the schools of the Academy, had literally encumbered himself with the medals given as prizes for drawing. ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... in the conduct of the paper, or the reader to direct its opinions, is based on a misconception of what the newspaper is. The claim of the public to have its communications printed in the paper is equally baseless. Whether they shall be printed or not rests in the discretion of the editor, having reference to his own private interest, and to his apprehension of the public good. Nor is he bound to give any reason for his refusal. It is purely in his discretion whether he will admit ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... not a word more. I will keep sacred and secret in my heart what you have told me, dear child. I will not judge you hardly. You are young—so young—as young as I was when I went forth to sorrow and misery. For you, even though I think your dream baseless, and that you are feeding hope on what may turn out to be the ashes of disappointment, I will not despair. I know your idol is worthy, and love for one who is pure and noble cannot work ill in the end. I will keep your secret; now, Lucy, little sister—keep mine. I can never wed with ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... just as dishonest as my earning more than my chief clerk, and Malthus getting more than a station-master. No, quite the contrary; I see that society takes up a sort of antagonistic attitude to these people, which is utterly baseless, and I fancy there's envy at the bottom ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... with darts and insolent words. The enraged Rutulian eagerly pressed upon it, and from a distance hurled against it a spear. Immediately the spectre, wheeling about, took to flight. Turnus, imagining that in very truth it was the Trojan chief who feared to meet him, and filled with baseless exultation, cried out, "AEneas, whither dost thou fly? Desert not thus thy promised bride; with this right hand will I bestow upon thee the settled abode thou hast sought in vain through so many lands and seas." Thus vociferating, he madly pursued the deceitful ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... this discourse impressed me, and I felt that I had no right to reject as profane and undeserving of examination the doctrine which it enforced. Accordingly I entered into a thorough searching of the Scripture without bias, and was amazed to find how baseless was the tenet for which in fact I had endured a sort of martyrdom. This, I believe, had a great effect in showing me how little right we have at any time to count on our opinions as final truth, however ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... time. "My dear Mr. Ware," he said, as they touched glasses again, and sipped the fresh beer that had been brought them, "of all our fictions there is none so utterly baseless and empty as this idea that humanity progresses. The savage's natural impression is that the world he sees about him was made for him, and that the rest of the universe is subordinated to him and his ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... power, would have done their utmost to exact a reckoning for past abuses. Upon the whole, then, Sir Francis had materially strengthened his position. But the strength was fictitious rather than real, and the baseless fabric which he had reared with such pains quickly tottered and fell. The three new Councillors were not long in discovering that their places were sinecures. His Excellency wanted none of their counsel, and had no intention ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... may the aristocracy of wealth founded upon the virtues, the toils, and the blood of her revolutionary armies soon vanish, and like the baseless fabric of a vision, leave not a ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... the town crier. I knew him well enough to know also that if it were not true, but merely one of his countless romances, it would be forgotten in the morning in the growth of some new invention as romantic and as baseless as itself. In any case, I gave him the assurance he asked for, and he went ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... than suspect Vedius Molo, there is not an iota of evidence on which anyone could base a demand for a warrant to search Villa Vedia or any other specified villa, farmstead or other piece of property. Xantha has vanished. There are rumors that she is at Villa Vedia, but they seem as baseless as the rumor of a party of horsemen conveying a closed litter, which rumor has radiated from uncountable localities all about here, not one of which localities could, when their inhabitants were questioned, substantiate the rumor in any way. Equally baseless appear the numerous rumors that this ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... bolder hand. Suppose the Japanese were to make up their minds to accelerate whatever process of synthesis were possible in China! Suppose, after all, I am not the victim of atmospheric refraction, and they are, indeed, as gallant and bold and intelligent as my baseless conception of them would have them be! They would almost certainly find co-operative elements among the educated Chinese.... But this is no doubt the lesser probability. In front and rear of China ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... Lash on, we richly deserve it! but, consider the fearful influence of worn-out cloth! Can a long series of unchanging kindness balance patched elbows? are not cracked boots receipts in full for hours of anxious love and care? does not the kindness of a life fade "like the baseless fabric of a vision" before the withering touch of poverty's stern stamp? ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... and later the "Unfinished" symphony, by Schubert, and a Beethoven symphony, attracted by each in turn, he realized that his prejudice against the whole question of symphonic music had been both wrongly conceived and baseless. ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... night with an apology. It was necessary that he should speak about himself. An utterly baseless story had, within the last few days, and doubtless with a view to this election, been revived by the London evening paper which originally made it. He regretted also to notice that his opponent had accepted the story, and ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... the nation could do what they pleased with it. This shallow sophistry was accepted by the French National Convention when it swept away estates of nobles and clergy, not on the tenable ground that the owners were public enemies, but on the baseless pretext that their property belonged to ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... that the potash in the fertilizer is in form of sulphate. Usually that profits the user nothing, and often the claim is baseless, but if it is a sulphate, the cost of the potash should have only 20 per cent added to the valuation of the potash, which usually will not add one dollar to the total cost of the ton of mixed fertilizer. Basing the valuations of the pounds of plant-food in the mixed fertilizer on the ...
— Crops and Methods for Soil Improvement • Alva Agee
... Another equally baseless and equally injurious charge was that the House had violated the spirit of the Constitution by selecting a candidate who had a less number of electoral votes than Jackson. "The election of Mr. Adams," said Benton, "was also a violation ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... Coverley, and ye, fair realms of Nature's history, whose pictures we tormented all grown persons to illustrate with more knowledge, still more,—how we bless the chance that gave to us your great realities, which life has daily helped us, helps us still, to interpret, instead of thin and baseless fictions that would all this time have hampered us, though ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... could not cause a flood on the earth; the report that some strange, misty object is visible in the starry heavens is based on a misapprehension; and finally, the so-called calculations of the author of this inexcusable hoax are baseless ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... and Romans. 'He first contrived many vain and sophistical things to serve the purposes of fame; among which were arms much bigger than his men could use ... left scattered up and down.' This report is probably baseless, as it is opposed to ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... him, and the first Crystal Palace—the first palace for the people in England—went slowly up, amid the sun-dropped shades of Hyde Park. Temporary as was that marvelous structure, destined so soon to pass away, like "the baseless fabric of a vision," I can but think it the grandest of the monuments to the memory of the Prince- Consort, though little did he so regard it. To his poetic yet practical mind it was the universal temple of ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... theory to theory, according as he is impelled by vanity, envy, or diseased desire of change,—and who, while he would subvert and scatter into dust those structures of knowledge, reared by the wise men of this and other generations, has nothing to erect in their room but the baseless and air-built fabrics of a ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... was never refuted, is really too horrible to ponder over. It puts in the shade any responsibility Napoleon had for the death of the Duc d'Enghien. It is needless to enlarge on the silly and altogether baseless attacks that were not only allowed to be made, but, we have good grounds for stating, were manufactured by members of the Government and their agents, and circulated for the purpose of distracting the public mind from their own iniquities, and inflaming bitter passions and prejudices by accusing ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... Canons gave rise to two legends about him which are still so often repeated that their absurdity must be mentioned here, although they have been known for many years to be baseless. One is perpetuated by an inscription on the organ in the church at Whitchurch, to the effect that Handel composed the oratorio of Esther on this instrument. Handel was never organist at Whitchurch; the ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... between two or three or more so-called species, belonging to different genera, have upon insufficient data been regarded as so many states or conditions of one and the same plant. Had the very pertinent suggestions of Professor de Bary been more generally acted upon, these suspicions would have been baseless. His observations are so valuable as a caution, that we cannot forbear prefacing our own remarks on this subject by quoting them.