"Baseness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not at first understood the lamentations of Catherine; but a twilight commenced to dawn in his ideas; he divined that his name had been used for an act of baseness; and, without being able to account for it, he felt the return of an old leaven of spite, ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... your master, had been King of Castile, I would never have been drawn by him out of my cloister. A man of virtue and spirit will not be prevailed with to go into a Court where he cannot rise without baseness. ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... would. I could not willingly begin to love a man whom I knew to be base; but when I had loved him I would not turn because of his baseness;—I couldn't do it. It would be a great—a terrible misfortune; but it would have to be borne. But here—I know all the ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... her, of course, I made light of her self-confessed baseness. I suppose I spent at least half an hour in comforting her. Then we supped, with a hint of April gaiety towards the end. I endeavoured to be humorous in a lover-like way. Fanny dabbed her eyes, smiled, and choked, and even laughed a little. But the vows, protestations, resolves for ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... hailed as the dawn of a new era. Young, he was only thirty-seven, well educated, a teacher of history, and with six serious books to his credit, he was a new figure in politics; Providence, moving in its mysterious way, had designed him to redeem politics from its baseness ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... deeply repented of the past, George could never summon up courage enough to inform Josiah of his baseness in destroying his trees. A hundred times a day he was on the point of declaring his guilt; but false pride always hindered him from confessing ...
— The Little Quaker - or, the Triumph of Virtue. A Tale for the Instruction of Youth • Susan Moodie
... world are those who are busy at something worth while, and the most miserable are those who are in idleness for lack of ambition or else are engaged in work which they themselves loathe because of its baseness." ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... which every man in love with glory tries first of all. Lucien was struggling as yet with himself and his own desires, and not with the difficulties of life; at strife with his own power, and not with the baseness of other men, that fatal exemplar for impressionable minds. The brilliancy of his intellect had a keen attraction for David. David admired his friend, while he kept him out of the scrapes into which he was led by ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... briefly; and I will begin from the first principles of praise and blame. For everything is to be praised which is united with virtue; and everything which is connected with vice is to be blamed. Wherefore the end of the one is honour, of the other baseness. But this kind of discourse is composed of the narration and explanation of facts, without any argumentations, in a way calculated to handle the feelings of the mind gently rather than to create belief or to confirm ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... they rode together down the plain, Their talk was all of training, terms of art, Diet and seeling, jesses, leash and lure. 'She is too noble' he said 'to check at pies, Nor will she rake: there is no baseness in her.' Here when the Queen demanded as by chance 'Know ye the stranger woman?' 'Let her be,' Said Lancelot and unhooded casting off The goodly falcon free; she towered; her bells, Tone under tone, shrilled; and they lifted up Their eager faces, wondering at ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... anticipation. It is the cave-man in me, hiding by night, waiting with a bludgeon to slay. I am beginning to be struck by the gradual change in my comrades. I fancied that I alone had suffered a retrogression. I have a deep consciousness of baseness that is going to keep me aloof from them. I seem to be alone with my own soul. Yet I seem to be abnormally keen to impressions. I feel what is going on in the soldiers' minds, and it shocks me, set me wondering, forces me to doubt myself. I keep saying it must be my peculiar ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... authenticity I cannot doubt. But that proves nothing for the truth of the particular stories which it contains. A book of scandalous and defamatory stories, especially where the writer has had the baseness to betray the confidence reposed in his honor by women, and to boast of favors alleged to have been granted him, it is always fair to consider as ipso facto a tissue of falsehoods: and on the following argument, that these are exposures ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... rejected "if he have a continued scab," i.e. lustfulness of the flesh: also, if he have "a dry scurf," which covers the body without giving pain, and is a blemish on the comeliness of the members; which denotes avarice. Lastly, he is rejected "if he have a rupture" or hernia; through baseness rending his heart, though it ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... he advanced into the heart of our kingdom, and at the head of the large army he had treacherously introduced as a mere appendage of state, than he declared the act of judgement was his right as liege lord of the realm! This falsehood, which our records disproved at the outset, was not his only baseness; he bought the conscience of Baliol, and adjudged to him the throne. The recreant prince acknowledged him his master; and in that degrading ceremony of homage, he was followed by almost all the lowland Scottish lords. But this vile yielding did not purchase ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... liberty she had just taken, "I have been told, there are men so base as to perjure themselves at the altar, in order to command the gold of ignorant and confiding girls; and if love of money will lead to such baseness, we may surely expect it will hurry those, who devote themselves to gain, into acts of ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... before him, offering that precious treasure his heart to Lady P——, asking whether it gave her pleasure to see him unhappy? whether it added to her triumph that her eyes and lips had turned a man into a fool?—quoting the Lord's Prayer, with a horrible baseness of blasphemy, as a proof that he had desired not to be led into temptation, and swearing himself the most tender and sincere fool in the world. It was from his home at Coxwould that he wrote the Latin ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "By my faith," said Charlot, "I mean to do the same by you. Know that I am the son of Duke Thierry of Ardennes, from whom your father, Sevinus, took three castles; I have sworn to avenge him, and I defy you." "Coward," answered Huon, "I know well the baseness that dwells in your race; worthy son of Thierry, use the advantage that your armor gives you; but know that I fear you not." At these words Charlot had the wickedness to put his lance in rest, and to run upon Huon, who had barely time to wrap his arm in his mantle. With this feeble buckler ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... lent thee meanes to scape thine ill, If thou abide, as true as is thy name, So truly shall thy fault, thy death fulfill: And as to loue the life for vertues flame, Is the iust act of a true noble will, So to contemne it, and her helps exclude, Is baseness, rashness, and ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... pure indifference the existence side by side with it of another false world, which had no right to be. Muspel was fighting for its life—against all that is most shameful and frightful—against sin masquerading as eternal beauty, against baseness masquerading as Nature, against the Devil masquerading ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... "I both could and did; and you will live to thank me for that baseness. You have a spirit, Asenath, that it pleases me to recognise. But we waste time. Mr. Fonblanque's estate reverts, as you doubtless imagine, to the church; but some part of it has been reserved for him who is to marry the family; and that person, I should perhaps tell you without more ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... matter and form. The materialization of the world is a consequence of the fall. Evil consists in the elevation of selfhood, which springs from desire, into self-seeking. Lucifer fell because of pride, and man, yielding to Lucifer's temptation, from baseness, by falling in love with nature beneath him. By the creation of matter God has out of pity preserved the world, which was corrupted by the fall, from the descent into hell, and at the same time has given man occasion for moral endeavor. The appearance of Christ, ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... I know thy superhuman power Needs no assistance from an arm like mine; But grateful as I am for this great service, I cannot leave thee now, and shrink from peril, That would be baseness which ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... vice! Now do I loathe the amorous Serafina, Who sacrifices all—her fame—her honour, At Passion's shrine. How do I adore The chaste, the innocent, sweet Isidora! Yet in my love, so ardent and so pure, There's guilt—deep damning guilt—and more, There's cruelty and baseness! I plant a dagger In the fond breast that cherishes the wound; Nor will she feel the pain until withdrawn, And happiness—nay, life—will issue with it. How inconsistent, selfish, treacherous! Heav'n pardon me—how can I ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... last, by an unsurpassed and most pernicious baseness, Gallus ventured on adopting a course of fearful wickedness, which indeed Gallienus, to his own exceeding infamy, is said formerly to have tried at Rome; and, taking with him a few followers secretly armed, he used to rove in the evening ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... of innocence disregarded, and his guard ordered to murder them all then and there. The very soldiers shrink from the sacrilege, but a willing tool is at hand. The wild blood of Edom, fired by ancestral hatred, desires no better work, and Doeg crowns his baseness by slaying—with the help of his herdsmen, no doubt—"on that day fourscore and five persons that did wear an ephod," and utterly extirpating every living thing from the defenceless ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... Charles V. and Philip II. Of his mother nothing is known. The conjectures of scandal are heightened and perplexed by the fact that he was ennobled when a child, and that, amidst all the denunciations of his overbearing behaviour and insufferable arrogance, he is never reproached with the baseness of his maternal lineage. Legitimated in infancy by an imperial diploma, Antonio was literally a courtier and politician ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... interrupted, pointing passionately to the door, "go out from this house, never to return to it again—go, not as a stranger to me, but as an enemy! I have no faith in a single promise you have made: there is no baseness which I do not believe you will yet be guilty of. But I tell you, and the wretches with whom you are leagued, to take warning: I have wealth, power, and position; and there is no use to which I will not put them against the man or woman who threatens the fair fame of this family. ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... suffering in exile almost fifteen years? Is it thus they would recompense innocence which all the world knows, and the labour and fatigue of unremitting study? Far from the man who is familiar with philosophy be the senseless baseness of a heart of earth, that could act like a little sciolist, and imitate the infamy of some others, by offering himself up as it were in chains: far from the man who cries aloud for justice, this compromise by his money with his persecutors. No, my father, this is not the way that ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... concerning the alleged ill treatment of Indians, and their natural peacefulness and good disposition. Custer had so frequently befriended the very men who surrounded his command and annihilated it, that the baseness of their ingratitude should be apparent even to those who are inclined to sympathize with the red men, and to denounce the alleged severity with which they have been treated. Travelers through the Dakota region find few spots of more melancholy, though ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... the world, they are never in earnest, and they are never appalled. But Salvator was capable of pensiveness, of faith, and of fear.' 'He would have acknowledged religion had he seen any that was true, anything rather than that baseness which he did see.' 'If there is no other religion than this of popes and cardinals, let us to the robber's ambush and the dragon's den.' 'A little early sympathy, a word of true guidance, perhaps had saved him. What says he of himself? "Despiser of wealth and of death." ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... the age For baseness of the spirit scorns, Saint Priest, who every album's page With blunted pencil-point adorns. Another tribune of the ball Hung like a print against the wall, Pink as Palm Sunday cherubim,(84) Motionless, mute, tight-laced and trim. The traveller, bird ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... ferocity and practice of savage vices which is probably unparalleled in any other part of the world."[653] One of the first civilised men to gain an intimate acquaintance with the Fijians draws a melancholy contrast between the baseness and vileness of the people and the loveliness of the land in which ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... be put off before entering into the temple of history; and the man of the nineteenth century, if he has taste and information, is merely an historian, and nothing more. The sacred emotion which generous actions produce in us, the indignation stirred in us by baseness and cruelty, are childish emotions which are to disappear in order that we may be free to contemplate vice and virtue with a pleasure always equal, very deep, and very pure. We have not here the aberration of a young and ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... than three. There is in swift walking, when the muscles are hard, the wind long, and the atmosphere exhilarating, a buoyant rhythm that more, perhaps, than merited success, or valorous conduct, smoothes out the creases in a man's soul. And so quick is a man to recover from his own baseness, and to ape outwardly his transient inner feelings, that I found myself presently, walking with a high head and a mind full ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... how Germany wanted peace at the moment when she declared war! That is how sincere she was in pretending that we obliged her to take up arms for her defense! That is the price she intended to make us pay for our baseness if we had the infamy to repudiate our signature as Prussia repudiated hers by tearing up the treaty that guaranteed ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... spring, turning quickly on Wallace, struck his dagger into his side. All this was done in an instant. Wallace did not fall, but staggering, with the weapon sticking in the wound, he was so surprised by the baseness of the deed, he could not give the alarm till its perpetrator ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... spurn the tool of a tool. Manourie, too, had to publish his apology. He called God to witness that Stukely had bribed him to lay traps for Ralegh, and to put into his mouth malcontent speeches. All the evil he told of his ally was believed. His professions that his own admitted baseness had been provoked by resentment of Ralegh's spontaneous abuse of the King were received with incredulity or unconcern. On the fact, Captain King's word in his Narrative in answer to Manourie was accepted in preference to the Frenchman's. The Narrative ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... is accused of some act of baseness, a contrast is at once instituted between his character and the specified act, and we ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... gentle elevation, its large-hearted charity, its quiet satire of folly and baseness, the story is one to win the affection and charm the fancy not only of boys and maidens, but also of grown men and ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... the wise; and therefore those faculties, by which the foolish part of men's minds is taken, are most potent. Wonderful like is the case of boldness in civil business: what first? boldness; what second and third? boldness. And yet boldness is a child of ignorance and baseness, far inferior to other parts. But nevertheless it doth fascinate, and bind hand and foot, those that are either shallow in judgment, or weak in courage, which are the greatest part; yea and prevaileth with wise men at weak times. Therefore we see it hath done wonders, in popular ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... that all these ridiculous or wicked little kings and emperors, and these political parties, and these policies and conspiracies, and this nationalist nonsense and all the patriotism and rowdyism, all the private profit-seeking and every baseness in life, all the things that it is so horrible and disgusting to be young among and powerless among, you think they will ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... the disgrace which he felt in hearing of acts of disorder or violence, such as in the humbler ranks of life would render them amenable to the laws of their country; or again, on the trust which he placed in their honor as gentlemen, and the baseness of any instance in which it was abused. "Is this a Christian school?" he indignantly asked at the end of one of those addresses, in which he had spoken of an extensive display of bad feeling amongst the boys; and then added,—"I cannot remain here if all this is to be carried ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... his trial on the king's bench, when he came over voluntarily to take it, in the late king's time. There did not appear even the least ground for a suspicion of it; nor did Hamilton, who appeared in court, pretend to tax him with it, which would have been in truth accusing himself of the utmost baseness, in letting the murderer of his friend go off from the field of battle, without either resentment, pursuit, or even accusation, till three days afterwards. This lie was invented to inflame the Scotch nation against the Whigs; as the other, that prince Eugene intended ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... country with a feeble force, and when his victories had won the grateful plaudits of his countrymen, it had the unparalleled meanness, while he was still fighting our battles, to censure the capitulation of Monterey. It had the baseness to call General Scott from the head of a victorious army, and to attempt to disgrace him in the eyes of his own country and the world. It denounced Judge White as a renegade, General Harrison as a coward, Mr. Clay as a blackguard, and General Scott as a fool. And, without ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... course among the perplexed vicissitudes of society, there was a force within him which would triumph over many difficulties; and a 'light from Heaven' was about his path, which, if it failed to conduct him to wealth and preferment, would keep him far from baseness and degrading vices. Literature, and every great and noble thing which the right pursuit of it implies, he loved with all his heart and all his soul: to this inspiring object he was henceforth exclusively devoted; advancing towards this, and possessed of ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... he talked with Miss Wainwright, and the effort he was now making to bring himself up to the firmness needed for the important interview with Mr. Hubbard which lay before him. In the sleepless hours of the night, Fenton had gone over the ground again and again; he had painted to himself the baseness of the thing he meant to do, and all his instincts of loyalty, of taste, of good-breeding, rose against it; but none the less did he cling doggedly to his determination. His purpose never wavered. His decision had been made, and this summing up of the cost did ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... (as Mr. Orage wrote with something like splendid common sense the other day) there is such a lot to do and so few people who will do it. So I will devote this article to considering one case of the astounding baseness to which Liberal journalism ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... Baseness so gross I had not guessed of them!— The thirty thousand false Bavarians I looked on losing not unplacidly; But these troth-swearing sober Saxonry I reckoned staunch by virtue of their king! Thirty-five thousand ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... avoid a challenge, and who shrieks "murther!" at the entrance of an unexpected visitor. In the light of such conduct it is difficult to regard as merely assumed his pusillanimity in the final scene, where he at first grovels before Clermont on the plea that by his baseness he will "shame" the avenger's victory. And when he does finally nerve himself to the encounter, and dies with words of forgiveness for Clermont and Tamyra on his lips, the episode of reconciliation, though evidently ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... of His love for His Church, which should guard us from two errors in connection with it. If married love is to be a type, however faint, of Christ's love for His Church, there must be no unworthiness connected with it; "no inner baseness we would hide;" no marrying for the sake of being married, for the dignity and position, or the worldly advantages it may bring; and there must be no matchmaking or flirtation that a woman need be ashamed of afterwards. "Let the wife see that she reverence ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... All that her native pride, her keen sense of wrong could do, was to shame her from dwelling on the thoughts which still caught their breath of life from the undying devotion of the past; which still perversely ascribed Frank's heartless farewell to any cause but the inborn baseness of the man who had written it. The woman never lived yet who could cast a true-love out of her heart because the object of that love was unworthy of her. All she can do is to struggle against it in secret—to ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... praise, when tried by the standard which our own reason supplies of those great virtues? I confess it was not always so. His severity was formerly ever on the side of justice; it was indignation at crime or baseness which sometimes brought upon him the charge of cruelty—never the wanton infliction of suffering and death. But it certainly is not so now. A slight cause now rouses his sleeping passions to a sudden fury, often fatal to the first object that comes ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... circular of the 8th inst. are received. I was a long time a correspondent of Miss C., never having seen her, but holding a letter of introduction from Vice-President Henry Wilson. I have no standpoint in politics of influence now. * * * Miss Carroll's case shows the infinite baseness of human nature—how few worship truth and justice. I am already assailed for speaking a word in her cause, and shall have all the old feuds against me revived; but I am not dependent upon the American people ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell
... modelled somehow as a tragic mask. He too, like everything else, had a history. From what height had he fallen, from what depth had he risen? He was the perfect symbol of generated constituted baseness; and I felt before him in presence of a great artist ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... room for a minute, and then replied, "Signor Herbert, I feel so disgusted with the treachery and baseness of Count Rodolph, that I hardly need observe, if my daughter were free he never should espouse her; indeed, he will have immediate orders to quit the state. You have been instrumental in preserving the life of the Marquis of Salerno, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... in question to bring Before her own face, were a flattering thing, But we think thy father's baseness,' quoth they, 'Might by thy beauty be clean ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... negociation of wretches, who would have paid their court by multiplying stipulations. Tranquilla scorned to detain any part of her fortune from him into whose hands she delivered up her person; and Hymenaeus thought no act of baseness more criminal than his who enslaves his wife by her own generosity, who by marrying without a jointure, condemns her to all the dangers of accident and caprice, and at last boasts his liberality, by granting what only the indiscretion of her kindness enabled him to withhold. He therefore ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... against the iron authority of these conditions and stood for truth and conscience. They were, indeed, the conditions of his existence as a lawyer, a fact which they easily persuaded themselves mitigated the baseness of their obedience to them, or ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... defeat at Cannae, had gone over to Hannibal and drawn Arpi into revolt, as if it were right that a man's fidelity should vary according to the fluctuations of fortune; and who now, when the Roman cause, contrary to his hopes and wishes, was as it were rising up again, would seem to aggravate his baseness by recompensing those whom he had formerly betrayed, by fresh betrayal. That a man whose custom it was to espouse one side, while his heart was on another, was unworthy of confidence as an ally, and contemptible as an enemy; that he ought to be made a third example to deserters, in addition to ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... half-formed paralysis, may bring any of us to this pass. But while we can think and maintain the rights of our own individuality against every human combination, let us not forget to caution all who are disposed to waver that there is a cowardice which is criminal, and a longing for rest which it is baseness to indulge. God help him, over whose dead soul in his living body must be uttered the sad supplication, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... friendly, why be cowardly about it? If he must recognize me secretly, why, I would rather not have such recognition. Acting a lie to his fellow- cadets by appearing to be inimical to me and my interests, while he pretended the reverse to me, proved him to have a baseness of character with which I ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... reason to yield to him that commanded thirty legions." These and the like, applications, and stooping to points of necessity and convenience, cannot be disallowed; for though they may have some outward baseness, yet in a judgment truly made they are to be accounted submissions to the occasion and ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... striven to match her moves, plotting in the darkness against her, and fighting desperately with such weak weapons as she possessed. It was characteristic that she did not blame herself for her failure; it was the baseness of van Tuiver, his inability to appreciate sincere devotion, his unworthiness of her love. And this, just after she had been naively telling me of her efforts to poison his mind against Sylvia while ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... religion only to humanity's discredit. How, if the people were always predisposed to virtue, were priests, sprung of the same people and bred in the same traditions, so invariably and incurably devoted to baseness and hypocrisy? Was the nature of a priest absolutely devoid of what physicians call recuperative force, restoring him to a sound mind, in spite of professional perversion? In fine, if man had been so grossly enslaved in moral nature from the beginning of ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... royal residence. For Tarautas had either destroyed the majority of those containing any accusation or had returned them to the senders themselves, as I have stated, [Footnote: The passage to which Dio refers is lost.] to the end that no proof of his baseness should be left. But he did reveal the names of three senators whom, from what he had himself discovered, he deemed to be especially deserving of hatred. These were Manilius and Julius, and moreover Sulpicius ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... violence and bloodshed, and my head swam, and my heart sickened, as I gazed at the confused conflict raging on the vessel's deck, and heard the shouts and cries of the combatants. Yet I felt an inward recoil against the baseness of sitting an idle spectator of such a struggle. A glance at the lion-hearted Erskine still maintaining the unequal fight, was an appeal to every noble and generous feeling: it nerved me for the attempt, and though I trembled ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... with the simplicity and directness of obvious truth, are full of terror, of pathos, the shame of human baseness and the glory of human virtue; and though the time is not yet sufficiently distant from the date of their occurrence to give to this record the universal acceptance it deserves, there are few, we think, even now, who can read it without amazement that ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... lurking in Florence, Tito went in hourly fear. At any moment the story of his baseness might be blown abroad; at any moment, worse still, he might be struck down by the old man, in whose wild eyes he had read only ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... refusal of Harold to embark in a civil war for his sake, and to force him upon the people of Northumbria in spite of their detestation of him, was an injury not to be forgiven. The fact that Tostig was ready thus to sacrifice England to his own private quarrel showed a baseness and recklessness that could hardly be expected from his early career. William naturally accepted the alliance, received Tostig's oath of allegiance, and aided him in fitting out a number of ships manned by Norman and Flemish adventurers. ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... her incredible suspicion. 'You insult me!' she said. 'And after what I told you! What intolerable assumption! What intolerable arrogance! What baseness!' ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... fronting the Tempter do grimmest battle with him; defiantly setting him at naught, till he yield and fly. Name it as we choose: with or without visible Devil, whether in the natural Desert of rocks and sands, or in the populous moral Desert of selfishness and baseness,—to such Temptation are we all called. Unhappy if we are not! Unhappy if we are but Half-men, in whom that divine handwriting has never blazed forth, all-subduing, in true sun-splendour; but quivers dubiously amid meaner lights: ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... make of such a man, wondered Mr. Caryll. If he were equipped with wit enough to apprehend the baseness of his conduct, he would be easily understood and it would be easy to despise him. But Mr. Caryll perceived that he was dealing with one who never probed into the deeps of anything—himself and his own ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... you to assure M. —— of my respect, and that it was only on one packet for him that I put my name, when I thought to have sent it by a friend. The baseness of the post-office opening it surprises me. No other letter for him has since passed through my hands. If any others come to me for him, I shall send them under ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... and Miss Piff; taking the tone of Mrs. Sniff, they shoulder Sniff about when he is let in with a corkscrew, and they whisk things out of his hands when in his servility he is a going to let the public have 'em, and they snap him up when in the crawling baseness of his spirit he is a going to answer a public question, and they drore more tears into his eyes than ever the mustard does which he all day long lays on to the sawdust. (But it ain't strong.) Once, when Sniff had the repulsiveness to reach ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... third, in ignoring the necessity of the presence of the military at the elections referred to, in order that disloyalty and treason might not openly defy the authority of the nation; the fifth, in ignoring two things, first, the monstrous baseness of the rebel treatment of our prisoners, who have been starved alive, with a refinement of cruelty reserved for this Christian age, and practised only by the Christian chivalry of the South; and secondly, the rebel refusal ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the Parade or elsewhere, but were to live ingloriously in wee side street lodgings, her disappointment was severe and extreme; but when she incidentally discovered that Mrs. Le Breton was positively a grocer's daughter from a small country town, her moral indignation against the baseness of mankind rose almost to white heat. To think that young Le Breton should have insinuated himself into the position of third master under false pretences—should have held out as qualifications for the post his respectable connections, when he knew perfectly well all the time that he was going ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... be chained by his appetites to the unclean: ever be driven back, dragged down again into the dirt by his own instincts: ever be rendered useless for all finer purposes by the baseness ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... life in which every one would be infinitely happier than anybody was in our world, and that the true interest of all would be furthered by establishing such a social order; but we held at the same time that the moral baseness and self-blinding selfishness of man would forever prevent him from realizing such an ideal. In vain, had he been endowed with a godlike intellect; it would not avail him for any of the higher uses of life, for an ineradicable moral perverseness would always hinder him from ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... cruelty and baseness, is to render the seat of the federal government the scoff of tyrants and the reproach of freemen FOREVER! On the 9th of January 1829, the House of Representatives passed the following vote. "Resolved, that the committee of the District of Columbia ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... rather have