Baseness Quotes - Page 2

• What will a man not do when frantic with love? To what baseness will he not demean himself? What pangs will he not make others suffer, so that he may ease his selfish heart?

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Love, Selfish, Heart

  William Makepeace Thackeray (1869). “Henry Esmond: And Lovel the Widower”, p.155

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The true Christians are the true citizens, lofty of purpose, resolute in endeavor, ready for a hero's deeds, but never looking down on their task because it is cast in the day of small things; scornful of baseness, awake to their own duties as well as to their rights, following the higher law with reverence, and in this world doing all that in their power lies, so that when death comes they may feel that humanity is in some degree better because they lived.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Christian, Lying, Hero

  8 Copy quote

• It becomes possible to admit that plainness may coexist with nobility of nature, and fine features with baseness; and yet to hold that mental and physical perfection are fundamentally connected, and will, when the present causes of incongruity have worked themselves out, be ever found united.

  Herbert Spencer

  Beauty, Perfection, May

  4 Copy quote

• Do we indeed desire the dead Should still be near us at our side ? Is there no baseness we would hide ? No inner vileness that we dread ? How many a father have I seen A sober man, among his boys Whose youth was full of foolish noise.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Father, Boys, Men

  Alfred Lord Tennyson, “Obiit MDCCCXXXIIi (Entire)”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Why, do you not know, then, that the origin of all human evils, and of baseness, and cowardice, is not death, but rather the fear of death?

  Epictetus

  Death, Evil, Dying

  Epictetus, Mary Wilder Tileston (1877). “Selections from Epictetus”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I particularly scorn my fondness for paradox. I despise pessimism, narcissism, solipsism, truculence, word-play, and pusillanimity, my chiefer inclinations; loathe self-loathers ergo me; have no pity for self-pity and so am free of that sweet baseness. I doubt I am. Being me’s no joke.

  John Barth

  Sweet, Self, Play

  14 Copy quote

• The dead are all holy, even they that were base and wicked while alive. Their baseness and wickedness was not they, was but the heavy and unmanageable environment that lay round them.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Evil, Wicked, Alive

  Thomas Carlyle (1881). “Critical and Miscellaneous Essays: Collected and Republished”, p.45

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• ... I feel tired to death, paralyzed by this mysteriously wasted life's stubborn concentration on hopelessness and dissolution. It occurs to me that if I lie still like this for long enough, then I'll be dead when I finally wake again, and nothing can ever again torment me, beset me, or present me with evidence of my baseness and decay. That thought is the only one that can comfort me.

  Christer Kihlman

  Depression, Lying, Tired

  Christer Kihlman (1990). “The blue mother”

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am still at Trattenbach, surrounded, as ever, by odiousness and baseness. I know that human beings on the average are not worth much anywhere, but here they are much more good-for-nothing and irresponsible than elsewhere.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Average, Anywhere But Here, Elsewhere

  4 Copy quote

• I once did hold it, as our statists do,
  A baseness to write fair, and labour'd much
  How to forget that learning; but, sir, now
  It did me yeoman's service.

  William Shakespeare

  Writing, Yeoman, Fairness

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 5, sc. 2, l. 33

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Advertizing, television and film all wield mighty powers to visually seduce us, while much fine art leaves us indifferent, confused or, at worst, repulsed. There is a desperate need for creative Christians to redeem the visual arena from both forms of excess, cutting through all the false glamour, tawdry baseness and dense obfuscation.

  John Walford

  Christian, Art, Confused

  5 Copy quote

• There is quite enough sorrow and shame and suffering and baseness in real life, and there is no need for meeting it unnecessarily in fiction.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Real, Suffering, Sorrow

  Theodore Roosevelt, Joseph Bishop (2010). “Theodore Roosevelt's Letters to His Children”, p.146, Applewood Books

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every base occupation makes one sharp in its practice, and dull in every other.

  Philip Sidney

  Practice, Occupation, Dull

  Sir Philip Sidney, Jane Porter (1807). “Aphorisms of Sir Philip Sidney: With Remarks”, p.15

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is hardly possible to suspect another without having in one's self the seeds of baseness the party is accused of.

  Stanisław I Leszczyński

  Party, Self, Suspicion

  François duc de La Rochefoucauld, Stanisław I Leszczyński (King of Poland) (1851). “Moral Reflections, Sentences and Maxims of Francis, Duc de la Rochefoucauld”, p.166

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Anger is certainly a kind of baseness; as it appears well in the weakness of those subjects in whom it reigns; children, women, old folks, sick folks. Only men must beware, that they carry their anger rather with scorn, than with fear; so that they may seem rather to be above the injury, than below it; which is a thing easily done, if a man will give law to himself in it.

  Francis Bacon

  Children, Anger, Men

  Francis Bacon (1850). “Works”, p.306

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is no more evil thing in this world than race prejudice, none at all. [...] It justifies and holds together more baseness, cruelty, and abomination than any other sort of error in the world.

  H. G. Wells

  Errors, Race, Evil

  24 Copy quote

• The motions of men must be such as suggest their dignity or their baseness.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Men, Dignity

  Leonardo Da Vinci, General Press (2016). “The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci”, p.210, GENERAL PRESS

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• When the scale of sensuality bears down that of reason, the baseness of our nature conducts us to most preposterous conclusions.

  Roger Chamberlain

  Nature, Bears, Reason

  4 Copy quote

• Do you know what is more hard to bear than the reverses of fortune? It is the baseness, the hideous ingratitude, of man.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Men, Bears, Fortune

  11 Copy quote

• Is it just or reasonable, that most voices against the main end of government should enslave the less number that would be free? more just it is, doubtless, if it come to force, that a less number compel a greater to retain, which can be no wrong to them, their liberty, than that a greater number, for the pleasure of their baseness, compel a less most injuriously to be their fellow-slaves. They who seek nothing but their own just liberty, have always right to win it and to keep it, whenever they have power, be the voices never so numerous that oppose it.

  John Milton

  Winning, Voice, Numbers

  4 Copy quote

• Nor is the darkness of colour a proof of the earth's baseness; for the brightness of the sun, which is visible to us, would not be perceived by anyone who might be in the sun.

  Nicholas of Cusa

  Darkness, Earth, Brightness

  5 Copy quote

• I condemn Christianity; I bring against the Christian Church the most terrible of all accusations that an accuser has ever had in his mouth. It is, to me, the greatest of all imaginable corruptions; it seeks to work the ultimate corruption, the worse possible corruption. The Christian Church has left nothing untouched by its depravity; it has turned every value into worthlessness, and every truth into a lie, and every integrity into baseness of soul.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Christian, Religious, Integrity

  Friedrich Nietzsche “Delphi Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (Illustrated): Friedrich Nietzsche”, Delphi Classics

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Those who profess contempt for men, and put them on a level with beasts, yet wish to be admired and believed by men, and contradict themselves by their own feelings--their nature, which is stronger than all, convincing them of the greatness of man more forcibly than reason convinces them of his baseness.

  Blaise Pascal

  Greatness, Men, Feelings

  4 Copy quote

• No language can fitly express the meanness, the baseness, the brutality, with which the world has ever treated its victims of one age and boasts of the next. Dante is worshipped at that grave to which he was hurried by persecution. Milton, in his own day, was "Mr. Milton, the blind adder, that spit his venom on the king's person"; and soon after, "the mighty orb of song." These absurd transitions from hatred to apotheosis, this recognition just at the moment when it becomes a mockery, saddens all intellectual history.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Song, Kings, Hatred

  Edwin Percy Whipple (1851). “Literature and life, lects”, p.4

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• One admirable trait in women is their lack of illusions about themselves. They never reason about their most blameworthy actions; their feelings carry them away. Even their dissimulation comes naturally to them, and in them crime is free of all baseness. Most of the time they simply do not know how it happened.

  Honore de Balzac

  Women, Feelings, Action

  4 Copy quote