Quotes & Sayings About Baseness

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

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

Merit has rarely risen of itself, but a pebble or a twig is often quite sufficient for it to spring from to the highest ascent. There is usually some baseness before there is any elevation. — Walter Savage Landor

That the deprecating attitude of a mass movement toward the present seconds the inclinations of the frustrated is obvious. What surprises one, when listening to the frustrated as they decry the present and all its works, is the enormous joy they derive from doing so. Such delight cannot come from the mere venting of a grievance. There must be something more -- and there is. By expatiating upon the incurable baseness and vileness of the times, the frustrated soften their feeling of failure and isolation. It is as if they said: 'Not only our blemished selves, but the lives of all our contemporaries, even the most happy and successful, are worthless and wasted.' Thus by deprecating the present they acquire a vague sense of equality. — Eric Hoffer

O fools, awake! The rites ye sacred hold
Are but a cheat contrived by men of old
Who lusted after wealth and gained their lust
And died in baseness-and their law is dust. — Al-Ma'arri

Nothing is more repugnant to me than brotherly feelings grounded in the common baseness people see in one another. — Milan Kundera

Glennard did himself injustice. it was from the unexpected discovery of his own pettiness that he chiefly suffered. Our self-esteem is apt to be based on the hypothetical great act we have never had occasion to perform; and even the most self-scrutinizing modesty credits itself negatively with a high standard of conduct. Glennard had never thought himself a hero; but he had been certain that he was incapable of baseness. We all like our wrong-doings to have a becoming cut, to be made to order, as it were; and Glennard found himself suddenly thrust into a garb of dishonor surely meant for a meaner figure. — Edith Wharton

With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base? — William Shakespeare

When you know what men are capable of you marvel neither at their sublimity nor their baseness. There are no limits in either direction apparently. — Henry Miller

Well, I must do't. Away, my disposition, and possess me Some harlot's spirit! My throat of war be turn'd, Which quier'd with my drum, into a pipe Small as an eunuch, or the virgin voice That babies lull asleep! The smiles of knaves Tent in my cheeks, and schoolboys' tears take up The glasses of my sight! A beggar's tongue Make motion through my lips, and my arm'd knees, Who bow'd but in my stirrup, bend like his That hath receiv'd an alms! I will not do't, Lest I surcease to honor mine own truth, And by my body's action teach my mind A most inherent baseness. — William Shakespeare

For it is not possible to join serpentine wisdom with columbine innocence, except men know exactly all the conditions of the serpent: his baseness and going upon his belly, his volubility and lubricity, his envy and sting, and the rest; that is, all forms and natures of evil: for without this, virtue lieth open and unfenced. — Francis Bacon

The moment one conceives the meaning of human greatness is the moment when one understands the baseness, the triviality and the meanness of the material from which we have to mould it. — Bill Hopkins

In civil business; what first? boldness; what second and third? boldness: and yet boldness is a child of ignorance and baseness. — Francis Bacon

The motions of men must be such as suggest their dignity or their baseness. — Leonardo Da Vinci

There can be a true grandeur in any degree of submissiveness, because it springs from loyalty to the laws and to an oath, and not from baseness of soul. — Simone Weil

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

From the day when Pierre, after leaving the Rostovs' with Natasha's grateful look fresh in his mind, had gazed at the comet that seemed to be fixed in the sky and felt that something new was appearing on his own horizon - from that day the problem of the vanity and uselessness of all earthly things, that had incessantly tormented him, no longer presented itself. That terrible question "Why?" "Wherefore?" which had come to him amid every occupation, was now replaced, not by another question or by a reply to the former question, but by her image. When he listened to, or himself took part in, trivial conversations, when he read or heard of human baseness or folly, he was not horrified as formerly, and did not ask himself why men struggled so about these things when all is so transient and incomprehensible - but — Leo Tolstoy

The consciousness of my own baseness has done nothing to reconcile me to the baseness of others. Nothing is more repugnant to me than brotherly feelings grounded in the common baseness people see in one another. I have no desire for that slimy brotherhood. — Milan Kundera

To think is to take a cunning revenge in which we camouflage our baseness and conceal our lower instincts. — Emile M. Cioran

There are only two great currents in the history of mankind: the baseness which makes conservatives and the envy which makes revolutionaries. — Edmond De Goncourt

I was perturbed by the suspicion that the anguish of love contemned was alloyed in her broken heart with the pangs, sordid in my young mind, of wounded vanity. I had not yet learnt how contradictory is human nature; I did not know how much pose there is in the sincere. how much baseness in the noble, nor how much goodness in the reprobate. — W. Somerset Maugham

To live an honest life you have to strive hard, get involved, fight, make mistakes, begin something and give it up, begin again, struggle endlessly, and suffer loss. As for tranquility - it's spiritual baseness. — Leo Tolstoy

It is because nations tend towards stupidity and baseness that mankind moves so slowly; it is because individuals have a capacity for better things that it moves at all. — George Gissing

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

The wish to hear such baseness is degrading. — Dante Alighieri

Conscience, the sense of right, the power of perceiving moral distinctions, the power of discerning between justice and injustice, excellence and baseness, is the highest faculty given us by God, the whole foundation of our responsibility, and our sole capacity for religion ... God, in giving us conscience, has implanted a principle within us which forbids us to prostrate ourselves before mere power, or to offer praise where we do not discover worth. — William Ellery Channing

Baseness that does not possess its own starting point [or principle] is always less harmful than that which does possess it, and intellect is such a starting point. It — Aristotle.

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

There is a native baseness in the ambition which seeks beyond its desert, that never shows more conspicuously than when, no matter how, it temporarily gains its object. — William Gilmore Simms

In the ocean of baseness, the deeper we get, the easier the sinking. — James Russell Lowell

Tis in ourselves that we are thus
or thus. Our bodies are our gardens, to the which
our wills are gardeners: so that if we will plant
nettles, or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up
thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs, or
distract it with many, either to have it sterile
with idleness, or manured with industry, why, the
power and corrigible authority of this lies in our
wills. If the balance of our lives had not one
scale of reason to poise another of sensuality, the
blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us
to most preposterous conclusions: but we have
reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal
stings, our unbitted lusts, whereof I take this that
you call love to be a sect or scion. — William Shakespeare

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

Some kinds of baseness are nobly undergone. — William Shakespeare

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

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

I believe we shall never learn to know ourselves except by endeavouring to know God, for, beholding His greatness we are struck by our own baseness, His purity shows our foulness, and by meditating on His humility we find how very far we are from being humble. 11. — Teresa Of Avila

Is it not He whose immortal hand ... has written there the death sentence of tyrants? He did not create kings to devour the human race. He did not create priests to harness us, like vile animals, to the chariots of kings and to give to the world examples of baseness, pride, perfidy, avarice, debauchery and falsehood. He created the universe to proclaim His power.
[The Cult of the Supreme Being] — Maximilien De Robespierre

No, no, there must be a limit to the baseness even of publishers. — Dorothy L. Sayers

The tyrant, who in order to hold his power, suppresses every superiority, does away with good men, forbids education and light, controls every movement of the citizens and, keeping them under a perpetual servitude, wants them to grow accustomed to baseness and cowardice, has his spies everywhere to listen to what is said in the meetings, and spreads dissension and calumny among the citizens and impoverishes them, is obliged to make war in order to keep his subjects occupied and impose on them permanent need of a chief. — Aristotle.

And it has always been a mystery, and I've marveled a thousand times at this ability of man (and, it seems, of the Russian man above all) to cherish the highest ideal in his soul alongside the greatest baseness, and all that in perfect sincerity.
The Adolescent (or, The Raw Youth) — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Here mankind discarded civilization as if it were an article of clothing and left behind every decent feeling: love; loyalty; simply everything. Here it stood naked, and exhibited it's wretched soul. Here, faced with the realm of death, all the baseness and cruelty of mankind was on display. — Schoschana Rabinovici

From my insufficiency to my perfection, and from my deviation to my equilibrium
From my sublimity to my beauty, and from my splendor to my majesty
From my scattering to my gathering, and from my rejection to my communion
From my baseness to my preciousness, and from my stones to my pearls
From my rising to my setting, and from my days to my nights
From my luminosity to my darkness, and from my guidance to my straying
From my perigee to my apogee, and from the base of my lance to its tip
From my waxing to my waning, and from the void of my moon to its crescent
From my pursuit to my flight, and from my steed to my gazelle
From my breeze to my boughs, and from my boughs to my shade
From my shade to my delight, and from my delight to my torment
From my torment to my likeness, and from my likeness to my impossibility
From my impossibility to my validity, and from my validity to my deficiency.
I am no one in existence but myself, — Ibn Arabi

The choking, sweltering, 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. Slopshirts attainable three-halfpence cheaper by the ruin of living bodies and immortal souls. — Thomas Carlyle

