Moreover, the assertion made by various writers that his cold was the cause of his dispositions not being as well planned as on former occasions, and of his orders during the battle not being as good as previously, is quite
baseless, which again shows that Napoleon's cold on the twenty-sixth of August was unimportant.
It is part of the martyrdom which I endure for the cause of the Truth that there are seasons of mental weakness, when Cubes and Spheres flit away into the background of scarce-possible existences; when the Land of Three Dimensions seems almost as visionary as the Land of One or None; nay, when even this hard wall that bars me from my freedom, these very tablets on which I am writing, and all the substantial realities of Flatland itself, appear no better than the offspring of a diseased imagination, or the
baseless fabric of a dream.
MESSENGER Dost thou not know thy fears are
baseless all?
At this moment he was lying ill of fever in the clay lands near Curitiba in Brazil, having been drenched with thunder-storms and persecuted by other hardships, in common with all the English farmers and farm-labourers who, just at this time, were deluded into going thither by the promises of the Brazilian Government, and by the
baseless assumption that those frames which, ploughing and sowing on English uplands, had resisted all the weathers to whose moods they had been born, could resist equally well all the weathers by which they were surprised on Brazilian plains.
Her perfectly
baseless conviction that time would yet bring about my meeting with Mary, partly irritated, partly amused me.
The
baseless fabric of a vision, then, shall furnish my theme--chosen with apologies and regrets instead of the more limited field of pretty Polly's small talk.
No, quite the contrary; I see that society takes up a sort of antagonistic attitude to these people, which is utterly
baseless, and I fancy there's envy at the bottom of it...."
His regret was for his
baseless disloyalty to one who had saved the lives of every member of his party, and offered harm to none.
All the hints and affirmations of others I treated as malignant,
baseless slanders; your own self-accusations I believed to be overstrained; and all that seemed unaccountable in your position I trusted that you could account for if you chose.'
It was even harder than he could have believed possible, to separate in his own conscience his abandonment by all his fellows from a
baseless sense of shame and disgrace.
It had been easy for me to gain a temporary effect by a mirage of
baseless opinion; but it is ever the trial of the scrupulous explorer to be saluted with the impatient scorn of chatterers who attempt only the smallest achievements, being indeed equipped for no other.
They were but a sign of broken joys and
baseless projects; in their very beauty they were (as the unlikeliest of men had said) almost a cruel satire on the loves, hopes, plans, of humanity, which are able to forecast nothing, and are so much brittle dust.