lost my purse Full of cruzadoes. And but my noble Moor Is true of mind, and made of no such baseness, As jealous creatures are, it were enough To put him to ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... desirous, as long as possible, of keeping up a semblance of friendship with Montezuma; and declared that he was willing to believe that, after the friendly messages and gifts the emperor had sent, he could not be guilty of such baseness and treachery. His anger therefore would be directed chiefly against the Cholulans, who were guilty not only of foul treachery to himself, but of dishonoring the ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... knows who made my need. Baseness of men! Pursuit being o'er, Doubtless her Husband feels no more The heaven of heavens of such a Bride, But, lounging, lets her please his pride With fondness, guerdons her caress With little names, and turns a ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... who flies into a rage at the least intimation that he will accept the gift which has been made him, spends most of his time in asserting his independence, and the firm resolution which he has made to owe nothing to the generosity of the man he has treated with such unquestionable baseness. Juliet keeps very quiet, but from the glimpse I caught of her this afternoon at her casement, I judge that the turn of affairs has had a very enlivening effect upon her beauty. Her eyes fairly ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... knows a trick worth any two of these: but it is curious to observe the community of baseness, and the comparative innocence of awkwardness and inexperience, which at once connote the species and denote the specimens of the later and ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... three rascals shouted, and what a vain struggle it was to try and preserve my dignity when Laddie clasped his hands and begged pardon, explaining that jokes were necessary to his health, and he never meant me to know the full baseness of this 'pleasantrie!' I revenged myself by giving him some bad English for his translation, and telling him of it just as I ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... of Kingsley's, above quoted, not because they fallaciously describe foam, but because they faithfully describe sorrow. But the moment the mind of the speaker becomes cold, that moment every such expression becomes untrue, as being for ever untrue in the external facts. And there is no greater baseness in literature than the habit of using these metaphorical expressions in cold blood. An inspired writer, in full impetuosity of passion, may speak wisely and truly of 'raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame'; but it is only the basest writer who cannot speak of the sea without talking ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... the passions, the reason, and the instincts of mankind? Have we no pride, no honor, no sense of shame, no reverence for our ancestors, no care for posterity, no love for home, or family or friends? Must we quail before the onion breath of an enthroned mob, confess our baseness, discredit the fame of our sires, degrade our children, abandon our homes, flee from our country and dishonor ourselves—all for the sake of a Union whose Constitution you have publicly burned and whose Supreme Court ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... casuistical refinement. What Carlyle said of John Sterling applied with remarkable exactitude to Paul Jones: "True above all one may call him; a man of perfect veracity in thought, word and deed; there was no guile or baseness anywhere found in him. Transparent as crystal, he could not hide anything sinister if such there had been ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... mistaken in supposing that by "baseness" is meant "self-love" here assigned as the motive of all human actions. Shakespeare meant only to observe, that a minute analysis of life at once destroys that splendour which dazzles the imagination. Whatever ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... letter, he had actually written himself into a sort of persuasion of its truth. When a finely constituted nature wishes to go into baseness, it has first to bribe itself. Evil is never embraced undisguised, as evil, but under some fiction which the mind accepts and with which it has the singular power of blinding itself in the face of daylight. The power of imposing on one's self is an essential preliminary to imposing on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... black. And what a great name is Dharini, signifying the fortitude and forbearance that comes from majesty of soul! What an association it carries of the infinite dignity of love, purified by a self-abnegation that rises far above all insult and baseness of betrayal! ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... that only the pure can repose in his action,—only he obtain deliverance by his deed, and after deliverance from it? The egotism, the baseness, the partialities that are in our performance are hooks and barbs by which it wounds and wearies us in the passage, and clings to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... to be the truth. Her silence puzzled Ralph. He searched his memory for words or deeds that might have made her think badly of him. In his present mood instances came but too quickly, and on top of them this culminating proof of his baseness—that he had asked her to marry him when his reasons for such a proposal ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... short period of natural reverence sends light and calm all through the day. Where the home is the place where true prayer is offered, the family is the group which meets in an act of worship; here and into this group there cannot easily enter strife, bickerings, or baseness. One short period, five minutes or even less, of quietness, of united turning toward the eternal, gives tone to the day and finer atmosphere to ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... (whose Thursday evening receptions we well know, attended by some of the most illustrious French and foreign residents in the metropolis,) to accompany him on a tour of inspection to the Gobelins, and had afterwards been guilty of the unexampled baseness of leaving the coupe he had employed standing, unpaid, at the door of a certain house in the Rue Racine, whilst he escaped by a private passage into the Rue de la Harpe, and so forth, and so forth. I saw it all. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... saith she, "How good a knight are you, and how ill default do you make in another way! No knight, methinketh, is there in the world that would have refused me save only you. This cometh of your folly, and your outrage, and your baseness of heart! The griffons have not done my will in that they have not slain you or strangled you as you slept, and, so I thought that they would have power to slay you, I would make them come to slay you now. But the devil hath put so much knighthood into you that ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... His baseness was well known to the town, for he was one of those whose tongues reveal their degradation as soon as they are intoxicated. He boasted of his exploits in the city and of the women he had brought to his ranch, and these revelations made him the hero of a certain ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... blows, had scattered the crowd of his cowardly assailants, and driven them away. A number of fellows had set on him in the dark—on him of all others. Oh, what a change must have happened in the school that this should be possible! He felt that the contagion of Brigson's baseness had ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... dreams were more frequent, we should be happier; yes, and better than we are; we should be shamed out of much baseness—for nothing so purifies and exalts the soul as the actual or imaginary companionship of the pure and exalted; no man who purposed to create a noble picture would choose an imperfect model; no one who seeks virtue and cherishes ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... ingratitude! Do you reproach me? You, you upbraid me? Have I been false to her, through strict fidelity to you, and sacrificed my friendship to keep my love inviolate? And have you the baseness to charge me with the guilt, unmindful of the merit? To you it should be meritorious that I have been vicious. And do you reflect that guilt upon me which should lie buried ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... common in Indian life. Distrust exists not among the children of the wilderness, until generated by the conduct of white men. These stories and thousand others, all exemplifying the triumph of virtue and honour over baseness and vice, are every day narrated by the elders, in presence of the young men and children. The evening encampment is a great school of morals, where the Red-skin philosopher embodies in his tales the sacred precepts of virtue. A traveller, could he understand what was ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... clothes; little concern for what we shall eat or what we shall drink. The man who has to observe the least of the ordinances of style knows not liberty. He is a slave; his dress betrayeth him and proclaims him base. There may be degrees of baseness. I am abject myself; but whensoever I revisit the haunts of men clad in the few light incommoding clothes that rationalism ordains, I rejoice and gloat over the slavery of those who have failed to catch even glimpses of the loveliness of liberty, who ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... musical, and uncommonly sweet, enhanced the admiration with which one viewed his matchless delivery, in which was perfect grace, and entire harmony with the expressions which fell from his lips. How mournful a sight, to see one so nobly gifted, leading a life of baseness and vice, devoting his immortal qualities to the vilest selfishness, and to the betrayal of his country and of liberty! Should the descendant of an oppressed and persecuted race take part with oppressors? Senator Benjamin is a renegade to the spirit ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... say more than I have said." It is no wonder, then, that Holt, driven to desperation by such treatment, wrote to Speed:—"Your forbearance towards Andrew Johnson, of whose dishonorable conduct you have been so well advised, is a great mystery to me. With the stench of his baseness in your nostrils you have been all tenderness for him, while for me ... you have ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... were hanged at the same place where the boy had been killed; and the other was, through the intervention of the priests, taken aboard the ship, in order to send him to New Spain. Many houses were burned, a damage, "which, although slight, was some punishment for so great baseness and treachery as they had displayed toward us, ... and was done, so that when Spaniards, vassals of his majesty, anchor there another time, the natives shall give them a better reception, and maintain more ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume II, 1521-1569 • Emma Helen Blair
... answered: "This foolish rage proves that you and Cambyses have the same blood in your veins. It would become you much better to repent of your crimes, and beg your old friend's forgiveness, instead of adding ingratitude to the unheard-of baseness of your ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... loss of power. "How can the man who has learned but one art procure all the conveniences of life honestly? Shall we say all we think?—Perhaps with his own hands.—Let us learn the meaning of economy.—Parched corn eaten to-day that I may have roast fowl to my dinner on Sunday is a baseness; but parched corn and a house with one apartment, that I may be free of all perturbation, that I may be serene and docile to what the mind shall speak, and quit and road-ready for the lowest mission of knowledge or good will, is ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... word, hang no more about me, I am no gibbet for you: go: a short knife and a throng!—to your manor of Picht-hatch! go. You'll not bear a letter for me, you rogue!—you stand upon your honour!—Why, thou unconfinable baseness, it is as much as I can do to keep the terms of my honour precise. I, I, I myself sometimes, leaving the fear of God on the left hand, and hiding mine honour in my necessity, am fain to shuffle, to hedge, and to lurch; and yet you, rogue, will ensconce your rags, your cat-a-mountain ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... by the repetition of her ancient tales of war and overthrow on a scale of such apparent magnitude, but with no glamour of distance to hide the baseness of the agencies by which the destinies of Europe were shaped anew. This was an occasion that tried the hearts of men; it was not easy to remain through all those years at once undazzled and untempted, and never in the blackest hour to ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... deepest condemnation of the violence of the Republic and the despotism of the Empire that the generation formed by it should have produced the class who could exhibit, and the public who could tolerate, the prodigies of baseness which attended the second ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... pause. "I have come to condole and sympathise with you in your distress. Much as I may have blamed your misplaced and unbecoming attachment to an obscure courtier, almost an adventurer in this palace, I cannot but feel that you must suffer from the discovery of the utter baseness of this man. Look not thus surprised. I see you have already learned his arrest—your whole manner ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... the Lady de Tilly; "I know it is hard to bear, but perhaps Le Gardeur did not send that message to you. The men about him are capable of deceiving you to an extent you have no conception of,—you who know so little of the world's baseness." ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... to see why a freethinker, who by reticence and conformity passes himself off for a believer, should be more leniently judged. The differences between a catholic and a protestant are assuredly not any greater than those between a believer and an unbeliever. We all admit the baseness of dissimulation in the former case. Why is it any less ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... nevertheless she kept her eye upon her lover and Lady Mabel. Lady Mary had said that she thought her brother was in love with Lady Mabel. Could it be possible? In her own land she had heard absurd stories,—stories which seemed to her to be absurd,—of the treachery of lords and countesses, of the baseness of aristocrats, of the iniquities of high life in London. But her father had told her that, go where she might, she would find people in the main to be very like each other. It had seemed to her that nothing could be more ingenuous than this young man had been in the declaration ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... to his brow; there was no doubt upon the subject. Danglars defended himself with the baseness, but at the same time with the assurance, of a man who speaks the truth, at least in part, if not wholly—not for conscience' sake, but through fear. Besides, what was Morcerf seeking? It was not whether ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... his suit had been rebuffed at every point, he was not discouraged. Indeed, had his other qualities equalled his perseverance, he had richly merited a full and good reward; but, unfortunately, this was his only redeeming trait, and the baseness of that motive which prompted it poisoned that very ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... and more accurate adjustment. Yet let the man look exclusively for awhile on the opposite side of the tapestry; let him brood over any of the facts which seem at war with the above conclusion; on some signal triumph of baseness and malignity; on oppressed virtue, on triumphant vice; on 'the wicked spreading himself like a green bay tree;' and especially on the mournfull and inscrutable mystery of the 'Origin of Evil,' and he feels that 'clouds and darkness' envelope the administration of the Moral ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... scoundrel, double-dyed, Would pluck an Uncle's whiskers in their pride, What baseness, then, doth such a man disclose Who'd raise a hand ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... rights of man, when Phillips with golden eloquence preached the doctrine of humanity and progress, men approved and applauded. When Parker painted the moral baseness of the times, men acquiesced shamefacedly. When Channing preached the gospel of love, they wished the dream might become a reality. But, when Douglass told the story of his wrongs and those of his brethren in bondage, ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... thought of Delia's baseness the more she inwardly raged against it. She sat in her own room with her feet over the register and munched caramels and nursed her grievance all the afternoon. Delia was miserable. She had tried by every means in her power to win at least a look from the girl, but all her attempts ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... exhibition of baseness, my solicitor came to me and told me that he had had an interview with the Attorney-General, and that he had authorized him to say, that if I would enter into bonds and give securities to keep the peace, he ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... a handful of wealthy men—and especially to the one most wealthy and unscrupulous among them—whose wealth is an accident of speculation, whose origins are repulsive, and whose characters have, as a rule, the weakness and baseness developed by this sort of adventures. There are, among such gutter-snipes, thousands whose luck ends in the native gutter, half a dozen whose luck lands them into millions, one or two at most who, on the top of such a career go crazy with the ambition of the parvenu and propose ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... according to their usage, these strange monsters did not neglect to set apart a small sum as an offering to Kalee their goddess; and when, after this and several other murders, all characterized by similar features of treachery and baseness, they returned to their village, they proceeded at once to celebrate Tapoonee, or a solemn rite of their most ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... went to legislatures and demanded investigations into the rascally methods of the railroad magnates. The facts, said they, should be made public, so as to base on them appropriate legislation which would curtail the power of such autocrats. Contrasted with the baseness and hypocrisy of the trading class, Vanderbilt's qualities of brutal candor and selfishness shine out as brilliant virtues. [Footnote: No observation could be truer. As a class, the manufacturers were flourishing ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... existence. An awe of his cleverness, his trickery, gripped her in a clutch of ice. The whole fabric of her own desires and plans and purposes seemed to crumple like the white ash in a dead fire, leaving her nothing. She had been out-witted instead of outfought. One more evidence of the man's baseness, his ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... the seat of war? The answer is easy: New England is not infested with Tories, and we are. I have been tender in raising the cry against these men, and used numberless arguments to show them their danger, but it will not do to sacrifice a world either to their folly or their baseness. The period is now arrived, in which either they or we must change our sentiments, or one or both must fall. And what is a Tory? Good God! what is he? I should not be afraid to go with a hundred Whigs against a thousand Tories, were they to attempt to get into ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... occasion. They despised him; they loathed him; they said and believed that he was false, selfish, designing, a traitor, an apostate, that he had run away from a failing cause, that he had sold himself. The language of contumely was exhausted in vain efforts to describe his baseness. Not even yet has the echo of the hard names which he was called quite died away in the land; and there are still families in New England with whom his dishonest tergiversation ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... father's love and care, I cannot but despise a man who becomes a father, then shirks from the responsibility which follows—who leaves the burden and the disgrace which follow parenthood outside the marriage relation to the poor woman alone. Such baseness, such cowardice, such despicable littleness of soul!—do you wonder why I don't want to ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson |