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

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

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

Riches are oft by guilt and baseness earn'd;
Or dealt by chance to shield a lucky knave,
Or throw a cruel sunshine on a fool.
But for one end, one much-neglected use,
Are riches worth your care; (for nature's wants
Are few, and without opulence supplied;)
This noble end is, to produce the soul;
To show the virtues in their fairest light;
To make humanity the minister
Of bounteous Providence; and teach the breast
The generous luxury the gods enjoy. — John Armstrong

THEY have the manners to be silent, and you, trusted as you are, the baseness to speak! — Henry James

If you expect the wise man to be as angry as the baseness of crimes requires, then he must not only be angry but go insane. — Seneca The Younger

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

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

I encountered among my comrades the most varied human traits, from frankness to reserve, from goodness, uprightness and kindness, to brutality and baseness. — Georg Brandes

It must not be thought that gold can be injured by rust, or virtue by baseness. — David R. Fideler

One must conform to the baseness of an age or become neurotic. — Robert Musil

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

But what worries me is not your shooting me, because after all, for people like us it's a natural death." He laid his glasses on the bed and took off his watch and chain. "What worries me," he went on, "is that out of so much hatred for the military, out of fighting them so much and thinking about them so much, you've ended up as bad as they are. And no ideal in life is worth that much baseness. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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

You know better than I," he said, "that all courts-martial are farces and that you're really paying for the crimes of
other people, because this time we're going to win the war at any price. Wouldn't you have done the same in my place?"
General Moncada got up to clean his thick horn-rimmed glasses on his shirttail. "Probably," he said. "But what
worries me is not your shooting me, because after all, for people like us it's a natural death." He laid his glasses on
the bed and took off his watch and chain. "What worries me," he went on "is that out of so much and thinking about them so much, you've ended up as bad as they are. And no ideal in life is worth that much baseness." He took off his wedding ring and the medal of the Virgin of Help and put them alongside his glasses and watch.
"At this rate," he concluded, "you'll not only be the most despotic and bloody dictator in our history, but you'll shoot
my dear friend Ursula in an attempt to pacify your conscience. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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

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

It is much safer to be feared than loved because ... love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails. — Niccolo Machiavelli

Let them judge me as they like, I could deceive them, but myself I cannot deceive ... and strange to say, in this acknowledgement of his baseness there was something painful yet joyful and quieting. More than once in Nekhlyudov's life there had been what he called, 'a cleansing of the soul.' A state of mind in which, after a long period of sluggish inner life ... he began to clear out all the rubbish that had accumulated in his soul and caused the cessation of true life. After such an awakening, Nekhlyudov always made some rules for himself ... wrote in his diary, began afresh ... — Leo Tolstoy

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. — Francis Bacon

We are much beholden to Machiavelli and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do . For it is not possible to join serpentine wisdom with the columbine innocency, except men know exactly all the conditions of the serpent; his baseness and going upon his belly, his volubility and lubricity, his envy and sting, and the rest; that is, all forms and natures of evil. For without this, virtue lieth open and unfenced. Nay, an honest man can do no good upon those that are wicked, to reclaim them, without the help of the knowledge of evil. — Francis Bacon

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

Atheism exists only in coldness, selfishness, and baseness. — Madame De Stael

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

Our fraught way of life gives each of us a narrowly defined role, creating conditions conducive to developing only those elements in our psyche which allow us to grow within the confines of that role. The other areas of our psyche waste away. Hence lack of contact. Here psychological and social factors combine, and produce fear, distrust, moral baseness and the death of hope. — Andrei Tarkovsky

Life is not an easy matter ... . You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness. — Leon Trotsky

People are always talking about it being their duty to find their way to their fellow men - to their neighbour, as they are forever saying with all the baseness of false sentiment - when in fact it is purely and simply a question of finding their way to themselves. Let each first find his way to himself! And since hardly anyone has yet found his way to himself, it is inconceivable that any of these unfortunate millions has ever found his way to another human being - or to his neighbour, as they say, dripping with self-deception. — Thomas Bernhard

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

Courtesy is a silver lining around the dark clouds of civilization; it is the best part of refinement and in many ways, an art of heroic beauty in the vast gallery of man's cruelty and baseness. — Bryant H. McGill

That evil wasn't glamorous, but just the result of ordinary half-assed badness, high school badness, given enough room, however that might happen, to become its bigger self. Bigger, with more horrible results, but never more than the cumulative weight of ordinary human baseness. — William Gibson

While he gazed
The beauty of her flesh abashed the boy,
As though it were the beauty of her soul:
For as the base man, judging of the good,
Puts his own baseness in him by default
Of will and nature, so did Pelleas lend
All the young beauty of his own soul to hers — Alfred Tennyson

