What is base?

Famous quotes containing the word base:

“You see how this House of Commons has begun to verify all the ill prophecies that were made of it—low, vulgar, meddling with everything, assuming universal competency, and flattering every base passion—and sneering at everything noble refined and truly national. The direct tyranny will come on by and by, after it shall have gratified the multitude with the spoil and ruin of the old institutions of the land.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)

“Do not gain basely; base gain is equal to ruin.”
—Hesiod (c. 8th century B.C.)

“There is but one pride pardonable; that of being above doing a base or dishonorable action.”
—Samuel Richardson (1689–1761)