"Baseness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hard a penance it deserved not. It might have been refused; but wherefore barb And venom the refusal with contempt? Why dash to earth and crush with heaviest scorn The gray-haired man, the faithful veteran? Why to the baseness of his parentage Refer him with such cruel roughness, only Because he had a weak hour and forgot himself? But nature gives a sting e'en to the worm Which wanton power treads on ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... instance. Amidst the terrors of the Judgment-hall he thrice denied his Lord. The evangelists make no attempt to shield him from adverse criticism; on the other hand, they mention in detail every circumstance that enhances the baseness of his behaviour. But they are equally careful to dwell also upon the reality of his repentance. John, in a passage of marvellous beauty, relates how in a saner mood, on the shore of the sea of Galilee, he thrice confessed his Lord—confessed Him with such glowing fervour, that he was there and then ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... on your guiltier head Shall our intolerable self-disdain Wreak suddenly its anger and its pain; For manifest in that disastrous light We shall discern the right And do it, tardily.—O ye who lead, Take heed! Blindness we may forgive, but baseness we will smite. ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... him, hut he is calm. He cannot stoop even to pray. He has deserted his Maker, and it would be baseness now to ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... poetry must be that which expresses not only the richest but the healthiest nature. Disease means an absence or a want of balance of certain faculties, and therefore leads to false reasoning or emotional discord. The defect of character betrays itself in some erroneous mode of thought or baseness of sentiment. And since morality means obedience to those rules which are most essential to the spiritual health, vicious feeling indicates some morbid tendency, and is so far destructive of the poetical faculty. An immoral sentiment is the sign either ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... you, sir. I consider that to recommend yourself to your highly respectable uncle, you have deliberately set yourself to blacken my character, which may bear comparison with your own, let me tell you. No words can do justice to such baseness as that!' ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... indignation unmoved, and answered: "This foolish rage proves that you and Cambyses have the same blood in your veins. It would become you much better to repent of your crimes, and beg your old friend's forgiveness, instead of adding ingratitude to the unheard-of baseness of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... was, it is not, perhaps, judging him too mildly to say that, had he succeeded in obtaining Evelyn's hand and fortune, he would have shrunk from the baseness he now meditated. To step coldly into the very post of which he, and he alone, had been the cause of depriving his earliest patron and nearest relative; to profit by the betrayal of his own party; to damn himself eternally in the eyes of his ancient friends; to pass down the stream of history ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... appreciative of men. His largeness of views and generosity of spirit were such that he seemed incapable of personal resentment. He was once exhorted to visit moral indignation upon some men who had wronged him deeply. Fully appreciating the baseness of their conduct, he said he would try, but added: 'I am afraid some one ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... are thus miserably abject and contemptible. Thou only art true! thou only art noble! thou wantest no glory for selfishness! thou doest, thou art, what thou requirest of thy children! I know it, for I see it in Jesus, who casts the contempt of obedience upon the baseness of pride, who cares only for thee and for us, never thinking of himself save as a gift to give us! O lovely, perfect Christ! with my very life I worship thee! Oh, pray, Christ! make me and my brother strong to be the very thing ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... you to assure M. —— of my respect, and that it was only on one packet for him that I put my name, when I thought to have sent it by a friend. The baseness of the post-office opening it surprises me. No other letter for him has since passed through my hands. If any others come to me for him, I shall send them under cover ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... the wickedness and baseness of the contrivance. They first, in order to keep the whole family in terror, accuse the whole family; then, having possessed themselves of the treasures of the Begums upon another pretence, they endeavor to fix upon them that improbable ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... seat of war? The answer is easy: New England is not infested with Tories, and we are. I have been tender in raising the cry against these men, and used numberless arguments to show them their danger, but it will not do to sacrifice a world either to their folly or their baseness. The period is now arrived, in which either they or we must change our sentiments, or one or both must fall. And what is a Tory? Good God! what is he? I should not be afraid to go with a hundred Whigs against a thousand Tories, were they to attempt to get into arms. Every ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... against this retreat before the hated Infame. At length his opinion came round to D'Alembert's reiterated assertions of the shame and baseness of men of letters subjecting themselves to the humiliating yoke of ministers, priests, and police. Voltaire wrote to Diderot, protesting that before all things it was necessary to present a firm front to the foe; it would be atrocious weakness to continue the work ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... have called him to account for it; but their contriving, and the king's consenting to so bloody a purpose, is methinks such a stain upon them, as can never be wiped off; and had that nobleman and the ship's crew perished, they would have added actual murther, to concerted baseness. ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... could hardly bring her mind to believe that he would actually put in practice such a piece of villany as should cost Aphiz his life. Knowing as much as she did of his imperious and stern habits, she did not believe him capable of such cold-blooded baseness. But no sooner had the officers, sent to execute his sentence against the innocent mountaineer, returned and announced the task as performed, than Komel was summoned to the presence of the ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... Deiphobus replied, "Thy debt is rendered; thou hast dealt aright. Fate, and the baseness of a Spartan bride Wrought this; behold the tokens of her spite. Thou know'st—too well must thou recall—that night Passed in vain pleasure and delusive joy, What time the fierce Steed, with a bound of might, Big with armed warriors, eager to destroy, Leaped ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... I desire, for your own good." "Mother," replied Abou Hassan, "I am persuaded of the truth of what you say, but shall be more certain of a fact which concerns me so nearly, when I shall have informed myself fully of their baseness and insensibility." Abou Hassan went immediately to his friends, whom he found at home; represented to them the great need he was in, and begged of them to assist him. He promised to give bonds to pay them the money they might lend ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... to such burthens. This country will be made the field of bloody contention till it gain that independence for which nature formed it. It is, therefore, injustice and cruelty to our offspring, and would stamp us with the character of baseness and cowardice, to leave the salvation of this country to be worked out by them with ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... inviting a very distinguished lady, also an American, (whose Thursday evening receptions we well know, attended by some of the most illustrious French and foreign residents in the metropolis,) to accompany him on a tour of inspection to the Gobelins, and had afterwards been guilty of the unexampled baseness of leaving the coupe he had employed standing, unpaid, at the door of a certain house in the Rue Racine, whilst he escaped by a private passage into the Rue de la Harpe, and so forth, and so forth. I saw it all. I blushed, I shuddered at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... inconsistently enough, to the last philosophers of Greece. His avarice was more clearly proved and more sensibly felt. If he were swayed by gifts in the administration of justice, the example of Bacon will again occur: nor can the merit of Tribonian atone for his baseness, if he degraded the sanctity of his profession; and if laws were every day enacted, modified, or repealed, for the base consideration of his private emolument. In the sedition of Constantinople his removal ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... musicians by their impalpable, mysterious tone-art can come nearest to conveying—the earthly beauty that has been purged of all grosser particles of dross in the white fires of the Divine Love. She was not altogether perfect, or one could not have loved her so. Her scorn of any baseness was bitterly scathing; the point of her sarcasm was keen as any thrusting blade of tempered steel; her will was to be obeyed, and was obeyed as sovereign law, else woe betide the disobedient. Also, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... the baseness of Rome under the Caesars, it was equalled by the corruption in France in the reign of Louis Philippe. Nothing like it had ever been witnessed in history. The thirst for gold having obtained possession of minds agitated by impure desires, society terminated ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... speaks of one or two real feelings, such as resentment against Othello, and he mentions one or two real causes of these feelings. But these are not enough for him. Along with them, or alone, there come into his head, only to leave it again, ideas and suspicions, the creations of his own baseness or uneasiness, some old, some new, caressed for a moment to feed his purpose and give it a reasonable look, but never really believed in, and never the main forces which are determining his action. In fact, I ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... Sheelah—you spoke so loud I could not help it. They are as safe with me as with yourself—but don't speak so loud another time, if you are talking secrets; and whatever you do, never suspect me of listening—I am incapable of that, or any other baseness." ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... both sides of the question. Oh! don't tell me of a worm selling his birthright for a mess of pottage: I never read of such worms in Buffon, or even in Pliny. But if they do exist in the human form, the baseness consists in the sale, not in the quid pro quo. A mess of pottage in itself is a very good thing—I should say, a very respectable thing; and no exchange can take away from it that character. Still, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various
... unpunished? Has virtue ever failed of its reward? Your novelist is of all autocrats the most zealous of right and wrong. Villain may through two-thirds of his career enjoy his wicked pleasures, exceedingly prosper despite his baseness; but ever above him the cold eye of his judge keeps watch, and in the end he is apportioned the most horrible deserts that any could wish. Virtue may by the gods be hounded and harried till the reader's heart is wrung. But spare your ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... creature would do with the cash; that he would hasten to 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 ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... there one being, stubborn as the rock to misfortune, whom kindness does not affect? For my part, kindness seems to me to come with a double grace and tenderness from the old; it seems in them the hoarded and long purified benevolence of years; as if it had survived and conquered the baseness and selfishness of the ordeal it had passed; as if the winds, which had broken the form, had swept in vain across the heart, and the frosts which had chilled the blood and whitened the thin locks had possessed no power over the warm tide of ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... cruelty, malice. And all these disgraceful characteristics must not merely become universally prevalent: they must also become universally esteemed, and be raised from the category of the most shameful kinds of baseness to that of 'virtues.' As little as it is possible to conceive of a 'humane' cannibal or of an exploiter under the influence of real philanthropy, so little is it possible to think of a magnanimous and—in the former sense—virtuous exploiter permanently ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... are so exceedingly tender of Harry Arnold's feelings, notwithstanding his agency in your ruin, that you would not have him reminded of his original baseness—or rather his dishonesty in not paying you in money, according to your understanding with ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... next, in the Commentary of Heracleon[468]: after that, in the pages of Theodotus the Gnostic (A.D. 192)[469]: then, in an exposure by Hippolytus of the tenets of the Naaeseni[470], (a subsection of the same school);—the baseness of its origin at least is undeniable. But inasmuch as the words may be made to bear a loyal interpretation, the heretical construction of St. John i. 3 was endured by the Church for full 200 years. Clemens Alex, is observed thrice to adopt it[471]: Origen[472] and Eusebius[473] ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... no less importance than Horace who called Cleopatra "non humilis mulier"—a woman capable of no baseness. But the phrase gains its greatest importance from the fact that it adorns the hymn which the poet dedicated to Octavianus and his victory over Antony and Cleopatra. It was a bold act, in such an ode, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... (as Mr. Orage wrote with something like splendid common sense the other day) there is such a lot to do and so few people who will do it. So I will devote this article to considering one case of the astounding baseness to which ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... "That it was reason to yield to him that commanded thirty legions." These and the like, applications, and stooping to points of necessity and convenience, cannot be disallowed; for though they may have some outward baseness, yet in a judgment truly made they are to be accounted submissions to the occasion ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... She saw him there, bowed under his burden, gloomy and wroth and sick with himself because the man in him despised the coward. Men of his stamp were seldom or never cowards. Their lives did not breed cowardice or baseness. Joan knew the burning in her breast—that thing which inflamed and swept through her like a wind of fire—was hate. Yet her heart held a grain of pity for him. She measured his forbearance, his struggle, against the monstrous cruelty and passion engendered by a wild life among wild ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... 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 ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... present civil incapacities were removed? Do you fear for your tithes, or your doctrines, or your person, or the English Constitution? Every fear, taken separately, is so glaringly absurd, that no man has the folly or the boldness to state it. Everyone conceals his ignorance, or his baseness, in a stupid general panic, which, when called on, he is utterly incapable of explaining. Whatever you think of the Catholics, there they are—you cannot get rid of them; your alternative is to give them a lawful place for stating their grievances, or an unlawful one: if you do not admit ...
— English Satires • Various
... creature?" asked Markheim. "Do you think I have no more generous aspirations than to sin, and sin, and sin, and, at last, sneak into heaven? My heart rises at the thought. Is this, then, your experience of mankind? or is it because you find me with red hands that you presume such baseness? and is this crime of murder indeed so impious as to dry up the very ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... feverish excitement which my heart understood in its secret sympathy, he had seemed eagerly to court every syllable that could extenuate the darkness of the offence, or even imply some less sordid motive for the baseness of the means. But as the son now closed with the words of unjust reproach and the accents of fierce despair,—closed a defence that showed, in its false pride and its perverted eloquence, so utter a blindness to every principle of that Honor ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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
... to its doom. The familiar proverb which declares that the gods make mad those whom they would destroy has a significance not always considered. For when a man loses his intellectual equilibrium, a baseness of character which never broke through the crust of conventionality may be suddenly revealed; and when a wicked system goes mad, such depths of perfidy are disclosed as few imagined to exist. During the last two years, while our Southern sky has been aglow with the red light of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... deeply repented of the past, George could never summon up courage enough to inform Josiah of his baseness in destroying his trees. A hundred times a day he was on the point of declaring his guilt; but false pride always hindered him from ...
— The Little Quaker - or, the Triumph of Virtue. A Tale for the Instruction of Youth • Susan Moodie
... A wakeful, stinging care, on the other side Scourges and goads no less the cavalier; Lest, if he now from Agramant divide, He should be taxed with baseness or with fear. If many deem it well he should abide, To many and many it would ill appear: Many would say, that oaths unbinding are, Which 'tis ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... which I do admire, Witness the world how worthy to be praised! The light whereof hath kindled heavenly fire In my frail spirit, by her from baseness raised; That being now with her huge brightness dazed, Base thing I can no more endure to view: But, looking still on her, I stand amazed At wondrous sight of so celestial hue. So when my tongue would speak her praises due, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... has hungered forty-eight hours,' muttered Calenus, 'has an appetite even in such a time.' He seized on the food, and devoured it greedily. Nothing could perhaps, be more unnaturally horrid than the selfish baseness of these villains; for there is nothing more loathsome than the valor of avarice. Plunder and sacrilege while the pillars of the world tottered to and fro! What an increase to the terrors of nature can be made by ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... but half a system to say, "Oh Miriam, a case herself, is the link between the two other cases"; that device was to ask for as much help as it gave and to require a good deal more application than it announced on the surface. The sense of a system saves the painter from the baseness of the arbitrary stroke, the touch without its reason, but as payment for that service the process insists on being kept impeccably ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... given her Miss Franks's letter, and poured out to her the story of his treachery and baseness. I may have been wrong, but something in me forbade it, and I preferred ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... 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 the ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... husband, and had endowed him with all kinds of chivalrous attributes, only to find out, as many a woman has done before and since, that her idol had feet of clay. The sudden shock of the discovery of his baseness altered the whole of her life, and from being a bright, trustful girl, she became a cold suspicious woman who disbelieved in everyone ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... sandals which must be put off before entering into the temple of history; and the man of the nineteenth century, if he has taste and information, is merely an historian, and nothing more. The sacred emotion which generous actions produce in us, the indignation stirred in us by baseness and cruelty, are childish emotions which are to disappear in order that we may be free to contemplate vice and virtue with a pleasure always equal, very deep, and very pure. We have not here the aberration of a young and ill-regulated mind, but ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... same thing which the Greeks defended against the Persians, the Romans against the Carthaginians and Egyptians, the Franks against Islam: namely, the chivalrous European way of thinking, which is ever being threatened by brutal force and puling baseness. We stand once more at a watershed of Kultur.—O.A.H. SCHMITZ, D.W.D., ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... or what Lord Shaftesbury wrote about "the frightful waste of human life in the factories, to which the children taken from the workhouses, or simply purchased all over this country to be sold as factory slaves, were consigned"(22)—who can read that without being vividly impressed by the baseness which is possible in man when his greediness is at stake? But it must also be said that all fault for such treatment must not be thrown entirely upon the criminality of human nature. Were not the teachings of men of science, and even of a notable portion of the clergy, up ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... with a splendid retinue; Camiola also appeared, decorated as for her bridal; but instead of bestowing her hand on the recreant, she reproached him in the presence of all with his breach of faith, declared her utter contempt for his baseness; and then freely bestowing on him the sum paid for his ransom, as a gift worthy of his mean soul, she turned away, and dedicated herself and her heart to heaven. In this resolution she remained inflexible, ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... in question to bring, Before her own face is a flattering thing; But we think thy father's baseness,' quoth they, 'Might by thy beauty be clean ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... These, it must be remembered, are not the valets and waiting-women, the Mascarilles and Nerines, but the recognised heroes and heroines who appear as the representatives of good society, and who, at the end of the fifth act, marry and live very happily ever after. The sensuality, baseness, and malice of their natures is unredeemed by any quality of a different description,—by any touch of kindness,—or even by any honest burst of hearty hatred and revenge. We are in a world where there is no humanity, no veracity, no sense of shame,—a world for which any ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... future and more accurate adjustment. Yet let the man look exclusively for awhile on the opposite side of the tapestry; let him brood over any of the facts which seem at war with the above conclusion; on some signal triumph of baseness and malignity; on oppressed virtue, on triumphant vice; on 'the wicked spreading himself like a green bay tree;' and especially on the mournfull and inscrutable mystery of the 'Origin of Evil,' and he feels that 'clouds and darkness' envelope the administration ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... whom His Majesty's favourite boot had been tried in vain. [124] But it was well known that even barbarity was not so sure a way to the heart of James as apostasy. To apostasy, therefore, Perth and Melfort resorted with a certain audacious baseness which no English statesman could hope to emulate. They declared that the papers found in the strong box of Charles the Second had converted them both to the true faith; and they began to confess and to hear mass. [125] How little conscience had to ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... VARIA}{GREEK SMALL LETTER NU},—the one being disgusting, the other horrible; and the pardon and marriage of Angelo not merely baffles the strong indignant claim of justice—(for cruelty, with lust and damnable baseness, cannot be forgiven, because we cannot conceive them as being morally repented of); but it is likewise degrading to the character of woman. Beaumont and Fletcher, who can follow Shakespeare in his errors only, have presented a still worse, because more loathsome and contradictory, ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... view, then, and on what ground can we say that a man is profited by injustice or intemperance or other baseness, which will make him a worse man, even though he acquire money or power ...
— The Republic • Plato
... have never had an honest sentiment; you have not robbed as long as you had enough to satisfy your caprices; that is what is called probity by rich people of your stamp; then followed want of decency, then baseness, crime, and forgery. This is only the first period of your life—it is beautiful and pure compared to ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... objects. As a lawyer, my life has been spent in a prolonged quarrel about money, land, houses; cattle, thieving, slandering, murdering, and other villainy. The little episodes of politics that have given variety to my career have only shown me the baseness of human nature, and the pettiness of human ambition. There are men who will fill these places and do this work, and who want and will choose nothing better. Let them have all the good they can get out of such things. But the minister of the gospel who ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... wit, it will be said; chearfulness and humour of the most characteristic and captivating sort. And is this enough? Is the humour and gaiety of vice so very captivating? Is the wit, characteristic of baseness and every ill quality, capable of attaching the heart and winning the affections? Or does not the apparency of such humour, and the flashes of such wit, by more strongly disclosing the deformity of character, but the more effectually excite our hatred and contempt of the man? And yet ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... self-righteous, and how void of the love of God! They esteem and admire themselves in their works of righteousness, which they suppose to be a fountain of happiness. These works are no sooner exposed to the Sun of Righteousness, than they discover all to be so full of impurity and baseness, that it frets them to the heart. Meanwhile the poor sinner, Magdalene, is pardoned because she loves much, and her faith and love are accepted as righteousness. The inspired Paul, who so well understood these great ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... he had evoked was a rather skillfully contrived piece of baseness; for by the remembrance of his own fete he, for the first time, perceived its inferiority compared with that of Fouquet. Colbert received back again at Vaux what Fouquet had given him at Fontainebleau, and, as a good financier, returned ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... which the French have so much reproached us, have been exceedingly pruned! Braddock is defeated and killed, by a handful of Indians and by the baseness of his own troops, who sacrificed him and his gallant officers. Indeed, there is some suspicion that cowardice was not the motive, but resentment at having been draughted from Irish regiments. Were such a desertion universal, could one but ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... in its very harshness, and it is generally limited to elemental cruelties. Quite different is the battle for the superfluous—for ambition, privilege, inclination, luxury. Never has hunger driven man to such baseness as have envy, avarice, and thirst for pleasure. Egotism grows more maleficent as it becomes more refined. We of these times have seen an increase of hostile feeling among brothers, and our hearts are less ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... not the proper return for the pains I had endured for him, and that now I began to believe what Maestro Antonio da San Gallo said of him. When he tried to turn the matter into jest on this exposure of his baseness, I showed him a letter of exchange for five hundred crowns upon Ricciardo del Bene. Then the rascal was ashamed, and wanted to detain me almost by force; but I laughed at him, and took my leave in the company of a painter whom I found there. This man was called Sguazzella: ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... be inferr'd what little difference ought to be allowed betwixt the Spanish Souldiers, Inhabitants of the West-Indies, and those of Europe. And how little the Soil or Climate hath influenced or caused their Courage to degenerate towards cowardize or baseness of mind. As if the very same Argument, deduced from the nature of that Climate, did not equally militate against the valour of our famous Bucaniers, and represent this to be of as ...
— The Pirates of Panama • A. O. (Alexandre Olivier) Exquemelin
... himself to the pains of contesting the claim, but the resolute queen awakens in him a sense of patriotism and of patriotic obligation by recalling the more nobly inspired attitude of his ancestors, and by convincing him of the baseness of ignoring the physical features which had been bestowed by nature on his domains as a guarantee ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... the ideals that he preaches for 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 as a citizen is his nominal ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... harsh, but Zeno thinks it inevitable; for he considers nothing good except what is honourable. But you do not think it true in the least, Antiochus. For you admit that there are many good things besides honour, and many evils besides baseness; and it is inevitable that the wise man must fear such when coming, and grieve when they have come. But I ask when it was decided by the Old Academy that they were to deny that the mind of the wise man could be agitated or disturbed? They approved of intermediate states, ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... the age For baseness of the spirit scorns, Saint Priest, who every album's page With blunted pencil-point adorns. Another tribune of the ball Hung like a print against the wall, Pink as Palm Sunday cherubim,(84) Motionless, mute, tight-laced and trim. The traveller, bird of passage he, Stiff, overstarched and insolent, ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... It is no Baseness for the Greatest to descend and looke into their owne Estate. Some forbeare it, not upon Negligence alone, But doubting to bring themselves into Melancholy in respect they shall finde it Broken. But wounds cannot be cured without Searching. Hee that ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... against which all her defiance would be as naught. Till this hour, though she had suffered, and when alone had writhed in agony of grief and bitter shame, in his presence she had never flinched. Her strength she knew was greater than his; but his baseness was his weapon, and the depths of that baseness she ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Those in attendance had thought the request a vagary of her delirium, but had complied. And there the poor passing soul had exerted its failing will to restore a broken connection—a golden thread of sentiment between its innocence and a monstrous baseness owning a blind, brutal allegiance ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... Louis XV., 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 ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... paid her, made her unmindful of what she owed Melanthe: the many obligations she had received from her, and the friendship she had for her in return, made her think she ought to acquaint her with the baseness of the count de Bellfleur, in order to prevent an affection which she found she had already too much indulged from influencing her to grant him any farther favours; but this she knew was a very critical ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... deadly, and killing rule of no rule; the consecration of cupidity and braying of folly, and dim stupidity and baseness, in most of the affairs of men. Slop-shirts attainable three-half-pence cheaper by the ruin of ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... come to the Royalists. We shall attempt to speak of them, as we have spoken of their antagonists, with perfect candor. We shall not charge upon a whole party the profligacy and baseness of the horse-boys, gamblers, and bravoes, whom the hope of license and plunder attracted from the dens of Whitefriars to the standard of Charles, and who disgraced their associates by excesses which, under the stricter discipline of the Parliamentary armies, were never tolerated. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... 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 sacred cause ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... the queen revenge to seek; Rage moved her breast, and shame possessed her cheek. E'en Cupid, we are told, assistance gave; What from his aim effectually can save? Fair in person was Gyges to behold; Excuses for her easy 'twere to mould; To show her charms, what baseness could excel? And on th' exposer all her hatred fell. Besides, he was a husband, which is worse With these each sin receives a double curse. What more shall I detail?—the facts are plain: Detested was the king:—beloved ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... baseness already lay at the threshold of his conscience for him ever to hope entirely to redeem himself; but in the first, sudden burst of contrition the man conceived an honest intention to undo, in so far as lay within his power, the evil that his ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the hands of his bold kinsman. He feared one moment, hoped another; now his ambition was flattered, now his sense of honour was alarmed. There was something in Lumley's intrigue to oust the government with which he served that had an appearance of cunning and baseness, of which Lord Saxingham, whose personal character was high, by no means approved. But Vargrave talked him over with consummate address, and when they parted, the earl carried his head two inches higher,—he was preparing himself for his rise ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... first brought to trial. Public curiosity was on the stretch. Nothing else was talked of, and the court on the day of trial was crowded to suffocation. The State Trials report, that Lord Chief Justice Coke "laid open to the jury the baseness and cowardliness of poisoners, who attempt that secretly against which there is no means of preservation or defence for a man's life; and how rare it was to hear of any poisoning in England, so detestable it was to our nation. But the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... 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 and the Prince ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... Rein and determines to attend the Radical meeting. Not finding him at home he goes to the house of his brother Halfdan, where he leaves the copy of the paper. The sick man picks it up, reads an onslaught on himself which in baseness surpasses the attack on Evje, starts up in uncontrollable excitement, and dies of a hemorrhage. The maid, who sees him lying on the floor, cries out into the street for help, and the editor, who chances to pass by, enters. He finds the Radical leader dead, with the ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... make of such a man, wondered Mr. Caryll. If he were equipped with wit enough to apprehend the baseness of his conduct, he would be easily understood and it would be easy to despise him. But Mr. Caryll perceived that he was dealing with one who never probed into the deeps of anything—himself and his own conduct least of all—and that a deplorable lack of perception, of understanding almost, deprived ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... and festive orgies, could not but prove very injurious to habits of study. The youth had imbibed the venal corruption everywhere prevalent. Hence it not seldom happened that Roman scholars conspired to rob their master of his salary and desert his class in a body. Roman vileness and baseness disgusted Augustine even more than Punic insubordination. He therefore took advantage of a request made by the citizens of Milan of Symmachus who was then Prefect of Rome, that he would procure for them a professor of rhetoric. He accepted the proposal; and toward the close of the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... themselves, they have even dared to say, that the Canadians were not capable of distinguishing between the blessings of liberty and the wretchedness of slavery;...but they have been deceived; instead of finding in you a poverty of soul and baseness of spirit, they see with a chagrin, equal to our joy, that you are enlightened, generous, and virtuous; that you will not renounce your own rights, or serve as instruments to deprive your fellow-subjects of theirs. Come ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... to say so—an act of baseness, a crime of some sort, may be the beginning, the first cause, of a man's salvation. It pulls him up, wakes his conscience. Aghast at what he has done, he reflects, repents, reforms. That is a comforting circumstance, ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... that the snow-flakes may give us the baptism of nature! There is no human God at this vast height; they worship Him in the flat world below. Give me your hand and look down! You are not dizzy? One should be free from the baseness of fear, ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... then boldly claim your rights. Arthur Ferris will probably be back in New York City in charge, and Worthington will yield rather than have the world, his beloved daughter, and all society know of his inward baseness. I shall delve further into the old records, under pretense of following up the title to our purchase. Perhaps we may even now unearth ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... speech-making set in, these very men who had been all expressing their profound contempt for the Lord Mayor behind his back, now flattered him to his face in such a shamelessly servile way, with such a meanly complete insensibility to their own baseness, that I did really and literally turn sick. I slipped out into the fresh air, and fumigated myself, after the company I had kept, with a cigar. No, no! it's useless to excuse these things (I could quote dozens of other instances ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... story of utter baseness. From St. Louis to Springvale Mrs. O'Meara's escort was more like a lover than a friend and business director of her affairs. This land was an Osage reservation then. O'Meara's half-section claim was west of here. The home he built was that little stone ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... invention and the fashion. For the invention, that ariseth upon your business, whereof there can be no rules of more certainty, or precepts of better direction given, than conjecture can lay down from the several occasions of men's particular lives and vocations: but sometimes men make baseness of kindness: As "I could not satisfy myself till I had discharged my remembrance, and charged my letters with commendation to you;" or, "My business is no other than to testify my love to you, and ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... Majesty's subjects; as a great and sudden increase in the number of married men occasioning the comparative desertion (for a time) of Taverns, Hotels, Billiard-rooms, and Gaming-Houses, will deprive the Proprietors of their accustomed profits and returns. And in further proof of the depth and baseness of such designs, it may be here observed, that all proprietors of Taverns, Hotels, Billiard-rooms, and Gaming-Houses, are (especially the last) solemnly devoted ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... they know at what price they were secured, for I shall surely, if I live, insist upon your wife and children hearing from my lips what agonies a wife and children, who are as dear to me as yours are to you, have suffered because of your baseness. ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... stirred by the evident baseness of the woman for recollection. Not unfrequently when all the other faculties are numb and failing memory does its offices with the greatest fidelity. The scene at the spring on the way to the Jordan reproduced ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... this letter, he had actually written himself into a sort of persuasion of its truth. When a finely constituted nature wishes to go into baseness, it has first to bribe itself. Evil is never embraced undisguised, as evil, but under some fiction which the mind accepts and with which it has the singular power of blinding itself in the face of daylight. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... its gentle elevation, its large-hearted charity, its quiet satire of folly and baseness, the story is one to win the affection and charm the fancy not only of boys and maidens, but also of grown men and ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... 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
... Delia's baseness the more she inwardly raged against it. She sat in her own room with her feet over the register and munched caramels and nursed her grievance all the afternoon. Delia was miserable. She had tried by every means in her power to win at least a look from the girl, but all her attempts were repelled ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... high treason was forfeiture of estates, with death or banishment to the recusants. Any other law they might have obeyed, and retained their inheritance. This law fixed its iron grapples in the conscience, and made obedience impossible, without a degree of baseness that rendered life intolerable. Hence Protestantism was detested, not so much as a religion, as an ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... are common in Indian life. Distrust exists not among the children of the wilderness, until generated by the conduct of white men. These stories and thousand others, all exemplifying the triumph of virtue and honour over baseness and vice, are every day narrated by the elders, in presence of the young men and children. The evening encampment is a great school of morals, where the Red-skin philosopher embodies in his tales the sacred precepts of virtue. A traveller, could he understand what was said, as he viewed ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... or from little frivolous excuses, or idle and unfounded conjectures, unworthy of beings expected to fill a moral station in life. Yes, O man! often in these solitary journeyings have I exclaimed against the baseness of thy nature, when reflecting on the little paltry considerations which have smothered thy benevolence, and hindered thee from succouring an oppressed brother. And yet, on a further view of things, I have reasoned myself into a kinder ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... Fabricius came to arrange terms for the exchange of prisoners; a man whom Cineas said the Romans especially valued for his virtue and bravery, but who was excessively poor. Pyrrhus, in consequence of this, entertained Fabricius privately, and made him an offer of money, not as a bribe for any act of baseness, but speaking of it as a pledge of friendship and sincerity. As Fabricius refused this, Pyrrhus waited till the next day, when, desirous of making an impression on him, as he had never seen an elephant, he had his largest elephant placed behind Fabricius ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... of these three kingdoms I defy To lure me to the baseness of a lie; And of all lies (be that one poet's boast), The lie that ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... filled his heart at the remembrance of her treachery. The baseness of it all was so appalling. He tried to think if he had ever wronged her; wondered if perhaps she loved someone else, and wished him out of ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... possibility of pain or fear for her, compared to the certain pain and difficulty of that life from which all reality of love is gone: where her earnest, truthful spirit must live in daily contact with baseness,—may even have, through virtue of her relation to Tito, tacitly to concur in treason. She goes back to what, constituted as she is, can be only a daily, lifelong crucifying, and she goes back to it knowing that ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... him a faithful relation of all that had happened. He heard me with great attention, and at the conclusion cried, with a deep sigh—'O Molly! I believe it all.—You must have been betrayed as you tell me; you could not be guilty of such baseness, such cruelty, such ingratitude.' He then—O! it is impossible to describe his behaviour—he exprest such kindness, such tenderness, such concern for the manner in which he had used me—I cannot dwell on this scene—I shall ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... therefore those faculties, by which the foolish part of men's minds is taken, are most potent. Wonderful like is the case of boldness in civil business: what first? boldness; what second and third? boldness. And yet boldness is a child of ignorance and baseness, far inferior to other parts. But nevertheless it doth fascinate, and bind hand and foot, those that are either shallow in judgment, or weak in courage, which are the greatest part; yea and prevaileth with wise men at weak times. Therefore we see it ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... resolution, tell him positively!—that Midwinter knew of the contemplated Fraud, and that he was staying away purposely, so as not to compromise me by his presence. This difficulty smoothed over—or, as I feel it now, this baseness committed—I reverted to myself, and came back again to the truth. One after another I mentioned all the circumstances connected with my private marriage, and with the movements of Armadale and Midwinter, which rendered any discovery of the false personation (through the evidence of other ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... But posterity will do him justice; it will see him, noble, kind, passionate, generous, tender, brave, with an unbounded and unquestioning love for his fellow-men, with a holy and fervid hope in their ultimate virtue and happiness, and an intense and passionate scorn for all baseness and oppression. ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... crimes; let us cast him out and fling him from us to that power which can fittingly condemn. I despise him, and despise his sufferings. His agony will give me no gratification. The anguish that a base nature can suffer is only disgusting to me—he suffers only out of his baseness. To me, and with a thing like that, vengeance is ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... her to the consciousness of the burthen of shame he had brought her. She saw why Owen thought himself past pardon. Speculation on the death of his benefactress! Borrowing on an inheritance that he had been forbidden to expect. Double-dyed deceit and baseness! Yesterday, she had said they were humbled enough. This was not humiliation, it was degradation! It was far too intolerable for standing still and feeling it. Lucilla's impetuous impulses always became her obstinate resolutions, ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as if he were evill himselfe. By Otho, that the fortune of a rash man is Torrenti similis, which rises at an instant, and falles in a moment. By Vitellius, that he that hath no vertue can neuer be happie: for by his own baseness he will loose all, which either fortune, or other mens labours have cast upon him. By Vespasian, that in civill tumults an advised patience, and opportunitie well taken are the onely weapons of advantage. In them all, and in the state of Rome under them thou ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... have no fear that the evil passions of men will ever be buried beyond hope of resurrection. We would not have this war end without signal and bitter retribution, and especially for all who have been guilty of deliberate treachery; for that is a kind of baseness that should be extirpated at any cost. If, in moments of impatience, we have wished for something like the rough kingship of Jackson, cooler judgment has convinced us that the strength of democratic ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... she conceived to be the truth. Her silence puzzled Ralph. He searched his memory for words or deeds that might have made her think badly of him. In his present mood instances came but too quickly, and on top of them this culminating proof of his baseness—that he had asked her to marry him when his reasons for such a ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... scoundrel in the 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." This scene is not fit for picture; it ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... 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 ...
— Miscellaneous Pieces • John Bunyan
... emigrants. The silent stoicism of their conduct, and the pathetic degradation of their appearance, would have touched any thinking creature, but my fellow-passengers danced and jested round them with a truly Cockney baseness. I was ashamed for the thing we call civilisation. We should carry upon our consciences so much, at least, of our forefathers' misconduct as we continue ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... while they rode together down the plain, Their talk was all of training, terms of art, Diet and seeling, jesses, leash and lure. 'She is too noble' he said 'to check at pies, Nor will she rake: there is no baseness in her.' Here when the Queen demanded as by chance 'Know ye the stranger woman?' 'Let her be,' Said Lancelot and unhooded casting off The goodly falcon free; she towered; her bells, Tone under tone, shrilled; and they lifted up Their eager ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... then? Why, why dost thou delay? Why is such baseness bedded in thy heart? Daring and hardihood ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... proceeding in a strain that would have quickly goaded Burrell to some desperate act; for, as the Buccaneer went on, he was lashing his passion with a repetition of the injuries and baseness of his adversary, as a lion lashes himself with his tail to stimulate his bravery; but the Protector demanded if Hugh Dalton knew before whom he stood, and dared to brawl in such presence. Silenced, but not subdued, he ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... know of a more appropriate name—after the baseness that you haven't even tried to hide, in your ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... and sat apparently meditating on the enormous baseness of the man who saved a lady's life and then proposed; and it was not until Mrs. Willoughby had spoken twice that ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... I knew was consumed in this and repeated efforts to wait for the slackening and renewing storm to pass away. In the intervals of calm I still fished, and even descended to what a sportsman considers incredible baseness: I put a "sinker" on my line. It is the practice of the country folk, whose only object is to get fish, to use a good deal of bait, sink the hook to the bottom of the pools, and wait the slow appetite of the summer trout. I tried this also. I might ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the best way to elevate men, to let the Lord have the use of them? However coarse and mean we are by nature, He can refine and elevate us. And any part of our life that is in danger of baseness may be lifted to beauty and blessing by putting it under the Christ. What a change came over this animal in one short day! An ass in the morning, ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... why a freethinker, who by reticence and conformity passes himself off for a believer, should be more leniently judged. The differences between a catholic and a protestant are assuredly not any greater than those between a believer and an unbeliever. We all admit the baseness of dissimulation in the former case. Why is it any less base in ...
— On Compromise • John Morley |