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 — William Shakespeare

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

How could the human heart hold within its chambers at the same moment such grand measures of nobility and baseness? He wrote in his notebook: Indians at Omaha station: I am ashamed for this thing we call civilization. — Nancy Horan

Hence to be happy is nothing but not to be in need, that is, to be wise. But if you seek what wisdom is, reason has already explained and declared this as far as presently possible. For wisdom is nothing but the measure of the soul, that is, that by which the mind is liberated so that it neither runs over into too much nor falls short of fullness. For there is a running over into luxuries, tyrannies, acts of pride, and other such things whereby the souls of unrestrained and unhappy men think they get for themselves pleasure and power. But there is a falling short of fullness through baseness, fear, sorrow, passion, and other things, of whatever kind, whereby unhappy men even admit that they are unhappy. — Augustine Of Hippo

[H]e that thinks absolute power purifies men's blood, and corrects the baseness of human nature, need read the history of this, or any other age, to be convinced to the contrary. — John Locke

I will remark, here, that James W. Paige, the little bright-eyed, alert, smartly dressed inventor of the machine, is a most extraordinary compound of business thrift and commercial insanity; of cold calculation and jejune sentimentality; of veracity and falsehood; of fidelity and treachery; of nobility and baseness; of pluck and cowardice; of wasteful liberality and pitiful stinginess; of solid sense and weltering moonshine; of towering genius and trivial ambitions; of merciful bowels and a petrified heart; of colossal vanity and - But there the opposites stop. His vanity stands alone, sky-piercing, as sharp of outline as an Egyptian monolith. It is the only unpleasant feature in him that is not modified, softened, compensated by some converse characteristic. — Mark Twain

For what prevents us from saying that the happy life is to have a mind that is free, lofty, fearless and steadfast - a mind that is placed beyond the reach of fear, beyond the reach of desire, that counts virtue the only good, baseness the only evil, and all else but a worthless mass of things, which come and go without increasing or diminishing the highest good, and neither subtract any part from the happy life nor add any part to it?
A man thus grounded must, whether he wills or not, necessarily be attended by constant cheerfulness and a joy that is deep and issues from deep within, since he finds delight in his own resources, and desires no joys greater than his inner joys. — Seneca.

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

No baseness or cruelty of treason so deep or so tragic shall enter our human world, but that loyal love shall be able in due time to oppose to just that deed of treason its fitting deed of atonement. — Josiah Royce

What [Nietzsche] calls slave morality is to him purely spite-morality; and this spite-morality gave new names to all ideals. Thus impotence, which offers no reprisal, became goodness; craven baseness became humility; submission to him who was feared became obedience; inability to assert one's self became reluctance to assert one's self, became forgiveness, love of one's enemies. Misery became a distinction — Georg Brandes

National character is only another name for the particular form which the littleness, perversity and baseness of mankind take in every country. Every nation mocks at other nations, and all are right. — Arthur Schopenhauer

A society where the simple many obey the few seers can live; a society where all were seers could live even more fully. But a society where the mass is still simple and the seers are no longer attended to can achieve only superficiality, baseness, ugliness, and in the end extinction. On or back we must go: to stay here is death. — C.S. Lewis

It (the heart) is supposed in popular language, to be the seat sometimes, of courage, sometimes of affection, sometimes of honesty, or baseness. — Lyndon B. Johnson

There are two infinities in this world: God up above, and down below, human baseness. — Jules De Goncourt

Your heart new to the world, and full of warmth and sensibility, receives its first impressions with eagerness. Artless yourself, you suspect not others of deceit; and viewing the world through the medium of your own truth and innocence, you fancy all who surround you to deserve your confidence and esteem. What pity, that these gay visions must soon be dissipated! What pity, that you must soon discover the baseness of mankind, and guard against your fellow-creatures, as against your foes! — Matthew Gregory Lewis

Taking a close look at - at what's around us there - there is some sort of a harmony. It is the harmony of... overwhelming and collective murder. And we in comparison to the articulate vileness and baseness and obscenity of all this jungle - Uh, we in comparison to that enormous articulation - we only sound and look like badly pronounced and half-finished sentences out of a stupid suburban... novel... a cheap novel. We have to become humble in front of this overwhelming misery and overwhelming fornication... overwhelming growth and overwhelming lack of order. Even the - the stars up here in the - in the sky look like a mess. There is no harmony in the universe. We have to get acquainted to this idea that there is no real harmony as we have conceived it. But when I say this, I say this all full of admiration for the jungle. It is not that I hate it, I love it. I love it very much. But I love it against my better judgment. — Werner Herzog