base-point

Updated: May 13, 2025

And at that notion, my brain grew giddy with the hope of seeing myself one day in one of those same cottages, tilling the earth, under God's sky, and perhaps . And then a whole cloud-world of love, freedom, fame, simple, graceful country luxury steamed up across my brain, to end not, like the man's in the "Arabian Nights," in my kicking over the tray of China, which formed the base-point of my inverted pyramid of hope but in my finding the contents of my plate deposited in my lap, while I was gazing fixedly at Lillian.

Charles Kingsley - Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet: An Autobiography