"Baseness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are characters in his works quite as depraved as those in Flaubert and in Zola. But from the way in which he describes them one feels that he despises their ignominy, and that he is indignant at their baseness. Now the pessimist, in whose eyes baseness and ignominy are the very essence of man, is no longer capable of indignation or contempt. Nearly always Daudet's books present to us, if only incidentally, some favourite character which ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... from the wearied ship, upon his own shore; when the king drags the daughter of Pandion into a lofty dwelling, concealed in an ancient wood, and there he shuts her up, pale and trembling, and dreading everything, and now with tears inquiring where her sister is; and confessing his baseness, he masters by force her a maiden, and but one, while she often vainly calls on her father, often on her sister, and on the great Gods above all. She trembles like a frightened lamb, which, wounded, being snatched from the mouth of a hoary ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... divinity, and yet (as rogues of higher rank comfort the pride of their conscience by despising inferior knaves) I suspect that the 'merrily' was the Sardonic mirth of bitter contempt; only, however, because he disliked Williams, who was simply a man of his age, his baseness being for us, not for his contemporaries, or even for his own mind. But the worst of all is the Archbishop's heartless disingenuousness and moon-like nodes towards his kind old master the King. How much of truth was there ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... That dost this habitation, where thou keep'st, Hourly afflict: merely, thou are death's fool; For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun, And yet run'st towards him still: Thou art not noble; For all the accommodations that thou bear'st Are nursed by baseness: Thou art by no means valiant, For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork Of a poor worm: Thy best of rest is sleep, And that thou oft provok'st; yet grossly fear'st Thy death, which is no more. Thou art not thyself; For thou exist'st on many thousand grains Which issue out of ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... 27) even though supper was practically over, is not inconsistent with John's statement that the supper proper was ended before the washing of feet was performed; the act does not appear to have been so unusual as to cause surprize. To many it has appeared plausible, that because of his utter baseness Judas would not be permitted to participate with the other apostles in the holy ordinance of the Sacrament; others infer that he was allowed to partake, as a possible means of moving him to abandon his evil purpose even at that ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... while Britain continues to discover that Meanness and Poverty of Spirit, which renders her still more than ever contemptible in the Eyes of all sensible People. The Moderation of France is such as becomes a great and powerful Nation. Britain forgetfull of her former Character, sinks into Baseness in the Extreme. The one is generously holding out the Arm of Protection to a People most cruelly oppressd while the other is practicing the Arts of Treachery and Deceit to subjugate and enslave them. This is a Contrast which an ancient Britain would have blushd to have had predicted to him. ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... countries. A simple difference in the names of men and of places would be all that would appear or exist. Every noble and every mean and every mixed exhibition of character,—every act of munificence and of baseness,—every narrative of thrilling or romantic interest,—every instance and example of popular delusion, humbug, man-worship, breach of trust, domestic infelicity, and of cunning or astounding depravity and hypocrisy,—every religious, social, and political excitement,—every ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... are there in the world! This foolish brother not to know, that he who would be bribed to undertake a base thing by one, would be over-bribed to retort the baseness; especially when he could be put into the way to serve himself by both!—Thou, Jack, wilt never know one half ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... accepted by Mr. Carruthers, who suggests, by way of palliation, that Pope was desirous at the time of providing for Martha Blount, and probably took the sum in order to buy an annuity for her. Now, if the story were proved, it must be admitted that it would reveal a baseness in Pope which would be worthy only of the lowest and most venal literary marauders. No more disgraceful imputation could have been made upon Curll, or Curll's miserable dependents. A man who could so prostitute his talents must have been utterly ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... [Excess of fear.] Cowardice. — N. cowardice, pusillanimity; cowardliness &c. adj.; timidity, effeminacy. poltroonery, baseness; dastardness[obs3], dastardy[obs3]; abject fear, funk; Dutch courage; fear &c. 860; white feather, faint heart; cold feet * [U. S.], yellow streak*. coward, poltroon, dastard, sneak, recreant; shy cock, dunghill cock; coistril[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... integrity. At any rate, he could not bring himself to feel very sorry. He knew that young Haight would not prosecute him for the dishonesty; he traded upon Haight's magnanimity; he only felt glad that he had the fifty dollars. But by this time Vandover did not even wonder at his own baseness and degradation. A few years ago this would have been the case; now his character was so changed that the theft seemed somehow consistent. He had destroyed young Haight's friendship for him. He had cast from him his college chum, his best friend, but ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... conduct for three years has been opposed to such a character; and, then, though not absolutely rich, perhaps, he has a gentleman's income, and is removed from the necessity of being reduced to such an act of baseness." ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... morning that—Why, what monstrous folly was all this? Into what unspeakable baseness had he fallen? Happily, he had but to take leave of the Warricombe household, and rush into some region where he was unknown. Years hence, he would relate the ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... others. Let him remember also that the worth of the ideal must be largely determined by the success with which it can in practice be realized. We should abhor the so-called "practical" men whose practicality assumes the shape of that peculiar baseness which finds its expression in disbelief in morality and decency, in disregard of high standards of living and conduct. Such a creature is the worst enemy of the body politic. But only less desirable ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... 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 and gone! It magnifies A failure ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... centre of the caravansary from the instant of her arrival; and she gave him her hand with the conventional frankness and self-command that set her apart from the weak. Once more he knew she was a woman to be worshipped, whose presence rebuked the baseness he ...
— The Indian On The Trail - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... hope, in making the Stones of Venice touchstones, and detecting, by the mouldering of her marble, poison more subtle than ever was betrayed by the rending of her crystal; and if thus I am enabled to show the baseness of the schools of architecture and nearly every other art, which have for three centuries been predominant in Europe, I believe the result of the inquiry may be serviceable for proof of a more vital truth than any at which I have ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... suffrages. Entrusted with the chief Executive power of the Nation by Republican ballots, he professed upon his accession to office the most entire devotion to the principles of the party; but he had, with a baseness hardly to be exaggerated, repudiated his professions, deserted the friends who had confided in him, and made an alliance with those who had been the bitterest foes of the Union in the bloody struggle which ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... herself had suspected and convicted him. In all that mattered their friendship had ended there. Distrust was unbearable between friends. It was a flaw in his little lady that she could believe him capable of baseness.... But not an unforgivable flaw, it would seem, since every hour that he had spent in her presence had become roses and music in his memory, and the thought that he would see her no more ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... 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 unscrupulous cunning. ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... 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
... honour, in every action which came before the world a right-dealing and a right-doing man. To do what seemed right to him from one point of view he stripped himself of lands and fortune, and when that was not enough he stooped to unutterable baseness. He was willing to betray his country to justify his ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... celebrate the success of his cunning by a revel at which he could brag to some loose companion how neatly he had cheated a generous and noble woman. But he did something more, almost inconceivable in its baseness; he took that letter to the Queen's Proctor and showed it to that archive of centuried insapience as a proof that there had been collusion in the case, that his wife and he were really on good terms, and that he was anxious to regain her. The Proctor took his word, and ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... altogether unnecessary!" said the master quickly. "Strange though the story is, I accept every word of it—every word. The friend you speak of was indeed a friend in need. You must keep your word to him—it would be an act of baseness to break it. I did not know the facts, you see. You may leave the ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... educational medium of youth. A good man or woman may keep a youth some little while in clearer air; but the contemporary atmosphere is all-powerful in the end on the average of mediocre characters. The copious Corinthian baseness of the American reporter or the Parisian chroniqueur, both so lightly readable, must exercise an incalculable influence for ill; they touch upon all subjects, and on all with the same ungenerous hand; they begin the consideration of all, in young and unprepared minds, in an unworthy spirit; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sink the private soldier, and address you in the character of the gentleman and your equal. I have a soul, Sir, notwithstanding my fallen fortunes, as keenly alive to honour as your own; and not even to save my wretched life, would I be guilty of the baseness you now attribute to me. You have asked," he pursued, in a more solemn tone, "what proof I have to show this individual to be the same who attempted the life of Captain de Haldimar. To Captain de Haldimar himself, should Providence have spared his days, I shall leave the melancholy task of bearing ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... with that passion, that diabolical lucidity, that vision of his, who had made her realize the baseness of her secrecy. She had no right to keep Owen to herself. He was ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... the weapons of craft against villains," he said. "There is no baseness to equal yours. You are repaid in your own coin; ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... if it was a serious proposition of law or logic. Nothing funnier can be imagined than the discomfiture of a story-teller who has fondly thought to tickle the great man's fancy by an anecdote which depends for its point upon some trait of baseness, cynicism, or sharp practice. He finds his tale received in dead silence, looks up wonderingly for an explanation, and finds that what was intended to amuse has only disgusted. Mr. Browning once told Mr. Gladstone a highly characteristic story ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... Daisy, Variegated, Beauty Daisy, Wild, Will think of it Dandelion, Love's oracle Daphne, Glory Dew Plant, A serenade Dianthus, Make haste Dipteracanthus, Fortitude Diplademia, You are too bold Dittany, Pink, Birth Dittany, White, Passion Dock, Patience Dodder of Thyme, Baseness Dogsbane, Falsehood Dogwood, Durability Dragon Plant, Snare Dragonwort, Horror Dried Flax, Usefulness Ebony, Blackness Echites, Be Warned in Time Elder, Zeal Elm, Dignity Endive, Frugality Escholzia, Do Not Refuse Me Eupatorium, Delay Evergreen Thorn, Solace ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... 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
... subtle snake! It is the baseness of thy selfish mind, Full of all guile, and cunning, and deceit, That severs us so ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... "haisse," and "revisse" in just three lines of La Dame aux Camelias. And everybody ought to know the story of the Immortal who, upon finding a man "where nae mon should be," and upon that "mon" showing the baseness derived from Adam by turning on his accomplice and saying, "Quand je vous disais qu'il etait temps que je m'en aille!" neglected crim. con. for crim. gram. and cried in horror, "Que je m'en allasse, Monsieur!" But this preciseness did not extend to the younger ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... vaguely conscious of the baseness of the mere weighing of such a choice; but he was engulfed in his overmastering egotism; his sense of obligation was dulled by the supreme selfishness of a lifetime, of a lifetime of unbridled temper and appetite, of a swaggering self-esteem which the remorseless operation of fate had ignored, ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... usual time? Linda saw and knew all this, and was disgusted. But even then she did not, could not think that Alaric could be untrue to her; that her own sister would rob her of her lover. It could not be that there should be such baseness in human nature! ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... or moated gate; Not cities proud with spires and turrets crowned; Not bays and broad-armed ports, 5 Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride; Not starred and spangled courts, Where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to pride. No:—men, high-minded men, With powers as far above dull brutes endued 10 In forest, brake, or den, As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude; Men who their duties know, But know their rights, and knowing, dare maintain, Prevent ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... difference in the general balance. But, alas, brigandage in all its forms is the rule in the eternal conflict of living things! From the lowest to the highest, every producer is exploited by the unproductive. Man himself, whose exceptional rank ought to raise him above such baseness, excels in this ravening lust. He says to himself that business means getting hold of other people's cash, even as the Gnat says to herself that business means getting hold of the Halictus' honey. And, to play the brigand to better purpose, he invents war, the art of killing wholesale ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... of low origin and despicable exterior, totally destitute of morals, and perfidious in the extreme; but with a supple, insinuating address, and an accommodating spirit, tolerant of all kinds of profligacy in others. Conscious of his own inherent baseness, he sought to secure an influence over his pupil, by corrupting his principles and fostering his vices; he debased him, to keep himself from being despised. Unfortunately he succeeded. To the early precepts of this infamous pander have been ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... 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 of ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... country-road, I occasionally see a big blackguard fellow thrashing a boy much less than himself. I am well aware that some prudent individuals would pass by on the other side, possibly addressing an admonition to the big blackguard. But I approve Thomson's statement, that "prudence to baseness verges still"; and I follow a different course. Suddenly approaching the blackguard, by a rapid movement, generally quite unforeseen by him, I take him by the arm, and occasionally (let me confess) by the neck, and shake him till his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... I suppose this is some vile equivocation; you have done worse, you have had the barbarity, the baseness, to attempt to poison his dog; the poisoned meat was found in your ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... of treason heaped on treachery, of insult repaid by fraud, would be easy enough. Indeed, a huge book might be compiled containing nothing but the episodes in this grim history of despotism, now tragic and pathetic, now terror-moving in sublimity of passion, now despicable by the baseness of the motives brought to light, at one time revolting through excess of physical horrors, at another fascinating by the spectacle of heroic courage, intelligence, and resolution. Enough however, has been said to describe the atmosphere of danger in which the tyrants breathed and moved, and ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... I am still too little a hysterical actress and too much a normal woman to take pleasure in such acting. I was never taught by my mother, the secret code of a woman's conduct toward a man, nor did they warn me of man's falsehood and baseness. I observed that quickly enough for myself, and see it every day behind the scenes. You think that to every woman who is in the theater you can boldly talk about your love as though it were some trifle, in the hope that perhaps she will swallow your ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... 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 ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... daughter of the chaplain of James the First. Whatever may have been Marston's antecedents, they were such as to gratify his tastes as a cynical observer of the crimes and follies of men,—an observer whose hatred of evil sprang from no love of good, but to whom the sight of depravity and baseness was welcome, inasmuch as it afforded him me occasion to wreak his own scorn and pride. His ambition was to be the English Juvenal; and it must be conceded that he had the true Iago-like disposition "to spy out abuses." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... so hackney'd in all baseness, That even truth from her would be disgrac'd. [Aside.] Had her condition far exceeded all Your seeming tender fears; or did I hear The peal of her death bell, I shou'd not wonder. Was she not up all night? ...
— The Female Gamester • Gorges Edmond Howard
... 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 and set a ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... incendiaries had been at work. Smoke was rising already from Downing Street and the back of the Treasury. Then came the carnage. One can well believe that not a single unnecessary bullet was fired. Not to believe that would be to saddle those in authority with a less than human baseness. But the question history puts is: Who was primarily to blame for the circumstances which led up to the tragic necessity of ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... 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 ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... time—perhaps in our lifetimes? And 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 fade ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... perfections, and it behoves human genius to seek, accept, nourish, and preserve a love like that; but one should take great care not to bow down or become enslaved to an object unworthy and base, lest we become sharers of the baseness and unworthiness of the same: appositely the Ferrarese ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... is a great ball where fools, disguised Under the laughable names of Eminence and Highness Think to swell out their being and exalt their baseness In vain does the equipage of vanity amaze us; Mortals are equal: 'tis ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... heed of Randall's protest. She only saw that she was to be the cloak to cover up something unclean between them. At a moment like this no woman pretends to have a sense of justice. Randall had equal share with her father in an unknown baseness. She hated him as he stood there so strong and handsome. And she hated herself ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... diary made during the month of October, 1789, long before 'the Terror,' by Gouverneur Morris. 'Surely it is not the usual order of Divine Providence to leave such abominations unpunished. Paris is, perhaps, as wicked a spot as exists. Incest, murder, bestiality, fraud, rapine, oppression, baseness, cruelty, and yet this is the city which has stepped forward in the ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... Then rear your standards; let your sounding drums Direct our soldiers to Damascus' walls.— Now, Tamburlaine, the mighty Soldan comes, And leads with him the great Arabian king, To dim thy baseness and [222] obscurity, Famous for nothing but for theft and spoil; To raze and scatter thy inglorious crew Of ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... I will answer the questions which have been agitating you this long while, which you have asked at every stage of this long narrative of a sinful life. Shake not your head, lift not your finger, exquisitely hypocritical reader; you can deceive me in nothing. I know the baseness and unworthiness of your soul as I know the baseness and unworthiness of my own. This is a magical tete-a-tete, such a one as will never happen in your life again; therefore I say let us put off all customary disguise, let us be frank: you have been angrily asking, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... explains that to my satisfaction. There is goodness in all men, and sermons even in stones. But goodness and badness is apt to run in streaks. Man, to use the language of another, is a queer combination of cheek and perversity, insolence, pride, impudence, vanity, jealousy, hate, scorn, baseness, insanity, honor, truth, wisdom, virtue and urbanity. He's a queer combination all right. And those mixed elements of his nature, in their effects on other people, we call personal influence. Many a man is not altogether what he has made himself, but what others have made ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... wanted, and had played her part with masterly skill. As for Claire, she had 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 pretending to admire her! ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... I had 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 ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... beauty of Kunigunda. Of a subtle and crafty disposition, she showed the gratitude of the serpent by stinging the hand extended to help her; in a word, she set herself to win the unlawful affections of the Lord of Fuerstenberg. He, weak creature as he was, allowed the latent baseness of his nature to be stirred by her youth and beauty. He listened when she whispered that Kunigunda had grown cold toward him; at her suggestion he interpreted his wife's modest demeanour as indifference, and already he began to feel ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... 