[A] In order to determine, he says, whether an organic form, an organ, or an organism, belongs to the same series of development as another, or that which ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... heart, and that only in calm meditation. But in this separation from real life he is likely to lose sight of all the limits of human nature, and seeking pure form he may easily lose himself in arbitrary and baseless conceptions. Reason will abstract itself too much from experience, and the practical man will not be able to carry out, in the crush of real life, what the contemplative mind has discovered on the peaceful ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... was all over; an interval of agonizing doubt—of days passed in miserable journeys to gain tidings, of hopes that took firmer root even as they were more baseless—was changed to the certainty of the death that eclipsed all happiness ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... is the probable essence of truth in Professor Haeckel's philosophy? for it is not to be supposed that the speculations of an eminent man are baseless, or that he has been led to his view of what he conceives to be the truth by some wholly erroneous path; his intuitive convictions are to be respected, for they are based on a far wider experience and knowledge of fact than is given to the ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... How baseless this expectation was, was seen from the event. For the Swiss being routed after a protracted combat, the troops of the Pope and Spain, so far from venturing to attack the conqueror, prepared for flight; nor would ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... light shows now in the east and at length the full moon rises, not blood-coloured as in our climates but straightway very luminous, and surrounded by an aureole of a kind of mist, caused by the eternal dust of the sands. And when we return to the baseless kiosk—lulled always by the Nubian song of the boatmen—a great disc is already illuminating everything with a gentle splendour. As our little boat winds in and out, we see the great ruddy disc passing and repassing between the high columns, so striking ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... who was sick and requested the Montenegrins not to murder him. The Italians and Nikita's friends soon afterwards spread a report of horrible murders in Montenegro. Certain Allied officers went up to investigate the matter and found that the charges were baseless. They were told by Mr. Gloma[vz]ic, the prefect of Cetinje, that the Allies, apart from the Italians, could go anywhere in Montenegro, but that the Italians would be opposed by force of arms and that if the Allies came up together ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... together; for the premises of this castle were so contracted that the whole process went on in the little space that remained of the open square. Like other fairy works, however, it all proved evanescent. Not only carriage and ponies, but castle itself, soon vanished away, 'like the baseless fabric of a vision.' On the death of the Marquis in 1809, the castle was pulled down. Few probably remember its existence; and any one who might visit the place now would wonder how it ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... Ameres replied, "and told me that he had been informed of the murmurs of the populace against me. He said that as one of his most trusted counselors, and as a high priest of Osiris, he knew that the charges against me were baseless; but that in view of the proneness of the people of Thebes to excitement and tumult, he should be glad to order a company of soldiers to keep guard over my house. I refused. I said that I was conscious of no evil, that none could say that I was slack in my ministrations in the temple, or ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... houses, and Mr. Thomson not altogether steady on his legs nor (to all appearance) easy in his mind. The pair had reached the middle of the bridge when (as I conceive the scene) the poor tippler started in some baseless fear and looked behind him; the child, already shaken by the minister's strange behaviour, started also; in so doing, she would jerk the lantern; and for the space of a moment the lights and the shadows would be all confounded. ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in himself and his external circumstances, shall be equally and totally false: his fortune resting on baseless credit,— his patriotism assumed,—his domestic affections, his honor and honesty, all a sham. His own misery in the midst of it,—it making the whole universe, heaven and earth alike, all unsubstantial ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the Moors. The general of the Saracens was again received as the saviour of the province; the friends of civil society conspired against the savages of the land; and the royal prophetess was slain in the first battle which overturned the baseless fabric of her superstition and empire. The same spirit revived under the successor of Hassan; it was finally quelled by the activity of Musa and his two sons; but the number of the rebels may be presumed from that of three hundred thousand captives; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... dawn dispelled it. View there was none from the deck of the Dulcibella; it was only by standing on the mainboom that you could see over the embankments to the vast plain of Holstein, grey and monotonous under a pall of mist. The soft scenery of the Schleswig coast was a baseless dream of the past, and a cold penetrating rain added the last touch of dramatic completeness to the staging of ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... terror. They had charged him with sinning on the strength of their hypothesis, and he has answered with a deliberate denial of it. Losing now all mastery over themselves, they pour out a torrent of mere extravagant invective and baseless falsehood, which in the calmer outset they would have blushed to think of. They know no evil of Job, but they do not hesitate to convert conjecture into certainty, and specify in detail the particular ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... that Christmas-day of old St. Colum broke the ancient spell. A thousand years away have rolled, 'Tis now ... "a baseless miracle." ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... predominance can the human being ever be contemplated. To the Artist, then, it becomes the only safe ground; the starting-point from whence to ascend to a true Ideal,—which is no other than a partial individual truth made whole in the mind: and thus, instead of one Ideal, and that baseless, he may have a thousand,—nay, as many as there are marked ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... yet in the limbo of existence, will awaken to consciousness, and, emerging as pure thought from the forms that imprisoned them, they will see these forms, the creatures of illusion, fall away and dissolve like a baseless vision. It is a magnificent dream of the ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... addicted. Amidst scrolls and seers, he had pined for action and glory; and, baffled in all wholesome egress, by the universal exclusion which, in every land, and from every faith, met the religion he belonged to, the faculties within him ran riot, producing gigantic but baseless schemes, which, as one after the other crumbled away, left behind feelings of dark misanthropy and ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... words came over her. Should she end in the convent of Crowland? And suspecting, fearing, imagining all sorts of baseless phantoms, she hardened her heart into ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... been carefully shielded from the chance of 'catching' it, as though it were the most dangerous of microbes. But now that I had enjoyed a little of the common experience of childhood, a great change had come upon me. Before I went to Clifton, my mental life was all interior, a rack of baseless dream upon dream. But, now, I was eager to look out of the window, to go out in the streets; I was taken with a curiosity about human life. Even from my vantage of the window- pane, I watched boys and girls go by with an interest which began to be ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... divulge this secret; nor may I breathe a single syllable calculated to do so,—if I deny one name, you may question me on more,—and, therefore, to deny one is a breach of my oath. But, beware!" she added vehemently, "oh! beware how your suspicions—mere vague, baseless suspicions—criminate a brother; and, above all, whomsoever you believe to be the real being under this disguised name, as you value your life, and therefore mine,—breathe not to him ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... there no gigantic monument of power either in pride or for utility; no temples, canals, or roads remain to remind posterity of our conquest and dominion. Were the English rule over India suddenly cast off, in a single generation the tradition of our Eastern empire would appear a splendid but baseless dream, that of our administration an allegory, ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... Fitzjames held also that State and Church should be identical; but rather in the form that State and Church were to be one and that one the State. For this there were two good reasons. In the first place, the claims of the Church to supernatural authority were altogether baseless. To bow to those claims was to become slaves of priests and to accept superstitions. And, in the next place, this is no mere accident. The division between the priest and layman corresponds to his division between his 'sentimentalist' and his 'stern, cold ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... palace at Helsingfors, I overheard a conversation between the Governor-General and his son, which revealed to me a staggering truth that I had never suspected. It was Oberg himself who had denounced my mother to the Minister of the Interior, and had made those cruel, baseless charges against her! Then I discerned the reason. She being exiled, her fortune, as well as that of my father, came to me. The reason they were scheming for Michael to marry me was in order to obtain control of my money. I saw at once how helpless I was in the hands of that unscrupulous ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... philenripideios]; bespeaks an unfair confidence from the reader; he takes credit for being once disposed to favour and indulge Euripides. In this way he accredits to the careless reader all the false charges or baseless concessions which he makes on any question between Euripides and his rivals. Such men as Valckenaer it is who are biased and inflected beforehand, without perceiving it, by all the commonplaces of criticism. These, it is true, do not arise out of mere ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... old trick of the public press in the United States, and probably in Europe also, to start a sensation with a blazing front page story, and in the course of a few weeks follow it with a complete and sarcastic expose of the whole matter as a baseless fabrication, piling facts on facts to show that the first story was an ingenious piece of deception got up by the subject with the purpose of making capital out of the credulity of the public. There ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower
... of Babylonia worshipped Asari, 'the strong one,' 'the prince who does good to men.' This has a strong resemblance in name and character to Asar, Osiris, of Egypt. But the connection which is proposed, from both names being written with the signs of an eye and a place, seems baseless, as the syllabic values of the signs were reversed in the two languages; either the writing or the sound of the name must be only a coincidence. Istar, another Sumerian deity, became softened in Semitic speech to Athtar, the moon-goddess of Southern Arabia; and the connection of this ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... above all things, and to rectify a baseless piece of news should not be a doubtful action on the part of the person who gave the news, but rather something in his favour that the public should appreciate it at ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... you have received from Valmai's own lips, for I know that to-morrow she will see you, having received her sister's letter in the morning; and the veil will be lifted, and all your sorrow will disperse like the baseless fabric of a dream. You will see already how Gwladys, dreading your influence upon the sister whom she thought you had deceived and deserted, was tempted, by your mistaking her for Valmai, to impersonate her, and to drive you away from her presence. ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... founded upon it the tradition that two knights on their way to Fulham to be blessed by the Bishop of London quarrelled and fought at the Westbourne Bridge, and killed each other, and hence gave rise to the name. This story may be dismissed as entirely baseless; the real explanation is much less romantic. The word is probably connected with the Manor of Neyt, which was adjacent to Westminster, and as pronunciation rather than orthography was relied upon in early days, this seems much the most ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... plausible reasons to plead for it; and he does assign certain reasons for his belief, which are, it may be safely affirmed, as frivolous and inconclusive as any that have ever been offered in support of the most baseless revery. They may be reduced to THREE; the first, derived from our cerebral organization; the second, from the history of a certain portion of our species; the third, from the analogy of ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... was an incarnation of Lakshmi. She became incarnate again, many centuries afterwards, as the wife of Krishna, another incarnation of Vishnu [W. H. S.]. Reckoning by centuries is, of course, inapplicable to pure myth. The author believed in Bentley's baseless chronology. ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... of windows opening and shutting), than I would depart to the verandah, and walk up and down there as I listened attentively to the sounds from the slumbering mansion. To this day, whenever I feel any expectation (no matter how small and baseless) of realising a fraction of some happiness of which I may be dreaming, I somehow invariably fail to picture to myself what the imagined happiness is going ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... did not waste all his time chuckling over the baseless rejoicings of the people of the town. He made himself acquainted with some of the white slaves, men who had been brought from England, and finding some of them very much discontented with their lot, he ventured to tell them that he was one of the pirates who ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... Rome, and the filial obedience of Constantinople. In the synod of Florence, the Greeks and Latins had embraced, and subscribed, and promised; but these signs of friendship were perfidious or fruitless; [5] and the baseless fabric of the union vanished like a dream. [6] The emperor and his prelates returned home in the Venetian galleys; but as they touched at the Morea and the Isles of Corfu and Lesbos, the subjects of the Latins complained that the pretended ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... thousands, for ever invisible and inconceivable to the inhabitant of the plains, manifested among the hills in the course of one day. The mere power of familiarity with the clouds, of walking with them and above them, alters and renders clear our whole conception of the baseless architecture of the sky; and for the beauty of it, there is more in a single wreath of early cloud, pacing its way up an avenue of pines, or pausing among the points of their fringes, than in all the ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... is, that, whilst all biographers have worked with so much zeal upon the most barren dates or most baseless traditions in the great poet's life, realizing in a manner the chimeras of Laputa, and endeavoring "to extract sunbeams from cucumbers," such a story with regard to such an event, no fiction of village scandal, but involved in legal documents, a story so significant and so eloquent ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... seen, gives no countenance to baseless speculations, and the publication of his book has, it is evident, fallen on them as a heavy blow and great discouragement. The preciseness of his details gives a force and authority to both his statements and opinions which cannot ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various |
