"Baseless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... constitution, they protest against the new constitution, they assert that they will to the utmost of their ability resist the introduction and impede the working of the new constitution. Their abhorrence of Home Rule may be groundless, their threats may be baseless; their power to give effect to their menaces may have no existence. All that I now contend is that the strongest, and the most energetic, part of Irish society is in fact and in truth bitterly opposed, not only to the details, but to the fundamental principle, of the new polity. ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... magic jewel in its head commonly known as "a toad-stone," although that "common knowledge" was really not knowledge at all, but—like an enormous mass of the accepted current statements in those times, about animals, plants and stones—was an absolutely baseless invention. Such baseless beliefs were due to the perfectly innocent but reckless habit of mankind, throughout long ages, of exaggerating and building up marvellous narrations on the one hand, and on the other hand of believing without ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... He has been and whence He has returned, because positive science and the anatomist's scalpel preach no gospel of a future, let us try to feel as well as to believe that it is life, with all its stunted capacities and idle occupation with baseless fabrics, which is the sleep, and that for us all the end of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... judgment was passing from him. When not under the influence of the drug everything looked dull, leaden, and hopeless. Thus he alternated between utter dejection, for which there would have been no cause were he in his normal condition, and sanguine hopes and expectations that were still more baseless. He had not gone to a physician and made known his condition, as he had intended while on his brief visit to the country; his pride had revolted at such a confession of weakness, and he felt that surely he would have sufficient strength of mind to break the ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... impure, (for, if that were the reason, then the Christian fiends should be incongruous with the angels, which they are not,)—but as the unreal opposed to the real. In all the hands of other poets, we feel that Jupiter, Mercury, Apollo, Diana, are not merely impure conceptions, but that they are baseless conceptions, phantoms of air, nonentities; and there is much the same objection, in point of just taste, to the combination of such fabulous beings in the same groups with glorified saints and angels, as there is to the combination, by a painter or a sculptor, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... blushed with shame as he thought to himself that a foreigner might apparently journey through the country from one end to the other without knowing that there was such a thing as a soldier in the land. What a travesty this was on civilization! How baseless the proud boasts of national greatness when only an insignificant and almost invisible few paid any attention to the claims of military glory! The outlook was indeed dismal, but Sam was no pessimist. Obstacles ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... rather in the form that State and Church were to be one and that one the State. For this there were two good reasons. In the first place, the claims of the Church to supernatural authority were altogether baseless. To bow to those claims was to become slaves of priests and to accept superstitions. And, in the next place, this is no mere accident. The division between the priest and layman corresponds to his division between his 'sentimentalist' and his 'stern, cold ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... occurrence would be impossible, for the [25] proper study of Mind-healing would cure the insane. That persons have gone away from the Massachusetts Metaphysical College "made insane by Mrs. Eddy's teachings," like a hundred other stories, is a baseless fabrication offered solely to injure her or her school. [30] The enemy is trying to make ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... receive them. She laughed, with a child's joy, as this picture rose up amidst the gloom of the dungeon. Her mind, faithful to its sweet, simple instincts, refused to receive the lofty images that flitted confusedly by it, and settled back to its human visions, yet more baseless, of the earthly happiness and ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... empires are eloquent of it. The most brilliant civilization the world has even seen through it became the most transitory. Even the vast and massive structure of the Roman Empire, undermined by moral corruption, vanished before barbarian hordes like the baseless fabric of a dream. To think that we can solve a problem of this depth and magnitude by any mere external means—as so many good and earnest women seem to imagine—by any multiplication of Rescue Societies, Preventive Institutions, and other benevolent organizations—is ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... we all know that we are going to live together. There is no more baseless theory on God's earth than that we are going to take eight millions of men and send them out of this country, because they want to learn something, because they want to live like men and be men and citizens, and because God has put them here for our work and our ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... And shot along the air with glancing ray, Swift as a falcon darting on its prey; No planet's swift career could match his speed, That seem'd the power of fancy to exceed. The courier of the sky I mark'd with dread, As by degrees the baseless fabric fled That human power had built, while high disdain I felt within to see the toiling train Striving to seize each transitory thing That fleets away on dissolution's wing; And soonest from the firmest grasp recede, Like airy forms, with tantalizing ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... of politicians can uphold the baseless assumption, that a law, or any conglomerate of laws, under the name of compromise, or howsoever called, is final. Nothing can be plainer than this,—that by no parliamentary device or knot can any legislature tie the hands of ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... that he compared the Rialto, greatly to its disadvantage, with Westminster and Blackfriars Bridges. I need not add, after what you have said, that I have not yet found my arguments successful. You do me the honour to ask me what to advise. It always appears to me (if this should prove to be a baseless assumption, I shall be pardoned), that Mr Dorrit has been accustomed to exercise influence ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... everything, this expectation of being cured cheered him, but then a new fear entered. His servant might have failed to find the physician. Again he grew faint, passing instantly from the most unreasoning hopes to the most baseless fears, exaggerating the chances of a sudden recovery and his apprehensions of danger. The hours passed and the moment came when, in utter despair and convinced that the physician would not arrive, he angrily told himself that he certainly ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... the world. Until the days of Domitian we do not hear of a single noble or distinguished person who had joined their ranks. That the Pudens and Claudia of Rom. xvi. were the Pudens and Claudia of Martial's Epigrams seems to me to be a baseless dream. If the "foreign superstition" with which Pomponia Graecina, wife of Aulus Plautius, the conqueror of Britain, was charged, and of which she was acquitted, was indeed, as has been suspected, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... inclination to "back out" of the matter in the same easy way in which those double-ender floating palaces Fritz had noticed on the way up could go astern in order to avoid an obstruction; albeit Nat was prolific in the extreme with all manner of excuses—excuses that were as baseless and unsubstantial as the foam churned up ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... messenger, and he must have told him the truth.' The speaker pointed to Festus. They turned their indignant eyes full upon him. That he had sported with their deepest feelings, while knowing the rumour to be baseless, was ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... to which such speculatists constantly have resort is, that the weakness or the entire absence of all considerations against their theory constitutes a positive argument in its support. No such thing; it affords only a fair presumption of the baseless character ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... distinctly attributed to one of ourselves, if we take the words in their simplicity and fulness, functions and powers which universal experience has taught us not to look for in humanity. And there have been a great many attempts—as it seems to me, altogether futile and baseless ones—to break the force of these words as a distinct prophecy of Jesus Christ. Surely the language is far too wide to have application to any real or ideal Jewish monarch, except one whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom? Surely the experience of a hundred centuries might teach men that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... was—what were her prospects, her connections, her standing in society. She begged me, but with a sigh, to reconsider my proposal, and termed my love an infatuation—a will o' the wisp—a fancy or fantasy of the moment—a baseless and unstable creation rather of the imagination than of the heart. These things she uttered as the shadows of the sweet twilight gathered darkly and more darkly around us—and then, with a gentle pressure of her fairy-like hand, overthrew, in a single sweet instant, all ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... elder lady, as her young handmaiden passed the door with her wonted demureness, "come here; no, get me a glass of water. Kate! I shall die of that girl. She does some idiotic thing, and then she looks in here with that contented, beaming look. There is an air of baseless happiness about her that drives me ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... self! A beast In passion, nay far worse than such, to feast On baseless anger against her whose least Stray word was kind; her daily ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... whole affair. Mr. Seward was so surprised and shocked that he raised one hand involuntarily, and groaned. Such is the condition of affairs at this stage of the terror. The pursuit of the assassins has commenced; the town is full of wild and baseless rumors; much that is said is stirring, little is reliable. I tell it to you as I get it, but fancy is more prolific than truth: be patient! [Footnote: The facts above had been collected by Mr. Jerome B. Stillion, ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... minds of the people at large, so that they would not know what the juries would sanction and what condemn, and would not therefore know practically what their own rights and liberties were under the law, the objection is thoroughly baseless and false. No system of law that was ever devised could be so entirely intelligible and certain to the minds of the people at large as this. Compared with it, the complicated systems of law that ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... are no such isles?' he would answer; 'If, with their magic birds and flowers, they are indeed but the baseless fabric of a dream? If your ship, amidst the ravings of the storm and the darkness of the tortured night, should founder once and for ever in the dark strait which leads to the gateways of that Dawn—those gateways through which no traveller returns ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... might not have been found in the followers of Cromwell. Like these they were fanatically but sincerely religious, and their unabashed and fearless adherence to their beliefs and their open observance of the outward forms of religion exposed them to the same cruel and baseless charge of hypocrisy. Just as the aristocratic followers of Charles I had jeered at the Roundheads, so did every thoughtless officer and newspaper correspondent jeer at the psalm-singing and the prayer meetings in the laagers. The Boers had the courage ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... more difficult to communicate on paper than this baseless ardour, this stimulation of the brain, this sterile joyousness of spirits. You wake every morning, see the gold upon the snow-peaks, become filled with courage, and bless God for your prolonged existence. The valleys are but a stride to you; you cast ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... latter to the Senate. The propriety of this course of action depended somewhat on the question of Sherman's physical condition. Rumor declared that he was suffering from mental decay, due to his age, but McKinley believed the rumor to be baseless, summoned him to the cabinet, and Hanna was subsequently appointed to the Senate. When Sherman took up the duties of his office it appeared that the rumor had been all too true, and a serious lapse of memory on his part in a diplomatic matter forced his immediate replacement by William ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... very wretched. There must be some foundation for such a tale. Why should Felix have referred to Roger Carbury? And she did feel that there was something in her brother's manner which forbade her to reject the whole story as being altogether baseless. So she sat upon her bed and cried, and thought of all the tales she had heard of faithless lovers. And yet why should the man have come to her, not only with soft words of love, but asking her hand in marriage, if it really were true that he was in daily communication with ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... rebellion. Okubo Toshimichi, a statesman and patriot of the purest type, had from the beginning resisted the reactionary movements of his clan. At the time of the rebellion he was minister of Home Affairs and put forth all his exertions to suppress it. A baseless slander that he had sent to Satsuma hired assassins to take Saigo's life, had been used by the reckless conspirators to force the rebel leader to an outbreak. This was believed by many of the samurai, not only in Satsuma ...
— Japan • David Murray
... a sensational connection between the loss and a controversy which is now going on with a foreign government is greatly to be deplored and is emphatically asserted to be utterly baseless. It bears traces of the jingoism of those 'interests' ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... Senator August, equally silent, was on his way home. The newspapers were hysterical in their demands for information; all day the wires leading to Washington had borne message after message imploring news, but only baseless rumors had sped back. And Tom Collins, knowing all this, realized the hopelessness of ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... is to sneer at such anticipations of a better future as baseless and visionary. The shrewd but narrow-eyed man of the world laughs at the suggestion that there car: be any stronger motive than selfishness, any higher morality than that of the broker's board. The ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... a region of the kingdom of Og, is a matter of much difficulty. It has been equated on philological grounds to the Lej[a]. But these arguments have been shown to be shaky if not baseless, and the identification is now generally abandoned. The confidence with which the great cities of Og were identified with the extensive remains of ancient sites in the Lej[a] and Hauran has also been shown to be without justification. All the so-called ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... sinking heart, what this meant, I saw in a moment that all the hopes I had raised on Simon Fleix's discovery were baseless. Mademoiselle had dropped the velvet bow, no doubt, but not from a window. It was still a clue, but one so slight and vague as to be virtually useless, proving only that she was in trouble and in need of help; perhaps that she had passed ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... such a measure, which at best would end in answering a few questions of unprofitable curiosity; whilst, on the other hand, without a knowledge of the ground on which value depends, or without some approximation to it, Political Economy could not exist at all, except as a heap of baseless opinions. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Nothing! how shall I define Thy shapeless, baseless, placeless emptiness? Nor form, nor colour, sound, nor size is thine, Nor words nor fingers can thy voice express; But though we cannot thee to aught compare, A thousand things to thee may likened be, And though thou art with ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... and bitter was the feeling against the horseflesh fable—for fable, our anger notwithstanding, we insisted it was—that thinking meat-eaters began to look upon it as a bad omen, and to wonder why a baseless rumour should stir up so much indignation. Tales of this kind, whether or not they tallied with probability, had come to be pooh-poohed, to be treated with disdain. Hence it was rather odd that an anecdote so racy should excite ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... turned out to be baseless. For instance, one day Johnny Boatman, a little boy not quite four years old, was lost. His mother was almost crazed, for word went out that the Indians had stolen him. A day later the lad was found under a tree, asleep. He had ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... Say, that, impatient of unjust command, Indignant Denmark spurns him from her land! He builds a lofty tower; the basis stands Fix'd in the stormy ocean's moving sands: The turrets in unstable grandeur rise, The baseless fabric shoots into the skies, Soon shall the glories of the ponderous hall Come thundering down, to crush him in ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... hearts were veiled in gloom. An unaccountable action on the part of the antelope had plunged the State into disgrace. That charmer, on the representation that the previous day was her birthday, and that vast treasures had been sent in a hamper for its celebration (both baseless assertions), had secretly but most pressingly invited thirty-five neighbouring princes and princesses to a ball and supper: with a special stipulation that they were "not to be fetched till twelve." This wandering of the antelope's fancy, led to ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... verily, those tortures said to be In Acheron, the deep, they all are ours Here in this life. No Tantalus, benumbed With baseless terror, as the fables tell, Fears the huge boulder hanging in the air: But, rather, in life an empty dread of Gods Urges mortality, and each one fears Such fall of fortune as may chance to him. Nor eat the vultures into Tityus Prostrate in Acheron, nor ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... rise to two legends about him which are still so often repeated that their absurdity must be mentioned here, although they have been known for many years to be baseless. One is perpetuated by an inscription on the organ in the church at Whitchurch, to the effect that Handel composed the oratorio of Esther on this instrument. Handel was never organist at Whitchurch; the church existed in his day, but it was an entirely separate ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... lose their might and their influence when discovered to be baseless, the power of supernatural Christianity will doubtless pass away, but the effect of the revolution must not be exaggerated, although it cannot here be fully discussed. If the pictures which have filled for so long the horizon of the Future must vanish, no ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... of Jesus are only words. These precious words, spoken to that one weeping sister in a little Jewish village, and which have brought hope to millions ever since, are as baseless as all the other dreams and longings of the heart, unless Jesus confirms them by fact. If He did not rise from the dead, they are but another of the noble, exalted, but futile delusions of which the world has many others. If Christ be ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Count strove to encourage, although none knew better than he how baseless it was. Beatrix, with a mother's fondness, kept little Wilhelm's room as it had been when he left it, his toys in their places, and his bed prepared for him, allowing no one else to share the task she had allotted to herself. She ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... aspects of the situation—what it meant to him and his prospects or what he could do about it. Hurt to the soul he stared at the wreck of a friendship. Nothing will more deeply sicken the heart of a naturally loyal man than to discover baseless his faith in some ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... by the electors of Harwich as their member in the short Parliament that sat from March to July, 1679, his colleague being Sir Anthony Deane, but both members were sent to the Tower in May on a baseless charge, and they were superseded in the next Parliament that met ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Fourth of July celebration. Difficulties arising in Germany as the war progressed. The protection of American citizens abroad; prostitution of American citizenship; examples; strengthening of the rules against pretended Americans; baseless praise of Great Britain at the expense of the United States. Duty of the embassy toward American students; admission of women to the German universities. Efforts of various compatriots to reach the Emperor; psychological curiosities. Changes ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... unknown sea all this insubstantial pageant had faded like the baseless fabric of the vision that it was and left not a ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... identities of the spiritual world. A single glance of it mocks all the investigations of man and all the instruments and books of the earth and all reasoning. What is marvellous? what is unlikely? what is impossible or baseless or vague? after you have once just opened the space of a peachpit and given audience to far and near and to the sunset and had all things enter with electric swiftness softly and duly without contusion or ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... feelings, by fitting to them a scheme of philosophical opinions. But unfortunately the philosophic system of both was so far from supporting their own views and the cravings of their own enthusiasm, that, as in some points it was baseless, incoherent, or unintelligible, so in others it tended to moral results, from which, if they had foreseen them, they would have been themselves the first to shrink as contradictory to the very purposes in which their system had originated. ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... colonists in America, the venerable Bishop's arrival in his native country was preceded by accusations intended to prejudice the young Prince, Don Philip, who was regent during the Emperor's absence, against him. Long years of championship of an unpopular cause rendered him impervious to these baseless attacks of his enemies. At a time of life when most men think to rest, Las Casas prepared himself with undiminished vigour to continue the struggle in the cause of freedom. Upon his arrival in Spain, he repaired at once to Valladolid where the court was usually in residence, ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... that he was taking the 'most haunted house in Scotland,' a house with an old and established reputation for mysterious if not supernatural disturbances. What he has got is a house with no reputation whatever of that kind, with no history, with nothing germane to his purpose beyond a cloud of baseless rumours produced during the last twelve-month. Who is responsible for the imposture it is not my business to know or to inquire, but that it is an imposture of the most shallow and impudent kind there can be no manner ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... brief sketch of the measures passed by Unionist Governments since 1886 with the object of promoting the material prosperity of Ireland, many points of interest have been necessarily omitted; but what has been said will suffice to show how baseless is the assertion, so frequently urged as an argument for Home Rule, that the Imperial Parliament is incapable of legislating successfully for Irish wants.[72] Nothing could be more futile than to ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... denial of immortality, saying: "The materialistic assumption that there is no such state of things, and that the life of the soul ends accordingly with the life of the body, is perhaps the most colossal instance of baseless assumption that is known to the history of philosophy." But we can say with equal force that the common-sense assumption that the life of soul continues beyond the grave is, perhaps, the most colossal instance of baseless assumption that is known to the history of thought, because, ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... waste all his time chuckling over the baseless rejoicings of the people of the town. He made himself acquainted with some of the white slaves, men who had been brought from England, and finding some of them very much discontented with their lot, he ventured to tell them that ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... when we shall no longer worship in temples made with hands, neither in the mountains of Samaria, nor in the temples of Jerusalem, or Rome, or London. 'The cloud-capt towers-the gorgeous palaces-the solemn temples-yea, the great globe itself, shall dissolve, and, like the baseless fabric of a vision, leave not a wreck behind.' Or in language far more solemn and striking, because they are the unerring words of truth, 'The heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat; the earth also, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Poe's book, and very likely did not know how to read. After having handed over Pym's journal, he had not troubled himself about its publication. Having retired to Illinois at first and to the Falklands afterwards, he had no notion of the stir that the work had made, or of the fantastic and baseless climax to which our great poet had ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... nation was disunited and disturbed, there was no one who could give unity to it. The princes therefore stood up together; constant references were made to antiquity to the injury of the present state; baseless statements were dressed up to confound what was real, and men made a boast of their own peculiar learning to condemn what their rulers appointed. And now, when Your Majesty has consolidated the empire, and, ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... penned these principles had had the safety of Abraham Lincoln in his keeping; and these simple statements are the best refutation of the baseless ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... founded upon it the tradition that two knights on their way to Fulham to be blessed by the Bishop of London quarrelled and fought at the Westbourne Bridge, and killed each other, and hence gave rise to the name. This story may be dismissed as entirely baseless; the real explanation is much less romantic. The word is probably connected with the Manor of Neyt, which was adjacent to Westminster, and as pronunciation rather than orthography was relied upon in early days, this seems much the most ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... apparently people of reason and intelligence. The fact is, the cable is so strong and heavy that with two cars crowded to the utmost, their united weight is insufficient to stretch the cable tight, let alone putting any strain upon it sufficient to break it. And most nervous worries are as baseless as this. ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... children. They would listen to no remonstrances from the two Frenchmen, who perforce had also to travel back, either alone or with the Bow Indians, in the direction of their war camp, where the idea of a Shoshone attack was found to be baseless. Eventually, the two La Verendrye brothers were obliged to make their way to the Missouri River, and abandon any idea of finding a way to the Western Ocean across ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve; And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... downright and earnest effort to paint nature as in a looking-glass, was fostered partly by the jealousy of their beaten competitors, and partly by the pure, perverse, and hopeless ignorance of the whole body of art-critics, so called, connected with the press. No notion was ever more baseless or more ridiculous. It was asserted that the Pre-Raphaelites did not draw well, in the face of the fact, that the principal member of their body, from the time he entered the schools of the Academy, had literally encumbered himself with the medals given ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... was not one to give way to fears that might be baseless. "Let us sleep," he said, shrugging his shoulders. And he lay down where he was, pillowing his head on a fishing-net. Bale said nothing, but examined the door before he stretched himself across ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... freezing coldness. The same old nightmare. How often he has told me of that same dream, that tormented him eighteen months ago. He says he often thinks of me now—and he still "dreams" of me! "Dreams are baseless fabrics whose timbers are mere moonbeams." Apply your ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... Shakespeare may have had employment in one of them. There is, it is true, no tradition to this effect, but such traditions as we have about Shakespeare's occupation between the time of leaving school and going to London are so loose and baseless that no confidence can be placed in them. It is, to say the least, more probable that he was in an attorney's office than that he was a butcher killing calves 'in a high style,' and making speeches ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... noticing the course of the games, and regulating their play accordingly, as they do at Baden-Baden and Hombourg. I suppose that now and then these scientific calculators must be told that their whole theory of chances is the most baseless delusion, but they certainly do not believe it; and at any rate this curious pseudo-science of winning by skill at games of pure chance will last our ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... expectations as to the present interview brought to humiliating discomfiture, but the influence of the disillusionment instantly retroacted with the effect of making the entire noble and romantic cult which had led up to this unlucky confrontation seem a mere farrago of extravagant and baseless sentiment. What on earth had Regnier been thinking of, to plan deliberately a situation calculated to turn a cherished sentiment into ridicule? If he had seriously thought his daughter capable ...
— A Positive Romance - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... these facts, and whose written testimony to them I possess. Lastly, that Mr. Edward Chapman (the survivor of the original firm of Chapman & Hall) has set down in writing, for similar preservation, his personal knowledge of the origin and progress of this book, of the monstrosity of the baseless assertions in question, and (tested by details) even of the self-evident impossibility of there being any truth in them." The "written testimony" alluded to is also in my possession, having been inclosed to me by Dickens, in ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... Wales!'" repeated he. "Surely, Sir, you have more wit than to credit that baseless tale? Why not set a price on ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... to the more plausible but equally baseless claim of Captain William Mackenzie of Gruinard, and his cousin, the late Major-General Alexander Mackay Mackenzie of the Indian Army. Captain Murdoch Mackenzie's claim having failed, we must go back another step in the chain to pick up the legitimate succession ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... having been hastily summoned, would return to demand angrily what the rumpus was all about. By this time the clerk would have recovered his wits sufficiently to denounce the proceeding as an outrage and the suit as baseless. But his master, who saw judgment against himself for sixty dollars and his goods actually under attachment, was usually in no mood to listen to, much less believe, his clerk's explanations. At all events, they availed naught, when Levine, with an expression of horror at such ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... public has just cause to complain, not (as I said on a former occasion) because the editor of such a book as Hoveden's Annals does not know everything necessary to elucidate his author, but because baseless conjectures are put forward ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... insinuation, baseless enough at the beginning, was now but too well justified. Colonel Cockshott was on his raw-boned brown hunter, and even my brief acquaintance with horses enabled me to see that Wild Rose no longer regarded him with her ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... organizing the colored regiments of half-size at the outset, with a full complement of officers. This measure, however agreeable it might have been to the horde of aspirants for commissions, was in itself calculated to destroy all self-respect in the soldiers, being based on the utterly baseless assumption that they required twice as many officers as whites, and was foredoomed to failure, because no esprit de corps can be created in a regiment which is from the first insignificant in respect to size. It is scarcely conceivable that any regular officer should have honestly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... was shaken down in his shallow and somewhat feeble understanding, the structure of his moral convictions was but a baseless fabric. Error in itself is not fatal to the inner sense of right; but Bruce's error was not honest doubt, it was wilful self-deception, blindness of heart, first deliberately ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... of the success of the Marconi telegraph made its way to the London Stock Exchange there was a fall in the shares of cable companies. The fear of rivalry from the new invention was baseless. As but fifteen words a minute are transmissible by the Marconi system, it evidently does not compete with a cable, such as that between France and England, which can transmit 2,500 words a minute without difficulty. The Marconi telegraph comes less as a competitor to old ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... no good reason for disbelieving Baudin's disclaimer. It was plain and candid; and there was nothing in his actions while he was in Australian waters which belied his words. The baseless character of the gossip promulgated by Lieutenant-Colonel Paterson, and the alleged exhibition of the map indicating the exact spot where the French intended to settle in Frederick Henry Bay, were disposed of by the fact that Baudin's ships went nowhere near that place ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... its bright pathway, immortal as it flows onward to eternity, immortal in its return to the bosom of God. It is no postulate, no corollary, no mere hypothetical judgment; no "undiscovered correlative of motion," no "baseless fabric of a vision"—but the one grand comprehensive Datum on which all the objective, as well as subjective, data of the universe rest. It is the same "spirit that moved upon the face of the depths," ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... lantern, and three bottles, probably containing oil; while the clothes of the family and a few mats were thrown across the open rafters. Upon my first meeting with this exile he had conceived for me one of the baseless island friendships, had given me nuts to drink, and carried me up the den "to see my house"—the only entertainment that he had to offer. He liked the "Amelican," he said, and the "Inglisman," but the "Flessman" was his abhorrence; and he was careful ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... moon-like gleam of your teeth will destroy the darkness frightful, so very terrible, come over me; Your moon of a face which glitters upon my eye, the moon-bird's eye, now makes me long for the sweet of your lips. O loved one, O beautiful, give up that baseless pride against me, My heart is burnt by the fire of longing; give me that drink so sweet of your lotus face. O you with beautiful teeth, if you are in anger against me, strike me then with your finger nails, sharp and like arrows, ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... that night with an apology. It was necessary that he should speak about himself. An utterly baseless story had, within the last few days, and doubtless with a view to this election, been revived by the London evening paper which originally made it. He regretted also to notice that his opponent had accepted the story, ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... not forget that the world will one day vanish "like the baseless fabric of a vision," and that we ourselves are "such stuff as dreams are made on;" but this is not the mood in which he dwells. Again: while it is for the philosopher to reduce variety to unity, it is the poet's task to detect the manifold ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... I again say, 'Let there be no mistake.' Each stone that goes towards the uprearing of this visible fane, each human soul that does its part in building the invisible temple of our national faith, is bearing witness to, and lending its support to, that which is either the truth of truths, or the baseless ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... the impression exist? The hateful and desolating impression made on us earlier by the thought of a 'block' universe, once for all and rigidly fixed in unalterable and uniform subjection to eternal and omnipresent law, has dissolved like the baseless fabric of a vision. And why? Just because being found intolerable it was faced and put to the question. Now that there has been substituted for it the spectacle of a universe necessarily or fatally evolving—or, as we have said, progressing—does it not, while still evoking the ...
— Progress and History • Various
... boundless egotism. They are not the clouds that gather and form and break into airy unreality in the atmosphere of earth. They are the shadows falling upon the soul of man from the unseen Realities, which alone have substantial and abiding being. The laws of nature are surely not the baseless fabric of a dream. These ideals are simply those laws, transfigured into their spiritual substances. Whatever in our blindness we may persuade ourselves elsewhere, over the Bible we recognize the true character of the visions which so strangely stir us. This is the power of the Bible. Christian ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... Here she lived in peace; But through the city she had sought me long. When I was gone from Mesched, and my brothers read The paper I had written, their wrath rose Against my tutor whom they deemed the spy. He, being found asleep beside the king Who lay dead, to his door they brought The baseless charge of murder. Through the streets They sent their criers to proclaim the deed. So, clamorous for his life, the people came And dragged him forth, and led him to the block And slew him. On a spear they set his head, ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... among table-rapping Spiritualists than among conventional Christians. The notion that those who reject the Christian (or any other) scheme of salvation by atonement must reject also belief in personal immortality and in miracles is as baseless as the notion that if a man is an atheist he will steal ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... manner, they have often been so egregiously misunderstood that many entire systems of interpretation—which were believed in for generations, and which fill many folios, now consigned to a happy oblivion— are clearly proved to have been utterly baseless. Colossal usurpations of deadly import to the human race have been built, like inverted pyramids, on the narrow apex ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... befallen him compared with what had come upon the schoolmaster! A man like him to be so treated! How gladly he would work for him all the rest of his days! And how welcome his grandfather would make him to his cottage! Lord Lossie would be the last to object. But he knew it was a baseless castle while he built it, for Mr Graham would assuredly provide for himself, if it were by breaking stones on the road and saying the Lord's Prayer. It all fell to pieces just as he lifted his hand to Miss ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... the Japanese were to make up their minds to accelerate whatever process of synthesis were possible in China! Suppose, after all, I am not the victim of atmospheric refraction, and they are, indeed, as gallant and bold and intelligent as my baseless conception of them would have them be! They would almost certainly find co-operative elements among the educated Chinese.... But this is no doubt the lesser probability. In front and rear of China the English language stands. ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... reasons to plead for it; and he does assign certain reasons for his belief, which are, it may be safely affirmed, as frivolous and inconclusive as any that have ever been offered in support of the most baseless revery. They may be reduced to THREE; the first, derived from our cerebral organization; the second, from the history of a certain portion of our species; the third, from the analogy of ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... time. "My dear Mr. Ware," he said, as they touched glasses again, and sipped the fresh beer that had been brought them, "of all our fictions there is none so utterly baseless and empty as this idea that humanity progresses. The savage's natural impression is that the world he sees about him was made for him, and that the rest of the universe is subordinated to him and his world, and that all the spirits and demons and gods occupy themselves exclusively ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... fishing, he should beware lest he be mistaken for the bait. Gaily I cast my fly over K. and now he has snapped off my head. That story about a second French Division was false. K. merely quotes the number of my question and adds, "The rumour is baseless." Well, "tant pis," as Guepratte would say with a shrug of his shoulders. Our first step won't have the weight behind it we had permitted ourselves for some hours to hope. Everywhere the first is the ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... free imagination, and without the possibility of being controverted. You may talk of your dreams; and you may tell what you heard a parrot say. Both Morpheus and the bird are incompetent witnesses; and your listener dare not attack your recital. The baseless fabric of a vision, then, shall furnish my theme—chosen with apologies and regrets instead of the more limited field ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... Colonna, and which she returned with ardour according to the assertion of some critics. My own belief, concurring with that of better judges than myself, is that we have here to deal with one of the many baseless stories told about him. Omitting the difficulties presented by his advanced age, it is wholly contrary to all we know about the Marchioness, and not a little damaging to her reputation for austerity, to suppose that ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... recent losses of the Royal Flying Corps on the Western Front, and the increased activity of the German airmen, created some natural depression, which might have been more pronounced had not Mr. PEMBERTON-BILLING seized the occasion to reiterate his charges of "Murder" already condemned as baseless by two judicial tribunals. The House will do anything in reason, but it refuses to accompany Mr. BILLING in his flights ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, March 21, 1917 • Various
... probable essence of truth in Professor Haeckel's philosophy? for it is not to be supposed that the speculations of an eminent man are baseless, or that he has been led to his view of what he conceives to be the truth by some wholly erroneous path; his intuitive convictions are to be respected, for they are based on a far wider experience and knowledge of fact than is given to the average man; and for the average man to consider it likely ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... was an incarnation of Lakshmi. She became incarnate again, many centuries afterwards, as the wife of Krishna, another incarnation of Vishnu [W. H. S.]. Reckoning by centuries is, of course, inapplicable to pure myth. The author believed in Bentley's baseless chronology. ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... the midnight hour, or when, lost in poetic dreams, fancy has peopled the scene, and the soul has been disturbed, till it shook the constitution by the passions that meditation had raised, whose objects, the baseless fabric of a vision, faded before the exhausted eye, they ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... who is said to have witnessed in magnificent apocalypse some closing scenes of the human drama. If he also heard in sublime oratorio a prelude of this widely extended glory, our vision may not be a "baseless fabric." After the quartettes of earth, and the interludes of angels, came the grand finale, when every creature which is in heaven, as well as on the earth, was heard ascribing "Blessing and honour and glory and power to Him who sitteth ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... human progress or merely bye-paths embryological or teratological. It may be possible to show that group marriage exists somewhere on the earth at the present time. Even if this is so, the theory of primitive promiscuity and group marriage as stages in the general history of mankind remain mere baseless guesses until we have a systematic account both of the causes which led to the various steps, and of the processes by which the various stages ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... truth, he ever did anything at all. Of both of them it may be said that no men stood higher in their profession, and that Mr Ball's suspicions, had they been known in the neighbourhood of Lincoln's Inn, would have been scouted as utterly baseless. And, for the comfort of my readers, let me assure them that they were utterly baseless. There might, perhaps, have been a little vanity about Mr Slow as to the names of his aristocratic clients; but he was an honest, painstaking man, ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... line, form the angle of one of their own Provinces. And yet we are not to examine there at all; we have never explored the country there, and are expected to yield to such arrogant, extravagant, and baseless pretensions! ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... all grown persons to illustrate with more knowledge, still more,—how we bless the chance that gave to us your great realities, which life has daily helped us, helps us still, to interpret, instead of thin and baseless fictions that would all this time have hampered us, ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Childe Roland, is the incarnation of the Greek spirit, the young, light-hearted master of the modern world, at whose trumpet blast the dark towers of ignorance, superstition and deceit have vanished into thin air, as the baseless fabric of a dream. Not that the jeering phantoms have flown! They still beset, in varied form, the path of each generation; but the Achaian Childe Roland gave to man self-confidence, and taught him the lesson that nature's mysteries, to be ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... himself and of his stewardship to God.—From our connextion here, there will probably be some interest in each other in that day; and I cannot bear the thought of your being able to say when the scheme of Universalism shall all vanish like the baseless fabric of a vision, and all the hopes built upon it will be like the spider's web and like the giving up of the ghost, that you should be able to say, I never warned you of this issue, nor admonished you of ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... end, if my suspicions are confirmed, I shall have lost all I have ever valued in life since my mother died—my plighted wife, and the one chosen friend whose companionship could make existence pleasant to me. God grant that this fancy of mine is as baseless as Sir David Forster declared it to be! God grant that I may never find a ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... ruler of the French kingdom, in vain proposed concession after concession. All negotiation indeed broke down when Henry formally put forward his claim on the crown of France. No claim could have been more utterly baseless, for the Parliamentary title by which the House of Lancaster held England could give it no right over France, and the strict law of hereditary succession which Edward asserted could be pleaded, if pleaded at all, only by the House of Mortimer. Not only ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... to reticence, he had gone home, written brief and hurried letters to Ray and to Gleason, told his wife that he had heard the stories, and that until Ray had a chance to explain would regard them as baseless rumors, or at the worst as exaggerations, for which Gleason was responsible; then he had slept the sleep of the just until the corporal of the guard came banging at the door at four A.M. to say the reveille had sounded out in camp. ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... historian, is the fact that the life of the Emperor has been blameless from the moral standpoint. On two or three occasions early in the reign accounts were published of scandals at the Court. They may not have been wholly baseless, but none of them directly involved the Emperor, or even raised a doubt as to his respectability or reputation. Take from history—or from biography for that matter—the vices of those it treats of, and one-third, perhaps one-half, of its ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... care, never creaked so loudly before or since—and stepped out into the cool air. The fresh breeze that smote my cheeks as I sat down outside to put on my boots brought me back to the everyday world—a world that seemed to make the events of the night unreal and baseless, so that I had, with boyish elasticity of temper, almost forgotten all fear as I began to descend ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... impressed me, and I felt that I had no right to reject as profane and undeserving of examination the doctrine which it enforced. Accordingly I entered into a thorough searching of the Scripture without bias, and was amazed to find how baseless was the tenet for which in fact I had endured a sort of martyrdom. This, I believe, had a great effect in showing me how little right we have at any time to count on our opinions as final truth, however necessary they may just then be felt to our spiritual ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... Babylonia worshipped Asari, 'the strong one,' 'the prince who does good to men.' This has a strong resemblance in name and character to Asar, Osiris, of Egypt. But the connection which is proposed, from both names being written with the signs of an eye and a place, seems baseless, as the syllabic values of the signs were reversed in the two languages; either the writing or the sound of the name must be only a coincidence. Istar, another Sumerian deity, became softened in Semitic speech to Athtar, ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... last chapter of the last book was done, it occurred to me to wonder whether I might ever be able to afford to get for a week or two where the thermometer went below ninety degrees in summer. But this was a wild and baseless dream, whose irrationality I quickly recognized. For such books as those into which I had been coining a year of my young strength and heart, I received the sum of one hundred dollars apiece. The "Gypsy" publisher was more munificent. ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... seems positively baseless, or absolutely irrational, its massing of supposed data, and its attempted coherence approximate more highly to Organization and Consistency than did the inchoate ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... and plunging into the ice-cold waters of passions so keen and translunar as to have become chaste. It may be so—and, on the other hand, it may be that the old sly earth-gods will hold their indelible sway over us until the "baseless fabric" of this vision leaves "not a rack behind"! In any case, for our present purpose, the reading of Emily Bronte strengthens us in our recognition that the only wisdom of life consists in leaving all the doors of the ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... book is not altogether without interest. The subject is called Astronomy, but should rather be called Astrology, for more than half the space is taken up with these baseless theories of sidereal influence which belong to the imaginary side of the science. But in the exordia and perorations to the several books, as well as in sundry digressions, may be found matter of greater value, embodying the poet's views on the great questions of philosophy. ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... in his right mind could bring himself to defile the grave of a shamefully abused and defenceless girl with these baseless fabrications, this manufactured filth, is inconceivable. How any man, in his right mind or out of it, could sit down and coldly try to persuade anybody to believe it, or listen patiently to it, or, indeed, do anything but scoff at it and deride ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... shows good literary workmanship. It does not weary the reader with vague theories; nor does it give over much expression to the enthusiasm—not to say baseless encomium—for which too many female biographers have accustomed us to look. It is a simple and discriminative sketch of one of the most clever and lovable of the class at whom Carlyle sneered as 'scribbling ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... strange baseless exhilaration! Suppose—suppose it was all a mistake, and she should wake back to the old stubborn, perfunctory reality! Perhaps it was better, saner—that quiet taken-for-granted existence. Perhaps she regretted—but even with the half-fear at her heart she laughed at that. If wake she must, she ...
— A Reversion To Type • Josephine Daskam
... his own individual life, but of life in general, had assumed an aspect so empty, vain, and colourless, that he felt he would not rise from his bed for anything existence had to offer. He recalled his usual frame of mind, in which these things seemed attractive, with a dull wonderment that so baseless a delusion should be so strong and so general. He wondered if it were possible that it should ever again ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... accept with the resignation due to fate. At first she had done so; but then a singular surmise crept into her thoughts—a suspicion which came she knew not whence—and thereafter was no rest from fantastic suggestions. Her surmise did not remain baseless; evidence of undeniable strength came to its support, yet all was so ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing |
