"Base" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that does not carry upon it not only ill faith and national dishonor, but direct proofs of corruption. When Mr. Hastings values himself upon this shocking and outrageous breach of faith, which required nothing but a base and illiberal mind, without either talents, courage, or skill, except that courage which defies all consequences, which defies shame, which defies the judgment and opinion of his country and of mankind, no other talents than may be displayed by the dash ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... the Chinaman's outdoor costume, the dark, loose upper garment fastening tight round the base of the throat, the short, wide trousers, and on his head a black felt hat. Under the brim of this his face wore an expression of hesitating inquiry as if he were ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... small pick in his hand, climbed up over a mound of loose rocks and loose earth, ten feet around the rock, and entered the narrow mouth of a deep, freshly dug ditch. Ten feet farther on he was halted by a tall black column solidly wedged in the narrow passage, at the base of which was a bench of yellow dirt extending not more than two feet from the foot of the column and above the floor of the ditch. There had been mighty operations going on in that secret passage; the toil for one boy and one tool had been prodigious ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... walls of houses have black perspiration and their air-holes are fetid; the loathsomeness of existence increases and melancholy overwhelms one; the seeds of vileness which each person harbors in his soul, sprout. The craving for vile debaucheries seizes austere people and base desires grow rampant in the brains of ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... above his head; and the impression of immovable solidity which its cold, grey, stately column conveyed to his mind, contrasted powerfully with the howling wind and the raging sea around. It seemed to him, as he sat there within three yards of its granite base, like the impersonation of repose in the midst of turmoil; of peace surrounded by war; of calm and solid self-possession in the midst of fretful ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... 605; weak-hearted, fainthearted, chickenhearted, henhearted[obs3], lilyhearted, pigeon-hearted; white- livered[obs3], lily-livered, milk-livered[obs3]; milksop, smock-faced; unable to say "bo" to a goose. dastard, dastardly; base, craven, sneaking, dunghill, recreant; unwarlike, unsoldier-like. "in face a lion but in heart a deer". unmanned; frightened &c. 860. Int. sauve qui peut[Fr]! [French: every man for himself]; devil take the hindmost! Phr. ante tubam trepidat[Lat], one's courage ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... leaves this line, running southeast, and connects Gorizia with Trieste across the Carso Plateau. The second line comes from the east from Laibach through San Pietro, where a branch runs south to Fiume, and the third comes north from the Austrian naval base at Pola. Gorizia is served by the northern road from Vienna, from Trieste by the main line, and by the branch just described. Supplies from Vienna would be stopped by cutting the road anywhere north of Gorizia. But to shut off Trieste as a source, both of the southern rail communications ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... steed, That wants no driving and disdains the lead; If guards, mechanically form'd in ranks, Playing at beat of drum their martial pranks, Should'ring, and standing as if stuck to stone, While condescending majesty looks on;— If monarchy consists in such base things, Sighing, I say again, I ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... silver—just the right steely silver because it was the wrong side! Mrs. Carr then started on another quest for gold that should be as right as that silver. She found it at last in some gold-lace antimacassars at Whiteley's! From these base materials she and Mrs. Nettleship constructed a magnificent queenly dress. Its only fault was that it ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... it! You've cut loose from your base and burned your bridges behind you. I would have brought my congratulations sooner, but I've had a long jury case on hand. You did it, my boy, and you did it like a gentleman. You might have killed him if ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... them. They soon agreed, in the first place, without any difficulty, in making the shores of the Oquossak, the next lake above, and the last and perhaps largest of the four great lakes forming the chief links of this singular chain of inland waters, the base-line of their operations. Phillips and Codman, having procured a wide strip of the outer bark of the white birch,—ever the woodman's substitute for writing paper, when writing becomes necessary,—then proceeded to draw a map, ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... the ceaseless sunlight like a plague. Man and horse and mules were the only life in the naked bottom of this caldron. The mirage had caught the nearest island, and blunted and dissolved its points and frayed its base ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... wall, at the first range of windows, and at the second, where the others are, a passage that runs right round, whereby he contrived to weaken the walls so much, that, the edifice being without buttresses at the base, it was dangerous to raise a vault over it, and particularly on the angles at the corners, upon which all the weight of the vault of that tribune must rest. Wherefore, after the death of Ventura, there was no architect with courage enough to ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... of provisions it had withdrawn to Ostrolenka. There was no pursuit. The natural question, Why? is still unanswered. Some declare that the French troops were too weary and bad-tempered; others, that Napoleon, in view of the quagmires to which the roads were now reduced, dared not abandon his base of supplies, as he was accustomed to do in summer weather and in fruitful lands. There is still a third answer, that nothing was to be gained; for of what use were the few miles of bare, flat land which the army, putting forth its utmost exertions, might have been able to traverse? All ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... all about me; and in the harsh language which I used to my sister and even to my father. Oh, what an example of patience and mildness was he! I love to think of his excellent qualities; and it is the anguish of my heart that I could ever have been base enough and wicked enough to have pained him. O my God, why is not my heart doubly-agonized at the remembrance of all my great transgressions?' So poor John Martyn, lying silent in his grave, entered into that felicity which, ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... whose voice I am not to be reconciled, preaching. Thence with Sir J. Minnes (who poor man had forgot that he carried me the other day to the painter's to see some pictures which he has since bought and are brought home) to his Jodgings to see some base things he calls them of great masters of painting. So I said nothing that he had shown me them already, but commended them, and I think they are indeed good enough. Thence to see Sir W. Pen, who continues ill of ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... bowing slightly from the shoulders, in affable salutation. Or most of all, when his fists clench, his jaws display big nervous knots, his eyes gleam with hard blue light in wrath over some palpable iniquity, some base cowardice, some outrageous ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... to his score of "Euridice" Peri has set forth his ideas about recitative. He has told us how he tried to base its movement upon that of ordinary speech, using few tones and calm movements for quiet conversation and more extended intervals and animated movement for the delineation of emotion. This was founded upon the same basis as the theory of Caccini, which condemned emphatically the indiscriminate employment ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... Cheops is the largest structure of any kind ever erected by the hand of man. Its original dimensions at the base were 764 feet square, and its perpendicular height in the highest point 488 feet; it covers four acres, one rood and twenty-two perches of ground and has been estimated by an eminent English architect ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... kinds, or fragments of larger fossils, are often present as well. Other magnesian limestones, again, exhibit no striking external peculiarities by which the presence of magnesia would be readily recognised, and though the base of the rock is crystalline, they are replete with the remains of organised beings. Thus many of the magnesian limestones of the Carboniferous series of the North of England are very like ordinary limestone to look at, though effervescing less freely with acids, and the microscope proves ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... ought to disdain the flat cap and blue gown, that here was his opportunity, and that among the Badgers he would soon be so rich, famous, glorious, as to wonder that he had ever tolerated the greasy mechanical life of a base burgher. Respect to his oaths to his master—Sir John laughed the scruple to scorn; nay, if he were so tender, he could buy his absolution the first time he had ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... a membranous sac, situated upon the upper portion of the spinal column. It extends from the base of the skull to the top of the tra'che-a, (windpipe,) and is continuous with the oesophagus. From the pharynx are four passages; one opens upward and forward to the nose, the second leads forward to the mouth, the third downward to the trachea and lungs, the fourth downward and backward ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... characteristic of early Gothic work is what is known as the dog-tooth. This is formed simply by cutting a cube of stone into a pyramid, depressing the sides, and cutting them into geometric leaves, leaving the sharp angles of the pyramid from the base to the apex standing out in bold relief. In ground-plan this is simply composed geometrically of a rectangle divided diagonally into four equal parts, and by striking four semicircles from the centres of the four sides of the rectangle. Here we get a form of ornament in the flat which appears ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... with a little shudder, to Miss Milton. She had come to him because she thought that he would like to share in her revenge. That, more than anything, hurt him, bringing him down to her base, sordid level, making him fellow-conspirator with her, plotting...ugh! How cruelly unfair that he, upright, generous, should be involved ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... never to return. He wrote to explain his motives to Mme. d'Albany. Mme. d'Albany wrote back in a way which showed that she believed the assertions of Foscolo's enemies; that she ascribed to cowardice, to meanness, to a base desire to make himself conspicuous, the self-inflicted exile which he had taken upon him: a letter which the editor of Foscolo's correspondence describes to us ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... that he "lived without abusing his power, and died poor." See Memoires, vol. i. p. 332. By this expression, says Coxe, the reader will be reminded of a curious coincidence in the concluding lines of the eulogium inscribed on the base of Mr. Pitt's statue, by his friend and pupil, the Right Honourable George Canning, "Dispensing, for more than twenty years, the favours of the crown, he lived without ostentation, and he ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... necessary. I therefore directed them to stroll about the beach for an hour or two and to collect oysters or shellfish. The part of Perron's Peninsula which we were on consists of abrupt cliffs of the height of about two hundred feet; at the base of these and between them and the sea there is a narrow strip of sandy land and dunes, and at their summit is a barren sandy tableland, gently sloping away to the southward and appearing to extend throughout the ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... standpoint may be suggestive and interesting. Assuredly it is only by some such general revision, if not on these lines then on others, that a practicable way of escape is to be found for any one, from that base and shifty opportunism in public and social matters, that predominance of fluctuating aims and spiritless conformities, in which so many of us, without any great positive happiness at all to reward us for the sacrifice we are making, bury the solitary ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... In that base blaming of her alone we get the measure of Sebald as at this hour he is. He turns upon her with a demand to know how she now "feels for him." Her answer, wherein the whole of her nature (as, again, at this hour it is) reveals itself—callous but courageous, ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... boat, and borne down by the weight of his armour in the moment of the ripeness of his plot at midnight, when the signal for action sparkled to lighten across the ships and forts, had touched him in his boy's readings, and he found a resemblance of himself to Fiesco, stopped as he was by a base impediment, tripped ignominiously, choked by the weight of the powers fitting him for battle. A man such as Alvan, arrested on his career by an opposition to his enrolment of a bride!—think of it! What was this girl in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... water from 3 to 61/2 fathoms, on muddy ground. These rocks lie nearly due south from Point Dundas, and I proposed to observe the latitude on both sides from thence, whilst lieutenant Flinders did the same at the point, that a base line for the survey might be obtained from the difference; but the difficulty of finding a convenient position disappointed me, and no satisfactory base was obtained here; so that the extent of this bay in the chart is ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... me, and I retreated to a corner of the room, where stood a heavy base-ball bat, which had been presented to me for skilful playing. That corner was my ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... one of the few remaining one-party Communist states, began decentralizing control and encouraging private enterprise in 1986. The results, starting from an extremely low base, were striking - growth averaged 6% per year in 1988-2007 except during the short-lived drop caused by the Asian financial crisis beginning in 1997. Despite this high growth rate, Laos remains a country with a underdeveloped infrastructure, ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Thou in whose ear the dumb time coming sings, Death, priest and king that makest of king and priest A name, a dream, a less thing than the least, Hover awhile above him with closed wings, Till the coiled soul, an evil snake-shaped beast, Eat its base bodily lair of flesh away; If haply, or ever its cursed life have ceased, Or ever thy cold hands cover his head From sight of France and freedom and broad day, He may see these and ...
— Two Nations • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... exclaimed the father, as he pressed her with passionate joy to his heart—ay, joy, even in the presence of her so long the light of his life now passing for ever from earth. For a few minutes the dying had been forgotten, for what was death—a death of peace—to the long misery into which man's base, brutal passion would have converted the life of that pure and lovely girl? Now, however, she was safe, and still supporting her on his arm, Mr. Sinclair turned to his wife and tenderly moistened her parched lips. What a mockery of all human cares seemed that ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... last master in Red River," Riel said to one of his followers. "My men can fight now, for here we have at once a fortification and a base of supplies." ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... not. The fact is, Mrs. Mowbray was present. Mrs. Mowbray is not what she appears to be. Before her I had to pretend an indifference that I did not feel. In short, I had to make myself appear a base coward. In fact, I had to be on my guard, so as not to excite her suspicions of my feelings. Afterward, when I might have redeemed my character in your eyes, I did not know how to begin. Then, too, I was afraid to help you to escape, for I saw that you hated me, and ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... complied, and, having completed the preliminary commonplaces, said, as he hurled the core with an energetic sweep of his arm into the ocean at the base of the little bluff on ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... find among their discarded artificial flowers, leaves and buds that will serve as the base of ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... we observe that sensations, form the base of the educational pyramid. All knowledge which comes to the ego, the seat of consciousness, must come through sensations produced by contact with material things in the domain of nature. Hence, as ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... sharply defined against a vague and shadowy background, like the panels which a Bengal fire or some electric sign will illuminate and dissect from the front of a building the other parts of which remain plunged in darkness: broad enough at its base, the little parlour, the dining-room, the alluring shadows of the path along which would come M. Swann, the unconscious author of my sufferings, the hall through which I would journey to the first step of that staircase, so hard to climb, which constituted, all by itself, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... conversation awakened the literary sense in him as a schoolboy, on holiday from Harchester, now nearly five decades ago. He judged it a matter of good omen, moreover,—toying for the moment with kindly superstition—that the book should issue from a house redeemed by his kinsman from base and brutal uses and dedicated to the worship of knowledge and of the printed word. That fat, soft-bodied, mercurial-minded little gentleman—to whom no record of human endeavour, of human speculation, mental ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... was just the way diphtheria began. The little girl had been thrashing about in the bed and whimpering for "daddy" since eight o'clock. His heart sank like lead, to a far deeper level than it had dropped with the base desertion of Butler. Filled with remorse, he ran upstairs without taking off his hat or overcoat. The feeling of resentment toward Butler was lost in this new, overpowering sense of dread; the discovery of his own lamentable unfitness for "high ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... good, the sultan could not approve of it, but fell into a rage. "What!" said he, "is the sultaness of the Indies capable of prostituting herself in so base a manner! No, brother, I cannot believe what you state unless I beheld it with my own eyes. Yours must needs have deceived you; the matter is so important that I must be satisfied of it myself." "Dear brother," answered Shaw-zummaun, "that you may without much difficulty. Appoint another hunting-match, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.
... their trouble, for it was so much higher than any of its surroundings that everything beyond it seemed flattened, and nothing in particular could be seen. It is composed of a pink and whitish-coloured granite, with quantities of calcareous stone near its base, and it appears to have been formed by the action of submarine volcanic force. No particular hills and no watercourses could be seen in any northerly direction. The Gascoyne River could be traced by its valley trend for twenty-five ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... feet like a gigantic black leech. But an elephant has no horns, whereas this one had four of them! The front pair stuck from the flat forehead slightly bending forward and then spreading out; and the others had a wide base, like the root of a deer's horn, that gradually decreased almost up to the middle, and bore long branches enough to decorate a dozen ordinary elks. Pieces of the transparent amber-yellow rhinoceros skin were strained over the empty eye-holes of ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... the Doctor gave his consent for removal to the Base Hospital, and the Subaltern found himself being once more hauled on to a stretcher ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... strode over to the house of his bride-to-be. She received him modestly and pleasantly, and her beauty struck him into such an amazement that he could not at first find words to express the charge he wished to make. At last, by turning his back, he managed to speak his base and foolish thought. She, thinking this a jest, at first made light of it, but when he faced her once more, frowning this time, like a thunder-cloud, and brandishing the cudgel above his head, she was filled with fear and could hardly keep her feet. She denied the charge. ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... night his wagon trains and heavy guns were moved across the Chickahominy toward his new base on the James. ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... honour, and instinctive clinging to hereditary faith, without the sense of heroism or enthusiasm for martyrdom which sustained Estelle, and rather with the feeling that inconstancy to his faith and his Lord would be base and disloyal. But, as the long days rolled on, if the future of toil and dreary misery developed itself before him, the sense of personal love and aid towards the Lord and Master whom he served grew upon him. Neither the ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Whatever in life he had recovered his old rooms for, he had not recovered them to receive Milly Theale: which made no more difference in his expression of happy readiness than if he had been—just what he was trying not to be—fully hardened and fully base. So rapid in fact was the rhythm of his inward drama that the quick vision of impossibility produced in him by his hostess's direct and unexpected appeal had the effect, slightly sinister, of positively scaring him. It gave him a measure of the intensity, ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... pass through but little air," said Deepwaters, "I should suggest a short-stroke cylinder of large diameter, with a flat base and dome roof, composed of aluminum, or, still better, of glucinum or beryllium as it is sometimes called, which is twice as good a conductor of electricity as aluminum, four times as strong, and is the lightest of all known metals, having a specific gravity of only ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... from foreign markets, the limited size of domestic markets, lack of natural resources, periodic devastation from natural disasters, and inadequate infrastructure. Agriculture provides the economic base with major exports made up of copra and citrus fruit. Manufacturing activities are limited to fruit processing, clothing, and handicrafts. Trade deficits are made up for by remittances from emigrants and by foreign aid, overwhelmingly from New Zealand. In the 1980s ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... thoughts; M'Guire, again, ere he joined our ranks, was on the brink of starving, and now, thank God! receives a decent income. That is as it should be; the patriot must not be diverted from his task by any base consideration; and the distinction between our position and that of the police is ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... As he turned the image over to look at the base he had all he could do not to utter a cry of surprise. For there, rudely scratched on the plain surface of the gold, was what was unmistakably a map. And it was a map showing the location of the ruined temple—the temple and ...
— Tom Swift in the City of Gold, or, Marvelous Adventures Underground • Victor Appleton
... was made at the Madeira Islands, when the ships headed southward, reaching Rio Janeiro late in November. In January, 1839, they halted at Orange Harbor, Terra del Fuego, and made it their base of operations. On the 25th of February Lieutenant Wilkes, in the Porpoise, accompanied by the Sea Gull, started for the South Pole. On the 1st of March considerable ice and snow were encountered and an island sighted, but the men could not land because of the surf. The next day the Ashland ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... the inclining ledge he was traversing. The path was low at the base of one of the loftiest crags. It wound its way upwards in such a fashion that he could see little more than fifty yards ahead of him ere it turned away to the left as it skirted the hill. He was using his last ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... last you are saying what you have felt for a long time! At last I know what you think of me! So be it! I don't retract one jot or tittle of what I say. Mama is a perfectly moral woman, if you actually imagine some base imputation; but she lives for the pleasant, the pretty, the easy. She doesn't love this man's soul—nor care if he has one. Her love for him is a parody of the love that my father taught me to understand and to hold sacred. She loves his love for her; his 'delightful' appearance. She loves his place ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... is a real little heroine, Jamie; but she must not go to prison. We must do something for her. She has been with me for a whole month now, and I never came across a more upright little soul. You surely have not been frightening her with the base idea that we would give ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... glass area of which was divided by sash bars or leaded lines into numerous radiating patterns of more or less grace and beauty. By omitting the entablature of the common horizontal doorhead and breaking the base of the pediment, the round arch of the fanlight was made to fit very nicely within the sloping sides of the pediment, the keystone of the arched casing occupying the upper angle beneath the peak of the gable. Pilasters or engaged columns ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... no more. As his hands came in contact with the brass rail at the back of the chair there came a tremendous blow at the base of the brain, a cold feeling of sudden death, and the crisis was past. When Berrington came to himself again he was lying on a bed in a small room; there was a lamp on a table by his side. He had no ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... not. Some enemies of our holy religion have tried to make people believe that Catholics have to pay the priest in confession for forgiving their sins; but every Catholic, even the youngest child who has been to confession, knows this to be untrue, and a base calumny against our holy religion; even those who assert it do not believe it themselves. The good done in the confessional will never be known in this world. How many persons have been saved from sin, suicide, death, and other evils by the advice and encouragement received in ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead
... who had contracted for the work, procured for the Author of Waverley the stones which composed the gateway, together with the door, and its ponderous fastenings, which he employed in decorating the entrance of his kitchen-court at Abbotsford. "To such base offices may we return." The application of these relies of the Heart of Mid-Lothian to serve as the postern-gate to a court of modern offices, may be justly ridiculed as whimsical; but yet it is not without interest, that we see the ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... of Constantinople is a derivative of the Buondelmontius series, which dates from 1420, and forms the base of all known maps prior to the Conquest. Buondelmontius' map of Constantinople has been published from several MSS., varying considerably in legend and other details:[1] the best account of these publications ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... journeyed for about two hours, and the sun was just setting when we entered a region infinitely more dreary than any yet seen. It was a species of tableland, near the summit of an almost inaccessible hill, densely wooded from base to pinnacle, and interspersed with huge crags that appeared to lie loosely upon the soil, and in many cases were prevented from precipitating themselves into the valleys below merely by the support of the trees against which they reclined. Deep ravines, in various directions, gave ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... confusion of men and purposes fluttered that strange flag, the stars and stripes, that meant at once the noblest thing in life, and the least noble, that is to say, Liberty on the one hand, and on the other the base jealousy the individual self-seeker feels towards the common purpose of ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... defied the whole world. I could have made my own terms, for it was near dinner time and the family must eat; but, alas for the treachery of the human heart! Frank betrayed me. He climbed in at the window, unlocked the door, and delivered me up to the foe. Nay, he even defended the base act, and helped bear the struggling culprit to imprisonment. That nearly broke my heart, for I believed he would stand by me as staunchly as I always stood by him. It was a sad blow, and I couldn't love or trust him any more. Peanuts and candy, ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... After all, it might be a boy; the chances were equal. The Squire would not listen to any one else at all; so as the time went on his idea was more firmly fixed than ever. His arrangements were made on the base that he would have a son. The name was of course decided. Stephen had been the name of all the Squires of Normanstand for ages—as far back as the records went; and Stephen the new ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... broadsword. Besides two culverins mounted on the less precipitous side of the hill—which was the way we came—they had smaller firearms in galore on the sconce, and many kegs of powder disposed in a recess or magazine at the base of the tower. To the east of the tower itself, and within the wall of the fort (where now is but an old haw-tree), was a governor's house perched on the sheer lip of the hill, so that, looking out at its ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... battle, ditch'd, and wall'd with turf; Which gave advantage to an ancient soldier,— An honest one, I warrant; who deserv'd So long a breeding as his white beard came to, In doing this for 's country: athwart the lane, He, with two striplings,—lads more like to run The country base than to commit such slaughter; With faces fit for masks, or rather fairer Than those for preservation cas'd or shame,— Made good the passage; cried to those that fled, Our Britain's harts die flying, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... hungry? When the index of shadow points out from the base of old Sentinel Rock and touches that column of descending spray they call Yosemite, I go to dinner. "The Fall of the Yosemite"—what a dream it is. A dream of the lotus-eaters, and an aspiration of the Ideal in Nature. You can not realize it; and yet, you will never forget ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... having been established there, it was for a long time the centre of the Roman dominion in Campania, and the seat of the quaestor for southern Italy even down to the days of Tacitus.[1] It was an important base in the war against Hannibal, and at last refused further contributions for the war. Before 184 more settlers were sent there. After the Social War it became a municipium. The fertility of its territory and its manufacture of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... precipitous island out of the sea of forest that lay about its base; and above the mighty rock-walls that seemed to rise sheer from the surrounding plain at least a dozen peaks towered into the sky, two of their summits covered with eternal snow, and shining like points of rosy fire in the almost ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... to the days of confusion and misery which Fra Girolamo Savonarola, the Dominican of Florence, daily prophesied were in store for the Church. Ascanio Sforza was the first to reap the reward of his base compliance. The new Pope loaded him with favours, and openly acknowledged his indebtedness both to him and Lodovico, while at Milan the event was hailed with public rejoicings, and joy-bells and solemn processions celebrated the accession of this pontiff, who was destined ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... engagements. Let it not be said that you turned renegades to a noble cause. Some of you have sisters and parents for whom you would be ready to fight. Are you then acting like brave men by turning against your officers? I will not believe that you are so base and worthless. Now, lads, let me see who will stand by us. Those who would keep to their pledges come over to starboard, while the rest stand on the ...
— The Boy who sailed with Blake • W.H.G. Kingston
... Slone, as he gazed hard at Creech. The fellow had told that rationally enough. Slone wondered if Bostil could have been so base. No! and yet—when it came to horses ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... cast iron and entirely hollow, consists of two uprights, B, connected at their upper part by a sort of cap, B, which is cast in a piece with the two cylinders, C and c. The whole rests upon a base, B squared, which is itself bolted ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... peculiar, rather vindictive roar, rose up in long, quivering points; but it soon sank down again and ran on as before, with a slight hiss and crackle. I even noticed, more than once, an oak-bush, with dry hanging leaves, hemmed in all round and yet untouched, except for a slight singeing at its base. I must own I could not understand why the dry leaves were not burned. Kondrat explained to me that it was owing to the fact that the fire was overground, 'that's to say, not angry.' 'But it's fire all the same,' I protested. 'Overground fire,' repeated Kondrat. However, overground as it was, ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... man up was a heavy hitter named Durrick. He had one strike and two balls called, and then sent a low one to left field which gave him first base with ease. ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... deep base voice of Mrs. Ridge in her favourite phrase: "Well, I don't think, Miss Annett. You won't get over me," and Miss Annett's mildly submissive, "I should think not ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... rapidly upon the bridge without heeding the vidette's challenge—he, taking them to be the enemy, shot both barrels of his gun at them and fled to alarm the other videttes and his comrades at the base. The whole party became so alarmed by his representation of the immense number and headlong advance of the enemy, that, without stopping to fight or reconnoiter, they all came in a hand-gallop to camp. The ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... ma'am, not 'im!" piped the Old Un from the doorway, "it ain't the pore lad's fault. It's Joe, blame it all on to Joe—Joe's got a bad 'eart, ma'am, a black, base-'earted perisher is Joe—so no jam for Joe, ma'am, an' only one ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... different points of view: A classification may be based on the kind of material, as memory for concrete things, the actual objects of experience, on the one hand, and memory for abstract material, such as names of things, their attributes and relations, on the other. Again, we can base a classification on the type of ideation to which the material appeals, as auditory memory, visual memory, motor memory. We can also base a classification on the principle of meaning. This principle of classification would give us at least three classes: memory for ideas as expressed ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... an opinion, entitled to more than a passing consideration: 'Perhaps strong circumstantial evidence in cases of crime, committed for the most part in secret, is the most satisfactory of any from whence to draw the conclusion of guilt; for men may be seduced to perjury, by many base motives; but it can scarcely happen that many circumstances, especially if they be such over which the accuser could have no control, forming altogether the links of a transaction, should all unfortunately concur to fix the presumption ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... in the Revue Philosophique, from the pen of the editor, M. Th. Ribot. (See especially the Revue of May, 1880, pp. 516, et seq.) M. Ribot speaks of the modification of particular nerve-elements as "the static base" of memory, and of the formation of nerve-connections by means of which the modified element may be re-excited to activity as "the dynamic ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... astonishing eagerness at every the most trifling show of such opinions in their favor. Next, and what appears to me to be full as important, it shows that they are willing publicly to countenance, and even to adopt, every factious conspiracy that can be formed in this nation, however low and base in itself, in order to excite in the most miserable wretches here an idea of their own sovereign importance, and to encourage them to look up to France, whenever they may be matured into something of more force, for assistance in the subversion of their domestic government. This address of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... is of a pure white, with black hill, logs, and feet. A slight tinge of brownish red is found on some individuals on the crown of the head, and a small patch of orange-yellow extends from the angles of the mouth to the eye. On the base of the bill is a fleshy tubercle or knob, and the upper mandible is curved ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... aspires to that time when freed from the mastership of another, he may become maister of himselfe: pushing onward (as much as in him lies) his age with his shoulder, that soone he may enioy his hoped libertie. In short, he desires nothing more then the ende of this base age, and the beginning of his youth. And what else I pray you is the beginning of youth, but the death of infancy? the beginning of manhood, but the death of youth? the beginning of to morow, but the death of to day? In this sort then desires he his death, and iudgeth his life miserable: ...
— A Discourse of Life and Death, by Mornay; and Antonius by Garnier • Philippe de Mornay
... of Ferry's divinations, the brilliant celerity with which he followed them out, the kindness of his care; Quinn's care of us was paternal, Ferry's was brotherly and motherly. We loved Quinn for the hate and scorn that overflowed from his very gaze upon everything false or base. But we loved Ferry for loving each and every one of us beyond his desert, and for a love which went farther yet, we fancied, when it lived and kept its health in every insalubrious atmosphere, from the sulphurous breath of old Dismukes to the ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... patient—to sacrifice ourselves freely. The survival of the fittest! Why, Samuel, the very idea is a denial of spirituality—what are we that we should call ourselves fit? To think that is to be exposed to all the base passions of the human heart—to greed and jealousy and hate! Such doctrines are the cause of all the wickedness, of all the materialism of our time—of crime and murder and war! My boy, do you read that Jesus went about, worrying about His own survival, and robbing ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... out his foot. Across the instep and at the base of the toes ran two rows of tiny round punctures from which the blood was oozing. ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... the base betrayal of the party to the Mexicans by one of their members named LEWIS, gives us a picture of Mexican duplicity most vivid and striking: but it is only the prelude to cruelties more barbarous and revolting than have recently stained the acts of any but the most savage and uncultivated ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... Perrault, while they explain all the parts and proportions of a pillar. They talk of the cornice, and frieze, and base, and entablature, and shaft, and architrave; and give the description and position of each of these members. But should you ask the description and position of its beauty, they would readily reply, that the beauty is not in any of the parts or ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... themselves and to the anonymous craving of humanity than to think of him as dependent upon the historic evidence as to the personality of Jesus. The soul requires something more certain than historic evidence upon which to base its faith. It requires something closer and more certain even than the divine "logoi" attributed to the historic Jesus. It requires a living and a personal soul for ever present to the depths of its own nature. It requires ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... Birney, he published The Philanthropist, a red-hot anti-slavery sheet. During his first year in this enterprize his office was twice attacked by a mob, and in one of their raids the office was gutted and the press thrown into the river. These lively scenes induced a change of base and settled the good Doctor in ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... after the retreating enemy along the direct line to Richmond, now more than ever before, seemed the natural scheme. But to this McClellan still remained unalterably opposed. In the letter of February 3 he had said: "The worst coming to the worst, we can take Fort Monroe as a base and operate with complete security, although with less celerity and brilliancy of results, up the Peninsula." This route, low as he had then placed it in order of desirability, he now adopted as the best resource, or rather as the only measure; and his judgment was ratified ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... ceased: then godlike Hector answer'd kind, (His various plumage sporting in the wind): That post, and all the rest, shall be my care; But shall I then forsake the unfinish'd war? How would the Trojans brand great Hector's name, And one base action sully all my fame, Acquired by wounds and battles bravely fought! Oh! how my soul abhors so mean a thought! Long have I learn'd to slight this fleeting breath, And view with cheerful eyes approaching death. 10 The inexorable ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... great "rocking-stone." The immense rock, weighing many tons, was poised on a tiny base, and it almost seemed as if Rosy Posy might push it over, ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells
... which Archbishop Whately was chairman, called attention to the subject of transportation. It was the opinion of the committee (1836), that to send the peasantry of Ireland to a community so polluted, was base, cruel, and impolitic. The right reverend prelate asserted that statesmen were tolerating a social organisation, destined one day to involve the empire in deep disgrace, and exhibit the awful spectacle of a ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... poor man? At any rate, unless he gave everything away to the poor, he would find it much harder to get to heaven. The needle's eye would be too tight for him. She almost wished he were penniless poor. If one were coming to the base of it, any man was rich who was not ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... all were men of the highest ideals and character. Not one could be accused of double dealing and intentional misrepresentation, like Alexander Pope; not one was intemperate, like Robert Burns or Edgar Allan Poe; not one was dissolute, like Byron; not one uttered anything base, like many a modern novelist ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... the wolf through coulees and over rocky ridges in the foothills, and through a canon at the base of Sombrero Peak. ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... having neither a depression in the centre, nor having any particular partiality to attack either the wrists or the inside of the nose. In modified small-pox each pustule is, as in unprotected small-pox, inflamed at the base; while in chicken-pox there is only very slight redness around each vesicle. The vesicles in chicken-pox are small—much smaller than the ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... on retreating forever, Ohio," he said. "All our supplies are coming from Nashville, and we are getting farther away from our base every day." ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... bloodshed upon the spots where the emblem of Christian love and brotherhood is raised up. A certain lonely hill, which it was my fortune to pass on one occasion, was marked by three decaying crosses set among the stones and thorns at its base. I inquired the reason of their presence there from my servant, a faithful old peon who was a native of the vicinity. "Ah, senor," he replied, crossing himself devoutly as we drew rein and gazed upon the melancholy spot, "three caballeros died here—pasado por ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... been in that man's keeping for more than two years. I would not touch it. 'Twould infect a gentleman, and make of him a rascal just as base." ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... affectionately after her. As she saw from the landing the top of his dark, grey-streaked head she almost screamed with fury. It was in that moment that aversion for him rose in a tumult from her heart. She hated Toby, but for his base cruelty alone. She hated Gaga for his inescapable possessiveness and gentle persecution. It was a horror to Sally in her abnormal condition. She began to run up the next flight of stairs, and tripped upon her skirt. The stumble ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... affirmed that, among all the acts of selfish perfidy which royal ingratitude conceived and executed, there have been few more characteristic and none more base. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... act of turning the key, drew it from the lock, and to Malcolm's orders, threats, and appeals, returned for all answer that he had no time to attend to him, and so left him looking through the bars. Malcolm dashed across the burn, and round the base of the hill on which stood the little windgod blowing his horn, dismounted, unlocked the door in the wall, got Kelpie through, and was in the saddle again before Johnny was halfway from the gate. When the churl saw him, ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... Mills. The presence of the Ninth Regiment, under command of that noted disciplinarian, Colonel Broadcastle, and terribly in earnest, as was evinced by the ball cartridges gleaming in their belts, was sufficient to discourage any further attempts at disorder; the sudden shift of base of the newspapers which had formerly supported the rioters, and now, taking their cue from the policy of the new Governor, counseled immediate surrender; above all, the trial, conviction, and sentence of their moving spirit, ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... in these heretical and treasonable undertakings was one Agnes Simpson, or Samson, called the Wise Wife of Keith, and described by Archbishop Spottiswood, not as one of the base or ignorant class of ordinary witches, but a grave matron, composed and deliberate in her answers, which were all to some purpose. This grave dame, from the terms of her indictment, seems to have been a kind of white witch, affecting ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... balance at their bankers, but no bankers with whom to have a balance. No men are more capable of supporting poverty with content and dignity than the Spaniards of the old school. For none are more perfect gentlemen, or more free from the base modern belief that money makes the man; and I doubt not that a member of the old Cabildo of San Josef in slops was far better company than an average British Philistine ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... theory of development develops itself. Its fundamental postulate is the difference of temperature between the nebulae and the surrounding space. But the fact is that nobody knows what is the temperature of either space or nebulae, nor is anybody likely ever to know enough of either to base any scientific theory upon. Astronomy will never teach men how to make worlds; nor is it of the least consequence that it does not; since we could not make them, ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... a schedule of inferential results which could not be tested by experience, and which were based ultimately on a one-sided and uncritical assumption. It is an uncritical common sense experience that substances are different from qualities and actions, and that the latter inhere in the former. To base the whole of metaphysics on such a tender and fragile experience is, to say the least, building on a weak foundation. It was necessary that the importance of the self-revealing thought must be brought to the forefront, its evidence should be collected and trusted, ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... economic law works rapidly and encounters comparatively few obstructions; and the extension of the line represents the lands outside of this region in which the laws are sluggish in their action. It is as though this base line were a section of a vast surface including both civilized and primitive states. AB represents the smallest population per unit of land of a given quality within the central area, and DC represents the largest, while the ascending line BC shows the gradations of essential density in ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... walls, pointed arches of the doorways, cages of iron bars projecting balcony wise around each square window. And not a soul in sight, not a head looking out from these dwellings, these houses of men, these ancient abodes of hate, of base rivalries, of avarice, of ambitions—these old nests of love, these witnesses of a great romance now past and gone below the horizon. They seemed to return mournfully my wondering glances; they seemed to look at me and say, "What do you here? We have seen other men, heard ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... temple of the god of gods, side by side with the statue of Jupiter, Caesar found his own statue with "Caesar, demi-god," at its base. The captive chiefs disappeared in the Tullianum, and a herald called, "They have lived!" Through the squares jesters circulated, polyglot and obscene; across the Tiber, in an artificial lake, the flotilla of Egypt fought against that of Tyr; in the amphitheatre ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... to compare the invasion to a plague of lice or incessant armies of locusts. The Eastern armies were indeed like insects; in their blind, busy destructiveness, in their black nihilism of personal outlook, in their hateful indifference to individual life and love, in their base belief in mere numbers, in their pessimistic courage and their atheistic patriotism, the riders and raiders of the East are indeed like all the creeping things of the earth. But never before, I think, have Christians called a Turk a locust and meant it as a compliment. ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... (natural order Umbelliferae), a perennial herb with a leafy hollow stem, 2 to 3 ft. high, much divided leaves, whitish beneath, a large sheathing base, and terminal umbels of small white flowers, the outer ones only of which are fertile. The fruit is dark brown, long (3/4 to 1 in.), narrow and beaked. The plant is a native of central and southern Europe, and is found ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... great nor the declivity sharp; but the surface was formed of blocks of ice, like the collections of big stones you sometimes encounter on the sides of mountains near the base; and I had again and again to fetch a compass so as to gain a smaller block down which to drop, till I was close to the vessel, and here the snow had piled and frozen ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... endured, the name which she had created would be handed down from generation to generation. Alas, alas! our ambitions are not always realised in the way we would choose! When one has pined to be in a first team, or to come out head in an examination, it is a trifle saddening to be obliged to base our reputation ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... that the elder prisoner had long been known to be a common utterer of base coin, in which she dealt very largely with those individuals who are agents in London to the manufacturers of the spurious commodity in Birmingham. She had been once or twice before charged with the offence, and therefore she became so notorious ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin |
