Baseness quotes:

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In the ocean of baseness, the deeper we get, the easier the sinking. -- James Russell Lowell
Nothing is more repugnant to me than brotherly feelings grounded in the common baseness people see in one another. -- Milan Kundera
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Some kinds of baseness are nobly undergone. -- William Shakespeare
One must conform to the baseness of an age or become neurotic. -- Robert Musil
Every base occupation makes one sharp in its practice, and dull in every other. -- Philip Sidney
When the scale of sensuality bears down that of reason, the baseness of our nature conducts us to most preposterous conclusions. -- Roger Chamberlain
In civil business; what first? boldness; what second and third? boldness: and yet boldness is a child of ignorance and baseness. -- Francis Bacon
It is hardly possible to suspect another without having in one's self the seeds of baseness the party is accused of. -- StanisÅ?aw I LeszczyÅ?ski
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
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
There is a law of neutralization of forces, which hinders bodies from sinking beyond a certain depth in the sea; but in the ocean of baseness, the deeper we get, the easier the sinking. -- James Russell Lowell
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
A war for a great principle ennobles a nation. A war for commercial supremacy, upon some shallow pretext, is despicable, and more than aught else demonstrates to what immeasurable depths of baseness men and nations can descend. -- Albert Pike
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
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
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
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
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
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
Atheism exists only in coldness, selfishness, and baseness. -- Madame de Stael
No, no, there must be a limit to the baseness even of publishers. -- Dorothy L. Sayers
The motions of men must be such as suggest their dignity or their baseness. -- Leonardo da Vinci
There are two infinities in this world: God up above, and down below, human baseness. -- Jules de Goncourt
To think is to take a cunning revenge in which we camouflage our baseness and conceal our lower instincts. -- Emile M. Cioran
It is hardly possible to suspect another without having in one's self the seeds of baseness the party is accused of. -- StanisÅ?aw I LeszczyÅ?ski
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
[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
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
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-MaÊ¿arri
There is a law of neutralization of forces, which hinders bodies from sinking beyond a certain depth in the sea; but in the ocean of baseness, the deeper we get, the easier the sinking -- James Russell Lowell
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
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

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