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 ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... Demon of Baseness, who has subdued the other peoples, was busily at work in Germany as well: ten years more, and God would perhaps have found no one in the world to fight for him.—H.S. CHAMBERLAIN, D.Z., ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... real baseness. He was too clever, too genuine—he had too great a contempt for worldly greatness. They offered him a bishopric if he would attack Luther. He only laughed at them. What was a bishopric to him? He preferred a quiet life among his ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... her side with honied smile, And fawning courtesy, and limping stride, Showing to those who knew the heart, more vile The baseness that his gilding sought to hide; But she went on unmoved, and stood the while Still as a marble statue at his side; Certes, a terror o'er the spirit crept, It had been mercy had ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... the cross is the school of light; it discovers the world's vanity, baseness, and wickedness, and lets us see more of God's mind. Out of dark affliction comes a ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... me! In the nicest point, The honour of my house, you've done me wrong. You may remember (for I now will speak, And urge its baseness) when you first came borne From travel, with such hopes as made you looked on By all men's eyes, a youth of expectation; Pleased with your growing virtue, I received you; Courted, and sought to raise you to your merits; My house, my table, ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway
... Ges Nuovo (1584), are dignified and creditable designs. The domical church of S.M. della Salute, at Venice (1631), by Longhena, is also a majestic edifice in excellent style (Fig. 174), and here and there other churches offer exceptions to the prevalent baseness of architecture. Particularly objectionable was the wholesale disfigurement of existing monuments by ruthless remodelling, as in S.John Lateran, at Rome, the cathedrals of Ferrara and Ravenna, ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... Yahya turned to his companions and said, "What doth he deserve who forgeth a letter in my name and carrieth it to my foe?" They answered all and each, saying this and that, and every one proposing some kind of punishment; but Yahya said, "Ye err in that ye say and this your counsel is of the baseness of your spirits and the meanness of your minds. Ye all know the close favour of Abdullah with the Caliph and ye weet of what is between him and us of anger and enmity; and now Almighty Allah hath made this man the means of reconciliation between us; ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... Indies could not shed as dazzling a light as that thorny crown. Like the brave soldier who gathered into his own breast the spears of the enemy, Christ has taken the sting from our sorrows and made us more than conquerors over the wounds of earth. Surely he has tasted it all for us,—the baseness and coldness and ingratitude and treachery which have wrung human hearts all through the ages,—when Judas betrayed him, Peter denied him and they all forsook him and fled, do you suppose any other ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... when Clarissa came between her and her father—sharpened Miss Granger's suspicions in this case. She was jealous even of that supposed flirtation at Belforet, four or five years ago. She was angry with Clarissa for having once possessed this man's heart; ready to suspect her of any baseness in the past, any treason ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... them convincing power. They derive their cogency from a favouring atmosphere of opinion or feeling. Two features of recent controversy suffice of themselves (if proof were needed) to establish the truth of this assertion. The rhetorical emphasis laid by Home Rulers on the baseness of the arts which carried the Act of Union is, as an argument in favour of repealing the Act, little else than irrational. The assumed infamy of Pitt does not prove the alleged wisdom of Gladstone; and to urge the repeal of an Act which has stood for nearly a century, because it was carried by ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... defending it and explaining whatever was not quite clear in its proposals, forestalled all criticism by putting up Mr Redmond to move its rejection. A more humiliating attitude, a more callous betrayal, a more sorry performance the whole history of political baseness and political ineptitude cannot produce. The feeling that swept through Ireland on the morrow of this Convention was one of disgust and shame, yet the people were so firmly shackled in the bonds of the Party that they still sullenly submitted to ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... here's none that fears The wagging of an ass's ears, Although a wolfish case he wears. Detraction is but baseness varlet And apes are apes, though ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... horde, lead forth the strength and flower of all Italy! On the one side, chastity contends; on the other wantonness; here purity, there pollution; here integrity, there treachery; here piety, there profaneness; here constancy, there rage; here honesty, there baseness; here continence, there lust; in short, equity, temperance, fortitude, prudence, struggle with iniquity, luxury, cowardice, rashness; every virtue with every vice; and, lastly, the contest lies between well-grounded hope and absolute despair. In such a conflict, were even human aid ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... Renaissance, so now, vice trickled downwards from above, infiltrating the masses of the people with its virus. But now, even more decidedly than then, the upper classes displayed obliquities of meanness, baseness, intemperance, cowardice, and brutal violence, which are commonly supposed ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... wits are something impaired. What think you of her telling a gentleman who had acted in a most noble and honourable manner—exactly as a gentleman should do—that she could not have believed him capable of such baseness? and she ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... the thirteenth century as this cemetery has come to be of our own time. It is the crude representation of modern Italian life that you see, realistic, unique, and precious, but for the most part base and horrible beyond words. All the disastrous, sensual, covetous meanness, the mere baseness of the modern world, is expressed there with a naivete that is, by some miraculous transfiguration, humorous with all the grim humour of that thief death, who has gathered these poor souls with the rest because someone ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... life, they proceed in their less adventurous career, neither chilled by the coldness, nor sickened by the meanness, nor disappointed by the selfishness of the world. They virtually admit, though they often theoretically deny, the baseness of human nature; and, strangers to disinterestedness themselves, they do not expect to meet with it in others. They are content with a low degree of enjoyment, and are thus exempted from much poignant suffering; ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... have it, leave me; y'are infectious, the plague and leprosie of your baseness spreading on all that do come near you; such as you render the Throne of Majesty, the Court, suspected and contemptible; you are Scarabee's that batten in her dung, and have no palats to taste her curious Viands; and like Owles, can only see her night deformities, but with the glorious splendor ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher - Vol. 2 of 10: Introduction to The Elder Brother • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... zealously defended by the Wittenberg Philippists. With a good deal of animosity they emphasized that the Gospel in its most proper sense is also a preaching of repentance (praedicatio poenitentiae, Busspredigt), inasmuch as it revealed the baseness of sin and the greatness of its offense against God, and, in particular, inasmuch as the Gospel alone uncovered, rebuked, and condemned the hidden sin (arcanum peccatum) and the chief sin of all, the sin of unbelief ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... 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 didn't care to ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... Principal, and who Secondary; to whom had belonged in reality the place of Agent, to whom that of the Employer. The sticklers for emancipation (a fashionable word in our times, when rational acquiescence is deemed baseness of spirit, and the most enlightened service passes for benighted servility!) have been free on numerous occasions to make the effort they are now making. Could any considerable person have been found to share their feeling, they might have proposed ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Polly is soon to be married to Mr. Brown; but Mr. Smith has changed his lodgings, "which," she adds, "has made the house extremely dull. However, that's not the worst news; pardi, I wish it was! but I've been used like nobody,-for Monsieur Du Bois has had the baseness to go back to France without me." In conclusion, she assures me, as you prognosticated she would, that I shall be sole heiress of all she is worth, when ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... very lowest baseness of his character.—It is poor Olivia speaks. "Thus each day I grew more pensive, and he more insolent, till at last the monster had the assurance to offer me to a young baronet of his acquaintance." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... more of the epithet "untoward," as applied in the speech to the battle of Navarino. If the term was meant, he said, to cast any blame on the gallant officer who commanded the fleet at Navarino, he would protest against the baseness and ignominy of such an insinuation in the most solemn manner; or if it was to be understood that it referred to that which happened by accident, and which stood across the object we had in view, he entered his protest against it. However much ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... it will be a grand thing to unite Ashbourne and Briarwood, but Roderick Vawdrey is too honourable to marry a girl he could not love. I would never believe him capable of such baseness," answered Violet, standing up for ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... process of soothing 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, ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... haud facile emergunt, quorum virtutibus obstat res angusta domi. [2296]"The wisdom of the poor is despised, and his words are not heard." Eccles. vi. 19. His works are rejected, contemned, for the baseness and obscurity of the author, though laudable and good in themselves, they will not ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... in the interview between them, after having bestowed on him some abusive epithets, challenged him to the field. Grant declined to accept the invitation; and Lewis, after spitting in his face in the presence of several of the French officers, left him to reflect on his baseness. ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... Jonathan's tale being told—a tale so colored with all their bitterest prejudices that it was certain to be greedily listened to; and in the storm of angry passion it would rouse everything else would be swallowed up by resentment against Eve's baseness; and the fire once kindled, what would ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... excited mind a way of escape, upon which, even though it brought with it a sense of baseness, she ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... incentives and temptations to aspire to higher intellectuality, and to experience the sentiments of authoritative self-control, of silence, and of solitude. Asceticism and Puritanism are almost indispensable means of educating and ennobling a race which seeks to rise above its hereditary baseness and work itself upwards to future supremacy. And finally, to ordinary men, to the majority of the people, who exist for service and general utility, and are only so far entitled to exist, religion gives invaluable contentedness with their lot and condition, peace of heart, ennoblement ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... 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 the ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... found. Discontented and mutinous from the first, and now terrified by the fictions of Nicanope, they had deserted, preferring the hardships of the midwinter forest to the mysterious terrors of the Mississippi. La Salle mustered the rest before him, and inveighed sternly against the cowardice and baseness of those who had thus abandoned him, regardless of his many favors. If any here, he added, are afraid, let them but wait till the spring, and they shall have free leave to return to Canada, safely and without dishonor. [Footnote: Hennepin (1683), 162.—Declaration faite par Moyse Hillaret, ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... a fine fellow," he said to him, bending down to whisper the words. "I love brave men. Enter my service, and you shall be rich and happy; my favors shall heal those wounded limbs. I do not propose to you any baseness; I will not ask you to return to your party and betray its plans,—there are always traitors enough for that, and the proof is in the prisons of Blois; tell me only on what terms are the queen-mother ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... Amy"—it was thus he communed with himself—"to which thy cruel levity—thine unthinking and most unmerited falsehood, has condemned him of whom his friends once hoped far other things, and who now scorns himself, as he will be scorned by others, for the baseness he stoops to for the love of thee! But I will not leave the pursuit of thee, once the object of my purest and most devoted affection, though to me thou canst henceforth be nothing but a thing to weep over. I will save thee from thy betrayer, and from thyself; I will restore thee to thy parent—to ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... whom I had deemed a man of men Faulty, as great men are, but with no taint Of baseness,—with those faults that shew the saint Of after days, perhaps,—wert even then When first I loved thee but a spreading tree Whose leaves shewed ...
— A Woman's Love Letters • Sophie M. Almon-Hensley
... number, in the person of CHARLES LENOX REMOND, whose eloquent appeals have extorted the highest applause of multitudes on both sides of the Atlantic. Let the calumniators of the colored race despise themselves for their baseness and illiberality of spirit, and henceforth cease to talk of the natural inferiority of those who require nothing but time and opportunity to attain to the highest point ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... philosophy was kindled within him. Some of his relatives blamed Plato, because he did not chastise the impertinent youth; but he replied, 'There is no reproof so severe as to show him, by the manner of my own life, the contrast between virtue and baseness.'—That is the Plato I want you to show me, when we ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... and a guest of whom the victorious English were continually requiring the ignominious dismissal; until, wearied by the indifference to all hints and orders to free France from his compromising presence, the Court of Versailles had descended to the incredible baseness of having the Prince kidnapped as he was going to the opera, bound hand and foot, carried like a thief to the fortress of Vincennes, and then conducted to the frontier like a suspected though unconvicted swindler, ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... well—there's but one feeling amongst the National Assembly—the common danger has united all parties.' 'But why,' I inquired, 'does your Assembly affect to speak of the carrying off (enlevement) of the king in all its decrees, when the king himself writes that he escaped of his own free will? what baseness, or what treason, in the Assembly to employ such language, when surrounded by three millions of bayonets.' 'The word carrying off is a mistake in dictation, that the Assembly will correct,' replied La Fayette; then he added, ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... were not distracting ones. Mr. Verne had in his possession proof of the baseness of Hubert Tracy and his legal accomplices, and the more he thought of it ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour |
