"Baseness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... blame them. They showed that the crowded city life can bring out human nobleness as well as human baseness; that to be crushed into contact with their fellow-men, forced at least the loftier and tender souls to know their fellow-men, and therefore to care for them, to love them, to die for them. Yes—from one temptation the city life is free, to which the country life is ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... augment one's wealth, as do factory owners and manufacturers; or to profit by the poverty of men to increase one's gains, as merchants do. And everyone taken separately, especially if one's remarks are directed at someone else, not himself, will answer, No! And yet the very man who sees all the baseness of those actions, of his own free will, uncoerced by anyone, often even for no pecuniary profit, but only from childish vanity, for a china cross, a scrap of ribbon, a bit of fringe he is allowed to wear, will enter military ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... uncivilized nations, and the uncivilized customs which disgrace our own colonies, are become so familiar as to be permitted amongst us with impunity, we ourselves must insensibly degenerate to the same degree of baseness with those from whom such bad customs were derived; and may, too soon, have the mortification to see the hateful extremes of tyranny and slavery fostered ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet
... good name is, after the grace of God, mans most precious possession; wealth is mere trash compared with it. You may find people who think otherwise, but the universal sentiment of mankind stigmatizes such baseness and buries it under the weight of its opprobrium. Nor is it impossible that honor be paid where a good character no longer exists; but this is accidental. In the nature of things, reputation is the basis of all honor; if ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... been cruel, Countess, but the cruelest were those in which you attribute the highest motive of my life to the baseness of hypocrisy. I have done many wrongs, broken many oaths, sinned many sins—in the interests of my country—the service of which has been the only aim of my existence. I have been entrusted by the Emperor himself with missions ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... told with the simplicity and directness of obvious truth, are full of terror, of pathos, the shame of human baseness and the glory of human virtue; and though the time is not yet sufficiently distant from the date of their occurrence to give to this record the universal acceptance it deserves, there are few, we think, even ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... had to combat the influence of the Arioi may have exaggerated its baseness. In their unsophisticated minds, unprepared by reading or experience for comparisons, most of them sailing directly from English divinity schools or small bucolic pastorates, the devout preachers thought Sabbatarianism of as much consequence ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... 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 ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... 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 ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... with his chin in his hands, dull, stricken, crushed. He had heard the story of his father's baseness from Frances Cable, and he had been told the true story of Jane; from Rigby he learned of the vile transactions in which his father had dealt. At first, he could scarcely believe his own ears, but in the end lie saw that but—half the truth could ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... whose misery and baseness Hangs on my door; whose hateful whine of woe Breaks in upon my sorrows, and distracts My jarring senses with thy ...
— Jane Shore - A Tragedy • Nicholas Rowe
... Wild, Will think of it Dandelion, Love's oracle Daphne, Glory Dew Plant, A serenade Dianthus, Make haste Dipteracanthus, Fortitude Diplademia, You are too bold Dittany, Pink, Birth Dittany, White, Passion Dock, Patience Dodder of Thyme, Baseness Dogsbane, Falsehood Dogwood, Durability Dragon Plant, Snare Dragonwort, Horror Dried Flax, Usefulness Ebony, Blackness Echites, Be Warned in Time Elder, Zeal Elm, Dignity Endive, Frugality Escholzia, Do Not Refuse ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... 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
... "How good a knight are you, and how ill default do you make in another way! No knight, methinketh, is there in the world that would have refused me save only you. This cometh of your folly, and your outrage, and your baseness of heart! The griffons have not done my will in that they have not slain you or strangled you as you slept, and, so I thought that they would have power to slay you, I would make them come to slay you now. But the devil hath put so much knighthood into you that ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... solely in thought of what is immoral and low, bound in the fetters of impure delights, living the life, whatever it may be, peculiar to the passion of body; and so totally merged in sensuality as to esteem the base pleasant, and the deformed beautiful and fair. But may we not say, that this baseness approaches the soul as an adventitious evil, under the pretext of adventitious beauty; which, with great detriment, renders it impure, and pollutes it with much depravity; so that it neither possesses true life, nor true sense, but is endued with a slender life through its mixture of evil, and ...
— An Essay on the Beautiful - From the Greek of Plotinus • Plotinus
... once reflect that he is one of the most scandalous as well as pernicious lyars; sure he must despise himself to so intolerable a degree, that it would be impossible for him to continue a moment in such a course. And to confess the truth, notwithstanding the baseness of this character, which he hath too well deserved, he hath in his countenance sufficient symptoms of that bona indoles, that sweetness of disposition, which furnishes out a good Christian."—"Ah, master! master!" says the host, "if you had travelled as far as I have, and conversed ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... been thrice defeated by a garrison so contemptible in numbers, and led by a female. To his eternal infamy let it be recorded, that pretending to have been deceived by the terms of capitulation, D'Aulney hanged the brave survivors of the garrison, and even had the baseness and cruelty to parade Madame de la Tour herself on the same scaffold, with the ignominious cord around her neck, ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... served what seemed the voice; and unprofane Have dedicated to melodious ends All of myself that least ignoble was. For though of faulty and of erring walk, I have not suffered aught in me of frail To blur my song; I have not paid the world The evil and the insolent courtesy Of offering it my baseness for a gift. And unto such as think all Art is cold, All music unimpassioned, if it breathe An ardour not of Eros' lips, and glow With fire not caught from Aphrodite's breast, Be it enough to say, that in Man's life Is room for great emotions unbegot Of dalliance and embracement, ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... Amelie," replied the Lady de Tilly; "I know it is hard to bear, but perhaps Le Gardeur did not send that message to you. The men about him are capable of deceiving you to an extent you have no conception of,—you who know so little of the world's baseness." ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... by the monks. What Francis Parkman said of the Roman Catholic Church is true of the monastic institution: "Clearly she is of earth, not of heaven; and her transcendently dramatic life is a type of the good and ill, the baseness and nobleness, the foulness and purity, the love and hate, the pride, passion, truth, falsehood, fierceness, and tenderness, that battle in the restless heart ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... the king, And I, his son, am here to-day atonement fall to bring. Count, ye did a craven business and I call ye COWARD here! Behold, if I await you, think not I come with fear, For Diego Laynez wrought me well set in his own mould, And while I prove my birthright I your baseness shall unfold. Your valor as a crafty blade will not avail ye more, For to my needs I bring a sword and charger trained to war." Thus spake to Count Lozano Spain's champion, the Cid, (Ere long he won the title by achievements which he did) That day he slew ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... not for my sake, but in order to satisfy my people, that they may bear more patiently your operations in Spain. For my part, I approve all you have done in that country. King Charles and his son Ferdinand have abundantly deserved their present fate by their incapacity and baseness, and I do not pity them. But one must comprehend the system of the great Napoleon as clearly and thoroughly as I do, to be able to pass over the great catastrophes which your majesty has caused the world to witness. My people, and, above all, my nobility, have not yet progressed so ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... basest scoundrel, double-eyed, Would pluck an Uncle's whiskers in their pride, What baseness, then, doth such a man disclose Who'd raise a hand ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... forget. We shall be cheerful and happy. You remember: 'Where beauty shines amidst mire and baseness there is only torment'.... You need not ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... II. Of his mother nothing is known. The conjectures of scandal are heightened and perplexed by the fact that he was ennobled when a child, and that, amidst all the denunciations of his overbearing behaviour and insufferable arrogance, he is never reproached with the baseness of his maternal lineage. Legitimated in infancy by an imperial diploma, Antonio was literally a courtier and politician ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... the gods together, he said: "Ye see what the Earth has become through the baseness of men. Once they were deserving of our protection; now they even neglect to ask it. I will destroy them with my thunderbolts and ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... Cholulans. Cortez pretended to believe them, as he was desirous, as long as possible, of keeping up a semblance of friendship with Montezuma; and declared that he was willing to believe that, after the friendly messages and gifts the emperor had sent, he could not be guilty of such baseness and treachery. His anger therefore would be directed chiefly against the Cholulans, who were guilty not only of foul treachery to himself, but of dishonoring the emperor's name by ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... hold our tongues. We took it for granted that Lawless would hold his, and as for my people, they knew nothing, I thought, or if they did, I was sure of them. How the thing got abroad I could not at the time conceive, though now I am well acquainted with the baseness and treachery of the woman I called my friend. The affair was known and talked of every where the next day, and the story was told especially at odious Mrs. Luttridge's, with such exaggerations as drove me almost mad. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... old. I speak to those of you who have condemned me. I am condemned, not for lack of argument, but because I have not chosen to plead after the methods that would have been pleasant and flattering to you, but degrading to me. There are things we may not do to escape death, for baseness is worse than death, and swifter. Death has overtaken me, who am old, but baseness my accusers, who are strong. Truth condemns them, as you have condemned me, and each of us abides sentence, And for you who have condemned me there will be a penalty swift and ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... descend, he says, from ugly forms to ugly conduct, and from ugly conduct to ugly principles, till we finally arrive at the absolute ugliness which is vulgarity. This identification of insensibility to beauty with moral baseness was something of a paradox even in Greece, and does not fit the English character at all. Our towns are ugly enough; our public buildings rouse no enthusiasm; and many of our monuments and stained glass windows seem to shout for a friendly Zeppelin ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... to the Christians than to treachery and their own miserable feuds. A body of cavalry, which El Zagal despatched from Guadix to throw succors into the beleaguered city, was encountered and cut to pieces by a superior force of the young king Abdallah, who consummated his baseness by sending an embassy to the Christian camp, charged with a present of Arabian horses sumptuously caparisoned to Ferdinand, and of costly silks and Oriental perfumes to the queen; at the same time complimenting them on their successes, and soliciting the continuance of their friendly dispositions ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... charge Cecil, or the mass of Englishmen who conformed with him in turn to the religion of Henry, of Edward, of Mary, and of Elizabeth, with baseness or hypocrisy. They followed the accepted doctrine of the time—that every realm, through its rulers, had the sole right of determining what should be the form of religion within its bounds. What the Marian persecution was gradually ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... event. Supposing, for instance, I heard a report of the death of some public man; it would not startle me, even if I did not at once credit it, for all men must die. Did I read of any great feat of valour, I should believe it, if imputed to Alexander or Coeur de Lion. Did I hear of any act of baseness, I should disbelieve it, if imputed to a friend whom I knew and loved. And so in like manner were a miracle reported to me as wrought by a Member of Parliament, or a Bishop of the Establishment, or a Wesleyan preacher, I should repudiate the notion: were it referred to a saint, ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... off, so far as concerned notice given, with a House that shall be nameless,—for the question on which I took my departing stand was a fixed charge for waiters, and no House as commits itself to that eminently Un-English act of more than foolishness and baseness shall be advertised by me,—I repeat, at a momentous crisis, when I was off with a House too mean for mention, and not yet on with that to which I have ever since had the honour of being attached in the capacity of Head, {1} I was casting about what to do next. Then it were that proposals ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... sent by the Duke of Parma were so insulted by the bestialities of the French commander as to go back to their master without negotiating, and no decent man would consent to return. A starving little abbe volunteered for the service, and, possessing a special aptitude for baseness, succeeded in his mission. Thus Alberoni, afterward Cardinal and Prime Minister of Spain, got his foot on the first rung of the ladder of fame. The details of the story are too gross to repeat, and the Memoirs ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... the English, besides an annual tribute of 48,000l. The country was wholly exhausted both of money and spirit. The Danes in England, under the protection of the foreign Danes, committed a thousand insolencies; and so infatuated with stupidity and baseness were the English at this time, that they employed hardly any other soldiers ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... rebuke, and when I informed him that Mr. Flanders had attempted to debauch me, he foamed with rage, and loaded the reverend libertine with epithets which were decidedly uncomplimentary. Still, he doubted the story of my mother's crime—he could not believe her to be guilty of such baseness; but he assured me that he should satisfy himself of her innocence or guilt, then left me, after having made me promise not to expose him in reference to his affair with the servant girl ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... speaking of anything that Edmonson did not like; his feelings were so strong that he seemed always ready to be vindictive. Her feeling toward him for this intimation had been anger which had cooled into contempt of a nature like his, ready to find baseness everywhere. The suggestion was no reproach to her, for she had had no thoughts of disloyalty to Katie. As she sat there still seeming to listen, suddenly, it seemed to her, for she could not trace its coming, a picture rose before her with the vividness of reality. She ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... you give power to Marylebone, they will fawn on the householders of Marylebone. If you leave power to Gatton, they will fawn on the proprietor of Gatton. I can see no reason for believing that their baseness will be more mischievous in the former case than in ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 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 to ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Loyalty died away into servility. We look in vain among the leading politicians of either side for steadiness of principle, or even for that vulgar fidelity to party which, in our time, it is esteemed infamous to violate. The inconsistency, perfidy, and baseness, which the leaders constantly practised, which their followers defended, and which the great body of the people regarded, as it seems, with little disapprobation, appear in the present age almost incredible. In the age of Charles the First, they would, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... vulgarized by the repetition of her ancient tales of war and overthrow on a scale of such apparent magnitude, but with no glamour of distance to hide the baseness of the agencies by which the destinies of Europe were shaped anew. This was an occasion that tried the hearts of men; it was not easy to remain through all those years at once undazzled and untempted, and never in the blackest hour to despair of ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... take care to avoid his error. It will be sufficient to say that when he had finished Richard stood accused not only of having stolen two thousand pounds from John Trevethick, but of having compassed that crime under circumstances of peculiar baseness. He had taken advantage of his superior education, manners, and appearance, to impose himself upon the honest Cornishman as the legitimate son of his landlord, and secured within that humble home a footing of familiarity, only the better to compass a scheme of villainy, which must ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... Washington. His voice, deeply musical, and uncommonly sweet, enhanced the admiration with which one viewed his matchless delivery, in which was perfect grace, and entire harmony with the expressions which fell from his lips. How mournful a sight, to see one so nobly gifted, leading a life of baseness and vice, devoting his immortal qualities to the vilest selfishness, and to the betrayal of his country and of liberty! Should the descendant of an oppressed and persecuted race take part with oppressors? ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... est via, 'tis hard for a poor man to [2295] rise, haud facile emergunt, quorum virtutibus obstat res angusta domi. [2296]"The wisdom of the poor is despised, and his words are not heard." Eccles. vi. 19. His works are rejected, contemned, for the baseness and obscurity of the author, though laudable and good in themselves, they ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... dyery standing before him. Quoth the door-keeper to him, "Is no this thy comrade whom thou robbedst of his silvers and leftest with me sick in the closet doing such and such by him?" And the workmen said to him, "Is not this he whom thou badest us seize and beat?" Therewith Abu Kir's baseness was made manifest to the King and he was certified that he merited torture yet sorer than the torments of Munkar and Nakr.[FN228] So he said to his guards, "Take him and parade him about the city and the markets;"—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... Roman history which the Tower of London has done in our own. Here, by the orders of Cicero, were strangled Lentulus, Cethegus, and one or two more of the accomplices of Catiline, in his famous conspiracy. Here was murdered, under circumstances of great baseness, Vercingetorix, the young and gallant chief of the Gauls, whose bravery called forth the highest qualities of Julius Caesar's military genius, and who, when success abandoned his arms, boldly gave himself ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... applied, the indignant and mortified priest concealed his resentment for a moment, and took the undaunted boy into the house, where, having him secure, he presented him to others, whose baseness and cruelty being equal to his own, they stripped him to the skin, and applied their scourges to so violent a degree, that, fainting beneath the stripes inflicted on his tender frame, and covered with the blood that flowed from them, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... indeed, no; she was still threatening Paris. Once there, she would not lack for reprisals. To have played on her pity! To have made a lure of her tender concern for the unfortunate! Never would she forgive such baseness. And only a little while ago she had been as happy as the nightingale to which they compared her. Never had she wronged any one; she had been kindness and thoughtfulness to all with whom she had come in contact. But from now on!... Her fingers tightened round the bars. She might ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... undoubtedly mistaken in supposing that by "baseness" is meant "self-love" here assigned as the motive of all human actions. Shakespeare meant only to observe, that a minute analysis of life at once destroys that splendour which dazzles the imagination. Whatever grandeur can display, or luxury enjoy, is procured by "baseness", by offices ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... love; in its secret, inscrutable, unyielding loyalty to that promise given to a dead man; in the nobility of its refusal to shine brighter in its faith and truth and chivalry by the revelation of that other man's mean baseness; in its almost paternal solicitude; in its agony of love for her, insensible and careless; in the sick despair that had given up and left off hoping: even in the pride that had—or so it seemed to her—asserted itself ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... intelligence directing very inferior abilities, just as our good friend the dog is an excellent shepherd to his silly, docile flock. In her, the most ordinary ideas are so logically dovetailed that one is tempted to accept them even when one hesitates to approve them. Her mind must be free from baseness, for throughout our conversation she made no effort to please me. Would it not have needed a very quick discernment, a very uncommon shrewdness to know so soon that she would ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... not. Still, her spirit was darkened with scorn and indignation at the act of dishonor which she felt her lover had committed, just as the atmosphere is by a tempest. In fact, she detested what she considered the baseness and treachery of the vote; but could not of a sudden change a love so strong, so trusting, and so pure as hers, into the passions of enmity and hatred. No sooner, however, had her father named Hycy Burke with such approval, than the storm within her directed itself against him, and ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... There be some sports are painful; and their labour Delight in them sets off; some kinds of baseness Are nobly undergone; and most poor matters Point to rich ends. This my mean task Would be as heavy to me, as odious; but The mistress, which I serve, quickens what's dead, And makes my labours pleasures: O! she ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 47, Saturday, September 21, 1850 • Various
... natural man was exalted on this account. Some of the old Greek philosophers, too, found much in nature that was divine. Christianity took a different view of the matter—it exalted the spirit, and emphasised the baseness of the material. The growth of the sciences made man again a mere tool of laws and methods, but it considered matter as superior to mind, mind being entirely dependent upon impressions received from matter. The question ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones
... these do not inspire and direct them. The stream is as pure as it is mighty, fed by ten thousand springs in the bounty of untainted nature; any augmentation from the kennels and sewers of guilt and baseness may clog, but cannot strengthen it.—It is not from any thought that I am communicating new information, that I have dwelt thus long upon this subject, but to recall to the reader his own knowledge, and to re-infuse into that knowledge a breath and life of appropriate ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... "I might have the baseness to abandon that poor old man whose life I am; but, my friend, those other feeble creatures there before us, Madeleine and Jacques, would remain with their father. Do you think, I ask you do you think they would be alive in three months under the insane dominion of ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... been, the knowledge remained with him that she herself had suspected and convicted him. In all that mattered their friendship had ended there. Distrust was unbearable between friends. It was a flaw in his little lady that she could believe him capable of baseness.... But not an unforgivable flaw, it would seem, since every hour that he had spent in her presence had become roses and music in his memory, and the thought that he would see her no more stabbed ceaselessly ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... threw off the damp cloth, and revealed the clay model of a head. The face was unmistakable, but it expressed every baseness—cunning, arrogance, ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... wherefore base? When my dimensions are as well compact, My mind as generous and my shape as true, As honest madam's issue? Why brand they us With base? with baseness? with bastardy? base, base? Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land; Our father's love is to the bastard Edmund As to the legitimate: fine ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... collusion between the parties. The proof of this you will find in the enclosed paper, which will be sworn to, in due legal form, whenever it is necessary. Even when you see them, you will scarcely believe these 'damning proofs' of Wharton's baseness. But I always knew, I always told you, that this pretence to honour and candour, frankness and friendship, with this avowed contempt of all principle and all virtue, could not be safe, could not he sincere, would ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... against King William that were no more honourable than the ambushes of cut-throats and footpads. 'Tis humiliating to think that a great prince, possessor of a great and sacred right, and upholder of a great cause, should have stooped to such baseness of assassination and treasons as are proved by the unfortunate King James's own warrant and sign-manual given to his supporters in this country. What he and they called levying war was, in truth, no better than instigating murder. The noble Prince of Orange burst magnanimously through those feeble ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the liberty of observing to him, father, that, having obtained his throne by perjury, and cemented it by blood, and maintained it by hypocrisy, he could entertain no hope of preserving it unless the collective baseness of his subjects should be found to exceed his own, which was ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... "You are wronging Lucilla and wronging Nugent. Lucilla is incapable of saying anything against you to Grosse; and Nugent is equally incapable of misleading her as you suppose. What horrible ingratitude you attribute to one of them—and what horrible baseness to the other! I have listened to you as patiently as I can; and I feel sincerely obliged by the interest which you have shown in me—but I cannot remain in your company any longer. Madame Pratolungo, your suspicions are inhuman! You have not brought forward a shadow of proof in ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... swear and call on Gods when they mean nothing? Who call it complaisant, polite good Breeding, To say Ten thousand things they don't intend, And tell their nearest Friends the basest Falsehood? I know you cannot think me so perverse, Such Baseness dwells not in an Indian's Heart, And I'll convince you that I ...
— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers
... allowed," said Robinson, indignantly; "nor did I think that any member of this chamber would have had the baseness ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... OF HIS PREDECESSORS: The right to be free is a truth planted in the hearts of men, and acknowledged so to be by all who have hearkened to the voice of nature, and disproved by none but such as through wickedness, stupidity, or baseness of spirit, seem to have degenerated into the worst of beasts, and to have retained nothing of men but the outward shape, or the ability of doing those mischiefs which they have learnt ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... On the whole, he thought, such a marriage was what one would have looked for in Regnault; as Buscarlet said, one might almost have guessed. He, with his genius and his restlessness, his great fame and his infamy, the high achievement of his art and the baseness of his relaxations, he was just such ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... good husband and father, he becomes better in his domestic relations. If he has been charitable before, he becomes more so now. Men's weaknesses he looks upon as human frailties, until time and sense teach him that frailties have degenerated into positive perversity of character and baseness of heart. He will condemn falsehood and ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... (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. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... of his men did, and the pirate immediately sent some of his crew on board the Perry galley, who effectually made themselves masters thereof, and as Upton said, used him and the rest of the persons they found on board with great inhumanity and baseness, a thing very common amongst those wretches. Upton also insisted that as to himself, one of the pirate's crew ran up to him as soon as they came on board and with a cutlass in his hand, said with an oath, You old son of a bitch, I know you and you shall ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... that had the deepest interest in their safety and success must surely feel the deepest sorrow at their unhappy and unmerited misfortune. Read the epitaph inscribed upon their monument by public authority. In this, AEschines, you will find a proof of your absurdity, your malice, your abandoned baseness. Read! ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... inviolable attachment to religion and virtue, and seemed so averse to all sorts of inflammatory discourse, that he durst not presume upon the footing he had gained in her affection, to explain the baseness of his desire; he therefore applied to another of her passions, that proved the bane of her virtue. This was her timidity, which at first being constitutional, was afterwards increased by the circumstances of her education, ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... come to the point of establishing a distinction between his own money and the housekeeping money, just as Louis XV. drew the line between his privy purse and the public moneys. He deceived Dinah as to his earnings. On discovering this baseness, Madame de la Baudraye went through fearful tortures of jealousy. She wanted to live two lives—the life of the world and the life of a literary woman; she accompanied Lousteau to every first-night performance, and could detect in him many impulses of wounded vanity, for ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... 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
... power on landing; storms the fortress of St. Domingo; assumes the government before he investigates the conduct of Columbus; seizes his arms, gold, secret papers, etc.; summons Columbus to appear before him; his baseness in collecting evidence; puts Don Diego in chains; also Columbus; his fears in respect to the Adelantado; puts him in irons; his mal-administration; a saying of his; superseded in his government by Ovando; sails for Spain ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... danger, far or near; Spurn at baseness, spurn at fear. Still, with persevering might, Speak the truth, and ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... sports are painful; and their labour Delight in them sets off: some kinds of baseness Are nobly undergone; and most poor matters Point to rich ends. This, my mean task Would be as heavy to me as odious, but The mistress, which I serve, quickens what's dead And makes my labours pleasures: O, she is Ten times more gentle than her father's crabbed, And he's compos'd of harshness. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various
... general depression, when even the unconquerable Washington said "I have almost ceased to hope," one staggering blow would be very likely to end the struggle. There could be no heavier blow than the loss of the Hudson river, and with baseness almost incredible Arnold asked for the command of West Point, with the intention of betraying it into the hands of Sir Henry Clinton. The depth of his villainy on this occasion makes it probable that ...
— The War of Independence • John Fiske
... offspring of the Chief 165 Antimachus, who when my brother once With godlike Laertiades your town Enter'd ambassador, his death advised In council, and to let him forth no more? Now rue ye both the baseness of your sire. 170 He said, and from his chariot to the plain Thrust down Pisandrus, piercing with keen lance His bosom, and supine he smote the field. Down leap'd Hippolochus, whom on the ground He slew, cut sheer ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... 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 institutions will be more triumphantly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... he said; "let me not delay another moment in seeking her, and convincing her that I could not have been guilty of the baseness of ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... flooding its banks, and eating out new channels with many a landslip. It is a strange world, and man, a strange animal, guided, it is true, usually by most commonplace motives; but, for that reason, ready and glad at times to escape from them and their dulness and baseness; to give vent, if but for a moment, in wild freedom, to that demoniac element, which, as Goethe says, underlies his nature and all nature; and to prefer for an hour, to the normal and respectable ditch-water, a bottle of champagne or even a carouse ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... now mentioned, 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 feeling ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... world of treachery and cowardice fill you with disgust as it does myself? Does not your soul shrink with dismay at the infamy we behold everywhere at the present time? Oh, I know your heart is noble and pure, and despises the baseness which is now the master of the world. Let us, therefore, escape from it. Come, dearest, come! I have two pistols at my rooms. They are loaded, and will not fail us. A pressure of my finger—and we are free! ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... well-practised skill, He "squares" Surveyors too! For Jobbery finds some baseness still For venal hands ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... we have all the poverty and none of the pride!" Some one unluckily said that the things were not all in that torn state. "What," said he, with the utmost contempt, looking to the party, "is there any one that wishes to exhibit his devoted baseness? Let him not whisper here behind my back, but come forward and get into the box." He paused, and had no further interruption. "To you, Gentlemen of the Jury, I appeal. I ask you if you have seen ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 563, August 25, 1832 • Various
... you amaze me.—In what part of my mind or conduct have you found that baseness, which entitles you to treat me ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... of your correspondents be good enough to explain the circumstances which gave rise to the adoption of "farina" as a term expressive of baseness ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various
... with beauty night and morn, Guarding the soul within from every stain, No baseness since the first day she was born Behind those star-lit brows could access again, Bathed in the light that streamed from all things fair, Turning to spirit each delicate door of sense, And with all lovely shapes of earth and air Feeding her ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... brain. That faithful love roused the reviving influences of my better and nobler sense. Was the man whom I had enshrined in my heart of hearts capable of such base wickedness as the bare idea of his marriage to another woman implied? No! Mine was the baseness, mine the wickedness, in having even for a moment thought it ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... why the Poet's dictum "change is of all things most pleasant" is true, is "a baseness in our blood;" for as the bad man is easily changeable, bad must be also the nature that craves change, i.e. it is ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... it has not only destroyed but made a world." At Naples, in the Romagna, wherever he saw a spark of noble life stirring, he was ready for any exertion; or danger, to blow it into a flame. He stigmatized baseness, hypocrisy, and injustice, ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... straight! It's well God had mercy on us. And what was it for? Who doesn't have intrigues nowadays? Why, if he was so jealous, as I see things he should have shown it sooner, but he lets it go on for months. And then to call him out, reckoning on Fedya not fighting because he owed him money! What baseness! What meanness! I know you understand Fedya, my dear count; that, believe me, is why I am so fond of you. Few people do understand him. He is such ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... hunger-maddened incendiaries had been at work. Smoke was rising already from Downing Street and the back of the Treasury. Then came the carnage. One can well believe that not a single unnecessary bullet was fired. Not to believe that would be to saddle those in authority with a less than human baseness. But the question history puts is: Who was primarily to blame for the circumstances which led up to the tragic necessity ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... the most precious jewel that was ever intrusted to the custody of a friend. You are the arbiter of my fate. More, much more than my life is in your disposal. If you should betray me, you will commit a crime, that laughs to scorn the frivolity of all former baseness. You will inflict upon me a torture, in comparison of which all the laborious punishments that tyrants have invented, are couches of ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... war, and have, I hope, said enough to show that we have no reason to blush for our soldiers, but only for those of their fellow-countrymen who have traduced them. But there are a number of opponents of the war who have never descended to such baseness, and who honestly hold that the war might have been avoided, and also that we might, after it broke out, have found some terms which the Boers could accept. At their back they have all those amiable and goodhearted idealists who have not examined the question very critically, but are oppressed ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... wicked deception on the part of Jasper," said Melleville to himself, as he left the store. "A lie told with sinister purpose. How given over to all baseness is the man!" ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... bright look coming into his eyes, 'and that is one reason why I am quite determined not to precipitate matters. We can't afford to have revolution after revolution in a poor and struggling place like Gloria, and so I want these people to give the full measure of their incapacity and their baseness so that when they fall they may fall like Lucifer! Hamilton would be rather for rushing ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... proper course of public conduct shews that we are still as ready to resort to torture as Bacon was. As to vindictive cruelty, an incident in the South African war, when the relatives and friends of a prisoner were forced to witness his execution, betrayed a baseness of temper and character which hardly leaves us the right to plume ourselves on our superiority to Edward III. at the surrender of Calais. And the democratic American officer indulges in torture in the Philippines just as the aristocratic English officer did in South Africa. The incidents ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... ready to declare for her as always before, when the gods decreed otherwise, and the day was lost—but lost, in the indignant language of the Queen, 'not in fair and honorable fight, but through the baseness of a stratagem rather to have been expected from a Carthaginian than ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... your weaknesses, your meannesses in detail. One thing I might have told him, which I left out—the fact that you are no gentleman, not even bourgeois—a mere peasant clown. He would not have let you measure swords with him if he had known the baseness of your ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... But while we can think and maintain the rights of our own individuality against every human combination, let us not forget to caution all who are disposed to waver that there is a cowardice which is criminal, and a longing for rest which it is baseness to indulge. God help him, over whose dead soul in his living body must be uttered the sad ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... employer's shoulder. It has been said of men in battle that they have been shot and have run forward some hundred feet without knowing what has happened to them. And so Mr. Crewe got five or six lines into that editorial before he realized in full the baseness of Mr. Pardriff's treachery. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... easier to do if she had conspired against her heart in doing it. And yet, cold-bloodedly to expose him and pluck the clothing from a passion—dear to think of only when it is profoundly secret—struck her as an extreme baseness, of which not even the woman who perused and reperused his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... world calls gross, there are a thousand that slide into it. The storm only blows down the trees whose hearts have been eaten out and their roots loosened. And when you see a man having a reputation for wisdom and honour all at once coming crash down and disclosing his baseness, be sure that he began with small deflections from the path of right. The evil works underground; and if we yield to little temptations, when great ones come we shall ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Kneel to Him who will judge you for your baseness; it is too late to kneel to me! Oh, great God! to think how I have loved this woman, and how ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... said." It is no wonder, then, that Holt, driven to desperation by such treatment, wrote to Speed:—"Your forbearance towards Andrew Johnson, of whose dishonorable conduct you have been so well advised, is a great mystery to me. With the stench of his baseness in your nostrils you have been all tenderness for him, while for me ... you have ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... my friends, but all may not have prudent tongues in their heads. The reward is large, and perhaps some will be tempted;" he glanced at Iasus, who, to do him justice, had never thought of a second deed of baseness. "I cannot risk that. No, Artemisia goes out of the city to-night, and she must get ready without the ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... on him some abusive epithets, challenged him to the field. Grant declined to accept the invitation; and Lewis, after spitting in his face in the presence of several of the French officers, left him to reflect on his baseness. ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... city when there was war, but his counsel was that of a traitor, and the city was lost. Now behold, it is written that he who has given counsel about the country or its capital should perish with it when it comes into peril. He would not die—so I killed him; but not before he had heaped upon me baseness and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... his insolence so far, as to declare that he should mutilate Honorius before he sent him into exile. But this assertion of Zosimus is destroyed by the more impartial testimony of Olympiodorus; who attributes the ungenerous proposal (which was absolutely rejected by Attalus) to the baseness, and perhaps ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... to know a father's love and care, I cannot but despise a man who becomes a father, then shirks from the responsibility which follows—who leaves the burden and the disgrace which follow parenthood outside the marriage relation to the poor woman alone. Such baseness, such cowardice, such despicable littleness of soul!—do you wonder why I don't want ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... fight for bread, for the necessities. This law may seem brutal, but there is an excuse 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
... had finished 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 power of imposing on one's self ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various |
